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When George Washington died in 1799, Congress tasked his Revolutionary War comrade Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee with composing a eulogy.
“First in war — first in peace — and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Lee wrote of Washington. The first president was “pious, just, humane, temperate and sincere; uniform, dignified and commanding.”
Yet as president, even the saintly Washington wasn’t immune to criticism, and any idea that Americans would warmly venerate their leaders vanished with his successor, President John Adams. One newspaper editor, who the administration would later arrest, called Adams “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless.”
As we head into the first-in-the-nation voting in the 2024 primary this month, none of the presidential candidates is first in the hearts of their countrymen. Joe Biden is 81, the oldest president ever and one who is struggling with John Adams-level unpopularity.
Former President Donald Trump is also deeply disliked by a majority of American voters and suffers the added liability of being the first former president to be criminally indicted (four times). Colorado’s top court ordered Trump’s name to be taken off the ballot for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and Maine’s secretary of state followed suit, but other states have rejected similar arguments. On Friday afternoon the US Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on the case February 8.
It places the nine justices at the center of a presidential election for the first time since the court’s pivotal ruling that stopped the recounting of the votes in Florida in 2000, handing the presidency to George W. Bush.
On Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where Washington hunkered down for the 1777-1778 winter with an ailing and battle-bruised Continental Army, Biden sought to cast Trump’s campaign as an existential threat to American democracy. Trump responded by accusing Biden of “pathetic fearmongering.”
It’s been three years since Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6. Harry Dunn, who served in the Capitol Police for 15 years, was one of those guarding the symbol of American democracy that day.
“Those who took part in the assault against the Capitol used all kinds of weapons against the officers defending it: Flagpoles were used as pikes. Metal bike racks that they had torn apart became bludgeons,” Dunn wrote. “Some of the police officers who fought alongside me were screaming in pain from the injuries they suffered while battling the attackers. Many officers were temporarily blinded and coughing from chemical irritants being sprayed in their faces. Police officers like myself who were Black were verbally assaulted with racial epithets, in addition to the physical blows we endured.”
“Our scars, both physical and emotional, still run deep and serve as a constant reminder of the fragility of our democratic institutions.” Dunn announced this week that he is running for a House seat representing a Maryland district.
Biden and the border
As SE Cupp noted, Biden, with only 39% of voters satisfied with his job performance, has “the lowest approval rating of the last eight administrations at the same point in their presidencies.” Republicans are bashing him for the surge of migrants across the southern border.
How should the president react? Close the border, Cupp argued. “It’s a humanitarian crisis, an economic crisis and a crisis of national security. That is, in every way, the responsibility of the president to address … Closing the border will force Democrats and Republicans in Congress to the table, to get something done finally. Why? Democrats will want the border re-opened as soon as possible, and Republicans won’t want Biden to take away one of their biggest — and frankly best — talking points.”
Up against Trump
This month’s first contests in the presidential primary — the Iowa caucus on Jan. 15 and New Hampshire primary on Jan. 23 — will test Trump’s so-far unshakable lead in the GOP race. Judging by the polls, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could potentially upstage Trump, but they have a fair amount of ground to make up.
In back-to-back CNN town halls Thursday, each made their case. “In need of a political Hail Mary, DeSantis executed as well as could be expected, but his performance seems unlikely to have sparked a fire,” wrote Patrick T. Brown. “Haley, on the other hand, can be content to play the long game, hoping her surprisingly good poll numbers in New Hampshire hold before the campaign trail turns south to her home state. Her performance Thursday night — offering fairly traditional GOP orthodoxy with a blend of compelling personal narrative and present-yet-understated identity politics — may offer GOP voters who are seeking an alternative to Trump their most likely vehicle. The key question, one that Iowa will shed some light on come January 15, is how many of those voters actually exist.”
The traditional “game changers” associated with Iowa and New Hampshire may instead result from Trump’s experiences in court this year, argued Julian Zelizer. “While the indictments and trials have done little to hurt Trump politically thus far, and in many ways, they seem to have boosted his standing by fueling the anti-establishment message and making it difficult for opponents to secure much airtime,” Zelizer wrote, “it is possible that a conviction would look very different.” (Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases brought against him.)
If the economy is the determining factor in the election, Biden should have an edge, according to John Avlon. The US has more than made up for the jobs it lost during the pandemic, wages are increasing faster than prices and the economy is growing. “Look at the data and ask yourself whether Americans overall — and America itself — are better off now under Biden than at the end of the Trump presidency? The answer is yes.”
For more:
Laura Belin: How Haley and DeSantis could pull ahead in Iowa
David Mark: The Supreme Court could make a Trump victory virtually impossible
Rob Davidson: I’m an emergency room doctor. Here’s what has me worried if Trump comes back to power
Mideast powder keg
A drone kills a Hamas leader in Beirut, Israel exchanges fire with Hezbollah across the Lebanese border, the Iran-backed Houthi militia attacks commercial shipping in the Red Sea, suicide bombings for which ISIS has claimed responsibility kill at least 84 people in Iran. Every day brings more signs of the violence and instability plaguing the Middle East, Peter Bergen pointed out.
“This all makes for a simmering mess, because while armed drones and proxy forces allow powers like the US, Israel and Iran to avoid all-out conventional wars, reliance on drones and proxies is also playing with fire as they move all these powers closer to all-out conflict. The history of warfare, after all, suggests that it is the most uncertain of human enterprises, and seemingly relatively unimportant events like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which became a key trigger of World War I, can instigate broader conflicts,” wrote Bergen.
In the midst of the Mideast conflict, there are questions about Israel’s leader. “Now that the war against Hamas has entered a new phase, with Israeli military officials announcing they will start withdrawing from Gaza several brigades in advance of lengthy, but apparently lower intensity, more targeted fighting,” wrote Frida Ghitis, “Israelis can turn their attention to the urgent matter of the prime minister who failed at his most important job: keeping the country safe.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has also failed since October 7 in refusing to take responsibility for the disaster, repeatedly affirming, ‘We’re going to answer all these questions,’ about what went wrong. But now, ‘Let’s focus on victory.’”
“The fact that Netanyahu expects the reckoning to come after the war creates an incentive for him to prolong it. As Israel decides how to pursue the conflict with Hamas going forward, that’s a conflict of interest that is unacceptable and dangerous.”
Claudine Gay resigns
The resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay launched a flood of commentary, including her own opinion piece in the New York Times. To historian Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas at Austin, the controversy touched off by the December 5 congressional hearing featuring Gay and the presidents of two other Ivy League universities, yields lessons about the role of America’s higher education system, which he called “the envy of the world.”
“Students and scholars from every continent make enormous personal sacrifices to gain admission to US campuses, and in recent years applications to the most prestigious schools have increased dramatically…” But America’s institutions of higher learning are increasingly struggling to tell their story within the US — and to retain the confidence of the public.
“American universities offer dynamic spaces for learning and discovery, unparalleled by any other institution, and they promote efforts to improve the world in ways large and small,” Suri observed. “On most campuses today, that compelling mission does not have the defenders it deserves … Too often college presidents are chosen not to lead for a purpose, but to keep the most influential members of their communities comfortable. Like other politicians today, they serve interest groups,” with students and scholars often being the least influential.
The congressional hearing featuring the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania “showed that they were uncomfortable with difficult moral issues, fearful of offending any vocal group and committed to quiescence over engaged discussion, including legitimate protests. By not taking a side or saying everything ‘depends on context,’ they pleased no one and antagonized everyone. That is not how educators, who thrive on the study of controversial issues, behave. It is how administrators are taught to act and keep their careers moving forward.”
AI comes for content creators
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft Corp., claiming their artificial intelligence models use the newspaper’s work without permission. As law professor Seán O’Connor wrote, the case raises a fundamental question:
“When artificial intelligence firms set their systems to scrape and ingest millions of painstakingly produced news stories, is it comparable to art students learning to paint by recreating the “Mona Lisa” — or unfair misappropriation?”
The defendants will likely argue that they’re just making “fair use” of the work, under copyright law. “Can a generative AI reproduction of previously published news and commentary be fair use? I don’t think so,” O’Connor observed. “Some journalists become more widely read than others not just because they publish first or have better insights but also because they express their ideas well … Generative AI’s use is not ‘transformative’ in that it is not commenting on or critiquing the original story or shifting it to a different medium, purpose or context. It is, instead, reproducing substantial parts of others’ work simply to compete in the same market channels as the original.”
“Rather than mastering the styles of other experts to develop new and better ones, it is a snaking hose flailing around uncontrollably, spewing thoughtless sequences of text based solely on probabilities that one word comes after another in human expression.”
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Keir Giles: What would happen if the West stopped playing by Russia’s rules?
AND…
‘Your Fat Friend’
Aubrey Gordon began her career writing under the pen name “Your Fat Friend.” As Sara Stewart noted, Gordon and filmmaker Jeanie Finlay have collaborated on a widely praised documentary with the same title.
The name came from a letter Gordon sent to a friend explaining “how she, as a 350-pound woman, would like to be addressed.”
“Just say fat,” Gordon reads from her essay in the film. “Not ‘curvy’ or ‘chubby’ or ‘chunky’ or ‘fluffy’ or ‘more to love’ or ‘big guy’ or ‘full-figured’ or ‘big-boned’ or ‘queen size’ or ‘husky’ or ‘obese’ or ‘overweight.’ Just say fat.”
“As Gordon acknowledges, many thin people (whether they are medical professionals or strangers) presume they know better than a fat person what that person should and shouldn’t eat. Gordon recalls one woman removing a melon from her grocery cart, telling her it has too much sugar. ‘It’s a melon!’ Gordon exclaims incredulously to the camera,” Stewart noted.
“But as she and other fat activists have publicly said for years now, it’s laughable to think they are unaware of nutrition and health recommendations, of the benefits of exercise and the dangers of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases. Listening to her describe a nonstop intrusion of strangers’ cutting remarks and disapproving looks and overheard comments from people desperate to lose five or 10 pounds — anything, Gordon points out, to avoid looking like her own body — is to begin to understand the severity of the damaging scrutiny to which fat people are subjected.”
