Democracy plaything

Indeed, it has long been in the Chinese government’s interest to sow cynicism among its citizens about the mechanisms of democracy. The current Administration and its steady stream of blunders have made Beijing’s task appreciably less difficult.

From this New Yorker thing by Jiayang Fan.

Some years ago at a dinner in Shanghai a smart person gave me his a somewhat jaded take on what would happen if China got democracy.  He described how some huckster demagogue from TV would get elected and be terrible.

Peggy Noonan worth reading as usual.  She got me to subscribe to the WSJ:

Here’s an idea.

It would be good if top Hill Republicans went en masse to the president and said: “Stop it. Clean up your act. Shut your mouth. Do your job. Stop tweeting. Stop seething. Stop wasting time. You lost the thread and don’t even know what you were elected to do anymore. Get a grip. Grow up and look at the terrain, see it for what it is. We have limited time. Every day you undercut yourself, you undercut us. More important, you keep from happening the good policy things we could have done together. If you don’t grow up fast, you’ll wind up abandoned and alone. Act like a president or leave the presidency.”

As Ms. Noonan points out that’s unlikely to be effective for long but it’s something positive.