Viva Peter Baker whose Sunday New York Times reflection below provides the text for this meditation. Baker suggests that trump is showing an independent streak, He is playing nice with Democrats. Baker adds that the president is not really a Republican, something we always knew. Baker suggests that Trump is up-ending 200 years of two-party rule. That's where he is wrong.

Baker is wrong on two counts. Two-party rule died decades ago by its own hand, with the permission of the presidents. And if you look closely, Obama was actually the first independent President of the modern era.

The verdict must be that it's the parties that have lost identity. It is they who need resuscitation.

Trump and Obama

It is not that President Trump is not nearly anything you can name. He is close to impeachment and close to saving himself by standing in the middle and making Congress behave. Obama would have loved that position because he was as apolitical as Trump. He just happened to be hit with a wave of knee-jerk racism. The biggest lie in politics is that Obama was a raving anything. He was the soul of reason.

So why the problem?

Obviously, Trump has spent all his time as President doing stupid things to please a constituency -- the GOP -- that would treat him like dirt if they could get away with it.

The feeling is mutual. Trump's presidential savaging of Obama was a matter of convenience that the courts will over time prove ill-founded.

Of course, there are differences between Dems and the GOP and we could have two vital parties. But they are consumed with things that have nothing to do with what they claim to represent or care about.

It's what Obama called politics.

We need two-party rule and an independent executive

Both parties feed at the same trough, the same contributors keep them alive. If Trump actually wants to make deals there is no better place than Congress.

All he needs to do is get off his right-wing horse. As for Obama if he had yelled at McConnell for racism and marched to the Capitol and called both parties to the mat he would have done better than allowing his definition of politics to kill him.

Politics is good

Politics is fine. Aristotle says so. It needs work just as Aristotle's philosophy does.

But the fact is that Trump and Obama have more in common than what separates them. And if Trump finally gets the reward for seeing that, it will be unfair to Obama but good for the country.

Compared to the Dems, the GOP congress is snakes. But both houses and both parties are riddled with corruption and compromise. If we get two-party rule back, it will be because they and we wised up.
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