Glad I Didn’t Say That! Politico Shoots Itself in the Foot on Foreign Meddling

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Democrats, election 2016, election interference, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Mainstream Media, MSM, Politico, Trump, Ukraine

“…acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters the U.S. aid was withheld at least in part because of a request to have Ukraine investigate unfounded allegations that foreign countries assisted Democrats in the 2016 election.”

–Politico, October 17, 2019

“Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”

– Politico, January 11, 2017

 

(Sources: “Mulvaney acknowledges Ukraine aid was withheld to boost political probe,” by Quint Forgey, Politico, October 17, 2019, https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/17/mulvaney-confirms-ukraine-aid-2016-probe-050156 and “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire,” by Kenneth P. Vogel and David Stern, Ibid., https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is Trump Finally Getting It on NAFTA?

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automotive, Bill Clinton, Canada, Inside U.S. Trade, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Politico, Ronald Reagan, rules of origin, tariffs, Trade, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s still unconfirmed, but if true, a development reported in the (usually reliable) newsletter Inside U.S. Trade would reveal that the Trump administration is finally recognizing a major weakness in its approach to revising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And special bonus – the proposal in question would also go far toward solving the trade problems with China and most of the rest of the world that have been rightly identified by the administration.

Here’s a good summary of the scoop provided Tuesday by Politico:

“Three sources close to the [NAFTA] talks said the U.S. has demanded that Mexico, and possibly Canada, accept a higher tariff rate for autos that don’t meet the pact’s new content rules. That would essentially force companies that build cars in Mexico to agree to have exports to the U.S. that don’t conform to the rule be subject to a tariff beyond the 2.5 percent rate Washington bound itself to at the World Trade Organization. USTR [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative] also declined to confirm this development….”

The key here is the point about higher tariffs. The three NAFTA signatories have now come to agree that the treaty’s regional content rules need to be made more strict. So far, in order to qualify for tariff-free treatment anywhere inside North America, autos and light trucks (which comprise an outsized share of intra-North American trade, and have attracted the most attention in the talks) need to be made of 62.5 percent North American parts and components. The aim, at least ostensibly, has been to encourage producers outside North America to relocate production and jobs inside the free trade zone.

The Trump administration has been pressing to raise the content levels needed for such tariff-free treatment to at least 70 percent for passenger vehicles, and reportedly Mexico is now on board in principle (though the exact number has yet to be agreed on). But so far, the administration has not demonstrated much, if any, awareness that higher mandated local content levels alone won’t bring many new factories or jobs to the signatory countries – and have under-performed on this front so far – for a very simple reason. As I’ve noted repeatedly, the penalty that non-North American producers need to pay for non-compliance is only 2.5 percent – an extra cost they can easily absorb.

The Inside U.S. Trade item suggests that this point has been taken, which would be great news for all three NAFTA countries if the eternal tariff is raised high enough to foster North American production and discourage imports. Even better, this proposal – which would essentially turn North America into a genuine trade bloc if extended to all traded goods and services – would by definition limit American imports from all the countries long regarded in Washington as troublesome trade partners (like China, Germany, and Japan). For they would all find it much more difficult to supply the United States – along with Canada and Mexico – with exports, and would face great pressure to serve North American customers instead with products overwhelmingly made in the free trade zone by North American workers.

It’s true that an increase in the external NAFTA tariff would violate WTO rules and would therefore expose all three North American economies to retaliation from outside the continent. But all three countries have run chronic trade deficits with the rest of the world, so they stand to come out ahead if a full-fledged trade conflict actually resulted. And as former President Ronald Reagan emphasized when he originally broached the subject (back in 1979), North America is self-sufficient, or could easily become so, in every significant product or service used by a prosperous economy.

Indeed, Reagan subsequently and explicitly contended that NAFTA was needed as a trade bloc to fend off the challenges posed by regional consolidation in Europe and East Asia. (The Wall Street Journal article in which this argument was made is now behind a pay wall, but the quote is found in my Marketwatch.com op-ed linked above.)  So did former President Bill Clinton. Both were known – and rightly so – as free trade supporters. Donald Trump, a decided free trade skeptic, should settle for no less.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Offshoring Lobby Snake-Oil on NAFTA

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China, Cummins Inc., free trade agreements, manufacturing, Morning Trade, NAFTA, North American Free Frade Agreement, offshoring, offshoring lobby, Politico, steel, tariffs, Tom Linebarger, Trade, Trump, Vietnam, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If Tom Linebarger conducts business the way he talks about trade policy, I’d watch out for my wallet if I dealt with his company. Because recent remarks made by the Cummins Inc. Chairman and CEO about President Trump’s efforts to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) represent an unusually brazen example of snake-oil peddling.

In an interview with Politico‘s “Morning Trade,” Linebarger, whose firm is a leading manufacturer of diesel and natural gas engines and engine components, contended (in the reporter’s words) that “Although Trump believes differently, the United States is a much less attractive place for companies to invest if NAFTA no longer exists.”

In Linebarger’s view (and his own words), even if they’re only bargaining tactics, Mr. Trump’s threats to terminate the deal are “a terrible idea” because “Investors make decisions based on what they project is going to happen and one of the challenges in posturing with something of this nature is that people will begin to change their plans.”

Continued Linebarger:

“Not only would terminating NAFTA worsen the position of the U.S., but it causes multinational companies like mine to figure what’s the best way to position yourself for a world without NAFTA, which might mean changing manufacturing locations. Mexico has 44 free trade agreements. The U.S. has free trade agreements with 20 countries. So the very best way to sell to everybody else is to be in Mexico.”

But here’s what Linebarger didn’t tell Politico. First of all, according to Cummins’ latest annual report, more than half (54 percent) of all of the company’s net sales last year went to customers in the United States. The year before, it was 56 percent. Second, one of Cummins’ senior executives for Latin America stated publicly last month that all of Cummins’ Mexico engine production is exported, and that 80 percent goes to the United States. (The rest goes to the United Kingdom.)

So if Trump terminated NAFTA, and (as he has pledged) raised tariffs on Mexico-produced goods and services high enough to make the country unprofitable as an export platform, Cummins could lose nearly all of the customers for its four Mexico factories if it failed to return that production to the United States. It would also lose a big chunk of its total worldwide customers. 

Of course, Linebarger, Cummins, and other footloose multinationals could always try to skirt those tariffs by producing for the American market in other countries.  But that strategy could only succeed if the Trump administration simply sat back and did nothing about U.S. trade with any of these countries.  And just this week, Washington served notice that it would respond to such production-shifting ploys by announcing stiff new tariffs on Chinese-made steel entering the American market from Vietnam.        

In addition, the Latin America executive made clear that, despite Linebarger’s touting of Mexico’s non-U.S. trade deals, the company has made scarcely any use of them. And continuing U.S. domination of Cummins’ Mexico exports is all the more striking given that Mexico has been able to benefit from a free trade deal with the European Union (which the United Kingdom of course will be leaving) since late 2000, and from such an agreement with Japan since mid-2005. (Incidentally, counting all the EU countries separately is the only way the number of Mexico’s free trade agreements gets anywhere close to Linebarger’s 44.)

The only conclusions that can be drawn from the numbers: Either Linebarger is a complete incompetent and has failed to use Mexico as a supply base for dozens of promising non-U.S. markets, or he recognizes that Europe, Japan, and much of the rest of the world have little interest in importing advanced manufactured goods like those made by Cummins — or at least little interest in importing them from Mexico.

But let’s not ignore an equally important conclusion made clear by this piece: If journalists don’t stop simply taking at face value the claims of Offshoring Lobby mainstays like Linebarger, Americans will never have the kind of informed debate they need on trade and their place in the global economy.

Im-Politic: More Fake News on Trump and Muslims

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Barack Obama, CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, George W. Bush, Hamas, Holy Land Foundation, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, Muslims, Politico, Sally H. Jacobs, terrorism, travel ban, Trump

American’s mistrust of the Mainstream Media is so great that even the Mainstream Media is getting worried. If these reporters and editors keep turning out slanted stories like Politico‘s article yesterday reporting a growing national shortage of Muslim clerics, their trust deficit can only deepen.

The main message that author Sally H. Jacobs and the Politico staff wanted to send is stated clearly in the headline and subhead: “America is Running Out of Muslim Clerics. That’s Dangerous: How Trump’s travel ban worsened a shortage of qualified preachers – and why that’s dangerous.”

And the piece does contain several anecdotes about imams from Muslim countries invited to serve mosques in the United States being turned away during the last year by U.S. immigration authorities. Moreover, it leads off with a story about one of those congregations being unable to generate enough volunteer imams from its own ranks, ostensibly because of studies showing that violence against American Muslims has been rising since the 2016 election that put Mr. Trump in the White House.

But there are two enormous, related problems with these points – one which Jacobs and her editors don’t appear to be aware of but should have investigated further, and one they clearly are aware of (which of course is a clear indication of bias).

The problem that’s known to the Politico team is that the only big decrease in the numbers of imams permitted to enter the United States that emerges from the best data available took place under former President Obama. How do I know that this is known to Jacobs and the Politico staff? Because it’s mentioned in the article:

“In an effort to stem fraudulent applications for such visas, the number of R1s [a U.S. visa issued for temporary religious workers] issued during the Obama era declined significantly from 10,061 in 2008 to 2,771 in 2009. In the following years, though, the number rose steadily and in 2016 the government issued a total of 4,764 R1s.

“It is unclear whether or by how much those numbers have dropped during the Trump administration, as statistics for fiscal year 2017 will not be available until next year, says a U.S. State Department spokesman.”

And something else crucial should be apparent from these sentences: The reason that the Obama administration cracked down – even as the Muslim population of the United States kept rising, thereby boosting the demand for clerics – is because it perceived a phony imam problem that needed to be nipped in the bud. This problem, moreover, surely grew under the presidency of George W. Bush – who so many Never Trump-ers across the political spectrum are now portraying as a paragon of tolerance.

If only these vital points hadn’t been buried in Jacobs’ piece!

The problem that Jacobs and the Politico staff may not be aware of (but arguably should have been) is that the main hate crimes figures cited in the piece come from a source that, to put it mildly, has reputational and objectivity problems: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Just one such problem: In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government (under George W. Bush) “has produced ample evidence” to establish CAIR’s association with groups like the Holy Land Foundation (an Muslim charity convicted in the United States of funding Islamic militants) and Hamas (listed by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization since 1997).

There’s no denying that an actual or impending shortage of American Muslim clerics is an important and interesting development in its own right. And it raises the at least as important and interesting question of why Jacobs and Politico were so determined to turn a real news story into a fake news attack on President Trump?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Which Democrats are Serious and Un-Serious About Trade Overhaul?

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AFL-CIO, Bernie Sanders, Canada, Charles Schumer, currency manipulation, Debbie Dingell, Democrats, dispute resolution, Elizabeth Warren, environmental standards, labor standards, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Politico, Richard Neal, Robert Lighthizer, Rosa deLauro, rules of origin, Thea Lee, Trade, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, unions, Wilbur Ross, William Pascrell, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Usually, paying attention to instances of politicians and other public figures getting up on their soapboxes is a waste of time. Yesterday served up an exception: a press conference held by House Democrats in reaction to President Trump’s official decision to open talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The statements recorded in this Politico account offer some evidence as to which leaders on America’s Left are willing to work with the administration on trade policies that can help the working class voters Democrats still profess to champion, and those who will remain content to sit on the sidelines and take partisan potshots.

Reportedly, all of the House members who spoke at the event “said…they feared Trump would make only modest changes to NAFTA after blasting it as an economic disaster throughout last year’s presidential campaign.” The basis for these worries? The letter sent yesterday by new U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to Congressional leaders announcing the administration’s intention to open NAFTA talks with the two other signatories, Canada and Mexico. According to these House Democrats and some other trade critics, the document apparently was “short on details,” which many claimed indicated Trump’s intention simply to “tweak” rather than comprehensively overhaul the agreement.

All else equal, wondering about the president’s real intentions is anything but unreasonable. His personality, after all, is mercurial, and one of his major trade initiatives to date – the negotiations begun with Beijing following February’s summit with Chinese leader XiJinping – has legitimately disappointed advocates of the major course change he pledged during the campaign. (The other major trade initiative, scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, kept a leading campaign promise to the letter.) Moreover, the Lighthizer letter is indeed short on specifics.

But none of the participants in the press conference seems to have noticed that in previous statements –including reportedly to leading Democratic lawmakers, top Trump officials have emphasized the need for dramatic NAFTA changes.

For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has described as high NAFTA-related priorities greatly tightening the pact’s rules of origin in order to incentivize more non-NAFTA manufacturing investment inside the free trade zone, and restructuring a dispute-resolution system that gives each signatory an equal vote even though the United States represents more than 85 percent of North America’s total economic output. Reinforcing this point was the Lighthizer letter’s contention that “establishing effective implementation and aggressive enforcement of the commitments made by our trading partners under our trade agreements is vital to the success of these agreements and should be improved in the context of NAFTA.”

Meanwhile, Lighthizer reportedly has told Senators that the administration is thinking of adding to NAFTA rules that would prohibit currency manipulation – a move that would set a valuable precedent for future trade deals. In addition, his letter mentioned the need to improve NAFTA’s labor and environmental protections. In my view, they’re largely unenforceable. But they’ve been a prime focus of Democratic Party trade policy positions for decades.

So given that background, it seems fair at this point to finger Connecticut’s Rosa deLauro, New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell, and Massachusetts’ Richard Neal as grandstanders. The former stressed the “tweaking” allegation. The latter two charged that “It was clear from the start that the administration was only interested in working with the Congressional Republican leadership in drafting this notice [the Lighthizer letter].”

I’d also include in this group several key Senate Democrats, including Leader Charles Schumer of New York, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of New York, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They voted against Lighthizer’s confirmation despite his decades-long record of fighting predatory foreign trade practices both as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative during the Reagan administration, and as a trade lawyer representing domestic American producers.

More temperate in their judgments were Michigan’s Debbie Dingell, and the AFL-CIO’s Thea Lee. The former stated that she was “investing the time to understand where the consensus is.” The latter said, “We enter every negotiation in a good faith state of mind and we expect a lot from our government. Certainly candidate Trump made a lot of promises about fixing flawed trade agreements and looking out for American workers and good jobs, so we will hold him and his administration to that promise.”

I can’t think of a more reasonable position for politicians and other supporters of a movement that still styles itself as the “party of the common man [and woman].”

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Where America Has Literally Been Asleep at the Switch on Trade

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Buy American, Canada, Commerce Department, European Union, free trade agreements, FTAs, government procurement, Government Procurement Agreement, GPA, Japan, Jeff Merkley, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Norway, Politico, South Korea, Tammy Baldwin, Trade, Trump, Wilbur Ross, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Here’s a big, sincere shout-out to U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Tammy Baldwin (Illinois). Thanks to their insightful curiosity, Americans have just gotten evidence that their country’s trade policy is indeed as much of a disaster area as claimed by President Trump and other critics.

Their accomplishment? The two Democrats asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to look into how well Washington has been implementing a more than two-decade-old global trade agreement aimed at opening government procurement markets around the world. Also examined: the trade liberalization record of government procurement provisions of bilateral and regional trade agreements signed by the United States (like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA).

The findings were released last month (and alertly reported by Politico‘s trade correspondents), and make clear that the United States has been getting royally shafted. Moreover, these results have been inevitable both because the global deal was so poorly conceived from an American standpoint, and because literally no one in the U.S. trade policy-making apparatus has been tracking the results of either the global agreement or the relevant sections of the narrower trade deals agreement affecting literally trillions of dollars worth of actual and potential sales.

Even worse, the blithe assumption that other signatory countries has been scrupulously abiding by all of these procurement agreements has sharply limited America’s willingness to expand and tighten the Buy American rules that cover its own official purchases – in the process, passing up major opportunities for growth and job creation at a time of economic weakness. And P.S. This includes President Trump.

The GPA is a “plurilateral” agreement negotiated under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. In other words, accession by WTO members is voluntary. Still, the deal, which went into effect in 1996, currently encompasses 47 countries that are now committed to placing foreign enterprises and their own domestic entities on an equal footing when they compete for government contracts. Nine other WTO members are in the process of signing on. Most of America’s bilateral and regional trade agreements also prohibit discrimination in awarding these opportunities for supplying governments with goods and services. Consequently, 19 other countries have promised the United States to open their official procurement markets to the United States in return for America opening its own to them. (All of these governments have carved out various agreed on exemptions. And sub-national governments are covered by these deals as well.)

With stakes this high, you’d think that at some point the U.S. government would display reasonably consistent interest during the multi-decade lives of these trade agreements in whether they’ve been paying off. But according to the GAO researchers, you’d be wrong.

Even though the GPA requires detailed, annual reporting of procurement statistics by signatory governments, the GAO’s

“review of data that the United States and next five largest GPA parties [the European Union, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and Norway] submitted to the WTO for 2008 through 2013 found that a number of parties did not submit the reports annually, the submitted reports did not include all required data, and each party’s reports included inconsistencies that limit the data’s comparability. Further, a lack of common understanding on definitions of key terms has led to inconsistent reporting practices among the GPA parties, and a GPA statistical working group has made little progress in addressing such challenges.”

Some specific failings:

>”although Canada submitted annual notifications with central government procurement data for 2008 through 2013, the notifications did not include data on procurement by subcentral governments or by other government entities”;

>”Japan’s annual notifications have not included procurement by entities such as utilities and state-owned enterprises that are covered by the GPA”:

>”South Korea has not submitted notifications for any year except 2010, and Japan has not submitted a notification for 2012 although it did so for other years through 2013.”

>”Of the U.S. FTAs [free trade agreements] we reviewed, only NAFTA requires its parties to report annual statistics on government procurement; however, the last data exchange between the three NAFTA parties took place in 2005. As a result, information about the extent to which U.S. FTA partner governments open procurement to U.S. suppliers is not available.” [Emphasis added.]

The United States has been far from a whiz in reporting, either. But its failings have been much less excusable given all the evidence provided by the GAO showing that it’s opened its procurement markets much wider than any other GPA or FTA signatory. Despite the above data limitations, the GAO nonetheless felt confident in concluding that for 2010, “[T]he United States reported more than twice as much GPA-covered government procurement as the next five largest GPA parties combined, although total U.S. government procurement is less than the combined total for the other five parties.”

In money terms, the value of contracts opened to non-discriminatory bidding by the United States at all levels of government was $837 billion. The value of contracts opened by those five non-U.S. GPA parties that promised to liberalize the most in absolute terms was some $381 billion. Yet total government procurement in the United States that year was some $1.7 trillion, the GAO estimates. For the other five GPA signatories, it was much larger – $4.4 trillion.

Moreover, because of the aforementioned reporting failures, it’s not possible at all for the U.S. government, or the American people, to gauge procurement liberalization under free trade agreements – with the exception of Canada. But when their procurement budgets are added in, and duplication eliminated (e.g., for Canada), the total market that should be available to American business and workers at least in principle is $4.4 trillion. 

The GAO doesn’t conclude that U.S. trade partners are simply capitalizing on Washington’s indifference to flout their treat obligations. In fact, in one instance, it even tries to get them partly off the hook: “Many EU member states, as well as Japan and South Korea, have actual government expenditures smaller than the United States’ and are therefore likely to have more smaller-value individual procurement contracts that fall below the GPA threshold levels.” (Decisions on the smallest government contracts typically are one of the main GPA and FTA procurement carve-outs.)

But if so many foreign government contracts are too small to be opened for non-discriminatory bidding, then obviously these trade deals are too poorly structured to give American producers anything remotely like reciprocity. And more important, Washington so far has had no way of knowing judging by any measures whether non-discrimination in principle is being translated into non-discrimination in fact .

As Mr. Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, recently noted, “There’s not a lot of point making trade deals if you don’t enforce them.” He could have added that such enforcement is impossible without seeking and obtaining reliable data on results. Donald Trump’s predecessors have flunked these two crucial tests of American trade policy-making. Until he gets strong evidence to the contrary, it’s time for the president to take the logical next step, assume that the GPA and the FTA government procurement measures have been serious mistakes, and ignore them as thoroughly as America’s competitors evidently have.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Confusion in Mainstream Media-Land

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Ben White, Catherine Rampell, economy, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Mainstream Media, Politico, recovery, The Washington Post, Trump

“Trump’s ‘make America great’ plans face a slowing economy”

– Ben White, Politico, January 6, 2017

 

“Trump is being handed a great economy”

– Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post, December 26, 2016

(Sources: “Trump’s ‘make America great’ plans face a slowing economy,” by Ben White, Politico, January 6, 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/us-economy-2017-outlook-trump-233293 and “Trump is being handed a great economy. What happens when it goes south?” by Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post, December 26, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-being-handed-a-great-economy-what-happens-when-it-goes-south/2016/12/26/524ff948-cba9-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html?utm_term=.403834fd0f3d)

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: New Year, New President…New Anti-Terrorism Policy?

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border security, Center for a New American Security, chattering classes, Daniel Benjamin, Daniel Henninger, foreign policy establishment, geopolitics, internationalism, ISIS, Middle East, neoconservatism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Politico, terrorism, The Wall Street Journal, Trump

For me, one of the biggest reasons for optimism for 2017 is the election of a president ready and willing to kick over the obsolete crockery of American foreign policy and grand strategy. President-elect Trump still has to come up with his own comprehensive answers to the question, “What would come next?” His signature foreign policy speech of the campaign made that clear enough. It contained elements both of the genuine, nationalist, down-to-earth “America First” approach that I believe is urgently needed, and of the grandiose internationalist, even neoconservative blueprint that I believe must urgently be scrapped.

It’s entirely possible that this tension will complicate the new administration’s foreign policy for years to come. One reason is a simple as personnel. Because the nationalist bench is so thin, finding enough bodies to staff all the senior jobs that need to be filled will require Mr. Trump to rely on many conventional thinkers. Another has to do with the inherent difficulty of big transitions. Barring a catastrophe, they rarely happen overnight – and in many cases shouldn’t.

But because the challenge is so formidable, the overhaul effort can’t start too soon, and Americans have just received several reminders that the place to start is with fundamental geopolitics – and specifically, with my own observation that America’s immensely favorable location on the globe is an almost completely neglected diplomatic asset that Washington should try to capitalize and maximize, not seemingly intentionally squander. Put simply, those two oceans matter decisively, and coupled with the nation’s staggering treasure trove of resources and continental scale, argue compellingly for seeking progressively less, not more, global engagement. And as I’ve written, nowhere is this truer than regarding the fight against global terrorism.

In my view, little could be clearer or more promising for a geographically isolated country like the United States than the need to focus anti-ISIS etc efforts on keeping terrorists out of the country. Will a border enforcement-centric anti-terrorism policy work perfectly? Of course not. Is it a better bet for American security than pretending that even defeating ISIS will rid the dysfunctional Middle East of extremism forever, or even a few years? Or imagining that in any foreseeable future, that sad region can be turned into something other than a swamp for breeding more jihadism? That’s a total no-brainer.

But as indicated in a recent column by The Wall Street Journal‘s Daniel Henninger, America’s chattering classes have a long way to go in learning this lesson. According to Henninger, the terrorist attacks that have hit the United States lately show that “This is what it means to live as a target. What are we going to do about it? Wrap ourselves in two protective oceans?”

Moreover, a Google search quickly turned up a May report by the Center for a New American Security that reminds how deeply ingrained in the bipartisan American foreign policy establishment this belief is. According to the authors – described as “an extraordinary [and thoroughly bipartisan] group of scholars, practitioners, and journalists”:

“The best way to ensure the longevity of a rules-based international system [itself kind of a dicey notion that desperately needs rethinking] favorable to U.S. interests is not to retreat behind two oceans, lower American standards, or raise the tolerance level for risk. The proper course is to extend American power and U.S. leadership in Asia, Europe, and the Greater Middle East….”

Nonetheless, some reasons for optimism appeared last year as well. One of the most notable: An essay in Politico by Daniel Benjamin – a former Obama administration counter-terrorism official. Writing in March, Benjamin observed sagely that “While the jihadist threat is genuinely global, it is by no means equally distributed. ”

And one main reason cited by the author?

“The United States still has the blessing of geography—two oceans that mean that outside extremists will need to fly to get here. As we found on Christmas Day 2009, when Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab tried to detonate his underwear on a flight bound for Detroit, our aviation security, no-fly lists and intelligence need constant updating. But we have made major strides. By contrast, Europe, with its weak external borders, nonexistent internal borders and a migrant crisis that has brought close to a million and a half migrants into its borders, faces multiplying perils.”

And although clearly the United States has decided to “fight the terrorists over there,” Benjamin perceptively observes that it’s also made notable progress securing the border:

“One big reason why the chances of a Brussels or Paris-like attack are lower here is that we’ve been working flat out to reduce the threat for almost 15 years, since 9/11. With one of the worst extremism problems in the West, Britain has gone hard at this as well. But the same cannot be said for our Continental cousins. The United States has spent upwards of $650 billion on homeland security since 9/11. No comparable European statistic exists, but judging by law enforcement, border security and other agency budgets, the overall figures are much lower.”

I’ve been careful to argue that these two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive, and that one form of military operation in the Middle East can contribute significantly to U.S. security – at least until border controls are even stronger. That’s a campaign of anti-ISIS harassment, conducted through the air and with special forces on the ground, aimed at keeping the group off balance enough to prevent the consolidation of an Afghanistan-like base for staging September 11-scale attacks.

A somewhat larger scale anti-ISIS effort has made important progress in disrupting the group’s capabilities over the last year. But the victory will be pyrhhic if takeovers of terrorist strongholds like Mosul and Raqqa generate claims of “mission accomplished.” Benjamin is right to warn against U.S. complacency. But that’s likeliest to be prevented if the hard, unglamorous, continuing work of better securing the border moves to center stage in Washington’s anti-terrorism policy.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media Covers Up Clinton’s Birther Link

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2008 election, 2012 election, birtherism, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jim Asher, Mark Penn, McClatchy, Newsweek, Obama, Politico, Sidney Blumenthal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME

We now have a foolproof test of whether the Mainstream Media deserves even a smidgeon of trust from readers and viewers for coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign: See how a news organization has reported – and whether it starts to report – that one of Hillary Clinton’s closest confidants is now credibly accused of spreading in 2008 the rumor that President Obama was born overseas (and therefore was never eligible according to the U.S. Constitution to serve in the Oval Office).

Before fans of the Democratic presidential nominee and/or haters of her Republican rival Donald Trump become apoplectic at reading this, please keep in mind that posing the above challenge does not mean that I endorse Trump for president, that I think he’s a good person, or that I don’t recognize his own prominent role in pushing the so-called “birther” story. Nor does this position of mine mean that I view as fact the claim about Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. (For the record, he has called it “false. Period.”)

What it does mean is that I’m arguing that the country’s leading sources of information about the world’s most important political event – a U.S. presidential election – have now been presented with a claim from an entirely respectable source (one of their own!) that one of the earliest proponents of the birther story (which of course has been denied by the president himself and indignantly by former Secretary Clinton) was a long-time associate of the Democratic nominee. And so far, the verdict is clear: Much of the Mainstream Media has flunked badly.

Let’s leave out opinion columns and unsigned editorials, since they’re not supposed to be objective accounts of events. Let’s even leave out so-called “news analyses” – which although they tend to appear in the news sections of publications and websites, are at least labeled as something other than supposedly straight reporting. And let’s quickly review what we know for sure.

Yesterday on Twitter, a former head of the McClatchy newspaper chain’s Washington, D.C. Bureau stated that Blumenthal had told him “in person” during the 2008 Democratic primaries that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya. Then-Senator Clinton was the future president’s opponent for that year’s Democratic nomination in the White House race. McClatchy is a national newspaper chain that publishes major dailies in cities including Miami, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; and Kansas City, Missouri.

As for Blumenthal, this lengthy account, among others, should make clear that his intimate association with both Clintons stretches back several decades. Indeed, Hillary Clinton intended to name him as one of her senior aides at the State Department. And even though the new Obama administration quickly scotched the idea, the new Secretary and Blumenthal stayed in continual touch during her tenure – as so many hundred of her released emails show. His access, in fact, was so good that 24 of them contained information that was classified at the time as confidential or secret – and still is. (See the previous linked item.)

So the contention by former McClatchy newsman Jim Asher was undeniably important. In a subsequent email to his former colleagues, he elaborated:

“Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya. We assigned a reporter to go to Kenya, and that reporter determined that the allegation was false.

“At the time of Mr. Blumenthal’s conversation with me, there had been a few news articles published in various outlets reporting on rumors about Obama’s birthplace. While Mr. Blumenthal offered no concrete proof of Obama’s Kenyan birth, I felt that, as journalists, we had a responsibility to determine whether or not those rumors were true. They were not.”

So how did The New York Times, which has long fancied itself the world’s “newspaper of record,” deal with this development? It didn’t. The paper’s main article about the latest birther-related developments contained no mention of the Blumenthal. And the only reference to the 2008 Clinton campaign was this brief paragraph:

“During the 2008 Democratic contest, a senior strategist for Mrs. Clinton at one point pondered, in an internal memo that was later leaked, the ways in which Mr. Obama’s personal background differed from those of many Americans.”

(Just FYI, the senior strategist in question – pollster Mark Penn – was really senior, and also a leading Clinton adviser for many years.)

The Washington Post‘s main news story also ignored Blumenthal’s reported actions, though it did mention the Penn memo – which it said was written in 2007 (i.e., incredibly early in the 2008 campaign). In addition, the Post quoted by name a then-top Clinton campaign official’s for-attribution claim that a volunteer in Iowa was let go for a similar suggestion.

The newspaper Politico doesn’t have the national reach of The Times or the Post, but it is considered must-reading by the intertwined political-media-and policy establishments in Washington. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with this publication where hard news ends and that murky news analysis category begins. But three of its posts on the alleged Clinton campaign role in fostering birtherism omitted any mention of the Blumenthal-related charges, too. They’re found here, here, and here.

And in case you’re wondering – because the newsmagazines have clearly lost influence in recent decades – both TIME and Newsweek whiffed on this story, too.

Moreover, here’s what could be more disturbing: the apparent failure of any Mainstream Media types to investigate Asher’s charger further, rather than simply include Blumenthal’s denial in the accounts that do mention him, and leave the impression that we’re left with an intriguing but ultimately unresolvable “He said, he said” situation.

For Blumenthal is well known throughout the national political press corps, and it’s very difficult to believe that McClatchy was the only news organization to which he attempted to sell his own birther insinuation. Indeed, it’s almost as difficult as believing that Blumenthal acted in 2008 without Clinton’s knowledge.

As a result, the major news organizations still have a chance to redeem themselves. First, their reporters could directly ask Clinton about Blumenthal’s actions. Second, they could ask each other whether or not they were contacted by Blumenthal. I’ll certainly be watching to see if the press is interested in improving its so-far failing grade. If you’re really interested in the health of our democracy, whatever your political leanings, you should be, too.

Following Up: Republican Optimism on Trump and the Black Vote

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2016 elections, African Americans, Ben Schreckinger, Bernie Sanders, black clergy, blacks, Democrats, Donald Trump, Following Up, Frank Luntz, Hillary Clinton, Hispanics, illegal immigration, Immigration, Jobs, Politico, pollsters, racism, Republicans, voters, white supremacists

Big reasons for skepticism still abound, but I couldn’t help but noticing a piece on the Politico.com website today quoting Republican election strategists – and one genuine big shot by name – as claiming that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump could win enough African-American support in a general election to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton. This new article echoes a post I wrote last September, which focused on Trump’s possible appeal to a black population that has lost lots of jobs and job opportunities thanks to the political establishment’s love affair with mass immigration.

There could well be a big wishful-thinking component at work in the Politico piece. Indeed, who can forget how badly many Republican pollsters and consultants mis-judged the makeup of the electorate during the last presidential election and were stunned by Barack Obama’s victory by a very healthy electoral vote margin. And there’s no doubt that political prediction has been an especially hazardous business during this campaign.

At the same time, Politico has become a go-to source of elections-related information and analysis. So its decision to run this article indicates that lots of the powers-that-be in national politics take seriously the chance that Trump could lure significant numbers of black voters away from Clinton or her chief Democratic rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. At least, consider the evidence presented by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger.

Most notably, he quotes leading Republican political guru Frank Luntz as claiming that if Trump won the GOP nomination, “he would get the highest percentage of black votes since Ronald Reagan in 1980 [14 percent]. They listen to him. They find him fascinating, and in all the [focus] groups I have done, I have found Obama voters, they could’ve voted for Obama twice, but if they’re African-American they would consider Trump.”

Schreckinger quotes another pollster (anonymously) who has allegedly “tested Trump’s appeal to blacks and Hispanics and come to the same conclusion. ‘He behaves in a way that most minorities would not expect a billionaire to behave….He’s not a white-bread socialite kind of guy.”

The author adds that “Already, Trump has been laying groundwork in the African-American community that could pay dividends in a general election. With the help of his political and business adviser Michael Cohen, Trump has spent years cultivating black faith leaders. Last year, he held meetings with black pastors in Georgia and at Trump Tower in New York. Trump’s team has also made a pair of black female video bloggers, Lynette ‘Diamond’ Hardaway and Rochelle ‘Silk’ Richardson, prominent surrogates online and on the trail.”

Further, some independent polls have found that a Trump candidacy would win a not-negligible share of the combined black and even Hispanic vote. Given Republicans’ poor recent performance with these groups, any substantial improvement could tip certain key states.

Of course, it would be a big mistake to overlook the obstacles to such Trump successes (other than the 800-pound gorilla in the room of Hispanics punishing Trump en masse for his strong opposition to illegal immigration and especially his deportation proposals – which I continue to think he’ll back away from in favor of curbs on employments and government benefits opportunities that will both produce significant ”self-deportation” and weaken America’s attraction to prospective newcomers).

After all, some of Trump’s outreach to African-American clergy hasn’t gone swimmingly. He’s also on record as having made several remarks widely considered racist. And the backing Trump has gotten from white supremacist groups, however unwanted, can’t help.

Nonetheless, so far during primary season, anyone betting against Trump has been a big loser. The general election of course won’t be exactly the same, or even close. But neither will it be 100 percent different.