Trump Normalized August 31, 2016August 30, 2016 Jim Burt: “Pretty good summary from Rick Valelly, Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore: . . . No previous presidential candidate in American political history has been a dangerous demagogue, clearly unfit and unprepared for the office. No one before in American presidential electoral history has been so narcissistically disdainful of the basic ethical requirements of democratic electioneering. . . . He has threatened his opponent’s life, said that if he is President he will try to prosecute her and jail her, asked a foreign power and dangerous adversary to intervene in the election on his behalf, encouraged violence at his rallies, urged a massive assault on the civil liberties of a group of Americans, offended an historic ally and neighbor, the Republic of Mexico, in the most unhinged way, threatened to rip up stable treaty alliances that protect our security, lied constantly about policy questions of fact, engaged in smears and conspiracy thinking, flirted with anti-Semites and white nationalists, suggested that he will encourage nuclear proliferation if he is President, and he has urged his base to treat his electoral defeat, if it happens, as a case of illegitimate and rigged defeat. Yet this rhetorical barrage has been effectively normalized. We have gotten all too used to this kind of menacing, deranged talk. The basic reason for that is his own party. It has refused to disown him. There is no line that he cannot cross. The Republican cohabitation with Trump is understandable. It’s not admirable, but it has a clear organizational logic. Given the enormous gains that Republicans made in 2010 and 2014, in Congress and among the states, they have a lot to protect. Most of the party’s office-holders have obviously decided that they must live with Trump and ride out the election to wherever it may lead. That has given him a license to say things that should have cost him his campaign long ago. . . . Jim concludes: “Trump is a human stain which should be a permanent ‘Mark of Cain’ on any candidate or officeholder who has temporized with him.” And if she wins, Hillary Clinton will be the most prepared, qualified person ever to assume the office of the Presidency, with a lifetime of trying to make the world better for others. Seventy days to go . . .
And Now: Something Upbeat For A Change August 30, 2016August 30, 2016 Look around! Look around! What a time to be alive right now! Here are 11 reasons to be excited. Thrilling. Everything from flying cars to tremendous increases in efficiency and sustainability. Making a pound of “beef” without 1,800 gallons of water. Yes, it’s a little scary, too. (How soon will we be pleading with HAL to “open the pod bay doors“?) With serious concerns over what it will do to jobs. But as to that: History has shown that while new technology does indeed eliminate jobs, it also creates new and better jobs to replace them. For example, with advent of the personal computer, the number of typographer jobs dropped, but the increase in graphic designer jobs more than made up for it. It is much easier to imagine jobs that will go away than new jobs that will be created. Today millions of people work as app developers, ride-sharing drivers, drone operators, and social media marketers— jobs that didn’t exist and would have been difficult to even imagine ten years ago. . . . And the future is coming in any event, so you may as well take a peak. Then if you have time, read this by Richard B. Freeman — “Who Owns the Robots Rules the World” — which addresses that issue of employment . . . and, really, the central issue of our time: how to distribute the fruits of human ingenuity? . . . Robotization, like past technological changes, can be a very good thing, relieving the workload of humans while helping overcome the many challenges the world faces. But it could also affect humans disastrously, dividing societies between the owners of the robots on one side, and the workers who compete with the robots on the other. We should worry less about the potential displacement of human labor by robots than about how to share fairly across society the prosperity that the robots produce. . . . . . . In recent decades, the labor market has increasingly tilted against workers, producing levels of inequality that arouse global concern not just from traditional advocates of an egalitarian income distribution, but also from such staid organizations as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Increases in worker productivity were once passed on proportionately to workers through gains in wages. Today, gains accrue disproportionately to the wealthy—who are the principal owners of capital. . . . Apologies that yesterday’s short column got mangled. Here it is, corrected: Trump’s Campaign CEO Guilty Of Voter Fraud You gotta have to kinda love this: Donald Trump’s new presidential campaign chief is registered to vote in a key swing state at an empty house where he does not live, in an apparent breach of election laws. . . . Bannon is executive chairman of the rightwing website Breitbart News, which has for years aggressively claimed that voter fraud is rife among minorities and in Democratic-leaning areas. . . . Willfully submitting false information on a Florida voter registration – or helping someone to do so – is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Already loathsome for his views and headlines, this is who Trump chooses to helm his campaign? (Or, more likely, to helm the cable channel bonanza he plans to reap if he loses?)
Trump’s Campaign CEO Guilty Of Voter Fraud August 29, 2016August 29, 2016 You gotta have to kinda love this: Donald Trump’s new presidential campaign chief is registered to vote in a key swing state at an empty house where he does not live, in an apparent breach of election laws. . . . Bannon is executive chairman of the rightwing website Breitbart News, which has for years aggressively claimed that voter fraud is rife among minorities and in Democratic-leaning areas. . . . Willfully submitting false information on a Florida voter registration – or helping someone to do so – is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Already loathsome for his views and headlines, this is who Trump chooses to helm his campaign? (Or, more likely, to helm the cable channel bonanza he plans to reap if he loses?)
Not One Of 45 Living Economic Advisers Supports Trump August 27, 2016August 26, 2016 Not Republicans, not Democrats, not Reagan Republicans — not ONE of the living members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. But what do they know? Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed King of Bankruptcy, will win so much we’ll get tired of winning. He will win so much that more than 95% of black Americans, he says (“I promise you”), will vote to reelect him. And Mexico will pay for it. Read it in the Wall Street Journal, here. And if you can, click here. Have a great weekend.
Still No THERE There August 26, 2016August 25, 2016 Trump “guarantees” that by the end of his first term “more than 95%” of blacks will vote to re-elect him. This is so absurd — Obama got only 93% of the black vote — it suggests nothing he says should be taken seriously (not that we didn’t already know that) — yet his pronouncements lead the news every night . . . and his followers lap it up. Especially as it regards his opponent. Yesterday, his having called her “a bigot,” Hillary responded. If you missed it, I urge you to read the transcript. Yesterday, also, VOX bolstered my view that there’s no “there” to the Clinton Foundation story. (Quick: somebody tell “Morning Joe.”) What kind of world do we live in where war-hero John Kerry is swiftboated and Dan Rather — not George Bush — loses his job? Where Al Gore is ridiculed for saying he invented the Internet,* not lauded for being its Senate champion? Where 70% of those who voted to re-elect Bush thought Iraq attacked us and a majority of Republicans still doubt Obama’s citizenship? Where the Senate Majority Leader – devoted to seeing the President fail — can say that “by any standard Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country”? Nate Silver sees only a 16% chance Trump wins. I find that terrifying. Roughly the same odds of dying in Russian roulette. One of the things we can tell all our friends in blue states like California and New York is that this time your vote really does matter. In addition to winning the Electoral College, we need to show an enormous win in the popular vote. First, to minimize the chance Trump will be able to persuade people the election was “rigged” and that, really, he was the people’s choice. Second, to show the world America has not lost its mind. *He did not actually say that.
No THERE There August 24, 2016 According to the Post: There’s a new round of “revelations” concerning Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department today, and since it involves some people sending emails to other people, it gets wrapped up with that other story about Clinton. Are you ready for the shocking news, the scandalous details, the mind-blowing malfeasance? Well hold on to your hat, because here it is: When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, many people wanted to speak with her. Astonishing, I know. Here’s the truth: every development in any story having to do with anything involving email and Hillary Clinton is going to get trumpeted on the front page as though it were scandalous, no matter what the substance of it actually is. . . . . . . Judicial Watch, an organization that has been pursuing Clinton for many years, has released a trove of emails . . . that supposedly show how donors to the Clinton Foundation got special access, and presumably special favors, from Clinton while she was at State. The only problem is that the emails in question reveal nothing of the sort. What they actually reveal is that a few foundation donors wanted access, but didn’t actually get it. . . . . . . And that’s it. If there were anything more scandalous there, have no doubt that Judicial Watch would have brought it to reporters’ eager attention. So: Nobody got special favors and nobody got “access,” except for the second-highest-ranking official of an important U.S. ally . . . Do powerful people, organizations, and countries donate money to the Clinton Foundation so they can rub shoulders with Bill Clinton? You bet they do. That’s the whole model: exploit Clinton’s celebrity to raise money which can then be used to make progress on important issues like climate change and global health. Likewise, a healthy portion of Huma Abedin’s job as Clinton’s closest aide seems to have consisted of fielding requests from people who wanted to get her boss’s time and attention. That’s the way it is with many powerful people, in politics or any other realm. If we were able to see all the emails from the office of any senator, Democrat or Republican, we’d see the same thing: a steady stream of people asking, on their own behalf or someone else’s, for the senator’s time. Donors, businesspeople, advocates, constituents, they all want to talk to the person whose picture is on all the walls. If we find cases where someone actually received some favor or consideration they didn’t deserve, then depending on the details it might actually be scandalous. But an email discussion of Bono’s wacky idea to send U2 concerts to the International Space Station is not a scandal. ☞ Read the whole story if you have time. The media and the crew over at “Morning Joe” have gone nuts over this. Of the thousands of meetings the Secretary had, nearly 10% were with non-government officials! Some of them, old friends! (Do friends never come t0 visit? One a week would be 200 over four years.) About half of whom, perhaps admiring the work of the Foundation, support it! It’s not a big story, as the Post explains, but Trump gets endless-loop airtime calling it CRIMINAL. She is the most corrupt politician ever — the worst secretary of state ever — he is immensely rich, knows more about ISIS than the generals, the country is a disaster only he can fix, she just lies and lies and lies and he saw three thousand Muslims cheering across the river as they watched the Towers come down — so of course whatever he says dominates the news. And has done so for more than a year. We hang on his every word for guidance and inspiration. He tells it like it is. E.g.: “I have a great relationship with the blacks.” E.g.: “I’ve had a beautiful, flawless campaign.” E.g.: “This very expensive global warming bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temperatures.” E.g.: “Sorry, losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest. Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” He literally said all that, just as Eisenhower or Truman or Lincoln — perhaps John Adams or Ronald Reagan or, well, any great world leader — might have. So I read the Associated Press story that threw “Morning Joe” into the caffeineosphere. Among those granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa. Horrible, no? The “Wall Street executive,” by the way, is a business school classmate of mine, a Republican. Hurrah for him for giving generously to the Clinton Global Initiative anyway. The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. Did “Morning Joe” miss this sentence? I’m not saying there can’t be thoughtful discussion of potential conflicts . . . of nuances and trade-offs. Is it better for the world not to have had Bill Clinton inspire 6,000 people to give $2 billion so there’d be no perceptual — or perhaps even real — conflicts? Should the foundation be shuttered now? Should Antonin Scalia not have spent a weekend duck hunting with Dick Cheney while matters of interest to Cheney were before the Court? Should Clarence Thomas’s wife not work for a right-wing think tank? These are issues that could make for thoughtful discussion — but there was none of it yesterday on “Morning Joe.” Rather, the revelations above were a disaster for Clinton, beyond the pale, huge news — even though the AP reporter who wrote the story that was making them crazy said on their show that the AP had found no evidence of legal or ethical violations. At the end of the day, do you know what I think? I think the person we elect as President, this year and any year — or, for that matter the person appointed secretary of state — will bring with him or her decades of friends and acquaintances, some of whom may be called upon for advice, some of whom may be called on to join the administration, and yet others of whom may ask to drop by to say hello or advocate an idea or ask for help. It we choose our presidents and secretaries of state wisely, that large pool of talent and relationships will help them do a good job. And when inappropriate requests are made, they’ll be politely denied. If inappropriate requests are granted, there’s reason for concern — perhaps even for a front-page headline. But for Tuesday’s AP story to make people crazy? Come on, Morning Joe: you’re better than this.
Don’t Buy The Premise August 23, 2016August 22, 2016 I am so happy to see lifetime Republicans saying Hillary is the only choice that I often find myself letting pass the premise that accompanies many of their statements. Namely, that she’s the lesser of two evils. (“Hillary could be our worst president, but Trump could be our last president.”) The truth is, Hillary has the potential to be a great president. She is, for starters, better prepared to assume office than anyone ever before her. She’s seen the job close up as First Lady . . . Congress close up as a Senator . . . worked effectively with some Republican senators . . . knows and is respected by virtually all the world’s leaders. She is beyond brilliant; steady and cautious; and has been focused her entire adult life on helping others. Can any of the same things be said of Donald Trump? The only world leader who seems to respect him is Vladimir Putin — who is playing him for a fool (and, arguably, trying to destabilize our democracy). Meanwhile, Hillary brings with her a spouse beloved around the world, who led the country through eight years of peace and unparalleled prosperity. Can any of that be said of Trump’s spouse? As to all her “baggage” . . . so much of it is just manufactured, and the rest blown out of proportion. It’s how the game works, I guess. But it can have disastrous consequences. Consider: Republicans persuaded the country that Al Gore said he invented the Internet (he never did say that — but actually was its champion in the Senate, for which we should be hugely grateful) . . . that he did something sinister by making 61 fundraising telephone calls without going across the street to a different office to make them (a transgression so minor and meaningless, based on an 1883 law enacted before there even were telephones, there was apparently “no controlling authority” as to whether it was even a transgression at all) . . . that he knowingly accepted money laundered through Buddhist monks (he did not) . . . that he falsely claimed to have been the model for Erich Segal’s Love Story (everything he said was “absolutely true,” and by the way — who cares?) . . . . . . and so, with a little help from Justice Scalia, we got George W. Bush, the war in Iraq, raging deficits, a near depression, an eight-year delay in confronting climate change . . . and more. Will the same playbook take a fundamentally spectacular, trustworthy candidate and give us President Donald Trump? The Benghazi tragedy has been investigated endlessly, and the truth is: the Secretary did nothing wrong. The “commodities” saga was subjected to extensive scrutiny in a Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative journalist’s book and the truth was: he found nothing she had done wrong. And on and on. There are dozens of these things — they just keep piling them on. I can’t prove that in 40 years of public service she’s never done anything wrong, obviously, or that she has not sometimes been slow to own up to mistakes — not because I know anything damning, just because (a) it’s impossible to prove a negative and (b) she’s human. But in context? In proportion? In the real world? The real world is complicated. But political campaigns and headline writers (and certainly Fox News) sweep that away. So which is better? For Hillary to have explained in detail why she “voted for the war”? (Which she did not. She voted to give Bush the authority, to enhance the credibility of his threats; but only on his assurance he would only use that authority as “a last resort” to protect us. Read more here.) Or is it better to dispense with nuance and context and trade-offs and just say, as she has, “it was a mistake”? Same with the emails (none of which was marked “classified” except for the three with the little C-marks — read more here). Is it better to explain? To defend, at least partially? To attempt to provide perspective? Probably not: your critics will keep coming at you no matter what. (Look at the nine Benghazi hearings; look at the huge proportion of Republicans who still believe President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim.) And attempts to explain come across as defensive and evasive. She’s not perfect; but like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before her she’s certainly not “the lesser of two evils.” She’s terrific. And if she wins, she and the talented team she attracts will work, like Obama and Clinton, to create jobs (30 million under Clinton/Obama, fewer than 1 million under the last 12 Republican years) and to make our lives better.
Another Republican To Heed August 21, 2016 But first: Louisiana floods destroy home of Christian leader who says God sends natural disasters to punish gay people. And think about it: If God is looking to punish people, would it be for loving each other? Really? Have you already read Richard Cross’s Baltimore Sun op-ed? . . .I have always been GOP to the core.. . . In fact, I personally drafted the speech of the “Benghazi mom,” Patricia Smith. In that speech, I concluded with the following line: “If Hillary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?” As a political speechwriter, that was something of a home run moment for me. The New Yorker called the speech “the weaponization of grief.” But weeks after the end of the 2016 GOP convention, I am confronted by an inconvenient fact: Despite what I wrote in that nationally televised speech about Hillary Clinton, I may yet have to vote for her because of the epic deficiencies of my own party’s nominee. . . .I could never vote for Donald Trump. So instead I am confronted by two painful choices: Vote for the most divisive political figure in the past 25 years or throw away my vote on a kooky Libertarian ticket. . . . Fear sometimes wins you elections, but it doesn’t create jobs, build schools, reduce crime or improve the quality of life for all citizens. Great political leaders help us transcend our fears. Still, the prospect of voting for Hillary Clinton is uncomfortable to me, as if Dr. Van Helsing were compelled to vote for Dracula. But the only prospect more terrifying than voting for Hillary Clinton is not voting for her. The reality of American politics today is, she is the only choice. Jim Burt: “If Trump wants to compare his physical and mental stamina to that of Hillary Clinton, he could start by spending 11 hours undergoing hostile interrogation without losing his cool. Mrs. Clinton did that with the Benghazi committee. What has Trump done that can compare?” Paul Lerman: “Did you see MSNBC’s coverage of the ‘duck’ sent to Trump Tower for ducking release of his tax returns? Apparently they couldn’t stop him from going up and down the now-infamous escalator repeatedly, the lobby has to allow public access. And an excellent video medley of Trump’s nonsense in alphabetical order. Worth watching!”
Donald Ducks August 18, 2016 Former General Motors chair: “I’ve Always Voted Republican. Until Now.” Powerful. Donald Ducks. Is it because he’s not nearly as rich as he says? (I think so.) Doesn’t give much to charity? Doesn’t pay any taxes? Is tied up with the Russians in some way this would disclose? He’s said in 2014 he would “absolutely” disclose his returns if he ran for President but is constantly contradicting himself, so don’t hold your breath. David Z.: “Regarding Trump’s new proposal to do an ideological test of all immigrants requiring them to support things like gay rights. Question: Will this require the deportation of 75% of the Republicans in Congress?” ☞ And here’s a crazy question: what’s to prevent a terrorist from lying in the interview? Someone sent me this love story. I had to look some things up (coup de foudre?), and I could not imagine living in Aiken myself — but if you have five minutes to read two remarkable lives and explore a 60-room house . . . enjoy.
Will You Still Feed Me, Will You . . . When I’m 124? August 17, 2016August 17, 2016 Click here. One thing the article doesn’t touch on — how our little spaceship will accommodate so many more passengers if lifespans double. But hey: if we can figure out how to grow our own replacement organs, we can probably figure out how to live sustainably from the sun’s all-but-unlimited supply of energy. The harder part may be learning to live together in peace and mutual respect. But there was a Jewish guy a couple of thousand years ago who pretty much worked that out for us, should we learn to listen. [Cue the heavenly chorus.*] *Or in this case, Leonard Cohen. Just don’t listen too closely to the lyrics. It’s the mood I’m going for. (Maybe we should go with this instead. Or this.)