Troubling Times Ahead

Posted: March 22, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

As I ponder current events, I find that I am deeply troubled by what is taking place.  It is troubling on so many levels, from today’s tragic terrorist attacks in Brussels Belgium — which appear to be part of a concerted attack on Western Europe — to the emergency closing of the Washington D.C. Metro system for 24 hours last week due to serious safety concerns — yet another stark reminder of our deteriorating infrastructure.  And of course, I find the current political season to be the same old dreary one that we have experienced over the last several years — only worse.  Normally, I am a pretty optimistic individual, but that pool of optimism is quickly drying up.  As many of you know, I often look to history to keep things in perspective, and believe it or not, we have had some dark days in our nation’s history that used to make the current one pale in comparison.  Now I cannot help but wonder if future historians will look at this era as one of the darkest.

As troubling as recent world and domestic events may be, I am deeply concerned about the tone and pronouncements coloring our presidential primary campaigns.  As I said before, it is difficult to believe that out of our entire population, the remaining five candidates are the best that our country has to offer. All five are flawed in some way.  That said, it appears that our future president is one of those five.  More specifically, all wishing aside, it is nearly certain that next year at this time we will have either a President Trump or a President Clinton.

I try to be even-handed, while expressing my opinion, in my posted pieces.  I find it impossible to be even-handed when thinking of a President Trump.  In his words, it would be a disaster. He has no real policy other than vague assertions that we should believe him that he will solve every problem because he is such a great negotiator.  Where he does offer some specificity, as rare as that may be, his policies are non-sensical or likely to cause serious damage to our nation as we know it.  He, along with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have certainly tapped into a vibrant and energized element of our society that is totally dissatisfied with business as usual.  Got it.  Unfortunately, other Republicans and Democrats were slow to “get it” or never wanted to get it.

However, to me Senator Sanders is far less dangerous than Mr. Trump.  The Senator is way off base in his economic policies.  They are mostly feel good proposals that if enacted would bankrupt our country and end up making the economy worse than it already is.  His appeal emanates from frustration with the economic collapse of 2007 and 2008 where everyday workers and investors feel they were had by the Wall Street titans and that the average citizen has no chance of competing in a rigged system.  In this he may be right as reflected in the fact that all these years later, no one from Wall Street has been held personally accountable for the mess they created.  To get a sense of how that system works, try reading The Big Short (or take the short-cut and watch the recent movie version of it).

Mr. Trump is far worse.  Forget for the moment (as difficult as that is) his lack of truthfulness and his narcissistic, rabble rousing, profane, violence inducing, hateful comments about other religions, ethnic groups and women.  And forget for the moment his not so veiled threat of “riots” if he does not get the nomination. Let’s instead just take a sampling of what he proposes to do as president.

He has repeatedly said that he would “change the law” covering his ability to sue individuals that criticize him.  Suing people is apparently his hobby.  More to the point, if you listen to what he proposes, he plans to stifle our most fundamental right — the freedom of speech enshrined in our Constitution as the First Amendment (maybe he finds it hard to believe that it is even more important than the right to carry weapons). He is notoriously thin-skinned and lashes out at anyone that criticizes him.  He is obsessed. As president, he would get criticism almost on a daily basis — it’s what we do to our presidents.  What actions would he initiate as he acts out against those critics?  It appears our right to free speech would be explicitly inhibited, or at least implicitly stifled through repeated investigations of dissenters.

Today during an interview on NBC in reaction to the attacks in Brussels he was asked if he would use “any means necessary” to get information from those already arrested.  He said yes.  To make sure that they understood him, the interviewers asked directly if he meant torture.  He said yes.  And not just “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding.  He said torture.  To be sure, he said that he would “have to follow the law” which now precludes torture, but cavalierly added that he would change the law to allow it.  Remember that he has already announced that he would kill the families of terrorists, regardless of whether they were aware of their relative’s activities or not.

Yesterday, he said that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the basic building block of our foreign policy and the collection of our closest allies) was no longer relevant and that he would consider withdrawing from it.  A few days ago he was asked who his foreign policy advisers would be were he president and he famously said

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.  I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are.  But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”

An ego that has no bounds.  To be fair, yesterday he announced a list of five advisers that are, shall we say, less well-known than one would expect.  But at least one, George Popadopolous lists being a representative to the 2012 Model U.N. in Geneva as one of his qualifications, so he’s got that going for him.

I could go on, the list is endless and as I have written about before, Mr. Trump may actually be resurrecting the Know Nothing Party.  I resisted writing about Mr. Trump because he has over saturated the media and there is not much more to say that has not already been said.  Every outrageous thing he says or does is covered and nothing seems to slow his drive to the Republican nomination.

Equally confounding are the Republican leaders that say they will support Mr. Trump as the nominee even as the call him a “con man” a “charlatan” and other monikers that one would think might keep them from supporting the bully.  Apparently “winning” for Republicans is more important than the country’s well-being.  Well done, Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) for saying that Mr. Trump is a danger to our nation and that you will never support him.  If only others that purport to disavow his statements would take a similar stand.

To date, there has been no substantive debate in any forum of Mr. Trump’s proposed policies or ideas on solving real problems other than vague assertions that it will be “great.”  This is no way to find that person most qualified to be president.  If there can be no substantive debate on the issues (and I do not doubt that Mr. Trump is an intelligent person, he is just woefully uninformed and to date has demonstrated no desire to learn), then we will see a campaign that is about as dirty as our country has seen in over a century.  Our only hope is that there will be no more debate over the size of Mr. Trump’s hands and what that means for his other physical attributes.

The reason that I am primarily writing about him (Senator Sanders is also unrealistic, but he is not unhinged) is two-fold.  I am very concerned about two classes of people who are emerging from this campaign.  Let me explain.

Mr. Trump appeals to a segment of society that has been well documented by the media and by the Trump campaign itself.  I do not need to talk about the fringe elements of his supporters.  I will say that I am not surprised that we have such people in the United States, but I am surprised that there are so many.  My concerns are about different groups of people.

I am increasingly coming across people who I know and respect, intelligent people, with high paying jobs, good upright citizens that say they plan to vote for Mr. Trump.  Their reasons vary but generally amount to a frustration that “regular” politicians need to be given a message that business as usual no longer cuts it and he seems to be the person that can really shake things up.  Usually they go on to say that former Secretary Hillary Clinton may be a better candidate, but they foresee that if the Republicans continue to control the Congress  that there will be four to eight more years of partisan fighting and gridlock and our nation’s needs will not be addressed.  Therefore, they will vote for Mr. Trump.  Scary. When asked about all his pronouncements that inherently trample the Constitution and are, frankly, un-American, they often reply that “he won’t really do that.”  Well, I say, I guess that means he is lying.  The response is often that all politicians lie to get in office and that he will “change” if elected.  Personally, I find no logic to this position because if he is not a politician, which is why they say they like him, then how come they think he will act like a politician once in office?  And if they think he will be like other politicians, then why vote for him?  Most importantly, we cannot take the chance.  He may actually do what he says.  The man seems to have no limits.

Equally concerning to me, are other bright, upstanding citizens that say if their only choices are Mr. Trump or Secretary Clinton, then they will not vote.  This is extremely dangerous.  Their protest will be a vain, misguided undertaking.  Someone will be president, like it or not.  Besides being an abdication of their duty as a citizen, they will most likely end up with a president they like less than the other person. Anecdotally, those that might otherwise vote for Secretary Clinton, but are rightly troubled by the baggage she carries, are the most likely to say they will not vote.  If that occurs, say hello to President Trump.

 

 

 

Party Like It’s 1852 Again

Posted: February 29, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

As the cliché goes, history often repeats itself.  1852 marked the effective end of the Whig Party, a political party that had elected four presidents and that generally favored the supremacy of Congress over the presidency, based on the Constitution.  It evolved for a while into the Know Nothing Party which was virulently anti-immigrant, especially against Catholic immigrants.  Eventually, mostly along regional lines over the issue of slavery, and forged by the Civil War, the modern Republican and Democrat parties emerged.

I am a strong believer in the two-party system.  In my lifetime, our country at times has veered right of center and left of center, depending on the election of one party over the other.  But I believe that the majority of Americans are moderate and centrist, with tendencies that cause them to lean left or right at various times over differing issues, but in the end, we mostly want to stay in the middle of the road.  We stay there without careening blindly over the cliff thanks to our two-party system.  It is self-correcting as one party or the other pulls its opponent back towards the middle when things start to get too wacky.  I am concerned that we are about to lose that balanced system as it appears to me that the Republican Party is about to self-destruct, much like the Whigs in the mid-19th century, over politicians and policies that no longer fit the main stream.  The reasons are many.

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday and by Wednesday morning we may wake up to the inevitability of Mr. Donald Trump (R-Manhattan) as the presumptive Republican nominee for president.  There is no need for me to list the many insults he has thrown at various groups around the country or to point out that he has no literate policy in any area of significance to this country other than to build a wall.  His nomination will create a dilemma for many main stream Republicans.  Support their nominee, chosen by the people and for the people, or not?  Whether or not individual voters continue to support him in the general election, he will have destroyed the Republican Party as we know it.  Even a cursory look at his statements (it is difficult to call them policies) indicate that he is all over the map on defense, foreign policy, healthcare, taxes, understanding the Constitution, trade, the economy and just about everything else. Few of his pronouncements match long-standing Republican policies.  Should he be elected, I am not sure how the rest of the Republican Party will align with his ideas, whether or not the Republicans continue to control both the House and the Senate.  (It may be hard for Republicans to hold onto the Senate with Mr. Trump at the top of their ticket.)  Those that think Mr. Trump will be better than any Democrat may be in for a rude awakening.  Regardless, under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party will not continue to exist as we know it today.

Couple the thought of Mr. Trump as president (gasp!) with current events in the House and Senate. In the House of Representatives, the compromise budget hammered out as former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was being driven out of the Congress by his own party is now in jeopardy. The bipartisan agreement on the budget was to make 2016 non-controversial, get the Congress back to the business of running the country, and allow for other issues to get addressed in “regular order.” In the last few days, however, the Republican Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 Tea Party Representatives that caused the revolt that resulted in the government shut down in 2013, are now threatening to do the same thing again this year.  They do not plan to follow the budget agreement that all sides thought was in place.  Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) is going to have his hands full dealing with this rebellion, just as Speaker Boehner did before him.  In many ways it is a battle within the Congress, among Republicans, as to the future of their party.

In the Senate, not much is getting accomplished.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) seems intent on shutting the government down through inaction.  So far, nothing of substance that President Obama put forward has been, or apparently will be, considered. Senator McConnell and his fellow Republicans have moved from just disagreeing with or opposing the president’s policies, to being down right insulting.  There are numerous examples as to how they are doing this to a “lame duck” president (for the record, an elected official is a lame duck only after an election where their replacement has been duly elected — not the full last year in office), but let me just throw out a few.

Earlier this month, the president sent his budget plan for fiscal year 2017 to the Congress. Before it officially arrived in the House and Senate, the Republican leadership rejected it in total.  Their prerogative of course, but one would think that they should actually take a look at it before rejecting it. However, that was not sufficient in their view.  For the first time in 41 years, the Congress did not even provide the courtesy of inviting the budget director to testify before Congress about what was in the plan. The Republican chairs of the respective budget committees announced before the budget was released that they would not invite the director to testify because they were not interested in knowing anything about what was in it.

Another example can be found in the video released last week by Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) where he makes a show of taking President Obama’s plan to close down the prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba and wadding it up into a ball and shooting it into the trash can without reading it.  One may disagree about the efficacy of closing the prison, but why make it into an insult?  (See: Trump, Donald.)

Biggest in the news, and the one that most worries me, is the refusal of the Senate leadership to abide any nomination by the president to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court following the untimely passing of Justice Antonin Scalia.  No nominee is named — but they already promise to refuse to provide even the most basic of traditional American political processes and will not meet with the nominee.  I have seen the tapes of then Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) and then Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) saying during Republican presidential administrations that the president should not be allowed to nominate a justice in their last year as president.  Two things come to mind.  We seem to be on a giant national play ground so let me use a grade school admonition:  two wrongs don’t make a right.  More importantly, Senator Obama and Senator Biden never actually stopped a nominee from coming before the Senate.  They may have voted against some, but they did not stop them and they certainly did not prevent the process from playing out as it should.  If Republicans do not like the nominee, fine.  Don’t vote for the person.  But to be rude and insulting by refusing to meet with and provide due consideration is ridiculous.  It is their job — do it.   It is also bad politics.  Think about it.

The country is angry and about to nominate Donald Trump as a major party nominee.  Much of that anger is directed at the Senate and House for not doing their jobs.  It seems that strategically and tactically Senator McConnell is off base.  No Republican needs to vote for any nominee (although if qualified, they should follow American tradition and do so) but by not allowing any nominee to be vetted in the Senate, they play right into the Democrat’s hands.  Talk about rallying the Democrat’s base — this will do it and probably lead to some incumbent Republican Senators losing their re-election campaigns. Follow the process, use the system to their advantage, keep the seat vacant but do it by following the rules.  I am not sure what he is thinking unless he is afraid that some Republicans might actually vote for the president’s nominee if that person is qualified.  What a tragedy that would be.

Senator McConnell’s thinking is also short-sighted.  To satisfy the base now, he is willing to take a chance on the future.  President Obama would likely nominate a moderate to the Supreme Court this year because he knows  that is the only way his nominee has any chance at all to be confirmed.  What kind of nominee will a President Trump put forward?  Does Senator McConnell think that a President Clinton will put up a nominee more to his liking?  Hardly. (Fantasy:  President Clinton nominates Barack Obama for the empty Supreme Court seat.  Now that would be something to behold.) If Senator McConnell wants to see a more moderate nominee, his best chance is now, not after the election. Especially as his argument is that “the people” should have their say — well they will, and both presumptive presidential nominees are surely likely to put forward someone less palatable to the Senate.

(History lesson:  Chief Justice John Marshall, perhaps one of the greatest to sit in that chair, was nominated by John Adams in late January 1801 — months after the election of Thomas Jefferson as president.  The Senate confirmed him and he took the bench on the 4th of February, one month before President Adams left office.  President Jefferson accepted the appointment because the Constitution gives the president and the Senate the power to appoint members of the court.  Nothing in the Constitution says anything about “lame ducks” which in this case, both the president and some members of the Senate most certainly were.  These are the “Founding Fathers” that so many now refer to as the justification for their actions.  These Founding Fathers knew the Constitution, were certainly “originalists,” and guess what?)

Why do I think this is important to Republicans and that they should change their approach? Because taken together, and in conjunction with other similar events and the mood of the nation, the soul of the party is at risk.  I worry that the back lash, and continued infighting within the party, will destroy or at least splinter the current Republican Party.  Whether that new political entity will be better or worse than what exists now, I certainly cannot say.  However, I am concerned about another Know Nothing Party emerging, for however short of a time.  Without two strong mainstream political parties, both vibrant and reflecting the core values of our nation, we will lose our way in the middle of the road and careen recklessly off of it and over a cliff.

 

 

Happy New Year and Good Luck in 2016

Posted: December 31, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

As 2015 comes to a close, I wish each of you a wonderful new year in 2016 and hope that our country comes through the coming elections in better shape than what I fear may be the case given our experience over this past year.

I am normally an optimistic, the glass is half-full kind of guy, but I am discouraged by the political discourse of the last few months.  I am concerned that it will only get worse in the new year.  The rhetoric is depressing and may become more so as some candidates find that it works to their advantage to vilify others, and as some candidates become desperate to be noticed before they fade away.

I also learned long ago to stay out of the prediction game.  With the right knowledge and experience, it used to be feasible to make a meaningful, if not always correct, educated guess as to the direction of certain events and the resulting policy decisions that follow.  I do not feel that way anymore. Additionally, as I have expressed in previous pieces, I think that it is too early to begin discussing which candidates from which political parties will be our choices in November.  I have no idea who will make it through the spring and summer and emerge as a viable candidate.  Therefore, at this point in the process, I have no idea who I will vote for and I will try to keep my mind open as the campaigns progress.  That said, I have already decided who I cannot vote for no matter their popularity or the alternative candidate from the other party.  Out of the roughly 15 candidates combined in the Republican and Democrat parties still running (and sometimes it is hard to keep track) there are at least five that I know that I cannot vote for, no matter what.  Some fall into that category because of their hateful rhetoric and others because in my view, they are just plain unqualified to lead this country. Some fall into both categories.  Hopefully, they will not end up running against each other.

Logically, and historically, I know that we have experienced shameful demagoguery in campaigns past.  I know also that our nation’s history has had shameful periods of racism and bigotry that were considered main stream.  And as much as I would like to think that as a nation we have moved past those misguided beliefs, I know that some racists and bigots still exist in our country.

So the politics of racism, bigotry, hatred and fear — dealing in the mysterious “other” who are not like us and do not belong in our country — is, unfortunately, not new to this nation.  We now have at least two leading candidates, Mr. Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), that are experts at exploiting the fear and hatred of others and who also have little use for the truth should it not coincide with their narrative.  They seem to be very popular — although it is difficult to know whether that popularity will translate at the voting booth.  While I am deeply disappointed in their campaigns, it is really nothing new in our history.  What has truly discouraged me is the number of people who pollsters of all stripes tell us support their campaigns.  I knew there were bigots and racists out there, what is discouraging is the number that seem still to exist in the year 2015. And before someone gets their hair on fire, I recognize that not all supporters of Mr. Trump and Senator Cruz are bigots or racists.  I know that. However, too many seem to fit in that category.  By a lot. Anger and fear are powerful motivators, but when exploited for purely personal gain, it becomes dangerous.  Both Mr. Trump and Senator Cruz are well polished exploiters of those emotions.  I see their hateful ways reflected in all sorts of social media and other outlets.  Although I am never sure if the anonymity of social media creates more salacious comments “just because” — “trolls” that enjoy stirring things up — or if the anonymity of social media allows people to expose what is really in their hearts without fear of being considered haters, but whichever is the case, Mr. Trump and Senator Cruz through their speech and actions, make it okay to be anti-social.

Please spare me the accusations of “political correctness.”  For these two candidates (and others) claiming that they do not have to be politically correct has become a crutch.  It is an anti-intellectual and facile claim that assures that no substantive discussion of the issues is needed and that to be polite and not rude in political discourse is not necessary.  We are the worse for it.  Bigots and racists are given free rein to malign others.

Before Christmas, Danielle Allen wrote an interesting opinion piece about “political correctness.”  (It can be found here.)  The term, according to Professor Allen was first coined by James Wilson in 1793.  James Wilson was a representative to the Continental Congress and an influential member of the committee that gave us the Constitution and was one of the original Justices of the Supreme Court.  The first substantive case heard by the new court was Chisolm v. State of Georgia which established that individuals could sue states.  The decision was later effectively over-turned by the Eleventh Amendment. (I am not a legal scholar, but should one want to read an interesting analysis of the case, it may be found here.)  What is pertinent to this discussion, is that the rhetoric following a lazy interpretation of “politically correct” has subverted the original use of the phrase.  In some ways it may be better said as “correct politically” or Justice Wilson’s emphasis on “We the People” and his belief that sovereignty rested with the “people of the United States” rather than individual states.

This interpretation was presaged by a speech of his on July 4th 1788 following the achievement of the minimum number of states needed to ratify the Constitution.  In his speech he laid out the vision of the crafters of that great document, its importance and how it is up to us, the people, to vote for good leaders.  He emphasized how each vote was important (perhaps because his was the deciding vote for independence in the Pennsylvania delegation).  Or as he said in part in his stem-winder of a speech (original spellings used below, italics and bold are mine):

Allow me to direct your attention, in a very particular manner, to a momentous part, which, by this constitution, every citizen will frequently be called to act. All those in places of power and trust will be elected either immediately by the people; or in such a manner that their appointment will depend ultimately on such immediate election. All the derivative movements of government must spring from the original movement of the people at large. If, to this they give a sufficient force and a just direction, all the others will be governed by its controuling power. To speak without a metaphor; if the people, at their elections, take care to chuse none but representatives that are wise and good; their representatives will take care, in their turn, to chuse or appoint none but such as are wise and good also. The remark applies to every succeeding election and appointment. Thus the characters proper for public officers will be diffused from the immediate elections of the people over the remotest parts of administration. Of what immense consequence is it, then, that this primary duty should be faithfully and skillfully discharged? On the faithful and skillful discharge of it the public happiness or infelicity, under this and every other constitution, must, in a very great measure, depend. For, believe me, no government, even the best, can be happily administered by ignorant or vicious men. You will forgive me, I am sure, for endeavouring to impress upon your minds, in the strongest manner, the importance of this great duty. It is the first concoction in politics; and if an error is committed here, it can never be corrected in any subsequent process: The certain consequence must be disease. Let no one say, that he is but a single citizen; and that his ticket will be but one in the box. That one ticket may turn the election.

In other words, no government, no matter how well conceived and designed, can function properly unless good, educated, and competent people — not “ignorant or vicious men” — are elected.  The government is only as good as those elected to it.  In my view, we lost that principal and fundamental element to good governance with the likes of Mr. Trump and Senator Cruz.

 

 

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