[I posted the following note in May of this year.  An “inside baseball” insight to blogging:  if one writes ponderous pieces that need to be broken into parts (as I obviously do), one should never post any part of a note until all parts have been completed.  I learned that with this piece.  I posted Part I … and then got distracted.  Part II is now done.  Its specific text will differ to a certain extent from the draft that existed last spring, but regrettably, nothing Mr. Ryan did between then and now has changed its tenor.]

After Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan announced his intent to retire from Congress this past April, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement intended to praise Mr. Ryan, saying in part, “Paul’s speakership has yielded one signature accomplishment after another for his conference, his constituents in Wisconsin’s 1^st Congressional District, and the American people [my emphasis].”

While one can agree or dispute Sen. McConnell’s characterization of Mr. Ryan’s tenure as one of “accomplishment,” it seems to me that the order in which he placed Mr. Ryan’s constituencies was entirely accurate — and (unwittingly) more indictment than tribute.

By all accounts, Mr. Ryan is an upbeat, pleasant man of probity.  His intelligence and grasp of policy detail are legendary.  Even those that vigorously disagree with him on substantive issues like and praise him personally.  Yet, it is hard, as Mr. Ryan’s tenure draws to a close, not to characterize his record as, at best, one of accommodation and enablement, and at worst, one of hypocrisy and timidity.

Any review of Mr. Ryan’s record demonstrates that the issue of greatest concern to him throughout his career has been the ever-growing federal debt.  An internet search yields such a number of the Speaker’s declarations on the issue that if all were recorded here, WordPress would need another couple of servers to hold them.  A brief sampling:

• In March of 2010:

“This debt crisis coming to our country. The wall and tidal wave of debt that is befalling our nation. Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt within ten years, we have a debt that is looming so high that in the last year of President Obama’s budget just the interest payments on our debt is $916 billion dollars.”

• And again, urging a need for fiscal restraint in March, 2013:

“Our debt is already bigger than our economy.”

These are understandable sentiments; a number of thoughtful commentators have suggested that our burgeoning debt may be not only our most important domestic policy issue but also our most dangerous foreign policy challenge.  However, anyone looking at the dates of these and his like comments will note that they all were made while Barack Obama was in the White House.

• In 2001, Mr. Ryan voted for President Bush’s tax cuts [to be fair, at the time of the vote, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was projecting a significant federal budget surplus into the future].
• In the summer of 2003, he voted for President Bush’s second round of tax cuts. If truly a deficit hawk, he accommodated to his party’s political interests.
• In the early winter of 2003, he voted for Medicare Part D. If truly a deficit hawk, he accommodated to his party’s political interests.
• According to news accounts, he voted at least five times to raise the federal debt ceiling during the Bush presidency. Good policy, but I’ve seen no indication that he sounded any alarm in those years — as contrasted with the struggles on this issue during the Obama presidency.

If I understand the reporting correctly, the CBO concluded in 2012 that the Bush Tax Cuts and Medicare Part D were the cause of about 30% of the then-current national debt.  No matter how one feels about the substance of these measures, it was apparent by the time that President Trump took office that the Bush laws had significantly added to the deficits that Mr. Ryan never tired of railing about.  Mr. Ryan nevertheless ushered through the House both a tax cut and a budget deal – which USA Today reported that he called the “biggest accomplishments” of his Speakership — that the CBO estimated in April would add $1.6 trillion to the deficit during the next decade … and more if the individual tax cuts (set to expire in 2026) are extended.  This estimate could not have come as a surprise; when Trump tax plan details surfaced in the spring of 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that “not one respondent” in a University of Chicago poll of leading academic economists thought that the plan would pay for itself.

In the final analysis, the Speaker was more interested in obtaining perceived short term political gain for the members of his House Republican caucus than in America’s long term fiscal stability.  The measures he championed placed the entitlements that millions of Americans need and will need on even shakier ground than they were before.  He instead chose to accommodate his members.  A fact is a fact.

It’s difficult not to conclude that the dichotomy between Rep. Ryan’s words and actions is more evidence of political careerism and opportunism than fervently-held policy beliefs.  Even so, I am less troubled by his inconsistency on fiscal issues than by his failure of moral Constitutional leadership.  However, recognizing that this is a blog rather than an endless Word document, it’s time to call a halt.  More in Part II …

There are certain positions embraced by large numbers of our citizens that I don’t understand – literally, “don’t get”; perhaps foremost among them is the visceral desire so many of our people have to keep immigrants out of our country.  The President is obviously currently in the process of inciting a frenzy amongst his supporters about the “caravan” of Hondurans now making their way north from their country through Mexico.

Putting aside the fact that the President is blatantly lying about these desperate people – such as calling their progress north an “invasion” (2000 penniless, malnourished, exhausted, unarmed people — including children — over 1000 miles away is hardly a challenge for the most wealthy and armed 300+ million people on earth), while indicating that the caravan was organized and/or encouraged by the Democrats and includes “Middle Easterners” (presumably terrorists) – so as to prey upon his supporters’ fear and intense dislike of Hispanic immigrants for his own political gains, it cannot be ignored that although the President exploits these feelings, he didn’t create them; a significant segment of our populace obviously does feel a deep antipathy toward non-white, non-English-speaking immigrants.

In an economy in which just about everyone that wants a job has one, it’s hard to ascribe these citizens’ abhorrence to fear of job loss.  Perhaps some of it arises from no more than a wary discomfort with what is different.  Perhaps some arises from the notion that immigrants are a drain on our public finances.  (Acknowledging that there are distinctions that should perhaps be taken into account, I have seen any number of economists opine that immigration is an overall a net economic plus for us.)  Since the vast majority of the President’s supporters and virtually all of those that form the backdrop of his rallies are of European Christian descent, it’s hard not to attribute the hostility of some (NOT all) to racial and/or religious bias.

As these struggling people continue their extremely arduous and dangerous journey north, the irony of the anxiety being felt by some of our citizens isn’t merely an “800 pound gorilla” … it’s King Kong.  I see little difference between the struggle those in the caravan are currently enduring to escape intolerable conditions in their own country to seek a better life in our country from that of the European emigres who left intolerable conditions in their countries to come here a couple of centuries ago.  Whether they braved a terribly dangerous journey to cross the sea to an extremely harsh environment because of religious persecution, famine, or otherwise, they came here, as the Hondurans currently intend, because they saw it as their only way to a better life.  The vast majority of them arrived here with no more than those in the caravan carry today.  Those of English, French, German, Russian, Irish, Polish, Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish, and other descent certainly must have considered the languages, customs, faiths, and skin tones (between northern and southern Europe) of the others strange and perhaps threatening.  They got over it.

I absolutely agree that those that immigrate here should make every effort to assimilate and contribute – for their good as well as ours.  That said, while we need immigration laws, they should be tolerant ones.

There is a dominant American DNA strand, the strand that actually made this country great:  that without regard to ethnicity, gender, religion or other particulars that distinguish us from one another, our forebears that chose to make the journey here carried the same gene in their psyches — the courage to risk everything for the promise of a better life.  These Hondurans possess the same DNA strand.  Whether they ever reach and/or are admitted to our country, they already are, in the most fundamental way, citizens of the United States …

As the maelstrom around the Kavanaugh nomination may perhaps be starting to draw to a close, a few impressions at the intersection of politics and policy:

1. As indicated earlier, I submit that Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination should be denied because no one has brought forth a tenable reason why Dr. Ford would make up a claim — of which she has testified she is “100%” certain – when she knew that she would provoke the whirlwind which will now forever mark her life and impact the lives of her family. As far as I can tell, even Republican Senators don’t – as I understand Sen. Orrin Hatch said – find her “uncredible.”  I ask my conservative women friends:  If the roles were reversed, and you knew in high school a now-liberal male judge nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President, would you make up an alleged assault, purely to prevent your former classmate from being elevated to the Supreme Court?  And:  how likely is it that even after 30 years, you would be mistaken about the identity of your assailant?

 

2. To parrot a point admittedly made by numerous talking heads: While, subject to the outcome of the FBI investigation, a “He Said, She Said” situation appears to exist, this is not a criminal investigation; it’s a job interview.  The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard that would be appropriately required to convict Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault isn’t required to withhold consent to his ascension to the Supreme Court; what’s required are sufficient grounds to conclude that we as a people should look elsewhere for our next Supreme Court Justice.  That standard has – in my view – been easily met.

 

3. I have been and continue to be disappointed at the majority of Republicans’ response to this controversy. Too many seemed obsessed by the timing of the presentation of the allegations.  I consider the timing of the presentation of the allegations irrelevant – a red herring to stir up the conservative partisan base.  I would have expected that the reaction of any Senator of either party to these allegations would have been:  Is Dr. Ford telling the truth, or not?  The truth, as well as it can be determined, is what matters – whether the allegations were brought forth months ago or minutes before the final confirmation vote.  Sen. McConnell is already saying that the Senate will vote “this week.”  Clearly, what he cares about is winning this fight, not truth or right – a shameful dereliction of duty on par with his failure to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland.  Virtually no commentators think Democrats will take control of the Senate in January, so presumably, if there is sufficient evidence of questionable behavior on Judge Kavanaugh’s part to dissuade a couple of Republican Senators from consenting to the Judge’s nomination, there are plenty of other conservative judges President Trump can nominate that will receive Senate confirmation in either this or the next Congress.  Sen. McConnell nonetheless clearly believes that he can’t take the chance – which says to me (if we needed further evidence, which I didn’t) that he prioritizes partisanship over truth and fair process.

 

4. I found Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony on September 27 disqualifying in two additional respects not evident in the earlier proceedings. First, conceding (as just about everybody that reads these pages is well aware) that the poster of these notes can be subject to his own Irish eruptions, and that those of us with vitriolic natures sometimes need a bit of tolerant understanding when we erupt, Judge Kavanaugh’s opening statement, in which he stated that the concerns regarding Dr. Ford’s allegations involved:  “… a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” “apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election;” “Revenge on behalf of the Clintons”; and “millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups,” was … unseemly and unsettling.    This display of rank partisanship, no matter the provocation, is unfitting for a Supreme Court nominee and sullies the standing of the Court.  His elevation will cause doubt throughout his tenure whether any litigant with a position contrary to his natural inclination will get a fair hearing.  Second, and as important to me:  although Judge Kavanaugh apologized thereafter, his response to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s respectful question (given the circumstances) whether he had ever drunk so much that he didn’t remember what he had done the next morning was purely … bullying.  He bullied her.

 

5. Nevertheless, unless Mark Judge, the only person Dr. Ford places in the room with her and Judge Kavanaugh at the time of the alleged assault, substantially confirms Dr. Ford’s account, I’d consider it highly likely that Judge Kavanaugh will be confirmed.  Mr. Judge’s concern if he untruthfully supports Judge Kavanaugh’s account:  if Democrats assume a majority in the House of Representatives next January, they are very likely to commission a more thorough investigation of Dr. Ford’s allegations, which will certainly include checking with anyone that Mr. Judge might have talked to about the Kavanaugh-Ford incident.  Any material discrepancy uncovered between Mr. Judge’s informal exchanges and his account to the FBI could well ultimately have serious repercussions for Mr. Judge … and then-Justice Kavanaugh.

 

6. I find it ironic that Republican Sen. Jeff Flake – sufficiently a pariah in some circles within his own state’s Republican party that he chose not to seek reelection – has, despite Sen. McConnell’s myopic preoccupation with Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation, perhaps saved a number of Republican seats in the upcoming midterms by forcing the FBI investigation of the sexual allegations against Judge Kavanaugh. We have been on the road, but even out in the great southwest, we sensed the paroxysm that would have resulted had the Republicans slammed through Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation without investigation of or regard to, and perhaps in disregard of, Dr. Ford’s claims.  Although the partisan skirmishing is continuing, some of the partisan steam seems to have been let out of the pot.  Unless the FBI comes up with credible evidence to support Dr. Ford’s claim, not only will Judge Kavanaugh be confirmed, but Republican candidates in close races may escape the wrath that I submit might have been visited on them for a Republican process deemed partisan and incomplete by a substantial number of Americans.

 

If I were President Trump and Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, I’d immediately nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative favorite.  Unless there is anything disqualifying in Judge Barrett’s background that has so far been unreported, a rejection of Judge Kavanaugh will sufficiently vent liberals’ furor while stoking conservatives’ anger that Judge Barrett’s nomination will sail through.

Around Memorial Day, I did a post on “Taking a Knee,” relating to NFL players’ demonstrations during the national anthem, and it engendered as much response – pro and con, from people on both sides for whom I have the highest regard — as any note I’ve entered thus far. 

With so much in our nation and the Catholic Church worthy of discussion, I enter this now only because of an op-ed published yesterday on NBC News by former NFL player Nate Boyer, a six-year Army veteran and Green Beret with tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Perhaps all but me are already aware of this, but Colin Kaepernick’s decision to take a knee during the national anthem as his manner for protesting police brutality toward African-American males arose as a result of a discussion with Mr. Boyer.  Apparently, the first week that Mr. Kaepernick staged his protest, he had sat on the bench during the national anthem, and Mr. Boyer had taken him to task for his apparent disrespect for the nation and our service men and women.  Messrs. Kaepernick and Boyer had their discussion not long thereafter.  I found this quote attributed to Mr. Boyer, in which he described the players’ exchange after he understood what Mr. Kaepernick was actually intending to protest by his gesture: 

“I expressed to him, maybe there’s a different way of demonstrating, where you’re showing more respect for those who laid down their lives for what that flag and anthem stand for.  I suggested kneeling, because people kneel to pray; we’ll kneel in front of a fallen brother’s grave.”

Mr. Boyer makes clear that he disagrees with what Mr. Kaepernick did, but supports Mr. Kaepernick’s right to do it.  A link to his recent op-ed is posted below.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-america-how-military-service-influenced-my-ncna906956