(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Public Outscores the Experts on China Trade Policy

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(What's Left of) Our Economy, allies, America First, Blob, Center for Strategic and International Studies, China, CSIS, elites, globalism, multilateralism, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO

So many big takeaways from a new poll on U.S. and global attitudes toward China and U.S. China policy (both the economic and national security dimensions), I hardly know where to begin! But if I could only write a lede paragraph for a single news article (or blog item), here’s what I’d say: The American public is a great deal more sensible on how to deal with the People’s Republic than so-called “thought leaders.” And what I mean by “more sensible” is more “America First-y” and less globalist.

The survey was conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank not only squarely in the globalist camp, but a charter member of the globalist, bipartisan U.S. foreign policy “Blob” (which includes a sizable trade and economic sub-Blob) that exerted dominant influence over America’s course in world affairs until Donald Trump came along, and whose supposed expertise still mesmerizes the Mainstream Media.

Of special interest, CSIS sampled opinion from everyday Americans, those so-called thought leaders (whose follower-ship, as implied above, is greatly diminished), and thought leaders from countries that are U.S. allies or “partners.”

The gap between public and elites on China policy views seems widest on the economic and trade issues that President Trump has made so central to his approach towards the People’s Republic, and the CSIS survey contains decidedly good news for him and his fans in this area: The general public is much more supportive of the “go-it-alone,” unilateral sanctions and tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump to combat and/or eliminate Chinese transgressions in this area than the Blob-ers.

Although a multilateral approach (using “international agreements and rules to change China” economically) won plurality backing among the general public (34.8 percent), fully 69 percent of the U.S. thought leaders favored this route. Yet nearly a third of the U.S. public (32.8 percent) endorsed employing “U.S. government tools like sanctions and tariffs”, versus only three percent of the deep thinkers.

As I’ve written repeatedly, (e.g., here and here) a multilateral China trade strategy is bound to fail because international institutions (like the World Trade Organization) are too completely filled by countries that either rely heavily on China-style predation to compete in the global economy, and because even (or especially?) longstanding U.S. treaty allies had been doing business so profitably with the People’s Republic that the last development they wanted to see was a disruption of the pre-Trump status quo. So support for multilateralism in this case can legitimately be taken as support for do-nothing-ism – especially since the vast majority of these elites so enthusiastically pushed for the reckless U.S. expansion of commerce with China that’s lined many of their pockets, but that’s undermined American prosperity and national security.

The CSIS poll, moreover, provides some indirect evidence for this argument: Nearly as high a share of the foreign thought leaders backed a multilateral approach for dealing with China economically (65 percent) as their U.S. counterparts. And their support of U.S.-only approaches (seven percent) was only slightly higher than that of the U.S. thought leaders’ three percent. (The foreign thought leaders may be slightly more gung ho for America going it alone due to confidence that their own products will fill any gaps in the China market left by U.S. producers shut out by the trade wars. On a net basis, though, their countries are coming out losers this year.)

At the same time, one surprising (at least to me) economics-related finding emerged from the survey: Whether we’re talking about the American people generally, or thought leaders at home or abroad, just under 20 percent favor substantial decoupling from China as the best economic approach for the United States.

When it comes to messaging, however, the survey isn’t such great news for Mr. Trump – and Trumpers – on China trade issues. On the one hand, answers to the question on evaluating his performance in this area can – although with a stretch – be interpreted to show majority support for the view that his record has achieved noteworthy gains. Principally, 27.8 percent of U.S. public respondents agreed that the President’s China measures have “been effective in producing some tactical changes in Chinese economic policy” and 9.9 percent believe they have “been effective in forcing long-term changes.” Those groups add up to 37.7 percent of the sample.

Another 20.5 percent checked the box stating that Trump policies have “hurt U.S. consumers and exporters but protected important U.S. industries.” A case can be made that at least some members of this group would give these policies good grades, or that many would give them partly good grades, possibly bringing the total for positive views somewhere in the mid-40 percent neighborhood.

Much more certain, however, is that the most popular single answer (with 41.8 percent support) was that the trade war “has damaged U.S. economic interests without achieving positive change in China.”

Also signaling a Trump China messaging problem – as with much other commentary, the CSIS survey mostly measures China policy success as changing Chinese behavior. In my view, that goal is much less important – because it’s much less realistic, at least in terms of producing verifiable reform – than protecting U.S.-based producers from China’s economic predation. The relative resilience shown by domestic industry both throughout the trade war and into the CCP Virus-induced recession indicate that this goal is being achieved. But neither the President nor his economic nor his campaign team mentions it much, if at all.

CSIS’ polling also found that fully 71 percent of U.S. thought leaders gave Trump’s China economic policies the big thumbs down – and although they don’t vote, their aforementioned influence in the Mainstream Media could partly explain why broader American opinion on the Trump record seems so divided. (For the record, foreign thought leaders weren’t asked to rate the Trump strategy.)

But having established that everyday Americans have a good deal to teach the experts on China trade and economic policy, how do the two compare on China-related national security policies? As indicated above, the gap here isn’t nearly so wide, but worth exploring in some detail – as I’ll do in a forthcoming post!

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Those Stubborn Facts: Park Avenue Joe

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election 2020, elites, Joe Biden, money in politics, Park Avenue, populim, Scranton, Those Stubborn Facts, Trump

“I really view this campaign as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue. And I really mean it, Because, you know, when you’re raised up here in this area, an awful lot of hard-working people bust the neck — all they ask for is a shot, just a shot. All that Trump can see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market.”

– Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, September 19, 2020

Campaign contributions to Biden from donors with Park Avenue addresses:  $1 million-plus

Campaign contributions to President Trump from donors with Park Avenue addresses: $127,000

Campaign contributions to Biden from donors in Scranton: $355,706

Campaign contributions to President Trump from donors in Scranton: $336,657

(Source: “Park Ave Residents Gave Joe Biden 8 Times What They Gave to President Trump,” by John Carney, Breitbart.com, September 18, 2020, https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/09/18/park-ave-residents-gave-joe-biden-8-times-what-they-gave-donald-trump/)

Im-Politic: In Case You Still Doubt It’s a China Virus

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China, China virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, decoupling, elites, globlalism, Hong Kong, Im-Politic, Iran, Italy, pandemics, Taiwan, The Epoch Times, Trump

Yesterday’s RealityChek post explained why Americans looking for current domestic scapegoats for the sluggish China Virus outbreak response are barking up the wrong tree. But despite the predictable criticisms from globalism- and political correctness-happy elites and the Mainstream Media journalists who follow their cues, the search for foreign scapegoats is absolutely legitimate – primarily because one country above all has unmistakably earned the title: China.

Skeptical? Then check out this editorial from The Epoch Times. As it compellingly demonstrates, “Where Ties With Communist China Are Close, the Coronavirus Follows.”

More specifically, although the editorial writers note that numerous drivers lie behind COVID19’s spread, “the heaviest-hit regions outside China all share a common thread: close or lucrative relations with the communist regime in Beijing.”

One reason I found the editorial especially important was its explanation for the virus’ concentration in Italy. Some convincing explanations for high levels of Italian mortality rates have come out, but I’ve yet to run across any material on why China Virus became so common in Italy to begin with. The Epoch Times spotlights some major reasons:

“Italy, the most heavily affected country outside China as of March 10, was the first (and only) G-7 [“Group of 7” – an official organization of the world’s seven biggest economies] nation to sign onto the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road). In an attempt to prop up its weakening economy, Italy has also sought to capture the Chinese market for selling its luxury goods….

“Italy also has signed scores of sister-city agreements with China, with the cities of Milan, Venice, and Bergamo included among them. These are the areas hardest-hit by the virus.”

China ties also seem largely responsible for the coronavirus’ outsize impact on Iran:

“The Iranian regime has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016, and its ties with Beijing began years before that. In violation of international sanctions, Iran has imported embargoed materials from China, while continuing to sell oil to the PRC. The Islamic Republic allowed flights in and out of four major Chinese cities until the end of February.”

And reinforcing the case for a vital Iran-China connection is this Wall Street Journal piece. It reports that the Iranian city of Qom, which Iran’s government calls the country’s COVID19 starting point, has been the site of numerous infrastructure projects built by Chinese engineers and technicians as part of that Belt and Road program.

As the Times notes, even South Korea’s government – whose comprehensive and seemingly testing program has garnered widespread global praise – seems to have set itself up for China Virus troubles “for refusing to ban Chinese tourists at large and instead only barring entry for those who recently traveled to Hubei Province, the epicenter of the epidemic in China.”

Don’t forget, moreover, that one big reason surely has concerned South Korea’s long surging economic relations with China – which assembles lots of high-value manufactured goods containing numerous South Korean parts and components. The same goes for Japan, another coronavirus hotspot.

The Epoch Times‘ conclusion is also borne out by the experiences of two other places with extensive economic relations with China that seem to have the disease contained: Hong Kong and Taiwan. (And I don’t mean to suggest that the latter isn’t a “country.”)

The city, located right next to another China Virus epicenter, Guangdong Province, has basically shut its border with the People’s Republic. Taiwan “began to board planes and assess passengers on Dec. 31, 2019, after Wuhan authorities first confirmed the outbreak. In early February, Taiwan banned entry to foreign nationals who have traveled to the PRC.”

Of course, now that the virus has spread far beyond China, government authorities need to focus on more domestically focused strategies – although plugging remaining foreign travel gaps, as President Trump approved in his otherwise unsuccessful Wednesday night Oval Office address, can certainly be justified in many circumstances.

Moreover, China’s primo role in not only the coronavirus outbreak but the previous Bird Flu and ongoing Asian Swine Flu episodes indicates that there’s something about China that makes it particularly (if not uniquely) plague-prone. As a result, further curbs on commerce with the PRC seem imperative even leaving aside (as no one should) Beijing’s recent threat to cut off shipments of vital medicines and their chemical ingredients to the United States. In other words, keeping the focus on China’s responsibility will help American leaders keep and intensify their focus on desirable, broader economic decoupling.

And China’s disgraceful effort to place blame for the virus on the United States amounts to a major additional reason to spotlight the above transnational coronavirus links.

“Blame games” in politics and policy are often condemned, and surely they’re often wrongheaded or overdone. But they also serve the valuable purpose of clarifying thought, accurately identifying problems, and – as suggested above – speeding the discovery of effective solutions. That’s why The Epoch Times editorial gives me more reason than ever to keep calling the coronavirus the China Virus – and why the same should go for all Americans.    

Im-Politic: How I Scooped The Times on Trump and Nationalism 25 Years Ago

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America First, Democrats, elites, environmentalists, foreign policy, globalism, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, internationalism, interventionism, middle class, minoriites, nationalism, politics, Populism, Republicans, sovereignty, The National Interest, The New York Times, Thomas Edsall, Trade, Trump, working class

However conceited it sounds, it really is time – again – 🙂 to pat myself on the back. This morning’s New York Times featured a long analysis by contributor Thomas Edsall titled “The End of Left and Right as We Knew Them.” The main thesis (as per a quote from the director of the “International Institutions and Global Governance Program” at the Council on Foreign Relations):

“The most salient political division today is not between conservatives and liberals in the United States or social democrats in the United Kingdom and France, but between nationalists and globalists.”

Edsall himself elaborates:

“By now it has become quite clear that conservative parties in Europe and the United States have been gaining strength from white voters who have been mobilized around issues related to nationalism — resistance to open borders and to third-world immigration. … On the liberal side, the Democratic Party and the center-left European parties have been allied in favor of globalization, if we define globalization as receptivity to open borders, the expansion of local and nationalistic perspectives and support for a less rigid social order and for liberal cultural, immigration and trade policies.”

Moreover, at the heart of these new divisions are class distinctions: The nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic are likeliest to be relatively poor and relatively uneducated – although Edsall does present research findings showing – unconvincingly in my view – that classic “racial resentment, more than economic anxiety, influenced the [U.S.} presidential election.”

Yet the author also unmistakably believes that the left “In recent decades…both in Europe and in the United States [has] begun to include and reflect the views of large numbers of well-educated elites — relatively affluent knowledge or creative class workers….” Indeed, he coins a nice phrase: “The rise of the affluent left.”

So what does this have to do with yours truly? Plenty. Because nearly 25 years ago, I predicted the development of exactly the same trend. My forecast came in an article for the journal The National Interest that was called (wait for it) “Beyond Left and Right” – and it got a fair amount of media attention from both liberals and conservatives. (The National Interest itself is on the right end of the spectrum.) 

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find versions on-line that aren’t behind pay walls, but here are a few excerpts from a dog-eared xerox:

“…a new underlying fault line [replacing the old left-right divisions] is already emerging in American foreign policy, dividing what might best be called nationalists and internationalists. In terms of American diplomacy, this new alignment will pit a generic model of foreign policy-making that long predates the Cold War – one based at bottom…on the belief that international activism itself is the key to American security and prosperity – against a rival approach…whose supreme goal is consolidating American military and economic strength, and enhancing America’s freedom of action. In the realm of economic policy, those who argue that the nation-state, as an economic player, is obsolete or dangerous will vie with those convinced of its continuing relevance and legitimacy. In electoral politics, sharp differences in economic interests and cultural outlooks will produce a widening rift between business, professional,and government elites on the one hand, and wage-earners on the other. The issue of class, in other words, is re-emerging in American politics.”

I added that these divisions were arising from “the different impact of world economic trends on different classes” and were producing “a foreign policy debate [that] increasingly pits social and economic classes against each other, focusing on the questions of who pays the costs and who incurs most of the risks involved in competing economic and security policies.

“Polls repeatedly show that the best educated and wealthiest Americans are the staunchest internationalists on both security and economic issues. The surveys also show strong support for internationalist policies to be lacking nearly everywhere else on the social spectrum. “

And there’s more. I wrote that “At the mass public level,” the nationalist faction would be comprised of “blue collar union members, white collar middle managers and small businessmen from the Perotista ranks; family- and community-oriented immigrants; and grassroots environmental activists.”

As for their rivals, “The social base of internationalism would include many big multinational businesses and their upper level managers, financiers, professionals, and retailers. Journalists and the rest of the mass media, as well as academics, also tend to support an idealistic globalism. Other members of a new internationalist coalition might include minorities whose fear of cultural conservative nationalists outweighs their qualms about job-destroying internationalist free-trade economics, and affluent, mainstream environmentalists.”

And there was more on the role of the media: “Much of what they lack in numbers, the internationalists would make up for in money, influence, and the aura of respectability that their media allies will continue to provide.”

What would happen to liberal and conservative internationalists in the process? The former

“may wind up permanently alienating labor, minorities, and the white-collar middle class whether they intend to or not – and lose their identity as champions of the underdog and as agents of progressive change in the process. Internationalists of the Right will face similar problems. Without offering their voters something more than NAFTA, the continuing “creative destruction” of their jobs, endless foreign interventions, and Marilyn Quayle’s definition of family values, it is difficult to see them avoiding George [H.W.] Bush’s political fate.”

For good measure, I added that if they do crystallize, the resulting new coalitions are likely to be “less inclined to compromise than their predecessors….”

Clearly, I didn’t get everything right. But I’m kind of amazed at how many developments I absolutely nailed. Further, we’re only a few months into the Trump era. In other words, the American political realignment I anticipated still probably has a long ways to go.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why the Big Media Really Don’t Get It

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elites, Establishment Media, income inequality, media, Sarah Kendzior, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Just when you think that the Establishment Media is almost totally hopeless when it comes to reporting on the economy, someone new (at least to me) comes along to restore at least some faith in Big Journalism.

The reporter in question is Sarah Kendzior, and one of her latest pieces stunningly explains one of the biggest frustrations experienced by so many Americans when they read its coverage of economic issues: why major new organizations keep talking up an economy that has failed so much of the nation’s population.

Kendzior’s work has documented and quantified an explanation that many of us have long suspected but couldn’t demonstrate conclusively: “For one thing, pundits and politicians are unlikely to work in the regions where most Americans live.” More specifically, journalists are found in those relatively few big American cities that have, on the whole, enjoyed surging prosperity even as most of the rest of the country has experienced sagging fortunes at best.  And their isolation from Main Street America keeps growing.  As Kendzior has found:

“In 2004, one out of eight journalism jobs was based in New York, Washington DC, or Los Angeles—a high number even for that era. By 2014, that number had changed one of every four, even as the cost of rent in those cities rose astronomically, and the number of unpaid and low-paid positions exploded. This has led to journalism increasingly becoming an occupation of elites, with the reporters of the rest of the country underrepresented and the concerns of their communities underreported.”

This piece by Kendzior makes another economic argument that deserves a lot more attention: The geography of prosperity looks set to become even more highly concentrated going forward. Why? Because the yawning and expanding gap between living standards outside these islands of affluence and living costs inside them is preventing talented American from moving to cities and utilizing their abilities to the fullest. To quote Kendzior again:

“[T]he talent of the heartland is wasted as job-seekers from these regions remained trapped. For millennials, many of whom are saddled with massive college debt and are expected to complete unpaid internships, the situation is particularly dire. Moving to the city where their field is located can prove impossible without family wealth. Careers are ending before they have the chance to begin.”

Kendzior’s analysis makes clear that this disheartening trend will be generally neglected by this elite media, too. But her own work encouragingly indicates that such developments won’t be ignored quite so completely, and I’m looking forward to more of it.

Im-Politic: What a Pundit’s Confession Really Tells Us

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chattering class, David Brooks, elites, Im-Politic, media, punditocracy, pundits, The New York Times

New York Times columnist David Brooks just wrote one of the most remarkable articles this remarkable campaign season has seen yet on the Donald Trump phenomenon, and on how (incompetently) the nation’s chattering classes have handled it. In about 1,000 words, Brooks made clear not only how thoroughly he and most of the punditocracy has misunderstood an enormous swathe of the nation’s population, but how little it knows even about the elite policy communities that supposedly comprise its home turf. Along the way, Brooks also provided a valuable (if unwitting) reminder that the chattering classes have become so hidebound and cocooned that they’re no longer subject to the kind of accountability that governs most of the rest of American life.

Brooks’ April 29 offering was highlighted by what looks like an admirable confession. Although continuing to portray Trump as a “gruesome,” Joe McCarthy-class demagogue, Brooks also wrote that the success of his unparalleled maverick candidacy (along with the strength of Senator Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic crown) “has reminded us of how much pain there is in this country.” But then Brooks went significantly, and revealingly, beyond this increasingly standard punditocracy position.

“I was surprised by Trump’s success,” he wrote, “because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own.”  And he promised to “rip [himself] out of that and go where [he feels] least comfortable.”

Obviously, the more first-hand contact media (and other) elite mouthpieces have with Main Street America (in all its variants), the better, though there’s no guarantee that these experiences will enlighten. Brooks also has some legitimate credentials as a reporter and social observer – though the work that made his reputation in the latter category perhaps characteristically focused on “the new upper class and how they got there.”

But his “bad pattern” mea culpa amounted to admitting a sin that is all-but-unforgivable in journalism – or should be. Brooks just basically told us that he’s spent much and perhaps most of his time in the punditocracy – and certainly this presidential cycle – pontificating about issues like income inequality and middle class stagnation and how they’ve been affected by Trump’s signature issues of trade and immigration from entirely inside one of the most brightly gilded cages imaginable.

As is all too typical of the chattering class’ members, even if they come from working or middle class backgrounds, they’re become so far removed from them that they live utterly different lives, face none of the economic and social pressure experienced by their less fortunate compatriots, and in all likelihood have spent no meaningful time recently in Main Street neighborhoods or even states (excepting of course quick swing-throughs during campaign seasons).

Yet even granting that Brooks is a purveyor of “opinion journalism” (accent, it seems on “opinion”), he’s just acknowledged that his opinions have resulted mainly from whatever prejudices and groupthink commonplaces he’s absorbed from the Acela Corridor bubble he inhabits. In other words, his sources for the sweeping observations he has confidently made about the nation’s politics, society, culture, and economy comprise a flyspeck-scale, entirely unrepresentative sample. His essays and verbal commentaries don’t result from literal fabrication – the ultimate journalistic crime. But even if not disseminating deliberate falsehoods, Brooks is nonetheless trafficking in exercises in wild extrapolation whose results are comparably inaccurate, or at least misleading.

Moreover, especially on the economic issues I follow most closely, Brooks doesn’t even consult with a representative range of policy community sources! True, scholars, other policy specialists, and think tanks that consistently criticize current trade and immigration policies take decidedly minority positions. But they exist, and they’re not that difficult to find, especially since they manage to attract media coverage on a quasi-regular basis. If you read and listen to nothing but Brooks, however (and so many others like him), you’d never know this. Either Brooks is unfamiliar with them, or chooses to ignore them. Neither conclusion is flattering.

Finally, although he’s not alone in this failing, Brooks’ column not only shows unmistakably that he’s gotten the biggest political story by far of recent decades flat wrong – Trump’s rise – but admits this blunder. In other walks of life, incompetence of this magnitude is called a firing offense. And confessing this ineptitude makes this task a slam dunk for an employer. Yet Brooks keeps bloviating on – no doubt because his views closely mirror those of the family that still runs The Times – in yet another display of the gulf between the chattering classes and the country they feel entitled to lead.  

Im-Politic: A Slobbering Media Love Affair…with Jeb

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2016 election, Donald Trump, elites, Establishment Media, Gawker.com, Im-Politic, Immigration, J.K. Trotter, Jeb Bush, media bias, NBC News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Trade, Washington Post

A major theme of RealityChek since its launch has been that, if America’s Big Media ever took seriously their one-time mandate to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” those days are long gone. Instead, establishment journalists collectively have clearly decided that their priority instead is coddling the nation’s political and business elites and protecting their privileged perches from the great unwashed. That’s when they aren’t crossing back and forth among those worlds.

So you can just imagine how (ruefully) pleased I’ve been these last few days to read through various media post-mortems of former Jeb Bush’s historically disastrous presidential campaign. In an ordinary campaign year, media types surely would have roasted the former odds-on Republican favorite as a monument to nepotism whose respectable turn as Florida governor was massively offset by his family connection with his widely reviled brother, the former president, by his reliance on George W. Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy advisors, and by the oceans of special interest money that were funding his White House run.

But of course, this isn’t an ordinary political year, and although Jeb Bush was not exactly adored by the mainstream press, he was often flatteringly contrasted with Donald Trump. This media anti-Christ’s capitol offense has been daring to blast away at the two of American elites’ most sacred cows – the job- and wage-killing mass immigration and offshoring-friendly trade policies that simultaneously enabled the establishment to claim cosmopolitan, noblesse oblige ideals even as it’s pocketed nearly all of the lavish benefits.

Now that Bush is toast politically (and both Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and establishment darling Marco Rubio, Republican Senator from Florida, are still running reasonably strong), the media has been freed to let its pro-Bush – and thinly disguised anti-Trump – biases hang out.

We should all be indebted to Gawker.com’s J.K. Trotter for compiling some of the most cringe-inducing. All are worth reading, but in case you’re pressed for time, here are a few lowlights, as well as examples I’ve found:

>From The New York Times‘ Ashley Parker: “[A]t the core, what made Jeb compelling to cover was that he was deeply, impossibly human.

“In a cycle where so many other candidates were able to toggle effortlessly between soaring speeches and masterful debate performances, between well-rehearsed outrage and manufactured indignation, Jeb almost seemed to think aloud in real time, and we got to watch him muddle and bumble through, just like any real person….

“Jeb was a flawed candidate, who ran a wildly imperfect campaign. But he struggled mightily and did it on his own terms, trying to talk about big, serious things. And for that, perhaps, he deserves a round of applause.”

>From the Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza: At January’s South Carolina Republican debate, Bush “made serious and nuanced points about immigration and foreign policy, and he demonstrated deep knowledge on almost every issue. …as he has throughout the campaign, Bush painted a picture of a complex world — from the Middle East to here at home. His answers to questions were larded with detail and complexity. On Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country, for example, he was measured and thoughtful; ‘every time we send signals like this, we send a signal of weakness, not strength,’ Bush said.

“Jeb knows the world is complex. He knows that problems aren’t solved simply because you say so. He knows the work of governance is hard. ”

>From The Wall Street Journal‘s Beth Reinhard and Rebecca Ballhaus: “Mr. Bush’s departure also reflects the fading of a brand of Republican politics as a harder-edged conservatism comes into focus. His father advocated a ‘kinder, gentler nation,’ his brother described himself as a ‘compassionate conservative’ while Mr. Bush called for ‘the right to rise.’

“It was conservatism laced with the Bush family’s sense of noblesse oblige and old-fashioned patriotism, manifested in a focus on education policy, a desire to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and a strong military presence on the world stage.

“But Mr. Bush faced a GOP electorate angry at all things Washington, making ties to the establishment a vulnerability rather than a strength.”

>From TIME’s Philip Elliott and Zeke J. Miller: “At a time when experience was a vulnerability rather than a resume line, Bush insisted on running a policy-centric campaign. It was a year that saw bluster overtake substance, and Bush refused to shift. ‘In this campaign, I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds,’ he said before leaving the stage, tears visible in his eyes. His insistence on running his campaign his way proved his undoing. While rivals mastered clipped sound bites, he held forth on policy. When reporters tried to goad him into questions about politics, he defaulted to wonkdom. If a voter took the time to attend his town halls, he owed it to them to give a thoughtful answer.”

>From NBC News: “Bush ran for all the right reasons, according to NBC News. He told voters he had a ‘servant’s heart’ and, in private and public, his campaign always appeared motivated by duty rather than personal ambition right up to his final speech.”

It’s important to note that all these strongly opinionated views have come not from pundits – who are supposed to be opinionated in their work. They come from beat reporters and political analysts – who are not. The media’s increasingly open biases can only be signaling ever mounting levels of contempt for Main Street, and warning everyday Americans that trusting all the news they watch and read can be hazardous for their political and economic health.

Im-Politic: American Elites’ America Last Leanings

Tags

E.J. Dionne, elites, Establishment Media, globalization, Im-Politic, incomes, middle class, national interests, offshoring, Steven Weisman, The Washington Post, Trade, trade agreements, working class

Although I don’t know E.J. Dionne well, the Washington Post columnist has always been one of my favorite journalists. It’s not his politics – they’re too orthodox lefty for me. It’s been his personality – always respectful and open-minded in our limited dealings, and equally gracious, tolerant, and genuinely curious in print, despite being highly opinionated.

That’s why it pains me to write that his newest offering widely missed the mark on the first-order issue of identifying the U.S. government’s top economic priorities. It’s only saving grace is underscoring how wide the philosophical and worldview gaps have grown between the the Establishment Media (at least much of it) and the general public (at least much of it).

Summarizing a new book on the new world economy, Dionne commends the author for “painstakingly avoiding dogmatism” and taking care “in laying out the often-agonizing choices” created by globalization. For example, he continues, the rapid growth of international trade and investment,

“has ‘elevated the living standards of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide’ but also ‘has helped suppress the incomes of low-skilled middle-class workers in rich countries.’ Where do our loyalties lie? How do we balance obligations to our fellow citizens in the communities and countries in which we live against the interests of those far away?”

Excuse me, but “Time out”! “Where do our loyalties lie”? Not only should the answer be screamingly obvious to any American citizen, but just when did this become a legitimate question? It certainly would never be asked with any sincerity anywhere else in the world, except perhaps in affluent Scandinavia and elsewhere in guilt-ridden northern Europe. That undeniable reality alone should warn Americans against such cosmopolitanism. A U.S. leadership unsure whether its first obligations are to its own citizens is a poor bet to protect their interests adequately in a world where other major-power leaders aren’t nearly so confused.

Then there’s the democracy angle (which Dionne ironically deals with – from a different angle – in his following sentence). How many American voters do you know have elected public officials to pursue foreign interests – however morally compelling – over their own? Just as important, how many of those public officials themselves put America Last? At the least, aren’t they obliged to identify themselves clearly, so their constituents can know who they’re supporting? Private citizens of course have every right to set their own international priorities (provided, of course, that they don’t clash with or undermine official American diplomacy). But elected or appointed members of the U.S. government can’t legitimately enjoy this option – unless they’ve advertised their views before entering public life.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that the United States should never subordinate its needs and wants to those of others. Often in world politics, and politics in general, long-term gain can justify short-term pain. But if the pain is likely to last longer, and keep intensifying, the American people have a right to know about such consequences before the key decisions are made. Nor do I have any intrinsic problems with using U.S. assets to create overseas benefits for their own sakes (as opposed to self-interested goals like buying and keeping allies). But again, these choices need to be approved in advance by the voters. Otherwise, politicians would have free rein to be charitable and compassionate with Other People’s Money.

And in a sense, this is what Dionne and the author he lauds (former journalist-turned Washington think-tanker Steven Weisman) arguably, if unwittingly, are engaged in. For it’s much easier to call for more altruism in American policy when high incomes make such measures affordable. Unfortunately, the kinds of Americans who Dionne and Weisman at least recognize will bear the brunt of the price aren’t in this position.

There are also major policy reasons to doubt the wisdom of globalization policies that elevate raising foreign incomes over maintaining American incomes. As I’ve written repeatedly, offshoring-friendly U.S. trade policies that have had these effects bear much responsibility for the last financial crisis, which harmed the populations of first and third world countries alike. But that’s an argument that’s reasonably debatable on the merits. Acting as if foreign populations’ interests should outweigh Americans should be completely out of bounds – again, unless the public actively approves. And the fact that thoughtful commentators like Dionne even view this option as deserving consideration, whether as an “agonizing choice” or not, tells you most of what you need to know about why so many working- and middle-class voters nowadays are so furious at their nation’s elites.

Im-Politic: Why the Elites’ Trump Bashing Keeps Flopping

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2016 election, Bloomberg, Cheap Labor Lobby, China, Donald Trump, elites, free trade agreements, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jobs, media, Mitch McConnell, Muslim ban, NBC News, Obama, political class, punditocracy, Rasmussen, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Timothy Egan, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, wages

Two weeks ago, I wrote that if opponents of Donald Trump really wanted to stop him in his tracks, they’d support seriously addressing the legitimate economic grievances of his supporters. The firestorm ignited by the Republican presidential front-runner’s proposal temporarily to bar non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States signals that legitimate national and personal security grievances need to be dealt with, too. After all, that would be a constructive response. Instead, most of the anti-Trump forces, especially in the nation’s elite media and political classes, have doubled down on the invective.  

New York Times columnist Timothy Egan’s latest offering was especially revealing in this regard. He both repeated the by-now standard denunciations of Trump as a neo-fascist, bigot, and xenophobe. But then he added an interesting wrinkle. Like some of his colleagues, he made a (typically condescending) nod to how “most” Trump supporters “do not see the shadow of the [Nazi] Reich when they look in the mirror. They are white, lower middle class, with little education beyond high school. The global economy has run them over. They don’t recognize their country. And they need a villain.”

Egan also just as typically charged that “Trump has no solutions for the desperate angst of his followers.” That’s patently false. Trump’s position paper on China, closely resembles the specifics-laden approach taken by many critics of America’s China trade policies in Congress – especially in Democratic ranks. And although his call for mass deportation is surely unworkable (and likely to be replaced by a completely realistic attrition strategy), Trump’s immigration position paper is similarly detailed and entirely practicable – albeit anathema to the corporate Cheap Labor Lobby and the guilt-saturated elitist mass immigration crowd on the Left.

But then Egan did something completely weird. He insisted that “Tearing up trade agreements is not going to happen.” But he himself offered no specifics as to why. After all, all treaties and similar agreements have “out” clauses. Abundant evidence shows that these deals and related policies have slowed growth (and therefore job creation) tremendously in this already miserable economic recovery. And opposition to the latest attempt to add to this destructive record – President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership – keeps mounting. Even so dedicated an outsourcer toady as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has just urged that Congress not vote on the TPP until after the election.

Which all raises the question: Is Egan ignorant enough to believe that a major course change for U.S. trade policy is still impossible? Or is he one of those boardroom liberals who’s trying to prevent one?

Meanwhile, the futility of trying to marginalize Trump at all costs becomes clearer by the day. The latest evidence comes from the current round of opinion polls. As I’ve often written, they’re often full of problems and this last batch is especially all over the map. But two of them (from Rasmussen and Bloomberg) show that Trump’s Muslim ban – which I oppose – has attracted significant and partly bipartisan backing, and the Rasmussen survey shows it enjoys a plurality.

Perhaps more revealing, NBC and The Wall Street Journal, which pegged backing for the ban at only 25 percent nationally, found in a pre-ban sounding that 54 percent of Americans believed that the United States admits too many immigrants from the Middle East – including more than a third of Democrats. And what does the public think of President Obama’s approach to terrorism and ISIS – which particularly in the former case the punditocracy seems to consider the gold standard? According to a new New York Times-CBS News survey, 57 percent disapprove.

The bottom-line here appears pretty clear. Mainstream political and media elites are increasingly convinced that Trump has “crossed lines” that must never be crossed, and data keeps appearing that, thanks largely and understandably to their clueless insistence that standard approaches are working as well as possible, the lines themselves are moving dramatically.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Middle East Refugee Admissions Must be Hyper-Cautious

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anti-semitism, elites, ISIS, liberals, libertarians, Marco Rubio, media, Middle East, neoconservatives, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris attacks, progressives, refugees, Syria, terrorism, The New York Times, World War II, xenophobia

If there are good arguments against hyper-cautious U.S. policies towards accepting Middle East refugees, I haven’t heard them yet. Instead, those urging lenient, “generous” approaches have simply supplied the latest burst of evidence that large percentages of America’s political and media elites, as well as other avowed progressives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians, have lost most of their common sense and even their instinct for self-preservation.

It’s also important to note that too many advocates of tighter restrictions for those fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq and the Middle East’s general turmoil have taken butt-headed positions, too. (The main example – admitting only Christians.) But on balance, the restrictionists have been much more realistic than their opponents – whose ranks of course include President Obama.

I’d quote from his remarks on the subject earlier this week in Turkey but they were so narrow and shallow (focusing solely on that religious discrimination issue) that they’re easily dismissed. No better was the New York Times’ main editorial on refugees. Its writers – rightly seen as leading voices of what passes for American liberalism these days – endorsed Mr. Obama’s claim that the restrictionists were “betraying” American values. But they also accused the restrictionists (without naming them) of “confusing refugees with terrorists” and of “absurdly” portraying Muslims as “inherently dangerous,” thereby running the risk of validating terrorist propaganda about the Western world’s implacable hostility.

Most revealingly, it handled the crucial issue of vetting refugees streaming in large numbers from lands completely convulsed by chaos simply by scoffing at Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s concern that “you can have 1,000 people come in and 999 of them are just poor people fleeing oppression and violence, but one of them is an ISIS fighter.” Surely, The Times contended, “America can offer a smarter and more generous response.” But it seems that presenting specific recommendations would have meant exceeding space limits, since none were mentioned.

My perusal of the Mainstream and social media has turned up several prominent arguments for leniency that at least make a nod toward history and logic – but only in the most superficial and tendentious ways.

For example, one supposed “Aha!” point made by the lenience backers consists of citing polls from the 1930s indicating strong U.S. public opposition to admitting (often Jewish) refugees fleeing the Nazi-fication of Germany and outbreaks of similar persecution elsewhere in central and eastern Europe. Those past restrictionists unmistakably were motivated by anti-semitism and broader xenophobia. Therefore, imply the modern refugees’ avowed champions, so are today’s restrictionists.

But was the world of the 1930s threatened by anti-American Jewish- or other European-dominated terrorist groups? That’s news to me. One Facebook friend noted that (at least two) German spies had made it to the United Kingdom in December, 1940 disguised as refugees, suggesting that this kind of danger did exist.

But at that time, the U.K. had been at war and fully mobilized for more than a year. Normal peacetime transport between the continent and the British Isles was non-existent, the government was closely guarding the coast against spies and saboteurs, and whatever refugees who managed to leave (perhaps more heavily guarded) Germany, its allies, or occupied Europe, were few in number and easily identified. Indeed, the aforementioned spies came in a rowboat that was escorted to British shores by British forces. Such episodes are supposed to hold lessons for Americans today?

Others advocating for today’s refugees have noted that terrorists can also enter the United States as travelers using valid foreign or forged passports, and that threats can also come from domestic “lone wolves” and cells. All true. But are those observations supposed to demonstrate that there’s no point in vetting Middle East refugees today with the greatest care? That no vetting at all should take place? That today’s procedures should be loosened? If so, that’s tantamount to saying that since many crimes will never be prevented or solved, all law enforcement is pointless.

In fact, this kind of reasoning most plausibly buttresses the restrictionist argument. That is, it’s possible that some refugees or others in the Middle East and elsewhere who are politically inactive may be so enraged by restrictive U.S. and other Western policies that they wind up signing up with ISIS or similar groups. But the strength of these organizations makes clear that many other individuals in many countries have responded to many other terrorist recruiting pitches over many years. So why not use the greatest possible vetting prudence to at least boost the odds that dangerous extremists won’t cross American borders?

Of course, many supporters of lenience do agree that vetting is essential. Logically, this implies a confidence that the current system is satisfactory. But it’s difficult to see why this confidence is justified. It’s true that the current screening process is rigorous and protracted. It’s equally true, however, that significant numbers of Middle East refugees haven’t been admitted into the United States in the Age of ISIS. And although the United States has indeed safely admitted many such individuals previously, not until the latest round of Middle East conflicts had refugee numbers themselves reached flood-tide proportions.

Moreover, precisely because of these conflicts, today’s refugees present unusually difficult vetting challenges. As made clear even by Obama administration officials, the data needed to corroborate identity, criminal records, and other crucial details simply don’t exist or aren’t available.

Ironically, on the one hand, the detailed scrutiny refugees already receive makes clear that, under current U.S. procedures, there’s no chance of the country being flooded with large numbers any time soon. So unless these procedures are considerably eased, and/or American leaders decide to expand greatly the refugee numbers the nation has promised to take (currently “at least 10,000”), neither the threats feared by the restrictionists, nor the humanitarian relief desired by their opponents, will significantly increase any time soon.

But the ability of fewer than ten terrorists to turn Paris into a war zone for hours last week demonstrates that even overwhelming screening success may not prevent unacceptable danger. And the administration’s stated determination to bring all 10,000 Syrian refugees next year troublingly indicates a desire to expedite vetting, not reenforce it.

So anyone listening with intelligence and genuinely wanting maximum possible protection for the American people should recognize that most restrictionists are saying, “Better safe than sorry,” not urging completely closed doors. It’s also obvious that their critics don’t have a message remotely this responsible, or even coherent.