Im-Politic: How Trump is Letting the China Virus Crisis Go to Waste

Tags

CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, China trade deal, China virus, coronavirus, Im-Politic, National Institutes of Health, pandemics, pharmaceuticals, Phase One, Trump, Wuhan, Wuhan virus, Xi JInPing

As tragic as the coronavirus has been for victims in China and elsewhere and their loved ones, both the humanitarian and the Machiavellian in me can’t help but think that President Trump is squandering some great and closely related opportunities being created by the outbreak.

To be sure, the President hasn’t completely ignored the disease. He tweeted yesterday that “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!.”

He stated at a January 22 press conference at the big global economy conference in Davos, Switzerland that the U.S. government has a plan to contain the virus in the United States. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health say they’re working on a cure – in tandem with the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

But given that the United States is the world leader in medical research, and given that the President has just (justifiably) eaten China’s lunch with the new Phase One trade deal, it seems like much more could and should be done, and in a much higher profile way.

For example, the President, who isn’t shy about broadcasting his achievements and intentions, should announce that’s he’s directing federal research agencies to treat the coronavirus threat as a top priority, as well as seek a similar commitment from U.S. medical schools and drug companies. And how about a summit of American medical research leaders from the public and private sectors to brainstorm both on addressing the present danger and the overall growing threat of pandemics resulting from the ever smaller world being created every day by increasing worldwide commerce and travel?

In fact, why even restrict this meeting to American participants? The President should think about either inviting their foreign counterparts to the session as well, or to a follow-up meeting.

That’s what my humanitarian instincts tell me.

And my more political self? It would advise the President explicitly and publicly to offer his buddy, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whatever assistance the Chinese need. For good measure, he should propose sending a team of American scientists and public health experts from the government and private sector to China to assess the situation first-hand (including the status of the disease and China’s progress in combating it) and develop recommendations to improve the Chinese response.

Clearly, these actions would serve humanitarian ends. But they would also put Beijing’s dictators in quite the pickle. Right after having their clocks cleaned in the trade negotiations, they’d be put in a position of accepting American help (which would involve a huge loss of the face so critical in Chinese culture), or declining assistance (which can only further anger a Chinese public that’s already not thrilled with the crisis management skills of either the central government or local officials). In other words, either way, the United States scores political points with public opinion both worldwide and in China in particular.

Meanwhile, no one could legitimately criticize Mr. Trump for declaring that all agriculture imports from China are being banned, since the CDC admits that, although it lacks “any evidence to suggest that animals or animal products imported from China pose a risk for spreading 2019-nCoV [the technical name for the virus in question] in the United States,” that “This is a rapidly evolving situation.”

It’s become a well-worn cliché that the Chinese word for “crisis” combines the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” But even though this specific claim seems questionable at best, the underlying idea and logic are compelling, and need to be applied to U.S. coronavirus policy liji (Chinese for “immediately”).  There’s no excuse, to quote former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, for letting the opportunity go to waste.

Im-Politic: Media Bias Even in Impeachment Trial Basics

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House managers, Im-Politic, impeachment, impeachment trial, Trump, Washington Post

Charges of media bias are so common nowadays that their simple volume can undercut their credibility. But at least from time to time some such instances are so flagrant that they should generate condemnation across the political or ideological spectra, and the latest came yesterday on the Washington Post website’s home page.

It’s no longer on-line (and didn’t appear in print), but it consisted of capsule descriptions of the House’s impeachment managers and Trump legal team, and I was so offended that I made sure to copy them as soon as I saw them. Here they are, starting with the managers (and they are indeed worth presenting in full):

Rep. Adam B. Schiff: “The California Democrat is known for distilling complicated subjects clearly and having a willingness to go after Trump’s soft spots.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler: “The New York Democrat leads the committee traditionally in charge of impeachment and shepherded the articles through Congress.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren: “The California Democrat, who is serving her 13th term, is one of the most experienced members of Congress on impeachment.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries: “House Speaker Pelosi described the New York Democrat as ‘an accomplished litigator in private practice’ before seeking office.”

Rep. Val Demings: “The Florida Democrat was the first female police chief in Orlando, and Pelosi cited her law enforcement background as a strength.”

Rep. Jason Crow: “The Democrat from Colorado served as an Army Ranger and was partner in a law firm in Colorado.”

Rep. Sylvia Garcia: “The first-term Texas Democrat was a municipal judge in Houston and was one of the first Latinas elected to Congress from Texas.”

And here are the descriptions of the Trump team:

Pat Cipollone: “Republican lawmakers have described Cipollone as the ‘quarterback’ for Trump’s: legal strategy.”

Jay Sekulow: “Sekulow is the leader of the president’s personal legal team and he represented Trump during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation.”

Ken Starr: “Starr is the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton.”

Alan Dershowitz: “Dershowitz is the Harvard Law emeritus professor who advised the defense team in football star O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.”

Pam Bondi: “Bondi was the attorney general in Florida for eight years and has a number of ties to Trump.”

Robert Ray: “Ray is the former independent counsel, replacing Starr in October 1999, who oversaw the agreement with Clinton that averted a possible criminal trial.”

Pat Philbin: “Philbin is Cipollone’s right-hand man, his most senior deputy in the White House’s legal office.”

Michael Purpora: “Purpura took the lead on battling to prevent White House grand jury testimony from the Mueller investigation from being made public.”

You see the pattern here? Of the Post‘s seven House manager blurbs, four (those for Schiff, Lofgren, Jeffries, and Crow) contained flattering value judgments. And the favorable Crow description included experience that’s of course impressive militarily, but completely irrelevant to the impeachment trial, or any legal matters.

Of the seven Trump lawyer blurbs, none contained a flattering value judgment and three contained references arguably aimed at sliming their subjects (the link drawn between Dershowitz and O.J. Simpson; the observation of Bondi’s (unspecified) “ties to Trump”; and Purpura’s role in what’s all but dismissed as a cover-up.

As for Cipollone and Purpora and Philbin, it would be easy for Post readers to conclude from these otherwise straight factual portrayals that their careers have included no positions of consequence other than their Trump White House jobs – even though the first served as a senior aide to then Attorney General William P. Barr during the administration of George H.W. Bush (no fan of Mr. Trump’s); the second worked as a senior Justice Department official during the administration of George W. Bush (no Trump enthusiast, either), as well as a federal prosecutor in New York; and the third held jobs in Justice’s chain of command under Bush 43.

Everyone should be free to believe that the House managers are mainly legal eagles and/or paragons of virtue and even heroism, and that the Trump legal team is dominated by mere Trump flunkies. But such views don’t bear the slightest resemblance to facts, and if a newspaper fails to  keep this distinction straight for what should be a relatively uncontroversial informational feature, why should anyone trust it on anything less cut and dried?

Im-Politic: A Billionaire Candidate’s Massive Climate Change Blind Spot

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China, climate change, Democratic debate, Democrats, election 2020, Im-Politic, tariffs, Tom Steyer, Trump

It’s now been five days since I first heard it, but I still can hardly believe my ears because this utterance might have been the single dumbest and/or most ignorant combination of positions I’ve ever heard a leading political figure make. It came from Tom Steyer during the Democratic presidential debate last Tuesday night, and even though the California billionaire’s campaign seems to be going nowhere fast as the 2020 campaign nears its primary phase, it deserves to be spotlighted.

The first of the two statements in question? Steyer’s declaration that “On the first day [of his presidency], I would undo Mr. Trump’s [China] tariffs.” The second? “…I would declare a state of emergency on day one on climate.”

Why is this so mind-boggingly idiotic? Because as should be known by anyone who thinks he or she is qualified to be President, not only has China become by far the world’s largest emitter of the greenhouse gases held to be responsible for climate change, but as shown in the left-hand chart below, it started becoming an emitter in a class by itself at the turn of the century – i.e., right about the time when it was admitted into the World Trade Organization (WTO). And the most important effect of WTO admission was greatly complicating the challenge faced by all the world’s economies – including America’s – in using tariffs to curb the growth of China’s subsidy-fueled carbon-belching export-heavy industries. 

We don’t yet have data for 2019, but the chart also shows that the growth of China’s emissions began to slow (though they’re still growing faster than anyone else’s except India’s) as China’s economic growth (which has always been export-heavy) began slowing. Moreover, over the last year, as literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods intended for U.S. markets have been hit by President Trump with stiff tariffs, China’s growth hit a 29-year low. Think that’s a coincidence? Think again, as between 2018 and 2019, China’s annual export growth crash dove from 9.9 percent to 0.5 percent in U.S. dollar terms. (The right-hand chart, which measures emissions on a per capital basis, displays similar trends.) 

There’s nothing of course intrinsically wrong with Steyer’s passionate belief in the need to combat climate change. But his utter failure to recognize China’s immense contribution to the danger he sees makes embarrassingly clear – to put the kindest interpretation on the matter – that his knowledge base lags far behind his emotions. To the extent that other high profile climate activists repeatedly let China off the hook as well, they deserve the same criticism. And if this massive blind spot (or delusion) casts big-time doubt on Steyer’s qualifications to be President (which it should), it should have the same effect on all the other climate change resisters who display this shortcoming, too.

Im-Politic: Another Body Blow for the Trump-as-Phony-Populist Claim

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2016 election, 2020 election, Barack Obama, battleground states, counties, growth, Im-Politic, inflation-adjusted growth, Trump

Back in September, I published a piece challenging claims that President Trump is a phony populist by analyzing government data indicating that a key portion of his 2016 supporters – Americans who had twice voted for his White House predecessor, Barack Obama, before defecting to Trump World – had overall seen highly impressive gains in their annual paychecks under his administration. The evidence came from Commerce Department figures reporting on annual salary trends in the 196 counties that have voted Obama-Obama-Trump in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Recently, Commerce issued a new set of statistics permitting the issue to be examined according to another gauge – economic growth adjusted for inflation. These numbers reveal a decided Trump payoff for these voters as well and could signal that the President will retain the loyalty of most such flippers during this year’s election.

These new Commerce statistics would be noteworthy alone because they represent the federal government’s first survey of growth on the county level. But they also make clear that, at least through the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the economies of the “Trump flip counties” on the whole grew faster than they did during the final two years of the Obama administration.

As with my analysis of the county-level salary figures, this examination of the growth figures looks at the periods of the previous and current presidency closest to each other in the current business cycle. Just as I focused on private sector workers in my salary analysis, I focus on the private sector in this growth analysis (because the growth of government, which mainly reflects politicians’ decisions, sheds little light on the health of the economy as a whole).

One difference – whereas the salary analysis looked at figures in pre-inflation dollars (mainly because price-adjusted data weren’t available), these growth numbers all take inflation into account. That matters in part because the “real” figures are the growth numbers that are most closely followed by students of the entire national economy.

According to the Commerce results, total inflation-adjusted growth was greater in the final two Obama years than during the first two Trump years in 84 of the 196 flip counties – or 42.86 percent. The Trump years, however, were better growth wise during these periods for 57.14 percent of these counties.

Another important finding: During the final two Obama years, 27 of these counties saw their economies shrink in after-inflation terms in both of those years. But this plight was suffered by only 14 of the flip counties during the Trump years.

The results were much more even in terms of flip counties whose economies contracted when adjusting for prices during just one of the two final Obama years or just one of the two first Trump years. Eighty-six of the counties experienced economic contraction during one of the two final Obama years while 87 percent of the counties recorded such setbacks during one of the two first Trump years.

The Commerce growth data also suggest that some progress in reducing inequality was made in the flip counties during the first two Trump years – and possibly more than during the last two Obama years.

Specifically, in 2015, 56 of the flip counties outgrew the national private sector average of 3.3 percent in real terms, while two matched this rate.

In 2016, 82 outgrew the national private sector average and two tied it – but that national average had fallen by more than half (to 1.6 percent).

In 2017 – the first Trump year – only 49 percent of the counties grew faster than the national private sector average and two were tied. But that national average had bounced back up to 2.6 percent.

And in 2018, although the private sector’s national growth rate quickened again – to 3.2 percent adjusted for inflation – the number of Trump flip counties topping that performance jumped to 78, with six matching the national average.

The political implications of these findings become obvious – and obviously positive for the President – upon seeing how heavily the Trump flip counties are concentrated in likely 2020 battleground states and how many “winner” flip counties are found there.

Fully 47 of the 196 total flip counties are located in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio – states carried by Mr. Trump in 2016 and that are considered crucial to this year’s outcome.

In Michigan, the story for the President isn’t encouraging. Only three of its flip counties have grown faster during the first two Trump years than during the last two Obama years. But in Wisconsin and Ohio, growth under the President so far has been faster in 15 of 23 and eight of nine flip counties, respectively. (Only three of Pennsylvania’s counties, interestingly, are flippers – and two of them have grown faster so far during the Trump years.)

In addition, because he only narrowly lost Minnesota in 2016, Mr. Trump’s campaign is targeting the state this time around. With eleven of its 19 flip counties having grown faster under his presidency than during the final two years of his predecessor’s, the effort looks promising.

The new Commerce figures by no means guarantee victory for the President in November. As widely noted, his popularity is relatively low despite voters rating his economic performance highly, signaling that pocketbook issues may not override concerns about his personality, character, and other non-economic matters.

Also, the 2019 numbers won’t be out until after November, and they’re likely to weigh most heavily on the minds of voters who do prioritize the economy. In fact, fully 82 of the flip economies nationally experienced inflation-adjusted economic shrinkage in 2016 – which surely didn’t help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Nonetheless, two major national data sets now point to the conclusion that voting for Mr. Trump in 2016 has been a good bet for the lion’s share of one-time Democrats who switched presidential allegiances that year. And they strongly suggest that, if his rivals hope to use the economy against him this year, they’ll need a more convincing claim than that the President is a phony populist.

Im-Politic: Still Clueless – About Trump – After All These Years

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conservatives, election 2020, GOP, Im-Politic, Jeff Stein, Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Mainstream Media, Populism, Republicans, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Trump

Since a U.S. Presidential election year is now underway and since the Mainstream Media, for all its credibility problems, still supply the news coverage that so many voters rely on in whole or in part, it seems important to present some evidence that, nearly four years after Donald Trump’s victorious presidential run, at least two newspapers arguably at the top of the journalistic heap still have no clue as to what or why it happened.

Both examples deal with President Trump’s capture of the Republican Party, and the most disturbing of the two examples comes from The New York Times. The title of its December 21 piece – “Fear and Loathing: How Donald Trump Took Over the Republican Party” – tells you pretty much all you need to know about its perspective. Authors Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman do refer in passing to “Mr. Trump’s deviations from longstanding party orthodoxy on issues like foreign policy and tariffs,” but they apparently believe that they’ve had nothing whatever to do with the GOP’s transformation.

Instead, they portray the post-2016 party as nothing but a cult of personality, comprised of voters and a majority of office-holders so blindly devoted to and terrified of Mr. Trump, respectively, that they’re determined to overlook supposedly dispositive proof of the President’s unfitness for the White House as his Ukraine policies.

In fact, Martin and Haberman are so incapable of attributing the President’s success to the policy disasters spearheaded by the political establishment’s right wing (Google “financial crisis” and “Great Recession”) that one of their sources for this claim is no less than the head of the Club for Growth – a leading anti-Trump orthodox conservative organization.

And when they encounter a more convincing explanation – an observation by a North Carolina Republican Congressman that Mr. Trump “has a complete connection with the average Republican voter and that’s given him political power here” – they simply leave it hanging.

Somewhat better – but more bewildering – is Jeff Stein’s December 27 Washington Post report on “Trump’s quest to shatter GOP economics reached its culmination in 2019.” Let’s give Stein his due for focusing on the substance (even though he seems to forget that major Trump departures from Republican dogma began on his first day in office – when the President pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement).

But his two paragraphs could not be weirder – even from a standard political standpoint:

“Whether [the Trump era shift] will permanently remake the Republican Party, on the other hand, remains an open question.

“‘Republican lawmakers privately still believe the deficit is a problem and support free trade — but they’re not going to say that publicly, because it’s not where their voters are,” said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the libertarian-leaning Manhattan Institute. ‘I’m not sure Trump has changed the minds of Republican lawmakers as much as he has won over the base and lawmakers understand crossing the president is political suicide.’”

There’s no question that the long-term future of conservative, Trump-ian populism is still up in the air – if only because its triumph has been so sudden, and because largely as a result, its ability to create the institutional underpinnings needed for durability can’t be taken for granted.

But does Riedl really believe that Republican lawmakers matter to the party more than the base? That may be convenient for someone in a weakening establishment struggling to avoid the ash heap of history. But does Stein buy it? Or does his use of Riedl’s statement indicate that, like so many Mainstream Media reporters, he identifies with that weakening establishment, too?

Im-Politic: Trends that are Trump’s Reelection Friends?

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Adam Schiff, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, economy, election 2020, Elizabeth Warren, Gallup, Im-Politic, independents, Jobs, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Trump, Tulsi Gabbard

Don’t look now, but Gallup has just given President Trump two major end-of-the-year gifts in two separate sets of poll results it’s just published. Gift Number One: Mr. Trump this year moved into a tie with his White House predecessor, Barack Obama, as the man most admired by Americans. Gift Number Two: The state of the U.S. Economy, widely viewed as one of the most important determinants of Americans’ votes for President, has faded notably in their minds as a top national concern.

Impeachment, and the nonstop political coverage of Mr. Trump’s alleged wrongdoing, surely have been America’s leading political stories this year. But all the same, the President and Obama jointly headed the list of the country’s most admired man. Better yet for Trump-ers:  The survey was conducted in early December, so respondents had lots of time to digest the impeachment drama. And the possible icing on the cake – the tie was produced by a one percentage point reduction in the Obama score from 2018 (when he won this contest – and for the twelfth time!) and a five percentage point rise in the Trump score.

Further, although trend data isn’t available, Mr. Trump was named most admired by 10 percent of independents. That figure trailed the Obama total (12 percent), but not by much. And the former President won’t be on any ballots this year. 

The results for some of the President’s other major opponents and critics are bound to cheer him, too. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who’s helped spearhead the impeachment drive, increased his score from 2018 – but only by less than one percent to one percent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also rose in the poll – but only from one percent to two percent.

As for the group of Democratic contenders for Mr. Trump’s job, the best performers in this survey were Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Hawaii House Member Tulsi Gabbard, and California Senator Kamala Harris (who recently dropped out). Yet they all garnered only one percent of Americans’ votes. Nonetheless, all did better than former Vice President Joe Biden, whose backers for this title declined from one percent in 2018 to less than one percent this year.

As for the economy, since the global financial crisis produced the Great Recession starting at the end of 2007, it’s been rated as “the most important problem in the U.S.” in Gallup surveys seven times (the last coming in 2016). In addition, “jobs” was mentioned among the top four most important problems nine times. (I find it odd that the two are presented separately by Gallup as well.)

But since the Trump inaugural, the economy has vanished from the ranks of the top four national problems, and the only appearance made by jobs was in 2017 (when it came in fourth).

Even if polling was more of a science than an art, none of these results would guarantee President Trump’s reelection. One potential trouble spot: During each of his years in office so far, “government” has topped Americans’ lists of the country’s most important problems. The Gallup results indicate that respondents assign about equal blame for Washington dysfunction to Mr. Trump and the Republicans in Congress on the one hand, and to the Democrats in Congress on the other. But during the Trump administration, the percentages prioritizing this concern have risen overall from previous levels – and markedly.

The big takeaway for me is that if the President turns and keeps his focus to at least a reasonable extent on substantive issues like the economy, and shoots off fewer dumbbell and wholly unnecessary tweets and remarks (here’s a prime recent example), and if no new misconduct-related bombshells emerge, he’ll calm the nerves of the independents he needs to win back from their 2018 defection to the Democrats, in particular relieve their Trump Exhaustion Syndrome, and win reelection pretty handily. The big fly in this ointment, of course, is that the above prescription so far has never been followed by Mr. Trump.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media Keep Coddling Illegal Alien Crime

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Central America, crime, gang violence, gangs, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Long Island, Mainstream Media, MS-13, Open Borders, Rupert Murdoch, The New York Post, The New York Times, Trump

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and bloggers.

I’m in the middle of a planned little RealityChek break but sometimes you can be sitting around reading the papers lazily and an item (or two) just jolts you into action. In this case, it was the radically different coverage by The New York Post and The New York Times of Friday’s announcement of mass arrests on Long Island, New York, of alleged members of the Central America-based gang MS-13.

MS-13 is held responsible for any number of horrific murders and other crimes in the area (and around the nation), and the news made the front pages of both papers. The Post‘s initial display was more prominent, but then again, it’s a more regionally focused publication, so no one can have any legitimate beef with The Times somewhat lower key approach. Indeed, let’s not forget that The Times is a more than somewhat lower-keyed paper to start with.

But here’s what should be the subject of a big beef. Even though immigration policy was by no means the Post article’s main angle, the print edition article did quote “a federal source” (federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities worked together on the investigations leading to the arrests) as saying that an estimated half of the defendants are non-citizens in the United States illegally. (This claim was left out of the on-line version.) Both versions of the article quoted (presumably other) officials as stating that the newly indicted, in the reporters’ words, “include illegal immigrants, US citizens, and non-citizens who are in the country legally.”

And at the very end, the article noted that “President Donald Trump has often cited the dangers of the MS-13 “infestation” to push for tougher immigration laws.”

All in all, then, this tabloid, owned by Australian conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and which often covers and comments on the President favorably, looks to have provided an account of the arrests with an appropriate degree of balance and context.

You’d think that The New York Times, which long has proudly boasted that it presents “All the News That’s Fit to Print” would have performed at least as well. But do you know how many times The Times coverage, in print or on-line, mentioned the legal status of any of those arrested? Exactly none.

The paper did manage, though, to report – quite prominently in the piece – that “The gang’s notoriety and bloody tactics have caught the attention of President Trump, who has often invoked its name and reputation as a way to justify his immigration policy. He has referred to the group as an ‘infestation’ and to its members as ‘animals.’ In 2018, he invited the mother of one MS-13 murder victim to be his guest at the State of the Union address.

“And on Friday, the president went on Twitter to use the arrests as an argument for his immigration policy, saying that the gang takedown was an example of how ‘we are getting MS-13 gang members, and many other people that shouldn’t be here, out of our country.’”

In other words, any’one relying solely on The Times coverage could easily have gotten the impression that Mr. Trump is simply using MS-13 as a baseless – or at least suspicious – way to fan immigration-related fears. 

Since it’s a free country, The Times is perfectly within its rights to pretend or to suggest that the spread of Central American-based gangs like MS-13 has absolutely nothing to do with American immigration policy — except in the minds of xenophobes like President Trump.  But this kind of treatment belongs in its commentary pages, not in hard news reporting where facts and accurate context are supposed to matter.

Sadly, though, the paper’s coverage is only the latest instance of Mainstream Media news organizations — and other Open Borders supporters — coddling a vicious criminal ring which would have only a minor presence in America had the nation’s previous Presidents and Congresses taken seriously their responsibility to enforce border security.  As a result, it’s legitimate to wonder how many more innocent residents of this country, legal and illegal, need to be victimized by illegal alien crime for its enablers to wake up. 

Im-Politic: Another Possible Impeachable Offense: The Globalists’ Afghanistan War

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Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Craig Whitlock, George W. Bush, globalism, House Judiciary Committee, Im-Politic, impeachment, jihadism, Matt Gaetz, nation-building, Presidents, terrorism, Washington Post

It almost looks providential that within 48 hours, all these events transpired:

>The House Judiciary Committee continued its hearing on impeaching President Trump;

>Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, a Republican Judiciary Committee member suggested that former Presidents can be impeached; and

>The Washington Post began publishing a lengthy series documenting literally decades of official U.S. government deceit – including by former Presidents – surrounding the 18-year long war in Afghanistan.

It looks providential because if Gaetz is right (and, at least according to this analysis, there’s no legal consensus yet on the matter), it’s tough to think of more important abuses of power than the flood of dishonestly upbeat statements issuing from the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama about encouraging progress on the military and nation-building fronts in that protracted and ongoing conflict.

After all, the consequences of such abuses weren’t simply a short delay in providing military aid to a country (Ukraine) whose security and independence weren’t seen as remotely vital U.S. concerns even during the Cold War. Instead, according to Pentagon and other figures the Post cites, the war’s toll so far has included:

>2,300 dead American servicemen

>20,589 wounded in action

>Nearly one trillion taxpayer dollars – an inflation-adjusted figure that doesn’t include expenditures by the intelligence community and the costs of caring for wounded veterans.

It’s true that some of these casualties and spending date from the early years of the war – when no serious person can doubt the need to intervene militarily in Afghanistan to destroy its potential to serve as a terrorist base for planning and launching September 11-style terrorist attacks. But the vast majority date from the long years after the ouster from power of the Taliban and the destruction of Al Qaeda.

At that point, it should have been clear that the best American strategy for preventing the reemergence of jihadist organizations with global reach was maintaining small-scale special forces operations in the country that would focus on harassing extremists effectively enough to keep them off balance and incapable of organizing large-scale inter-continental violence. Stronger border security measures could also help keep them away from the U.S. homeland.  Instead, U.S. leaders embarked on campaign to nation-build in a region that historically has been so divided that no true nation had ever existed. 

(Actually, I first publicly critiqued the focus on nation-building in Afghanistan and touted the need for better border controls at a 2002 Washington, D.C. policy conference summarized here.  It wasn’t till 2014, however, when ISIS had replaced Al Qaeda as the main Middle East terrorist threat to the United States, that I first wrote about the need for harassment forces.)   

But the Bush and Obama administrations ignored this advice because they had drunk the globalist Kool-aid insisting that overseas threats can be dealt with adequately only by literally turning troubled parts of the world into the political, economic, and social successes that they have never been. These Afghanistan policies per se weren’t high crimes or misdemeanors – unless you favor criminalizing stubbornness persistent and extreme enough to qualify as stupidity.

What was arguably criminal? As documented by Post reporter Craig Whitlock, even though the documents (which exist because of a federal research project undertaken to analyze failure in Afghanistan) make clear widespread official recognition of the debacle on the ground, they “contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.”

And more to the point: “Several of those interviewed [by the project’s researchers] described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.”

I’ve only read Whitlock’s summary articles about the documents, not the documents themselves, but undoubtedly if he’d found evidence that Bush and Obama personally knew about the distortion efforts or, worse, ordered them, he’d have reported it. At the same time, determining Presidential guilt wasn’t the government research project’s mission. In fact, although the Post is still suing the government for release of the names of the more than 400 “insider” interview subjects whose statements represent most of the raw material gathered by the researchers, it’s not clear whether the two former Presidents were among them. Moreover, it appears that not all the documentary evidence produced by the project has been released, either with names attached or not.

So the question made famous by the late Tennessee Senator Howard Baker during 1973 Watergate hearings – “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” – can legitimately be asked about Bush and Obama. Any answers eventually shaken loose in impeachment or similar investigations will be too late to undo the enormous damage of the Afghanistan war to date. But they might hasten a decision by Mr. Trump finally to act on his instincts and cut the nation’s losses. More important, the prospect of sitting at a witness table might persuade future Presidents to be far less reckless when they spend America’s blood and treasure.

Im-Politic: An Impeachment Red Herring from House Judiciary

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Constitution, Democrats, executive privilege, House Judiciary Committee, Im-Politic, impeachment, Jerrold Nadler, Mueller Report, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Mueller, Special Counsel, Trump

You know the Shakespearian expression, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”? A wonderful way of describing someone who makes an argument that’s so over-the-top that it undercuts credibility?

I couldn’t help but think of it while reading the new report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff on “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment.”

I’m not talking about the substantive credibility of the case for President Trump’s impeachment (and/or removal from office). Instead, I’m talking about the case’s political credibility. Because this new study makes nothing so clear as the belief of the Committee’s majority Democratic members that they haven’t yet convinced enough of the American people that their efforts to oust the President are justified. And no doubt this conclusion applies to numerous others in the party’s House majority and in the Senate.

No one can have any legitimate issue with the Committee releasing such a report. As Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York notes, the full committee staffs put out similar studies in connection with the 1974 impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, and those against President Bill Clinton in 1998. (One important difference: Unlike the previous reports, this new study was the product only of one party’s staff.) And scholarship has of course advanced since then.

But in the process of “Addressing Fallacies About Impeachment,” the Democratic staff created some itself – that impeachment proponents are maintaining that impeachment “is not part of democratic constitutional governance”; that because a presidential election is coming up, a chief executive “is entitled to persist in office after committing ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’”; and that such a President’s voters consider themselves “entitled to expect that their preferred candidate will do so.”

These arguments are transparently fallacious because none of the President’s backers has questioned the legitimacy of impeachment per se, and none believes that, whatever the political calendar, any office holder deserves to keep on serving after committing impeachable offenses.

To use an obvious but instructive example, just ask yourself: If Mr. Trump had committed a crime in public view – e.g., stood “in the middle of Fifth Avenue and [shot] somebody,” as he once suggested during his campaign, in a (typically) hyperbolic efofrt to describe his popularity with his base – does anyone seriously think that even the staunchest Trump-er would respond (if there were no extenuating circumstances, like self-defense) “Nope, nothing impeachable here. Let’s just let him serve out his term.)

(Interestingly, outside the impeachment context, the President’s lawyers have argued that Mr. Trump, or any President, couldn’t be criminally indicted for such an act while in office, but that’s a separate issue from impeachment.)

What Trump supporters are saying is that, after literally years of investigations – by Congress and by a Special Counsel (Robert Mueller) whose integrity no Trump opponent questioned – no conclusive evidence of impeachable transgressions has emerged. And that given the approach of a new election that would give the public a chance to decide the President’s fitness for office (an opportunity that was not available for second-term Presidents Nixon and Clinton), the best course for the country’s sake is moving on from the current proceedings. In other words, they’re making a political and policy argument, not a Constitutional argument.

For example, the Mueller report specifically concluded that “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election” and, more controversially, regarding obstruction of justice allegations:

“[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

As numerous impeachment backers have pointed out, in his post-report press conference, Mueller did note, in the course of explaining the substantive and Constitutional obstacles to accusing a sitting President of criminal behavior, that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.” And of course that was a reference to impeachment.

But neither Mueller nor his report has stated that Mr. Trump actually has committed an impeachable defense, or explicitly said that enough evidence exists to warrant an impeachment inquiry. The Special Counsel simply observed that, if Congress has enough further problems with the President’s actions, it has a Constitutionally permitted avenue for pursuing these concerns.

It’s true that Congress has not yet had the chance to question under oath current and former administration officials who might be able to provide first-hand evidence of impeachable Presidential wrongdoing, and that the initial obstacle has been Mr. Trump’s refusal to permit them to testify.

That opposition could well stem from the President’s fear of what these figures might say. But it could also stem from legitimate concerns about executive privilege – a President’s recognized right, originating in the separation of powers created by the Constitution, to keep under wraps, including from Congress, internal deliberations of his or her administration.

This privilege is by no means absolute, and such Executive-Legislative branch disputes can be refereed by the courts. But Congress’ Democrats have declined to go this route either to compel such testimony, or free up impeachment-relevant records. In this regard, therefore, they so far have no one to blame for the absence of a “smoking gun” but themselves.

So why are the Judiciary Democrats serving up this red herring? I’m not a mind-reader, but Congress’ Democratic leaders acknowledge that they’re following the polls, and they show plain as day that, since late October, public support for impeachment and removal has fallen steadily – to the point where it’s clearly under 50 percent and still shrinking. And some evidence shows that the numbers are worse for the Democrats on this issue in key presidential election battleground states and Congressional districts crucial to their continued control of the House.

I’m not questioning whether House Judiciary Democrats, or any other Trump opponents, sincerely believe that the President has committed impeachable offenses, or whether they view the evidence as clearcut and even overwhelming. But the new Judiciary report’s baseless charge Trump supporters would oppose impeachment under any circumstances is strong evidence that, in this ultimately political debate, they’re far from making the political case.

House-Keeping: I Just Got Suspended by Twitter??!?!!?

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censorship, free expression, free speech, Im-Politic, social media, Twitter

Many of you who know me either in person or through my writings know that I adore Twitter.  I’ve repeatedly stated that by light years it’s the most effective medium I’ve ever used from the standpoint of reaching individuals and organizations I very much want to reach.  It’s also great for challenging users to express themselves pithily.

So imagine my surprise early this afternoon to have found out that my Twitter account has been “suspended”!

This action could be a simple mistake.  (After all, like all the major social media platforms, Twitter deals with huge numbers of users.)  But the timing (the day of some major Trump impeachment hearings) does look a little fishy.

Of course, one of the more frustrating aspects of this incident is that there’s no way for me to find out Twitter’s reasoning yet – assuming I was suspended “for cause.”  Nor is it possible for me to identify any accusers, either who work for Twitter or not.  And I may never find out.  It’s also noteworthy that the suspension wasn’t preceded by a warning of any kind.  One minute, I was a tweeter in good standing, and the next, sentenced as a bad actor and silenced.

The platform does permit users to appeal suspensions, and the process includes an opportunity for me to plead my case.  (I’ve done both.)  But apparently it’s up to me to prove my innocence – not the other way around, as is the case with virtually the entire American legal system (the IRS appeals process being a notable exception).

Thanks to the telephone and email, I’ve been able to spread the word to some friends, colleagues, and other contacts, who have begun to question the decision on Twitter and via other media.  If anyone reading this would like to do the same, I’d be very grateful.

Nothing I’ve ever tweeted has been any more profane, ad hominem, knowingly false, or otherwise offensive than anything I’ve written here – or anywhere else.  And like I said, maybe the software just messed up.  But if not, my suspension (however brief or long) would raise some serious questions about how much longer Twitter and other platforms should be permitted, without any regulation or even simple accountability,  to play such an increasingly dominant role in the national and global public squares.  And yes, I’ll pass on word of any new developments as soon as I get them.  (Unless I’m subjected to a gag order???)