I enjoy this. Into politics, pop culture, and other silly stuff.
San Francisco, CA
Joined December 2020
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Eric Anduri retweeted
Paul Schrader, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor on the set of BLUE COLLAR (1978).
Eric Anduri retweeted
“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.” ~Mark Twain
It’s funny to think that very recently we had three US presidents who were very unlikely candidates, especially if you used the criteria of “who are the likely contenders to succeed the newly sworn-in president?” There are three individuals in a row that would have seemed virtually unthinkable as the next US president at the exact time a new president just took office. The first of the three is George W. Bush who in January 1993 wasn’t generally well-known and what little the public knew about him wasn’t very flattering as he was perceived as a screw-up and the Bush family’s “black sheep; the thought of him succeeding Bill Clinton in January 1993 seemed virtually unthinkable. When Bush took office in January 2001, the thought of him being succeeded by a black man with the name “Barak Hussein Obama” who at the time was a state legislator representing parts of Chicago and who was virtually publicly unknown outside of Chicago would have seemed virtually unthinkable. And when Obama took office in January 2009, it seemed virtually unthinkable that he would be succeeded by Donald Trump. Have there been any other instances of this in the history of the US presidency: three men in a row whose presidency would have been considered virtually impossible at the exact moment their predecessor took power?
1/ I asked @grok whether there have been any other instances in U.S. history of three consecutive presidents whose rise would have seemed virtually unthinkable at the exact moment their predecessor took office (the Bush–Obama–Trump sequence).
Here’s Grok’s answer:
2/ No clear historical parallel exists.
The three cases:
• Jan 1993 (Clinton inaugurated): George W. Bush wasn’t even Texas governor yet. He was widely viewed as a relatively obscure figure with a mixed reputation—the “black sheep” of the family. Hardly a national contender.
• Jan 2001 (G.W. Bush inaugurated): Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator representing parts of Chicago, essentially unknown outside local circles.
• Jan 2009 (Obama inaugurated): Donald Trump was a celebrity businessman and reality-TV star with no elected experience. Almost no serious observers saw him as a future president.
3/ History has individual dark-horse winners (Polk, Harding, Carter, etc.) and plenty of accidental presidents who rose via death or resignation (Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, TR, Coolidge, Truman, LBJ, Ford).
But those are different. The question is about the next elected president being nearly unimaginable at the start of the prior term. That’s much rarer.
4/ Consecutive two-term streaks exist (Jefferson–Madison–Monroe; Clinton–Bush–Obama), but those involved relatively predictable party or elite figures—not successive outsiders who were obscure or dismissed when the previous president was sworn in.
5/ Closest near-misses still fall short. In the McKinley → TR → Taft → Wilson stretch, TR was already a major national figure and vice president; Taft was Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor; Wilson was a respected academic but not yet a national political force in March 1909. Real jumps, but far less extreme than 1993–2009.
6/ Bottom line from Grok: Individual long-shot rises happen. An unbroken chain of three consecutive elected presidents, each of whom was obscure or widely dismissed at the exact moment the previous one took office, appears unique in U.S. presidential history.
Eric Anduri retweeted
"Everything Trump touches turns to crud. So it's really insane." —Krugman trib.al/dBCNHR5
As a sports fan, this is my all time favorite play. Indeed, as it says, it remains a thing of absolute beauty.
Another example of why we need leaders who understand San Francisco
The San Francisco-born small business, Philz Coffee, just lost its community values after being bought out. Now owned by private equity firm Freeman Spogli, Philz is no longer allowed to display pride flags. This sad moment highlights the critical importance of locally-rooted businesses that support and understand the communities they serve, including the LGBTQ community.
Ouch.
Maureen going nuclear on JFK Jr. back in 1997
nytimes.com/1997/08/13/opini… via @NYTOpinion
