Another Quaker(ish) president?

March 4, 2019

Because the Quak­er pres­i­den­tial track record is so dis­tin­guished (Her­bert Hoover, Richard Nixon) maybe it’s time to put anoth­er Quak­er into the Oval Office. John Hick­en­loop­er, for­mer gov­er­nor of Col­orado and raised in the Philly sub­urbs, has thrown his hat into the ring.

Back in 2010 he told the Philadel­phia Inquir­er he and his wife were reg­u­lar meet­ing atten­ders liv­ing “Quak­er val­ues” but when Friends Jour­nal reached out to him a few years ago it sound­ed like he no longer iden­ti­fied as a Friend.

New Yorker New Yorker New Yorker

November 9, 2016

Web­sites are start­ing to talk about a Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­tial cab­i­net and the names high­light a curios­i­ty of this elec­tion: many of the prin­ci­ple insid­ers come from North­east Cor­ri­dor states that vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton. Rudolph Giu­liani and Chris Christie, are, like the whole Trump fam­i­ly, metro New York­ers and as far as I know Newt Gin­grich lives in north­ern Virginia.

I’ve lived in Chris Christie’s New Jer­sey since he was elect­ed gov­er­nor and I find it real­ly hard to believe he’s sud­den­ly going to have a strong inter­est in the Mid­west­ern red states that gave Trump the win. You can point to VP-elect Mike Pence of Indi­ana, but as far as I can tell he was only brought on for strate­gic rea­sons and is not part of the Trump circle.

What real­ly can Trump do to bring back the good pay­ing jobs that dis­ap­peared decades ago? Our econ­o­my has been shift­ing regard­less of which par­ty occu­pies the Oval Office. There’s sops and pork to be doled out, but the nation­al econ­o­my has been cen­tral­iz­ing in the big coastal cities that our new polit­i­cal lead­ers call home (the same would have been true with a Clin­ton pres­i­den­cy). What if Trump’s elec­tion is the ulti­mate prank: red states sell­ing their vote to a New York devel­op­er who will most­ly con­tin­ue to devel­op the New York-to-DC corridor?