Reporter: Second Hundred Days Are More Important
President Trump is right that 100 days is “a meaningless contrivance” that the press nonetheless “is harping on obsessively,” admits Bill Powell at Newsweek. He argues that “Trump’s second hundred days are likely to be far more consequential,” since Congress finally is set to seriously address two of his key policies: tax reform and repealing ObamaCare, and this period is “likely to produce more evidence that Trump’s is a learning presidency.” That learning is on display in foreign policy. For example, “consider the complete change of tone and substance regarding China.” That’s because “Trump, thankfully, is smart enough to be educable” and realizes he needs Beijing to deal with North Korea diplomatically.
Demographer: The Arrogance of Blue America
The “rage against red America” from “the deepest blue cores” over having elected Trump has produced “oikophobia — an irrational fear of their fellow citizens,” observes Joel Kotkin at The Daily Beast. To the “blues,” “Trump’s America is not only socially deplorable, but economically moronic as well.” So they want to “draw themselves into a cocoon so they can ignore the exploited people of America,” many of whom “reside in blue states and cities.” Indeed, “both segregation and impoverishment has worsened during the decades-long urban ‘comeback.’[hair space]” Fact is, “If you want to see worst impacts of blue policies, go to those red regions — like upstate New York — controlled by the blue bourgeoise.” These “backwaters” tend to be treated “at best as a recreational colony that otherwise can depopulate, deindustrialize and, in general, fall apart.”
Media critic: Why Does the Left Fear Bret Stephens?
New York Times readers and writers are “greeting the arrival of neoconservative pundit Bret Stephens to the newspaper’s op-ed page as if he’s Slenderman coming to murder their children,” says Jack Shafer at Politico. Saturday’s debut column, on climate change, “has traumatized the Times mind-meld like nothing before.” Well, nothing except “the outrage that followed” the appointments of former Nixon speechwriter William Safire in 1973 and neocon William Kristol in 2008. Back then, “the Upper West Side rioted. The Times newsroom wept in shame,” as it is now over Stephens. But “if we’re going to call for Stephens’ dismissal based on the alleged deficiencies in his Saturday column, let’s apply the same standard to other Times op-ed page residents . . . Let’s fact-check and peer review them, too.” Says Shafer: “Fat chance of that happening.”
From the right: Don’t End Arts Funding — Redirect It
Veteran museum curator Brian Allen opposes a funding cutoff for the National Endowments and other arts agencies. However, he writes in National Review, “I think they need to change.” Federal support of the arts constitutes less than 0.4 percent of funding; but while this aid can make a difference, “as we spend it now, [it] usually doesn’t.” Federal arts agencies “are aggressively unfocused” and “lots of money is piddled away.” Indeed, small-grant “federal funding often ends up simply increasing an institution’s general budget. It doesn’t move the nation’s cultural needle.” He suggests major investments in arts infrastructure to upgrade many venues’ “physical limitations” as well as “promoting free admission,” which is “the quickest and best way to increase accessibility and attendance.”
Conservative take: Jim DeMint’s Political Assassination
Former Sen. Jim DeMint reportedly is being ousted as head of the Heritage Foundation in “a coup orchestrated by Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham,” says John Hart at Forbes. It all goes back to the 2010 decision by Ed Feulner, then the think tank’s president, to create Heritage Action, a new version of Heritage “with fangs” to take direct political action on legislation. What happened, says Hart, is that “Ed Feulner created a beast. DeMint fed the beast. DeMint tried to tame the beast. The beast turned on DeMint.” Heritage’s influence has waned and many have “questioned its effectiveness.” By the time “DeMint realized the ‘beast with fangs’ was out of control, it was too late.” But he alone will have to “pay the price” for others’ “strategic missteps.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
