A Short Post okn Impeachment

It is not too early for the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump. He has in his one month of office violated a number of significant laws that injure the Constitution and seriously endanger the fabric of the American order and there is no need to wait until the government is destroyed before it can be remedied. The impeachment power is very broad and inherently political, the Constitution saying “high crimes and misdemeanors” which means anything weighty enough to get Congress to act, as Hillary Clinton said when she was a staffer on the Watergate Committee. Andrew Johnson was in danger of taking over the War Department when it was still a question whether the South would restart the Civil War and so, in my opinion, should have been convicted. The near impeachment of Richard Nixon was also serious because there was a plan and action towards undermining the electoral system. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was frivolous, just a private matter just to get payback over the Nixon resignation, and the two impeachments of Donald Trump were for serious matters: first to use foreign policy for personal political advantage and, second, to overthrow the government.

Here are some of the charges against him. Trump, first off, fired the inspector generals who are career servants who manage abuse in their agencies and so belies his attempt to get rid of fraud and abuse. He did so by failing to provide the thirty day notice required by law, which Senator Lindsey Graham regarded as a technicality b ut is at the heart of the matter, which is an executive branch independent of the chief executive, reliant on law rather than as Trump says, as a king. Trump all but abolished the USAID, which had been established by Congress, and so while there is a degree of flexibility whereby it can be reorganized by the chief executive, it is illegal to abolish the overwhelming part of it because that would be the equivalent of a line item veto and no such act has been passed by Congress and might not pass muster as a constitutional law, at least under most supreme courts, because it unbalanced the arrangements established in the Constitution for the balance between the legislative and the executive branches. Aside from being unconstitutional, dumping the USAID is unwise because the agency gains friends overseas and is an adjunct to the State Department and the Defense Department. Piling up chaotic firings is also open to impeachment because dismembering the executive is so great an affront that itg ios in  itself a ground for impeachment in that the President’s job is to faithfully steward the government. That also applies to the wholesale firing of people in the Department of Justice, quite aside from that particular set of firings undermines the independence of justice, another impeachable offense by politicizing the judicial process, as became clear in the Eric Adams case where there was a policy consideration traded for dismissing the Justice Departm ent’s charges against him.

Most egregious of all is Trump allowing Elon Musk to wander around into the most sensitive issues in the Treasury and Defense Departments. Musk has access to the Social Security payment system and has not said what he wants to do with that information. Will he reduce a percent or the whole of Social Security checks that have been sent unfailingly and effectively and efficiently since the first checks were issued in  1940? That would not only be illegal. It would violate what is sensed as a claim on the full  faith and credit of the United States, just like the dollar, and so also an impeachable offense. That remedy should be quickly applied so that it is not destroyed before it is remedied. At the least, Congress can demand Musk appear before congress to explain what he is doing, the claim that he is just a technical advisor to the White House clearly a subterfuge in that up to a week ago he claimed to be running DOGE.  

The impeachment is our final legal recourse for unseating a President. We have learned that the judicial system is too clumsy and burdensome a method in that it was not able to get to trial either the insurrection case, the stolen documents case and the Georgia case to interfere with the 2020 vote, all of them in the four years since the events happened. The Supreme Court can not be expected to uphol;d constitutional law because the majority, all men, are tainted by corruption, covering up corruption, or having lied during their confirmation hearings that Roe v Wade was settled law without adding that they would overthrow it anyway. The Congress is the final bulwark of the Constitution and even its Conservative members are likely to endorse an impeachment when, finally, public opinion shifts against Trump because of any attempt to reduce or alter Social Security payments without Congressional authorization. Some Senators are chafing at Trump preferring Putin to Zelenskyy and a legitimate impeachment offense is to change basic and long timer foreign policies, such as claiming Canada as a state or arbitrarily taking the Panama Canal. Policy matters, such as dismantling NATO, are also impeachable issues.They are being done without legislative consultation and so interferes with the ability of only the Congress to declare war.

Act in haste rather than try to rebuild the American constitutional structure should you be able to when Trump leaves the scene.

A Short Post on DEI

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are the watchwords and collectively the name of programs dedicated to fighting for allowing members of minority communities, such as Blacks, women and LGBTQ+, to be respected and get a fair shake in universities, workplaces and other organizations. I think they are somewhat overbearing in that they savor the thought police out to badger and threaten people into changing their ideas. Trump and his supporters are outraged at these programs and want to eliminate them particularly in the military, however worthwhi;le it was for those programs to have eased the integration of Blacks and women into the military and that malignant attitudes can arise again, as when gerrymandering and unequal voting conditions in the South arose again when  the preclearance of voting rights in the 1964 Voting Rights Act was suspended ten years ago. Moreover, I think that talk of white supremacy or inherent white bias seems to me a bad way to conceptualize the current racial and gender assignments. Better to use the idea of prejudice, which means feeling disparagingly about minority groups, and the idea of discrimination, which means laws and regulations that bar or set quotas for minority members, to remain the most accurate way to describe minority conditions. They are objective and measurable. A study in New Jersey in the Fifties showed that people said they wouldn't mind Blacks buying a house in their neighborhood but that their neighbors wouldn’t like it. 

But the issue remains whether DEI programs are pernicious or not. Do they invoke Critical Race Theory or Project 1619 which say that racism is in the heart of America? Or is it more salutary, by emphasizing how everybody should work to be aware of their shortcomings as human  beings, just as Jesus suggested? It turned out that it was very difficult to get an answer to that question. Organizations devoted to spreading DEI were notoriously vague and anodyne about what specific points of view they were expressing. Brochures promoting DEI curricula say that participants should engage in “tough conversations”. What does that mean? That there is “white supremacy” in the United States? That the United States is deep down anti-Semitic? Such brochures also say they encourage mentorship, which seems a laudable aim until you realize it might mean only Black mentors for Black students. Is that a good idea? Or only Jewish or Asian mentors for people of their races? That seems exclusion rather than inclusion and does not foster getting along with other kinds of people. Couldn’t it be that the specifics are too controversial to be named?

I ran across such an event of intimidation thirty years ago when a lawyer for the university administration came to address the assembled faculty members on female harassment. He said people should use their common sense to address whether an interaction was beyond the bounds. Clearly, he gave this talk so as to cover the university should it be sued. I raised my hand and asked whether kissing the wife of a faculty member at the end of a dinner party was acceptable. Let’s be concrete. He said I should be discrete, which was hardly commonsensical. The leading Feminist in the faculty emphasized my point by saying there are more serious things to deal with, such as female work discrimination and sexual assault. But  vagueness prevailed, is the coin of the realm, as when Sen. Gillibrand speaking to a Democratic National Convention said that a woman can tell the difference between a pat on the ass and a sexual assault, and a few years later got Al Franken to resign from the Senate because of a picture of him faking a grope of an actress playing her part. Imprecision is dangerous.

A Short Post: One Month In.

Donald Trump does not hide what he plans to do, even if the major idea is to damage or destroy institutions rather than to improve them. He made clear in his campaign that he wanted to politicize the Justice Department and that he wanted to get rid of the permanent civil service and he also wanted to deport ten or so million illegal aliens. He has done the first by firing FBI agents who worked on tnhe cases against him and fired people at the Justice Department and wants to make a deal whereby Mayor Eric Adams of New York will have his corruption charges dropped so as to encourage him to go after ilegal aliens, but that was resisted by attorneys in the Federal District Court of Southern New York who say they could not do that in good faith and as of yesterday one attorney agreed to sign the order so as to protect the jobs of the rest of  the staff from resigning or being fired. Stay tuned.

Trump has used Elon Musk to get rid of the permanent bureaucracy, but by slashing programs rather than auditing them first. He shut down USAID which provides children with food and life saving drugs to a number of foreigners without checking out the facts. He claimed a hundred million dollars of condoms were being sent to the Gaza Strip and took it back, saying he would make some mistakes, in that some amounts of money for condoms were being sent to Gaza, Mozambique. So Musk is sloppy checking out his own facts and so he is like Trump, who said Haitians in  Springfield, Ohio were eating cats and did when the Republican governor of Onhio said it never  happened and J. D. Vance shrugged that falsehood as a metaphor for how disorganized Springfield life had become. Musk is looking into the Treasury Department payment system and continues to do so even if there are court orders to unfreeze accounts, reopen USAID and stop snooping around Treasury payments. So there is a potential constitutional issue about whether the Administration will flaunt the judiciary.

An even  more constitutional test will occur in the attempt to engage in large scale deportations, which have so far been minor. The administration needs a lot of money to carry this out legally and more or less humanely. The House is proposing the money as part of the budget bill to be passed through Congress in  March. But there will be a handful of deficit hawk Republicans who will oppose it and so some Democrats will be required to pass the bill. The threat is that failiing to do so will shut down the government. But Democratic congresspeople have said that they will not accept such cuts on entitlements that the Republicans are proposing and get a government shutdown  by not providing money to the executive from Congress. But consider this. What if the Administration refuses to shut down the government? What if it continues to spend? SWnat can the Congress do about this constitutional crisis? The legal remedy is impeachment or the 25th Amendment but the Republicans are so intimidated by Trump that they will not exercise their constitutional prerogatives. What could they do? Raise an army of their own or ask the Pentagon to support them? So far, Trump has said he will obey district court federal judges, but he might get peeved about them or about Congress. 

Some voters may not be particularly concerned about constitutional processes if as some focus groups have said, Trump is moving the government, though not sure to what purpose. I blame the shortcomings of high school social studies. But people may wake up if they find, as the Republican House proposes, to cut Medicaid and ACA. The people are the final resort. Stay tuned.

A Short Post on Taxes

Every new Administration follows its traditional tax policy. New Republican Presidents or Republican controlled Congresses try to cut taxes on the rich and cut costs by restricting entitlements for the poor. Democratic Administrations or Congress's try to do the reverse: raise taxes for the rich and expand entitlements for the poor. Despite Trump’s outrageous and unprecedented assaults on permanent government structures, such as USAID and the Treasury Department payment system, Trump is following the playbook of Republican tax policy. There will be a fight in Congress in early March about how many taxes and programs to cut.

That is at least one of the key issues in any government whether or not such negotiations on either side is corrupt or self-serving rather than crafting tax policy for the interests of the people. Tax policy is an essential part of all governments. Just as businesses all engage in producing products or services such as lawn care or automobiles to be sold to individual consumers, just as they also package and advertise their wares, and also collect and monitor their receipts, all governments engage in parallel functions. They provide social services such as welfare and agricultural price supports and maintain defense departments and food safety; they appeal to their constituents for votes, which is the equivalent of purchases, and engage in campaigning, which otherwise is advertising, and they do the equivalent of getting remuneration by getting taxes. Ever has it been since governments began. The elders (but maybe not the old men) got the best parts of the giraffes the Pygmies had slain.

Here, however, is a problem faced by modern societies as that was outlined in the Fifties in John Kennnethj Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society”, those ideas still central to my thinking. The United States was very successful at providing individually produced privately owned goods and services. Competition might be redundant but effective at getting better products and services cheaper-- though I wonder about the entertainment industry which now, through streaming and cable, charges people to watch baseball  and football when they used to be free. Clearly, though, Galbraith claimed, collective goods and services such as fire departments and police departments, which make better sense to buy as a group rather than individually, because your house can get fire from an adjacent house that does not individually buy fire department services, the same true of regulations on clean air or defense establishments and the NLRB, are undersubscribed, even if some people conceive of how to package individual purchases of old age pensions and FEMA services. Taxes are not sufficiently raised to deal with the levels of demand needed by collective purchases. So American health care and education and struggling populations in Appalachia and the inner cities are not well serviced. And so there is a real fight in every Administration over whether to change the balance between collective and individual services and congresspeople are very articulate about this real issue, some finding the private or the public sector at fault, business ripping off consumers or government lazy and incompetent. These are rock bottom perceptions, Trump or not.

A Short Post on Gaza

Three weeks into the Trump Administration, there have been comic and dreadful incidents. The first week was comic opera about taking over Greenland, Canada and the Canal Zone, and then there came the tariffs on Mexico and Canada which were quickly resolved by the two countries agreeing to do what they would have done anyway if politely asked to do so, but that is not Trump's way, which is to bluster for its own sake, to make himself seem strong. Remember that he is a deeply superficial man.

The next week was much more sinister, and still unfolding. What does Musk plan to do now that he has access to the United States payment system? Getting unqualified people in office and purging Justice Department career employees seems not only vindictive but it also suspends the civil service system that has existed for a hundred fifty years. This is a very radical change that may or may not be Constitutional but still seriously worrisome. But it is fruitless to anguish about those real politics as whenJake Tapper and A. J. Vance bickering with ever more heat about whether Trump really said Pelosi and Schiff were of the enemy within. We know that Trump can be edited to mean whatever his supporters make him to mean.

But it is difficult not to be taken aback, especially by Trump’s supporters, with Trump’s jaw dropping announcement two days ago that he will take ownership over Gaza, has not ruled out using American troops to do so, and expelling the Palestinians from Gaza while making it the Riviera of the Near East.even though, as Trump admitted, the two nations don't want the by rebuilding after resettling Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan even, as Trump admitted, the two nations don '/t want the Palestinians. The America Firsters who supported Trump do not want foreign entanglements. No American boys and girls in Gaza. What is up with Trump? Is he serious or is this just a ploy? Who knows?  The Israelis don’t want it to happen either. It has been their long standing policy to fight their own battles with their own troops, except for experts and the Navy fliers who shot down Iranian drones and missiles. Israel does not want to be a colony of the United States; it wants to manage a great deal of autonomy as was shown by Netanyahnu thumbing his nose at Biden and pursuing his war on Hamas for fifteen months.

But Trump, for all his cynicism, is very naive and ignorant. He says he does not want to repeat a failed policy. He probably doesn't know that when the Israelis abandoned Gaza in 2005 they left an agricultural greenhouse industry that would provide exports throughout the Eastern Mediterranean  and the Palestinians destroyed them. There was English funding for building a high speed rail up and down Gaza and money for other infrastructure and new industry but the plan was rejected because the English would audit the books and the money not sent to graft and armament.  So that possibility was tried but Trump can't face up to that, while I am left with the prospect of a forever war, Hamas reborn in ten years and trying again to exterminate Israelis. Wouldn't it be nice to be in Coo Coo Land and everything bad would go away, like bleach clearing out Covid, as Trump had hoped?

A Short Post on Race

What if one of what the new White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, calls “legacy” reporters, meaning from the presumably fake news crowd, were to put her on the defensive in the White House Press Room by asking what about the two Trump plane crashes. After all, there had been no major air accidents in the United States for many years and then two happened during the second week of Trump’s second term. Couldn’t they be related? What’s up? That would be no more foolish than both the President and the Press Secretary saying at the podium that the first crash was the result of DEI even though no pilot of either the commercial plane or the helicopter has been publicly identified as a black, a female or a dwarf. Race was introduced only because the two speakers cared to do so, pursuing the idea that a minority must have done that. Such an attribution is clearly racist because it cites a deficient minority member for no reason even though such a minority pilot might have been perfectly competent, as years ago Eleanor Roosevelt attested when she insisted that a black pilot from the Tuskegee airmen be the one who flew her around an airfield.

Moreover, what if that legacy reporter then left the White House Press Room, saying I don’t have to legitimate such remarks. After all, the White House Press Conference is a two way street, the press gathering since there was a gaggle of reporters who stood around FDR’s desk asking him questions and he provided his own cagey  answers and there has never been a time from then to now when the press was assaulted by racist remarks until that recent exchange. The Washington press corps can look for other sources of information than the mostly trivial handouts provided to them, such as oncoming events, and so don’t have to stand with that. No legacy reporter comes and that ruins Leavitt’s party, leaving the place to Trump acolytes, not worthwhile covering on the networks.

The First Ten Days

So far, bluster, confusion and cruelty.

FDR in his first ten days stabilized the banking system by making bank deposits secure. What has Donald Trump done in his first ten days? His efforts have been fits and starts that are the result of impulsive initiatives and sloppy staff work in that his ideas are either bluster or platitudes and, whether through slyness or stupidity, manages to engage in a vagueness which directs attention to those who carry out policies rather than himself. His way of operating was best exemplified when he famously spoke to the adherents of his at the ellipse before sending them off to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6th in 2021, saying they “should be strong” and the future of the nation was at stake, even if he did not ask for violence, but that was the clear inference they could draw from what he said and so he was complicity in the insurrection even though he never said so in so many words and so is excused from the clear meaning of his words on many occasions, treated as sentiments or exaggerations rather than lies or assaults, his words redefined as a version of what he says in a more reasonable manner, as when  J. D. Vance said Trump was using Haitgians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio was just a metaphor for how bad immigrants were though Trump treated that ass literally true. Imagine if Biden had used language so vaguely or needed interpretation to make what he said palatable. But Biden stayed close to truth and wass can did even about world leaders, as when he said managing Bibi was difficult.

Susie Wiles as chief of staff had not had any interagency memo or detailed plan or contact with the Colombians before sending illegal immigrants back to Colombia and so had to bring the planes back from en route and then threatening to put up high tariffs on Colombia so that the military planes with shackled Columbians could be accomplished in their deportation when a little preliminary conference could have allowed extradition without difficulty. Just use commercial planes and no shackles. Trump and the Republicans see Trump as being strong and respected by his threat but that just means the Colombians and Latin America just see America as to be feared rather than respected, unless as Machiavelli thought, there is nothing to respect except fear. Latin America will be wary of braggadocio. To cover up a botched deportation.

The rhetorical obfuscation came next concerning those rounded up illegal aliens in the United States. The ICE leader, Tom Homan, said that the first to be deported were criminals, people who had raped and killed and assaulted people. But some of those rounded up were only illegals, those without documents, but Homan said it was alright to deport those people because they were illegally in the country. But that makes them violative of a misdemeanor rather than a felony, which is what people understand as deporting criminals first. It was perhaps inevitable that rounding up the truly criminal would include otherwise illegals, but Homan tries to confuse the two. Deporting law abiding aliens will raise lawsuits including habeas corpus ones, and would cost money and time, and sufficient funds have not been allocated by Congress for that purpose and so there will probably be illegal deportations that violate the constitution but we are all wary of fruitless trials never convened and constitutional suits and so the deportations will go on, found illegitimate after the fact, as happened when the internment of Japanese Americans was found unconstitutional long after it happened, however much those internments were decried in retrospect.

Then Trump’s White House declared he would not spend money allocated by Congress for a variety of new programs they White House does not approve, but that violates the impoundment act whereby there has to be a sixty day notice for consultation before proceeding with that and whether the Executive has the Constitutional right for what is in effect a retrospective line item veto. Constitutional issues of the highest order are at stake and the American people, who don’t trust the Supreme Court anyway, may chaff at the Supreme Court siding with Trump, which they are likely to do. But Trump is used to being in court and wearing out the judicial system and so may prevail, however it strains American legality

Then the White House fired a number of people who had civil service standing so that they could be replaced by political appointments, also a promise made by Trump on the campaign trail, but violated the statute that there had to be a thirty day notice for such severances, an easy enough procedure except for undue haste and lousy staff work to go through laws and regulations that apply, the new White House not terribly preoccupied with legality.

And then, most recently, a freeze on programs to bar money to groups such as Meals on Wheels because it is not a disbursement to a person, as is Social Security, but granted to an organization. Whatever the legalities, it was an attack on a charitable organization and so cruel. But the new White House Press Secretary was not able to see which organizations were barred or not, such as Medicaid, which is bloc granted to the states, and so yesterday the freeze was dropped, though defended the previous day, and we will see what happens. Vague declarations in the spirit of Trump but never developed with precision because, I think, they do not think with precision but only with their anger. It is to be seen if the American Republic or Republicans become tired of such gestures, but the public and that party are so used to being sloppy in thought and execution  that they will treat that as the way things are done. Who will stand up and says the king has no clothes?

This New Year's Eve

Here is a story about New Year's Eve and afterwards. My wife Jane and I weren't much taken with New Year's Eve as a holiday. It seemed superficial, unlike Christmas, where Jane had a tree ever since when she was a kid and her mother who immigrated from Odessa said that this was America and if her grandchild had a Christrmas tree, that was alright. I liked Passover, but I gave it up in my teens, and that was a sacrifice, when I became as secular as possible. Jane and I rarely stayed up late to watch the ball fall in Times Square, that holiday liturgy, turning in early. When my kids were little, one or the other got double hours for babysitting in the neighborhood coop and so had hours banked until March.

Last night, my son and daughter in law and myself had champagne and steak and by the time it was over, it was 9:45 pm and so I turned on my tv to see the ball drop from New York, two hours later in its time zone from me. I found it very touching: all those people being so cheerful, young couples kissing, small children on dad shoulders, animated and just being happy to be part of the crowd, amid the lights, with festooned lights and a lot of confetti, despite a ban on porta potties, backpacks, no containers of liquid, and police in abundance. Everyone was wishing one another a good new year, especially by the friendly Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen on CNN.

And then I thought about the sentiment. As I told you, things are going to be bad before they get even worse with the new administration. The debacle may occur as soon as Jan. 3rd, when Johnson may be ousted as Speaker because the deficit hawks don't think he is conservative enough even if Trump backs him. But chaos of weeks before a new Speaker is chosen is preferable to efficient Trump leadership that actually tries to pass money to build detention camps for 13 million people and jail political enemies and perogue the civil service. Drag events as long as possible until the 2026 midterms. Delay confirmations and defeat some of them.

Then, this morning, I heard about the New Orleans truck ramming which turned out to be by a native born American who had served honorably in the military, but had been declared by Trump to be an illegal alien. It is amazing to know that a President in three weeks is so fast and loose about facts rather than the government relied on to be careful to tell the truth except when it is deliberately lying, as happened when Cheney and company said that they were certain there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I thought the American people couldn't possibly re-elect George W. in 2004, but they did despite his betrayal of trust. Now we have elected a President who lies all the time, congenitally, and we of the press are in the awkward position of honoring a Presidential office while reporting his latest lies. Apparently, the uncooperative press people will be eliminated in the new White House Press Room.

Some people are suggesting to take a new tack and compromise with Trump rather than just oppose him. But his declaration of war is his stated attention and his past treasonable offenses to which he never answered in the court of public opinion, much less a trial. So he is a constitutional pariah and that is all that needs to be said.

These will be dark days and there is no reason to celebrate the just past New Year's Eve.

The State of the Election

I am very distressed at the present condition of the election. I thought that Kamala would by this time be far ahead, the character of Trump having revealed himself, just the other day by admiring Arnold Palmer's penis. He is a clown but Kamala rightly says that Trump is an unserious person who could bring about very serious consequences. My late wife reminded me that my predictions were largely based on hope rather than data or analysis and so what I say should be discounted. My daughter-in-law says that one party or the other will be very angry at the outcome, but that is not my feeling. If Kamala wins, I will be relieved, I think, rather than elated. If Trump wins, I will despair over whether the constitutional measures are available to control his worst instincts, which is to cede a lot of Ukraine to Putin, put eleven million people in detention camps and then deport them, and get revenge against his enemies, which include Pelosi and Schiff as bad people who are part of the enemy within. Sixty-one percent of veterans will vote for Trump even though Trump admires Hitler. What is going on?

Let’s put aside the issues. Kamala wants capital gains taxes lower than Biden did. She wants substantial tax breaks for home ownership, children and new businesses. Conservatives can support those proposals because they reduce taxes and Liberals can support them as a way to provide more entitlements to people. Yes, Kamala could have campaigned against the “Do Nothing” Republican Congress, as Harry Truman had done in 1948, but never mind. The only point of difference in the election is the character of Trump versus the constitutionalism of Harris and that is by now well established even  though some people think Trump is a flawed vessel who will further their own agenda, much of which seems to me indefensible. These differences are clear. So, less than two weeks before the election, what has to be said has been said. Everyone should go out to vote and let us be done with it. 

My daughter said to me many years ago that politics was character, and that applied to the electorate and not just the candidates. My point was that the qualities of a person’s politics, whether they are mean or niggardly to the poor, or care only for their own financial benefits, or are statesmanlike, was an expression of their innermost natures. But I don’t want to believe that because it would mean half of the  present electorate are tainted in their souls. Better to think they have been caught up in a frenzy induced by culture, which rapidly changes, and so will just pass, as Trump said would happen in the spring of 2020, at Easter time. But it takes work rather than wishes to lift the malaise. 

Ezra Klein in the New York Times says that Trump’s disinhibition makes him attractive. To some extent, people like him mean when some voters are too timid to be so outrageous. But I disagree. Think of what is the content of what he says. Do people disregard that? They just agree with the anger. These people may think you need a mean person during mean times and so a strong man will make the nation free. But crime is down and the economy is up and the nation needs the immigrants to keep the economy going. So anger is an end in itself, not for a purpose. It seems that there has been a sea change in that a lot of people do not want the President to be Henry Fonda or Jed Bartlett: cool under pressure, very well informed, humane. They want the opposite. That may mean Trumpism will outlast Trump, some other potential dictator arising, and that is very disheartening, that meanness, not disinhibition, the real thing. 

What might it be that could control Trump if he were elected? The 25th Amendment or a conviction by the Senate of an impeachment? Congressional Republicans have not been a bulwark of democracy, cowering instead because of their contributors and local party officials and their base, the Cheneys notable exceptions, but note that neither of the two have elective office, nor do some Republican ex-congresspeople and loads of ex Trump officials who have defected from Trump.  And as for the Supreme Court? All the male justices are corrupt. Alito and Thomas get millions of dollars worth of perks from interested donors who have business at the Court and sometimes report these and sometimes don’t and are both into far right points of view and so in Trump’s pocket. Roberts refuses to impose any ethical standards with any bite. Gorsuch and Kavenaugh told Senators during the time of their confirmations that Roe v. Wade was “settled law” and did not add that they would overrule it anyway. That is hardly the honorable behavior expected of a Supreme Court Justice. 

So the anti-democratic forces have been mobilizing for quite some time and can be attributed as far back as Gingrich who tried to make the Republicans something other than the me too party which for many years acquiesced to Democratic initiatives but just slowly. And at this juncture, one might expect there to be rioting of the streets by either side while in the moment of what used to be called a revolutionary moment as preceded the French Revolution or even the easily pacified Vietnam War protests. But people like me are amazed that what we anti insurrectionists do is follow out the formalities of democratic institutionalism for as long as that lasts, hoping that Kamala will win and that Trump would be restrained, nothing premature to be done. This may be the most important election since 1860, but let the other side fire on Fort Sumter.

My son says that I shouldn't worry because the election won't affect my life. I will have my Social Security and my streaming services and Amazon and my friends and family. But I have followed politics for three quarters of a century and care about it and can't give it up, the way I did with baseball when Derek Jeter retired and management knew that A Rod was on steroids. My daughter tries to just cultivate her garden but has become obsessed as well with the  election. My granddaughter is spoiling for an argument about how disgraceful Trump is. I guess I should be an Olympian and notice how foolish mere mortals might be and so let the election be noted as a possible upheaval that in history can occasionally come to nations, but I cannot disengage because this is in my time and in my place. I cannot just note that I am fortunate to live in interesting times. But my options are few. I vote and exercise my voice by writing and I can allow myself to feel dispirited.

The Presidential Campaign Now

Are voters reliable judges of character?

This is the dirtiest and meanest Presidential campaign in my lifetime. Worse than the Willie Horton ad leveled by George W. H. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988 where antiblack feeling was drummed up because Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts had left on parole a convict who reoffended. Just one and tube first Bush must have held his nose about what he was convinced to do. Not Lyndon Johnson unleashing the daisy petals ad and invoking nuclear war if Goldwater was elected in 1964, and a declaration by psychiatrists that Goldwatger was mentally unstable. Just  a few attacks, the petals had withdrawn after it was aired after only one time. Nor even Richard Nixon, who had associated his California campaigns with slanders on opponents being Communist tainted, presenting the checkers speech in 1952 to counter his having a slush fund, by clothing his wife in a Republican cloth coat and a refusal to give back the dog checkers that his daughters loved, himself clothed in Republican conventional respectability. This time is much worse. J. D. Vance says that it is alright to make up and repeat stories about migrants who happen to be legal but black as eating pets so as to show just how awful illegal immigration is. And a trump close supporter saying the white house would smell like curry if Kamala was elected and that Jews would be responsible if Israel was destroyed if Harris was elected, greatly exaggerating the two to three percent of Jewish American voters and American Jews in high places scrupulously and easily holding their allegiance to the United States even if having sentimental associations with Israel. When John McCain jousted with Barack Obama neither suggested the other was a threat to democracy and both current candidates charge that, one of them unfortunately true, the election an existential threat to America for the first time since 1860.

Even less combustible issues are discouraging. The Democratic Primary candidates in 2020, Harris, Sanders and Warren, were to the left of Joe Biden. Now, Harris is to the right of Biden, though not by very much, the best example of that in Harrfis wanting to raise capital income taxes by a little, less than what Biden has proposed. Trump was in favor of reversing Roe v. Wade and said so proudly but is now backpedaling because the issue is inflaming women. Not even the appearance of principle, just as his preferring a border issue rather than a border solution, as he said so overtly to Republican Senators who scuttled a border bill at his behest.This year found, this year as a whole, anti-Israel cohorts tinged with antisemitism has become prevalent and not only on campuses. The White House press corps displays some of that. A correspondent at a meeting asks whether their own beepers (which they probably don’t have as they are antiquated) asks if their cell phones will blow up. Jean Pierre, perhaps because of her discretion as press secretary does not quip as I would, “Not unless you got your instrument from Hezbellah which was a weapon of war sent  to underlings so as to communicate about planned battle action, and therefore liable to enemy intervention so as to disrupt military communications. Why were parents giving weapons of war to their children?

There is an asymmetry between the parties. Democrats don't castigate one another while Republicans say just awful things about one another. The worst Democratic candidates say is minor. Harris criticized Biden on bussing however much she misrepresented his position which was that local districts were free to allow bussing, and that is what happened when Harris was bussed as a child in Berkeley. Obama used his irony and wit to say of Hillary that she was “appealing  enough”. So Biden made up with Harris and made her Vice President and Hillary supported Obama with good conscience. Republican candidates go  for the jugular, as when George H. W. Bush as a candidate called Reagan’s economic policy “voodoo economics” and Vance said Trump was like Hitler. Those shouldn’t be passed off as words that become meaningless when the campaign is over for they lead to a cynical view that nothing politicians say can be taken seriously. Bush just allowed himself to be angry and say his words were only then once he became the Vice Presidential nominee and Vance says he learned to favor trump because of his administration as president though, obviously, being hitler is a  character trait that doesn’t go away even  if good administration follows unless he is a very bad judge of character, which is also a weighty  matter for someone running for very high office.

The columnists are all wondering under the guise of what they think the candidates should do is what they think the voters will do. What will motivate Harris or Trump to clinch the deal? What will Harris say to show is her purpose as president rather than just an alternative to Trump? Voters want more than that. But I disagree.The real question I ask is why that choice is not obvious. Whatever Harfris’s shortcomings, whether she flip flops or is not specific on policy, she is not a mean spirited insurrectionist who would sell America to the highest bidder and is afraid to confront any of America’s adversaries, he someone less likely to drop the bomb than to cave in at any treaty.

Consider the current events which make Harris a clear choice. The Biden Administration has been dealing with two major developments in the past few days and has been handling them professionally: they are providing hurricane assistance to the southeast United States and using the American military to assist Iranian missiles against Israel. American leaders are well informed and coordinating with one another and with their allies, saying very little about planks forward, which should be their posture, but as accurate as possible as the facts as they know them. That is  how a responsible government operates and by and large has operated in most Democratic and Republican administrations, sober rather than bellicose, measured rather than precipitous. And what does Trump do? He lied that Biden had not spoken to the Republican Governor of Georgia who himself said that Biden had given Georgia whatever he wanted. Trump lied about covid and recently about pets eaten in Springfield, Ohio, though that a President telling the truth to the American people is a sacred trust even if some information can be withheld. Will you trust Trump should he be elected to tell the people the truth about anything, significant, like a war, or trivial, like his crowd sizes? How can anyone take the position otherwise than that of the NY Times editorial board which is that in this case a patriot can only vote for Harris? And yet the polls remain surprisingly close, as if people disregard Trump as an insurrectionist or all the indictments against him . Why? Do people have no respect for the constitution or simple individual morality whereby we deplore liars and those who disdain the military?

And then, that night, there was the Vice Presidential debate. Vance “won” because he presented himself as more articulate than Walz, who opened with hems and haws rather than getting to the point directly, and also as a reasonable and compassionate person rather than the ogre and extremist preoccupied with punishing cat ladies by reducing the power of their votes. He did so by being mild mannered, family oriented, and engaging in the technicalities of legislation, as if people cared about such things, knowing that arguments could be made on all sides for an audience unfamiliar with the issues. So much for everybody wanting a policy debate when  clearly people prefer the personality debate that was present in the Harris Trump debate where everyone could assess the characters of the people running for President. Also, to achieve his ends, Vance just lied or obscured a number of issues as that was quickly ;pointed out by the commentators on CNN  who clearly prefer Harris. Vance said that he wanted to provide child benefits rather than defend his opposition to abortion. He also said that Trump saved Obamacare when he had in fact tried to overturn it. Vance also said that Trump had turned over power on Jan. 20th neglecting that he tried to overthrow the government on Jan 6th while also himself asking Georgia votes to give him the statue and in  cahoots with those engaged in drafting fake electors to gum  up the electoral process. Some of those actions are under indictment but trials are delayed at the behest of the president who, if he thought himself innocent, would move them quickly to clear his name. But the greatest failure of the debate was that the CBS moderator  put in  the question of Jan. 6th late in the debate rather than making it front and center because that is the central issue about whether Trump is suitable for high office rather than just one of a long set of issues worth debating. Insurrection is not just another item.

And this is happening while the United States is heavily engaged, though without ground troops, in two wars and abortion and the peaceful succession of power are mighty issues for the American people to deal with and debates just skirt around them. In the old days, when people were ideological or interest based, that is what candidates talked about: getting out of Korea or civil rights or welfare for the poor. Sometimes I prefer the old days so the media discussed the issues rather than personalities. But personality is what it is and the media do dig deeply into that rather than just the puff their supporters present. But I am unsure whether the American people are even up to judging character rather than policy. If they were, Harris would win in a landslide.

The Trump-Harris Debate

It is still a horserace.

The bottom line on the debate is that it is contentless even if consequential. Famously, in the first televised presidential debate, radio listeners thought Nixon “won”, whatever that means other than making some memorable pointed remarks lacking in  the opponent, while Kennedy was thought by the public to win maybe because of his teeth and smile while Nixon had five o'clock shadow. The debates contest appearances and so people decide they disdain Kamala’s laugh because that has become a Republican talking point. Moreover, we know alot about the candidates. Trump is mean and gruff and garbled and accept or like that for him, a strong man who voters may not have the gumption to express themselves while Kamala is a centrist left Democrat who moved more centrist this time than she was four years ago when the general rhetoric was more leftist even though Biden’s definitely New Deal leanings, pure FDR, was successful economically and overcame Covid. Saying the economy is the real issue is just a way of offering a respectable reason  for liking the Trump style. So why bother having the debate at all?

Well, the debate could provide dramatic surprises and that is what it delivered. And so the debate should satisfy as the real deal the broadcast and cablecast news organizations were hawking for a week now.Trump had to meet a low bar. All he had to do was sound coherent and a bit less mean while Harris, the old prosecutor, had to nail him on the wall to seem victorious. When I saw the debate, I decided that Harris began nervous but settled down and was fine at delivering her impassioned speech on abortion, but she failed to deny Trump’s charge that immigrants were being loosed from prisons and insane asylums, perhaps because so she would not seem to be protecting or defending undocumented aliens. In my view, the debate came down to being parallel stump speeches, each one offering their own slogans and myself amazed that Trump just goes on lying, like immigrants eating house pets. It was a largely useless exercise, I thought, that wouldn’t switch voters. People like the patter of the one they support.

But CNN  commentators thought differently, that Harris clobbered Trump, baiting him into saying stupid and racist remarks or having no answer to why he hasn’t offered a plan to replace Obamacare for the many years since Obama proposed it. The Times thought Trump was made small while Kamala went high. But if you discount his lies, Kamala doesn’t win by exposing them and, following J. D. Vance, it doesn’t matter if Haitians are eating cats, only that immigrants are disrupting American life. What still matters is comparing cheerfulness to meanness, and that is up to the voters. PBS,  the NY Times and the New Yorker mostly said the same thing. 

My take was different. Trying to expand the MAGAS would probably lose but  in a close thing. Trump was baited into saying what Harris wanted him to say, but Trump said what he wanted to say anyway: to be mean and vague and full of lies. His supporters want him to say these things even if MAGA commentators want him to dwell on issues. Why should he? He wins for his followers even if it loses the undecided, that very small figure who actually have not made up their minds about the differences. Trump has to gain more MAGAS to show up to vote, not win the undecided. In that case, he would probably lose but in a close vote. For Harris to really have a resounding victory, to win substantial numbers of MAGAS to her side, she would have required shaming him or getting him to stumble, which he did not do. He told his lies and exaggerations and did not linger on his self praise and grievances and so did not hurt himself unless people were ready to give up on him. The article yesterday in the NY Times by Peters, Healy and Robertson got it right, I think,  were close to the mark by pointing out that undecideds remained undecided which meant, to me, that uninformed people, and especially MAGAS, would vote for Trump whatever the debate results.

A debate is like a stage play and not just because it has revealing dialogue that is constrained in time and space, and in this case, as I claim, where the two sides were talking past one another. It is also dramatic because the audience makes sense of the drama, what is to be taken from the dialogue or excuse for one, out of the content and the exchanges. Playwrights improve a project by trying out audiences as to what makes an impact and will change a play so that it will resonate with real playgoers so that what happens on the strange is not elusive or obscure. They have to get it. Voters are even  less discerning playgoers. They are not schooled in political science or even standard historical references or particularly verbally astute. They just dip in late in the election year into politics and are expected to make a judgment on the candidates even though focus group members just after the debate the other night had difficulty articulating why they liked or didn‘t like one or the other candidate. The voters are amateurs with only passing interest in the subject matter and their specialized languages but they are supposed to be the wisdom of the Republic. Well, not really. People get to vote not because of their education or investment in the nation or even just because voting is an alternative to civil unrest. It is a procedure for transferring power and the Founding Fathers thought that a republic required only that a populace was virtuous, which meant that it could make obvious distinctions between right and wrong. The present election is obvious and we hope the Founding Fathers were right and the American people remain virtuous.