Where Does This Leave Us?

Posted on May 19, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 19th, 2017

The Watergate burglary occurred in May of 1972, and by the following January, seven conspirators had either entered guilty pleas or been convicted. In the ensuing months, investigative reporting led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post uncovered incriminating evidence that the White House, and President Nixon in particular, had engineered a cover-up and paid the conspirators to take the fall for the operation. When Nixon resigned in August of 1974, his administration had been virtually in stasis for more than a full year. The growing evidence against Nixon and his people had paralyzed the government.

Rumors of President Clinton’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky surfaced in 1997, and the resulting storm surge rose until Clinton’s famous denial, “I never had sex with that woman,” the following January. The scandal had already dogged the White House for months, and another full year passed before Clinton’s impeachment by the House and subsequent acquittal of criminal charges by the Senate. The result was that Clinton’s presidency was rendered impotent for the last two-and-a-half years of his administration.

The point is that whether you support Donald Trump or believe he has committed impeachable offenses, as things stand now, it’s a virtual certainty that his credibility and effectiveness as president have been crippled, at least temporarily. This is a very serious matter for the country no matter which side you’re on. Trump is about to depart on his first major international trip. Given his well publicized antics and the fact that the majority of Americans believe he has no respect for the truth, what are foreign leaders to think?

He cannot claim any moral high ground when he meets with the Saudi royal family and the Palestinians, and the chaos in the White House has left the Israelis hoping that his visit to Jerusalem doesn’t end in some kind of diplomatic disaster.  It’s an open question how our NATO allies will receive him when it’s not clear that his own government is behind him, and then there’s the video seen ’round the world of Russian President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov mocking Trump over those secrets he allegedly revealed.

As events play out, this may all blow over eventually, but what we know of previous White House scandals makes it highly likely that that can’t happen before the 2018 Congressional election season is upon us. If you’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for the Republican legislative agenda to be written into law, you’re probably wringing your hands. If you hate the Republican agenda, you’re rejoicing.

The House passed its health care bill by a hair with the full weight of the president twisting arms in the background, but that was when he still had a shred of credibility. Senate Republicans said clearly that effective presidential leadership will be essential to get anything resembling that bill through their chamber, and the Republicans surely realize their hopes for tax reform in this Congress are now on life support.

As the 2018 election approaches, how many Republican legislators whose seats are in jeopardy are likely to be intimidated by this president? What capital does he have left to buy their votes? I almost feel sorry for Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell – ummmm, no, that’s not true. But if I were inclined to, I’d have to remind myself that they’ve both been among Trump’s major enablers. Their deafening silence has allowed this crisis to explode out of proportion, though it’s not clear that they could have prevented it even if they’d had the backbone to speak out.

I’m not unhappy that the Republican legislative agenda appears doomed. As more Americans realize it’s the same selfish, elitist attempt to enhance corporate wealth at the expense of everything else that the right wing has always pushed, I expect the country to breathe a huge sigh of relief. The latest addition is an attempt to reduce funding for public schools to provide more for charter and private schools. Why not scuttle that tax cut and have enough money for both?

Having lived through this twice already, I HATE seeing the country in this kind of turmoil again, but maybe it’s for the best. Maybe these are just birthing pains for that populist revolution the country seemed to want so badly. Maybe with time to reflect on the mess we’re in and the reasons we got here, the Congress that’s sworn in in 2019 will be one that can work together to fix it.

We could get a glimpse of that future in Georgia, next month.

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Rod Rosenstein to the Rescue

Posted on May 18, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 17, 2017

Last night, during his Town Hall appearance with Bernie Sanders, John Kasich was reluctant to say what he thought of Donald Trump’s presidency. He equivocated with, “I never say I told you so,” and reminded viewers that he didn’t support Trump in the primaries and didn’t attend the Republican convention. Sanders didn’t equivocate as much as struggle to find the right words, settling for, “There’s something different about this guy.” The normally straight-shooting Sanders couldn’t bring himself to say what was on the minds of millions of viewers: Donald Trump is not only unqualified to be president, he’s mentally unbalanced.

Rather than beat on Trump further, they joined in urging Congress to stand together for the good of the country. It wasn’t too difficult to read between the lines. The only way to neutralize Trump and prevent him from doing further harm to the country is to forego partisanship and insist on competent and fair investigations into the president’s conduct. Both men had decided that there was a line they shouldn’t cross in criticizing Trump in a public forum seen around the world. If only Trump were capable of similar restraint.

People I know who from the start urged giving Trump a year before judging him are discouraged by his antics but not yet ready to give up the ship. I wish I could agree with them, but I am convinced that the best we can hope for is that the Kushner faction in the West Wing can keep him muzzled. When the President constantly creates his own crises and single-handedly neutralizes any progress on his party’s legislative agenda, I feel under no constraint to mince words.

Donald Trump’s emotional development is stuck at the level of a nasty, spoiled little boy who never received the guidance and discipline he needed. His narcissism has evolved into a compulsive behavior pattern that he is unable to control. His behavior as president is no different than it was throughout his business career. The difference is that before he was elected, the only thing that checked his amoral petulant nature was his lust for greater profits.

In the business world, he learned early on that refusing to back down would intimidate most adversaries. Justice in the world of business isn’t always equated with ethical or moral behavior, and most of those who opposed him, even with truth on their side, couldn’t afford to fight Trump’s high-priced army of lawyers. As for his hateful personal behavior, the power of his money usually rendered it irrelevant.

When Trump said he’d run the country like a business, he was telling us clearly that he had no intention of changing either his tactics or his behavior. Many of us knew from the start that it wouldn’t work. Personally, I’m not at all surprised that he appears to be treading water in quicksand. I was literally caught in quicksand many years ago, and I came away from the experience changed, but I doubt that Trump will learn from any of this. When I heard him whine about how badly he’s being treated while addressing the Coast Guard Academy graduates today, all I could do was shake my head. Really Donald? Do you accept no responsibility for the rising tide of protests against you?

History may record today as the day when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein emerged as the hero we needed to right the ship of state. Trump was reportedly on the verge of selecting Senator John Cornyn (R, Texas) as the new FBI Director, despite the fact that his only qualification for the job was a record of loyalty to Trump, and everyone in both parties was demanding that the new director be someone with a strong background in law enforcement and a record of unquestioned impartiality. Perhaps realizing how his selection would look, Cornyn announced that he didn’t want the job earlier today.

Rosenstein knew that the Justice Department had to step in without delay to assure that people had confidence in the integrity of the ongoing investigations. By appointing the highly respected Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to take over the FBI investigations, he in effect prevented Trump from making a shambles of the process.

Do any of us know what the investigation of Russian interference in our election and the possibility of collusion by Trump or his staff will yield? Of course not, but Rosenstein’s action assures that whatever the findings, the country can align itself behind them. If they doom Trump’s presidency, so be it. If they exonerate him from impeachable or criminal actions, we will at least be able to move past this chapter.

Would that change Trump’s behavior or would it leave him with a puffed up sense of vindication that will only make his insufferable behavior worse? In the 1997 film As Good as it Gets, Jack Nicholson played an obsessive compulsive misanthrope, who famously told Helen Hunt, “You make me want to be a better man.” I can’t even imagine what would motivate Donald Trump to say that.

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Self-inflicted Wounds

Posted on May 13, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 13, 2107

Donald Trump has said many times that being unpredictable makes him a stronger adversary when he negotiates deals. In Warcraft and Governance, I asserted that what he called unpredictability was part of a strategy of misdirection, diverting attention, and creating chaos among those who opposed him. It worked superbly during the 2016 election campaign, but I questioned whether it would serve him well when he had to govern.

As I look over the events of the past week, I wonder if I asked the right question. Was what we saw during the campaign Donald Trump brilliantly navigating his way to the presidency, or was he simply being true to his nature at a time when a large portion of the electorate was angry enough to buy it, while his opponent systematically self-destructed? Indications are that Trump resists all attempts to curb his instincts and continues to do, tweet, and say whatever he pleases. As public confidence in him unravels, his impulsiveness looks less like a brilliant strategy than an impending train wreck.

Consider the furor over his firing of James Comey. William Barr, who served as Attorney General under George H. W. Bush (41) wrote a pointed opinion piece in today’s Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/former-attorney-general-trump-made-the-right-call-on-comey/2017/05/12/0e858436-372d-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?utm_term=.1253caca6283). Barr said that in announcing his findings that Hillary Clinton had not done anything that warranted prosecution, Comey had “arrogated the Attorney General’s authority to himself”. Barr further wrote that he knows “of no former senior Justice Department official — Democrat or Republican — who does not view Comey’s conduct in July to have been a grave usurpation of authority”; that is, he deserved to be fired. Inasmuch as none of the people attacking Comey’s firing dispute that, I’m inclined to agree.

If Comey deserved to be fired, why all the fuss? Why were there three different stories on consecutive days about how and when the firing occurred? A simple statement by the president that reiterated what most of the Justice community believed to be true should have received bi-partisan support. The problem is, Trump didn’t do that.

He began by complaining that the FBI was taking too long with its investigation of Russia’s tampering with our election, creating the clear impression that he thought Comey, as FBI Director, might be out to get him. But both Barr and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, in his testimony earlier this week, stated clearly that Comey’s role in the Russia investigation was virtually nil. It is being conducted by career agents who never put politics ahead of country. Personally, I believe that’s true.

Trump called the idea of collusion with Russia a fraud cooked up by the Democrats. He ranted about fake news and undercut his own staff who were trying to defend his position. Somehow, he concluded that it was all the fault the press corps, when even his principal spokespeople said publicly that they couldn’t keep up with the changing stories put out by the White House. Then he threatened to end daily press briefings, (a red flag if there ever was one,) because he’s such an active, dynamic leader, no one could be expected to keep up with him.

By far, the most bizarre event of a week in which, largely because of Trump’s own tweets, Comey’s firing was being compared to the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, he committed an absolutely shocking misstep. After, for no apparent reason, thanking Comey in the letter in which he fired him, for informing him that he wasn’t the target of the FBI’s investigation, Trump then threatened Comey with the possibility that their conversations had been taped.

Recall that the pivotal events that ultimately led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president all revolved around White House tapes. In the midst of an uproar over his motives being watched by the entire world, Trump managed to make it appear that he had pressured the FBI Director over an ongoing investigation (which many legal scholars believe is an impeachable offense) and raise the issue of taped conversations by the president, which never occurred to anyone until Trump tweeted about it. Why would he do either of those things, which could only intensify the storm growing around him?

It seems inexplicable, unless you look carefully at the behavior of someone suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Narcissism, (https://wordpress.com/stats/day/americathebeautiful.blog). Is it possible that the explanation for Trump’s actions is that he suffers from a compulsion he can’t control? Could his need for admiration and adoration cause him to create conflicts that make him appear the victim of a conspiracy which only he can single-handedly overcome? Does any other explanation make more sense than that?

It’s being widely reported (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/12/white-house-staff-react-in-real-time-as-trump-tweets-jesus) that senior White House staff are at their wits’ end over Trump’s inconsistencies and temper tantrums. (Nixon was famous for them, too.) Many years of studying science has made me a believer in Occam’s Razor. If there’s a simple, obvious explanation staring you in the face, it’s usually the right one.

I wish it weren’t so. There’s far too much at stake for the country’s future to be in the hands of someone who behaves the way Donald Trump does.

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The Tuesday Morning Massacre

Posted on May 10, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 10, 2017

In the coming weeks, we will no doubt hear hundreds of partisan views about whether the firing of James Comey is comparable to the infamous Saturday Night Massacre of October 20, 1973. Amid the growing storm over the Watergate break-in the previous year, it became clear that the House Judiciary Committee could not handle the investigation on its own, and Attorney General Eliot Richardson appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the matter independently. The terms of the appointment were specific: the special prosecutor could only be removed by Richardson (not the president) and then, only for cause.

The man he appointed was Archibald Cox, a Harvard Law professor of impeccable credentials, who the public immediately greeted as a folk hero. When Cox issued a subpoena to President Nixon over the Watergate tapes, Nixon refused to comply and ordered Richardson to fire him. One way in which the firings of Comey and Cox are definitely not similar is the response of the respective Justice Department officials. Richardson, who had promised the Judiciary Committee that he would support Cox’s investigation wherever it led, refused Nixon’s order and resigned as Attorney General in protest. When Nixon ordered Richardson’s deputy, William Rucklehaus to fire Cox, he too resigned in protest, and it was left to the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, to reluctantly fire Cox.

The integrity of the people President Nixon appointed to his Department of Justice played an essential role in getting to the truth, which ended Nixon’s presidency. Can you imagine that happening now, as Trump’s people march in lockstep regardless of appearances and protests?

To me it’s especially ironic, as it was only yesterday that I said I didn’t want Trump to fail as president. But given his credibility issues, which are entirely self-inflicted, are we really expected to believe that he fired Comey over his handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails? Coming immediately after the House testimony of Sally Yates, which noticeably thickened the smoke rising from the investigation of possible collusion between Trump staffers and Russia prior to the election, is that even remotely plausible?

If Trump believes the Russia investigation will ultimately exonerate him and his staff, why would he create this cloud of incredulity, which will cast even a finding of complete innocence in doubt? It just doesn’t make any sense. What level of arrogance does it take to completely ignore the lesson of one of the darkest hours of our nation’s history? Will tweets and bluster and outrageous claims of hoaxes and fake news fool anyone who isn’t already a rabid believer?

Whether the Russia investigations ultimately prove Trump right or wrong, firing the FBI Director at this time sends the worst possible message, both to Americans and to people watching around the world to see whether our democratic institutions can survive the tactics of the Trump administration. I do want Trump to succeed in preserving what made America great, but this is not the way to do it.

He is flirting with a constitutional crisis of the first magnitude. First he attacked the credibility of the Judiciary, accusing every federal judge who ruled against him of a combination of bias and incompetence. That kind of rhetoric is a direct assault on our Constitution. It goes hand in glove with Trump’s comments on the rules by which the Congress conducts business. He finds them inconvenient because they don’t let him dictate legislative decisions, so let’s change them, right?

No, not right. The separation of power defined in the Constitution and the strength of a free press are what set us apart from the rest of the world. They are, in fact, precisely what makes America great.

I don’t know any more than any other American whether James Comey’s performance as FBI Director merited his being fired. But as every television personality knows, appearances matter, and timing is everything. If Comey mishandled the investigation of the Clinton emails, Trump had 108 days to remove him from office before Tuesday. He could have done so at any time without raising the specter of Richard Nixon’s worst decisions. If people compare firing Comey to Nixon’s blatant attempt to stop Cox from finding evidence of his guilt, it’s entirely Trump’s fault.

When Cox was fired, he famously said, “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people [to determine].” Those words are as true today as they were forty-four years ago.

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The Next Hundred Days

Posted on May 9, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 9, 2017

As President Trump settles into his second hundred days in office it’s important that those of us who were shocked and distressed by his victory are clear about what we want to happen during his term in office. I shall never forget seeing and hearing then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell address that question shortly after Barrack Obama’s first inauguration. He said, with no equivocation, that his job for the next four years was to assure that Obama would fail as president.

I was stunned, then angered by his words. The country was caught in the depths of a nearly unprecedented financial crisis caused by the government’s failure or inability to regulate the activities of the largest banks, and we were embroiled in an ill-conceived six-year-old war in Iraq and Afghanistan that seemed to have no end game, was destroying thousands of American lives, and causing deep divisions throughout our society. In that context, McConnell’s words sounded almost treasonous to me.

Forget that Obama was our first black president in a racially divided country. Forget that he had pledged to bring our troops home, repair the economy, and revolutionize our health care system. Whether McConnell agreed or disagreed with any of that, his words suggested that he didn’t perceive the difference between political opposition and lack of respect for the Constitution.

Of course, Senator McConnell knows better than that. Consummate politician that he is, I still cannot imagine why he chose those words. The point is that I don’t want to make the same mistake. I do not like the way President Trump conducts himself, and I am shocked by the implications of most of his cabinet appointments. I do not want to see most of what he has proposed enacted into law, but does that mean I want him to fail as president?

In a word, NO.

To wish for him to fail is to wish for our country to be weakened at a time when any number of potential enemies would like nothing better than to see us divided and indecisive. I want the progressive opposition in this country to stand up and fight against a law that would deprive millions of Americans of health insurance and a budget that would strip money from social and education programs to put more in the pockets of billionaires. I want every right-thinking American to fight against any proposal that deprives anyone of his or her basic rights or that redefines our immigration policy based on bigotry or intolerance.

I want us to defend our free press, while pressuring them to focus on professional journalism independent of ratings and sponsors. And I want the President to respect the Judiciary and stop acting like a petulant child every time someone says something he doesn’t like. We don’t need tweet storms and absurd allegations of fake news. And we don’t need to be denigrating people like Sally Yates, whose only failure was living on the wrong side of the aisle.

I want a president that reminds me of why I grew up so proud to be an American, feeling lucky to live in a country that cared about doing the right things. That may have been no more than a naïve fantasy back then, but it doesn’t have to be now. We needn’t pander to hate and fear. We needn’t talk out of both sides of our mouths on every issue.

Most of all, if we’re to defend ourselves against those who want to destroy us, we need first of all, for the rest of the world to see that we’re united in our commitments. Our allies need to know they can depend on us unconditionally when the need arises, and our enemies need to see that internal disagreement is our greatest strength, not a sign of weakness.

For that to happen our president must behave like an adult, and the rest of us need to be clear about the difference between being a loyal opposition and disrespecting the office of the presidency. So I’ll continue to challenge what I think is wrong, and hope that next year’s election restores some balance and credibility to the Congress. But I will never say what Mitch McConnell said.

I want a strong united country behind a president I can respect.

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Only Trump Can Resolve the Health Care Impasse

Posted on May 3, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 3, 2017

I know I’ve said this before. I’ll keep saying it as long as there’s at least one American who doesn’t get it. Health care in the United States isn’t about caring for people or whatever we think belongs in the basket of basic human rights. It’s about money. More specifically it’s about the battle over transfer of wealth. That’s why we hear pejorative terms like “entitlements” when the conversation should be about children born with chronic conditions or adults with diabetes or cancer, a perfect example of doublespeak.

No one should be surprised that the Republicans are having so much trouble agreeing on the very simple idea that preexisting conditions should not disqualify people from affordable health care. I would guess that if the question were put to a public referendum it would score up there with not killing puppies and protecting the American flag.

Money is not the root of all evil, and billionaires are not greedy and insensitive by nature; there are sufficient examples of people whose hearts are as big as their wallets in public life to prove that. But the people who disagree with most Americans on health care are those who have a lot of money and don’t want any of it spent on other people’s needs. That’s a basic fact of life in America today. It’s indisputable.

If all of that’s true, you might ask why the political party in power has a view that is so disproportionate, so completely out of step with the people they represent. Why, when the electorate is 53% female does a sizable percentage of the ruling party not believe women’s health issues are as important as, say, how many yachts their benefactors own? Could it be because when people enter the voting booth they’ve been distracted by well-crafted television ads that subtly and insidiously tell us everyone else is selfish and greedy, and that candidates who want to assure that people have what they need only want to increase taxes so government can get bigger?

Huge sums of money are spent on consultants who are experts in convincing people to believe things that aren’t in their self-interest. If people could vote directly on health care, almost every American family would put it at the top of their priority list, but instead it gets caught up in hate-mongering and saber-rattling and the result is a Congress that appears incapable of doing the right thing. Maybe that’s why its approval rating can’t get out of the twenties.

What’s the solution? Suppose we had a president who was a brilliant negotiator and deal maker. Suppose in addition that when all the nonsense of the political campaign was in the past, he was someone who really meant it when he said he cared about all Americans. Suppose he put his incredible talents of persuasion to work where they would do the most good.

It’s one thing to run a populist campaign and call the current president incompetent and the Congress corrupt. It’s easy to promise you’re going to drain the swamp of lobbyists and special interests, when your only goal is stirring up anger among the electorate and convincing them that you’re the white knight they’ve been waiting for.

My message to President Trump is this. Now’s the time to govern and show people what you’re really made of. Instead of playing to the crowd for applause, take a stand for what you know is right. Now that you have the power you sought, show us that all your anger at the government when you were a businessman was more than bluster. Use your bully pulpit as it was meant to be used. Stand up for what the people really want and let those who put personal greed above the common good know that they’ll pay a heavy price next year when the voters speak again.

Be the president you promised to be, and you might actually expand your base of support beyond the forty percent who voted for you. Keep doing things like that and you might even win me over.

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The Continuing Resolution was a Big Win…for Whom?

Posted on May 2, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 2, 2017

When Congress passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government running, we were so distracted by the on-again off-again threat over funding the border wall, most of us didn’t look too closely at the CR itself. First, in case you don’t know exactly what a CR is, it’s a special kind of appropriations bill, used when the most recent appropriation runs out, that provides funding for the government to keep doing whatever it was already doing until a formal budget agreement can be agreed upon.

Passing a CR usually involves some negotiations. Often its duration is an issue, but when very short term CRs are passed the entire process simply has to be revisited when they too run out. The more interesting negotiations are usually about content. People in Congress who think the government is spending too much or too little on this or that (defense, entitlements, subsidies, and so on) often try to amend the CR to cut or add items. That’s what the border wall threat was about. Trump wanted funding for the wall, which did not appear in the previous budget, to be added to the CR.

In the end, the CR passed on May 1 provided funds to keep the government open until the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2017. The Republicans were elated because they got it done, avoiding a shutdown for which they would have been blamed. The Democrats, however, were ecstatic.

Why? Because the Republicans essentially passed a six month extension of Obama’s 2016 budget (see James Hohmann’s May 1st edition of The Daily 202 for more details). They were going to defund Planned Parenthood – it didn’t happen. They were going to trash the EPA’s budget – that didn’t happen, either. Trump wanted funding for scientific research reduced, but it actually increased, including a huge $2 billion increase for NIH. He wanted to increase defense spending by $30 billion, but the conservative wing of the party cut that in half. He desperately wanted to deal Obamacare a fatal blow by cutting off federal subsidies that help people pay for premiums – that proposal died before the negotiations got started.

And then there’s the border wall. Not only did the CR include $0 in funding for the wall, but it only contained half of the money Trump wanted to beef up border security and that money came with language making it clear that it could only be used for new technology and maintenance of existence infrastructure. Trump’s own party couldn’t have slapped him down harder on his signature campaign promise.

In an ironic, but not surprising side note, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, one of the first PACs to support Trump early in his campaign, withdrew its support today, claiming that he’d failed to keep any of his promises on immigration (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/2/pro-trump-pac-rescinds-endorsement/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=pushnotify&utm_medium=push).

Until now, Trump’s policy of making promises while having no idea of the process he needed to use to fulfill them has been source of amusement for some detractors. His antics have lost him support among independent voters, but haven’t really dented his base. Is this the first large crack in the wall of Trump support? Conventional wisdom says groups that dump large amounts of money into a campaign expect payback after the election. I wonder how long his other big donors will hang in there when it becomes clear that he’s incapable of governing the way he promised.

The thing is, no one forced this situation on the president. He was so sure he could twist the Congress to his desires, that he insisted on funding the government only halfway through the fiscal year shortly after he was elected (http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-congress-budget-deal-20170430-story.html?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1).

The recent fight over the CR didn’t have to occur at all, if not for Trump’s need to brag about how much he could get done quickly. While many observers have noted that there’s a huge gap between his promises and accomplishments, nothing underlines that more than the total capitulation on the CR. Given Trump’s behavior, one can only wonder if this was just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s worth noting that Trump said he intends to renew the fight over funding for his goals in September. But by then, there will doubtless be a flock of Democrats out there campaigning against every vulnerable Republican in the House. The 2018 election will be only fourteen months away.

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Doublethink

Posted on April 28, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 28, 2017

“Doublethink” is a word coined by George Orwell in 1984. It’s similar to the word “doublespeak,” but there are important differences. “Doublethink” means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both as true (http://www.orwelltoday.com/doublethink.shtml). “Doublespeak” means using words to conceal or misrepresent the truth by disguising, distorting, and reversing their meaning,  and the use of euphemisms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak, www.dictionary.com/browse/doublespeak).

From the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was variously accused of lying and exaggerating to stir up his base. Since his inauguration, his style has had to evolve. He frequently contradicted things he said during the campaign, but these days every media outlet has a clip of every word he uttered, and the constant airing of his contradictions may have been a key reason that he’s been unable to expand his base of support. The aura of a candidate who believed he could say anything and get away with it got old quickly. Remember when he told a rally of 20,000 people that he could shoot someone on the streets of Manhattan and no one would be able to touch him?

The Donald Trump who has been serving as president has very publicly admitted that the job is a lot harder than he thought. He must have learned everything he knew about being president from watching The West Wing on television. The kind of evolution he’s been using lately is admitting he was wrong about something without actually taking responsibility for all the things he said that weren’t true. Someone has convinced him that fessing up to being wrong would endear him to the average American. If only it were that simple.

The Trump who campaigned was a nationalist, through and through. The Trump who decided not to withdraw from NAFTA is a globalist. When the press challenged him about that, yesterday, he said, “I’m both.” If that’s true, we who have never trusted him may have to revise our view of him.

It’s easy to call him a liar and a panderer, not that the people who voted for him seemed to care about either. But is it true? The comment about simultaneously being a nationalist and a globalist might be an example of doublethink, which would be a very different thing. Think about it. What if he truly believes he’s both? Would that make him more trustworthy and predictable or less?

Combined with his use of doublespeak (see above), of which he appears to be a master, I think that makes him an enigma. He’s much more than the billionaire tycoon and the media buffoon whose persona he has adopted. When he spent more than a year bragging about what he’d accomplish in his first hundred days and then, after dissing that as a fair measure of progress, he trotted out an inflated list of accomplishments to prove he’s done something, my first thought was, “Who does he think will buy that?”

We know his base will, and only time will tell if anyone else does. But I wonder if Donald Trump himself buys it; or is this just an example of doublethink? It’s an important point. If he’s exaggerating, distorting, and obfuscating, that would fit right into the view of him that sixty percent of America has had from the beginning. That sixty percent will continue to discount him and write him off as a showman of little substance. But maybe that’s not right.

First, while many of his executive orders have been pure fluff, and his two most public ones have been stopped by the courts, some have very quietly changed the playing field. With little fanfare, he granted individual states the power to gut a vital provision of Obamacare, though his own party can’t agree on how to modify or replace it in legislation. And regardless of court rulings, efforts to locate and deport illegal aliens have been greatly stepped up. So don’t scoff too hard at how ineffective he’s been.

The more important question may be what it means to have a president capable of believing totally contradictory ideas without noticing the contradiction. I don’t know what to call that, but I find it scary. Combined with having no moral center and an extremely narcissistic view of the world, there’s simply no telling what goes on in his head at any given moment. Perhaps in his mind, Vladimir Putin is both an admirable leader and an untrustworthy snake, and Xi Jinping is both a manipulative adversary seeking only to weaken us and an international partner we can count on to act for the common good.

If it’s true that Trump’s decisions tend to reflect the opinions of the last people he spoke to, we have to hope the people with the levelest heads are always the last ones to leave the room. I find all this more unsettling than believing he simply has no respect for the truth.

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A Hundred Days

Posted on April 24, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 24, 2017

first100days

In November, 2015 I visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York. It was very early in our far too long presidential campaign when every candidate was bemoaning the inability of Congress to get out of its own way, and to various degrees trying to convince us that our country was in crisis and only the one holding the microphone at that moment could fix it.

Walking through the FDR library gave me an interesting perspective. Given the challenges we faced from the depths of the Great Depression through the end of World War 2, did our current problems really qualify as a crisis? Maybe, but surely not with the urgency candidate Trump claimed.

Of all the things I saw at that library, the one that most got my attention, was the plaque pictured above. (Sorry the image isn’t clearer. You can see better images at http://www.fdrlibraryvirtualtour.org/page05-01.asp). At that moment what concerned me most about our country’s future was the enormous partisan divide in Congress. It had been some time since I’d studied the 1930’s in high school, so this simple display really made an impression on me. With the country in serious trouble, the new president whose wealthy family was, in effect, American royalty, felt the needs of the people who voted for him and fully devoted himself to making things better for them rather than telling the world how wonderful he was.

He had the same majority in Congress that Trump has today. He had the same kind of violent detractors who never stopped hating him and trying to tear him down. He also had a free press with a tradition of professional journalism, less influenced by money and special interests. With no need to inflate himself and no real skeletons in his closet, FDR fostered an open and positive relationship with both the print media and his radio audience.

He never claimed to have a magic bullet. In fact, he said he was willing to try new things and if they failed he would openly acknowledge that and move on to try something else. FDR was a highly skilled politician who managed to inspire most Americans to persevere, and they loved and believed in him. Though some people may have hated his progressive ideology, no one ever doubted that when Franklin Roosevelt made a promise he intended to keep it.

I never put much faith in the first hundred days test of a presidency. I wouldn’t have paid any attention to it in the current administration if Donald Trump hadn’t made it one of the central features of his campaign. It’s probably not fair to compare what FDR accomplished in 100 days to what Trump hasn’t. But it’s extremely fair to look at some of the reasons.

With the nation in the worst crisis since the Civil War, Roosevelt didn’t blame our problems on other countries and didn’t try to turn ethnic, racial, and religious groups against each other. He empowered people with a sense of purpose and his belief that we were all in this together and would have to work hard as a nation to make things better. Rather than appeal to fear, he repeatedly told people they could overcome it with hard work. He said he would use the power of the government to improve their lives. He promised jobs and made the government create them.

What did Trump do? He made outlandish promises he knew he couldn’t keep. A three trillion dollar infrastructure project was supposed to put Americans back to work, though overall we already had the lowest unemployment in a decade. Even someone as inexperienced as Trump had to know that was a promise a Republican majority in Congress would never pay for. But Roosevelt, by getting the press and the people on his side made it happen. He didn’t have a Congress with a huge progressive majority. What he had was a Congress that knew it had to deliver.

Roosevelt had to deal with much of the same isolationist and America First movements that Trump does. While Trump empowered them to help elect him, they have played no constructive role in getting things done. That’s what happens you get everyone pointing fingers at his neighbors and blaming them for his problems. The isolationists and anti-socialists fought Roosevelt at every turn, but he never stooped to demonizing them. By placing himself above his patrician roots and remaining focused on what he promised, he was able to mobilize a concerted effort that managed the massive task of reversing the effects of The Depression and got us through the war.

Take another look at the list of what FDR accomplished in his first hundred days. It’s beyond impressive. If it hadn’t really happened, you’d think it was a fairy tale. Now ask yourself, honestly, if Trump’s approach ever had a real chance to succeed and how much of the problem is Trump himself.

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Trump Declares War on Canada

Posted on April 23, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 23, 2017

Don’t get excited, it’s not that kind of war. Our missile silos in North Dakota have not been redirected northward.

Our news media didn’t think this was important enough to cover, since Canada hasn’t made any threats of nuclear war that I’m aware of. But a writer friend of mine who lives in Ontario and has been following this blog brought it to my attention. I’m always glad to hear what he has to say, because he’s very pro-American but his perspective is purely Canadian, and it’s healthy to see things through someone else’s eyes.

This is personal to me. I’ve always had a soft spot for Canada. Every time I’ve been there, every Canadian I met has treated me wonderfully. It’s a cliche that Canadians are the politest people in the world, but it’s more than that. They’re just nice. Even the RCMP motorcycle cop who gave me a ticket for speeding in British Columbia was like that. He almost apologized for stopping me, lamenting that at the speed I was driving he feared for our safety. Then he spent fifteen minutes mapping a route through the mountains to Banff that greatly enhanced our trip.

I never understood the disdain our government often shows toward Canada. I can’t document it, but it’s an impression I’ve had for decades.

When I lived in the Seattle suburbs in the seventies and eighties, I loved Washington State’s concern for the environment which featured a reliance on hydroelectric power. One of the most productive dams in Washington, in terms of electricity production, is Ross Dam. As Seattle’s need for power grows there’s always pressure to raise the dam so it can hold more water to run through the turbines. In 1942, the dam was raised 120 feet, a great thing for Seattle’s power needs, but raising the dam extended Ross Lake northward into B. C., where it flooded 5,000 acres of prime Canadian land.

In the seventies, the explosive growth of the Seattle area spawned a movement to raise the dam even further. The effect on B. C. would have been catastrophic, and I was shocked at the attitudes of many Americans who simply didn’t care. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and the 1984 High Ross Treaty with Canada (http://skagiteec.org/about/high-ross-treaty) resolved the issue, but this sort of thing goes on all the time.

The latest kerfuffle involves the dairy industry. Apparently, despite the fact that millions of people die of malnutrition each year in third world countries, there is a global glut of milk production. Thus, dairy farmers who depend on exporting their products face financial disaster when their markets dry up. That’s happening to dairy farmers in Wisconsin, which happens to be House Speaker Paul Ryan’s home state. So last week, President Trump traveled to Wisconsin to address their economic woes, and in classic Trump fashion he blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Canada, in particular, for closing its borders to U. S. dairy exports, calling Canada’s policies a disgrace to American workers (http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/strident-donald-trump-singles-out-canada-again-on-trade-target-in-energy-lumber-dairy). While he was at it, he also attacked Canada’s trade practices concerning timber and energy. Now that he’s made friends with China’s President Xi, he must need a new villain.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (ttp://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2017/04/11/canada-says-dont-blame-wisconsin-dairy-woes/100346214/), Trump was reacting to former U. S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s claim that recent changes in Canadian policy were choking off sales of American ultra-filtered milk which is used in cheese production. Canadians say it’s unfair to blame them, because Canada regulates its milk production by adjusting supply to meet demand, while other countries, including the United States, actually subsidize farmers to overproduce. There’s simply too much milk produced world-wide.

I’m not an economist, and clearly, the issue is far more complicated than my simple description. But I don’t have to be an expert in dairy economics to be unhappy when my president’s tendency to offend foreign leaders includes my favorite other country. If we can’t get along with Canada, things must be really bad.

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