“The people stood by and watched; the rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of God.’”
The MAGA Messiah will be inaugurated today. He saved himself; let us see how many he saves of those who have chosen him.
[Hopefully, any fans of Agatha Christie’s novels will excuse my adoption of her title to a 1927 mystery referring to four leaders of a global criminal ring. 🙂 ]
All are aware that any incoming president must make literally thousands of appointments to staff the posts discharging the government functions for which s/he is responsible. At the time this is typed, four of President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominees (hereafter herein, the “Big Four”) appear to be garnering the most scrutiny: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Health and Human Services Department (HHS) Secretary; former Fox News Commentator Pete Hegseth as Department of Defense Secretary (DoD); former U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI); and Trump Jack-of-All-Trades Kash Patel as FBI Director. Although one might be tempted to suggest that attempting to discern the relative threats each presents to our republic is akin to deciding whether one would rather be executed by lethal injection, electric chair, beheading, or firing squad (I’m a firing squad guy, myself; at least you’d take it standing up 😉 ), let’s take a look.
In a 2019 post about presidential cabinet appointments, I indicated, “… I follow an admittedly simple two-factor analysis in deciding whether I think the nominee should be confirmed: Is the nominee objectively qualified for the position? If so, is there any other objective factor that should nonetheless disqualify him/her from the positon for which s/he has been nominated (e.g., prior criminal conviction, demonstrated drug abuse problem, etc.)? Since the Constitution provides our President the power to nominate whom[ever] s/he considers appropriate, I don’t believe that a nominee’s subjective leanings or policy positions (if within the bounds of law) should be part of the equation.”
If I’m going to be consistent with past Noise, this is what I see looking at Mr. Trump’s Big Four:
Mr. Kennedy: I find Mr. Kennedy more nutty than nefarious, but he’s still dangerous. The New York Times recently reported that in May, 2021, Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the Federal Food and Drug Administration seeking to have its authorization for the then-recently-released COVID vaccinations rescinded — when estimates were beginning to indicate that the vaccines were saving thousands of lives. It’s obvious that he’s not qualified to lead HHS. He should be rejected on this ground. We don’t need to consider any allegedly questionable personal elements of Mr. Kennedy’s background. That said, there is a silver lining for those who are concerned about the disruption he might cause if confirmed: Mr. Kennedy has had no experience running a huge bureaucracy such as HHS; he is going to have to maneuver through thousands of HHS scientists who are more qualified and knowledgeable about their bureaucracy than he is; and although I am confident that Mr. Trump relishes the consternation that he has caused by Mr. Kennedy’s nomination, I doubt he is going to want to spend a lot of political capital fighting the battles Mr. Kennedy’s inclinations might generate (note how Mr. Trump already assured the public that we are not going to end the polio vaccine).
Mr. Hegseth: It is obvious that Mr. Hegseth, like Mr. Kennedy, is completely unqualified to discharge the post for which he has been nominated. Although — in the words of the pro-Trump, Murdoch Family-controlled Wall Street Journal Editorial Board — Mr. Hegseth “has never run an organization of any size,” he is seeking to lead the organization with either the most or the second most employees in the world (I’ve seen one indication that India’s Ministry of Defence might be larger). During his hearing, he appeared to have limited knowledge of the world or of the strategic issues DoD faces. He should be rejected. There is no need to get as far as his views of women or his multitude of attendant personal failings. [Even so, when your own mom calls you out – even though Mr. Hegseth’s mother has now retracted her reported past comments about her son (without denying she made them) – that’s bad, Man. 😉 ] That said, there is a silver lining for those who are concerned about the disruption he might cause if confirmed: the Pentagon is arguably America’s most entrenched bureaucracy. Although Messrs. Trump and Hegseth can certainly fire a number of generals they find to be “woke,” Mr. Hegseth might find it easier to physically push the Empire State Building than to move our military colossus where it doesn’t want to go. In what I hope will not prove to be the most Pollyannaish comment ever made here, I have trouble believing that many senior officers – who are made of sterner stuff than career politicians — are going to be willing at Messrs. Trump’s and Hegseth’s instance to use American military force against American citizens who may hereafter be demonstrating peacefully against Trump Administration policies.
Ms. Gabbard: It is ironic that one of the two of the Big Four about whom I have the deepest misgivings perhaps fares the best within the framework I have outlined. If I am to be consistent with what I have said before – that a nominee’s subjective leanings or policy positions (if within the bounds of law) should not be part of the determination regarding the nominee’s confirmation – Mr. Gabbard’s clear affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin and sympathy for Russian claims should not be a bar to her confirmation. Mr. Trump’s own affinity for Putin is well established no matter whom he names to be DNI. Whether Ms. Gabbard has the background to be DNI – to deftly sift through the oceans of intelligence gathered by our resources, and effectively inform the President — is seemingly a subjective rather than an objective determination. Her 2020 presidential candidacy, her service in the U.S. House of Representatives, and her interactions in the foreign realm (no matter how misguided they seem to me) arguably lend weight to her resume; on the other hand, I’ve seen a Wall Street Journal report indicating that she recently unsettled some Republican Senators by being unable to describe what the DNI does. Mr. Trump must think she has the necessary qualifications, and he won the election. I am not aware of any reports of extraneous personal issues that would constitute a bar to Ms. Gabbard’s nomination. That said, a conceptual framework only takes one so far. If I got a vote on Ms. Gabbard’s nomination, I would vote NO.
Mr. Patel: I will mostly set forth quotes I’ve gleaned elsewhere:
The ACLU: “Patel has described his desire to target perceived enemies, including the press and civil servants. In September, Patel stated, ‘We [must] collectively join forces to take on the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen, and no it’s not Washington, DC, it’s the mainstream media and these people out there in the fake news. That is our mission!’”
The Washington Post: “Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has suggested that multiple individuals previously critical of the president-elect should be criminally investigated, according to a review by The Washington Post of dozens of hours of appearances on conservative podcasts and TV interviews over the past two years.… Patel floated criminal probes of lawmakers and witnesses who gave evidence to the Jan. 6 committee…. Those include former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson and police officers who testified about defending the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.… If confirmed by the Senate, Patel would have the authority to launch FBI investigations .… In June 2023, Patel told Donald Trump Jr. on his podcast that ‘the legacy media has been proven to be the criminal conspirators of the government gangsters,’ referring to roughly five dozen members of the ‘deep state’ listed in his 2023 book, ‘Government Gangsters.’ And in December 2023, Patel told former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon on his podcast that journalistsshould be investigated,repeating false claims that Trump had won the 2020 election. ‘We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,’ Patel said. ‘We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.’”
The Roll Call (a publication rated “Center” by All Sides): “Kash Patel is set to face questions during a bid to be the next FBI director about his history of fierce criticism of current and former federal officials, including a list of 60 people he has deemed members of the ‘Executive Branch Deep State’ that critics have dubbed an enemies list. The list appears in an appendix of Patel’s book, ‘Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.’ It includes people such as FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and President Joe Biden. There are high-profile Democrats, Trump administration officials who have rejected his false 2020 election fraud claims and other administration officials who have since spoken out critically about his behind-the-scenes conduct. Patel used the book to fume against what he called the ‘deep state,’ a pejorative term for current and former federal officials, which he said was the ‘most dangerous threat to our democracy.’ … [S]ome critics have raised concerns that he will wield the sprawling investigative authority of the FBI to investigate and prosecute Trump’s enemies, if he’s confirmed. The president-elect, who flirted with authoritarian themes during his campaign, has called for the prosecution of perceived foes…. Patel’s list includes Biden administration officials as well as first-term Trump officials who have been critical of Trump, such as former Attorney General William Barr; former national security adviser John Bolton; Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper…. In his memoir, Barr wrote that he told White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Patel would get a role at the FBI ‘over my dead body.’ ‘Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,’ Barr wrote. NBC News reported that Bolton, who after leaving office lambasted Trump’s fitness for the presidency, said Trump had picked Patel to be his Lavrentiy Beria, an infamous Stalin police chief, and said that the ‘Senate should reject [Patel’s] nomination 100-0.’ … Patel, in the book, said the list was not exhaustive and did not include ‘other corrupt actors of the first order,’ such as Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who will be a senator and able to vote on a Patel nomination.”
A link to the full list included in Mr. Patel’s book is provided below. Unlike the bureaucratic and institutional constraints confronted by incoming Cabinet Secretaries, an FBI Director has fewer restraints. An exhaustive investigation of a private citizen such as Ms. Hutchinson, no matter how unwarranted, has the power to emotionally and financially destroy the subject’s life. Although he has reportedly recently assured a couple of Senators, including Democratic U.S. PA Sen. John Fetterman, that if confirmed he will not seek to prosecute Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies, you make up your own mind. (I do seem to recall Mr. Trump’s first-term Supreme Court nominees assuring the Senate that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent.) Mr. Patel’s statements make it appear that he is blissfully unaware of a little-known provision called the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, and I’m pretty sure that his declarations are evidence of notions that would be unconstitutional if implemented by an FBI Director. I’m with Messrs. Barr and Bolton on this one.
As anyone following reports of current Congressional machinations is aware, the majority of the Big Four appears highly likely to be confirmed, and perhaps all of them will be – I guess demonstrating that in the last analysis, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re injected, electrocuted, beheaded, or shot.
I’ve been a bit amused by some commentators’ sometimes-painful attempts since the election to provide a more benevolent gloss to the prospective actions of the incoming Administration. (I know, I know; a dark Irish sense of humor 😉 .) Although such is the American way – we have generally tended to rally around a new President, at least initially – Mr. Trump is not a new president. I give the President-Elect unqualified credit for consistency. What you see is what you get. The time for emotion has passed. His nominations of the Big Four, together with his bizarre suggested annexation of Canada and even the implied willingness to use force in Panama and Greenland, constitute compelling evidence that we are entering another staging of the divisive, vindictive, chaotic theater of the absurd we had during the first Trump Administration. I only hope that the Americans who voted for Mr. Trump understood what they’re going to get. You know the wag’s definition of insanity; I would prefer not to think that these citizens are completely insane.
Think this is only so much Noise? I sincerely hope you’re right. To use a phrase that Mr. Trump and I both appreciate: We’ll see what happens.
At the end of 2022, I observed in these pages that “at this [halfway] point in his term,” I considered President Joe Biden to be most consequential president America had had since Franklin Roosevelt.
I will spare you an extended litany of pros and cons of the Biden presidency; you have lived the last four years. Although the President’s defenders are now touting his many substantive achievements, four aspects stand out to me: the effective manner in which his Administration dispensed the COVID vaccines becoming available as he took office, reviving a country literally and figuratively crippled by the pandemic; the manner in which he led an economy – which at the time he took office economists were debating only whether it was headed for a “hard” or soft” landing — through four years of uninterrupted growth; the manner in which he protected America and other global democracies by fostering cohesion among NATO allies when Russia invaded Ukraine at a point that the alliance was in its greatest disarray since its founding; and – perhaps most importantly – the decent, stable, open manner in which he conducted the presidency.
That said, they don’t render a final assessment of a starter’s performance when he’s halfway through the ballgame. Mr. Biden’s second half wasn’t as strong as his first half; he didn’t aggressively address the chaos existing at our southern border until too late, and — crucially, even aside from the ultimate political ramifications – he should have recognized in late 2022 that he substantively simply didn’t have the strength to perform his office effectively for another six years, no matter whom the Republicans nominated.
Ever since starting these pages, I have had the idea of doing a post setting forth my ranking of the worst to the best American presidents of my lifetime (which, despite the hoary nature of these entries, only extends as far back President Harry Truman 🙂 ). If I ever do write such a note, I now expect that Mr. Biden will be placed not at the top, but somewhere in the middle, alongside Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Mr. Johnson’s extraordinary domestic policy achievements were ultimately overshadowed by Vietnam. Mr. Nixon’s extraordinary foreign policy achievements were ultimately overshadowed by Watergate.
While I place exceptional weight on the fact that Mr. Biden is a genuinely good man who means well, in 2020 he didn’t run for president and we didn’t elect him for his managerial, economic, or even foreign policy acumen. He ran and we hired him to perform one mission: rid us of Donald Trump.
He didn’t.
What is President-Elect Donald Trump best at? Diversion. Mr. Trump has said so many outrageous, cruel, and frankly traitorous things over the years that it has been impossible for the responsible media or any individual citizen to keep track of them all. All have become mentally numb, and our national moral spirit has correspondingly withered. I have seen it suggested that Mr. Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks thus far, taken together with the possibility that these nominees will be placed in their jobs through a maneuver that would avoid their requiring Senate confirmation, constitute either a mockery of the American system or an attempt to tear it down. (The President-Elect’s selections are so absurd by traditional standards that at one point I briefly considered whether Mr. Trump hadn’t decided to destroy our system by staging his own version of The Producers, Mel Brooks’ 1960s film about a couple of Broadway failures who attempt to reap millions from a fraud by staging what they expect to be a sure flop entitled, “Springtime for Hitler.”)
I’ve reconsidered. Consider whether Mr. Trump’s announcements aren’t a brilliant diversion.
Take former U.S. FL Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has just resigned from the House of Representatives after being tapped by Mr. Trump to become Attorney General, the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ). I would suggest that Mr. Gaetz may merely be a pawn for Mr. Trump. Since the nomination was announced, I’ve seen a Twitter clip in which a Republican House member stated that about 200 members of the House Republican Caucus – there are only about 218, in total 😉 — are happy to see Mr. Gaetz depart the House for all the disruption his self-serving shenanigans have caused during his years in Congress. It is hard not to believe that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, no matter what he says in public, was pleased to see Mr. Gaetz resign. Given the antipathy for the Attorney General-nominee among his own party members, it is also hard not to believe that what is by all accounts a very damaging House Ethics Committee report on Mr. Gaetz won’t become public by some means or other. In any event, the legislative outcry about the Gaetz nomination will seemingly demand public hearings if Mr. Gaetz does not withdraw, and one would have to assume that the odds against his confirmation are high – rejecting him will enable several Republican Senators to pretty politically painlessly establish that they are still institutionalists, independent, bipartisan, and moral.
But even Mr. Gaetz’ head on a stake might not be enough of a diversion to achieve Mr. Trump’s ultimate goal. So the next item on the menu will be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom Mr. Trump has nominated to be the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Mr. Kennedy is a manifest quack. His steadfast opposition to most if not all vaccines, questioning fluoride in water, etc., etc., etc., is enough to raise doubts in the minds of all but the densest conspiracy buff; I’ll venture that even the majority of MAGAs who have now been conditioned to question the efficacy of COVID vaccines nonetheless support children’s polio, chickenpox, and measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations. Add to that Mr. Kennedy’s declarations that he has a dead worm in his brain and that at one point he dumped a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park, and Senate confirmation hearings on Mr. Kennedy’s nomination will be enough circus to keep late night talk show hosts busy for weeks. Even the most rabid Murdoch American print publication, the New York Post, has come out vociferously against Mr. Kennedy’s nomination. Mr. Kennedy – although he may well not be savvy enough to recognize it – may simply more political cannon fodder for Mr. Trump. He provides more political cover for Senate Republicans, who can hold hearings, provide Democrats enough votes to reject Mr. Kennedy, and thereby appear institutionalist, independent, bipartisan, and rational. (And if by some miracle Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, one might question how effective he will be in instituting his hair-brained beliefs. I will venture that Mr. Kennedy is wildly misguided, but not malevolent. HHS is 80,000 strong, and every HHS employee will understand how to employ every existing bureaucratic roadblock to check Mr. Kennedy’s flights of fantasy.)
The President-Elect wins either way. If the Gaetz and/or Kennedy nominations are confirmed, he has completely emasculated the Senate. If either or both are not, Mr. Trump will have nonetheless gained favor with the Republican House caucus and the diehard healthcare conspiracists among his base. But what else, of greater strategic importance, have these nominations achieved? They’ve cleared the way for Senate confirmations of two nominees who might well have faced significant opposition from a decisive number of the remaining conservative (as contrasted with MAGA) Republican Senators but for the fury that will be expended during consideration the DOJ and HHS nominees: those of obviously unqualified Fox News Host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and undoubted Russian sympathizer former U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Even if hearings are held for Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Gabbard, Senate Republicans certainly aren’t going to reject everybody; Messrs. Gaetz and Kennedy will be the outside limit.
One might argue that Mr. Hegseth, if confirmed, will have trouble effecting MAGA aims against a bureaucracy as entrenched as the Pentagon. I’m not sure that’s correct – after all, remember who will be the Commander-in-Chief – but even if it is, imagine how much American military readiness will be impacted by the distractions within our armed forces caused by Mr. Hegseth’s – I can’t resist 😉 – witch hunts for “Woke” officers. The men and women who lead our military are human; they are concerned with their careers just like everybody else. Similarly, assuming that Ms. Gabbard is confirmed, our ability to protect our interests – at least, our traditional interests – will certainly be compromised if, as I have seen reported, our allies will no longer be willing to share their most sensitive secrets with us for fear that they will be disclosed to Russia.
I will venture that Russian President Vladimir Putin could care less about HHS, and probably but little more about DOJ. He does care about American military efficiency and America’s intelligence capabilities. One could argue that if the Russian President himself had orchestrated this series of nominations, he couldn’t have done any better to protect his interests.
Clever. Really clever. I practiced law too long to not still admire a true tour de force by those with whom I disagree. (Mr. Trump’s not that smart, you say? The man has been smart enough to get elected President of the United States twice – this last time with a majority of the vote – while making plain who he is and what he stands for.) Liberals and progressives – and me – now suffer from whiplash after nine years of having repeatedly looked down to see if our shoes were untied. (This analogy is not to make light of what is happening. Recall that on the brink of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to try to stave off the invasion President Joe Biden took the unprecedented step of releasing extremely sensitive American intelligence – undoubtedly shaped just sufficiently to protect the source — warning the Russians that we knew what they were about to do. At the time, it was speculated that to have such intimate intelligence, we had to have “turned” one of the perhaps – what, half dozen? 10? — men closest to Vladimir Putin. If this speculation was accurate, on or soon after January 20, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard is going to know who that is. Unspoken but almost certain: right now, the Biden Administration is undertaking frantic efforts to get America’s most sensitive Russian assets out of Russia.)
Bob Woodward noted in his book, Rage: “As [the first] DNI [in the first Trump Administration, Dan] Coats had access to the most sensitive intelligence – intercepts and the best deep-cover human CIA sources in Russia. He suspected the worst but found nothing that would show Trump was indeed in Putin’s pocket. He and key staff members examined the intelligence as carefully as possible. There was no proof, period. But Coats’s doubts continued, never fully dissipating.”
And to think — if Mr. Trump had lost this month’s presidential election, I had planned to pitch all of the Trump-related books I collected during the first Trump Administration.
President-Elect Donald Trump’s announcements this week of appointments for his Administration have demonstrated a previously evident but now openly flagrant contempt for – and possibly hatred of – the principles America has stood by and for over the last two hundred-plus years. We will reap the whirlwind. Even Mr. Trump’s most reasonable selection, U.S. FL Sen. Marco Rubio, who is qualified to be U.S. Secretary of State, has made it clear by his nauseating bootlicking to Mr. Trump that he will be no more than a lapdog for the incoming President’s whims. Stephen Miller, named Deputy White House Chief of Staff, declared at the New York City Trump Rally in the last days of the campaign that “America is for America and Americans only.” (I’ll leave it to you to characterize that one; I will note that it has been suggested in the Jewish publication, Forward, that Mr. Miller’s declaration was an echo of the “Germans for Germans only” slogan “which the Nazis used to separate out (and slaughter) Poles, Jews and other undesirables.” Tom Horman, whom Mr. Trump has named as “Border Czar,” will soon be caging migrants. I think one can be confident that while SD Gov. Kristi Noem is head of Homeland Security, any dog seeking to enter the country illegally will be shot. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been named co-heads of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” – transparently an organizational device that will be used to rid the federal bureaucracy of all of those not perceived as abjectly loyal to Mr. Trump and the MAGA movement. (This is a Trump proposal that does surprise me a bit in one respect. It’s not that Mr. Musk is getting a prominent role in the upcoming Administration – since he’s collected a car, a spaceship, and a social media site, he certainly has room in his garage for a President — but if this new Department’s “Efficiency” initiatives result in delay of Social Security checks to Trump voters, they will notice, no matter how much propaganda the alt-right media feeds them.)
Even then, the President-Elect was just getting warmed up. I admit that I found it so absurd that I actually laughed when I heard that Mr. Trump had named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News Host, as his choice to be Secretary of Defense. I’m no longer laughing; I wasn’t then aware of numerous reports I’ve since seen that he has called liberals, “domestic enemies.” The pick that has generally created the most shock is Mr. Trump’s choice of U.S. FL Rep. Matt Gaetz – he who has been investigated for sex trafficking and was as of the time his nomination was announced the subject of a U.S. House of Representatives Ethics inquiry – to become the next Attorney General, a post from which one might reasonably assume he will pursue former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, U.S. CA Sen-Elect Adam Schiff, and others Mr. Trump has called “enemies within” America. But … we’re still not done. Mr. Trump has named former U.S. HI Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — who has been referred to by a Russian commentator on Russian state television as “our girlfriend”— to become Director of National Intelligence. Russian President Vladimir Putin arguably literally couldn’t have selected any American as Intelligence head better suited to his purposes.
With every succeeding pick, Mr. Trump has ever more arrogantly demonstrated his intent to institute an autocratic regime aligned with other autocratic regimes (at least, Caucasian autocratic regimes). Not even I – and no one who reads these notes would call me, “Mr. Sunny” — thought he would move this dramatically, at least this early.
Ominously but predictably, I have seen reports that representatives of the upcoming Administration are making arrangements for erection of huge tent encampments outside our major cities, purportedly intended for the housing illegal immigrants prior to their deportation. I expect that this will be the only way in which these encampments are employed … for a while.
The majority of voting Americans are going to get what they voted for, although a significant segment of them might well soon decide that it wasn’t really what they wanted. As I said in a note posted here about a month ago: “[If Mr. Trump wins the election], [a]t some point [thereafter], some of the citizens who vote for Mr. Trump this November will say, ‘This is wrong. This is too much. I never intended this.’ By that time, it will be too late. In this context, the shame will be on them, not on him; he has made his designs perfectly plain [Emphasis in Original].” Now – although Mr. Trump hasn’t even yet assumed the presidency, and whether or not such segment realizes it yet – it is indeed too late.
One of the most arresting images I have seen since Mr. Trump was declared the victor in last week’s election is a sketch of Lady Liberty, seated, bent over, her face in her hands. Because I am now well into my Medicare-eligible years, these days I frequently find myself considering events not from the perspective of how they will affect TLOML’s and my generation, but how they will affect our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren (assuming that we ultimately have some 😉 ) and their generations. As I looked at that sketch of Lady Liberty, these words came to mind – perhaps blasphemous, but reflective of my sentiment:
“But Jesus turning to them said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children.’”
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
After giving you eye strain in the week before the Election, I have been uncharacteristically silent since. It has taken me a while to put Tuesday’s election results in perspective. I didn’t have to go through all the stages of grief – I was able to avoid “denial” (I always instinctively felt that it was going to be difficult for Vice President Kamala Harris against an entrenched MAGA base) and “bargaining” (whatever that means in this context; I leave it to the two accomplished psychologists who read these pages to enlighten me at some future juncture 🙂 ), and experienced depression before transitioning to anger (as one of Irish descent, that sequence is my usual). At this point, I have internalized that we have the result we have, although I am not ready to placidly acquiesce in what might come from it.
The fact that President-Elect Donald Trump won a majority of the popular vote (sweeping all seven of the supposed swing states) is at once reassuring – he has received a mandate from our people, which is what democracy is supposed to be about — and demoralizing, demonstrating as it does the willingness of the majority to deprioritize the principles that over the last two centuries made America different – that in my view actually have, in good economic times and bad, made America great.
There are so many rationales floating around as to why Ms. Harris lost that one cannot possibly list or address them all. I doubt that Ms. Harris lost because she is black in a nation that President Barack Obama won twice. I have significant doubt that she lost because she is a woman [although I also doubt that Democrats will run another woman presidential candidate in my lifetime (assuming there are further elections; more on that below)], since two Democratic women senatorial candidates – one of them openly gay — defeated male MAGA opponents (albeit narrowly) in swing states Mr. Trump carried. I don’t believe that President Joe Biden would have won if he had stayed in the race, given his low approval ratings (no matter how, in my view, grossly undeserved). Finally, I don’t believe that if Mr. Biden had announced his withdrawal after the 2022 mid-terms – a course recommended in these pages at that time – a full-blown Democratic Party Presidential Nomination contest would have either provided Ms. Harris a greater opportunity prove her mettle as a candidate or yielded a different Democrat who would have defeated Mr. Trump – not when Mr. Trump not only won all the swing states, but improved his vote percentage over 2020 in 35 states.
I’ve used pro football analogies before in describing different perspectives of the race; Democrats’ current rationalizations sounds to me like a losing NFL team saying, “We should have run the ball more,” or “We should have blitzed more,” when it lost by four touchdowns. In fact, given America’s currently toxically-partisan and supposedly closely-divided citizenry, Democrats – to use Mr. Obama’s summation of the 2010 midterm elections – got shellacked. This isn’t a criticism of Ms. Harris; I think she did all that she, or any other likely Democratic presidential nominee, whether starting this past July or in 2022, could have done to address all of the competing factors with which she had to deal. [And for all you fans of MN Gov. Tim Walz 🙂 : the final outcome seemingly unquestionably shows that Democrats wouldn’t have fared any better with PA Gov. Josh Shapiro as their Vice Presidential nominee than they did with Mr. Walz. I am guessing that today, Mr. Shapiro is privately thanking his lucky stars that Ms. Harris didn’t pick him as he readies for a presidential bid for 2028 (again assuming, for the purposes of this paragraph, that we have an election in 2028).]
One observation that has resonated with me is the notion that a significant number of our citizens were more offended by Democrats’ emphasis on identity politics — which they perceived as demonstrating a disregard for them — than they were fearful of Mr. Trump’s unabashed willingness to disregard the rule of law and demonize “others” and those who disagree with him. Perhaps those sentiments, taken together with the indication that a growing number of Americans are afraid of the future, yielded the result we got. In a democracy in which each citizen gets the same one vote, this matters. Although their irritation with identity politics is understandable, these citizens’ selection of Mr. Trump, despite all warning flags, to “fix it,” ignores the clear lesson of history: that demonization and trampling of norms, once begun, only metastasize. The latter fear of the future, if accurate, represents an apparent retreat from the bold optimism that has been the animating American characteristic throughout most of our history — a retreat that will form the subject of an impending post.
An aside, but perhaps an appropriate reflection upon the evolution of the American perception of acceptable presidential behavior evidenced by Mr. Trump’s election (excluding the many presidential indiscretions of which we are now aware, but were unknown by the American people at the time they were occurring): Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was an aide to now-long-deceased NY Gov. Nelson Rockefeller until he was lured away by President-Elect Richard Nixon in 1968, made clear in his memoirs that he considered Mr. Rockefeller one of the most able men he ever met. In 1960, when Mr. Rockefeller vied with Mr. Nixon for that year’s Republican nomination, one of the political impediments Mr. Rockefeller faced with the ordinary voter was that he had been divorced. By 1974, when Mr. Nixon was driven from office by his complicity in the Watergate scandal – although his resounding 1972 re-election makes clear that most Americans thought he was doing a good job on substantive issues — his successor, President Gerald Ford, successfully got Mr. Rockefeller confirmed as Vice President. In 1980, Americans elected President Ronald Reagan despite a previous divorce (although by that time Mr. Reagan had been married to Nancy Reagan for decades). By 2000, Americans were willing to accept a president they knew was not only a philanderer but a perjurer as long as they believed he was helping them; President Bill Clinton left office with a 60% approval rating despite the Lewinsky scandal, and I would submit that had he been constitutionally able to run again, he would have easily defeated the born-again and faithful husband George W. Bush. Twice divorced, admitted adulterer Mr. Trump was elected sixteen years later despite (well, you can fill in all of Mr. Trump’s “despites” 🙂 ) and has now been re-elected by a majority that necessarily includes a segment of voters who know that he was lying in his denial of his 2020 defeat and that he incited an attack on our nation’s Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election. It is for each of us to decide where on our own personal moral spectrums, if anywhere, the evolution from Mr. Rockefeller to Mr. Trump should have been enough. I have always thought that the American presidency called for a fundamentally good person who was willing to take morally questionable actions to achieve a greater good. It is clear that many Americans are willing to abide a man whom even a large share of his supporters concede is amoral in hopes that he will do good things. [I am particularly struck by those Evangelicals who admit that they wouldn’t want Mr. Trump as a pastor but can abide him as president. Granting that the Bible can be cited for just about anything anyone wants, one cannot help but pause at the seeming … let’s say, incongruity … that any such literalist Christians so readily disregarded Matthew 7: 17-18: “Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears rotten fruit. A good tree cannot bear rotten fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.”] It is what it is.
What comes next?
I have always guessed that the greatest irony of the 2016 Trump candidacy was that Mr. Trump undertook the effort not to win, but to hype his brand. The greatest irony of his 2024 campaign may be that he ran not because he wanted to govern but to avoid prosecution and jail time for truly consequential federal offenses for which he was obviously guilty.
We are where we are. The fact that there may be an understandable and even sympathetic explanation within a segment of the Trump Coalition for the upheaval we’re about to experience doesn’t mean that its consequences will be any less severe. Over the years, while I have striven to maintain a civil language and tone in these pages, I have said so many substantively harsh things about Mr. Trump, MAGAs, and their undemocratic designs that I couldn’t even list them all here. Any who have read many of these notes may be wondering if there is anything I might change or amend about these sentiments in whatever warm glow surrounds Mr. Trump’s undeniable victory and the impending peaceful transfer of authority of the most powerful nation the world has ever known. There is not. I pay Mr. Trump the respect of believing that he means and will do what he has said. I have meant what I have said. I have the severest doubts that the MAGA Administration will allow for a truly free and fair election in America in 2028. Over the next four years, I expect: that Mr. Trump – already exhausted and mentally degrading – to become a figurehead for a radical reformation of our federal government by Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Jr., and the MAGA zealots who have put together Project 2025; that all criminal charges now adjudged or pending against Mr. Trump will be dispensed with; that all of the convicted January 6th rioters will be pardoned; that many of Mr. Trump’s most prominent political and media critics will be prosecuted by the Trump Justice Department on trumped up (if you will 😉 ) charges (but not, ironically, Mr. Biden, who will be largely protected by the presidential immunity doctrine Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court has handed down) or otherwise pressured into submission; that MAGAs will pass measures that in fact if not in name will serve to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning constituencies; that many legal as well as illegal immigrants will be swept up in the Administration’s deportation initiatives; that MAGA-sympathetic generals will be appointed to lead the American military, and that at some point under their direction our armed forces will take action against peaceful American citizen demonstrators; that violence will increase against African Americans, legal immigrants of color, non-Christians, and Americans with untraditional gender and sexual preferences; that NATO will remain in name, but will have severely reduced effectiveness as America substantially limits its participation; that Russia will absorb at least Ukraine and possibly a number of NATO countries formerly members of the USSR; that Mr. Trump and his cohort will continue their approach of division and distraction; that – as I saw one wag on Twitter comment – within 90 days, as inflation continues to drop, Mr. Trump will claim credit and also announce that the economy he has falsely denounced for four years is the strongest economy in the world; and that — the bitterest irony of all — the gap between the American rich and those poor who consider Mr. Trump their Messiah will continue to widen. (The cruelest joke will be that because of alt-right propaganda, most are likely not to even realize that Mr. Trump did nothing for them.)
Too pessimistic, you say? I will be thrilled – thrilled – to be proven wrong; but review the above list, and point out which of the above you believe won’t occur during the upcoming Trump Administration.
If Mr. Trump and his minions actually effect the tariffs and tax cuts for which he’s advocated and bend securities laws to favor powerful oligarchs like Elon Musk, it doesn’t take an economics degree to predict that inflation, the deficit, and accordingly interest rates will soar and the stock market will drop; if they effect the mass deportations of illegal aliens he has promised, certain sectors of our economy dependent on illegal labor will crater, materially adversely affecting the entire economy; and that if they obtain the control over the Federal Reserve Mr. Trump seeks, global confidence in the dollar will plummet along with its value and hasten its abandonment as the world’s reserve currency.
For clues as to whether the MAGA Administration will be willing, contrary to my deepest misgivings, to allow for a free and fair 2028 election, an early indication will be how the Administration approaches issues that do matter to Trump voters. Ones coming to mind are the conservative shibboleths of a nationwide abortion ban, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts (there are a lot of Trump voters who benefit from Medicaid), and repeal of the now-popular Affordable Care Act without an essentially-like replacement. In these areas, Mr. Trump, even in his obviously mentally and emotionally degraded state, is cannier than his doctrinaire followers. If he or his MAGA cohort truly intend to subject their hold on power to the free will of all American citizens in 2028, they will abstain from any actions that they know will outrage their base. A more ominous indicator of any anti-democratic intentions they may harbor will arise, if at all, after the 2026 mid-terms, if MAGA propaganda starts to stoke unfounded fears of civil unrest or insurrection.
I fear that those who love American democracy as it has existed for more than two centuries will look back at November 5, 2024, and Inauguration Day, 2025, as the darkest days in American history; I fear that those who may have voted for Mr. Trump because they feel disrespected or afraid have administered a supposed cure to our body politic that will ultimately prove extraordinarily more lethal than the ailments it was intended to address. In all fairness, what will transpire after Mr. Trump reassumes office in January is yet to be seen. At least one very close friend for whom I have the highest regard believes that my concerns about Mr. Trump and his MAGA cohort are WAY overblown. That said, although I respect the outcome of a free and fair election and understand that the purposes of the Almighty are beyond my comprehension, I can’t help but be heartsick – for us, for the Ukrainians, and for all who for centuries nurtured the dream of America. If MAGAs do begin to effect a repressive society with fascist echoes, it will then be up to each of us to decide how – while acting peacefully within the bounds of law, morals, and ethics — we respond.
“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.”
What will be, will be.
In an entry yesterday, I suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris needed to toughen her message against Mr. Trump in order to win the presidency. A very close and very discerning woman friend of ours thereafter sent me an email, indicating that she feared that if Ms. Harris followed my recommendation, “being angry might backfire on a woman because she’d be perceived as being too emotional and ‘out of control’ to become the president.” It did make me ponder whether, in such a razor-thin contest, Ms. Harris might alienate more potential supporters than she would gain by being more combative as I had suggested.
Today, we got an answer. If the Vice President had had any idea of our exchange, I’d say that she had thread the needle and addressed both our friend’s and my concerns.
As all who care are aware, retired Marine Corps. General John Kelly, the longest-serving Chief of Staff in the Trump Administration, has within recent days gone on record with the New York Times stating that Mr. Trump meets the definition of “fascist.” Below is a link to a short speech Ms. Harris gave today in the wake of Mr. Kelly’s remarks. I would submit that the extremely grave tone she struck was perfect for the message – neither plaintive, nor too strident — the tone of a president addressing us about a true crisis. The three-minute length was perfect: short enough that any media outlet that wishes to air it can do so in its entirety. Two notes she made particularly resonated with me: first, without undue emphasis she recast her reference to Mr. Trump’s allusions to the “enemy within” to include anyone who might disagree with the former president, not just government officials or journalists; second, she employed the ultimate word about Mr. Trump (while being able to correctly attribute the characterization to Mr. Kelly): fascist.
I don’t know how many voters’ sympathies can be shifted in the days culminating on November 5; I will affirm that I consider Ms. Harris’ efforts today to be pitch-perfect.
On October 8th, the panel on MSNBC’s Morning Joe went on at length about the fact that former President Donald Trump is seemingly veering out of control on the stump, reporting that Trump insiders indicate that the former President isn’t listening to the advice from his campaign counselors, and chortling that contrary to the advice from such advisors – who believe that effectively exploiting economic issues will bring the former President victory in November — Mr. Trump is instead doubling down on his lies and rhetoric of hate and racism against migrants.
While I’m just an old retired blogger and these are an array of seasoned political analysts, I think that as loathsome as his tactics are, Mr. Trump’s instincts are strategically right and his advisors and the pundits are wrong. Not long ago, a close friend texted me about an observation that James Carville, formerly President Bill Clinton’s key political strategist, had made about Pennsylvania (seemingly likely to be the pivotal 2024 Electoral College state): That between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, it’s Alabama. In what both sides clearly consider a turnout election rather than a persuasion election, Mr. Trump – either cognitively or viscerally – seems to recognize that to win the state he needs to motivate the low-propensity Trump supporters in the small, picturesque but mostly destitute communities in the expanses between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. For Mr. Trump to instead try to convince moderately conservative suburban Philadelphia and Pittsburgh women – who are probably personally repulsed by him, who probably aren’t feeling inflationary pressure, and who have watched their stock portfolios soar during the four years of the Biden Administration – that they should vote for him because of a bad economy, seems a longer stretch. Better to play on impoverished Trump supporters’ natural fears and biases. As Adolf Hitler noted in Mein Kampf: “Faith is harder to shake than knowledge … Hate is more enduring than aversion.”
That said, if Mr. Trump is defeated – although right now, I fear that the Vice President’s campaign is flagging a bit — my instinct is that it won’t be because of his stands on most substantive issues; I would submit that aside from his clearly unpopular positioning on abortion (which he knows is hurting him, and he keeps trying to run away from), if the former President loses it will be because of his gargantuan and – crucially – blatantly obvious personal moral defects: the narcissism, the self-aggrandizement, the transparent lying, the sexual predation, the adultery, the pettiness, the instability, the greed, the conniving, the overt racism (as contrasted with subtle racism, which much of America unfortunately seems to accept); in a word, his amorality. To anyone who retains common sensibilities – even among some who may end up voting for him despite his evident failings — he’s … distasteful.
I think most scholars agree – with all due respect to many others across many forms of endeavor – that English playwright and poet William Shakespeare has been the most effective wielder of the English language in human history. Mr. Shakespeare built his tragedies around seemingly formidable figures, such as Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear, who were subject to a “tragic flaw” – a trait that ultimately led to the protagonist’s downfall. (The fictional Hamlet is highly insightful, but his ability to see all sides causes him to be indecisive, to hesitate when he should act.) I would submit that Mr. Trump’s ability to draw from inside himself to release Americans’ basest instincts – openly declaring and giving license to what millions of others were clearly feeling, but realized that they should repress, and did not theretofore give voice to – fueled his rise and has maintained his prominence; but at the same time I would suggest that if he loses in November, it will have been his own obvious amorality, rather than any substantive policy position (possibly save abortion), to be the “tragic flaw” that will have caused his ruin. (Note: in the Shakespearean lexicon, a flaw was considered “tragic” because it led to the downfall of the character. If Mr. Trump’s amorality does repel a sufficient number of voters that he loses, such will be tragic for him, but constitute salvation – or at least a reprieve — for our republic.)
But what if the next MAGA messiah – and there will be one – isn’t so obviously personally flawed? While those who wish to protect our democracy need to focus today on beating Mr. Trump and MAGA Vice Presidential Nominee U.S. OH Sen. J.D. Vance, the very fact that Mr. Trump, despite all of his personal baggage, currently retains at least an even chance to win the presidency means we cannot delude ourselves that even an unassailable Harris victory next month – although it may mean the end of Mr. Trump’s political career – will be the end of the MAGA movement or quench the dark passions within our citizenry which Mr. Trump has unleashed.
I fear that even if Mr. Trump loses, what comes next may be every bit as toxic but harder to contest. By all accounts, Mr. Vance won the recent Vice Presidential Candidate Debate. He didn’t do so because of sterling reasoning or better policy positions [he certainly continued his lies about the Springfield, OH Haitian immigrants being illegal (they’re legal) and claimed that during his presidency, Mr. Trump tried to save the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act (a whopper that anyone with the sense of a goose could see through)], but because the television camera loves style. Mr. Vance, notwithstanding his lies, appeared smooth and of pleasant demeanor throughout. He didn’t look crazy; he didn’t look “weird”; he didn’t look threatening; he came across as normal and sane while espousing the same positions and spewing the same lies that Mr. Trump does. This is terribly dangerous.
I read Hillbilly Elegy in 2016. Mr. Vance is without doubt an intelligent and insightful man who sometime over the last eight years decided that he was willing to sacrifice principle in return for power and prominence. (Recall Mr. Trump himself noted in September, 2022, “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad.”) If Ms. Harris defeats Mr. Trump, the day after the inauguration Mr. Vance will be the leading candidate for the 2028 MAGA Presidential nomination.
So what happens perhaps four years from now, when the hypothetically incumbent President Harris seeks reelection while being lambasted daily by alt-right propaganda, facing latent and overt sexism and racism, and carrying the weight of eight years of Democratic incumbency? When she faces a MAGA – we can now picture him – perhaps a white Christian married family man who appears stable, intelligent, reasonable, not self-aggrandizing and seemingly committed to positions larger than himself, a slyer liar than Mr. Trump and not greedy, not an adjudged sexual assaulter, not an adulterer, not a convicted felon, who will if elected set out to enact (more efficiently than Mr. Trump ever could) the policies set forth in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025)?
If that time comes – although right now, those who believe in democracy need to be focused on winning this election – let’s refer again to The Bard to sum up the challenge we will then face:
“[M]eet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain …”
We’ve just returned from a trip to the United Kingdom; amid the many wonderful experiences we had during our stay, by far the most arresting for me – no surprise to anyone who reads these pages – was a visit to the Churchill War Rooms and the Churchill Museum in London. (TLOML had to finally drag me out, noting that we were in danger of missing a tour we had paid for 🙂 ). Certain aspects of our trip are well worthy of a post at some point in the future, but reviewing the War Rooms and Museum exhibits setting forth the details of the fascist danger that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British people confronted alone from mid-1940 until the end of 1941 – the period after the Nazis overran Europe until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor finally brought isolationist members of Congress to support America’s entry into the war – is causing me to straightforwardly repeat here what I have indicated in the past: I perceive former President Donald Trump and his MAGA cohort to be a fascist threat to our way of life. I thought that if the former president was defeated in 2020, the spell he had cast over so many of our citizens would dissipate. Given the support he maintains despite his manifest unfitness for office, it would seem that that spell is even more intensely entrenched now than it was four years ago.
You who honor me by reviewing these posts are acutely aware of the many (and frequently wordy 😉 ) notes I have entered here. That said, if I was to list five entries set forth in these pages for which I have the most regard, “The Fourth Election,” which I posted in two parts in June, 2020, would certainly be among them. Its thrust was that the need to defeat Mr. Trump in the then-upcoming 2020 election was as critical to preserving the American life as the elections of 1788 (George Washington), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln) and 1932 (Franklin Roosevelt). I generally feel that I am “cheating” a bit if I quote a previous post to make a substantive point in a subsequent post, but in this instance, I can’t say it better the second time than I did the first. What follows are excerpts from “The Fourth Election,” edited only to clarify references. All emphasized text was emphasized in the original. (I hadn’t initially recalled that it included the longest litany of Mr. Trump’s personality failings that I have ever put together 😉 ). While, given its publication date, there is obviously no reference to Mr. Trump’s subsequent lying denial of his 2020 election defeat, nor to his subsequent seditious instigation of an attack on our Capitol, nor to the Project 2025 document (which, despite his denials, his actions in his last months in office make manifestly clear that he will implement if he is reelected), this 2020 post’s observations now seem prescient, given the glaring demonstrations we have seen since its posting of the authoritarian dangers a second Trump presidency will present.
The Fourth Election
…
On February 5, 2020, President Donald Trump was acquitted by the United States Senate at the conclusion of his [first] impeachment trial. Two days after the acquittal, President Trump removed from their respective positions European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondlund and Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, two witnesses whose undisputedly truthful testimony implicated the President in a scheme to pressure a vital but vulnerable ally for his own domestic political purposes. Four days after the acquittal, the United States Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, said that it was reducing the sentence it was recommending for convicted Trump confidante Roger Stone – described by former Trump Administration Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon during Mr. Stone’s trial as an “access point” to Russia conduit Wikileaks for the Trump Campaign — after the President tweeted that the 7-9 year term initially recommended by DOJ was “disgraceful” and a “miscarriage of justice.”
I tend to buy books in clusters. Largely driven by these Trump Administration actions … I went to my local bookstore to acquire specific titles that I considered appropriate supplements to my copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer: Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy; The New Sultan, the story of Turkey’s President (and now autocratically inclined) Recip Tayyip Erdogan, by Soner Cagaptay; Fascism: A Warning, by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and … a final selection — a volume generally available, but a title that causes you to lower your voice when requesting: Mein Kampf (in English, “My Struggle”), by Adolf Hitler.
At my last request, the young woman with whom I’d been working glanced up at me a bit sharply, then relaxed; apparently – thankfully — I look like a researcher, not a believer. She located Hitler’s opus, glanced at the price, added it to my pile, and observed sympathetically, “That’s a lot for such trash.” Then she added: “My Dad says I shouldn’t wear this necklace out like this.” I hadn’t previously noticed, but saw then: at the base of her neck was a small Star of David.
That is where we are today. Throughout President Trump’s term, we have seen countless instances of his deliberately sowing seeds of division among us, his lying, racism, religious bigotry, sexism, xenophobia, bullying, instability, narcissism, erraticism, avarice, pettiness, and flouting of norms, rules, and laws, his virulent attacks on the principled who disagree with him, a free press, and free speech, and his collaboration with foreign enemies for his own ends. Even so, never seriously did I contemplate the potential for his dictatorial inclinations until – after he was acquitted in the Senate — he dismissed Messrs. Vindman and Sondlund and meddled in Mr. Stone’s sentencing. Since that time, the Justice Department has sought to drop its prosecution of Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn (after Mr. Flynn twice pled guilty), Mr. Trump has dismissed four Inspectors General (dismissals U.S. UT Sen. Mitt Romney called “a threat to accountable democracy”), he has issued an Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship after Twitter added corrective links to his completely unsubstantiated tweeted claims of fraud related to mail-in voting, he has called upon the nation’s Governors to “dominate” protestors in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, and on June 1 had peaceful protestors cleared from Lafayette Square, in part through the use of chemical agents, in order to provide himself with a photo opportunity.
The above list isn’t exhaustive, but it is indicative. Clearly Mr. Trump has considered himself unfettered since his acquittal, and has felt free to exact revenge and pursue vendettas against those he considers to have wronged him or his entourage. Does anyone think that Mr. Trump will be more restrained if he is re-elected?
…
Former President Barack Obama is reportedly fond of a statement by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” With all due respect to Messrs. King and Obama, I consider the sentiment poppycock. What is right and just is not inevitable; it must be defended. Messrs. Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, and Messrs. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur didn’t prevail in their struggles because they were right; they won because they had more troops and better weapons than the enemy. I would submit that this is the Fourth Election in which the American way of life is at stake. We citizens have only votes to defend the freedom this nation provides. The existential threats [existing as of the 1788, 1860, and 1932 elections] were brought about by outside circumstances beyond the control of the Presidents called upon to address them; in this election, [Mr. Trump] is the existential threat. His presidency has revealed both the strength and fault lines within our system of government.
…
Although perhaps those that read these posts are already aware of this, it is nonetheless worth noting that Messrs. Hitler, Putin, and Erdogan all first assumed their leadership positions by Constitutional means in what were then actual democracies; none had to overthrow an established order before beginning their accumulation of control over their respective nations. While I draw a measure of solace from the manner in which [former Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper and [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark] Milley have recently distanced themselves and the military from Mr. Trump’s Lafayette Park stunt – one can’t be an autocrat without an army – there are plenty of other Defense Secretary candidates and Generals from whom Mr. Trump can choose from if he is re-elected. I have seen a number of pundits suggest that Mr. Trump’s presidency is “over.” I suggest that we need be watchful, lest his dictatorship start.
In normal times, I consider politics to be the “sports page” of world affairs: Who’s winning, who’s losing, who might employ what strategy. Today, in the United States of America, politics is where the substantive battle to protect our way of life will be fought. Although the ammunition in this contest must remain ballots, the struggle to protect the ideals upon which this nation was founded is every bit as much at issue in the current campaign as it is on Ukrainian lands. The political exchanges we will see over the next two months – and given our experience with the 2020 Election, perhaps all the way to Inauguration Day – will determine whether the American experiment in democracy survives.
First, an aside regarding Vice President and Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris’ selection of a running mate. Reports are that Ms. Harris intends to make her selection in the near future, and of course the Noise, probably foolishly, wishes to get in its two cents before she does.
She should name PA Gov. Josh Shapiro, 51, as her running mate. I have never seen Mr. Shapiro speak, but it’s seemingly by far the wisest choice based upon reputation and Electoral College math. Mr. Shapiro is reportedly very popular in Pennsylvania, and the Keystone State, with its 19 Electoral College votes, is the one upper Midwestern “Blue Wall” state for which Democrats have no effective counter if they lose [i.e., Ms. Harris could lose Michigan (15) if she wins Georgia or North Carolina (each 16, although both are obviously more difficult electoral challenges for her than Michigan) and could lose Wisconsin (10) if she wins Arizona (11; again, admittedly a longer political stretch.)] An additional plus is that Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas. Without getting into the substance of what our Israel-Hamas policy should be, I would suggest that a Harris-Shapiro ticket would allow the Democrats to have it both ways: Ms. Harris, who looks (although she is not) a bit Middle Eastern, can declare that Israel has the right to defend itself while expressing concern about Palestinian civilians while Mr. Shapiro loudly proclaims Israel’s right to defend itself.
[The swing state theory outlined above could also suggest Ms. Harris’ selection of NC Gov. Roy Cooper as a running mate; I’m not as keen on Gov. Cooper since his age (67) would blunt Democrats’ sudden youth advantage against former President and MAGA Nominee Donald Trump and I think Mr. Cooper’s presence on the Democratic ticket would be significantly less likely to secure North Carolina against Mr. Trump than Mr. Shapiro’s will to win Pennsylvania.]
Now, on to the delicious irony that by withdrawing from the presidential campaign, President Joe Biden now holds perhaps a decisive opportunity to cap over half a century of service to America. I have often suggested in these pages that the outcome of this election – i.e., the future of our democracy — will not be decided by the rabid bases of either party but by the mostly suburban moderate Republicans and conservative independents in the swing states who are disturbed by Mr. Trump’s undemocratic inclinations, erratic impulses and hateful passions but, according to apparently all polling, were even more concerned before the President stepped aside about his physical capability to lead us for another four years. I would submit that these voters, despite the alt-right propaganda machine’s best efforts to demonize Mr. Biden, think of the President as a fine man, a good guy who means what he says, who is now simply too old to carry the burdens of the presidency for another four years.
Mr. Biden has steadfastly maintained until this past weekend that he was the best positioned Democrat to bring about Mr. Trump’s defeat in November. He might not have been then. He is now.
The accolades that have poured in for the President since he announced his withdrawal as a patriot who has placed the good of country over his personal ambition are indications that Mr. Biden has transformed himself overnight, among the decisive moderate segment of our electorate, from doddering power seeker into America’s Eminence Grise (“Gray Eminence”) – its wise advisor. These moderates may or may not agree with all of Mr. Biden’s policies, but I doubt that they’re notably concerned about his mental acuity today and I would suggest that his credibility with these people as both the sitting President of the United States and one wishes what is best for our his people – who now has nothing personally to gain by what he says – has likely never been higher than it will be for the remainder of his term.
One of the great fears of the Kennedy Campaign in 1960 was that the Nixon Campaign would have then President Dwight Eisenhower – the leader of our victorious forces in Europe during World War II, then finishing eight years as president in which he presided over our nation’s 1950s economic boom, and significantly more popular with Americans than either man campaigning to replace him – stump for his Vice President, Richard Nixon. Although Mr. Eisenhower was reportedly willing to campaign – he apparently deeply resented John Kennedy’s criticism of his record — he never went on the road, because the Nixon Campaign never asked. In campaign post-mortems, accounts varied as to why Mr. Eisenhower wasn’t more effectively deployed. Mr. Nixon maintained that he didn’t want to overly stress Mr. Eisenhower, who had suffered a heart attack during his presidency (and at 70, was considered pretty old 😉 ); others suggested that Mr. Nixon, chafing at having had little influence during his eight years as Vice President, wanted to win the presidency on his own. Either way, Mr. Eisenhower’s absence from the campaign trail was arguably a pivotal factor in Mr. Nixon’s narrow defeat.
I am confident that Ms. Harris will want Mr. Biden on the road. I am equally confident that Mr. Biden will want to be on the road. This promises to be a quiet six months on the world stage. Russian President Vladimir Putin (with the prospect that a Trump presidency that will ease if not ensure his takeover of Ukraine), Chinese President Xi Jinping (with the prospect that an isolationist Trump presidency will ease his takeover of Taiwan), Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (undoubtedly cognizant that Mr. Biden, free of political ramifications, might, if provoked, use American power to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability), and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un (who is well aware that his nation will fare better with Mr. Trump, a gullible fool, as president and likely also fearful that Mr. Biden, free of political restraints, might act to destroy North Korea’s nuclear capacity) are all unlikely to do anything provocative. Clearly, absent bipartisan measures that might be required to address a domestic disaster such as hurricane damage, no legislation will pass Congress.
Mr. Biden is more fluent, a more effective speaker, when he speaks from the heart, and now free of the responsibilities of leading a campaign, relieved of the awareness that any gaffes he makes on the stump will be the entire focus of a ravenous media, I expect him to pull out all stops. He needs to hold nothing back; he has the rest of his life after January 20, 2025, to relax and enjoy his family. Wrapped in the trappings of the presidency and the aura of a man who has been willing to put country ahead of personal gain, I would submit that his declarations about what another Trump presidency will mean for America will carry tremendous, possibly decisive, weight with moderates. While only the Vice President can assure undecideds that she is qualified for the presidency, I predict that Mr. Biden will be the Vice President’s most effective surrogate, will be a more effective cajoler of swing state swing voters than Ms. Harris herself.
If Mr. Biden does enthusiastically engage in the campaign as I anticipate he will, and if Ms. Harris does win the presidency, Mr. Biden’s last contributions to our nation will have been to protect democracy and lay the path for our first woman president. In my view, he will already go down as our most important president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, speaking as one old Irishman about another, perhaps none of these achievements will be as sweet for him as the knowledge that he did, indeed, have the last word; that he beat Donald Trump one more time.
McCoy's Noise 