March 9, 2020--Bernie: Likable Enough?

Famously, in 2008, during the run up to the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, at the debate that featured Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, when the moderator asked Clinton whether she had the personal appeal to defeat her opponent, before she could answer, Obama interjected, "You're likable enough, Hillary."

The audience moaned and during the next few days Obama was widely criticized for his insensitivity and, as some claimed, his sexism. For interrupting her, for discussing her personality rather than her ideas and qualifications. They next thing, some speculated, he'd be talking about her clothes.

It was more than implied that he would not have behaved this way if he had been debating a male opponent.

Ultimately and ironically the bottom line was that Hillary lost the nomination because, among other things, the postmortems found, many potential voters didn't vote for her because they found her not to be likable. 

It could be that this time around Elizabeth Warren suffered the same fate. She too may have lost because many felt she too was not likable enough.

Sexism was again surely an issue. To smooth some of her rough edges she should have appeared on Saturday Night Live earlier in the primary season and done a little campaigning with her burrito-snatching dog, Bailey.

There is president for that. Remeember, Bill Clinton appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show and, donning shades, played a little sax. Even the dour Richard Nixon tried to demonstrate he had a sense of humor (he didn't) and showed up on Laugh-In, where he called for them to "Sock it to me." He was that desperate.

Speaking about likability, how likable is Bernie Sanders? 

To his followers, likability doesn't begin to characterize their fervor.  But to many, including voters who he has to appeal to now to defeat Joe Biden, his anger and grumpiness are turnoffs. After Trump they are looking for someone who can win but also calm things down.

Perhaps because of the absence of likability Bernie's mien is becoming aggravating and his numbers in the polls are sliding. Sexism for him is. not an issue.

Biden is clearly not a policy machine equalling Warren or Sanders, but an increasing number of Democrats are finding him . . . likable. Someone with whom they would like to have coffee or a beer.

This may not be the best way to pick a president, but there you are.

July 26, 2019--Trump's F-You

How petty. How small minded. How mean spirited. How nasty. Only our president is capable of such behavior.

I'm talking about plastic straws. But, first, I need to supply a little context. 

That brings me to light bulbs.

You may remember that during the waning days of Barack Obama's presidency he issued an executive order which required that by 2020 traditional incandescent light bulbs were to be phased out. They use too much energy, generate too much heat; and thus, going forward, old-fashioned bulbs are to be replaced by low-energy, compact fluorescent ones. Forget that they do not give as much light as classic bulbs, the government still was to require us to switch over.  

I say "was to" since under Trump this will not be required. It's one more of his many attacks on anything Obama, anything that contributes to his legacy. 

If Obama was for it (say the nuclear deal with Iran) Trump is against it and will do all he can to take it down. 

In biggest picture terms at the top of Trump's cut list is Obamacare. It has been my view that if the Affordable Care Act had been named for someone else, say Harry Truman (he was the first president to call for federally subsidized national healthcare), my guess is that Trump would not have been obsessing for years about how to get rid of it. I doubt if he even knows who Truman is. He certainly doesn't know from "The buck stops here."

I'm OK with TrumanCare if that would assure ObamaCare's survival.

Now we have a flap about plastic drinking straws.

Liberal Seattle is the first city to ban non-compostable plastic straws and other cities are sure to follow. San Francisco, Washington DC,  and New York among them.

Plastic straws  are the seventh-most common trash item found washed up on beaches thanks to the massive number American use--about 500 million a day.

This alone is enough to engage Trump's imagination--anything these cities might do is by definition bad and needs to be undermined. He knows that his base sucks up these kinds of things. 

Forgive the pun.

His people say these kinds of federal moves are a restriction on their freedom. Like electric cars and seat belts.

Ever looking for a way to pander to his base and make a quick buck, soon after Trump heard about Seattle he began to sell Trump-embossed plastic straws on his "Trump Campaign Store" website.

Liberal paper straws don't work.

STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP and buy your pack of Trump straws today.

Trump Straws - Pack of 10 $15.00

Please allow 12-14  business days.

Thus far he's raked in $200,000. At least he doesn't charge for shipping and handling.

March 28, 2019--Randy Paul

Did I hear or was I hallucinating that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wants the Senate to investigate Barack Obama's alleged role in launching the Mueller investigation?

If you've noticed that some of the crazies who wait outside federal courts or the Department of Justice, the one's who wear clothes made from American flags, carrying FISA signs, they are alluding to Obama supposedly getting the FISA court to authorize illegal wiretaps of Trump associates in order to trap Trump in one nefarious scheme or another.

Paul must be having fantasies of hauling Obama before the Foreign Relations Committee and grilling him about his roll in getting the investigation of Trump going.

This would assure that Paul would be welcomed back to Mar-a-Lago after being banned from Palm Beach as the result of leading the opposition to Trump's trumped-up national border emergency. Remember that one?

Jilted Paul, shivering in Kentucky, sees Lindsay Graham hanging in the sun with the Trumps and it makes him crazy. He knows, though, that any attacks on the Clintons and Obamas gets one a ticket south on Air Force One.

Even if Paul has to caddy for his beloved Mr. President it also assures him some attention from Trump's people and a leg up on another (disastrous) run for the Oval.

Actually, I'd love for this to happen. Can you imagine the mincemeat Obama would make of that committee and especially the pathetic Paul? Just ask Mitt Romney what it's like to debate Obama. 

That would be worth the price of admission.

March 21, 2019--Mayor Pete

I didn't have enough time yesterday to write something. But I did have time to get to know more about South Bend, Indiana's mayor and Democratic challenger, Pete Buttigieg.

I did some reading about him and indulged myself by watching on YouTube his appearance on "Morning Joe" and his town meeting on CNN via CNN On Demand.

If you haven't seen these I urge you to do so and after that tell me if there is a better candidate for Democrats to nominate to run against Trump, of for that matter serve as president.

And, if you agree, urgently send him some money.

I know he is a very long shot for various reasons, but so was Barack Obama.

July 17, 2018--Trump's Presser

In case you missed it, here's a transcript of President Trump's presser with Vladimir Putin--

Q: Mr. president, did you confront President Putin about Russia's hacking Hillary Clinton's campaign during the 2016 election?

A: Server, server, server . . .  no collusion, no collusion, zero collusion . . . Server, server, server, server . . . Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton . . . No collusion, no collusion, no collusion . . . Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama . . . Server, server, server, server.

Q: Thank you Mr. President. 

March 13, 2018--Spatting With Friends

I'm spatting again with some of my liberal friends. 

This time about the potential meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.

They are sharply critical of Trump for so impetuously agreeing to meet while I, though I too have my reservations, have been asking them what are the better alternatives--Not talking? Exchanging insults? ("Little Rocket Man," "Dotard") Saber rattling? All-out war where everyone agrees hundreds of thousands would die within minutes?

Most frequently, my friends, though they generally feel direct talks are ultimately a good idea, contend it is premature for Trump to agree to meet before traditional forms of negotiation and diplomacy prepare the way for a presidential meeting.

As one put it, "Countries such as North Korea, rogue countries seeking the imprimatur of legitimacy, see being invited to a face-to-face encounter in itself to be a major goal. Trump meeting with Kim would be a sign of welcoming him and North Korea into the company of credible nations. Kim craves a seat at that table. And so for Trump to trade it away, getting nothing substantial in return, is not the way to make a deal with the likes of Kim."

All good points, I concede but continue to ask what are the alternatives. My friends say, "None of the above."

So again I ask, "What should we do?"

My friends continue to say have Secretary of State Tillerson and what little staff he has work on what they would discuss when meeting, preparing the way for it, very much including what the two leaders will say and do when they finally get together. What agreements they can endorse and literally sign off on. Come up with agreements about step-by-step plans for the North that include ratcheting back their nuclear program while we agree to drawdown our military forces that are stationed in South Korea. 

And, of course, my friends say, to make sure before Kim and Trump meet that there will be verifiable stipulations regarding how the various drawdowns will be verified. To quote Ronald Regan when dealing with the Soviet Union, "Trust, but verify." In Russian, Doveryay, no proveryay.

"Sounds good," I say, "But the sad reality is that Trump does not have a diplomatic team in place or anyone for that matter in his administration who knows anything about East Asia much less Korea. We don't even have an ambassador to South Korea. And so, considering all of this and the reality of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ICBMs, what's the best way to proceed?"

At this point conversation begins to lose velocity with my friends and I at least agreeing that there are no precedents to draw upon and, considering the type of leaders they and we are afflicted with, maybe we have no choice but to try it Kim's and Trump's way--roll the dice and hope for the best. 

With that hope based precariously on the very fact of who are our leaders. One, in Kim, whose favorite American seems to be the preposterous Dennis Rodman while those most on our president's mind also come from the media and popular culture--"Alex" Baldwin and Chuck Todd. 

Before we move on, to underscore why I am attempting to cling to hope, I ask my friends why they believe with a Kim and a Trump traditional approaches, traditional forms of diplomacy have any chance of succeeding. Even if there were the usual Republican foreign policy folks serving in the Trump administration or, for that matter, if Hillary Clinton had been elected and with her there was the usual army of Democratic foreign policy experts, with Trump and Kim why would we expect any of the traditional approaches to foreign policy to work.

"Didn't we try that?" I ask, "Republicans as well as Democrats, when they or we were in power? What evidence of success can we point to from the approaches of the previous four presidents, who, over more than 25 years, tried various strategies, from cajoling and threatening to buying-off (bribing) the North Korean leadership?" 

Pressing further, I also ask, "What did George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama for that matter accomplish with regard to North Korea?" 

And concluding, I say, "During those two-plus decades the North Koreans became a major nuclear power. That's what got accomplished."

One more troubling thing--a friend, who I suspect represents a somewhat widespread feeling in progressive circles, acknowledged that a big part of him doesn't want this approach to work because he doesn't want anything positive to happen during Trump's presidency. Not to the economy and not in world affairs.

"So," I said, "If Kim and Trump roll the dice and that fails won't we then wind up going to nuclear war? If this is where we're already headed, maybe, just maybe . . ."

January 26, 2018--Trump vs. Obama

Donald Trump launched his political career by savaging Barack Obama, beginning with the birther racism to accusing him of being a stealth Muslim to doing all he could first as a candidate and now as president to discredit and dismantle everything that was accomplished during the Obama eight years in the White House. 

It is as if Trump wants to nullify Obama's presidency (more racism) and delete his name from history. To make it as if Obama was not president. Forget that--to make it so that he never existed. 

For Trump's most ardent followers this is the definition of how to make America great again: Purge the country of people of color and anyone who is not Christian. Actually, not a Protestant. 

If one is looking for the Trump policy agenda all that is needed is to take out a list of Obama's achievements and invert them. Voilà, the Trump agenda is revealed. For example, most recently, most dramatically Obama-annihilating, Trump allowing all states bordered by our oceans to license oil companies the unfettered right to drill.

Try as Trump might to pull off this campaign to overturn Obama's record and place in history, the facts, assuming anyone is interested in them, present a very different picture.

Case in point, a recent Joe Scarborough op-ed column in the Washington Post, "The Damage Trump Has Done, Documented."

Drawing on data about the state of the economy from a January article in Forbes Magazine, not exactly a Bernie Sanders endorsed publication, "Trump's Economic Scorecard: One Year Since Inauguration," Scarborough compares how the economy fared during each presidency.

Most self-vaunted is the run up of the stock market. Trump claims there is no better evidence that his economic policies are working and that this is in contrast with the "failed" Obama record. During the first year of the Trump presidency the run-up in the Standard & Poor's average was a noteworthy 19.4%. But, though he never fails to reject the idea that he inherited a heating-up economy from Obama, the market did even better during Obama's first year--rising on the S&P an astonishing 23.5%.

In regard to jobs created Trump's numbers were lower in 2017 than in any of the first six years of Obama's presidency. And the unemployment rate declined faster under Obama than during Trump's first year in office.

The budget deficit last year was $666 billion, whereas it was a declining $585 a year earlier under Obama. And the national debt, a favorite target of conservatives, is now accruing at a more rapid rate than during the years of the Obama administration.

Then the trade deficit, an important indicator of economic health, was worse last year than in any of Obama's eight years.

There are things to criticize when it comes to the Obama record about the economy (for example the unrelenting growth in the gap between the wealthy and middle class), but things with Trump in regard to the economy, acknowledging its early achievements, are for the most part not as noteworthy as during the Obama years. 

One thing is certain, President Obama's record, which, in spite of Trump's obsessive assault on it, continues to endure while we may soon see the dismantling of the Trump presidency itself. And over time we will also see how history regards each of them. The outline of that, regardless of the Trump posturing, is already clear.

November 6, 2017--We Need to Get Off Our Butts

All the liberals I know are fulminating about Donald Trump and all the truly destructive things he and his administration are doing to America.

Rather than focusing on what we can do today, almost all are turning their attention to the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential race in which Trump has already announced he will run for a second term.

But almost all the liberals I know are not paying any attention to an important off-cycle election that will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, in Virginia, where the current governor, Terry McAuliffe is term-limited and thus unable to run for an additional term.

As a measure of the seriousness of the outcome in Virginia Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama campaigned for the lackluster Democratic candidate, Ralph Northam. They also pointed to the political opportunity represented by the down-ballot elections, most importantly races for the state legislature.

I know more than a dozen Virginia residents, all Democrats, and only one two of them have done anything more than talk about how terrible the Republican candidates are. I have not heard from any of them that they are canvasing door-to-door or manning phone banks to help bring out the vote.

All the recent polls show the race for governor and lieutenant governor to be a statistical dead heat. Political professionals from both parties are saying it's all about turnout. The winners will be the ones who can mobilize their supporters to vote.

Knowing this, as my well-informed friends do, there is still little action to speak of among progressives. Except for whining and complaining about how terrible things are. How, for example, if the Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, wins and enough Republicans are elected to state office, women's reproductive rights will be imperiled and voting rights are likely to be curtailed. 

If that isn't enough to get my friends off their butts I don't know what will. 

Sadly, even the fear of that is not motivating a flurry of action. If I were cynical (and I am), I would suspect that my purple state friends would rather have things to complain about than make the effort to win.

Even sadder, I see this self-indulgent apathy to be endemic to the national Democratic Party. 

We've turned criticizing Donald Trump into an art form--feeling proud about our ability and cleverness to do that--but most liberals continue to look down their noses while mocking his supporters. But in the meantime, his people are mobilized and we are, well, wallowing in petulant passivity. All the while reminding anyone who will listen how smart we are.

You know what? We're not that smart at all. 

We may know our history, we may be more literate, more articulate, better educated, more reasonable, but what we are really good at is losing.

Who are our leaders? Chuck Schumer? Nancy Pelosi? Bernie Sanders? Joe Biden? Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren? Barack Obama?

Not including Obama, their average age is 72.  To make our agony worse, Obama, whom we pine for, is constitutionally unable to run for a third term. And even if he could, my suspicion is that he would lose to Trump who would again enjoy demonizing him.

As Harry Reid's former chief of staff, David Krone, recently told the New York Times, "There are killers and there are whiners. Unfortunately we have too many of the latter and not enough of the former."

If we can't get our act together to win this one--and with the scandals plaguing Trump, it should not be that difficult--2018 looms as a potential disaster. And unless we can come up with better candidates and get activated, we need to get ready for eight years of Donald Trump.

Ed Gillespie

April 17, 2017--Missile Fizzile

Just as I was having this fantasy about why the North Korean ballistic missile blew up Friday right after it was launched, I read the following in the Sunday New York Times--

Over the past three years a covert war over the missile program has broken out between North Korea and the United States. As the North's skills grew, President Barack Obama ordered a surge in strikes against the missile launches, the New York Times reported last month, including through electronic-warfare techniques. It is unclear how successful the program has been, because it is almost impossible to tell whether any launch failed because of sabotage, faulty engineering or bad luck. But the North's launch-failure rate has been extraordinary high since Mr. Obama first accelerated the program.

I missed the article but was hoping that we had developed cyber-techniques to do just what this report suggests--the ability to sabotage North Korean missiles (and maybe Russian and Chinese ones) without, if it comes to that, having to bomb, invade, or nuke our adversaries.

Blowing missiles up right after launch without having to fire a shot or invade sounds good to me.

It might also help explain why Donald Trump (who will take credit for our developing this capacity, denying any to Obama) felt he could go to Palm Beach again and play his 17th round of golf since being inaugurated.

On the other hand, fantasies can take one only so far.

March 6, 2017--Kool Aid

Anyone who thinks Barack Obama during the last months of his presidency had anything to do with bugging Donald Trump's Trump Tower email server is drinking the Kool Aid. This time with Steve Bannon, his Brietbart News, and talkshow lunatic Mark Levin pouring refills.

That Obama would commit a felony, literally a felony in support of Hillary Clinton's candidacy, when it was universally thought she had a commanding lead, is delusional. Starting with Trump who, dangerously, believes this stuff.

The explanation is a lot simpler--

The coverup being perpetrated by the current president and his flunkies is coming undone. Even poor attorney general Jeff Sessions sold his chief out, deciding on his own, without consulting Trump, to plead recusal when it comes to the Russian connection, basically abandoning the president to twist slowly in the wind as one piece of fabrication after another peels away, leaving Trump and his senior staff vulnerable to further exposure.

What happened is as follows--

As part of their routine monitoring of Russian electronic communications chatter, the NSA or CIA or FBI stumbled on conversations between the Russian ambassador and Trump operatives such as Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, both of whom have longstanding ties to high-level Russians, have been on various Russian payrolls, and as a result are significantly compromised, including, as Flynn finally fessed up, engaged in perhaps illegal discussions before taking office about reducing the sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia in retaliation after they were caught red-handed (pun intended) hacking into Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Digging deeper, members of the intelligence community discovered other connections, including, in his own words, Donald Trump, Jr. boasting about all the Russian money "pouring into" various Trump projects. Minimally from black-money laundries such as Wilber Ross' Bank of Cyprus.

With this evidence in hand, including transcripts of these back-channel discussions, it was easy for the FBI (not Obama) to secure FISA-court approval to monitor further conversations between Trump campaign operatives, transition team staff, and various Russian spies. As a result, intelligence officials discovered that the campaign outreach to the Russians and more recently the coverup reached very high into the Trump organization.

So, in the aggregate thus far, we have flunkies such as Flynn and Manafort directly involved in encouraging the Russians to sabotage Clinton's campaign, minimally inappropriately talking with them about what the compromised Trump administration would do after taking office to "compensate" Russia for its help in the campaign, and now of course the massive coverup that likely reaches to Trump himself.

Then of course there is what is revealed in the infamous BuzzFeed dossier about Trump and his Russian capers.

This explains the towering rage Trump unleashed on his staff on Friday after Sessions recused himself without even talking with Trump about his intentions. He opted not to take a bullet for the boss and has as a result already outlived his usefulness. Expect him to be exiled and as the drip, drip, drip continues and various members of the Trump team to begin to peel away. I suspect that this will soon include Rex Tillerson who refuses to drink the Kool Air because he doesn't want the coda to his remarkable career to be that he went down with the Trump ship. And, yes, Watergate style, FBI director James Comey to be fired.

January 13, 2017--A Fine Bromance

On an unseasonably warm day I was out on the terrace helping Rona secure some of her trees and plants for when the worst of winter will arrive.

When my part of the work was done, I collapsed on the bed and turned on MSBC to see if the world still existed.

At the bottom of the screen there was a shot of the White House State Dining Room. A graphic indicated they were waiting for the President and Vice President to arrive for a brief ceremony to honor Joe Biden's remarkable political career.

They were running late but I sensed it might be worth waiting. Maybe Biden would unleash a few valedictory Bidenisms. Like when he was caught on an open mic nearly eight years ago at another formal ceremony, Obama's signing the Affordable Care Act. Biden hugged Obama and whispered for all the world to hear, "This is a big fucking deal." It turned out to be just that.

Yesterday's was a wonderful occasion. The president struck the perfect balance between honoring Biden for his nearly 50 years of service and as is traditional in male-male bromances (and they clearly have an intense one) there was lots of affectionate joshing, including a smattering from the opus of the best Bidenisms. The "big deal" one very much featured with the f-word deleted (many grandchildren were present) but clearly hanging in the air.

When it was Biden's turn he didn't disappoint. He told stories from his life, a life of love and death and then more love and yet more death. But much of what he had to say was about Obama. All heartfelt and full of tears for what had been and what might have been.

"You have a heart as big as your head," Biden said, "And with it you entered my heart." It felt like a defining moment in both of their lives. These unlikely brothers. Not their political lives but their larger lives of family and commitment and integrity and resilient optimism even though, for Biden particularly, his life could have easily been one of cynicism and loss.

As it ended, I couldn't help but think about what was underway literally in other rooms beyond the true emotion and simple beauty of that White House ceremony.

The news channels could not wait to get back to it. One could feel that, as if there were digital emanations from the TV screen reaching out to pull us back into another version of reality, of what the media have opted to present as most important--the "unsubstantiated" CIA document, leaked by BuzzFeed, that alleges, in regard to Russia, that Donald Trump participated in many financial and personal indiscretions.

The reputable news outlets have known about this since August but did not write about it because they could not verify any of the accusations. But all the while, and this is what the networks and and papers such as the New York Times do when there is the hint of a scandal--as with Monica Lewinsky--pretending to be above matters of these kind, they cover the coverage.

That way they do not have to get down in the muck but instead write about what other sources that thrive in that muck are leaking. Journalistic ju jitsu at its most hypocritical. Having it both ways, the elite media remain clean while reporting about the reporting about the dirt.

In the current case that involves revealing, "unverifiably," that once when in Russia Trump asked to stay in the same suite in the same hotel that earlier had accommodated the Obamas and then hired Russian prostitutes to preform "golden showers" on the Obama bed.

Sad to say, though not verified, I'm almost inclined to believe this. This is where America is at. Where I am at. This is to where Donald Trump has helped to bring us.

And, I also thought, what will things be like, what will our country be like when the Obamas and Bidens are no longer in the White House and the Trumps next Friday arrive to check in.

                                       

January 2, 2017--24 Hours At the New York Times

It took David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, all of 24 hours to switch the story line.

On Friday his front page article was about how Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, without overly joining forces, had "boxed in" Donald Trump by Obama's expelling 35 Russian diplomats, otherwise known as spies, and how it was expected that tempestuous Putin, as during the Cold War, would "retaliate" by doing much the same thing to American spies stationed in Russia.

Slipping into Soviet-era rhetoric, the Times party line proclaimed the boxing-in to be extra clever on Obama's part since what was Trump going to do--on his first day in office say to the Russians, who he appears eager to make a "deal" with, "Never mind. Your spies are welcome to return. I don't want this to inhibit my budding bromance with Putin."

If that came to pass we'd all be relieved to know that John McCain doesn't have his hands on the nuclear codes.

This first political reaction by the Times to the Obama moves, was that it effectively exposed Trump's naivety when it comes to Russia in the person of Putin, and would trigger an immediate retaliatory response by the hotblooded Russian president that would so sour any possibility for a real resetting of our relationship with Russia that Trump's efforts to cozy up to Putin would fail even before he was inaugurated and that would expose that Trump is as inept in dealing with the Russians as have been Obama and his succession of diplomats and secretaries of state.

Trump and the Republicans might manage to repeal Obamacare, chipping away at Obama's legacy, but this stealthy move by Obama would guarantee that Trump's presidency would start off with a whopper of a foreign policy failure. Not quite of Bay of Pigs or 9/11 or Syria magnitude, but still a big and embarrassing blunder.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the boxing-in.

Putin did not retaliate. No U.S. spies were to be expelled. He said that wasn't a good or necessary idea because he didn't want to"create problems for American diplomats." The U.S. went low and he went high.

And then, undoubtedly not able to stifle a chuckle, added, "Furthermore, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited to Russia to the Christmas and New Year tree in the Kremlin." And then he signed the press release, in English, "Vladimir Putin."

Seizing the same moment, Trump tweeted--

Great move on the delay (by V. Putin). I always knew he was very smart.

Within minutes the Russian Embassy in Washington retweeted it.

And then within moments after that David Sanger and the New York Times had a different front page story--this time headlined: "From Russia, an Opening." "Risky," they warned, but an opening nonetheless. No longer so much a boxing-in.

Is it any wonder that a disproportionate number of chess grand masters are Russian?

                                

December 28, 2016--Boys Will Be Boys

Yesterday's political flap was tripped off by Barack Obama.

In a podcast interview with his former senior advisor, David Axelrod, alpha-male Obama claimed that if the Constitution allowed it, he could have beaten alpha-male Donald Trump and been elected to a third term.

God help us. We don't need any more Syrias, not that Trump and his national security team make me feel nationally secure.

In Obama's somewhat tortured words, he said--

I'm confident that if I--if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it. I know that in conversations that I've had around the country, even some people who disagree with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.

Help me out here with what the meaning of "it" is. But I do get the larger boast--that he could have whopped Trump's ass.

Trump, never one for subtlety but with an unusual touch of class, couldn't resist and with his small hands took up the challenge in a quick tweeted response--

President Obama says that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY!--jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.

But one thing Obama did get right--he acknowledged to Axelrod that Democrats are not effectively addressing the needs of working people. They're not doing a good job of communicating "that we understand why they're frustrated."

We're not there on the ground communicating not only the policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities, that we're bleeding for these communities. . . . It means caring about local races, state boards or school boards and city councils and state legislative races, and not thinking that somehow a great set of progressive policies, that we present to the New York Times editorial board, will win the day.

I've been attempting to make this point here now for nearly two years but never managed to say it half as well as President Obama.

                                       

July 28, 2015--The Way We Were

Just the other day the New York Times reported about a survey of Americans' racial views. In spite of having an African-American president, about 60 percent of whites and blacks indicated that they feel relations between the races is not good and 40 percent said in recent years it has gotten worse.

In contrast, shortly after Barack Obama was elected, two-thirds felt that race relations were "generally good."

The title of the article says it all--"Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations."

The shift in numbers may, sadly, be a reflection of the fact that we do have a black president. He has been so demonologized that that would not be a surprise.

By coincidence I was finishing H.W. Brands' excellent American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900 in which he reported about a dinner hosted by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 shortly after he assumed the presidency because of the assassination of William McKinley, a small dinner party for Negro educator Booker T. Washington. This was the first time in history that a black person had dinner with an American president in the White House.

The dinner, attended by Roosevelt's wife, four of his children, and one close friend of TR's was, in Brands' phrase "objectively innocuous." But there was a firestorm of outrage, all of it deeply and openly racist.

One example--

The Raleigh Post put its outrage in doggerel:

Booker Washington holds the boards--

The President dines a nigger.

Precedents are cast aside--

Put aside with vigor.

Black and white sit side by side,

As Roosevelt dines a nigger.

We may have our racial problems, but looking back suggests that we've come a long way.

June 26, 2015--Obamacare!

With the Supreme Court decision announced yesterday that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is constitutional, in addition to all the lives that will be bettered and saved as a result, there is one jolly political irony for those of us who consider it a pretty good piece of social legislation and feel that Barack Obama deserves to leave office in two-and-a-half years with his reputation, all right--his legacy, enhanced.

Here's the irony--

From literally the day Obama was elected in November 2008, many activist Republicans saw his election somehow to be illegitimate and have done everything they can to bring him down and delegitimatize him and his accomplishments--again, his legacy.

This is not to say that he has been a "great" or even a "near-great" president (if he secures a sound deal with Iran regarding their nuclear weapons program his stature will rise further) or that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, but all things considered--the economy, the roiled world with its out-of-control nationalisms and terrorism--he has done a rather good job. The economy is decidedly better than the one he inherited and he did end in an admittedly bumpy way the two wars that George W. Bush started and led into chaos.

But still GOP leaders and most of their followers wake up every day thinking about what they can do to undo everything Obama had a hand in accomplishing. Nothing more fervently than the ACA which the House of Representatives under John Boehner's fractured leadership voted to repeal literally dozens of times. There was a time during 2010 after the GOP seized control of the House that they did so every week for months.

Even Jeb Bush yesterday, with all the courage of a marshmallow, vowed to repeal it the day he is sworn into office in January 2017

As a sneering epithet to stigmatize the ACA, Republicans labeled it Obamacare. They couldn't say it enough. It was supposed to remind Americans that this abominable piece of legislation was the result of "his" efforts, the best evidence that he was a European-style socialist.

The name stuck. And isn't it amusing that this healthcare law, which is already providing life-saving coverage for up to 17 million previously uninsured Americans, many of them poor, and now twice has been upheld by a radically divided Supreme Court, will likely remain a permanent part of our social safety net alongside Social Security and more appropriately Medicare and Medicaid?

No other law that I can think of is named for a president. Social Security isn't called Roosevelt-Security, Medicare is not referred to as Johnsoncare, nor is the Voting Right Act named for LBJ. Welfare reform is not Clintonfare. Yes, we have the Monroe and Truman Doctrines but they were promulgated by an executive order, not something hatched with their leadership and then considered and passed by Congress.

Obamacare will be the way the Affordable Care Act will forever be known. So three-cheers for it and Obama.

As Joe Biden was heard to say on an open mike back in Match 2010 when it was passed, "This is a big f---ing deal."

June 17, 2015--Schmoozing With Congress

Again on Sunday, Maureen Dowd (who my 107-year-old mother calls Maureen Shroud) in the New York Times castigated Barack Obama for his unwillingness to deal directly with Congress. To work them, schmooze with them. How he has disdain for them, remains aloof, and thus is unable to get even widely-supported legislation passed, including last week to give him and future presidents more flexibility in Asian trade policy.

She wrote--

The president descended from the mountain for half an hour on Thursday evening, materializing at Nationals Park to schmooze with Democrats and Republicans at the annual congressional baseball game.

It was the first time he had deigned to drop by, and the murmur went up, "Jeez. Now? Really?" 

Obama has always resented the idea that it mattered for him to charm and knead and whip and hug and horse-trade his way to legislative victories, to lubricate the levers of government with personal loyalty. But, once more, he learned the hard way, it matters.

I am reading James Patterson's Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, and a large section of it is devoted to Ronald Reagan and his presidency.

Reagan may not have been the sharpest tack but he was among the most effective presidents in getting his agenda enacted by Congress, even though during his eight years in office, for the most part, both houses were controlled by Democrats. Fiercely partisan ones at that. Tip O'Neill, for example, was Speaker of the House during Reagan's tenure and there was no stronger partisan than old Tip.

He disagreed with almost everything the president stood for, but made many deals with him when they met regularly at the White House after office hours, trading stories and sharing a bottle of fine Scotch.

No fan of Reagan, Patterson reports that during his first 100 days in office, even while recovering from a very serious assassination attempt, Reagan amazingly met 69 times with 467 members of Congress, in addition to lobbying many more on the phone.

No one yet has added up Obama's meetings with members of Congress, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that during his first six-and-a-half years as president he has had fewer than 69 meetings and met with and spoken personally with fewer than 100 members.

Patterson writes that--

Though Reagan rejected major changes in his [legislative] plans, his actions indicated . . .  that he was far from the inflexible ideologue that critics had described.

Yes, the tax cuts he enacted with bipartisan support added exponentially to the national debt, tripling between 1980 and 1989 from $914 billion to $2.7 trillion, in many ways he was a successful president--the economy improved and he proved adept at foreign policy, very much including getting along famously and doing serious business with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Clearly schmoozing works.

May 6, 2015--Liking Obama Again

A friend who back in 2008 supported the candidacy of Two-Americas John Edwards and then Likable-Enough Hillary Clinton after he dropped out, subsequently offering lukewarm support for Barack Obama when he defeated Hillary and then went through the same disillusionment cycle most of his supporters did after he was elected president when he couldn't seem to get much done domestically or act consistently internationally, over coffee the other day declared that she had gone back to liking him.

"Really?" I asked, a bit incredulously knowing her tepid interest in him.

"Yes, really."

"Tell me," I said.

"Well, first, consider the alternatives. John McCain and then George Romney. Does anyone think either one of them would have been a better president?"

"Actually, millions do. Have you checked out Fox News lately or radio talk shows?"

"Touché. But, since no one here is listening, I mean does any smart person think either McCain or Romney would be better?"

"I'll have to think about that since it feels a little elitist."

"Let me help you," my friend offered, "Those who still prefer McCain or Romney would have us at war with Iran. How does that sound? Part of my point is that we're not bombing them because Obama, who was mocked back in 2008 for saying he would negotiate with the Iranians, may be in the process of pulling off a truly historic deal which, if we got very lucky--and neither Republicans in the Senate nor Netanyahu in Israel mess things up--could, with Iran's help, redefine for the better many of the disputes and wars in the Middle East."

"I agree. Obama has messed up with red lines in Syria and not seeing the ISIS threat soon enough, but he knows the history of the region and realizes that when dealing with all the rivals factions one size for certain does not fit all."

"And so it may be one of those things-could-be-much-worse deals. Not my favorite reality--I'd like it to be simpler and more infused with hope and possibility--but life there is not reducible to a string of clichés."

"And domestically? Obamacare? I thought you hated that," I reminded my friend. "That he bargained away any possibility of Medicare for all, the famous single-payer option, when he may not have needed to."

"Well it's true that I think he was too quick to take that off the table but look at the results. First at least 16 million people now have medical insurance who didn't before Obamacare and even impartial parties acknowledge the cost of medical care has gone down and along with it so has our deficit. His critics were wrong on all fronts--that no one would sign up and costs would skyrocket. Obama gets a B+ from me for that."

"What about the economy? Yes, the stock market more than doubled during his six years in office, but what about the middle class and those in poverty? Didn't things get worse for them while the top one percent or five percent got richer and richer?"

"Again, no one wants to hear this anymore (though it's still true), but look at what Obama inherited and look where we are today."

"It's true," I said, "No one wants to hear about George W. Bush, saying it's now Obama's economy."

"It is. It is. But to ignore the economic crisis Obama inherited is not only unfair but intellectually irresponsible. To make a valid assessment of what Obama has done and failed to do it's necessary--beyond spouting talking points or making things up--to look at where things stood in January 2009 and how they are today. I already mentioned that the deficit is down by about two-thirds, unemployment levels are at 20-year lows, wages have ticked up a bit, the banks are being held somewhat more accountable, and the real estate market for most is stabilized. We also are seeing a strong dollar and are rapidly moving toward energy independence."

"And Obama gets credit for all of this?" I was skeptical.

"Of course not, but he's getting all the political blame for the widening gap between rich and poor (even by Republicans whose tax polices are really more responsible for that) and the continued slippage in the wellbeing of the middle class. So he's entitled to credit about the things that are working better."

"Anything else?"

"Well, this is admittedly just an outline. The full picture is more nuanced and balanced. This is to give you a glimpse of why I am liking Obama again."

"You never loved him."

"That's true, but I was enthusiastic about his election and to a lesser extent his reelection. But there are others things to like."

"Such as?"

"Immigration reform. I know it's controversial and maybe even illegal, but his executive order was a big, bold deal."

"Agreed."

"Then there's Cuba for another. A big another. About Cuba I say, enough already. They are not a threat and though the Castros are still in charge, somehow, with countries such as Saudi Arabia, to cite one example, we have decent relations even though they are the opposite of a democracy. In fact, there's more freedom in Cuba. Women can drive and everyone gets educated."

"And they have the best cigars."

"Also," holding up her cup for a refill, "better cafe con leche."

April 23, 2015--The Rapture

Here's why we have to hope Michele Bachmann has a seat in the Republican clown car. Yes, we'll have The Donald and perhaps Herman Cain, but without her things will not be the same.

Here's why.

The Huffington Post reported the other day that in a radio interview with Jan Markell, host of End Times, the former congresswoman predicted that the Rapture is very near and it's all Barack Obama's fault.

The Rapture, as you know, is something many messianic Christians believe will mark the beginning of the End Times, Armageddon, the rule of the Antichrist, the destruction of nonbelievers, and after 1,000 years of violent suffering, the Second Coming of Christ, the Last Judgement, and God's eternal kingdom.

All this is Obama's fault?

I know some on the delusional fringe have called him the Antichrist, though with Hillary Clinton emerging as a possible president, some are now seeing her in that role. (Ironically, on these eschatological matters they appear to be able to view things in more gender neutral ways than most other issues.)

Bachmann laid out the case against Obama--it is all about his Middle East policies, especially his alleged mistreatment of Israel. She said: "If you look at the president's rhetoric, and if you look at his actions, everything he has done has been to cut the legs out of Israel and lift up the agenda of radical Islam." And thus because of him, “We need to realize how close this [countdown to End Time] clock is getting to the midnight hour.”

What she didn't spell out, but which is understood by Millennialists, is the requirement that all Jews return to Greater Israel, convert to Christianity, and through those actions set in motion the events that will lead to the Rapture and all that follows.

Those Jews who do not convert, alas, will be slaughtered. This unique role assigned to the Jews is why those who believe this are such strong supporters of Israel. It is not because Israel is the lone western democracy in the region. It is because of what the Jews and Israel must do to help bring about the ultimate Second Coming.

But here's what I do not understand--

Why, if these events are foretold and, to these believers, will intimately lead to Christ's return, the Last Judgement, their salvation, and the eternal Kingdom of God, why are Obama's polices, which are supposedly advancing their unfolding, a bad thing? Shouldn't Bachmann and those like her feel hopeful and thankful about what Obama is helping to bring about? Is the Rapture, which his policies are supposedly advancing, a bad thing or a good thing?

As I understand the Millennialists, the Rapture is a very much a good thing since it not only is the initial indication that End Times are coming but also true believers (and I assume this includes Michele and her pray-away-the-gay husband) would be Raptured. That is, at the very beginning of The End, they will be whisked up to heaven, leaving all and everything behind, including their neatly-stacked clothing and jewlery.

So I am confused--if Obama is playing such a crucial role in all of this, instead of excoriating him, shouldn't Bachmann and her co-believers be expressing their appreciation for all he is doing?

You see, then, why I am so eager for her to make another run at the presidency. It is only during the debates that all of this will get straightened out. Minimally, it would also be good for a few laughs.

April 16, 2015: Germany, Japan, Cuba & Iran

They bombed Pearl Harbor and after we defeated them in World War II, with great loss of life and limb as American's invaded island after bloody island in the Pacific, after just few years of occupation, Japan became one of our closest allies.

They invaded and conquered most of Western Europe; exterminated more than 6.0 million Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies; and mercilessly bombed civilian populations in England and elsewhere. After we entered the war, they killed more than 300,000 U.S. soldiers. And yet, again, after the allies defeated them and after just a relatively few years of occupation, with our help Germany was rebuilt and became one of our closest allies.

As with Japan, this relationship endures.

So why is there such a big problem with Cuba and Iran?

We were versions of allies with both until 1959 when Fidel Castro seized power and quickly thereafter announced that Cuba was in fact a client state of our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union. And, in Iran's case, we related well (perhaps too complicitously) until 1979 when the Islamic Revolution erupted and the new government, dominated by ayatollahs, captured and held hostage 66 American embassy workers.

Now, via his executive power, President Obama is moving rapidly to resume normal diplomatic relations with Cuba and there is evidence that Iran wants to make a deal with the West by agreeing to scale back its nuclear weapons program.

The former, normalized relations with Cuba, is long overdue and now all but certain to occur. The most significant resistance to such a deal is the demagogic posturing of presidential candidate Marco Rubio, whose parents were born in Cuba, and his pandering to the remnants of the Cuban-American community in the hope that they and other American Latinos will rally to support his ambitions.

There are also Cold-War-minded dead-enders who are still fighting the Soviets through its former proxy, Cuba.

Then of course there is the on-going resistance to anything Barack Obama wants to do, especially if it is potentially historic and would burnish his image as president.

Much more troubling is the widespread opposition among virtually all Republicans, and sadly many Democrats, who oppose the semblance of any deal with Iran, out of fear that they will be smitten politically by the Israeli lobby or yelled at by Benjamin Netanyahu.

If things were not to work out with Cuba, it would not be catastrophic. They are not strategic players and are no longer military allies of the Russians. No Soviet missiles with atomic warheads remain on the island and they are not in any way a threat to our security.

But unless the West is able to consummate a deal with Iran it is likely that we will be maneuvered into a war with them, siding with the Israelis and egged on by congressional hawks and passionate evangelical supporters of Israel. So this is quite serious and should not be a venue for political striving and demonologizing.

If we managed to overcome our hatred for the Japanese and Nazis and established sound and enduring relations with them, we should be able to do something similar with Cuba and especially Iran. But it is very much a we'll-see situation.

April 9, 2015--Running Against Washington

It is tempting to do so. Pretty much everyone thinks that "Washington" is broken and that to run against it as a presidential aspirant is a smart political idea.

Ronald Reagan did so successfully ("Government is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem") as did Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. And now we have Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and other Republicans proclaiming that they are outsiders (though at least two thus far are government employees, U.S. senators) and will either get the government to work, get it off our backs, or promise to do a combination of both.

I was reminded of this when reading, in The New York Review of Books, about David Axelrod's political memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

In 2008, in a debate before the New Hampshire primary Axelrod recalls Hillary Clinton, by implication criticizing Barack Obama, declaring that she had been fighting for change all her life and "We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."

Axelrod, and through him his candidate, seeing the political opening, jumped on her claim that it is difficult to bring about real change. He writes--

I recognized the opportunity that Hillary handed us. She was too much a part of the system in Washington ever to change it--and without changing the politics in Washington, real solutions to big problems would never come.

This may be a good way to win nominations and even get elected but it is a terrible approach to governing.

Like it or not, if we are to have a government (and even Tea Party people want some government--their Medicare, their Social Security, their military, their border police, their courts, their jails, their tax cuts) the only way for it to function is through various forms of bipartisan deal making. Deals between the President, his (or her) administration, and Congress, whichever party controls it.

Hillary was right--you have to be part of our system to get anything done. Forget changing it. And maybe she'll get a chance to try to function the old fashioned way. She may be boring, less than likable, and past her prime, but when she was a senator she did work this way and was able to get quite a lot accomplished.

The three presidents who got more of their agenda approved than any of their successors (whether or not you like their policies) were able to figure out ways to work with Congress. Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan. Privately, very privately, for the most part they expressed little respect for specific members much less the system itself. But they held their noses and figured out ways to work with Congress, including, if they could, through intimidation.

To get things done, the lessons of history suggest, those willing and adept at working the system do better than those who claim to be outsiders. It's not sexy but it works.