March 11, 2020--Germaphobe In Chief

Isn't it ironic that the world's best-known germaphobe, Donald Trump, may be in the process of being brought down by a whopper of a germ, the coronavirus.

I knew Trump was serious about running for president when he mingled in crowds and shook hands with people along the rope line without wearing gloves.

Years before that, occasionally in Manhattan, we would run into him and he always wore gloves, even in the middle of summer.

Even now, he is desperate to pretend everything is normal, claiming without evidence that the virus, like a "miracle" will soon just "disappear," the stock market will come roaring back, and in a romp he will win reelection.

Thinking about this and how Trump is behaving, a number of friends have been saying that the virus doesn't have to disappear to keep his supporters in line because, like his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, he could bungle the response to the pandemic (as is currently happening) and none of his people would care.

They would go along with the talking points which assert there is no public health problem. Like Ukraine, like with North Korea, like behaving as an apologist for Vladimir Putin, it's all a media-generated "witch hunt." The coronavirus is a "hoax" intended to bring Trump down.

But what is unfolding is categorically different than "lock her up" or calling the press the "enemy of the people." By comparison they are benign.

What we are seeing now is hitting much, much closer to home. It is literally a matter of life and death. Not some insipid chant at a feel-good Trump rally.

For example, many of his followers have aging parents or are elderly themselves. They have underlying medical issues such as COPD or heart disease and they know if they contract the virus there is a good chance they will die.

This is not an example of a Trump-inspired cost-free political frolic but a deeply feared threat. So lying about this is very different than lying about Benghazi. Deception will not make the virus go away.

In crises like the Bay of Pigs or 9/11presidents are supposed to remain calm and help people get through the trauma, not make matters worse by being flippant or incompetent. They need to feel our fear and pain, not exploit it for their own political benefit.

There is one good thing--Trump has made such an obvious and blatant mess of this existential crisis that people are finally coming to realize he is a fraud and cannot be depended upon to make us feel safe. Even some of his own people. Making citizens feel protected is a president's most important responsibility.

The current situation then represents a huge political disaster for him from which there is no easy recovery. Even members of cults (or Congress) have on occasion broken away from their charismatic leaders. I expect that something similar will soon change the narrative for some of Trump's most fervent acolytes. 

The fun for them is over.

October 16, 2014--Cuba Libre

Last week there was a report in the New York Times that during the most recent fiscal year, about 25,000 Cubans entered the U.S. illegally. More than at any time since the massive arrival of Boat People back in 1970s, 80s and 90s when a total of at least 300,000 came ashore (or drowned) in Florida, including 125,000 alone on 1,700 homemade vessels during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift.

Clearly our borders are even more porus than we imagined.

Central Americans and Mexicans continue to enter through gaps in the fence along the Rio Grande and, as an echo from the past, tens of thousands more are arriving again from Cuba in the same sort of rickety boats and rafts used previously.

This time they are not so much flooding into the country to escape Fidel Castro's oppressive regime but more the result of Cuba's collapsing economy. They are mainly economic, not political refuges.

And though we now have policies in place that make it easier for Cubans with families in the U.S. to enter legally, as this news reveals, the current policy is not working for all the Cubans who want to come here to begin new lives.

Cuba is such a hot-button topic that even with a growing interest by both of our political parties in appealing to Latino voters, about Cuba policy almost no one is saying, "Enough already."

Hardly anyone is suggesting we "normalize" relations with the Raul Castro government (Fidel lives on but, in his dotage, is in more than semi-retirmeent) and few are concluding, as communist-baiter Nixon did, that it is finally time to find ways to establish working relations with Cuba as Nixon dramatically accomplished with "Red" China.

Blocking any bold moves to recognizing the Cuban government must be the lingering fear that aging Cuba Libre Cuban-Americans, some of whom are Bay of Pigs veterans, will vote against any candidate or party that calls for normalization and, in presidential elections, might tip Florida into the column of the candidate who opposes any changes in status. Since as Florida goes, so goes the general election.

Which brings me to Barack Obama who is desperately seeking to do things that demonstrate he is an effective leader who still counts--

Do a Nixon.

Get Henry Kissinger out of retirement and have him (secretly) prepare the ground for an Obama trip to Havana to shake hands on a deal with Raul. In the same way Kissinger paved the way for Nixon to go to China to meet with Premier Chou En-lai and Chairman Mao. The rest is history with Nobel prizes waiting.

So the old Cubans sipping cafe con leche and puffing cigars on Calle Ocho in Miami will be upset. Who cares. They aren't oriented to vote for Hillary or Democrats anyway and Obama isn't any longer running for anything. Just for his place in history.

January 16, 2014--Bomb, Bomb, Bomb

I am reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis in Robert Dallek's excellent biography of John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life.

During the 13 days that it lasted, as the United States and the Soviet Union came eyeball to eyeball, facing the all-too-real possibility of a massive nuclear exchange, the unanimous advice JKF got from his military leaders, including Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay, the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, was to take the opportunity to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR. They felt that we still had the military edge but only if we attacked them preemptively.

Thankfully, for the sake of human life and civilization, JFK resisted that advice and here we are living to tell the tale.

Kennedy had been burned by a version of the same kind of advice 18 months earlier when the CIA and his generals advised the new president to support the invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles in an ill-fated attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

From that fiasco, JFK learned to be suspicious of his military advisors. Their job, he realized, was to wage war. Not peace. And as commander in chief, with the wisdom of our Founders that the military should be under civilian control, he needed to be leery of predictable advice to attack and invade.

I was reminded of those fateful times the other morning when former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared on Morning Joe to promote his memoirs, Duty.

As has been widely reported in the press, not only does Gates take frequent swipes at Joe Biden (inaccurately claiming that in 40 years of public life he has always been wrong in his policy recommendations) but also one of his presidential bosses, Barack Obama. Obama, he claims, not only did not "passionately" support the mission of soldiers mired in Afghanistan, but also was to "suspicious" of his generals' advice.

To that I say, "Thank you President Obama."

Let us recall that it was his generals who pressed him to send more troops to Afghanistan in another ill-fated effort to defeat the insurgents and stabilize the Afghan government under corrupt President Hamid Karzi. And beyond that, as Obama became more aggressive in declaring that we would withdraw all combat forces from there by the end of this year, it was his generals who went public, advocating that we leave a residual force in Afghanistan for 20 more years.

As JFK said in January, 1961--

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgement on each of us, it will ask: "Were we truly men of courage--with the courage to stand up to one's enemies--and courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates?"

Gates should know that history as well as that of the Eisenhower presidency before taking a too causal look back on his service under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. At least eight times during his presidency, former Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower faced down advice from his generals to preemptively wipe out the Soviet Union with massive strikes. They pressed what became a familiar mantra--that the U.S. would for only a few more years have the nuclear edge and that since war with the USSR was inevitable, we should get it over with while we had the advantage.

And at least eight times, Eisenhower, who more than any president was skeptical about such military advice, declined to launch the nukes. Better than anyone else, Ike knew that as surgeons will more often than not say, "Operate," generals will invariably say, "Bomb. "

Under the radar right now, while focusing most of our attention on Governor Chris Christie's exquisite agony, members of the U.S. Senate are quietly advancing legislation to ratchet up the sanctions against Iran. At the very moment that for the first time in decades there is a glimmer of hope that we may be able to negotiate our way to some sort of accommodation with them about their nuclear weapons program. Iran has already signaled that if this new sanctions bill is approved by Congress, overriding what would be a certain presidential veto, they will back out of further negotiations.

Maybe this is a geopolitical example of bad cop (Congress), good cop (Kerry-Obama); but with the Israeli leadership doing what it can to derail negotiations and Congress, very much including many Democrats under the influence of the Israel Lobby, we would be faced with another dangerous situation where bombing not negotiating threatens to become policy.