Obviously kind of a moron? I dunno, if you want something unexpected and contrarian, I guess you could read http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/07/25/3684164/case-for-donald-trump/

Unlikely. They’ve mostly avoided controversial people from the post-WWII era. I think the closest they’ve come is de Gaulle.

Honestly I have no idea. I keep swinging back and forth between “idiot who got ridiculously lucky by saying exactly the thing that tapped into a vein of anger he didn’t even realize was there” and “weird Zen genius who can consistently win everything while looking like he’s not even trying”.

Based on the healthcare thing, I’m leaning more towards the first one.

So that was *kind of* joking, and I don’t know anything about foreign policy, and this is probably the worst idea ever, but here goes:

Iran is a (partial) democracy with much more liberal values than Saudi Arabia, which is a horrifying authoritarian hellhole. Iran has some level of women’s rights, some level of free speech, and a real free-ish economy that produces things other than oil. If they weren’t a theocracy, it would be hard to tell them apart from an average European state.

In the whole religious war thing, the Iranians are allied with the Shia and the Saudis with the Sunni. Most of our enemies in the Middle East are Sunni. Saddam was Sunni. Al Qaeda is Sunni. ISIS is Sunni. Our Iraqi puppet government is Shia, which is awkward because even though they’re supposed to be our puppet government they like Iran more than us. Bashar al-Assad is Shia, which is awkward because as horrible as he is he kept the country at peace, plus whenever we give people weapons to overthrow him they turn out to have been Al Qaeda in disguise.

Telling the Saudis to fuck off and allying with Iran would end this awkward problem where our friends are allies with our enemies but hate our other friends. I think it would go something like this:

- We, Russia, and Iran all cooperate to end the Syrian civil war quickly in favor of Assad, then tell Assad to be less of a jerk (which he’ll listen to, since being a jerk got him into this mess)

- Iraq’s puppet government doesn’t have to keep vacillating between being a puppet of us and being a puppet of Iran. They can just be a full-time puppet of the US-Iranian alliance. Us, Iran, Iraq, and Syria all ally to take out ISIS.

- We give Iran something they want (like maybe not propping up Saudi Arabia) in exchange for them promising to harass Israel through legal means rather than violence. Iran either feels less need to develop nuclear weapons, or else maybe they have nuclear weapons but they’re on our side now so it’s okay.

- The Saudi king was visibly shaken and dropped his copy of Kitab al-Tawhid. The Arabs applauded and accepted Zoroaster as their lord and savior. A simurgh named “Neo-Achaemenid Empire” flew into the room and perched atop the Iranian flag. The Behistun Inscription was read several times, and Saoshyant himself showed up and enacted the Charter of Cyrus across the region. The al-Saud family lost their crown and were exiled the next day. They were taken out by Mossad and tossed into the pit of Angra Mainyu for all eternity.

PS: Marg bar shaytân-e bozorg

My cabinet/related picks:

Attorney General: Preet Bharara
Commerce: Peter Thiel
Defense: James Mattis
State: Tulsi Gabbard
Housing & Urban Development: Matt Yglesias
Homeland Security: Anonymous Mugwump
Health & Human Services: Julia Wise
Transportation/Energy: Elon Musk
Treasury: Satoshi Nakamoto
Education: Eva Moskowitz
Veterans Affairs: David Petraeus
Agriculture: Buck Shlegeris
Labor: Bernie Sanders

White House Chief Of Staff: Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg
Head of NIH: Stephen Hsu
Surgeon General: Dr. Chris Ballas
Head of FDA: Alex Tabarrok
Welfare Czar: Charles Murray
Chair of Federal Reserve: Scott Sumner
Budget Director: Holden Karnofsky
Head of CIA: Philip Tetlock

Everything else can be filled by randomly selected black women so that I can brag about how diverse I am.

First order of business: in addition to being my Secretary of Labor, Bernie Sanders is now vice president. I don’t care what he does with the position, it’s just so that the Republican Congress knows that if they impeach me, they’re getting a pacifist Jewish socialist as the leader of the free-world.

Second order of business is to get Robin Hanson to set up a national prediction market to help me figure out all my other policies. All other orders of business conditional on approval from national prediction market and from new CIA head Philip Tetlock. Then:

- Legalize marijuana and hallucinogens, lessen penalties for other drugs. Replace prison sentences for nonviolent crimes with corporal punishment.

- Build Trump’s wall, because it’s a meaningless symbol that will change nothing, but it’ll make Republicans like me, and it will make Democrats focus all their energy on criticizing that instead of anything substantive I do.

- Tax the rich. Maybe a Georgist land tax?

- Get rid of most occupational licensing restrictions. I’m probably too chicken to get rid of medical licensing entirely, but make it way easier to become a nurse-practitioner, and vastly expand the amount of stuff nurse practitioners can do. Allow psychologists to prescribe most psychiatric medication.

- Declare War On College. Forgive all existing student loans, then refuse to give out any new ones. Prohibit the government from asking about college degree when hiring new employees, and put pressure on private industry to follow suit for any position less absolutely-requiring-of-specialized-knowledge than doctor or engineer. Increase government loans to boot camps, online courses, et cetera.

- If Tabarrok hasn’t already solved everything about prescription medication by this point, do it myself.

- If Yglesias hasn’t already solved everything about urban housing by this point, do it myself.

- Carbon tax, with the money going into massive investment into ways to sequester atmospheric carbon.

- Basic income guarantee if possible, otherwise just sneakily increase income tax credits and stuff so that nobody notices.

- Tell Russia that if they can defeat ISIS, they can have as much of Syria as they want, and if they can do it while getting rid of Assad we’ll let them have Alaska back too.

- Agree with Russia and Ukraine to partition Ukraine into Pro-Russia Ukraine and Pro-West Ukraine. This would also work with Moldova.

- Recognize Somaliland.

- Tell Saudi Arabia that we’re sorry for sending mixed messages by allying with them, and actually they are total scum and we hate their guts. Ally with Iran, who are actually really great aside from the whole Islamic theocracy thing. Get Iran to grudgingly tolerate Israel the same way we got Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc to grudgingly tolerate Israel, which I assume involves massive amounts of bribery. Form coalition for progress and moderation vs. extremist Sunni Islam throughout Middle East. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

- Tell China that their artificial islands in the South China Sea are stupid and if they don’t stop, then we’ll show them what real artificial islands look like. If they call our bluff, send Patri Friedman over with ten billion dollars in state funding to create seasteads in whichever spots are most inconvenient for China.

- Eliminate the penny.

- Probably other things, I would have to think.