Happy Presidents Day to all our American readers and viewers. We'll be back with the second half of my cavalcade of presidential songs later this afternoon - that's Benjamin Harrison to Donald Trump, if you're keeping score. Despite the official federal holiday - "Washington's Birthday (observed)" - it's a working day for yours truly and I will be keeping my regular Monday date with Tucker Carlson live across America tonight at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. If you are in the presence of the receiving apparatus, I hope you'll dial us up.
~On Saturday night I joined Kat, Tyrus and my fellow Torontonian Dr Debra Soh on the "Greg Gutfeld Show" sofa. It was a fun hour as always. Here's Greg's opening monologue, and our initial remarks:
And from later in the show here's some wall talk:
You can watch the full show, including nude Brexit and Toronto chair-tossing commentary, here.
~Pat Caddell died over the weekend, from a stroke and far too young. He came to prominence in his mid-twenties as Jimmy Carter's brilliant pollster, and was supposedly responsible for the President's catastrophic "malaise" speech. The Democrats moved left and he moved iconoclastically right, which is how I came to know him - from green-room conversations at Fox over the last decade or so. Unlike most talking-heads who make their living yakking on TV all day long, Pat was an original thinker with an entertainingly weird streak; to the end he was an incisive analyst of underlying trends, and always worth listening to. I quoted him in After America:
It is never a good idea to send the message, as the political class now does consistently, that there are no democratic means by which the people can restrain their rulers. As the (Democrat) pollster Pat Caddell pointed out, the logic of that is "pre-revolutionary".
I think that was just an off-the-cuff green-room aside of Pat's at the time I put it in the book, but he started saying it out loud. The last time I saw him was at the 2017 Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, in which he looked back, as a pollster, on the Trump victory:
Perhaps most interesting of all is the question we asked on whether the Declaration of Independence says that the government receives their authority from the consent of the people. "Does the federal government today have the consent of the people?" And it's 68 to 75 percent we've ranged saying no, and I call that, when I first saw that result in 2013, a pre-revolutionary moment. And the question was whether anybody would speak to any of this.
And from the beginning, Donald Trump, a lot of his own instincts were – it's not exactly the way I would've designed it – but he managed to make a campaign and he stood up against 16 other people who were, in their own ways, essentially epitomizing the political class or the ideological class of their party, when the issue was neither ideology or the right of kings of our political class to rule.
In 2016, after one Trump-less debate, Pat emphasized the difference the non-party man made:
Citing the data, said Caddell, 'It's unbelievable. This country has left the building if you will on the political establishment, on America in trouble and in decline.' Caddell also noted that, just as with the last debate minus front runner Donald Trump, none of those themes really get 'hammered' without him.
'This is what it would have looked like without the insurgents having arrived.'
Indeed. And (to go back to that After America warning) the Dems, the Paul Ryan GOP, the media and the Deep State are determined to teach the people a lesson on what happens when their political inclinations stray beyond the permitted bounds.
Pat Caddell saw all that years before most of us. Rest in peace.
~Aside from the Presidents Day edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight", please join me on the radio at 8am Eastern tomorrow morning, Tuesday, with Dave Allen on 570 WSYR in Syracuse, New York - where I'll be appearing on stage at the Oncenter with Dennis Miller this Saturday:
You can listen live to me and Dave Allen here. (Dave will be introducing Dennis and me on stage at the Oncenter.)
You can find out more about the first ever Miller/Steyn tour here. It kicks off this Friday, February 22nd, at the Santander Performing Arts Center in Reading, Pennsylvania, and there are still just a few tickets left. After Syracuse the following night we head for the Kodak Center in Rochester and the Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre. And, if you need to make up for a floppo Valentine's, don't forget that with VIP seats you get to have your picture snapped with me and Dennis, and to take home a special autographed gift. But please note: VIP tickets are almost gone, so, if you've been looking forward to bending our ears as we come off stage and telling me and Miller how we totally sucked, don't leave it too late.
