If you really want to change the Trump administration, you have to change the guy at the top. And that's not happening anytime soon. But, again, where I do think where you will see some movement is on this economic side, where I suspect, for example, this is a victory for China, because Trump was - I mean, Bannon was the hawk on China trade.

E. J. Dionne

Categorized in : Thinking Mean Guy

Nowhere else in the world do the laws on firearms become the playthings of politicians and lobbyists intent on manufacturing cultural conflict. Nowhere else do elected officials turn the matter of taking a gun to church into a searing ideological question. But then, guns are not a religion in most countries.

E. J. Dionne

gun law country

Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.

E. J. Dionne

hard-work giving believe

A nation that hates politics will not long survive as a democracy.

E. J. Dionne

democracy hate long

Hope is different from optimism. Hope is a tough virtue, not a psychological predisposition. Hope insists on taking facts and reason into account and still insisting that improvement ... is always a real possibility.

E. J. Dionne

optimism political real

The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.

E. J. Dionne

battle identity war

The Democrats want to celebrate their successes but don't want to look out of touch with the people who haven't risen much in the last decade or so really.

E. J. Dionne

want people looks

I wish we had more [Dwight] Eisenhower Republicans in this [Donald]Trump cabinet.

E. J. Dionne

dwight-eisenhower cabinets wish

Liberals and conservatives disagree over what are the most important sins. For conservatives, the sins that matter are personal irresponsibility, the flight from family life, sexual permissiveness, the failure of individuals to work hard. For liberals, the gravest sins are intolerance, a lack of generosity toward the needy, narrow-mindedness toward social and racial minorities.

E. J. Dionne

generosity hard-work important

The worst kind of job to have is a job with lots of responsibility and very little power.

E. J. Dionne

responsibility littles jobs

At the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.

E. J. Dionne

religious views heart

What's really striking here is that a candidate who ran as the Paladin of the working class who'd deliver them picks a guy who heads a fast-food company, [Donald] Trump says he wants to bring back manufacturing.

E. J. Dionne

guy want class

It sure looks like [Vladimir] Putin did this [hack DNS site]. And we all need to take this seriously.

E. J. Dionne

putin looks needs

The New York Times had a headline on its website - Trump Turning To Ultra Wealthy To Steer Economic Policy. This doesn't sound very populist to me. Today's commerce secretary, the names being talked about for treasury secretary, I think there will be populist talk but maybe no populist action.

E. J. Dionne

new-york names thinking

I think Donald Trump simply needs to make himself look less bigoted, less dangerous, more comfortable to people.

E. J. Dionne

people needs thinking

The madman theory can work, but it only works if it's strategic. And I think one of the problems that President Trump faces is people don't really know how much strategy is here and how much is he just sort of talking off the top of his head. And I think North Korea is a really classic case of a potentially insoluble problem, a problem that you have to manage.

E. J. Dionne

president people thinking

Common decency is a core part of who people are.

E. J. Dionne

core common-decency people

Politically, Donald Trump doesn't seem to care much about what he says. He gauges the effect. Sometimes, in the middle of a speech, he will change his direction if the audience doesn't like him.

E. J. Dionne

gauges speech care

In the Trump language, words change their meaning day by day depending on his own political needs.

E. J. Dionne

language-words political needs

[I think there are a lot of Americans who are very scared ] that Donald Trump and his campaign, or his future administration, is just in denial. They just want to say, no, no, no, [Vladimir] Putin couldn't possibly have done this.

E. J. Dionne

administration campaigns thinking

I actually think there are more Republicans than people realize who would be sympathetic to immigration reform in the rank and file. I think the lesson for Jeb Bush is politicians shouldn't write books with long lead times.

E. J. Dionne

writing book thinking