February 5, 2019--Executive Time

Remember during the 2016 campaign how Trump made a big deal out of all the time Barack Obama was away from the office playing golf? How during his eight years as president, Trump ranted, he played 333 rounds? If elected Trump promised he would be "so busy working for the American people that he won't have time to play."

Fact checking shows that a little more than two years into his presidency Trump has already played golf 156 times. If he is reelected (heaven help us) he is on a trajectory to play about 600 rounds, nearly twice as many as Obama.

The cost thus far to taxpayers for all the back and forth to mainly Trump courses in Palm Beach, Bedminster, NJ, and Trump country clubs near the White House has been about $86 million. 

Extrapolated to eight years, this will swell to nearly $345 million. About four times as much as the cost of Obama's trips. Quite a piece of change.

Trump also criticized Obama for all the times he flew back and forth on Air Force One to vacation in Hawaii. Especially how much that cost. In fact, while president, Obama visited Hawaii fewer than a dozen times. Trump in just two years has already been to Florida more often then that.

Is there a scent of hypocrisy about this?

Also, do I sense a hint of racism? You know, how black people are lazy?

Then yesterday, AXIOS got their hands on and posted Trump's day-by-day schedule for the past three months. It shows him to be mainly alone when in Washington, spending more than 60 percent of his waking hours engaged in what his staff calls Executive Time. 

Time when Trump watches TV (presumable mainly Fox News), tweets, and talks on the phone to cronies who serve as informal advisors and enablers. These include Fox personalities such as "Judge" Judy, Laura Ingraham,  and Sean Hannity.

His meetings are mainly with the chief-of-staff and tend to last less than half an hour. He rarely has policy meetings with cabinet members or senior staff. He can barely sit still for more than a few minutes when he receives his daily national security briefing. Briefers are told to use charts and not words and to avoid including anything that might make him angry. Especially assessments of global threat with which he disagrees.

Picking up the AXIOS story the New York Times, Washington Post, as well as commentators on CNN and MSNBC have been expressing outrage that Trump is so off the case.

I have a different view. 

I welcome this. The more Executive Time he indulges in means there is less time for him to do the traditional work of being president. In other words, the less harm he might otherwise do if he followed a more conventional presidential schedule. 

It was felt by many that workaholic (and golfer) Bill Clinton and micromanager Jimmy Carter got in trouble by being so obsessed with minutia that they lost sight of the big picture issues that are the preferred purview of chief executives.

So, I say, let's stop criticizing Trump for lying around all day in his pajamas glued to the TV and Fox & Friends. The alternative could be worse. 

January 30, 2019--Kamala's Got the Goods

My early impressions had not been positive. I got the appeal but not the substance. The sizzle but very little steak.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee she participated a couple of weeks ago in the interrogation of Robert Barr, Trump's nominee to replace Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. It was a star-turn opportunity and so I tuned in hoping to be impressed but came away disappointed.

She spoke too much from notes and did not light up the room with her smarts or tenacity. A ho-hum performance  Not much evidence of fire in the belly. She seemed already too much a member of the Senate club after having been there a scant two years.

But, for me, Sunday changed all that. 

After informally announcing she was running for president two weeks ago while interviewed by Rachael Maddow she organized a rally in her home town, Oakland, CA, where she offered a full-throated declaration she was running for the highest office in the land.

With crowd size an important metric in assessing the strength of candidates (remember Trump's obsession with how many showed up for his inauguration?) it was impressive that at least 20,000 turned out for Harris. To organize such a massive rally is no mean trick, especially so early in a national campaign.

And then there was the speech itself. Unlike other candidates (think Hillary Clinton) who struggle for up to two years on the campaign trail to offer a convincing answer to the classic Roger Mudd question, the one back in 1979 he popped on Ted Kennedy who was seeking to unseat Jimmy Carter: "Why do you want to be president?" Kennedy effectively lost any chance of securing the nomination after struggling to offer a coherent answer.

With a nod to rhetoric at times used by Barack Obama, Senator Harris at the Sunday rally kept it simple and eloquent.

She concluded-- 

“We are here because the American dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before. And we are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: ‘Who are we? Who are we as Americans?’ So, let’s answer that question to the world and each other, right here and right now: ‘America, we are better than this.’’’ 

As they say, the crowd went wild and her polling numbers a day or two later soared--Biden had it all his way in the polls until then. His numbers lingered comfortably in the high 20 percents, hers languished at 5 percent or less. 

But as of now they are in a statistical deadbeat. Yes, it is still very, very early but this suggests Harris is tapping into a powerful vein of national aspiration. 

People are still longing to be optimistic, to have hope for a better future.

Further, she was radiant. Unlike so many others who on the trail feel as if they are campaigning begrudgingly, Kamala Harris seemed totally in her element and appeared to be having a deeply-felt joyous time. A star was being born.

And so, an early prediction--

Kamala Harris will win the nomination or wind up as the vice presidential candidate on Joe Biden's ticket. Far out on a limb I see the former to be more likely.

March 1, 2018--President Pence

Yesterday I began to worry about what kind of president Mike Pence will be.

Among other things what will it be like having a genuine religious fanatic in the Oval Office after the current narcissist-in-chief resigns. 

I worried that Pence may do more harm by actually being effective, with "effective" measured by what he will be able to get done by strokes of the executive-order pen as well as through legislation--enough members of Congress will be so relieved that Trump and his enablers packed up and left that they gleefully will vote to pass bills to allow prayer in schools as well as arm the teachers leading those prayers.

I know, I really do, that contemplating this is premature and overblown--I don't want to jinx it--but after eternally-loyal Hope Hicks up and quit, beaten-down Jeff Sessions hit back after Trump savaged him again on Twitter, calling it "disgraceful" that Sessions did not do enough to investigate Obama's alleged illegal surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition, feeling safe to do so because he sensed that Trump has been substantially diminished, I'm imagining Pence in charge because, in addition to the above, Jared Kushner is a politically deadman walking, and, above all else, Robert Mueller allowed the news to leak out yesterday that Trump is now officially a target of his widespread investigation--that he may be indictable for colluding with the Russians and leading the obvious obstruction of justice--for these reasons and more, time is running out for Trump, running out faster than senior staff of the White House are running out on the incredibly shrinking presidency (Kellyanne Conway is the latest from the inner circle apparently about to leave), for these reasons and more this is why I've begun to think about what a Pence presidency will look like.

To move the process along here's what I think Trump should do. My two-cents--

Surprise everyone by holding true to all the things he put on the table yesterday before congressional leaders regarding what to do to implement gun controls. Follow Dick Sports' and Walmart's example by raising to 21 the age required to buy all types of guns from 22 pistols to semi-automatic weapons; require "hard" background checks for all gun purchases, including those through gun shows; provide money to enable schools to become "hard targets"; consider limiting the sale of military-style rifles, especially to the mentally disturbed; and forget the crazy idea to arm teachers.

Work hard at this during his remaining time in office and not by tomorrow abandon the agenda to the NRA.

Then, return to the deal that a bipartisan congressional group agreed to last month that peeked Trump's interest for 48 hours before he jettisoned it and the DACA youth it was intended to legalize. It was a potential piece of legislation that had a good chance of being enacted into law. Many Republicans as well as most Democrats want to dispose of this politically toxic issue so take advantage of that. 

By doing this Trump would leave behind something of an actual legacy. Not just the obverse of everything Obama stood for and accomplished. 

Thus fortified by history, before things with Mueller get worse for Trump, as they now rapidly will, Trump should declare victory and join Omarosa, Kellyanne, Hope, and Ivanka wherever they settle. 

If Gerald Ford who succeeded Richard Nixon after he resigned the presidency claimed when he assumed the presidency that as a result "Our long national nightmare is over," Trump justly would be able to say his long nightmare is over.

Then we know what happened to Ford after he pardoned Nixon--in 1976 he lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter. If this is a harbinger that would mean we'd have to endure President Pence for just a couple of years.

But we will be able to quote what Gerald Ford also said on the day he assumed the presidency--"Our constitution works."

April 18, 2017--Presidential Daddy Problems

Since John F. Kennedy almost all of our presidents and aspirants to the presidency have had Daddy problems.

This struck me again recently when watching Donald Trump, pose in the Oval Office to sign an executive order to gut one more Obama initiative. This one I think having to do with environmental protection regulations.

President Trump has not given much attention to making the White House office his own. The shelves are deplete of books with the exception of an impersonal row or two of leather bound volumes purchased by the foot. Probably an ornamental set of Dickens novels. His desk has a messy stack of papers and files but no visible tchotchkes. And on the credenza behind his desk where all presidents array at least a dozen pictures of their families (even Nixon did this!), on Trump's credenza there is just one picture--a severe black-and-white photo of his Germanic-looking father, Frederick. And, yes, there is also a stack of souvenir golf balls. I assume one from each of his 17 courses.

When thinking about presidents and their fathers, there are reasons to begin with Barack Obama. His Daddy problem stemmed from the fact that he essentially didn't have one. I believe he met his Kenyan father just once when he was 10 years old. The title of his first book, Dreams From My Father, says it all. In fact, it could serve as the title of books by at least a dozen of our presidents--how they each were either in search of their fathers or coveted their involvement, love, and acknowledgement. In Barack's case all of this was missing and that contributed to the kind of adult and president he became.

Of presidents Kennedy had a pathologically involved and controlling father. From early on Father Joe unrelentingly prepped his sons for public life. His oldest boy, Joe Junior, was slated to become president and when he was killed in action in World War II Joe Senior's attention immediately turned to second son Jack, who he pushed to get into politics (JFK was reluctant) and for whom he then behind the scenes bankrolled his career and, it is generally agreed, not only promoted his various runs for office, but in 1960 spread enough money around to assure his winning the nomination and then conspired with political bosses in key states, including bribing them, to fix the vote count to assure his son's election to the presidency.

And once elected, Joe Kennedy, out of public view, played a major roll in influencing policy. It is now also fully known that President Kennedy on a daily basis sought his father's guidance and was powerfully motivated to please him and seek his approbation. Some biographers even say that JFK's hawkish inclinations were in large part to demonstrate manhood to his philandering Daddy.

Joseph and John F. Kennedy

Lyndon Johnson succeeded Kennedy. His father was a major player in the Texas state legislature but a poor businessman. So much so that when his finances collapsed the Johnson family lived for decades in dire poverty. Sam Johnson was a very severe man and never showed son, Lyndon, much affection or offered encouragement or praise. Robert Caro, Johnson's remarkable biographer, writes at length about how LBJ sought to please his father even well after he died. Much of what Johnson did was an attempt to make up for his father's failure and ultimately to surpass him.

Then there was Richard Nixon. No one had a more clinical Daddy problem than young Dick. There is no evidence that his censorious father ever praised him for any of his accomplishments. Quite the contrary. Dick was also raised in virtual poverty--his father's various business schemes for the most part failed and he took his frustrations out on his children, especially the bright, hardworking, and eventually successful son. Desperate for his father's praise and encouragement, he pushed himself beyond sensible or legal limits and brought himself down in the process. The disparagement and constant criticism he felt from his father was a large part of what motivated Dick--to show by his dogged success that he was worthy.

Jimmy Carter's father, according to his biographers, was also a withholding patriarch for whom his son, Jimmy, could never do enough to win his affection or praise. One even goes so far as to say that Carter's propensity to laugh without seeming motivation when speaking in public was the result of a lifetime of accumulated anger. Much of it derived from his father's severity. It was, in a manner of speaking, a nervous laugh that attempted to obscure the frustration and anger he felt from an unhappy, caustic childhood relationship with his Daddy.

Ronald Reagan's father was a lifelong alcoholic who moved his family from town to town across the Midwest in an attempt to find work and change his luck. He was unsuccessful in many ways--never able to provide for his family, establish a sustainable relationship with his wife, or provide emotional support for his children. Son Ronald was so wounded by his upbringing, though he was a great storyteller, that he barely mentioned him. It was as if these memories were so painful that he excised his father from the narrative of his life in an attempt to get out from under the memories of his gnawing presence.

Both Bush presidents, though they achieved the ultimate political prize, never felt they were worthy of their fathers' love or pride. George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott, was a successful financier and later, when elected to the U.S. Senate, was held in high esteem by his congressional colleagues. To him, his children could never do or accomplish enough to earn his fulsome praise. No matter how much George achieved it was never enough. Like many presidential fathers he was emotionally aloof from his boys, never making them feel appreciated or affirmed.

Bill Clinton's biological father died three months before Bill was born. His mother some years later remarried and Bill took his stepfather's name. But the marriage to his mother did not last and after she divorced him, he drifted out of young Bill's life. So in many ways Bill Clinton was fatherless and many who have studied his life and written about him claim that the emotional void that was the result of this unsatisfying family life helps explain his undisciplined nature as a politician, family member, and man.

George W. Bush, son of the 41st president, also felt his father's emotional coolness and thus tried desperately to please him. Many say that his decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein was to "finish the job" his father left unresolved when he had American troops come to the aid of Kuwait, which had been invaded by Iraq, and to surpass him as a wartime president. Also, some historians feel that his turning to Dick Cheney to serve as his vice president and cede to him so much of the power of the presidency was the result of Bush's impulse to seek substitutes for his biological parent, in the hope that they would offer him the affirmation he so desperately needed.

Other than as a curiosity should any of this interest or concern us?

It could well be that so many of our presidents having Daddy problems of this kind is a problem.

Seeking acknowledgement to salve fragile self-esteem may in the first instance be what motivated most of them to seek the power of the presidency. Not the desire to protect and improve the lives of those who elected them. If emotionally compromised as a result of the influences of their fathers, it also may be that allowing unresolved intra-psychic issues to influence decision making, particularly in crisis situations, gets in the way of their using their best, most rational judgement. We do not benefit by our presidents, when stressed by the consequences of dangerous decisions, to be so emotionally influenced.

One can only wonder what Frederick "Fred" Trump (ne Drumpf) might right now be thinking as his son attempts to deal with the North Korean threat. It could be that son Donald's boundless ego and insecurity are more on display and influencing his decision-making than any of his predecessors.

I would feel better about the situation if President Trump had a full array of family pictures on his Oval Office credenza, not just the one of Fred. Especially pictures of his children and grandchildren because what he decides and authorizes will affect them and their generation more than Trump himself or those of us who have already had full lives.

Fred and Donald Trump

July 25, 2106--A True Independent

I pretend to be, but in reality am not a political Independent.

Yes, back years ago, I voted for Jacob Javits who was a "liberal" Republican senator from New York. And at the presidential level, after a failed four years of Jimmy Carter's presidency, in 1980, conveniently not remembering, I may have held my nose and voted for Ronald Reagan.

About that one, I have regrets.

But in every other election cycle, I voted as a pretty much party-line Democrat.

When I think about myself as an independent, I am not referring to how I vote but rather that I like to think about myself as independent-minded.

So this cycle, at the risk of alienating my liberal friends, in the spirit of independent thought, I have been struggling to understand the Trump phenomenon and contending here and elsewhere that he ran one of the most remarkable primary campaigns in history and that he is smart and politically skilled enough to have tapped into the zeitgeist that derives from and motivates many millions of disaffected Americans.

Though never intending to vote for Trump, I have been attempting to remain independent-minded enough to make the distinction between my voting plans while taking note of his ability to understand what is motivating alienated voters. I have also tried to alert those of us who are not among his supporters to the forces churning within our culture, forces not well enough understood by the liberal elites.

For example, just the other day, as an example of out-of-touchness, David Brooks in his column in the New York Times rather hysterically claimed that only Ted Cruz among Republicans has the chutzpah and cojones to tell the faithful the truth--that Trump has taken the Republican party hostage and will turn it into a "cult of personality." Brooks pined for the GOP party of "Lincoln, TR, and Reagan."

He forgot to mention that it is also the party of Nixon and George W. Bush. In fact, it is more their party than either Lincoln's or Brooks.'

Clearly, though describing himself frequently as an Independent, Brooks among most others has his mind fully made up, not to be confused by historical inconveniences.

In fact, surveys show that most who claim to be Independents are anything but, and conclude that only between and 5 and 10 percent truly are. They are the only ones struggling to figure out which candidate to vote for--Trump or Clinton. The rest of us are committed to one or the other and there is almost nothing that could happen between now and November that would convince us to switch affiliations.

As Trump horrifyingly but insightfully boasted, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still win the nomination. And Hillary could have said, "I could break the law about passing along top secret documents via my private e-mail server and also be nominated."

So how intrigued Rona was the other morning when we stopped at a local market to pick up a copy of the New York Times.

Passing the paper to her, Kate said, "I am in a quandary about the election and for the first time may not vote."

"Really?" Rona said.

"Really. I like some things about Hillary and some things about Trump. But then there are enough things about each of them that I don't like that I may stay home on Election Day."

"Are you a registered Republican or . . ."

"Neither," she said, "I'm an Independent."

"We'll talk more later," Rona said. "We're rushing to meet someone. But to tell you the truth, you may be the first legitimate Independent I've ever met. Everyone else I know may say they are but aren't."

"That's me! Kate smiled.

Back in the car, after reporting this brief exchange, Rona said, "That was such an unusual way to talk about the election. How there are things she likes about both candidates."

"Very unusual," I said. "Do you think we know any liberals who consider themselves Independents saying anything like that about Trump?"

"Or for that matter any Trump people having anything positive to say about Clinton?"

"I can't wait to talk more with Kate as November approaches. Very interesting."