Although I disagree with the Vice President on most domestic issues (although we’re probably fairly aligned on most foreign policy issues), I believe him to be an intelligent and honorable man.  I’m therefore intrigued by the manner in which he’s currently positioning himself with his fawning behavior toward the President (I’m avoiding “obsequious,” the latest buzz word), given these premises:    

1.      Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea dramatically altered the severity and immediacy of the impact of the Mueller investigation upon Mr. Trump’s presidency.  By far the most reasonable assumption as to why the Mueller team would let Mr. Flynn plead guilty to such a minor charge is his willingness to provide evidence against Messrs. Trump, Trump, Jr., and/or Kushner.  The potential for substantial charges implicating the President – with consequent impeachment proceedings — would seem to be a significant possibility.  Mr. Pence and his advisors have to recognize that his chances of ascending to the presidency are higher than any Vice President’s since … Gerald Ford’s.

2.      Mr. Pence certainly appreciates that like all Vice Presidents, his primary duty is to ready himself to be President in a manner that enables him to effectively serve the American people who elected him.  While generally the best way for a VP to fulfill that goal is to adhere closely to the President, in light of current circumstances, it would seem that whether to adhere to or quietly separate from Mr. Trump is a strategic conundrum for Mr. Pence.  Given the toxic partisanship that exists today, if Mr. Trump is impeached, the country’s emotional upheaval, exacerbated by what can confidently be assumed will be Mr. Trump’s own response, will be our worst internal maelstrom since the Civil War.  Presumably, Mr. Pence sees that if such circumstances arise, it will be incumbent upon him to strongly uphold our rule of law while presenting stability to the world and maintaining a core credibility – that which supersedes a position on any given issue – with those on the right and the left.

3.      In the Vice President’s position, my reaction would have been to start quietly separating myself from the President in order to establish credibility beyond Mr. Trump’s rabid base, by supporting the Administration initiatives I believed in, while sidestepping the President’s piques and avoiding the displays of sycophancy that marred the signing of the tax bill.  Mr. Pence and his team appear to have concluded that the best way at this juncture for him to maintain that core credibility across the political divide is by clinging to Mr. Trump.  This approach presumably lessens the possibility that Mr. Pence will be blamed for the impeachment by Mr. Trump or his rabid base, and increases the likelihood that he can maintain their support as he assumes the presidency.  Since he already has the support of mainstream Republicans, he must be calculating that he can wait until he takes office to obtain at least the grudging support from the left by then making aggressive healing overtures. 

If this is his strategy, it rests on two assumptions:  that Fox News and the conservative media will report in a way that causes Trumpers to look favorably on him (not a bad bet); and that Mr. Trump himself doesn’t dump on him, or claim he undermined Mr. Trump’s presidency (not as good a bet).  If Mr. Trump would aggressively lash out at Mr. Pence – provided that conservative media was willing to serve as Mr. Trump’s megaphone — all of Mr. Pence’s current fawning behavior toward the President would have been for naught; he will assume the presidency without the support of the Trumpers while having done nothing to garner credit and good will from the left for being his own man.

Time will tell whether he needed a strategy for healing the nation’s current divisions … and if he did, whether he picked the right one …

Am struck this morning by the exquisite and peculiar pivot point that Attorney General Sessions has become – certainly quite unhappily, from his perspective – in the Trump saga.

Although the Democrats and some Republicans have cuffed him around for forgetting about both his own Russian contacts and Mr. Papadopoulos’ reference to Mr. Papadopoulos’ Russian ties, no one has really gone after the Attorney General with the outright viciousness we have seen in Washington.  Nobody is seriously calling for his resignation or firing.

I would suggest that there are two reasons.  First (and, regrettably, that probably of lesser import to Democrats), the Congress knows him, and the members may well viscerally know – even those, such as Sen. Schumer and Rep. Pelosi, that decry the AG’s views in most areas – that Mr. Sessions would not interact inappropriately with the Russians.

The second reason is obviously that Democrats and those Republicans concerned about Mr. Trump want Mr. Sessions right where he is – with his recusal effectively blocking the President’s ability to fire Mr. Mueller.  Democrats and those Republicans concerned about Mr. Trump don’t want Mr. Sessions; they want a full and fair investigation of Mr. Trump and his associates, and having Mr. Sessions continuing to serve as AG appears an appropriate means to achieve that goal.

I heard liberal talking heads lauding Mr. Sessions this morning for rebuffing Jim Jordan’s drive toward having the AG appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Uranium One.  While I don’t discount a desire by Mr. Sessions to do his job ethically and honorably – to follow the facts — being scrupulously straight is also the AG’s best approach for his own self-preservation.  I don’t think Mr. Sessions needs to be told that his own bumbling and faulty memory have given the Democrats sufficient ammunition against him so that even if he’s not now directly in the political cross-hairs, he’s certainly within range … and that his best course for his own survival is to play it scrupulously straight, lest he get swallowed by the Trump maelstrom …

I’ve heard it suggested that Donald Trump never expected nor truly wished to be president – that he ran as a huge marketing ploy for his businesses and brand.

Particularly if that is so, one can imagine that a number of avid supporters of the President that may well be thinking privately – albeit for different reasons – that they would be in much happier places in their lives today had he never run for office.  Without any deep reflection, I’d offer at least:  Mrs. Trump; Donald Trump, Jr.; Jared Kushner; Ivanka Trump; Reince Priebus; Sean Spicer; Michael Flynn; Michael Flynn, Jr.; Paul Manafort; Rick Gates; George Papadopoulos; Jeff Sessions; Tom Price; Wilbur Ross; Rex Tillerson; Bob Corker; and – perhaps – the President himself.

Only a few Trump supporters come readily to mind that (at least as of today) are now seemingly in better places in their careers – again, for different reasons — due Mr. Trump’s candidacy and presidency, than they would be otherwise:  Steve Bannon; Nikki Haley (admittedly not necessarily an “avid” supporter of Mr. Trump’s candidacy); and – perhaps – Mike Pence.

Since the first Mueller indictments (Manafort, Gates) and the Papadopoulos plea have been announced, I’ve sensed a further skewing of our people’s positions (if that’s possible).  Surfing the channels on October 31, I passed Fox News to see a teaser, “‘Witch Hunt – the Plot to Take Down the President” – tonight on Hannity.”  I found it truly disappointing.  I have three thoughts …

First, if attacks on Mr. Mueller’s probe and impartiality intensify – despite the fact that he was appointed FBI Director by a Republican, had his term as Director extended by a Democrat, and has his current post due to an appointment by an official of the Trump Administration — I ask this:  if you were in Mr. Mueller’s position, what would be most important to you?  I can only answer for myself; but although I am no fan of the President, if I was charged with responsibility for conducting the investigation, the enormity of the importance of the task to our nation would immediately extinguish any personal feelings I had about the President or his policies.  Since the way I performed this task would be my legacy, what would drive me wouldn’t be what the result was; it would be whether History (and my grandchildren), looking back on my service, would be able to say that I had performed my responsibilities competently … and even more importantly, with impartiality, honor, and integrity.  If that reaction resonates with you when you put yourself in Mr. Mueller’s position, why would you think that Mr. Mueller would feel differently?

Second, as to the attacks on Hillary Clinton:  as law students, we were reamed out by professors when we didn’t distinguish the “relevant” from the merely “interesting.”  I have no problems with Mr. Mueller’s team investigating the Clintons’ contacts with Russia … but would suggest that the President’s, his team’s, and the conservative outlets’ emphasis on the Clintons’ alleged contacts to Russia — as a counterweight to the team’s investigation into the Trump Campaign’s activities — is an exercise in false equivalence.  From the standpoint of the wellbeing of the nation, any findings that the Mueller team develops about the Clintons will be interesting, but not relevant for the simplest reason:  she’s not President, and won’t be.  On the other hand, Mr. Trump is President; determining what he and his people did or didn’t do is more than relevant – it’s vital, given their ability to affect the wellbeing of our nation.  If she was President, an investigation into her activities would be relevant, and an investigation into his, merely interesting.  If one could find one politically neutral citizen in this country, I would wager that s/he would agree that any attempt to liken the importance of the legality of the activities of a defeated candidate to those of a sitting President is … misplaced.

(This is obviously a “politically-focused” rather than a “foreign-policy-focused” post; the security threat that Russian activities are posing to our nation could be the subject of another note.  I have no way of knowing what activities we are undertaking to combat Russian activities, but I hope they are aggressive.)

Finally:  Are we “a nation of laws” – do we indeed believe that no one should be above the law – or “a nation of men [and women :)]”?  If the former, our concern as citizens should be that the appropriate Constitutional and other legal processes are being followed in the investigation of the Trump team’s activities, and no more.  This is such a fundamental principle that whether the subject of an investigation belongs to a political party or espouses a policy agenda one agrees or disagrees with should not play a part in one’s assessment of the legitimacy of the process.  I consider President Nixon to have had the finest foreign policy mind of the second half of the last century; but he broke the law.  He had to go.  I hope all Americans would agree that if President Trump and/or members of his team are proven to have broken the law, he and or they … will have to go.

Although I haven’t yet populated the “Guiding Principles” section of this blog, I make note of one Principle here that will be included, which is intended to apply to this and all posts to this site:  that I, or anybody else that enters a post, has to be willing to concede that anything s/he enters might be insightful … but could likewise be haywire!