Yeah, I was really surprised at this piece because he's sworn up and down for decades that he has no interest in running and who can really blame him?
I went to a taping of the Daily Show in 2010 and before he came out for the Q&A, the emcee opened with "no, he's not running for president so don't waste your question asking". That's how often he got that question.
I'm torn between doubting his actual efficacy from never holding office nor being in government, with that of thinking it doesn't really matter, that what we really need is an effective leader with moral and ideological direction, who leaves the policies up to our bureaucratic state
because biden- and almost every other recent president – have been politicians for decades, then yet still get nothing done.
John Stewart, at least has the truck record of being able to deeply research issues and find and stand for his moral ground in a consistent, predictable manner
I wouldn't trust him to " run the country" by himself. but I also don't think you need to be able to do that to be president. John Kennedy in a 1960s filled his kitchen cabinet full of highly intelligent people to help him govern. as a counterexample, George w. Bush was rather unintelligent, but filled his cabinet full of insanely intelligent( but evil ) and was highly effective in pursuing his agenda
If nothing else, John Stewart would be moral compass for the country
to preempt somebody jumping in on this with a dumb take on Trump: he accomplished rather little as a president, certainly far less than he could have, because he filled his cabinet with blithering yes men, Rather than a cohesive team that could strategize
I don't think penning a comedy bit counts as any kind of serious 'research'.
It's super easy to say something facile but funny about a subject and to clown around with rage when you don't have to actually do anything about it. I think he's said himself when challenged that it's just comedy and he's just a comedian.
I think what matters more is not his current views on any particular subject or knowledge thereof. but rather his well demonstrated ability to not only challenge his own views( and the current prevailing views/ countercurrent views ) - but also that of being able to surround himself by writers and collaboraters and and other people who can challenge his views.
it's very analogous to empiricism in research. I wouldn't trust him to get the right answer on his own, nor on the first time. but, I'd trust him, that it put up the the task on the issue of governance, he wouldn't be arrogant enough to assume he knows the only right way to do something, and hed actually try to sorround himself by intelligent capable people, and rely on their advice to get things done
I understand where you’re coming from. From my perspective, leadership in Washington is already surrounded by a cadre of policy wonks and researchers who guide policy and inform the lawmakers. While it is no-doubt true that the personalities of the politicians involved determine how open to reflection they are, the POTUS is often just picking between a handful of proposals which have been compiled for consideration.
This is something touched on with Bush Jr.’s Decision Points. The president has so many things to handle that they end up having little time to truly delve deep into the problem and wind up delegating most of that to their staff. It was a meme when Bush said he was “the decider”, but it’s very accurate.
Challenge himself, surround himself etc - but to make better jokes. They’re just jokes not genuine positions. He’s said that himself - it’s just done for comedy. He looks for the funniest thing to say over looking for the truth.
> he accomplished rather little as a president, certainly far less than he could have, because he filled his cabinet with blithering yes men, Rather than a cohesive team that could strategize
I agree that his cabinet was a mess, but he also had a firmly GOP congress his first two years that gave him incredible backing and they passed a fair amount of legislation because congressional GOP leadership are very organized.
Now that the GOP controls the Supreme Court and quite likely will control congress in the next cycle, the next Republican president is going to have an unprecedented amount of power.
a ham sandwich could have accomplished what he did. Rather, probably could have accomplished more than him. he was so incompetent that he probably accomplished less Republican agenda than if a lobotomized generic Republican candidate was in his stead. any generic Republican president would have been able to appoint the same Supreme Court judges. he changed nothing about this calculus after getting elected.
essentially, I believe almost any other person other than him could have accomplished more towards the Republican agenda than he did. it's almost unprecedented how little he did in spite of the power the Republicans had in 2016.
What's really weird about Biden is that he tried to govern as though he had a strong legislative majority. He didn't, and it didn't work. He could have done better if he didn't act like he could run everything without the Republicans. Instead, he keeps proposing things that are too extreme for the most conservative members of his own party, and then being surprised that they don't pass the Senate.
And, as you say, he has been a politician for decades. He should know this.
Unless... is it possible that he's smart? Is he pandering to the liberal wing of his own party, throwing out ideas that he knows are extreme and not good policy, and then letting them die in Congress?
Or is he trying to shine a spotlight on Manchin and Systema, and get them primaried?
All in all, I don't understand his strategy. It seems to not work very well, and it seems that he should know better.
I wonder what working with the Republicans to legislate would actually produce these days. For instance, they considered Roe extreme and so they unilaterally overturned it. They considered banning prayer in public schools as extreme and unilaterally overturned that. I wonder what it is that they could agree on and actually pass?
I don't understand this appeal to try to elect basically a king in a democracy. A single individual should not have the power to enact huge change and as far as I can tell he doesn't in the US.
Instead we should focus on electing good people to congress. The president should be irrelevant mostly if a congress is competent and can work together. Even if a president turns out to be a psycho congress can veto prof bills and pass them.
That's how the system was supposed to work. Since then Congress has given much of its authority over to the executive branch. The presidency doesn't need to consult Congress to engage in military action or make international promises.
I agree that we need to fix congress and also break the duopoly strangling it with swings from one extreme to another.
The president is supposed to be an administrator executing the laws passed by co guess. They are rhe head of state in I ternarional affairs but without the authority to make binding agreeme to for the country. They are the head of the military responsible for defending the county but are not able to attack other countries without the approval of congress. At least, that's how it's supposed to be.
Only congress can save this country, and that should terrify everyone.
If you're electing them, that's not a King. What you've got there is, maybe a Dictator of some sort depending on what happens when you try electing somebody else, but it's not a King (unless this is Star Wars for some reason).
The whole point of Monarchy is that you get random monarchs because of how sexual reproduction works. Short, stupid, clumsy, more or less everything is possible. England even had rules trying to pick boys to be the next monarch (these rules are no longer in effect for future generations) and because Mother Nature doesn't give a shit we got several Queens anyway. So elections have nothing to do with how somebody gets to be King.
Anyway, I think the role you're thinking about is Head of the Executive. You need a single human in this role for effective government, because the executive is responsible for immediate tactical responses and of necessity a democratic legislature cannot react fast enough or cohesively enough to serve this purpose.
It does you no good to give, say, Nancy Pelosi the status of "Commander in Chief" of your military forces, and then oblige her to hold a vote, subject to the whims of dozens or hundreds of people, on any directives for those forces. The Executive needs to make rapid tactical decisions and not be paralysed by conflicting political ambitions. This is also true for civil emergencies, nobody whose town was just destroyed by a volcano wants to hear about how due to procedural rules the emergency supplies won't arrive until Wednesday because a senator from another state wanted to make a broader point about gay marriage.
>If you're electing them, that's not a King. What you've got there is, maybe a Dictator of some sort depending on what happens when you try electing somebody else, but it's not a King (unless this is Star Wars for some reason).
Fair, although a lot of those examples you'd need to squint pretty hard to see an election. Hong Kong also "elected" Beijing's preferred candidate recently. No candidates representing the actual people of Hong Kong were allowed to run...
Stewart has an obnoxious habit of wanting to be taken seriously as a journalist but when he is taken too seriously he’ll say, “But I’m just a comedian…”
>Stewart’s constant “I’m just a comedian” response has prompted pushback from his detractors who have called it, among other things, a “dodge.”
Much as people with overly inflated egos are wont to do at any expression of either modesty or humility, or a bully is wont to that a victim would dare defang their attacks, depriving them of the dopamine hit they get when someone squirms under their finger.
Yes, "best practice" is to not undermine yourself in a debate with that sort of utterance, but today, I feel it is an invaluable expression of truth, and a reminder to the American people that even your President is just a normal bloke onto whom a shit ton of responsibility and accountability gets dumped for 4 years.
This country is a country of cobblers, haberdashers, construction workers, office workers, garbage men, and yes, comedians. I think it's about time that the political elite start to recall that "politician" was never intended to be a day job.
I bet writing that first paragraph made you feel really smart, thus giving you a nice dopamine hit. I recognize that feeling. I honestly have no idea what you meant by it though.
He (Joe Rogan) kinda does though, doesn't he? "I'm just an idiot, don't listen to me, make up your own mind." Of course that's just as much a BS excuse as Stewart's and Oliver's.
its a lot drier humor than the daily show, but especially if you watch the ticker and floating illustrations next to his head, there are a lot of jokes thrown in there
Stewart would be a good candidate especially when compared to other democratic offerings.
That doesn't make him well suited to be president though. He supports policies and positions that differ little form those leading us to our current predicament.
The article starts out saying that Biden should run again in 2024 which is about the most unserious, idiotic position for the democrats to be taking right now. Barely even a majority of democrats like this guy anymore and everyone else simply hates him. Pull your heads out of your butts if you don’t want to get trounced by Trump in two years. Good lord.
Depends where you are I guess. Plenty of people on the east coast, or at least in my area, seem to think his presidency is exactly what it said on the tin: basically unobjectionable, albeit kind of annoying. Hard not to vote for that when the alternative, in their eyes, is someone who will light the building on fire, crash the car, shoot the dog, and then blame it all on the neighbor.
I think the 1980s were considered a pretty good time for the US as a whole, and he was ranked pretty highly in this list [0], indeed nobody has beaten him yet.
were those times good because of what the Fed had done at the beginning of the decade? were they good because of the previous president's policy? were they good because of Reagan's policy?
I could see this being true. we only ever see him attack. Republicans, because most of what they do is so idiotic and insane. there's an implicit agreement with the viewer that He's doing this because the Democrats are so much more tame in comparison, that he doesn't need to spend time on them
it's from this cloth of shadows. we can infer his political beliefs and projector own. but he very well. could be a neoliberal hack who blindly trusts in his party, like Biden
He and Colbert had routinely poked entirely un-ironic fun at their own formula, by way of poking fun at Republicans for writing their material for them. I could believe they understood exactly what they were doing.
> could be a neoliberal hack who blindly trusts in his party, like Biden
So, I don't think Biden is exactly a hack but I do think he is a status-quo guy who doesn't understand when a long-term predictable plan makes him a sitting duck.
On the other hand, Jon does have to make a case for pretty much _any_ political expertise outside of punditry. I'd like to give him a chance sooner than any Republican.
He probably hasn't got the problem of saying aloud "Repeat the line" teleprompter instructions.
The political press has been telling us how badly the country is run for years; perhaps they can finally get a member of their corps elected and fix all the problems.
I don't think the Democrats need a presidential candidate at the moment. I think they're hunting for a VP to appoint right now, before they bail on Joe. Investigation into the Biden family operations will kick up too much evidence against other party leaders.
> I don't think the Democrats need a presidential candidate at the moment.
They actually do, Biden has one big con; age. He will be 81 in 2024. He already has very low approval rating and with recession looking more realistic, they're going to need to have contingencies.
Democrats are horrible at planning things in advance, this is where Republicans beat them.
I didn’t say republicans wins everytime, they do get misfires just like everyone else.
I still think they are better than Dems in this area.
Just look at how they managed their goals with the justice system, starting with the Supreme Court. They don’t care about Trump that much because POTUS last either 4 or 8 years. Supreme Court, gerrymandering election maps, and so in outlast any POTUS picks.
IIRC my ballots always just showed the Presidential Candidate's name and political party, nothing about the candidate's Vice Presidential nominee. I don't know the rules or law when it comes to the VP nomination, but could it be changed last minute?
Additionally, if something happened to the VP nominee between election and taking office, wouldn't the President-Elect choose a new VP without going through an election?
Unless this varies from state to state, you don’t remember correctly. Every ballot I’ve seen lists both the Presidential candidate and Vice-Presidential candidate. I think the idea is that you’re voting for a party’s ticket, not the person running for President.
Ballots are locked for a certain period of days before an election.
The presidential candidate chooses their running mate and are voted on together. Until the early 1800's, the winning presidential candidate became president and the runner-up became VP. This didn't work out very well because the VP sometimes came from the opposing party.
If a sitting VP leaves office prematurely, then Congress votes on the replacement. I assume that would also be the case in a VP-elect situation.
And then maybe Hasan Piker or H3H3 can run in 2028. I'm really optimistic about the effect the internet is having in mobilizing young Americans into politics.
While Jon Stewart projects an affable and trustworthy persona, I personally believe the Daily Show is largely responsible for the kind of snide discourse we see around politics today.
Yes, politics has always been contentious, but Jon Stewart popularized the format of taking a subject and reducing it to a very narrow aspect, mocking it, and associating audience applause with “winning”.
Again, this is speculation on my part so I can’t give you a source or citation, but the kind of ‘clap back’ responses I read on Twitter seem inspired by how the Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver approach covering politics. Take a complex subject, find a flaw or make a non-sequitur joke, and use that to discredit the other side through humiliation.
It’s good entertainment, but it does not make for good discourse and it is incredibly polarizing.
>I personally believe the Daily Show is largely responsible for the kind of snide discourse we see around politics today.
They might have just been riding the wave, but the changing temperature of political discourse was certainly on display in the changing tone of that show. Maybe all the tape of cable news they had to pour through over the years rotted their brain despite watching it with a critical eye.
There were two big shifts over the years. I watched when it was goofing around in a news format, when it was pointed, and when it became salty I eventually stopped watching.
The pointed period was it's golden period and it's rise in fame. They poked fun at the tricks of the tv news establishment and put egg on politician's faces. It was obvious they had a perspective, but it didn't seem like they were sacrificing comedy to send a message. ...and then some years later they blatantly were.
The time I realized I was done with the show was when I read some news during the day, and a politician said basically: "A, but B, therefore C." That night on The Daily Show, they played a clip of A, cut to Stewart at the desk to double down on point A, cut to a clip of C, smash cut to Stewart pulling a face and pause for reaction. The Daily Show used to be the ones to clown on CNN for doing exactly that.
Would the Daily Show of today or Last Week Tonight give me the same soft spot for Ron Paul getting ratfucked by the cable news media? The Daily Show of 15 years ago didn't want him in power but still celebrated him on the occasions he made decent political points that neither the GOP or dems wanted to touch with a 10 foot pole, and exposed how his campaign was under- and mis-reported. These days? They'd ratfuck him even harder than cable news.
> …Jon Stewart popularized the format of taking a subject and reducing it to a very narrow aspect, mocking it, and associating audience applause with “winning”.
I enjoyed The Daily Show, but political satire has been popular for as long as politics has been a thing.
“The oldest example that has survived till today is Aristophanes. In his time satire targeted top politicians, like Cleon, and religion, at the time headed by Zeus. ‘Satire and derision progressively attacked even the fundamental and most sacred facts of faith’…”
> Jon Stewart popularized the format of taking a subject and reducing it to a very narrow aspect, mocking it, and associating audience applause with “winning”.
What makes this so hard to believe that a citation is required? This was the format of his show, it was incredibly popular in the 2000’s and alumni cast of the show have gone on to replicate the formula.
Why do you think he was the first? I don't understand what kind of rock a person lives under to pretend like this was some undiscovered format The Daily Show pioneered.
Elvis was a hugely popular rock musician when there were still a lot of potential fans to convert to actual rock fans. Jon Stewart entered no such market for political talk shows. The format had long since saturated the market.
>”Jon Stewart entered no such market for political talk shows. The format had long since saturated the market.”
[citation required]
Political talk shows are one thing, but basing the show around comedy-first was the key. You can’t just claim that because talking on television about politics existed long before the daily show means the daily show did nothing innovative or that it didn’t popularize anything.
They're responsible for the problem and decline of discourse. The most you can say about Stewart is that he made it funny. I agree he shouldn't run for office, I just don't think he's responsible for the snide discourse.
That was 100% earned by politicians who brought clowns like Palin and Trump to the forefront.
@jonstewart: Ummm…No thank you