On the Presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

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.

A Candy Land Certification

I wasn’t going to post on this, since the point to be made here has been made in a number of other quarters, and has undoubtedly already occurred to you; but a metaphor that seemed most apt struck me, and I can’t resist. This week, we had a Candy Land Certification of Donald Trump’s November electoral victory.

Virtually all are aware of the board game, Candy Land. We played Candy Land quite a bit with our grandchildren over the Holidays, as we had with our children at the same ages. A player’s victory or loss depends entirely upon what s/he draws from a shuffled deck of colored cards that coordinate with colored squares on the path to the Candy Castle. Wikipedia describes the game as “… suitable for young children. No strategy is involved … .”

That said, precisely what makes the game suitable for young children – its simplicity and random nature – makes it difficult for an oldster to “fix” the game so that a young player wins, even if the oldster is so inclined. (Some are, some aren’t; we’ll leave the benefit of each approach to parenting and grandparenting specialists 🙂 ). Over the Holidays, we found that our young family members would be happy when they won – peace would reign – or very upset when they lost – tantrums might erupt. They are all wonderful kids; we are inordinately proud of each of them; their behavior was the same as I remember our kids’ being 35 years ago, and I am confident that they will all learn to maturely deal with defeat as their parents have. (I recall that my own ability to handle defeat in my early grade school years left a lot to be desired; one might well infer from these notes that my demeanor hasn’t improved much 😉 ).

You know where I’m going with this. Despite all the bromides now being cast out about “the peaceful transfer of power,” peace is only prevailing in our land because Mr. Trump won. If the vote totals between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris had been exactly reversed in the key swing states – Ms. Harris lost the three “Blue Wall” states that would have been enough for her to claim an Electoral College majority by an average of slightly over 1% — our land would have been torn apart over the last two months by lies, threats, spurious lawsuits, violence, MAGA state legislators’ attempts to override their states’ vote tabulations, and Congressional MAGAs’ baseless procedural challenges to Ms. Harris’ certification.

But this week, we had no tantrums. The kids are happy because they’re getting to enter the Candy Castle.

Lessons from Mr. Carter

As all are aware, former President Jimmy Carter, 100, died this past weekend. I’m acutely aware that a number of those reading this note can’t remember when Mr. Carter was president. As is appropriate when marking the passing of such a fine man, commentators – I noted that for the brief time we tuned in, even on Fox News – have emphasized Mr. Carter’s fundamental decency. The grotesque dichotomy between Mr. Carter’s character and that of the next occupant of the Oval Office need not be remarked upon here; it speaks for itself. (I do admit that I relish the notion that older Evangelical leaders’ contemplations of Mr. Carter may be causing them to rue, however briefly, how far their movement has strayed over the last 50 years for what it considers expediency.)

As someone who does remember Mr. Carter’s presidency, a number of lessons have occurred to me:

First, he ran a revolutionary campaign in 1976. As hard as it might be for younger Americans to now appreciate, the Deep South was nowhere, politically, in 1976. To be successful, any presidential candidate’s timing has to be right, and has been repeatedly remarked, Mr. Carter’s sincere morality provided the perfect contrast to the sordid revelations of then-former President Richard Nixon’s Watergate; but it was more than that. Mr. Carter and his advisors [Chief Campaign Strategist (and later White House Chief of Staff) Hamilton Jordan and his closest confidante (aside from Mrs. Carter) (and later White House Press Secretary) Jody Powell (both of whom were about 20 years younger than Mr. Carter, and both of whom passed away in the 2000s)] devised a strategy in which he would make an early first impression – and hopefully win – the Iowa Caucuses and then contrast himself from his multiple liberal adversaries for the Democratic nomination by taking positions that were more conservative (except on civil rights, where Mr. Carter’s record was impeccable; African American support was his base) than those held by the rest of the field. Nobody outside of Iowa had ever heard of the Iowa Caucuses before 1976. The Carter Campaign realized that Mr. Carter’s background – an Evangelical, a farmer, a military background – was perfectly tailored for Iowa, and that the national media loved the new, the different. They made Iowa matter, he won, and rode the momentum to a victory in the New Hampshire primary. He was on his way – and won a bunch of subsequent primaries by taking about 30% of the vote while the liberal field split the remaining 70%. (President-Elect Donald Trump employed a version of the strategy — undoubtedly without recognizing the parallel to Mr. Carter’s – to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination).

Mr. Carter’s narrow victory over then-President Gerald Ford is further evidence of a point I have made here several times in connection with my father, a rock-ribbed Republican who nonetheless passionately supported John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, in 1960: Mr. Carter needed and swept the Electoral College votes of the Deep South, although I would venture that the majority of those states’ voters were closer to Mr. Ford on substantive issues than they were to Mr. Carter. It didn’t matter; Mr. Carter’s election psychologically empowered them in the same manner that Mr. Kennedy’s did for Catholics and former President Barack Obama’s did for African Americans a generation later. (When campaigning in the South, Mr. Carter would grin, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a president who doesn’t speak with an accent?” The South, which had been trending Republican before Mr. Carter’s 1976 run, returned resoundingly to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.) (The one group that has not been decisively motivated by common identity is women, demonstrating both why we should have a woman president, and why we don’t.)

I will venture that as president, Mr. Carter knew how to manage but didn’t know how to lead. (A criticism he himself acknowledged but didn’t agree with.) Legendary Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives “Tip” O’Neill once remarked – my words, but his meaning – that Mr. Carter knew more about policy and less about Congressional dynamics than any president he ever worked with. Last fall, we took a trip to the United Kingdom, and while there I was particularly struck by the simultaneous lunacy and brilliance of the British system. The vast majority of the UK citizens we talked to had respect for and loyalty to King Charles (although clearly not the reverence they held for his late Mum 😉 ) while mostly disparaging their elected representatives (the current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, had just assumed his post; I couldn’t remember his name, and most of them couldn’t, either). The allegiance the Brits have for Charles — whose crown in the official photo seems (aptly, to me) slightly askew – who sits in opulence, separated only by an accident of birth from the guy on a pub stool down the street from the Palace — seemed absurd to my American eyes; at the same time, no matter how contentiously Brits may disagree on the policies of the ruling government, they all have the King to rally around. Although Prime Ministers have rallied the UK – Winston Churchill being the most renowned example – for the most part, it is the Monarch who is the communal foundation. I envy the touchstone of unity that the monarchy provides UK citizens. We Americans expect our Presidents to be both King – to lead majestically – and Prime Minister – to get the minutia right. Very, very few men (not only have all of our presidents been men; I fear that all will be men for the remainder of my lifetime) are good at both. Required to choose, we Americans seem to prefer presidents who lead with broad flourishes: in the last century, Messrs. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, Obama, Trump. We seemingly have less patience for presidents, no matter how arguably successful on paper, who govern in a more ministerial fashion: Messrs. Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Biden. Mr. Carter made a fine Prime Minister but a poor King. He checked a number of substantive boxes, but failed to hold the American imagination. His challenge as president was perhaps best captured in the Iranian hostage crisis: he did, in the end, through patience and persistence, bring the hostages home – an achievement for which their families and all rejoiced on a human level – but at a cost of leaving Americans feeling impotent, humiliated by Iran, then a third-rate nation with nothing but oil going for it. What Mr. Carter achieved – saving the hostages while avoiding a Mideast war – was commendable. It is not nearly so clear that his approach was the wisest strategically.

Mr. Carter taught me a lesson about myself – one that I suspect he would not appreciate — that indeed was part of the genesis of the title of this site. Never over the last 50 years have I been as passionately for a candidate as I was for Mr. Carter in 1976. (I have since been at least as passionately against a candidate, but you know that 😉 .) In 1976, I had nothing against Mr. Ford; I had simply become a true believer in Mr. Carter. I was absolutely confident that Mr. Carter would really make a difference, truly lead us in a new direction. For me, his presidency was a terrible disappointment. [I guess that at bottom, I am among those Americans that prefer majesty (while hoping the president has an able staff in the background 🙂 ) to ministry.] In 1980, my vote for Ronald Reagan was not a vote for Mr. Reagan but a vote against Mr. Carter. If you now dismiss my initial expectations as youthful exuberance, I will not disagree; but the fact remains that between 1977 and 1981 I realized, and have always thereafter recognized, that if I could be that wrong about a candidate, any notion I had about any candidate or issue, no matter how firmly held, could simply be … only so much noise.

That said, I leave the most important lesson for last: Mr. Carter’s example after leaving the White House. I would venture that there can hardly be a more bitter blow to one’s psyche than to win the U.S. presidency – to ascend to the highest secular height that the modern world offers – to work as hard at the job as Mr. Carter did, and then … to be so humiliatingly cast aside (Mr. Reagan won 44 states). In Mr. Carter’s post presidency – I think that even the notion of a “post presidency,” and the term, “Post-President” were generated because of Mr. Carter – he taught us that even following the most emotionally devastating defeat, there is much good one can do if one has the gumption to get up and do it. So even at this time when some of us are terribly disillusioned, his example provides encouragement that there is much good to be done – not only in the realm of policy and politics, but also to better the everyday situations of those less fortunate around us.

We just need to see what can be done, and get up and do it.

Gratias tibi, Mr. President. Requiescat in pace.

Green Bay’s Championship Quest Begins

Although I have watched the vast majority of the Green Bay Packers’ games this season, my interest has been less avid than in past years given my preoccupation with our descent into political cataclysm. Since the Green and Gold clinched an NFL NFC wildcard playoff berth last week and the playoffs don’t actually begin for another couple of weeks, one might question why I have suggested above that its championship run begins today.

A sports organization’s expectations are based upon its tradition and experience. I suspect that the New York Yankees and their fans are dissatisfied with the team’s 2024 performance; given the team’s dozens of World Championships, its recent World Series loss probably rendered the season a failure in their eyes. On the other hand, had the Milwaukee Brewers rather than the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers won the National League pennant, Brewer fans would now be ecstatic with the team’s performance even if New York had swept the Brew Crew in the Fall Classic.

For the Packers, inasmuch as the franchise owns more pro football titles than any other, and given the consistent success the team has had since Brett Favre became the team’s quarterback in 1992, anything less than a championship leaves the Packer Faithful somewhat disappointed (notwithstanding the fact that the team has actually only made it to the Super Bowl three times, winning but twice, over that span). Even last year – which at the outset was considered by Packer fans a rebuilding year, with many, including me, wondering whether Quarterback Jordan Love had the right stuff – ended with Mr. Love and his young colleagues jelling at the right time and coming tantalizingly close to the making the NFC Championship game.

Despite the respectful commentary that Green Bay is currently receiving from national sports pundits, if one looks at the team’s season in its entirety, it hasn’t been as good as its record indicates. To date, it has only beaten two teams with good records, and its four losses have been administered by three of the teams that have higher playoff rankings than it does. At the same time, one of the Packers’ two “quality wins” came against the Seattle Seahawks in Seattle two weeks ago, and the squad convincingly polished off a bad New Orleans Saints team at home this past week – the kind of thrashing a good team should administer to a wanting one.

So I will venture that today, Packer fans will find out whether this year’s team has championship potential. If Green Bay beats Minnesota in Minnesota, we may have something. If it doesn’t, we probably don’t. I’m hoping for the best; a long January playoff run will provide a pleasant distraction. 🙂

What Makes … a Christian?

[What follows is a post – which included the bracketed italicized “preliminary note” immediately below – published in these pages on December 22, 2023. (There are two italicized clarifications: the first relating to the timing of a statement by Pope Francis; the second relating to Holy Days of Obligation falling on Mondays.) As I evolve in my own faith (whether it ultimately inures to my eternal benefit or ill 😉 ), I found that when I looked back on what I entered last year that last year’s note captured my current sentiments as well as anything I might observe this year; thus, I’m taking the liberty of resetting it here. Have joyous Holidays!]

[A preliminary note: my comments below will undoubtedly reflect my Roman Catholic training, and may not relate exactly to all Christian faiths.]

As Christmas is upon us, I’ve reflected upon what I think makes … a Christian. Traditional Christian theology holds that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man, conceived in the womb of a virgin without sin, who came into the world to teach us an affirmative life of love (as a complement rather than as a contradiction to Judaic law, which I understand tends to focus on prohibitions), and willingly died as a sacrifice to God the Father as expiation for the sins of humankind. His themes as recorded in the Gospels – what Christians call, “the Good News” — are compelling but relatively few. What theologians have erected upon them over the last two millennia can be likened to an exponentially mushrooming coral reef.

I’m pretty confident that the hierarchy of my Roman Catholic Church would take significant issue with some of what follows; they might well consider me a fallen-away Catholic, perhaps even a fallen-away Christian. That’s as may be. One tenet that I am confident that religious scholars of most if not all faiths agree upon: each of us is responsible for his/her own soul. I personally would add another tenet, with which many of these worthies might not agree: That those of us who claim to believe in Him can, at best, only do what we have faith He wants. During the last 60 years – let alone the last 2000 years — there have been Popes who have had such different theological emphases that such differences have seemed to come precariously close to differences in kind. I don’t see how those of us with no claim to infallibility can expect to have any greater degree of enlightenment or unanimity.

The strictest view of Christianity is that followed by those who rigidly adhere to all of the dictates of the hierarchy of their given Christian Church. (Some – including Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson – maintain that they are following the Bible’s precepts. I respectfully disagree. The Bible can be cited for just about anything anybody wants. It’s a Church’s elders who decide which of the Bible’s passages will be emphasized, which ignored.) From the Roman Catholic perspective, strict Catholics would be those whose beliefs include, as the Church hierarchy declares: that the physical expression of homosexual love is a sin (Pope Francis’ authorization [in 2023] for priests to bless same-sex couples is certainly a softening but seemingly not a reversal of the Church’s traditional position); that Mary, the Mother of Jesus – for whom I have the deepest reverence — was not only a virgin when the Lord was conceived in her womb, but was ever-virgin (i.e., never engaged in sexual relations despite the fact that she was a married woman); that women are inherently unqualified to be priests; and that it is a sin to fail to attend Mass on the Church’s designated Holy Days of Obligation (unless the Holy Day falls on a Monday; apparently, Mondays are less Holy than other days). [Note: Catholics were required to attend Mass on Monday, December 9, 2024, for the Immaculate Conception, the first such Monday obligation I can recall in some years. Perhaps members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are reading the Noise; but if so, I am in dire theological straits 😉 .]

Abiding by a set of such rules is the correct approach for some. Everyone finds spiritual solace in his or her own way. Not all can be as unquestioning of church elders’ pronouncements.

A second, less formalistic view holds that Jesus is the Son of God, but that the Lord’s fundamental message focused little on legalisms and mostly on love. Jesus did seemingly pay lesser heed to ritualistic observance of religious rules: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings.” (Matthews 23: 13); “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not [despite Judaic law] immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 14: 5). This at first does appear to provide a theological safety net for those reluctant to abide by rigid dictates; that said, the core of the Lord’s teaching, while simple, is in fact exceedingly challenging in our competitive, materialistic (capitalistic? 😉 ) culture: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 37 – 39); “[L]ove your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6: 27-31); “[I]t is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19: 24). Finally, when one analyzes it perhaps the most perilous line in all of Scripture, recited by rote by millions of Christians every day: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us [Emphasis added].”

If you’re shifting a bit in your chair as you’re reminded of these, you’re not alone. These teachings are something to strive for – while setting an unnerving standard.

Finally: Does one have to believe that Jesus was God in order to be considered a Christian? I suspect that the hierarchy of every Christian denomination would answer resoundingly in the affirmative, many presumably quoting John 14: 6: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ [Emphasis Added].” Put aside the fact that biblical scholars agree that John was the last Gospel written, and that John reports Jesus as affirmatively declaring his divinity in a manner that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, written closer in time to Jesus’ life, fail to record. (I think biblical scholars also agree that none of the Gospels were written by the men to whom they are respectively attributed.) Even so: Is the way to salvation only through Him, or can it be through living His message (whether or not one is even aware that it was His message)? Have the deceased human beings who have lived existences of caring and giving — among them, Jews, Muslims, those subscribing to Eastern faiths, indigenous peoples around the world, and those who follow no specific faith – been condemned because they have/had either never heard of Jesus or do/did not accept his divinity?

I reject the notion that a loving God could be so harsh to so many of the creatures He has brought forth.

At the same time, we are all in need forgiveness. Our faith lies in the confidence that the Almighty will look past our transgressions if we try hard enough.

“But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ … [T]hey went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus … said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She replied, “No one, sir.’ Then Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more.’” (John 8: 7 – 11).

Not sinning in the future is probably not a realistic expectation for most of us; trying to live a more giving life perhaps is. So to all Christians – which I would submit includes all of those of any or no faith who are trying to live in accordance with the principles the Lord set forth:

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

Mr. Trump’s Scent

As all who care are aware, a bipartisan Congressional funding bill required to keep the government open, considered completed but for formal passage, was scuttled this week. For the most part, I’ve been adhering to my intent to distance myself from public affairs throughout the Holidays, so I don’t know whether the bill was substantively good or bad, but do understand that Congress needs to pass a funding measure by midnight tonight to avoid a government shutdown. It’s been reported that the bipartisan compromise was abandoned after Billionaire Financier Elon Musk tweeted against the bill innumerable times on December 18. It’s also been reported that that President-Elect Donald Trump himself suddenly opposed the bill unless it included an increase in the federal debt ceiling while President Joe Biden is still in office, although there is no formal need to extend the debt ceiling until sometime this summer.

Since Messrs. Musk and Trump torpedoed the bipartisan funding bill, Democrats have declared that they won’t support any new bill that House Republican leaders jerry-rig. I’m hoping they stick to it. I sincerely hope that they aren’t idiotic enough to capitulate to Mr. Trump’s sudden demand to expand the debt ceiling when there is no pressing need. If Speaker Mike Johnson gets no Democratic help, I think he might find – since he has proclaimed that the Bible is his worldview – that it was easier for Moses to collaborate with the Almighty on parting the Red Sea than it will be for him to generate a symphony from the Republican House cacophony.

Not to be lost in the chaos: the Dynamic Duo of Messrs. Musk and Trump are pulling in different directions. Mr. Musk seemingly wishes to use the authority Mr. Trump has indicated that he will be granted to cut federal spending with apparently little regard for public reaction. At the same time, Mr. Trump is evidently well aware that the large segment of his electoral base who depend on government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid don’t actually care about reducing the deficit if reduction measures adversely affect their benefits and services.

In terms that Mr. Johnson would understand if not appreciate: the majority of American voters opted for this Tower of Babel, and now they’re beginning their trip to Gehenna.

While Mr. Musk’s billions have obviously provided him significant influence for some time, his overt political ascendance has occurred at stunning speed. I’m wondering whether Mr. Trump yet perceives the risks he has assumed in squirting a Musk scent so liberally over his incoming Administration, and if so, what he is able to do about it.

MAGAs are absolutely excellent at spreading propaganda through their alt-right echo chamber; they’re already trying to spin this debacle as Democrats’ fault despite the fact that they hold the majority in the House. Their claims will undoubtedly be accepted blindly by Fox viewers and the like. If Democrats have any savvy at all – not a given – they should exploit this extraordinary opportunity to make Mr. Musk the issue – and politically emasculate Mr. Trump (whom exit polls indicate some young men voted for because of his manliness) in the process. Nobody likes billionaires, rank-and-file MAGAs no more than anybody else. One and all, House Democrats should message, “We will vote for what was going to be passed by both parties until Donald Trump’s puppeteer, Elon Musk, got in the way. We will vote for nothing more, and nothing less.” Every House Democrat should put this message out every hour of every day in every outlet they can reach.

According to an “AI Overview” generated in response to my Google search:

“Description

Musk is a warm, subtle, and complex scent that can be powdery, sweet, woodsy, or earthy. It can also have fruity or floral undertones. Some say it’s a better version of the natural smell of skin.

Uses

Musk is a common base note in perfumes, adding depth, warmth, and longevity to fragrances. It can also be found in candles and room sprays.

Origins

Musk originally came from the musk deer’s glands, but is now mostly synthetic or plant-based. The name “musk” comes from the Late Greek word moskhos, which is derived from Persian and Sanskrit words meaning “testicle”. The deer’s gland was thought to resemble a scrotum.

Ethical concerns

The use of natural musk in perfumery has been banned due to ethical concerns over the cruel practices involved in obtaining it from deer.”

There are certainly those among Mr. Musk’s detractors who maintain that Mr. Musk will engage in cruel practices. Unless the incoming Administration is willing to quickly institutes autocratic measures to achieve its unpopular aims, Mr. Trump and Congressional Republicans may soon determine that they need to distance themselves from Mr. Musk before he extracts any more from their political moskhos. 😉

Back At Ya

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden (“hereafter, “Hunter”), yesterday seemed to me worthy of a short note. At some point in January before Inauguration Day, I’ll do a post on Mr. Biden’s conduct of the presidency, but the pardon will only be addressed here.

While the media is harrumphing that the President “lied” when he indicated while running for a second term that he would not pardon Hunter, and I would have considered the action dishonorable a month ago, I now consider it to be irrelevant whether Mr. Biden was lying or simply had a change of heart since the election. I also consider it irrelevant that President-Elect Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and the alt-right media propagandists will constantly cite Hunter’s pardon as rationalization for every disreputable action they hereafter take; masters of “whataboutism” that they are, if they didn’t have the pardon to yell about, they’d find something else. (If they even care to justify their actions; I suspect that soon if not immediately, they won’t even bother to try.)

It was the American people who pardoned Hunter. The vast majority of American eligible voters – not only those who affirmatively voted for Mr. Trump, but perhaps as many more who didn’t care enough about our democracy and way of life to go to the polls to vote against him – blatantly demonstrated that they don’t give a damn about self-dealing, lying, or respecting the rule of law. Why should Mr. Biden be expected to act in disregard of their evident sentiments?

I had already determined since the election that when referring to the actions of Mr. Trump and his acolytes in future posts, I wouldn’t allude much to the Constitution, federal law, or authorities such as The Federalist for what the Founding Fathers might have intended; Mr. Trump, MAGAs, Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court and a majority of the American people have already made a mockery of those standards. So, reflecting purely by what seems right to me, since hearing of the pardon I have considered the mood of an 82-year-old man, whose heart has been broken by the majority of Americans’ willingness to turn their backs on the American principles he has spent his life defending, faced with the prospect that he would probably die with his son in a prison system controlled by the unscrupulous who hate him. Of course, he would pardon his son. I would. Any parent reading this who wouldn’t should immediately place his/her children up for adoption.

I would submit that the pardon also represents a “Back at Ya” from Mr. Biden to the American people for their disregard of his half-century of service. It would be from me, were I in his place. (I know; “Back at Ya” is merely a euphemism; but someday my grandchildren may read these notes 😉 .)

May the Biden Clan have a Very Merry Christmas.

A Little Bit of Heaven

At Mass a couple of weeks ago, I heard the best sermon I have ever heard in my life – and that’s covering a lot of sermons – offered by Fr. Thomas Hagan, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, founder of Hands Together, the nonprofit he started in 1986 after leaving the Princeton University Chaplaincy. Hands Together provides educational, pastoral and humanitarian development to Haiti’s largest and poorest slum, Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil. Before he recounted the horrendous conditions which residents of Cité Soleil endure – they not only suffer extreme destitution, but are now subject to the terror of the gang anarchy dominating Haiti — Fr. Hagen, approximately 80, of Irish ancestry, began by describing his childhood with his siblings in a working class area of Philadelphia, and indicated that as he grew up, his father often repeated that his family provided him “a little bit of heaven” on earth.

A Little Bit of Heaven. I suspect that in many instances, Thanksgiving will mark the first occasion since the presidential election that family members holding fiercely contrasting political perspectives will be together. No matter whether one eagerly awaits or fearfully dreads what will follow Inauguration Day, during this Holiday let all of us who are blessed with family embrace that Little Bit of Heaven that our loved ones provide, and take a minute to say a prayer for or otherwise remember those who are not as fortunate. Also, consider whether you experienced a particular blessing during the past year for which you are truly, truly thankful. We did.

Fr. Hagan was in Madison rather than in Haiti because he was evacuated from Haiti earlier this year due to death threats against him; other members of the Hands Together organization had previously been captured, tortured, and killed. His most recent attempt to return to his adopted land was abandoned literally in-flight due to reports that gangs were shooting at planes attempting to land at the Port-au-Prince airport. Recognizing that this is the time of year that all with an address are deluged with solicitations for charitable contributions, I am including a link at the bottom of this note for any with an interest in Fr. Hagan’s mission. I admit that I was very taken with the fact that almost thirty years ago he left what was clearly a pretty comfortable position at Princeton to undertake the work he has.

In a number of past Thanksgiving notes I have included a link to one of the West Wing vignettes relating to Thanksgiving. Aaron Sorkin’s Thanksgiving scenes ranged from the patriotic to the humorous. The one below was perhaps his best expression in the series of the love and tradition that is family.

Happy Holiday.

https://www.handstogether.org/

A Reversal of the American Spirit

I was going to write a version of this post during the interregnum between Administrations no matter which presidential candidate won the recent election, but President-Elect Donald Trump’s clear victory over Vice President Kamala Harris brought the issue I have been pondering into immediate relief.

Americans are afraid of the future.

I would submit that Mr. Trump’s manifest wide support – even if he hadn’t won – demonstrates a fundamental reversal in the American spirit, an indication of a visceral if not cognitive understanding on the part of a decisive segment of our people of the uniquely American danger they face, brought on by our own success over the last quarter of a millennium with its attendant rising expectations: they lack the capability to perform at the level necessary to maintain the traditional American lifestyle. They’re not fools; they know it. They fear it. I would submit that this group of citizens has embraced Mr. Trump, despite his obvious failings, because he provides them the illusion that he can turn back the clock to a simpler time in which they can still compete — a reversal of the American ethos trumpeted by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

Let’s start with my profession. The fictional Attorney Perry Mason first appeared in 1934. All fans of the novels or the television series will well recall Mr. Mason’s secretary, Della Street; but Mr. Mason also employed Gertie, the receptionist/switchboard operator. The novels have multiple scenes of Mr. Mason dictating to Ms. Street taking shorthand in his office while Gertie was in the outside area to answer the phone. That said, in the real world, over time Mr. Mason would have gotten a dictation machine – the newfangled invention is a key component of the solution to Agatha Christie’s classic 1926 mystery, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – and then, he wouldn’t have needed to consume Ms. Street’s time with taking dictation; she could be out front, greeting clients, answering the phone, and transcribing dictated tapes … and Gertie, unless she had or could acquire other skills of commensurate economic value, would have been out of a “good-paying” job. You know where this is going: with the advent of voicemail, the personal computer, email, and word processing software, Mr. Mason would be receiving most of his messages technologically and doing most of his own transcription; the services he would then need from Ms. Street would be significantly more sophisticated for her to maintain her “good-paying” job. Two different types of fallout occur here: not all previously satisfactorily-performing secretaries would have the raw ability to discharge these more sophisticated responsibilities, and thus would no longer earn “good” wages; and over time, as Mr. Mason and any potential associate he hired further leveraged technologies to conduct their practices, they would need only one sophisticated assistant, putting a second out of work. (Lawyers themselves are certainly not immune; when I started, young lawyers were sent to the library to do research and draft legal memos for their seniors; now Artificial Intelligence can provide senior lawyers probably as good or better results at a fraction of the time and per-project cost.)

In 1914, Henry Ford enticed farmers to work in his plants with the offer of the unheard-of wage of $5/day. Being a farmer is hard – it requires many different skills. The vast majority of farmers who left the fields for Mr. Ford’s jobs were undoubtedly vastly over-qualified for the tasks he assigned them, but the phenomenal money was the ticket to the middle-class lifestyle. Now, we face the opposite reality: machines ever-increasingly perform the repetitive tasks that traditionally afforded “good paying” jobs to Americans who lack the wherewithal to perform more sophisticated tasks affording wages now necessary to support the traditional American lifestyle.

And again: You will recall the recent strike by the International Longshore Workers Union, in which the organization demanded not only wage increases but a management agreement not to employ automation to take their jobs. (I think the automation issue is still outstanding.) My reaction: in the long run, the Longshoremen might as well jump in unison into the Atlantic Ocean, and thrust their palms seaward: they’ll stand a better chance of holding back the sea than they will technology.

Obviously the least relevant to the vast majority of us, but still indicative of our current state: “The average speed of a four-seam fastball in Major League Baseball (MLB) today is 94.2 miles per hour. … In 2022, the average fastball speed was 93.6 miles per hour. … [In] 2002 … the average fastball speed was around 89 miles per hour.” (The irony is that I can’t even cite a source for this; it was an “AI Overview” generated in response to my Google search.) Judging by trends, you’d have to guess that in 1980, the mid-80s was a decent major league fastball. Although not many of us have been or aspired to be major league hitters, it would seem that a hitter who 40 years ago could hit a fastball in the 80s could be a well-compensated major leaguer even if he perhaps struggled to hit heat in the 90s; today, unless he has other skills, that same individual is coaching high school baseball at a fraction of a major league salary.

All of us saw clips of Ms. Harris declaring on the stump, “We won’t go back.” Although I think her primary meaning was a rejection of an America dominated by the male, white, straight, and Christian, to many of our people worried by the future, it could also have meant a more fundamental kind of threat, because they intuitively and cognitively recognize that their only hope to maintain the traditional American lifestyle is to go back to what worked – what was safe – in the past. They’ve turned to Mr. Trump.

I recently noted in these pages that the majority of our forebears (aside from Native Americans and those brought here in chains) affirmatively marched into the future, risking everything to start a new life here. That spirit created a very large share of the advances humankind uses today, from the automobile to the light bulb to the airplane to the smart phone. But while Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit has made us great creators, the progress of these achievements has over time made it increasingly difficult for a growing segment of our less-talented citizens to match the material expectations that have accompanied these American accomplishments. During travel in our latter years, we have seen the lifestyle of the average Mexican, the average Cambodian, the average Dominican, the average Brazilian, the average Kenyan; even if we haven’t seen we can imagine the lifestyle of the average Chinese. The general populace in these nations may lack the capability to create technical innovations, but they obviously have the manual skills to efficiently recreate them in return for wages sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of living in their respective nations but wildly insufficient to maintain an acceptable standard of living in ours. The irrefutable fact that immigrants will do jobs in this country that native-born Americans won’t demonstrates the distinct difference in perspective and expectation. Our youngest son, the most widely traveled in our family, has observed to me on more than one occasion that Third World poor have objectively less than most American poor, but are significantly happier. I would submit that it is because their expectations are so much lower.

Maybe there was a time when we could have done something about the fact that the progress of American life was beginning to outpace an increasing number of our citizens’ ability to meet their material expectations; maybe not. The first instances of outsourcing began in the 1970s, Republicans’ belief in unfettered international free trade (later also embraced by Democrats) accelerated the process in the 1980s, and TLOML and I recently attended a talk in which the speaker asserted that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, served as the true death knell for much of American manufacturing. Assuming that one accepts the speaker’s assertion, Mr. Clinton, as bright as he is, certainly didn’t recognize the impact that NAFTA would have on the American factory worker. I’ve heard any number of pundits note how many of Mr. Trump’s base voted for President Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. This may be unfair, but one must consider whether the charismatic Mr. Obama was not these voters’ last hope – The Audacity of Hope; “Yes, We Can” — and when it turned out that No, We Couldn’t, they were receptive to Mr. Trump’s dark message of American carnage. When Mr. Trump proved so unsavory and incompetent in his first term, a barely decisive segment was willing to turn back to President Joe Biden, an unquestionably good man and longtime friend of American workers. Since many of these Biden voters apparently believe, rightly or wrongly, that he failed them, they returned to Mr. Trump.

[With the benefit of hindsight, query whether the belief of a notable segment of Americans in the promise of America didn’t expire during Mr. Obama’s time in office, when so many of our citizens never truly recovered from the Great Recession. I have pondered whether he put his chips on the wrong issue in his first term when he went all in for health care. Notwithstanding the much societal good that the now-very-popular Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) has provided, I will venture that if required to choose, the vast majority of us would prioritize a good paying job over good health care benefits. In the first two years of his presidency, should Mr. Obama have championed, instead of healthcare, an aggressive jobs act and apprenticeship programs to accompany the financial institution bailout effected to preserve our economic system? (But if so, what skills would have been chosen to emphasize? At whom would the training have been directed? Would those at whom it was directed participated? With the advance of technology, would any such targeted occupations still afford “good” wages today?) Although Mr. Biden is a good man, one could argue that even he has engaged in palliative sophism, regularly referring to the “good paying” manufacturing jobs that will result if America takes the lead in “green energy” technology. While we certainly have the capability to design cutting edge green technologies, it will take the less-developed world virtually no time to figure out how to manufacture anything we develop at less cost than it can be manufactured in America.]

I have – clearly obliviously and arrogantly — thought that college-educated Americans have in recent elections broken so heavily for Democrats because they were willing to recognize reality – the truth about Mr. Trump – while Trump supporters actively refused to accept it. While there is certainly some validity to that – some MAGAs willingly gobble up the distorted reality spewed at them by Fox News and other alt-right media outlets, despite having (at least up to now) an ample opportunity to discover a closer approximation of reality by digesting a blend of news sources — what may be a more accurate perception of the American majority’s return to Mr. Trump, despite all of his obvious flaws, is that the American college-educated minority is largely financially satisfactorily-fixed, and thus can literally afford to contemplate issues of democracy, equality, and the rule of law, while many in the non-college-educated majority generally cannot afford such a luxury. The decisive segment in the last election was arguably not motivated by cultural issues, but by survival. They are financially drowning. When you’re drowning and in need of a lifeboat, you don’t care about Climate Change, the fate of minorities or faraway peoples, or the fact that the lifeboat captain who says he will throw you a life preserver is an unsavory liar, bully, and racial bigot; you want the life preserver. You also don’t pause to consider whether the preserver he offers actually has any buoyancy.

Although America has unquestionably bestowed more good on downtrodden countries than any other nation in the history of the world, perhaps we never were as generous, as magnanimous, as we liked to think we were. Maybe we just had, relative to the rest of the world, first a lot of land, and then a lot of money. If we were more generous, more magnanimous, we are no longer. If this is a criticism, it is also a self-criticism — I certainly do NOT suggest that my focus is not and has not always been first on the wellbeing of my family – but it is nonetheless a painful realization.

Mr. Trump promises his supporters that he will return them to a time in which not only — as the lyrics of All in the Family’s theme song, “Those Were the Days,” impart — “Girls were girls and men were men,” but also: to (figuratively) bring back shorthand; to impose aggressive protective tariffs; to keep all automation off the docks; and to prohibit any fastball above 89 miles an hour. The obvious trouble with all of this is that other nations will continue to automate their plants, their docks, and their offices, and will train to hit fastballs faster than 89 miles an hour – while our prices go up, and American factories do not magically reappear. The price for Mr. Trump’s salve is the loss of world leadership, and perhaps even deeper American disillusionment.

In what was an ode to immigrants in his last speech as president, President Ronald Reagan stated in part:

“While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams, we create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. … This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

This is a dilemma for which I would venture that no American president of any political stripe, no matter how wise or well-meaning, would have a ready answer. Ninety-two years ago, at a time when so many of our people were in much more dire straits than they are now, they put their faith in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom I rank as one of our three greatest presidents (along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln). One of the greatest travesties of the upcoming Trump Administration may be that no meaningful initiatives are undertaken to see if there is any realistic solution to assist the voters motivated by economic fear who have placed their faith in Mr. Trump.

If you’ve made it through this post, I admire your tenacity. I’ve mentioned several times here since I started in the fall of 2017 – now a pretty long time ago, during the first year of Mr. Trump’s first term in office – that this site has provided me a means of catharsis during the most domestically turbulent period of my lifetime. (There was a point at which pundits compared the Trump Era to the Vietnam Era; having lived through both, I would submit that in terms of the breadth of overall national toxicity and threat to our national fabric, Vietnam now pales in comparison to the present day.) Even so, I admit that right now I am drained – as much by the fact that a majority of my fellow citizens choosing to cast ballots voted for Mr. Trump as that he won at all. (Even those fearful about their futures should have realized that no matter what challenges we face, Mr. Trump isn’t the answer.) That said, since by Constitutional definition, no efforts to degrade American democracy or dismantle of our traditional way of life will be undertaken before January 20, 2025, this seems the right time to give us both a respite to replenish (and also to provide these aging eyes with a literally sorely-needed break from what has been extended screen time). While it is certainly possible that Mr. Trump or his MAGA cohort will do something between now and Inauguration Day to sufficiently stir my ire – or that the Green Bay Packers, not as good as their record would indicate, will do something to stir my fervor 🙂 — so as to drive me to post, except for Holiday notes, I intend to be largely taking a break from these pages until the early part of the New Year.

Until then, stay well.

The Art of Diversion

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.