Why President Trump Still Bashes John McCain

Donald Trump is back to insulting John McCain. It’s not entirely clear why; I’ve seen it suggested that the president saw a “Saturday Night Live” rerun that got him going again. Maybe it was something else. Whatever the immediate cause, at this point everyone agrees that Trump is only hurting himself by insulting the late Arizona senator and war hero.

Almost everyone, anyway. Some pundits still fall for what I’ve called the #cleverfallacy – the mistake of inventing some brilliant logic to explain Trump’s seemingly irrational actions. There’s a powerful impulse to make this error. We like to attribute rationality to other people’s decisions, for one thing, and those who make this mistake are usually quite clever themselves and good at thinking up complicated political strategies.

And yet the best explanation for most of Trump’s actions, and certainly for the most obviously self-destructive ones, is that there’s nothing strategic going on; he’s acting on instinct. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O'Brien points out, insulting people in public is just what Donald Trump does. What he’s always done.

I’d add to this something important about presidential history. One thing almost all presidents have in common is that they believe they got to the Oval Office by overcoming the odds and the skepticism (or worse) of professional pundits. They all manage to believe this even if they were favored for the presidential nomination and the general election; after all, there are always at least a few doubters, and somewhere along the road most presidents do pull off a real upset of some kind. This attitude can be found in other fields as well, of course, but it’s a particular occupational hazard for the presidency.

Unfortunately, it’s a very dangerous attitude to have, because it encourages presidents to trust their gut feelings and disregard the counsel of others, especially those who weren’t with them for their glorious electoral victories. As I’ve said, almost every president has at least a mild case of this syndrome. Trump – who really did overcome the opinions of virtually every analyst in getting elected – appears to have it worse than most.

Good presidents recognize that this is a problem and fight against it, accepting that they may have won despite mistakes and flaws that they can improve upon while in office. Such self-knowledge doesn’t appear to be among Trump’s strengths. By all indications, he’s going to continue doing what he’s always done – in the belief that he knows more than his critics, that what he’s been doing has worked so far, and that therefore he should continue on, no matter how many things go wrong.

1. Josh Putnam on the all-new Nevada caucuses. As he points out, it’s possible that primary-like aspects of the new arrangements, if they’re adopted, could induce New Hampshire to move up its own primary (which in turn would mean Iowa would move up). I’d like to see an extra week there instead of the current 11-day gap, and then another extra week or two between South Carolina (scheduled for Feb. 29) and Super Tuesday on March 3. For better or worse, however, this schedule isn’t designed by the national party with the goal of choosing the nominee in the best possible way; instead, it’s a complex set of negotiations involving 50 (plus) state parties, legislatures and governors, along with various party actors.

2. Genia Kostka at the Monkey Cage on “social credit” in China.

3. Lee Drutman argues for replacing the Electoral College with a direct vote and a ranked-choice system. At this point, I’m ambivalent about getting rid of the Electoral College, and I’m generally not a big fan of ranked-choice voting, but it’s probably appropriate here. A simple plurality vote won’t do; it would encourage splintering and allow for fringe candidates to win with a very small vote share among many parties. Normally I’m not thrilled about the demands on voters of ranked-choice voting; we have city elections coming up in San Antonio, and I know who I support for mayor and city council, but I have no idea how to rank the other candidates and don’t really want to. In presidential elections, however, there would be plenty of information available.

4. Christian Vanderbrouk on the danger of white supremacists.

5. Jamelle Bouie on the Electoral College.

6. Andrew Sprung explains “Medicare for anyone.”

7. I don’t buy it, but Jonathan Chait’s argument in favor of Joe Biden campaigning with Stacey Abrams as his already-selected running mate is worth checking out.

8. And Molly E. Reynolds and Jackson Gode at Brookings have a new and very useful tracker for House oversight actions.

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