The Carpentariat

Bruni's inexcusable hit job on Biden

The Times' impossibly self-righteous Frank Bruni — Is there any sociopolitical quandary about which he, single-handedly, fails to provide the virtuous answer? — has determined that Joe Biden, whose sociopolitical wisdom surpasses Bruni's by several parsecs, would be unfit as Democrats' presidential nominee:

"What would you say if I told you that we should put our chips on a man who failed miserably at two previous campaigns … and that he spent nearly 45 years in Washington ['a dirty word'] … and that his record includes laws and episodes that are reviled — rightly — by … female and black voters. [And that he's four years older than Trump.]

"You’d tell me that I was of unsound mind.

"Well, Joe Biden's boosters are."

According to Bruni, know this: You're unhinged if you support a presidential candidate with a half-century of political and policy experience, which dwarfs that of any other Democratic hopeful and positively blows away the sitting president's lack of knowledge and knowhow — a candidate with, heaven forfend, flaws in his record. Deem it refreshing that other candidates lack Biden's flaws, for they are without sin, but only because they have done so little to criticize in their short, undistinguished political careers.

In short, support for the experienced candidate is akin to downing some really powerful goof juice, whereas support for virtual nonentities, here and there, is like imbibing a sobering elixir.

And yet we are the ones of unsound mind, according to the intellectually boorish columnist.

To substantiate his claim that vast political-policy experience is a killer, Bruni writes, "ask Hillary Clinton how consoling her impeccable credentials are." It's as though, in Bruni's mind, experience is just experience; the candidates' immensely differing personalities are of no significance. There is a blindness here that staggers.

Bruni's squalid discrimination against age I won't dignify with a counterargument, except to observe that some gays, too, possess irrational phobias. His more reasonable objections to Biden are these: "[He] has many [shortcomings and vulnerabilities]. His record is one of them. There’s prodigious accomplishment there but also trouble: his stern treatment of Anita Hill when she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he was chairman; his role as an ambassador for the financial services industry in Delaware; his key part in the passage of crime bills that ended up punishing African-Americans disproportionately."

Doubtless these complaints would arise in 2020's presidential melee, even though equally reasonable responses should, by argumentation rights, prevail. As Biden has explained (over and over), as Judiciary chairman he could not simply order other senators to cease and desist in their rude questioning of Hill. "Under the Senate rules," Biden has said, "I can’t gavel you down and say you can’t ask that question." He voted against Clarence Thomas and has repeatedly said he believed Hill.

As for his "role as ambassador for the financial services industry," Biden represented the state of Delaware, for Pete's sake — then the geographical home of financial services. As a U.S. senator, he was doing his job. And as for his "key part" in passing 1990s crime legislation, I would remind Bruni that such was the political zeitgeist of that decade. Since then, Biden "played a 'critical' role in the Obama administration’s continuing efforts to overhaul" the harsh, unwise system he helped to establish.

We make mistakes — the spearhead of 1990s crime legislation, Bill Clinton: "I signed a bill that made the problem worse" — and we atone — "I want to admit it." Biden continues to defend his tough-on-crime past, however, and in politics, there is nothing wrong with that.

Bruni concedes that Biden is "an admirable person…. He pressed on with public service long after he could have cashed in. His devotion to his family is palpable; his strength through its tragedies, extraordinary. He’s informed, he’s affable and he’s real." (Remember when being authentic was Job One in politics? When it's inconvenient in argument, it becomes passé, I gather.) Yet the preposterously baffling, nearly uninterpretable scathing line in Bruni's columns is this: "His party can’t get enough of the word 'progressive,' but he’s regressive, symbolizing a step back to an administration past."

Bruni seems to be using "regressive" in a chronological sense, however the totality, the suggestive pattern, of Bruni's preceding criticisms leads one to think he is using regressive in the political, or ideological, sense. And that would be an insult beyond fairness — and comprehension. Much like Ted Kennedy, Biden is a liberal lion — and even if Bruni is writing chronologically only, what is to criticize in the Obama administration's FDR-like, progressive-conservative approach?    

If, after reading Bruni's tsk-tsk column, you still prefer Biden to any among his comparatively shallow pack of competitors, well, I guess you're unhinged. The virtuous Bruni always knows.     

 

20 years of life, and not a clue

Late last month, the faculty of Williams College, Illinois considered, for adoption, a 2015 University of Chicago statement on the matter of students and free speech. A petition in opposition immediately was issued, and signed by 363 students (of roughly 2,000) — "an amorphous group of students activists who came together to hex all fascists." The petition reads, in part:

A petition has circulated … which claims to defend the right to "free speech and free expression" on college campuses. The authors of the Williams petition assert that "while there is an understandable desire to protect our students from speech they find offensive, doing so risks putting down legitimate dialogue and failing to prepare our students to deal effectively with a diversity of opinions, including views they might vehemently disagree with." We … take grave issue with the premises of this petition and the potential harm it may inflict upon our community….

With increasingly visible violence towards those most marginalized by our society, why is this discussion happening now? "Free Speech," as a term, has been co-opted by right-wing and liberal parties as a discursive cover for racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism. The creation of this petition at Williams cannot be separated from those dehumanizing associations…. Therefore, this petition has grave potential to further silence the voices of people of color, queer people, disabled people, poor people, and others outside the center of power….

While the University of Chicago statement says that students "may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject," the issue is that these are not views we reject; they are views that reject us, and our very right to speak/breathe. The UChicago Statement, in failing to see this, has rejected our right to counter-protest, to "interfere." Thus, our rights protected by the 1st amendment are eradicated by a petition that claims to support "free speech." This document does not promote free speech: it punishes it.

Rare indeed is nearly perfect Orwellian spin. Guaranteeing everyone's right to free speech is offensive to the 1st Amendment, say the students, since the protection of that right denies others' right to shut down free speech. Thus only the negation of free speech guarantees what it negates. Orwell's Ministry of Truth could not have penned a more ideal statement of Doublethink.

Furthermore, say the students, the college's "urgent need to protect 'free speech' over all other issues … is evidence of white fragility, ideological anxiety, and discursive violence." Hence China's repressive censorship, one gathers, is but evidence of Asian strength, ideological security, and discursive tranquility? The student's indifference or outright hostility to freedom of speech and thought is positively staggeringly.

Perhaps most astonishing is the students' assertion that free speech "has been co-opted" by both conservatives and liberals "as a discursive cover" for virtually every cultural ill of modern society: "racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism." Unpondered by these students is that only freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas have ameliorated these age-old transgressions against foul isms and phobias; that somehow, forcing only one ideological position on society will improve that society.

The students seem unaware of Justice Brandeis' famous formulation: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." It also seems that the "process of education" is what the students are missing.

 

Trump is right, for once

Boy met girls. Boy slept with girls. Girls threatened exposure. Boy, running for class president, bought girls' silence in violation of school's campaign finance laws.

The moot court of public opinion, cable news and sundry commentators — and moot the court really is — has determined that this belated exposure of wrongdoing has "delivered a potentially devastating one-two punch" against the boy, Donald Trump; that "the likelihood that the [Trump organization] and the Trump campaign face charges is now high"; and that "the danger to Mr. Trump, his business and his campaign has compounded significantly."

This is humbug, of the most wistful kind — not about the boy's business and campaign, which may indeed be in danger of criminal prosecution, but about the boy himself. The little lad of privilege will graduate (barely) and proceed to live out the corrupt but gaudily comfortable life that was handed to him by dad.

Trump, now famously and better known as "Individual 1," directed his rarely legal mouthpiece to pay "the girls" — a porn actress and Playboy model — a combined $280,000, say federal prosecutors, which somewhat surpasses the allowed limit of $2,700 apiece. And say the NY Times commentators quoted above, "[Trump] could be named as an unindicted co-conspirator … or charged if he leaves office before the statute of limitations runs out (most likely in 2022)."

Which is to further say, Trump will be named as an unindicted co-conspirator but won't be charged upon leaving office. (Notice the above commentators wisely omit any mention of impeachment and removal, since a Republican Senate renders that eminently proper course inconceivable.) George W. Bush committed far worse crimes than paying off a couple bimbos; illegal surveillance and internationally banned torture were W.'s presidential pastimes. Yet President Obama swiftly decided that getting on with repairing W.'s wrecked economy was saner than prosecuting the former president. Likewise, President Biden will decide that repairing Trump's immense wreckages, foreign and domestic, will be saner than proving in court what everyone already knows: Trump is a dimwitted crook.

Prosecutors are also onto Trump's Russia dealings, as their filings showed yesterday. But establishing a beyond-reasonable-doubt, direct link betwixt Donald and Vladimir would be infinitely more difficult than photocopying the Trump Organization's bank statements, which prove the bimbo payoffs. Nevertheless, cable news (MSNBC and CNN) rejoiced in the Russia crumbs thrown by prosecutors, as though delicious bread-of-life justice is coming. Again, humbug.

Hence, ironically, Trump was more right than wrong when yesterday he tweeted: "Totally clears the president. Thank you!"

 

Andrew Sullivan and "America's New Religions"

Being Friday afternoon, Andrew Sullivan's latest thoughts are out, and these are among his strongest.

In "America's New Religions," he elegizes our diminishing Christian faith, which Sullivan contends is the very foundation of liberal democracy. Especially through Christianity's social-justice movements, he writes, the marginalized increasingly entered the bloodstream of the body politic, and thus, with regularity, have "renewed" the "liberal project." Such thinking follows Niebuhr, which to my thinking pretty much sanctifies it — as far as sanctification can go, anyway.

Sullivan's core argument is that as Christian faith has waned, political cultism has waxed — since tribal fanaticism, as it were, is a close substitution for genuine religious faith.

We have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical. They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided….

The same cultish dynamic can be seen on the right. There, many profess nominal Christianity and yet demonstrate every day that they have left it far behind. Some exist in a world without meaning altogether, and that fate is never pretty….

And because [the major Trumpian subset of evangelical] faith is unmoored but their religious impulse is strong, they seek a replacement for religion. This is why they could suddenly rally to a cult called Trump.

Here, Sullivan's notions encounter a spot of trouble, notwithstanding the overall strength of "America's New Religions." For instance having concluded that the left's Christian social movements once acted as the bulwark of liberal democracy, he criticizes the left's contemporary social movements — shorn of Christianity — merely because they are, well, shorn of Christianity.

To the latter Sullivan attributes singular wisdom, culture and restraint. Why? Do not the secular though divine writings of Shakespeare, Dante, Dickens and Tolstoy impart, though with greater readability, Biblical wisdom? Why must only the Word of God, as imagined by ancient scribes, pass for the very highest of received virtue? The simple answer, of course, is that for two thousand years, that's what we've been told. By Christians.

Sullivan's otherwise strong proposition is that because of evangelicals' errant religious faith, they have by necessity substituted a faith in Trump, which has as much to do with Christianity as national socialism.

Their leaders have turned Christianity into a political and social identity, not a lived faith, and much of their flock — a staggering 81 percent voted for Trump — has signed on. They have tribalized a religion explicitly built by Jesus as anti-tribal. They have turned to idols — including their blasphemous belief in America as God’s chosen country. They have embraced wealth and nationalism as core goods, two ideas utterly anathema to Christ.

I resist the argument that Trump is responsible for evangelicals' ill-fated apostasy, for in my own book of empirical wisdom, they jettisoned Christ soon after the first Easter. When have evangelicals not embraced tribalism, exceptionalism, materialism and nationalism? There have been individual holdouts, naturally, but as a movement, evangelicals have always been closer to Molière's characterization of Christian faith than Jesus'. But Sullivan is correct, I think, in seeing Trumpism as evangelicals' most grievous downfall to date.

Then again, what do I know? I'm a Montaignean skeptic, and here, I write specially as an agnostic. We of both persuasions freely confess that matters of the unknowable — the existence of a Cosmic Lawgiver whose supreme wisdom is filtered down to us bipedal primates — are matters best reflected on a few seconds after death. Sullivan, an earnest Catholic, sees Christianity as elemental to every aspect of life. Is social justice somehow truly less just if stripped of religious faith? Is evangelicalism truly "without meaning altogether," mostly because of its (as I see it) execrable faith in Donald Trump? In the second case, I'd say yes; in the first instance, I'd say no. But I sure as hell can't say I know both to be true.

And I'm glad I don't know. For if I knew — if I were tuned in to, possibly, God's absolutes — I'd be left with nothing to speculate, wonder or argue about.

 

Meet America's newest representative to the world

Donald Trump has done it again. In his quest to convert his presidential administration into an Augean stable of Fox News talking poopheads — K.T. McFarland, Scott Brown, Tony Sayegh, Mercedes Schlapp, Richard Grenell, Georgette Mosbacher, Anthony Scaramucci and John Bolton were all contributors to the scatological network — he has gone and hired Heather Nauert, the absolute epitome of photogenic mental vacancy, to be this nation's second-most essential diplomat — ambassador to the United Nations.

Ms. Nauert's knowledge of international affairs and world history is impressive, to be sure. One is thunderously impressed by her summer reflection, for instance, on the 74th anniversary of D-Day. "When you talk about Germany, we have a very strong relationship with the government of Germany," said Heather, as the State Department's spokeswoman. "Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We obviously have a very long history with the government of Germany, and we have a strong relationship with the government."

One normally would not cite the U.S.-led allied invasion of Europe, so that we might reduce Hitler's Germany to rubble, as a high point of "strong" U.S.-German relations. Indeed, in contemplation of Ms. Nauert's historical analysis, the Washington Post was brought to hilarious understatement: "The D-Day comment raised eyebrows over the summer, when some suggested it demonstrated a lack of historical understanding."

As historians are wont to say, however, Nauert's unoccupied brain, in this case, is nothing new. I am reminded of George W. Bush's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, another blonde vacancy, who was once required to meditate on another high point of U.S. foreign relations. "I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about … the Cuban Missile Crisis. It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure. I came home and I asked my husband, I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?'"

Ms. Nauert's diplomatic experience lies in her years of work as a Fox News contributor, a health insurance lobbyist, and as a minion for "her family’s financial services company," notes the Post. In her labors as an opinion vendor, "She has broadcast just about every right-wing talking-point under the sun," adds the Post. (Example: "In 2013, she said that a swimming group for Muslim girls at a YMCA in St. Paul, Minn., was evidence that 'sharia law is now changing everything.'")

Fox News, that fountain of Trumpian integrity, repeatedly labeled Ms. Nauert as a "GOP Consultant" and a "GOP Strategist." Such labels "[invest] Nauert with just the right wonkiness and insider cachet," observed the Post's Paul Farhi in 2000. "Except that she says she’s never worked for the Republican Party.

Asked Farhi, rather reasonably: "Why, other than looking like the younger sister of another Heather (Locklear), is she on TV at all? From what well of life-shaping experiences do our anointed dispensers of video wisdom draw their opinions?"

We now must ask, Why, other than being an impressive reincarnation of Perino's ignorance under W.'s aegis, will she be at the United Nations? From what well of life-shaping experiences do Trump's anointed dispensers of video wisdom draw their foreign policy opinions? We reflect for only a second or two. Why of course, Ms. Nauert is merely another manifestation of the Trump's squalid quest to convert his presidential administration into an Augean stable of Fox News talking poopheads.

 

In honor of cable-news hurricane guys and dolls

My posting has been a trifle precarious today. High winds in Portland knocked out cable internet around midnight, and it has remained knocked out, cold. (We finally were able to connect via hotspot.)

This has reminded me that my estimate yesterday of area mountaintop winds of 70 mph was pretty much accurate. Last night the news reported that winds atop the Portland area's "Gorge" reached a body-blown 71 mph. That was the virtual cyclonic whirlwind in which I snapped a photo of the Columbia River snaking through some of the most Gorgeous terrain I have ever seen.

Doing so was in no way frightful, but it did require steadfast determination. Time and again I struggled to steady myself and raise my camera against ferociously strong winds, only to be blown away, literally.

Thus my hat goes off to those resolute, hour-after-hour hurricane updaters: cable-news beachside reporters.

 

At last, a simple explanation for a complex situation

Tuesday, the Dow plunged by 800 points. This morning it tumbled by another 750 points; as of this writing, it's down by nearly 500 points. Together, notes the Washington Post, "The Dow and S&P 500 have both given up all gains for the year."

The Post offers a grab bag of pointed causations.

Investor anxiety has spiked over the Canadian arrest — and probable extradition to the U.S. — of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of China's giant tech firm, Huawei. The speculative consensus is that Ms. Wanzhou violated U.S. sanctions on trading with Iran, one of the U.S. president’s favorite enemies. At any rate the Chinese government regards her apprehension as rather rude, which complicates the status of U.S.-China trade talks, assuming their status is even viable enough to ponder.

Another factor behind the equity markets’ dive into a mammoth pool of anxiety is OPEC’s anticipated oil-production cutbacks, to staunch falling oil prices. These would be, in large part, Saudi Arabian cuts, which the U.S. president has cheerfully promised would never come, thanks to his undiplomatic, happy-go-lucky tolerance of Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of a troublesome journalistic voice.

Also contributing to investor nervousness is a growing yield-curve inversion, reports the Post, which simply means that short-term U.S. bonds are yielding a higher rate of return than long-term bonds, which is both unusual and worrisome. “Inverted yield curves usually mean a recession is coming,” observes the Post, “although not immediately.” In addition, there’s the specter of a poor jobs report tomorrow — one sign of a cooling economy.

Yet, silly journalism, all these factors are utterly irrelevant to the stock market’s nosedive. Somehow the Post overlooked the singular cause of market troubles: Donald J. Trump. Chortle not, for I am quite serious.

The spectacular growth in markets was, as you'll recall, entirely Trump's doing. Or such was the financial world according to Trump. It follows, then, that the markets' equally spectacular implosions are, as well, entirely Trump's doing. There are no other factors, no other explanations, no other causes. He who takes all the credit for equity good times must also take all the blame for equity bad times.

Trump will accept no such blame, of course, not even a little. But we band of brothers and sisters, we unhappy many, know better. Trump singlehandedly has caused the markets to crash, and he alone is responsible for the coming recession.

 

George H.W. Bush, and liberalism's self-respect

In "George Bush and the Obituary Wars," Frank Bruni is characteristically ultra-moralizing. But though he is too often sententious, here he makes a worthy argument against tribal intolerance and partisan self-righteousness. These traits have justly become monstrous bugaboos among the eminently fair-minded — and Bruni is nothing if not fairly virtuous, as he unceasingly, implicitly reminds us. Nevertheless, a large part of what the Times columnist writes bears reproduction:

On Twitter over the weekend, the television writer Bryan Behar did something unconscionable. He praised George H.W. Bush. The former president had just died. In Behar’s view, it was a moment to recognize any merit in the man and his legacy.

Many of his followers disagreed. They depended on Behar for righteous liberal passion, which left no room for such Bush-flattering adjectives and phrases as "good," "decent" and "a life of dignity." How dare Behar lavish them on a man who leaned on the despicable Willie Horton ad, who nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, who did too little in the face of AIDS, whose privilege often blinded him to need.

They lashed out at Behar. They unfollowed him [on Twitter]. And they demonstrated the transcendent curse of these tribal times: Americans’ diminishing ability to hold two thoughts at once.

Bush has indelible stains on his record. He also has points of light. At times he failed the responsibilities of leadership. At times he did right by them. He showed folly and he showed wisdom, cowardice and courage, aloofness and kindness….

We do seem to be getting worse at complexity. At nuance. At allowing for the degree to which virtue and vice commingle in most people, including our leaders, and at understanding that it’s not a sign of softness to summon some respect for someone with a contrary viewpoint and a history of mistakes.

I'm skeptical that we're "getting worse at complexity," since a too-sizable portion of humans, including the American species, has always preferred simplicity. (Hence the appeal of simple-minded demagogues such as Donald J. Trump, who is one of those rare bipedal exceptions to the rule that "virtue and vice commingle.") Willam Occam preferred a kind of simplicity because he had given it a great deal of complicated thought; most Americans prefer simplicity because it's easy.

Other than that objection to Bruni's argument, he is patently correct in pointing out that the American body politic groans under the "curse of these tribal times: [the] diminishing ability to hold two thoughts at once." Upon Bush's death, what liberal commentator was unaware of leftist single-mindedness — that penning a congenial eulogy of the recently deceased conservative president would engender only disfavor from quite a few liberal readers? See: Behar, Brian.

Any such eulogy was in no way an endorsement of George H.W. Bush's every act; it was but a timely, respectful recognition that many of his acts were praiseworthy. The politician who brought us Willie Horton also brought us the Americans with Disabilities Act, for one. Was it wrong to acknowledge that a flawed man did some good?

I would fret endlessly if I believed that both left and right had commenced an unfamiliar, abnormal intolerance of graciousness. But this partisan attribute is aged. Democrats claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant, an apish buffoon, a wholesale destroyer of the U.S. Constitution. Republicans maintained that FDR was a traitor to his superior class, an unrepentant socialist, a wholesale destroyer of American individualism. To both dead chief executives, by the devout opposition it was good riddance, with nary a note of respect.

The left's intolerance of political differences may be as pathetically prominent as the right's. But the more educable left, I would hope, is capable of reform(?). Although the left also gets no respect from the perpetually intolerant right, that doesn't mean it can't cultivate more respect for itself. And inherent in such self-respect is learning that "it’s not a sign of softness to summon some respect for someone with a contrary viewpoint and a history of mistakes." See: Bush, George H.W.

But, maybe I'm only being as self-righteous as Frank Bruni.

 

Breathtaking

Tough day. We were on our way to see ...

THIS.

It's known as "The Gorge," just 20 minutes east of Portland.

"A River Runs Through It" — the Columbia — and the panoramic scenery was nearly enough to make me believe in aesthetic design, which, I should think, even a snake-coddling fundamentalist would settle for.  

The photographic experience was a hoot. At roughly 4,000 feet in elevation, the bitter winds were blowing at hurricane speed. I kid you not, the typhonic gusts were coming across the mountain top at at least 70 mph — blowing me back and damn near knocking me over several times. I snatched a shot at every mere 50-mph-wind opportunity, assuming one would be more than a windblown blur.

My companion L. Reeves — and this I didn't know at the time, I was too busy trying to maintain an upright position — never made it out of her car, for she couldn't get the door open against such fierce winds. This was not my most chivalrous moment.

Shortly after, we retired to a country general store nearby, had some coffee, a giant chocolate chip cookie, and a good laugh. 

 

Trump, Mulvaney, and the CFPB, the Consumer-Fucking Plutocrats' Bureau

Paul Waldman, a WaPo Plum Line columnist, takes a look at Trump's unconscionable wreckage of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — contra his campaign protests on behalf of the little guy — via his demolition engineer, Mick Mulvaney, the bureau's director.

From WaPo's meticulous reporting, Waldman quotes: "enforcement actions by the bureau have dropped about 75 percent from average in recent years, while consumer complaints have risen to new highs." In graphic representation, the current bureau's dereliction of duty appears thus:

This Waldman passage is particularly startling, and uncomfortably amusing: "As Mulvaney told his constituents at a meeting of the American Bankers Association, 'I won’t talk too much about regulation by enforcement, but the short version is we’re not doing it anymore.' They must have laughed so hard in glee that their monocles popped out."

Waldman's thesis is that Trump is betraying the very voters he promised to safeguard from the cruel, monied elite. True enough. However my countervailing thesis would be: We — the politically aware — don't deserve Trump's treachery, but his base does, in spades. I wish every one of them a 30-percent credit card interest rate, payday loans at 90 percent, and mortgage brokers stabbing at them from Hell's heart.

I'm not a vindictive man. Just fair-minded. Since the radically backward GOP base wished to saddle all of us with a president most foul, it's only fair that they suffer the worst.

 

Andrew Sullivan's brilliant gimmick

I’m with her. https://t.co/7oEdZaa6DT

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) December 5, 2018

I like Sen. Klobuchar as well. In fact I'd like to see her as Joe Biden's running mate. She's intellectually sharp, politically astute, personally charming and temperamentally subdued. (In the Senate Judiciary Committee's recent confirmation hearings, her undemonstrative reaction to Brett Kavanaugh's outrageous verbal assaults on her person was as impressive as any I've ever seen in such a tense political moment.)

That said, my Klobuchar vp-preference isn't the point of this post — the actual point being, rather curiously, that the Minnesota senator has a lifetime "progressive score" of 90 percent (rounded), reports ProgressivePunch.org. And yet Andrew Sullivan persists in labeling himself a conservative.

Were he back in the immensely troubled land of Brexit madness (cause second, effect first), Sullivan would, I'm sure, rate as a conservative. But in the United States — and he is a naturalized U.S. citizen — an English conservative is an American liberal. Except for his oddly daft, occasionally favorable remarks about some magic-asterisked Paul Ryan proposal (many others have likewise been fooled by the prince of fiscal legerdemain, though), Sullivan consistently writes from the political spectrum's left.

If his self-imposed conservative label did not precede him in reputation, a reader could be forgiven for mistaking his writing as a Nation publication. (Time does not allow me to provide a revealing history of his writings, but anyone who has read them has also recognized their unmistakable liberal slant.) 

Yet if Sullivan came clean and announced himself as the American liberal he is, he would be forfeiting his quite successful, journalistic gimmick: his image as a disgruntled, boldly independent, tell-it-like-it-is conservative, which sets him apart from what would otherwise be rather customary liberal piety.

Good marketing strategies often come with at least a dollop of deceit, so in that sense, I can't blame Sullivan for perpetuating his almost comically inaccurate reputation as a conservative. But let's be clear — he is no such thing.

 

Trump: "I won't be here" when the crisis comes - as though he is now

Whenever we might think that presidential cynicism can't possibly become more savage, a story such as "Trump on Coming Debt Crisis: 'I Won’t Be Here' When It Blows Up," from the Daily Beast, violently emerges:

"Sources close to the president say he has repeatedly shrugged [off the exploding national debt], implying that he doesn’t have to worry about the money owed to America’s creditors—currently about $21 trillion—because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable."

It seems graphic evidence of America drowning in rising tides of debt was presented to Trump soon after he snatched the presidency from democratic will. "Yeah, but I won’t be here," said this most callous of U.S. presidents.

Having exacerbated the debt problem with yet more typically ill-advised Republican tax cuts, Trump instructed a spokesmen to do what Trump always does: Pass the buck. "While the president has and will continue to do everything in his power to rein in Washington’s out-of-control spending," prevaricated the White House's Hogan Gidley, "the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and it’s time for them to work with this president to reduce the debt."

With classic Trumpian logic, the president has ordered Cabinet members to slim down their budgets. "But," writes the Daily Beast, in tune with a bit of Washington Post reporting, "Trump also set strict limits on what sorts of programs could be cut—and quickly proceeded to propose increased spending in other areas of the federal government."

But what's a Trump story without a touch of knee-slapping Laffable humor? By that I mean "economist" Stephen Moore — former Club for Growth president and Wall Street Journal editorialist, now the Heritage Foundation's chief sorcerer of Hogwartian mumbo-jumbo — once "personally assured" Trump that when it comes to the debt and deficits, not to worry. "If you grow the economy," advised Moore, "you don’t have a debt problem."

Trump self-defensively took up this piece of macroeconomic twaddle, telling the debt-concerned that "We’re gonna grow our way out of it." Reality has intervened, however. Of late we've had tremendous Obamian growth; still, the debt grows ever larger — and with menacing speed.

Does this at all trouble the president of the United States? Hell no. Because Trump knows that when the national debt begins to existentially threaten a livable economy, "I won't be here."

 

A Mt. Hood lodge, one of FDR's wonders

1. On the way to Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge, a 1937 W.P.A. project, christened by — some say, meaning me — that greatest of U.S. presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The drive is 90 minutes from Portland.

2. Getting a bit closer.

3. Then very close.

4. At the lodge, one wing of it, anyway. It was 22 degrees with a wind chill of what must have been well into the minus range.

5. Inside the lodge. This is what socialism could build.

6. Again, inside the lodge. Artistry was but one financially wounded profession that socialism supported.

7. The chair built by a lodge artisan for FDR to use while visiting.

8. My chauffeur, mountain guide, sometime skier and magnificent companion, L. Reeves, sitting before the lobby's fireplace.

As the captions hovering over pictures 5 & 6 suggest, the 1930s were, in my book, among the most exhilarating and politically exciting of decades. Roosevelt's taming of capitalism through socialist programs — mostly out of desperate need — demonstrated the possibilities of good government and the splendor of good-government activism.

 

Where's J. Edgar when we could use him?

Now comes the rewarding news that the National Republican Congressional Committee was also hacked — by the Russians, I hope — which, as Politico puts it, is likely to be, ahem, a trifle awkward for the victims. The hack will not, however, be awkward for Trump, since the man has no shame. From Politico:

The fact that the NRCC was hacked and withheld that information is likely to prove embarrassing at a time when Republicans are grappling with an election in which they lost 40 seats and control of the House. President Donald Trump has also claimed that Republicans are better than Democrats at cybersecurity, explaining why one party was hacked in 2016 but the other was not.

"The DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked," Trump told CBS News in July. "I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans, too. But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses."

Years ago I heard Trump say that emails are for wimps, that real men use the phone. I suspect Trump's aversion to email communication was less a matter of feared wimpishness than fear of a subpoena-able paper trail.

Of course more eminent — I'd even say more distinguished — mob bosses don't use the phone, either, since they know a dozen FBI agents are huddled somewhere with earpieces, enjoying the conversation. But ever since J. Edgar joined Beelzebub in that netherworld of really harsh police states, the FBI wouldn't dream of bugging the crime-saturated Oval Office. 'Tis a pity.

 

Sympathy for a devil

Michael Isikoff, of Yahoo News, relates the latest from "multiple sources":

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors … are "tying up loose ends" in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks....

The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — [Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen].

A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.

Those "significant new details" will be the stuff merely of past crimes, from the top down — the tangible, concrete acts of a presidential candidate who believed the law is for other people, which he continues to believe as president. I say merely because emotional conflict within the human condition, as it were, is, to me anyway, of far greater interest in this squalid tale of Trumpian corruption.

With what seems no little compassion, the NY Times reports that "[Cohen] has told friends that he is mystified that he is taking the fall for actions he carried out on behalf of Mr. Trump, who remains unscathed." Mr. Cohen was perhaps the most ruthless of Trump's defenders, so it's challenging to sympathize with his psychological hurt and sense of unfairness. Yet sympathize I do.

Cohen is but the latest in a nearly interminable line of those who've been destroyed by befriending, and helping, Donald Trump. The latter is akin to a powerfully venomous spider nesting comfortably in his complex, inescapable web; in human terms, an untouchable mob boss. Cohen is correct that Trump "remains unscathed," and like many a violent gangster who died of old age in his own bed, Trump is likely to remain unscathed — with permanence.

Cohen, and others who have come clean, will take the fall by loss of income and reputation, as well as gaining a mammoth legal bill. Meanwhile, he who sits in the center of Trump's sordid web will remain untouchable — and if ever touched, acquitted. Trump will never pay a price, though he insists that his former friends do: "Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time," retweeted the president yesterday. He then added, with original Trumpian vileness: "You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things … and not serve a long prison term?… He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence."

Cohen's crimes were, of course, in no way "unrelated" to Trump. They were, instead, Trumpian crimes incarnate: lies about his Russian connections, his Moscow project and the campaign-finance-violating payments of hush money to deflowered kittens. For all this, Trump knows he will walk, but demands that Cohen serve "a full and complete sentence." Mobbed-up chutzpah doesn't get any more treacherous than that.

Yes, I sure can sympathize with Michael Cohen.

 

The Dershowitz Dance

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Alan Dershowitz writes:

"Because it is the report of a prosecutor, [the Mueller report] will inevitably be one-sided…. If unrebutted, [it] will probably be quite damaging, even devastating, to the president and his associates. Virtually all reports by special and independent counsels, from Kenneth Starr’s report on Bill Clinton to Lawrence Walsh’s on the Iran-Contra scandal—have been devastating when issued without any rebuttal."

Why wait for Mueller's underhanded "one-sidedness," however, when Dershowitz, in spades, dishes his own?

"This doesn’t mean that the report would survive a well-documented rebuttal," he continues. "I don’t believe that the Mueller report will directly accuse President Trump of any crimes. Collusion—even if Mr. Mueller were to conclude that it occurred—is not a crime. Nor can exercises of a president’s constitutional authority or rights—such as firing an executive-branch official, issuing a pardon or tweeting—be turned into crimes by stretching elastic statutes."

Dershowitz is, of course, well aware that collusion is a crime as framed by 18 U.S.C. § 371, which postulates a criminal act "[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose." Trump and his team did just that, to the Federal Election Commission, when it accepted a foreign power's electoral assistance — the history of which becomes more vivid by the day — and concealed the candidate's bimbo payments.

In addition, even a first year law student would know that a president's pardon power, as well as his sacking power, is not unlimited. If a president pardons an ally or dismisses a foe for the express purpose of concealing a crime, then that president has obstructed justice, Q.E.D. 

I understand Professor Dershowitz is concerned — on a nonpartisan basis, it should be added — with Trump's civil liberties, and as such is acting as the defendant's necessarily controversial, though unofficial, counsel. But his legal arguments could be shot down in L-One moot court. Is this really the level of thinking we should expect from a Harvard Law professor emeritus?

 

Donald Trump, back in his saddle

Max Boot spoke a bit too soon.

"Grading on the steep curve by which he is judged, President Trump may have had his most successful international outing at the Group of 20 summit that concluded on Saturday in Buenos Aires. But that’s not because he accomplished anything significant. He didn’t. It was simply because he did not commit a massive gaffe."

What Trump did commit (after Boot's column appeared) was not really a gaffe, but more of a characteristically idiotic Trumpian remark. When returning from the G20 summit, where the president of the United States spent most of his time cancelling meetings, dodging once-valued allies and keeping his authoritarian pals at a distance — the cameras, you know — he dictatorially announced:

"I will be formally terminating NAFTA shortly. We get rid of NAFTA. It's been a disaster for the United States. It's caused us tremendous amounts of unemployment and loss and company loss and everything else."

That is, he told Congress to take or leave his NAFTA deal, as is. This greatest of negotiators doesn't do negotiation.

My educated guess is that Trump was autocratically inspired by his recent proximity to Bonesaw bin Salman and Tricky Vlad Putin. They get to have all the fun, pouted the president, while he must suffer an energized opposition party and divided government. It's. Just. Not. Fair.

House Democrats, of course, are delighted to permit Trump his dictatorial moment — and more. For reasons known only to the Great Negotiator, he believes the Dems will take the heat for a NAFTA-implosion and consequent jobs lost. This is palpably, empirically untrue. The chief executive will be blamed by the electorate, in this case as he should be.

So Max, you were almost correct in writing that Trump managed to escape a much-expected, massive stupidity. But for heaven's sake, it had been, what, 48 hours since he had put his big orange foot through his little duck lips?

 

The self-devouring GOP

I need your help.

The Times' Jonathan Martin writes that "Nearly a month after the election, there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout."

Then paragraphs later, there is this: "The Republican response, or lack thereof, to the midterm backlash stands in stark contrast to the shake-ups and soul-searching that followed its loss of Congress in 2006 and consecutive presidential defeats in 2012."

Is my memory faltering?

Leadership shake-ups are common, but I recall no GOP soul-searching subsequent to its congressional and presidential defeats in 2006 and 2012, respectively. I do recall the party's pathetic, insincere "autopsy" following Obama's 2012 thrashing of Romney.

Did the party set out to be insincere? I doubt it. But its sensible autopsy's pained reception made it as ironic as "Arbeit Macht Frei." We must appeal to minorities, saideth the document — duh; and we must appeal to women — duh. Whereupon the party's regulars proceeded to slander all but the nation's Archie Bunkers.

The Times' Martin writes another curious passage. "But now a cadre of Republican lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly."

True, there is some discontent among House members. In Martin's reporting, however, roughly an equal amount comes from House members who were just bright enough to understand that their party isn't about to reform — and so they've retired.

If one could somehow quantitatively plot Republican nastiness, ignorance and demagoguery from 1964 on, I'm certain one would reveal a 45-degree upward trajectory. There has been no soul-searching for decades, for the party has been hostage to the very ignorance and nastiness that keeps it alive — the base.

Soul-searching will remain elusive till at least 2021, when Trump and yet more congressional Republicans go down with a thunderous kaboom. Even then, though, the party's remaining members will stay beholden to the base, hence little reform is to be anticipated. The GOP is eating itself alive.

 

Going and coming, in awe

Crossing the Columbia River, entering the state of Washington.

Crossing the Columbia River, reentering the state of Oregon.

As we crossed, I tried to picture flea-bitten, gnat-haunted Lewis and Clark navigating the waterway in its pristine surroundings. The miles they had traveled, the native peoples they had met, all the wonders of the newest of the New World they encountered — it is occasions such as theirs for which the word "awesome" was truly meant. 

 

Is Hillary running?

The picture propels an audible gasp.

The vast indifference to the speakers before the tiny huddle, assembled last week at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena, is photographic evidence of Bill and Hillary Clinton's irrelevance, according to that indefatigable Clintonwatcher, Maureen Dowd. She may be right, although Canadian opinion may not reflect American opinion.

Have the Clintons' fortunes — popular, not material — really plummeted this far? Dowd paid $177 well in advance for a ticket to hear them speak; the tickets were two-for-one, and "On the day of the event," notes Dowd, "some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits."

The Times columnist goes on at some length about Clintonian greed — "They [have] stockpiled a whopping $240 million" — and says, at first, she is "mystified" by the couples' determination to remain in the spotlight. But there's no mystery here, which I could have told Dowd — and which she soon realizes. To wit:

"Some in Clintonworld say Hillary fully intends to be the nominee. Once more, in Toronto, she didn’t rule it out, dodging the question with a lame joke. She carries herself with the air of a president in exile. Her consigliere, Philippe Reines, has prodded reporters on including her name when they write about 2020 candidates.

"And Bill has given monologues to old friends about how Hillary knows how she’d have to run in 2020, that she couldn’t have a big staff and would just speak her mind and not focus-group everything."

Observes Dowd, correctly, I suspect: "The way that the whole thing came crashing down in 2016 is too hard for them to bear. They would like to rewrite the ending, but there is no way to do that."

Yet were I Hillary, I'd do the same. Like Al Gore, she was cheated by the antique, senseless Electoral College — and doubtless she believes there are, yet again, 66 million votes out there, waiting to be cast in her name. Hillary will have her revenge. But she won't play Lady Macbeth. She will do the regicidal deed herself.

That may be delusional on Hillary's part. What's not delusional, I think, is to say that Hillary is in the running.