Subject: Defining the presidency down
From: "Bloomberg View" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 05:02:24 -0400 (EDT)

A daily digest of opinions and analysis

The Soft Punditry of Low Expectations

Why do political analysts lavish praise on Donald Trump whenever he chats politely with world leaders, delivers a speech by teleprompter, or otherwise acts like a normal politician? Maybe it’s because they know the dignified times never last. Timothy L. O’Brien takes stock of the commentariat’s ultra-low standards for the man in America’s highest office.

When Congress Turns Violent

In the years before the U.S. Civil War, brawls, canings, fisticuffs and duel challenges were increasingly common in the House and Senate. Are the bad old times coming back? Francis Wilkinson interviews historian Joanne Freeman about Congress’s violent past and its restive present.

The Artist Who Waited All His Life for Putin

The Moscow-based painter Ilya Glazunov, who died this week at 87, devoted his life and work to advancing an unsubtle vision of Russian pride. His efforts paid off. Leonid Bershidsky pays ambivalent respect to the artist who did more than anybody to articulate the part-nationalist, part-Soviet, deeply conservative ideology of the Putin era.

The Dark Side to Macron’s Bright Idea in France

Term limits, proportional representation and other political reforms sound great in theory. But only in theory. Megan McArdle explains why the French president’s seemingly common-sense proposals could backfire spectacularly in practice.

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Ritholtz’s Reads

Risk, return, and skill in the portfolios of the wealthy (Vox EU)

Man versus machine: How has indexing changed the market? (Barron’s)

The 125 most important finance people you have to follow on Twitter (Business Insider)

Bloomberg Gadfly

Facebook’s virtual reality bet runs into real reality

Winds shift from tail to head for emerging-market debt

Apple supplier sales are fodder for bulls and bears

(Read Barry Ritholtz’s full daily news roundup here.)

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