Monthly Archives: June 2020

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

The Trump Roadshow pretends there is no raging pandemic and no rising death toll

Donald Trump is on the move. Tulsa. Phoenix. And coming soon to Mount Rushmore, where he will celebrate the 4th.

Meanwhile, the number of new coronavirus infections reported across the U.S. yesterday — 38,115 — was a record high since the start of the pandemic. The number of infections in this country totals more than 2.3 million and the death toll exceeds 119,000. I recommend the interactive feature in this morning’s New York Times, which illustrates in vivid animation the relentless spread of this virus.

“Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” June 25, 2020 New York Times.

In March, the President, failing to apprehend the reference to Nero fiddling while Rome burned, retweeted a cartoon image of himself playing the violin.

Ignoring the pandemic; willfully refusing to do anything to tame it (except for persistent wishing); pretending that if we just all go back to work and out to shop, all will be well — this is hardly a promising reelection strategy. But that seems to be Trump’s game plan. And, by all accounts, that — winning reelection, not defeating the coronavirus — is Trump’s fixation.

That’s a remarkable testament to Trump’s intellectual incapacity, moral depravity, and unfitness for the office he holds.

More significant than a stupid, self-defeating strategy is that people continue to die. Tens of thousands who didn’t have to die. This is a national tragedy as a result of a monumental failure of leadership. We can see this clearly in the contrast between the U.S. and the European Union. The EU has begun to tame this virus; we haven’t. It’s getting worse here.

Meet the Press, June 21, 2020.

Trump is incapable — relying on his gut and his small, threadbare bag of tricks — of defeating the coronavirus. So, having failed to wish it away, he ignores it.

Here’s what’s even more significant: The contemporary Republican Party is complicit in this ongoing catastrophe. Republican leaders have made a deal in getting behind Trump, and standing behind him come what may.

The failures of Trump’s tenure in the White House are clearly visible. The consequences can’t be hidden or wished away. And among the national Republican leadership, there are plenty of men and women who see well enough what is going on.

And they’re going along with this. They stick with Trump no matter what the consequences. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of Americans get infected needlessly, and no matter how many tens of thousands of Americans die as a result of Trump’s failures — they stick with him. They have freely entered into a pact that they are unwilling to break.

They made a cold, hard calculation to follow Trump because it kept them in power, gave them tax cuts, shredded regulations, and allowed them to stack the federal courts with right-wing ideologues. And the fact that their bargain has brought pain and suffering and death in numbers that are stomach turning — that, in their minds, doesn’t outweigh the political benefits of the deal.

There is so much that is indecent about this President. There’s so much to be distressed and angry about. Day after day, the cases of coronavirus increase and the death toll mounts. It’s disheartening and infuriating and disturbing to watch senators, members of Congress and the cabinet, advisors in the White House — the whole lot of defenders and apologists for Trump — accept the sickness, the pain and suffering, and the deaths of Americans because, in their minds, what they’ve gained outweighs the devastation that their political bargain has brought to the rest of the country.

(Image: Mount Rushmore in the fog, National Park Service.)

Democrats, Donald Trump, Republicans

Why is the United States, with 4% of the world’s population, #1 — at 25% –in COVID-19 cases?

Chuck Todd interviews Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Todd: President Trump’s Tulsa rally came one day after the United States recorded the most new cases of COVID-19 since May 3. And at a point when, according to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. is doing a far worse job of controlling the pandemic than the European Union is doing – basically similar size, if you will. Look at that graph. . . .

Dr. Osterholm, welcome back…. How do you explain that the United States have 25% of the globe’s cases and we’re sadly number one with the rocket ship? …

Osterholm: … At this point we don’t really have a national plan that really puts together what we’re trying to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the territories – all kind of with their own plan. And you’ve seen in the past week how disjointed that is.

What are we trying to do? We’re at 70-percent of the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases in early April. And yet I don’t see any kind of a – This is where we need to go and this is what we need to do to get there kind of effort. And that’s one of our challenges.

Todd: Is this a failure of testing and tracing – is that where this failure is? Or is this just across the board?

Osterholm: Well, we have to understand, as I’ve said to you on multiple occasions, We’re not driving this Tiger, we’re riding it. And while other areas have done much better around the world in stopping it after a difficult period of time with it, we haven’t done that.

And part of that is the fact that we have not really, I think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue; that we can’t shut down our economy, but we just can’t suddenly say, We’re done with it.

This virus is operating on its own time, under its own rules, not anything we impose on it. And we’re now trying to act like somehow we can policy-wise impose our will on this virus. And that’s what’s happened.

Other countries have been much more aware of the fact that the virus is going to do what it’s going to do. And so you have to basically stay locked down. You have to limit transmission in areas that we’re not doing. And that’s why I think you’re seeing right now is increases in a number of states, because everybody’s back to a pre-pandemic mindset.

Dr. Osterholm: “… we have not really, I think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue.”

The Messenger in Chief, of course, is Donald Trump. And that is not the message that he is communicating. So, it is Republicans, who look to him as their leader, who are least likely to have gotten the message.

Consider one aspect of the public health message that the public hasn’t gotten — wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus and protect other people. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that

Democrats are almost twice as likely as Republicans (70% v. 37%) to say they wear a mask “every time” they leave their house and while most people (72%) think President Trump should wear a mask when meeting with other people, only about half of Republicans (48%) agree. The partisan difference in opinion and behavior regarding masks is largely driven by Republican men. About half of Republican men report wearing a protective mask at least most of the time when leaving their house to go someplace where they may come into contact with others (49%) and smaller shares say President Trump should wear a mask when meeting with other people (43%).

Trump’s policy on the coronavirus is denial. And numbers make the President look bad. In Tulsa, the President said, “When you do testing to that extent you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’ They test and they test. We got tests for people who don’t know what’s going on.”

White House officials insisted that Trump was only kidding. But when asked on Tuesday about his comments, Trump replied, “I don’t kid.”

And there is evidence to back up Trump’s serious intent: “The Trump administration is planning to end federal support for some coronavirus testing sites across the nation at the end of the month — including seven in Texas, where confirmed cases of COVID are spiking.”

As a campaign strategy denial doesn’t look very promising, but that, clearly, is the strategy the Trump campaign is running with now. Trump said in February, “It’s going to disappear.” Trump told Sean Hannity last week, “It’s going to fade away.”

Trump’s most fervent followers, especially Republican men, are ready, willing, and able to accept the President’s wishful thinking.

The policy of wishful thinking is the reason the United States is Number 1 in the world in coronavirus infections and deaths. It is the reason that the coronavirus is not going to disappear. The virus will “operate on its own time, under its own rules.” And Donald Trump refuses to do anything to stop it.

Democracy, Donald Trump

Juneteenth, Confederate statues and flags, Tulsa, race-baiting, and the strange career of Jim Crow

Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865 after arriving at District Headquarters in Galveston, Texas on the 18th :

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

Juneteenth has been a holiday in Texas since 1980. Ed Kilgore asks what it will take to make it a national holiday.

That may be as difficult as overcoming Republicans’ objections to ridding the Capitol of Confederate statues. Or getting NASCAR fans to put away their Confederate flags — which are as rich in historical symbolism as nooses.

Donald Trump found an historic setting — Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of a race massacre that killed hundreds of Black residents and burned 40 square blocks of the Greenwood district (“The Burning of Black Wall Street, Revisited” by Brent Staples) on June 1, 1921 — to relaunch his campaign after a coronavirus hiatus.

Trump offered the usual fare — including a ample portion of “white racial grievance” — to his assembled fans, as described by Jose A. Del Real (“With ‘kung flu,’ ‘thugs,’ and ‘our heritage,’ Trump leans on racial grievance as he reaches for a campaign reset”):

He referred to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus as the “kung flu.” He called racial justice demonstrators “thugs.” He attacked efforts to take down Confederate statues as an assault on “our heritage.” And in an ominous hypothetical, he described a “very tough hombre” breaking into a young woman’s home while her husband is away.

Today Trump is doubling down on race-baiting:

“Historically presidents have tried to calm tensions and not stoke them but elect a racist reality television host….” — Molly Jong-Fast 

“There’s a not-terribly-subtle subculture of white nationalists and neo-Nazis who share video footage of black people assaulting white people, trying to make images they believe will incite race hatred go viral. Anyhow, the president of the US is a key member of that community.” — Brian Beutler 

“The President of the United States is sharing videos of crimes committed by black people to push back on the notion that racism is a problem in our society.” — Aaron Rupar

Last summer, Brian Stelter reviewed Trump’s history of race-baiting, suggesting that “The pattern is the big story.”

These events brought to mind a passage in C. Van Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow describing white Southerners’ frustration at the economic, political, and social crises of the 1890s:

There had to be a scapegoat. And all along the line signals were going up to indicate that the Negro was the approved object of aggression. These ‘permissions-to-hate’ came from sources that had formerly denied such permission. They came from the federal courts in numerous opinions, from Northern liberals eager to conciliate the South, from Southern conservatives who had abandoned their race policy of moderation in their struggle against the Populists, from the Populists in their mood of disillusionment with their former Negro allies, and from a national temper suddenly expressed by imperialistic adventures and aggressions against colored peoples in distant lands. But for the majority it came much easier to blame the Negro for their defeat, to make him the scapegoat, and to vent upon him the pent up accumulation of bitterness against the legitimate offenders who had escaped their wrath.

“The pattern is the big story.” Donald Trump has been offering 21st century permissions-to-hate from the White House since his inauguration.

The public protests and other activity across the country may suggest that the tide is turning. Time will tell how well and how far things go with efforts to reform police culture and, more broadly, to change the status of Black Americans.

The prospects of ridding the White House of Donald Trump — critical if we are to see meaningful change — are going to play out in unpredictable ways over the next four and a half months. The story from Tulsa — where few participants wore masks, but attendance fell far short of campaign-generated expectations — was mixed.

The small crowd and rows of empty seats in Tulsa last week actually restored a measure of my faith in human nature. For all his lies, and hate, and divisiveness — which his supporters either celebrate or accept in stride — it was reassuring to think (at least last week at the BOK Center) that the Republican base is not so gullible as to believe every tale the fabulist in the White House (and Fox News Channel) spins.

Donald Trump is not even trying to defeat the coronavirus. He’s trying to wish it away. And at least a portion of his base knows it is still here. Score one for common sense over motivated reasoning.

Trump returns from Tulsa. Photo by Patrick Semansky / Associated Press in Los Angeles Times.

Finally, a note about style: ‘Black’ is the new black. “Why hundreds of American newsrooms have started capitalizing the ‘b’ in Black,” describes a step toward “affirming the experience and existence of an entire group of people who built this country and have contributed to every sector.”

2020 General Election, Democracy

Protesting is powerful, but voting is critical to achieving victory in a democracy

I love this Jonathan Bernstein column (“Voting Is Essential. It Is Also Overrated”), though I disagree with the suggestion, even at a time when street protests have swept the country and appear to have shifted public opinion nationally, that voting is overrated. Beyond the provocative headline:

Is voting the fundamental act of democracy? It’s a fundamental act — but hardly the only one. It’s no more basic than protest marches, campaign rallies, board meetings of organized interest groups, donations to candidates and groups, seminars at think tanks, press reports of city council meetings, lobbying, interactions within a party network, and so on.

Bernstein argues that

voting is only a limited part of how a self-governing republic works. It’s a reminder that anyone who really wants to be in the business of republican governing needs to find ways of getting involved beyond being just a voter, whether it’s through social movements, organized interest groups, political parties, or more than one of these.

It’s the interactions of those groups and elected officials that set the agenda for government action and fill in the details; it’s also those groups, along with the mass media, that create and change public opinion, which in turn changes what elected officials and others in government choose to do. That’s where much of the richness and texture of self-government are really found, not in voting booths.

I thought of this richly textured milieu when reading yesterday’s Los Angeles Times (“Rein in police unions, some labor allies say”):

It was a far cry from “defund the police,” but the response was severe anyway. In 2019, Steve Fletcher, a first-term member of the Minneapolis City Council, decided to oppose a budget proposal to add more officers to the Police Department.

Business owners soon started calling Fletcher, who represents part of downtown, complaining of slow police responses to 911 calls about shoplifting. Store owners told Fletcher the officers who eventually responded had a message: “We’d love to help you with this, but our hands are tied by the council; talk to your council member,” Fletcher said in an interview.

The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis declined to comment for the LA Times story; the Minneapolis Police Department denied there had been a deliberate slowdown. But, in fact, slowdowns – ‘work-to-rule’ – are a familiar tactic among public and private-sector unions. And law enforcement unions are among the most powerful labor groups in the country. California’s pension gap – a gargantuan issue for cities and counties, as well as the state – began with an extravagantly generous pension deal for the California Highway Patrol in 1999, during the second term (before he was recalled from office) of Democratic Governor Gray Davis. And candidates in both parties, in nonpartisan races, and at every level (and not just in California) covet the contributions and endorsements of law enforcement, which are touted in campaign fliers, direct mail, and radio, TV, and online advertising.

Police officers, who carry guns and badges (as well as billy clubs, rubber bullets, tasers, and chemical sprays), are more powerful than most individuals. Collectively, they are even stronger. Like the thuggish leadership of the NRA, police unions often seem to overplay their hands. (An example from the Washington Post: ‘the leader of the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation, Bob Kroll, has called the protests convulsing the city a “terrorist movement”; told officers that “the politicians are to blame” for the rioting and the police “are the scapegoats”; and described Floyd as a “violent criminal.” He has also fostered political division in the largely Democratic city; at one point, the union sold “Cops for Trump” T-shirts to raise money for charity.’) Then again (like the NRA), law enforcement unions are so well entrenched that they are accustomed to getting what they want. Niceties such as work-to-rule are overshadowed by episodes of police violence directed against protesters and journalists (and by contrasting instances where “the protesters had to deescalate the police”).

Street protests

For 23 days and counting, following the murder of George Floyd, there have been demonstrations in streets across the country (and abroad) protesting police brutality and, especially, police killings of black men. Young people have led and participated in large numbers in these protests (“These Kids Are Done Waiting for Change”).

In real life, Nya Collins, Jade Fuller, Kennedy Green, Emma Rose Smith, Mikayla Smith and Zee Thomas had never met as a group when they came together on Twitter to organize a youth march against police violence. It was unseasonably hot, even for Middle Tennessee, with rain predicted, and earlier protests here had ended in violence, with the Metro Nashville Courthouse and City Hall in flames. Collectively, these are not the most promising conditions for gathering a big crowd, much less a calm one. But the teenagers were determined to press on, even if hardly anyone showed up.

On June 4, five days later, the founding members of Teens for Equality — as the young women, ages 14 to 16, call their organization — were leading a march of protesters some 10,000 strong, according to police estimates. “I was astonished,” Kennedy Green, 14, told me in a phone interview last week. “I did not know there were that many people in Nashville who actually see a problem with the system. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, there are so many people here who actually care.’”

The sustained demonstrations, day after day, have been regarded as extraordinary expressions of energy and commitment to end violence directed against black Americans by police officers sworn to protect our communities. It has been exhausting, even for young people (“Young Protesters Say Voting Isn’t Enough. Will They Do It Anyway?“).

“I’m tired. I’m literally tired. I’m tired of having to do this,” said Aalayah Eastmond, 19, who survived the 2018 massacre at her high school in Parkland, Fla., became a gun control advocate, saw many legislative efforts stall — and is now organizing protests in Washington over police violence against fellow black Americans.

And political activism can be frustrating:

The deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement. The relentless creep of climate change. Recurring economic uncertainty — this time amid a pandemic exacerbated by missteps across the federal government.

“In an ideal world, all of these issues would be solved by going out and voting,” said Zoe Demkovitz, 27, who had supported Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign, as she marched against police violence in Philadelphia. “I tried that. I voted for the right people.”

“And this,” she concluded, adding an expletive, “still happens.”

I thoroughly agree with Bernstein that political activism is “where much of the richness and texture of self-government are really found, not voting booths,” but I don’t accept at all that

voting by itself is … well, it’s not useless, but it’s a blunt instrument that can’t really do much. A vote can’t tell the government to reform the police force, let alone give specific instructions about how to do that or any other complex task. It can’t tell the winning candidate to lower taxes, or negotiate a trade treaty with China, or make abortion illegal or marijuana legal.

All it can really do is either throw the bums out or keep them in office. And that’s not a defect with the way that elections work in the U.S. It’s inherent in the nature of voting in mass electorates. 

It takes a blunt instrument to get the attention of people in power. Throwing the bums out (or not) is powerful. Even Mitch McConnell’s caucus is scurrying for cover. It may not be much, but they’re hoping their reform proposal puts them on the right side of this issue with voters. It’s because McConnell may lose his majority at the polls in November that he has bothered with even the pretext of doing anything about police violence.

Moreover, street protests are a blunt instrument. Staging a sit-in is a blunt instrument. Giving money to – or volunteering for – a candidate or a group pushing for change is a blunt instrument. Showing solidarity with a police union is a blunt instrument. For most political activists, all we have is blunt instruments. And we had better be prepared to exercise our right to vote (and encourage our community allies to do likewise) or wielding the other blunt instruments of self-government won’t amount to much.

I agree with Barack Obama, who has begun to speak out more often as the November elections grow nearer:

I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.

Young protesters and millions of Americans embrace ending police violence against black Americans as a compelling goal. But not everyone is on board. This is a struggle to increase accountability for a powerful group. Labor unions are not in the business of increasing accountability at the expense of job security. So of course police unions stand in opposition to this agenda, but they are hardly the most significant sources of opposition.

Add Donald Trump; Trump’s voting base; the political party that controls the White House, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate, and a majority of governorships and state legislatures. And as Democrats press the issue, police reform will inevitably become more partisan, with reflexive opposition from nearly half the country.

Jim Crow came into existence at the end of reconstruction in 1877 and stretched well into the mid-1960s. But, as we have seen with the aggressive voter suppression strategies of the Republican Party, the 1965 Voting Rights Bill was only an ephemeral victory. And as we have seen in recent years, in a flood of videos of the police shooting and strangling black men, racist violence — often with deadly consequences — is alive and well in America.

While recent polling suggests support for Black Lives Matter (such as a Pew survey that found: “67% of Americans say they strongly (38%) or somewhat (29%) support the Black Lives Matter movement, while smaller shares (31%) oppose the movement”), this can’t be regarded as a game changer. Folks had better be prepared to get out and vote if this agenda is going to continue to advance. We must “elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.”

(‘All Black Lives Matter’ painting of Hollywood Boulevard as seen on ABC7 Los Angeles.)

Donald Trump, Republicans

Making the case that Donald Trump is a strong president is harder than it looks

[Spoiler alert: The photograph by Doug Mills of the New York Times captures President Donald Trump, flanked, a few steps behind, by the Attorney General of the United States and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, making a triumphant walk into Lafayette Park. No other man in the country could have led this walk. No one else holds such a powerful position. Nonetheless, after trying to establish that Trump is a strong president, I conclude that this is not the case.]

In the United States we like to “rate” a President. We measure him as “weak” or “strong” and call what we are measuring his “leadership.” We do not wait until a man is dead; we rate him from the moment he takes office. We are quite right to do so. His office has become a focal point of politics and policy in our political system. – Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power, p. 3.

A number of political scientists and commentators, adhering to the Neustadt model of presidential power, have contended throughout his term that Donald Trump is a weak president. I made the case for this view in a previous post. In this post, I will argue that this conclusion leaves out a singular presidential power (unobserved by Neustadt) that greatly enhances Trump’s political influence. This must be factored into the equation in assessing Trump’s leadership. Yes, the man displays a profusion of weaknesses (reviewed in my original post), but in assessing his relative power as president, attention must be paid to an unprecedented strength that stems from Trump’s domination of the Republican Party.  

This domination has guaranteed Trump a measure of immunity from consequences that no president before him enjoyed. A Republican Party united in the refusal to buck its leader renders all criticism of Trump partisan, which transforms the narrative in the mainstream media into tiresome politics-as-usual bickering between the parties. Republican unity, in the face of off-the-rails leadership, is a huge asset, resulting in unprecedented presidential immunity from substantive objections or pushback from his party.

To set up my argument, I’ll begin with observations made last week on June 7 by George Will (interviewed after publication of his op-ed, “Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.”). From the interview:

Twenty-sixteen: people faced with two candidates they didn’t like, opted for the one they knew least and that was Mr. Trump. Three and a quarter years later the fact is that 90-percent of the Republican Party approves of his conduct. Ninety percent. The Republican Party has never been so united in the 20th century – not really since it was founded in 1854.

It was divided between the Teddy Roosevelt and the Taft Republicans in 1912, between the Dewey and Taft Republicans in the 1940s, between the Goldwater and Rockefeller Republicans in the 1960s. Today it is a united party and united behind someone unfit to lead. That is a sobering thought.

Chuck Todd: … How do we fix this? … Is it a new party, new conservative party?

No, what you do is, is you give, as a disobedient child, is you give them a time-out. You give them time to reflect on the cost of suspending their judgment, and suspending their principles and convictions, and turning themselves into a cult of personality. Which is why I think a very thorough rejection of the party, top to bottom, in the elections, will cause them to pause and think: Is it worth it? What am I gaining from this acquiescence? In a man that no one, that – no Congressional Republican to speak of has any affection for the President. This is all fear.  Fear grounded in the 90-percent. [Link at MSNBC: Sorry, video is no longer available.]

The takeaway: Trump’s base – party activists, FNC viewers, talk radio listeners, devotees of rightwing websites and social media, and folks still chaffing at Obama’s election – will turn out in Republican primaries to punish office holders and candidates who have gotten on Trump’s bad side. It is hardly an exaggeration to refer to this, as Will does, as a cult of personality.

It had been uncommon, before Trump, for a president to go after a Senate or House member of his own party. Trump is ready, willing, and able to follow through with this threat, which can bring an abrupt end to a political career.

Politicians with an instinct for survival are quick learners. They watched the takedown of Mark Sanford, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, whose conservative credentials were solid, but who was a sometime Trump critic. He lost his primary when Trump turned on him. Another solid conservative, who decided not to seek reelection as a Senator after straying from the Trump fold, commented on the Sanford takedown:

“This is Trump’s party,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a fierce critic of the President who decided not to run for re-election in Arizona. “We’ve all felt it. It was reiterated last night. If you want to win a Republican primary, you can’t deviate much from the script. It’s the President’s script. You can’t criticize policy or behavior.”

The resulting fear throughout the GOP caucuses of both houses ensures that contradicting Trump on anything that he cares about (which is always about him) is exceedingly rare. Trump speaks or tweets. And caucus members reinforce his message, comment evasively, or stand silent. The possibility of a bipartisan critique of presidential misbehavior vanishes. Republican Party unity means not giving an inch and being always “willing to engage in overlooking the truth, overlooking the facts.” Any rebuke or criticism of Trump is reported as just more squabbling between the parties because Republicans won’t criticize their leader. They’re with him come what may.

That’s powerful. That’s a presidential strength that would have prompted Richard Neustadt to add an additional chapter to his book, had he witnessed the phenomenon.

Democrats have noticed Congressional Republicans’ submission to Trump. Sherrod Brown wrote after the Senate impeachment trial (“In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear”):

In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out.

But:

They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like “Low Energy Jeb” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:

“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”

“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”

“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”

Republicans gave Donald Trump a pass on impeachment. Before that they gave him a pass on the abuses documented in the Mueller Report. Before that they gave him a pass on undermining the nation’s intelligence agencies, sabotaging international alliances that keep the peace, and wrecking relations with democratic governments across the globe. Republicans have given Trump a pass on moving millions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to Trump family businesses. The list goes on: the hollowing out of the State Department, the purging of career professionals across the executive branch, and serial firings of inspectors general.

What has happened in the Department of Justice is especially egregious. Bill Barr has sought – with considerable success – to undo criminal prosecutions brought by Mueller’s team against Trump cronies and grifters, while weaponizing the justice department to go after Trump’s political enemies (from Senator Richard Burr to Joe Biden, the President’s 2020 opponent, as well as numerous career officials in place during the previous administration).

Checks and balances are anachronistic

In another era, Congress would have had an active role in uncovering and remedying much of the corruption and malfeasance in evidence. Not so long ago, the effort (in at least some instances) would have been bipartisan. No longer. The White House has stonewalled Congressional investigators in wholesale fashion and asserted broad executive privilege in court. It refused absolutely to cooperate with the House impeachment investigation – no documents, no witnesses:

Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it.

Trump has succeeded in neutering Congressional oversight (and with the firings of inspectors general, oversight within the executive branch) and in shrugging off checks on the White House to a degree unthinkable four years ago. And at every step, Congressional Republicans have gone along with whatever Trump has brought their way. The Republican Senate has gone further.

Trump directs the reality show

In another era, a conspiracy theory with a catchy name, but otherwise devoid of facts, evidence, or even a coherent theory of the case, wouldn’t receive much attention. Trump, who has cited “Obamagate” dozens of times, signals to Republicans to get on board with the charade:

On May 16 Trump, retweeting a complaint that McConnell has done nothing about “the Russian collulsion hoax,” sent a tweet directing McConnell to “Get tough and act quickly, or it will be too late.”

Three days later, McConnell gave “a full-throated endorsement of an aggressive Senate Republican investigation of the counterintelligence probe into whether the then-candidate and his campaign colluded with the Russians in 2016.” The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Ron Johnson, and Lindsey Graham’s Judiciary Committee, have both opened investigations.

The President dominates his political party in a way that no previous president has done, and that no one would have expected of any presidential nominee of either party before Trump. Justin Amash has suggested that Trump’s shamelessness “gives him this superpower that other people don’t have.” I regard Trump’s immunity from consequences to be vastly more significant. Personal immunity to feelings of shame in a president goes a long way, but not nearly as far as historically unparalleled party unity. This is shamelessness writ large – across a whole political party following its leader: “…suspending their judgment, and suspending their principles and convictions, and turning themselves into a cult of personality.”

Taking a step back

Donald Trump has been a remarkable (and I would venture, consequential) president. Trump and the Trump presidency have generated much debate, including the disagreement about whether or not Trump is a weak or a strong president. Let’s review:

● Donald Trump has an historically unique set of strengths: 90% approval from Republican voters and the willingness – and ability – to punish Republicans (who dare venture criticism of the President) in primary elections. This has served to instill fear among Republicans in the House and the Senate, silencing dissent or criticism, and giving Trump immunity from bipartisan resistance to foolish, reckless actions. I regard this – especially within the context of the conventions of mainstream journalism – to be highly consequential.

● This could have only happened with a Republican president. Reflect on a single off-the-rails incident, the Helsinki summit conference, and consider a counterfactual. What political repercussions would have ensued, had Barack Obama sided with Vladimir Putin and against the U.S. Director of National Intelligence? This almost certainly would have split the Democratic Party in two. Many Democrats, concerned with national security and aware of Putin’s hostility to democracy, would have been unwilling to rally round the president.

Now consider that Helsinki was not a single off-the-rails incident. We’ve had many such incidents. And Trump’s conduct has become more deviant over time. Nonetheless, the GOP “has never been so united.”

● But this phenomenon is not just a function of the distinct character of the Republican Party in the highly polarized era of the Tea Party and Fox News Channel. Trump’s weaknesses – impulsive angry tweets, narcissistic sensitivity to criticism, and indiscriminate vindictiveness – have solidified his hold on the Republican Party. Trump’s unbridled lack of restraint has served to build that fear among Republicans and fortify maximal party unity.

Trump’s irrational, impulsive, narcissistic behavior has – in this regard – worked for him. None of Trump’s 2016 competitors for the party’s nomination could have expected to be as feared as Trump, or to have silenced criticism so effectively, since none of them would be at all likely to behave in ways that Trump by all appearances is compelled to do.

● Jonathan Bernstein and Matt Glassman, two prominent and consistent adherents of the Neustadt thesis, have argued that (apart from the tax bill) Trump has no legislative accomplishments. Republicans in Congress, in their view, aren’t afraid to buck Trump about issues where they disagree with the President. Glassman writes, “… GOP legislative power mostly lies in Congress right now. Republican leaders have almost completely ignored the policy priorities of President Trump.” Far from being dominated by Trump, on this view, Congressional Republicans control the agenda.

My reply: Yes, but only on issues that are of negligible concern to Trump. What matters to Trump are perceived slights, petty resentments, and personal payback. Seeing Mark Sanford go down matters. Trump has a short attention span and a meager interest in public policy. (Glassman makes this point as well.) The policy prescriptions Trump mentions – whether a payroll tax cut or an infrastructure bill or anything else – are idle chatter. Mitch McConnell and other Republicans understand this. Thus, they can control the (insignificant) legislative agenda (at least in the Senate).

As Bernstein has explained (“The Post-Policy Republicans Seized Control Long Ago”), Republicans have no interest in governing. Powerful people in the Republican Party – from the crew at FNC, to Rush Limbaugh et al. on talk radio, to the House Freedom Caucus – are focused on fanning the flames of resentment among the base, and decapitating leaders who aren’t on board with that, not on creating a governing agenda.

In Bernstein’s words (regarding GOP fears that the party’s angry base could wreak havoc on Republicans’ electoral prospects): “The hallmark of all this dysfunction is a political party that is rarely interested in, and increasingly unable, to articulate and enact public policy — a post-policy Republican Party.” (That’s why, for instance, after campaigning in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 on the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans never bothered to craft a replacement.) Trump’s indifference to legislation matches his party’s.

● Furthermore, Trump gets his way even when he loses legislatively. Consider the wall, perhaps Trump’s premier campaign issue in 2016. I’ll grant that a ‘stronger’ president could have found a way to get Congress to fund it. It would have required negotiating with Democrats and a willingness to accept a legislative compromise. This was beyond Trump’s capacity.

But then what happened? Trump defied Congress and carried the day. In February 2019, Trump declared a national emergency and moved billions of dollars of military funding to construction of the wall. In July 2019, the five Republican men on the Supreme Court backed him up. In January 2020, Trump moved billions more – for a total of $18.4 billion – toward construction of his wall.

Trump won on his own terms. It was an ugly, drawn-out spectacle, but that might have won him points with his base. This president got what he wanted. Congressional Republicans acquiesced, rather than offering principled objections, jealously safeguarding Congressional prerogatives (contrary to the expectations of the Founders) or opposing presidential overreach.  

● Legislation aside, both Glassman and Bernstein insist that Senate Republicans, not Trump have the upper hand. Glassman has argued, “Senate Republicans—if they cared—could *still* demand Trump clean house in WH, install a real CoS, and start running administration in a modestly non-corrupt manner. Yes, they have a collection action problem and face some individual risk, but they have plenty of leverage, too.” Bernstein has argued:

At one point, Trump echoed civil-rights era reactionaries by threatening “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” only to back down when Republicans urged him to. That is, even when all Trump has is words, he’s easily rolled by his own allies. (They’re not willing to remove him from office, partly because they know how easy he is to defeat any time they want to.)

I disagree with both judgments. I believe that Trump is leading the Republican Party and McConnell (and other Republicans) are trailing in his wake. At this stage, it is fantasy to think that a significant handful of Senate Republicans would “demand that Trump clean house.” Not in the real world with 90% of the base backing him. And not the least because no rational Senator has reason to suppose that anything Senators could ‘demand’ could possibly put Trump’s White House on track. When Generals Kelly and Mattis and other ‘adults in the room’ surrounded Trump, things were less erratic. But no one, at this stage, is going to make Trump go back to those days. The men surrounding Trump now would push back as fiercely as Trump himself.

And, while I agree that we can make a case in some contexts that Trump “is easily rolled by his own allies,” it is only in some contexts. In this case, Trump has seen (what he has regarded as) his ticket to reelection (the good economy and rising stock market) disappear and has seen Biden leading in virtually every poll in the past year, with his lead increasing as we approach the election. Trump, who has a small bag of tricks, is in desperate straits. He is willing to listen occasionally, though not consistently. He will be beating the law and order drum – with demands for domination and violence on city streets again and again between now and November. His allies have won a news cycle at most. Trump is in charge. He dominates a Republican Party that might be better off without him, but the best evidence of the past three years is that Republicans can’t slip out of his grip.

So, is Trump a strong president?

No, he’s not. Here’s why: While Trump has unprecedented control of his party, and benefits from the consequences of that control, a solitary asset isn’t enough of a counterweight to Trump’s many glaring weaknesses. Trump is a poor strategist, a poor negotiator, and a poor manager. He is so obsessed with himself that he is compelled to do and say things every day that aren’t in the least helpful to a president. Wishful thinking, not planning, is the order of the day. Trump’s absolute failure to take command of the federal government to defeat the coronavirus is a case in point; instead he has imagined it magically going away. And, as the public health disaster continues to unfold, his hope for an economic rebound in the midst of the pandemic, is risible. He doesn’t have a plan. Not for the virus, not for the economy.

Not a day goes by when Trump’s weaknesses are not on full display. Steve Schmidt, speaking colloquially, rather than as a scholar, has said, “this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation. Of weakness. When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile, an idiot.” The evidence for this view – whatever nouns and adjectives we choose – is overwhelming.

While Neustadt was in no position to evaluate Trump’s unique strength, we are. And the balance still tilts toward weak.

Dan Drezner has written, “If Neustadt is correct in his view that the chief power of the presidency is the ability to persuade, then Donald Trump has been a weak, ineffectual president.” Then, after reviewing the extensive damage Trump has done in three years, Drezner offers an assessment with reference to the Imperial Presidency. Drezner writes that

constraints on the presidency have been severely eroded in recent decades, enabling even a comparatively weak leader to be a powerful president. Trump assumed the office at the zenith of its power, and his willingness to flout norms has empowered the office even further. For half a century, Trump’s predecessors have expanded the powers of the presidency at the expense of countervailing institutions. Trump himself has attempted massive executive branch power grabs, but the underlying trends eroding formal and informal constraints on the president long predate his inauguration. They make the existence of a president with Trump’s peculiar psychology far more worrisome now than it would have been even amid the heightened tensions of the Cold War. Crudely put, Trump is a weak man who occupies a powerful office, and the power of the office demands that greater attention be paid to Trump’s unique psychology.

This matches Nancy Pelosi’s critique of the President. She takes for granted the power of the office and the capacity of a president to lead the nation, but regards Donald Trump as a weak man. In an April 14 press release, the Speaker takes Trump to task for his “incompetent reaction” to the pandemic: he dismantled the infrastructure to overcome a pandemic, ignored warnings, dithered instead of acting to prevent the death and disaster that ensued, failed to provide for testing, masks and PPE, and told his followers that the pandemic was a hoax that would magically disappear.  Describing Trump’s flight from responsibility, she says: “a weak person, a poor leader, takes no responsibility.  A weak person blames others.”

No walk through the park — no matter that only he can lead it — can change the fact that a weak man occupies the Oval Office.

[Post revised for clarity.]

Democracy

Being black in America, street protests, voting or not bothering to vote, and the 2020 election

● The murder of George Floyd is disheartening, enraging, even disorienting. It is jarring to reflect on how near the racial regime in 21st century America is to the United States of the Jim Crow era. In 2020 being a black American carries extraordinary risks, especially in encounters with the police. Meg Guliford (“We are not okay. And you shouldn’t be either.”) reflects on the burden of these racial realities.

● In the course of an interview, a political scientist who has studied how protest affects politics, says this:

There has been a debate in social science for a long time about whether there was a backlash to the waves of violent protest in 1967 and 1968. Commonly, people will say “riot,” but I am using “violent protest” and “nonviolent protest” as the two categories.

Most of the destruction we’re witnessing doesn’t fit into either category. The opportunity for looting, not protest, drew many people into the streets. They look like protesters, but they’re not:

Two groups emerged more distinctly later in the day: one ransacking shops, the other rallying on message. In Santa Monica, they were often blocks apart. Looters in the shopping district on 4th Street appeared organized, smashing windows with crowbars and skateboards and loading the stolen goods into waiting cars. Some ran or drove off as sirens approached, but mostly continued as they passed. Dozens stole shoes and gear from a Vans shop, while bike after bike was pulled out a hole in the front door of an REI store. Fires were lit, with at least two squad cars burned.

● Research suggests that violence can diminish the prospects for successful protest, and many commentators have recalled Richard Nixon’s successful law and order campaign for president, after urban unrest struck scores of cities in 1967 and 1968. Michael Cohen casts doubt on the idea that the violence of the past week must benefit Trump, because “the advantage that Biden has – and Nixon had in 1968 – is that he seems like a calming force; someone who will bring normalcy in a time of division and chaos.” (Nixon also had a secret plan to win the war, which had spiraled tragically out of control under LBJ.)

● Regarding the 2020 election, what concerns me most is not the Americans who are tired of Trump, but may stick with him because they are anxious about disorder. It is the millions of voting age Americans who are tired of Trump, but see no reason to vote. They are disengaged and cynical.

Jon Favreau, who conducted focus groups with swing voters in four American cities, observes:

More than anything else, what stayed with me after the focus groups was the overwhelming cynicism these voters have towards almost every American institution. What unites most of them isn’t just disgust and disappointment with Trump, but with a political system that only seems to work for a shrinking number of people who aren’t them. 

The research of More in Common revealed the same phenomenon among a group of “passive liberals” (15% of voting age Americans) who are “would-be Democratic voters,” but generally don’t vote: “They’re younger, more urban, more female, more black and Hispanic on average and have a clear orientation toward the Democratic Party. . . . But they feel disaffected and cynical toward the system so they are less inclined to vote as a whole.”

Systemic racism isn’t going to budge much in the next few months. What happens as young protesters (and others watching the protests) see personnel changes at the local level, but no reform at the federal level? Do they double down on their commitment to change and cast votes against the candidate who sees very fine people among white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and the political party that sustains him? Or do they grow disaffected and walk away, cursing the whole corrupt system?

Republicans thrive when faith in government falters, which is assured as long as Trump is in the White House. Dysfunction, gridlock, polarization, even corruption and incompetence, all count as victories for the GOP. They make responsive, effective governance impossible. That works for the deep-pocketed individuals and corporations that benefit most when change can’t happen.

The steep challenge for Democrats, Favreau notes, is to present a vision of progressive politics that would make a tangible difference in the lives of people against whom the system is rigged — and to convince voters that they can deliver on their vision.

(Image from a local TV broadcast of folks with cellphone cameras chronicling the vandalism and looting going on as they pass by.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Attorney General Barr is all-in with the Trump/GOP strategy of flooding the zone with shit

From this morning’s New York Times (“William Barr’s State of Emergency”), an interview with the Attorney General of the United States:

Mail-in ballots are another domain where Trump had been staking out turf. He called the distribution of ballot applications in Michigan “illegal” and warned that voting by mail “doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” In a second interview on May 20, when I asked who was going to referee the 2020 election, Barr replied, “The voters.” He said his department’s role would be limited, as the power belongs to the states and their electors. But when I brought up Trump’s tweet about Michigan, which he posted that same morning, Barr quickly seized the opportunity to float a new theory: that foreign governments might conspire to mail in fake ballots.

“I haven’t looked into that,” he cautioned, offering no evidence to substantiate that this was a real possibility. But he called it “one of the issues that I’m real worried about,” and added: “We’ve been talking about how, in terms of foreign influence, there are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in. And it’d be very hard to sort out what’s happening.” 

Let’s be clear: Bill Barr is neither “an imbecile,” nor “an idiot” (Steve Schmidt’s assessment of Donald Trump). He is an astute political operative who knows precisely what he is doing. From the moment he succeeded Jeff Sessions, he has been all-in with Trump. All-in with Fox News Channel, Limbaugh, Breitbart, and every other star in the conservative media universe. He is (as Jay Rosen aptly characterized the White House strategy to dodge accountability at all costs) “flooding the zone with shit.”

(Image: Nice Shot – A Blow for Liberty by Bill Bramhall. )