Opinion: ‘No moderating tendencies’

Welcome to the new Trump team — not the same as the old team. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Friday, March 23, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist First, H.R. McMaster and John Dowd are out. John Bolton and Joseph diGenova are in. The common theme: President Trump is replacing advisers who tried to moderate him with those who play to his worst impulses. Dowd’s resignation as one of Trump’s lawyers “is yet more evidence that the president will continue to approach the Mueller investigation not as a legal problem but as a PR problem,” [Paul Waldman writes in The Washington Post]( [The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin argues]( that, “Dowd’s departure substantially increases the chances that the President will move to fire Mueller — perhaps very soon.” Kelly Magsamen, a former government official, [called Bolton’s job]( — national security adviser — “by far the most important national security position in our government” because “this person is the one in charge of shaping and framing national security decisions for the President.” She added that “Bolton has no moderating tendencies.” Republicans vs. democracy. The biggest problem in American politics is the extremism of the Republican Party. The Democrats certainly have their problems, but they pale by comparison. Large numbers of Republican voters hold beliefs that are simply false (climate change is a hoax, Barack Obama is a Kenyan, Robert Mueller is Democratic partisan). Trump, meanwhile, [flouts]( the rule of law, while Republican leaders in Congress try to pass major legislation [largely in secret](. I’ve argued that conservatives aghast at these developments [should vote against their party]( in order to reclaim it. Republican leaders won’t abandon their extremism if they keep winning. In [a mini-essay on Twitter]( Noah Smith of Bloomberg View takes on the same issue but from a different angle: He says that the answer is expanding voting rights so that more Americans have the opportunity to vote against Republican extremism. “The #1 policy priority for Democrats at both the state and federal levels should not be universal health care, gun control, climate change, etc.,” Smith wrote. “It should be democracy.” By democracy he means laws that remove obstacles to voting: making registration automatic, for example, and expanding the hours — and the ways — that people can vote. Several states are [already taking steps]( in this direction, but there is much more to do, [as Wendy Weiser and her colleagues at the Brennan Center explain](. Smith argues that voting restrictions have been crucial to the Republican Party’s extremist success. “Since the 90s, as Hispanics (and Asians) grew as a % of the U.S. population, one faction of the GOP wanted to court them. A second faction wanted to keep the party a white ethnic party. The second faction, sadly, won,” he writes. “Instead of toning down white identity politics to court Hispanics and Asians, the GOP decided to: 1) turn up the identity politics; 2) deport as many nonwhite immigrants as possible; 3) use voting restrictions and gerrymandering to win with a minority of votes.” But this strategy won’t continue to work if larger numbers of minorities begin voting. To Smith’s good points, I’d add that laws aren’t the only problem. Voter turnout among Latinos and Asian-Americans [is low]( for a complicated mix of reasons, some of which are unrelated to Republican malfeasance. Whatever the cause of the current situation, though, a rise in minority turnout could transform politics. In that case, “the GOP will be forced to reboot itself with a new ethos and a new message that appeals to Hispanic and Asian voters (black voters probably being out of reach for them no matter what),” Smith writes. “Ultimately, the reason to focus on democracy is to help the Republicans go sane again.” Programming note. I’ll be away next week, but the newsletter will continue. My colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick will give you a couple of reading suggestions based on the day’s news. I will also have an item in each day’s newsletter, writing about a topic that I find important but haven’t found room to mention in the newsletter so far, given the pace of news. The full Opinion report from The Times follows. Op-Ed Contributor [What McMaster Leaves Behind]( By JONATHAN STEVENSON The outgoing national security adviser failed to contain his erratic boss. But his replacement is worse. Op-Ed Columnist [Bumbling Into a Trade War]( By PAUL KRUGMAN What Trump doesn’t know can hurt us — and help China. Op-Ed Columnist [The White Southern Anti-Trump]( By MICHELLE GOLDBERG Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans defends the values Trump trashes. Op-Ed Columnist [Macron-Trump, a Friendship that Must Deliver]( By ROGER COHEN As Trump surrounds himself with hawks, Macron may be a bulwark against disaster. Op-Ed Columnist [Cynthia Nixon and the Degradation of Experience]( By FRANK BRUNI In politics, too, training and knowledge matter. Hasn’t Trump taught us that? Op-Ed Columnist [Speaking as a White Male …]( By DAVID BROOKS How much does identity shape opinion? Editorial [Trump’s Half-Baked China Tariffs]( By THE EDITORIAL BOARD He’s right to accuse it of stealing American technology, but has no idea how to fix the problem. HOW ARE WE DOING? We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [leonhardt@nytimes.com](mailto:leonhardt@nytimes.com?subject=Opinion%20Today%20Newsletter%20Feedback). ADVERTISEMENT Contributing Op-Ed Writer [If You Love High TV Bills, This Is the Merger for You]( By TIM WU An antitrust challenge to AT&T’s merger with Time Warner is the last chance to stop pay-television bills from getting any higher. Op-Ed Contributor [How to Prevent Smart People From Spreading Dumb Ideas]( By MICHAEL J. SOCOLOW Think first before you retweet that bit of fake news. Op-Ed Contributor [What It’s Like to Be Black in Austin]( By JOSHUNDA SANDERS Years before the bomb attacks, I felt fear and isolation even in this progressive haven. Op-Ed Contributor [America Passed Gun Control in 1968. Can It Happen Again?]( By JASON SOKOL The King and Kennedy assassinations spurred passage of the Gun Control Act. Op-Ed Contributor [Why It’s So Hard to Reform Canadian Health Care]( By DANIELLE MARTIN A mix of pride, defensiveness and terror of American-style system makes it hard for Canada to admit where it falls short. The Stone [How Democracy Can Survive Big Data]( By COLIN KOOPMAN We can blame Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for the damage they’ve done, but the responsibility lies with all of us. Sunday Review [How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’]( By DAVID REICH If scientists avoid discussing the topic candidly, racist theories will fill the vacuum. Editorial [Would You Want to Be Donald Trump’s Lawyer?]( By THE EDITORIAL BOARD We didn’t think so. Editorial [Young Slovaks Show Extremism in Europe Can Be Defied]( By THE EDITORIAL BOARD Protesting the murder of a journalist, a generation on the rise refuses to be silent when unscrupulous politicians erode hard-won freedoms. LIKE THIS EMAIL? Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up [here](. 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