Im-Politic: Should Hillary Clinton Give Bill the (Campaigning) Heave-Ho?

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2016 elections, Bill Clinton, border security, bridge to the 21st century, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism, Jobs, reeducation, retraining, San Bernardino, Saudi Arabia, Tashfeen Malik, terrorism, Trade, white working class

If I were Hillary Clinton, I’d be having big second thoughts about how extensively I’d want to use husband Bill Clinton as a surrogate in her presidential campaign. For the former president keeps – I assume unwittingly – laying all sorts of traps for the still likely Democratic nominee on the super-sensitive and explosive issues of the economy and immigration-related threats of terrorism. This report of a an appearance Bill Clinton made yesterday in New Jersey shows why his stumping is so problematic for Ms. Clinton.

Take the economy. Although at the 2012 Democratic convention, Bill Clinton made a politically brilliant case for the Obama administration’s economic record, he sure sounded more downbeat at Union College: “All over the world there is stagnant economic growth, stagnant incomes, rising inequality and deep arguments over what to do about our increasing diversity,” he contended. Since the United States remains part of that world, this indictment sounds an awful lot like it includes President Obama’s second term – which former Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in no position to condemn.

Bill Clinton also claimed to recognize a major component of America’s economic failings – the worsening plight of the white, working class that has helped foster the rise of presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump. In Mr. Clinton’s words, “We all need to recognize that white, non-college-educated Americans have seen great drops in their income, have seen great increases in their unemployment rate, have seen drops in their life expectancy….”

Trouble is, his credibility on these issues lies in tatters. In part, he’s a fatally flawed messenger on this score because the job- and wage-killing trade deals he spearheaded as president starting with NAFTA deserve such blame for white plight (along with undercutting minorities’ progress). Similarly the former president’s vague call that Trump supporters and the like “be brought along to the future” echoes his utopian presidential promise to help Americans harmed by trade liberalization by building a “bridge to the twenty-first century” constructed of retraining and reeducation programs.

Nor did Bill Clinton help his wife’s cause by insisting (in the reporter’s words) “that fortified borders and immigration bans can’t prevent terrorism.”

According to the former president, “The last serious terrorist incident in the United States occurred in San Bernardino, Calif. Those people were converted over the internet.” But although that seems clear for Syed Rizwan Farook, it’s anything but for his wife, Tashfeen Malik. While still living in her native Pakistan, Malik reportedly “attended the Al-Huda Institute in Multan, part of a chain of women-only religious schools in Pakistan.” Al-Huda says it aims to promote a peaceful message, but it’s “known for its puritanical interpretation of Islam” – an interpretation that’s played a decisive role in fostering terrorism both theologically (by promoting intolerance) and institutionally (through activities sponsored by the Saudi theocracy that champions such reactionary values).

Indeed, Malik also reportedly changed dramatically following a trip to Saudi Arabia several years before immigrating to the United States. And speaking of her entry into America, Republican Members of Congress have charged that Malik’s visa application was never properly vetted by U.S. immigration authorities.

Mr. Bill Clinton’s other comments on immigration and terrorism issues ranged from the ignorant to the inane. Apparently the former president thought he could definitively establish Trump as a kook by noting, “You can build all the walls you want. You can build them all across Canada; they got a bunch of foreigners in Canada.” But even under President Obama – no immigration hard-liner – “The US-Canadian border [has] increasingly [become] a national security hotspot watched over by drones, surveillance towers, and agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”

And kooky is the only apt description for President Clinton’s suggestion that such border security measures are pathetically irrelevant because “You could not keep out the social media.” In other words, because all dangers can’t be prevented, all prevention efforts are pointless.

President Clinton could well find his campaign mojo again before the November elections. No politician who has won the presidency twice should ever be underestimated, much less counted out. But time keeps getting shorter, and unless Mr. Clinton ups his game soon, his new boss might soon have to send him the Trump-ian message, “You’re fired.”

Guest Post: Cable News is Badly Missing the Big ISIS Picture, by B.J. Bethel

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Brussels attacks, cable news, Fareed Zakaria, Guest Post, Iraq, IS, ISIS, media, Middle East, Paris attacks, pundits, San Bernardino, Syria, terrorism, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Thomas Friedman

Although campaign junkies wouldn’t know it, one of the biggest news developments of the day is being badly mis-reported by the cable news networks they followed obsessively: The Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL – also commonly known as ISIS or just IS) is losing in the Levant – namely, in Syria and in Iraq.

With presidential candidates wanting to forgo the Geneva Convention, carpet bomb civilians and generally try to out-tough each other in debate after debate, you’d think IS is conquering the world like Alexander the Great, or running a blitzkrieg through central Europe. But producers and executives trying to capture eight-second attention spans seem incapable of getting the story right. In fact, the only reliable American reporting on IS’ remarkably fast fade is coming from major U.S. newspapers.

Just a year and a half ago, IS was indeed frighteningly on the rise. It controlled an area the size of Great Britain, reaching from Syria into Iraq to Tikrit. The group captured the second-largest city in Iraq – Mosul – after the Iraqi military refused to fight. It created a new arena for terror on social media, posting videos of brutal executions. Mass executions of Christians in Libya, captured on video, quickly followed, and shocked those who failed to realize the reach of the group or its brutality.

Adding to the sense of alarm: evidence that IS was rewriting the terrorism rule book Western officials thought they’d figured out. Indeed, last year The New York Review of Books published a history of IS by “Anonymous” – identified as a high-ranking official in a Western government. The main theme: The group defied convention. Nearly every move it made was wrong according to the existing framework of success for terror groups and the West had no explanation for its existence, let alone its success and how to stop it.

Circumstances are different now. The Islamic State has lost most of its major territory in Iraq. An Iraqi military division – trained by the U.S – ran IS out of the city of Tikrit in a day and a half. Its last major stronghold outside of rural territory is Mosul, but local news service Rudaw has reported that Sunni militia, the Kurdish and Iraqi presidents, and U.S. envoy Brett McGurk are planning to retake Mosul, in what is expected to be one of the bloodiest battles in the region’s history of the region. Already, the U.S. military has been operating within 75 miles of Mosul. It seems the bully has finally taken a punch to the face.

Yet when the IS issue is discussed on television – whether by pundits, politicians or candidates – it’s within the framework of two years ago, when the group was flooding Iraq. This alarmism seems to be justified by the group’s dramatically stepped up attacks outside the Middle East – in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino, California. But paradoxically, IS’ strikes outside its home region reflect its worsening predicament in Iraq and Syria, not its strength, and cable’s failure to present this context shows the costs of coverage lacking context or even analysis with minimal depth.

The contrast with the major dailies is especially revealing. Take The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the battle in the Levant. When the Free Syrian Army took Palmyra last week, the Journal had the story a day or two later. The New York Times, and Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday morning GPS CNN show are also feature reporting with detail and solid judgment.

Why has national TV news been portraying the Islamic State with all the sloppiness of local TV news discussing the latest school board meeting? In all likelihood, because reporting complexity would make the standard four-panelist, five-minute pundit segments much difficult for audiences to follow. How could you keep typical viewers from flipping the dial after years of feeding them little but the latest cheap shot or salvo aimed at a rival political operative?

Debates could suffer, too. Since the audiences generally haven’t been informed about the current facts on the ground, on-target questions would be confusing. And the candidates themselves, as well as ratings-starved networks, would lose valuable opportunities to make those showy, attention-grabbing, tough-sounding “crank up the Enola Gay” quotes that end up on Vines and Facebook.

What exactly should the cable networks in particularly be covering? In particular, they need to do a much better job understanding and explaining IS’ attraction to its fighters and supporters.

During the group’s heyday a year ago, IS was indeed recruiting in droves. Now it’s failing to find new followers as it takes major losses and discovers fighting is a bit tougher when you aren’t rolling into cities unimpeded.

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times put it best – if you are a 20-year-old man in Syria or Iraq, don’t have a wife or job; IS can provide those. But circumstances have changed. IS is facing actual opposition, meaning there’s a good chance of dying from a bullet wound or a gravity bomb. IS, moreover, was paying its fighters with oil revenues, but these started drying up substantially right after its rigs were bombed by allied airstrikes.

In addition, one major reason for IS’ success despite its brutality and other convention-defying tactics has been its religious message. That is, IS is as much an apocalyptic cult as much as a radical Islamist terror group. It cites a belief that a confrontation with the West in Syria would bring about the end of the world. This is why the group uses social media as a means to keep itself in the news and to try to drive the U.S. into a conflict in Iraq: a final round with the West on Islam’s home soil would lend credibility to its vision of the end times and ostensibly supercharge recruiting.

But today, the group is engaged in heavy combat, its organization and rank and file both taking heavy losses. But the Western military role in Middle East combat has been relatively light – especially on the ground. So those end-of-the-world predictions are looking ever dicier.

In addition, IS has been losing much of the ground it had gained in Syria as well as in Iraq. The Kurds pushed IS across the Euphrates three weeks ago, forcing them into their home territory of Aleppo. Six months ago this accomplishment would have been unimaginable. Last week the Free Syrian Army defeated IS in Palmyra, the ancient Roman/Greco city.

Indeed, this brings us to another reason why IS’ recent loss of traction isn’t being covered: the unholy alliance arrayed against it. Hezbollah, Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad (who was Public Enemy No. 1 three years ago ahead of IS and all other radicals before him), the Free Syrian Army, the Russians, the Turks, the Kurds, (maybe some Al Qaeda elements), the Iranians – all these forces have had a part in pushing IS back and handing it defeat after defeat even as U.S.-aided Iraqi forces are beating the group in Iraq. How does one tell that tale in a 30-second news byte?

But complexity can never excuse shoddy reporting – in particular when it’s obscuring the most important IS-related development of all: IS isn’t attacking Brussels and Paris for its enjoyment but for survival, trying to move the battlefront, trying to take the focus from the Levant. Expect IS also to become more active in Libya, where it has created a new franchise, for lack of a better word. This isn’t the darkening shadow of conquest we’re seeing, however, but the desperate lashing out of a cornered animal.  

B.J. Bethel is an Ohio-based journalist who has covered politics, government, the environment, and sports for over a decade.

 

Im-Politic: Why Trump’s Critics Need to Learn Trump-ish

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2016 election, African Americans, anger, assimilation, border security, borders, Chuck Todd, Donald Trump, Fox News, George Will, Hillary Clinton, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, ISIS, Islamophobia, Jeb Bush, Jobs, John Kasich, Latinos, Lindsey Graham, Megyn Kelly, middle class, Muslim ban, Muslims, NBC News, Obama, Paris attacks, political class, polls, presidential debates, racism, radical Islam, refugees, San Bernardino, sexism, sovereignty, terrorism, wages, xenophobia

Since the political class that routinely slams him is hermetically shielded from the struggles of Donald Trump’s middle class and working class supporters, it’s no surprise that the nation’s elite pols and pundits don’t speak a word of Trump-ish. Assuming, in the spirit of the holiday season, that at least some of the Republican front-runners’ assailants are actually interested in understanding the political earthquakes he’s set off and responding constructively, as opposed to buttressing their superiority complexes or stamping them out (frequently in response to special interest paymasters), here’s a handy two-lesson guide.

Special bonus: This post also goes far toward both interpreting the widely noted anger marking the nation’s politic today, and explaining why Trump’s bombshells keep boosting, not cratering, his poll numbers.

Lesson One: It’s been all too easy to condemn Trump’s various comments on immigration policy as xenophobic, racist, or both. Some have clearly been sloppy and/or impractical, which is why, as in the case of his deportation policy, or the original form of the Muslim ban (which didn’t distinguish between citizens and non-citizens), I’ve been critical.  (For the former, see, e.g., this post.  For the latter, I’ve expressed my views on Twitter on November 20 and December 7.)  There’s also no doubt that much opposition to current, permissive immigration policies stems from the kinds of fears about threats to “traditional American values” that have animated explicitly discriminatory anti-immigrant movements in the past.

Yet the standard denunciations of Trump’s positions ignore too many features of his pitch and his proposals to be convincing. For example, if Trump is a simple racist, or white supremacist, why does he never mention the supposed threats from East or South Asian immigrants? And if these groups really are often conspicuously singled out as “model minorities” even by many immigration policy critics, how can they reasonably be lumped into the racist category? Further, why does Trump’s immigration plan emphasize the harm done by low-skill and low-wage legal and (especially) illegal immigrants to the incomes and prospects of so many low-skill and low-wage black Americans?

Similar observations debunk the portrayal of Trump’s Muslim ban as simple, ignorant, irrational Islamophobia. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly (e.g. this post) , for many reasons, Islam presents special problems for American national security and international interests. Even President Obama has accused the so-called moderate majority of the world’s Muslims and their leaders of failing to resist the fanaticism of ISIS and Al Qaeda strongly enough. And although Muslims have by and large integrated peacefully and successfully into American life – certainly more so than in Europe – Western, evidence of pro-terrorist activity and sympathy is too compelling for comfort.

So obviously, there’s much more to the Trump pitch and platform than mindless hating. In the case of immigration from Mexico and the rest of Latin America that’s overwhelmingly economically motivated, it’s the concern that business and other elite economic interests have so successfully and so long focused Washington on satisfying its appetite for cheap labor that the needs of native-born workers and their families, as well as the fundamental security imperative of maintaining control over national borders, have been completely neglected. Therefore, Trump’s pronouncements – including his call for a wall – are best seen as demands that American leaders prioritize their own citizens and legal residents in policymaking, and for restoration of border security arrangements essential for concepts like “nationhood” and “sovereignty” and “security” to have practical meaning.

In other words, when Trump and his supporters complain about Mexican or Latino immigrants, whether legal and particularly illegal, the candidate in particular, and arguably most often his supporters, are complaining not about newcomers with different skin colors or about foreigners as such. They’re complaining about immigrants who are serving exactly the same purpose as the picket-crossing scabs that historically have aroused heated – and sometimes violent – reactions from elements of the American labor movement: increasing the labor supply to further weaken workers’ bargaining power.

Of course, there’s another, non-economic reason for focusing on Hispanic immigrants that has nothing to do with racism or bigotry – though you don’t hear this point from Trump himself. It’s that worry about assimilation and American values referenced above. In turn, it springs from (a) both those groups’ distinctive insistence on concessions to bilingualism in daily life (when was the last time you heard about demands for Chinese language instructions on ballots, or Vietnamese announcements on subway P.A. systems?); and (b) from the eagerness many politicians show to accommodate them. The latter is in sharp contrast to official America’s handling of earlier immigration waves, when the overriding intent was to Americanize newcomers as soon and as completely as possible – and when demands for special treatment were far less common.

Similar non-bigoted messages are being sent by Trump’s Muslim ban and related opposition to admitting large numbers of refugees from Middle East war zones. Assimilation is clearly on the minds of his supporters. But security is an even bigger issue for both the candidate and his backers. Especially in the wake of the November Paris attacks and the ensuing San Bernardino shootings, many Republican and even some Democratic party leaders have understandably felt compelled to call out an Obama administration that has, in the face of all common sense, kept insisting that those fleeing areas of chaos could be adequately vetted – and that with equal stubbornness has demonized such prudence as prejudiced, callous, a propaganda windfall for ISIS, and un-American.

Lesson Two: This one, concerning Trump’s insulting comments towards fellow presidential hopefuls, journalists, and other individual critics (whether they’ve been truly critical or not) should be much easier to understand – though perhaps more difficult for the targets to take to heart. In a perfect world, or even close, office-seekers, anyone in public life, or anyone in public, shouldn’t call others “stupid,” or “losers” as Trump has, and it’s even worse to disparage people because of their looks or use sexist slurs against women.

But this is not only a world that is far from perfect. It is a world – and country – in which the wealthy, the powerful, and the influential enjoy privilege that is almost unimaginable unless you know or have seen it personally. Far too often, to a degree not known in America for decades, their position has come at the expense of fellow citizens so remote financially, culturally, and even geographically from them that the latter might as well as invisible. And even more infuriating, the occupants of America’s commanding heights seem to stay securely in place – and even more securely in place – no matter what failures and even catastrophes they inflict on the country. Increasing signs of nepotism and even dynasticism foul the picture further.

In other words, there’s no shortage of reasons for many Americans to refer to their current leaders, their wannabe leaders, and all their varied courtiers without the level of courtesy to which we’ve become accustomed. Indeed, there is every reason for a big bloc of the electorate to view them as outright crooks, incompetents, or some combination of the two. And when Trump treats them as such, a strong case can be made that, even though he’s coarsening public discourse, he’s also sending the Beltway crowd and its fans and funders across the country messages about millions of their countrymen that they urgently need to hear and understand. For example, Trump backers

>are completely unimpressed with monuments to unearned status like former Florida Governor (and presidential relative) Jeb Bush, and former Senator and Secretary of State (and First Lady) Hillary Clinton;

>view failed or failing presidential rivals like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ohio Governor John Kasich as shills for the corporate cheap labor lobby and its mass immigration plans, not as courageous champions of more inclusive conservatism;

>and wonder who decreed pundits like George Will and news anchors like NBC’s Chuck Todd or Fox’s Megyn Kelly to be arbiters of political, social, and cultural acceptability.

In other words, Trump’s supporters believe that spotlighting the disastrous records, wrongheaded positions, or hollow reputations of many individual American leaders and media notables is vastly more important than protecting their delicate sensibilities. In turn, the specificity of this harsh treatment reveals something important about much of the anger pervading American politics today. It’s not simply aimed at abstractions like “politics as usual” or “Washington dysfunction” or “the system” or even “corruption.” That’s because in addition to being almost uselessly vague, these terms conveniently permit practically any individual or even any particular category of individuals involved in public life to assume that the problem lies elsewhere.

Instead, today’s anger is directed at specific individuals and groups who large numbers of voters blame for the country’s assorted predicaments, and who Trump supporters read and see routinely belittle their frustrations and therefore condemn their chosen spokesmen as know-nothings, clowns, bigots, and even incipient fascists.

Trump’s blast at Kelly right after the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland in August was especially revealing. Even I first described it as needlessly personal and petty. But looking back, it’s also clear why so many Trump acolytes and (then) undecideds seemed to ignore it and its seeming implications about Trump’s personality and judgment.

For in the actual debate, they heard Kelly pose what they surely viewed as a second-order “gotcha” question – about Trump’s previous insults of women. And they also heard an answer from the candidate that immediately pivoted to some of their top priorities. “I don’t frankly have time,” Trump responded, “for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.”

And the more political rivals and other establishmentarians harrumphed or inveighed about Trump’s crudeness, the more backers and sympathizers viewed Kelly not mainly as a bullied female, but as another out-of-touch media celebrity and even an elitist hired gun, and the more they scorned Trump’s critics as selfish plutocrats more concerned with protecting one of their own than dealing seriously with pocketbook and other core issues.

Therefore, as with his populist policy stances, Trump’s language and its appeal are confronting his establishment opponents with a fundamental choice if they want to keep these approaches out of American politics. They can try to learn Trump-ish, and respond constructively to the legitimate economic and non-economic concerns fueling it. Or they can remain self-righteously ignorant, and continue vilifying him and his backers. Since the insults directly threaten not just the elites’ prestige but their lucrative perches, I feel pretty confident that they’ll choose the latter. What’s anyone’s guess is how long, and even whether, they can keep succeeding.