Over the last few days, I’ve read most of Michael Wolff’s book. Although it’s easy to see why the President is upset about its unflattering portrayals of him and his key aides, the book somewhat ironically also leaves an impression that, if accurate, supports the Administration’s denial of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia: the key players appear as shady bungling neophytes, not savvy malevolent plotters. Mr. Wolff notes Steve Bannon’s breezy dismissal of any Russian collusion: “ … the Trump campaign was not organized enough to collude with its own state organizations…” (No matter what you think of Mr. Bannon’s politics, he has a wicked wit.) It will be sadly in keeping with Mr. Wolff’s portraits if the President and his cohorts are ultimately proven to have obstructed justice by trying to impede and mislead law enforcement officials’ investigation of a collusion that never existed …
Wisconsin Senators in Shutdown Debate
I just emailed the following Letter to the Editor to The Wisconsin State Journal:
A nonpartisan lament: as I was watching Senators conferring in the hour that led up to the government shutdown, it struck me that neither of Wisconsin’s Senators appeared to be a meaningful player in the debate. Sen. Baldwin – if, given the grainy images of the Senate’s cameras, it was indeed her wearing a red top and dark slacks – simply meandered around groups of Senators engaged in animated discussions; I didn’t see Sen. Johnson participate even that much, until the Republicans put him in the presiding officer’s chair to declare the impasse. If the impressions I gathered from watching the Senate scene are accurate, it was a disappointing (lack of) contribution by both, given Wisconsin’s illustrious history of sending Senators to Washington that were difference makers.
Welcome 2018 Addition — or Blown Pick?
This has been such a sad year for us Packer faithful that there hasn’t been much to write about. However, to add insult to injury, I read yesterday that Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt – formerly a ballyhooed Badger – made the NFL’s all-rookie team; meanwhile, the Badger linebacker that Green Bay selected when it could have selected Mr. Watt – Vince Biegel – spent most of the year injured and didn’t – at least to me – create much impact when he was on the field late in the season.
Time will tell. Perhaps, Mr. Biegel – assuming he’s healthy — will outshine Mr. Watt starting next year; but if he doesn’t, and Mr. Watt continues to shine, that’ll be a blown pick on the scale of Ron Wolf’s selection of Terrell Buckley instead of Troy Vincent in the 1992 draft. I’ve always felt that the Buckley pick – leaving the Packers with a hole in secondary that Troy Aikman exploited for several years, until Mr. Wolf drafted Craig Newsome in 1995 – cost the Packers an earlier Super Bowl Championship in the Favre era …
Letter to WSJ Editor, re: “Pentagon’s Fading Readiness”
I just emailed the following Letter to the Editor to The Wall Street Journal in response to its cited editorial:
While I completely agree with the concerns regarding our military preparedness raised in your editorial, “The Pentagon’s Fading Readiness” (January 16), I find the Journal’s expressions of dismay disappointingly inconsistent with its months of cheerleading for a tax cut that virtually every economist quoted in its News and Finance sections opined would increase the deficit by a trillion dollars or more. Our ability to invest in defense is now further constrained by the breaks we’ve given primarily to cash-rich corporations and the wealthy at a time of booming national economic growth. You bemoan the degradation of our security that is resulting from insufficient political and financial support; but if we were indeed determined to dig a trillion dollar-deeper hole in the deficit, perhaps we would at least be more militarily secure if even half of the trillion provided to corporate interests and the well-to-do had instead been devoted to buttressing our national defense.
(Nielsen) Why would …
… an able person with a bright future like Kirstjen Nielsen – previously utilized in different ways by Administrations of both parties — so transparently dissemble for President Trump in a manner that has virtually assured that due to a single Congressional session, her career is dead ended – that no serious President of either party will ever again appoint her to a significant post? Today, the Morning Joe talking heads criticized Ms. Nielsen sharply for acting in what they consider her misplaced loyalty to Mr. Trump. However, at one point while she was serving as Deputy White House Chief of Staff, the President’s close supporter, Roger Stone, was quoted describing her as “… a neocon who likely did not vote for Donald Trump and certainly does not support his non-interventionist worldview.” That hardly sounds like a diehard Trump loyalist.
A musing: that Ms. Nielsen did testify as she did out of loyalty – but to Mr. Kelly, not to the President. She was apparently a surprising choice for DHS to some; one wonders whether Mr. Kelly got her the role to get her out of the White House (where she was reportedly not popular with some of the President’s intimates) and into the (presumably) politically safer environs of DHS by in part persuading a paranoid President that she would be safe and loyal. If so, Ms. Nielsen may have acted as she did yesterday not to protect the President’s standing with the nation, but Mr. Kelly’s standing with the President.
A second musing: if the first musing is correct and Mr. Kelly is the man he is reputed to be, he is wildly angry at Ms. Nielsen for sacrificing her career for him …
Counterproductive Protestations …
The President’s recent tweet that he is a “very stable genius” is reminiscent of Gov. Bush’s claim during the Republican Presidential debates, “And I do have the strength [to be President],” and – for those with longer memories – of Adlai Stevenson III’s declaration in 1982, “I am not a wimp.” If one has to make this kind of protestation, one has already lost the battle …
Pence’s Positioning …
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 …
South Korea approves LG plant in China
Richard Haass comments in A World in Disarray that when viewing the world through the prism of regionality, “Many of the most important economic, military, and diplomatic interactions take place at this level for the simple reason that proximity counts.” I was reminded of his comment by an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that indicates that the South Korean government is allowing one of its largest companies, LG, to build a OLED production facility in China, which the Journal states will be “the first-ever [sic] transfer of the sophisticated display technology outside the country.” The Chinese produce OLED technology, but currently lack South Korea’s sophistication.
Although the Journal further reports that the South Korean government has cautioned LG to increase its security to protect the technology, presumably all realize how futile those efforts will be for a factory placed in China. In an admirably understated fashion, the article indicates that South Korea and China have warming diplomatic and economic relations, driven in part by a desire to have a coordinated policy regarding North Korea.
Referring back to a recent post, I would suggest that this South Korean decision is simply a manifestation of that government’s assessment of global realities. It is at the epicenter of the quake that could result from the acrimonious exchanges of two mercurial leaders; it may well feel uneasy (understandably) about the United States’ willingness to defend it; it has very likely determined (rationally) that China can do more than the United States to protect it against North Korean aggression; and it has apparently decided (certainly uneasily) that in the current bellicose atmosphere, there is less risk from China ultimately attempting to exploit their closer ties to sap its economic and political freedoms than there is that North Korea will take cataclysmic action affecting the lives of its citizens.
While – since proximity counts, and China is the dominant Asian power – South Korea may in coming years have begun to establish closer ties with China in any event, it’s hard not to conclude that these sorts of diplomatic shifts will occur at an accelerating rate due to the visceral perception that the U.S., despite its occasional protestations to the contrary, is in the process of disengaging from many of its traditional alliances.
Letter to WSJ Editor, re: “Tax Reform: States”
I just emailed the following Letter to the Editor to the Wall Street Journal in response to its cited editorial:
As a 40-year Wisconsin and taxpayer who has never been a member of a union, I was offended by the presumptuousness of your editorial, “Tax Reform Take 2: The States” (Dec. 21), in which you dismiss certain high tax states as “liberal political cultures heavily influenced by public unions,” suggest that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker “should propose an across-the-board tax rate cut,” and conclude by urging high-tax-rate states to cut their rates in order to be “more taxpayer friendly.”
You should mind your own business. Wisconsin has traditionally placed greater emphasis than some other states in areas such as educational excellence, quality state services, a solid support network for the disadvantaged, and safeguarding our natural resources. Efficiency is vital, but – as with most things in life – you get what you pay for. It is not Wisconsin’s place to question other states’ services and taxing approaches; it is not your place to question how we in Wisconsin – or citizens of other states that tax at relatively higher rates – choose to conduct ours. The majority of people in these states would not consider the degradation of the quality and availability of their state services likely to result from a reduction in their states’ income tax revenues to be “taxpayer friendly”; these states balance their services/taxing approaches as they do because the majority of their citizens believe in them. High-earner residents have always been able to leave these states if they wished; it’s pure speculation that they will now. Our federal system is designed to enable the citizens of different states, across a wide swath of issues, to express their cultures and values in their own ways. Does the Journal only stand for federalism when it doesn’t like an approach that the federal government is taking on an issue?
An Unfortunately Lasting Trump Legacy
I have heard some of our people who are troubled by President Trump’s actions in his first year in office console themselves by saying, “This too shall pass.” In the domestic sphere, they may be right. In the foreign sphere, I’d suggest that the President’s behavior in this single year has in the most important respect left an impression on foreign leaders that won’t be undone for generations, if at all: a faith in the constancy of America. Although specific Trump foreign policy approaches may (almost certainly will) be reversed – his laissez affaire approach toward Russian aggression, his economic disengagement in Asia, his withdrawal from the Climate Accord – it seems highly doubtful that any foreign leader with any sense will in the foreseeable future base his/her nation’s well-being on any long-term commitment from the United States (I know I wouldn’t). Mr. Trump’s election and behavior have made clear that no matter how sincere a given President might be in providing assurances on a given policy, the American people are capable of electing a successor who completely undoes previously agreed-upon commitments. This loss of confidence may have the silver lining of getting those nations generally aligned with us to become more self-reliant; with shrinking funds, our ability to cast a defense net over our allies would be unraveling over the next decade in any event. That said, this loss of confidence could in the coming years and decades cause our Asian allies, out of a sense of self-preservation, to seek closer ties to China than we will like, and perhaps similarly cause our European allies to be less willing to assist us in confronting inappropriate Russian behavior (due to their need for its oil) than we would hope.
McCoy's Noise 