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- Oct 30, 2004
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What do you think Biden would be doing better if he were younger? II said that he'd do some head of state stuff better, which is probably right but pretty small potatoes IMO.Well he is. But so is Trump
In Trump's case, in 2016 at least he ran a pretty unusual campaign for a Republican--not religious at all, suggested that he'd make progressive tax changes, promised a universal healthcare plan, promised to move left on foreign policy in some ways (though also talked about bringing back wars of conquest and plunder and committing war crimes so that one was weird), said he wouldn't cut entitlements. But then in office, he was spectacularly incompetent (couldn't even put anything together or get an infrastructure deal done even though everyone on both sides wanted one) and just ceded policymaking to the usual GOP apparatus, except that he made them more pro-dictator internationally and had carve-outs for his personal corruption. I think that divergence and incompetence could plausibly be tied to his decline. Going forward, there seems to be less divergence (mostly because he no longer says unorthodox stuff about policy), but he's even further gone. On the other hand, people mostly don't *want* Trump to succeed in the policy changes he's talked about so him being out of it and not knowing what's going on might be kind of better...