Carter, Trump

The Coming Chaos Presidency …

Posted on by mjohnson

It is no coincidence that while news coverage over the last week or so has been focused on the fourth anniversary of the Donald Trump-inspired riot at the U.S. Capitol and the funeral of former president Jimmy Carter that the next president conducted a rambling, shambling news conference where he said he wouldn’t rule out attacking a NATO ally and trolled the country with which we share the longest undefended border in the world.

Trump lives for chaos and distraction. He must be, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth said of her father Teddy, “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” T.R. had a big ego, but also a big brain. He read and wrote books and knew science. Trump knows chaos.

It was completely predictable that his fragile self-image could not tolerate extended days of laudatory coverage of Carter, an American president with more decency and character than the entirety of the incoming administration. Trump had to redirect attention to himself, even if the attention is mostly in the nature of slapping your forehead and muttering, “he said what?”

Donald Trump: very much the “odd” man out at Jimmy Carter’s funeral

We’ve seen this show before. The soon-to-be president is a master at dominating the national mind-set. He loves it, as do many of his supporters who think it’s great fun to spin up Canadian, Danish, French and German politicians who are forced to respond to his senseless rants.

Rename the Gulf of Mexico? Why not. Pardon the lawbreaking thugs who took over the Capital at his prompting? Sure. Send the Marines – again – to Panama to reclaim “our” canal? We stole it fair and square, so why not? Make Canada the 51st state? Why not alienate an old ally, our second largest trading partner, that supplies huge quantities of crude oil; cars and car parts; and machinery such as turbines, engines and construction equipment parts. Not to mention the great Canadian maple syrup you can get at Costco.

“We have been so concerned about all the scary things that Trump’s going to do, we forgot he’s also going to do some really stupid things,” said Desi Lydic, a host of the Daily Show.

It has been suggested that Americans should take Trump “seriously but not literally.” Be wise and take him both seriously and literally. He is a psychopath literally capable of anything over the next four years, or whenever he decides to leave office, and most of what he suggests and does will be profoundly stupid and often disastrous.

The only thing more predictable than Trump sending his first born to Greenland to scope out hotel locations is that not a single Vichy Republican, the spineless, gutless, cowering sycophants that have time and again enabled this flawed, ignorant man would raise as much as a limp social media post against his chaos.

They’re frankly too busy trooping to Mar a Lago to kiss his ring … or something, and by week’s end some were saying the Greenland gambit was a totally fine idea.

You can’t help but wonder when the buyer’s remorse will set in. Maybe when he has to actually manage a natural disaster or a foreign crisis. Perhaps when the debt ceiling needs to increase to prevent a government default. Perhaps when bird flu or another public health crisis produces a new “disinfectant” crisis, a signature moment of the first Trump presidency.

Just to remind you: On April 23, 2020, while standing in the White House briefing room for the daily Trump follies during Covid, the then-president rambled at some length about the magic powers of sunlight before going totally off his rocker.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Bleach manufacturers had to issue warnings. Who knew that many Trump supporters were, well, that gullible?

“It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue,” said one White House official at the time. “It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”

Credibility? International credibility? Not with this guy.

Imagine John Kennedy during the tensest days of the Cuban Missile Crisis going on live television to say no, he couldn’t rule out lobbing an ICBM into the men’s room at the Kremlin? (Actually, Barry Goldwater did say something similar, but poor Barry was seen in his day, even by many Republicans, as more than a little dangerous, and Goldwater never got anywhere near the nuclear codes.)

The chaos, the incompetence are the point with Trump, along with clinging to power no matter what.

In true Orwellian fashion Trump largely succeeded this week in rabbit holing January 6. The avalanche of pure, unprocessed bull about the very worst of his behavior in the first term is taking hold. The coming pardons will further serve to erase this dastardly, ugly Trump stain.

“Trump has an audacious goal,” writes Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice, “to reinterpret one of the most public crimes in history, to wrap it in the gauze of patriotism.” He’s asking us to brainwash ourselves, and many of the gullible seem willing to embrace his utter nonsense.

The clear, cold fact for Trump supporters and the rest of us is simple. He’s back for only two reasons: to stay out of jail and to grift over everything from Bibles to golden sneakers. The Greenland threat, the Panama Canal, the mocking of Canada are all about distracting from the real and profound harm he will do.

The grift goes round and round …

Reflect on this: There is no greater contrast in American history than Carter’s exit and Trump’s return. As Pete Buttigieg says of Carter, “He’s this figure who is so respected for a sense of decency – humility, really – from all sides … So the contrast was, of course, not lost on me, as we were thinking about what coming next in Washington.”

Which is to say we ain’t seen nothing, yet.

Figure out how you are going to respond.

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Additional Reading:

A couple of other items of interest …

“You Should Run for President”: Jimmy Carter’s Ad Man Speaks

Gerald Rafshoon helped take Carter from the peanut farm to the White House. Here, he exclusively recalls some of the key moments of a decades-long relationship.

Good inside baseball on Carter’s 1976 campaign for the White House.

George Norris still has lessons for today’s leaders

Who the heck was George Norris you may be thinking. Good question: one of the great legislators in American history.

Norris of Nebraska, one of the greatest senators ever

“Norris is perhaps best known for his role in creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). These initiatives lifted poor and rural Americans from a near-medieval existence, ushering them into an electrified era that transformed their lives, work, and incomes. Norris took on powerful private utility interests to make these landmark achievements a reality.”

There is much more to the Norris story, including creating the unicameral legislature in Nebraska.

Good column on why Norris must not be forgotten.

Climate ‘whiplash’ linked to raging LA fires

The disastrous fires in southern California may just be the beginning.

“Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity.

“These ‘fire weather’ days are increasing in many parts of the world, with climate change making these conditions more severe and the fire season lasting longer in many parts of the world, scientists have shown.”

Read the full story.

Thanks for reading. See you again soon.

Andrus, Carter, Conservation, Democracy

Jimmy Carter Forecast Our Future …

Posted on by mjohnson

The presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of books on Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, among others, contends that it takes decades after any president leaves office to begin to assess their historical importance.

With his death on December 29 at age 100, and with Jimmy Carter having been out of office for more than 40 years, his White House tenure is ripe for reassessment, and we’ve seen plenty of that this week.

Carter’s is a complicated legacy, and making his presidential assessment even more difficult is the near universal acknowledgment that Carter was the best “former president” ever.

Two recent biographies by Jonathan Alter and Kai Bird reassess Carter as a much underappreciated president. Bird’s assessment that Carter’s “presidency was ahead of his times” is persuasive given his emphasis on human rights as a cornerstone of American foreign policy, his environmental leadership – he placed solar panels on the White House roof which Ronald Reagan later removed – and his dedication to an anti-imperial presidency.

Yet, much like Joe Biden, Carter stumbled badly in understanding the power of inflation to inflame voter resentment, and Carter’s prickly tendency to present himself as the smartest guy in every room turned off many, including fellow Democrats.

Like all presidents, perhaps save the one about to return to the White House, Jimmy Carter was a complicated guy, a rock and roll fan who taught Sunday school for 40 years, a devoted husband who admitted to lust in his heart, a nuclear submariner who spoke constantly of peace.

Yet, who among us is without contradictions, so I come to praise the late president as perhaps the most genuinely decent man to ever hold the job and one who was right on many big issues.

Most of the Carter obituaries, maybe not surprisingly, have omitted Carter’s role (and that of his Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus) in pulling off what is arguably the greatest single piece of conservation legislation ever – the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

The unsurprising part of the Alaska omission reflects the reality that all national politics are Washington-centric. Being a great conservation president who mastered the details of legitimate Native American claims to The Last Frontier and measured them against what Andrus called “the rape, ruin and run crowd” was lost on most political obit writers.

Still, that law, signed by Carter on December 2, 1980, nearly a month after he lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan, more than doubled the size of the national park system, while creating wildlife refuges, national monuments and preserves. It was a truly historic achievement ranking Carter with Teddy Roosevelt as a visionary in protecting American land for generations far into the future.

The New York Times printed the Alaska story on page A20.

What the obits have not omitted is the so called “malaise speech,” a televised address Carter delivered from the Oval Office on July 15, 1979. Carter titled the speech “A Crisis of Confidence,” and the word malaise was never used.

Nonetheless, the speech has taken on outsized influence as a kind of shorthand for Carter’s “weakness” as a president or, for some, televised evidence of his off putting preachiness. Carter biographer Jonathan Alter saw the speech differently, and I agree, as “the most curious, confessional, and intensely moral television address ever delivered by an American president.”

Knowing that many writing now about Carter’s legacy simply don’t have memories of his presidential period, or even more likely have accepted the conventional wisdom that the speech is evidence of some huge political miscalculation, I decided to go back this week and re-read that speech.

Viewed through the lens of the pending return of Donald Trump to the presidency – Carter called Trump a “disaster” during his first term – the 1979 speech was both a warning and a plea.

While the speech from a policy standpoint was about energy it was really about values and responsibility. Carter spoke of a “crisis of confidence,” and called for individual citizens to rededicate themselves to the nation’s enduring ideals.

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America,” Carter said. Remember that was 45 years ago.

“The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.

“It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else – public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.”

And then this:

“We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Those were not the words of a weak president, but a moral one, and given where we sit today a prophetic one.

Carter delivers “The Crisis of Confidence” speech in 1979

“As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.”

In the best tradition of political leadership, Carter called for individual Americans to buck up, take more responsibility, and believe in themselves and the country.

“First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.”

Given that Americans have again chosen Trump, a profoundly flawed man who has done more than anyone in our lifetimes to denigrate American institutions, while basing his fundamental appeal on division and the worst instincts of his supporters, Carter’s plea in 1979 could well be made today. It remains profoundly relevant.

“All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.”

By the time Carter gave his most famous speech his approval ratings were in the dumpster, inflation was running high and political change was in the air. The man who made Carter a one-term president, Ronald Reagan, dismissed the speech saying he didn’t see anything wrong with America or Americans. And that explains a lot about The Gipper and his nearly infallible sense of what a politically advantageous position looked and sounded like.

Reagan would later declare it “morning in America,” a country that was a shining city on a hill, but which man, given where we find ourselves, had a better grasp on the “real America?”

One column following Carter’s 1979 speech

Carter, as close to a 20th Renaissance Man as has ever occupied the White House, was really calling, Lincoln-like, for our better angels to assert themselves. That they did not was, at least not entirely, his fault – “The fault dear Brutus,” as Shakespeare wrote, “is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

Carter understood, certainly understood better than most who found his presidency wanting, that all great nations, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. would later write in The Cycles of American History, undergo “patterns of alternation, of ebb and flow, in human history.”

We are in the midst of one of Schlesinger’s cycles right now – an ebbing of faith in democracy – a cycle of immense division where character and competence in public officials counts less than their ability to keep us riled up, anxious about our place, and hating someone or something. The rightwing denigration of democratic institutions, the utter disdain for “elitist” expertise, is now the defining characteristic of our time. The threat this presents to the country is surely in keeping with the central warning of Jimmy Carter’s much maligned speech.

If Carter’s message of the need for unity and sacrifice and coming together was too much for Americans to absorb in 1979 it could just be that the timing of his departure was close to perfect. We’re reflecting on Carter’s good and productive life, and his lifelong striving to do good, while waiting – again – for a man with vastly different inclinations.

Carter’s life – and his “malaise speech” – remind us what’s at stake when we trust our government, and indeed our future, to genuinely unserious, hateful and petty people.

The next months will tell us just how unserious we have become. Jimmy Carter, one might say, saw it all coming a long time ago.

—–0—–

One more thing …

E. Jean Carroll: Affirmed!

Jimmy Carter, the Sunday school teaching evangelical who made it a personal cause late in his life to build homes for needy Americans and battle against deadly tropical diseases affecting some of the world’s poorest people, died within hours of a U.S. Appeals Court affirming the guilty verdict of the incoming president.

As the Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “after a nine-day trial, a jury found that plaintiff-appellee E. Jean Carroll was sexually abused by defendant-appellant Donald J. Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed her in statements he made in 2022. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.”

If you care to you can read an excellent summary of the ruling regarding the once and future president by former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.

Or, in the alternative, you can just marvel that this is happening in the United States of America.

Happy New Year. And all the best.

GOP, Politics, Trump

Only the Worst People …

Posted on by mjohnson

“kakistocracy” – government by the worst people

—–

The world could not imagine a Syria without an Assad. But it happened, and with stunning speed. The pure evil of that corrupt, malevolent regime has been obvious for years. The weakness behind the Syrian leader was not so obvious until his murderous, incompetent rule collapsed. This is the way of all tyrants.

Before Assad was forced to flee – he’d been in power for 24 years – Syria was described by the U.S. State Department as “a republic ruled by the authoritarian regime … The president makes key decisions with counsel from a small number of security advisors, ministers, and senior members of the ruling” party and “Assad and party leaders dominate all three branches of government.”

Authoritarians seem invincible until they aren’t. I wrote recently that the corruption in the next administration will soon enough become obvious, and for a while it will seem merely odious and then suddenly it will engulf everything around it.

Abandoned by allies and now at the mercy of Putin

Finally, when the end inevitably comes – it always does – it will be brutal and fast, and the wreckage will long linger.

Bashar al-Assad, a brutal sociopath, ran a corrupt, incompetent regime by surrounding himself with the worst people. He’s now living out the remainder of his dictatorial life in Putin’s Moscow.

Meanwhile Donald Trump, a born authoritarian, is constructing a truly awful, inept, corrupt American government, almost certainly the first time a president-elect has purposefully done so. The Trump government in waiting is distinguished only by its utter lack of distinction, a collection of misfits, sexual abusers, billionaires – lots of billionaires – political grifters, reality television fakers and above all loyalists.

Loyalty to the dear leader is, after all, the only real qualification that matters in the mob or in a Trump Administration.

As headlines detail the white supremacist beliefs of the Fox News personality who may soon run the Pentagon and the conspiracy embracing nonsense of the nominee to head the FBI, the stories have read as though this kakistocracy is somehow normal. But, if you are among the nearly half of the American population who thinks this show of schlock and awe is abnormal and frighteningly dangerous then you aren’t among the crazy ones.

As the writer Eliot Weinberger observed recently, only partially summarizing the coming circus:

“The future surgeon general, a Fox News regular, and the future administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, a daytime television host, sell dubious health and weight loss supplements online.

“The future director of the FBI promotes a supplement to reverse the effects of the Covid vaccine.

“The future deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism is the spokesman for a fish oil supplement.

“The future secretary of homeland security stars in an infomercial for a cosmetic dentistry business, in which she exclaims: ‘I love my new family at Smile Texas!’”

With the possible exception of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the secretary of state designate who has served on the Foreign Relations Committee and presumably could find Uganda on a map, the rest of this collection, as Weinberger wrote, “have no connection to the work they will manage, or no experience in the work they will manage, or no experience managing large bureaucracies like the bureaucracies they will manage.”

—–

Let’s remember this is the same Marco Rubio who in 2016 called Trump a “con artist,” and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.” That statement, as was once said in the Nixon White House, is clearly no longer “operative,” begging the question: who changed – Trump or Rubio?

—–

All these jobs – really, really important jobs – are fundamental to keep Americans safe, the economy working and the essential functions of government operating. Yet, these positions are being gifted to a collection of the worse possible people. It is the American kakistocracy.

Most Americans don’t pay much attention to history, but if they did they might see the historical warnings attached to the coming government.

There will be a crisis in the next four years, likely more than one. We forget now how close the American economy came to complete collapse in 2008. That fiasco left wounds that still bleed, but without a competent adult at the Federal Reserve or a realistic Treasury secretary we might have experienced this generation’s own Great Depression. While many, many mistakes were made no one who saved the American economy back then was selling fish oil supplements.

Competency matters.

And now come the unaccountable oligarchs. America has always had its unfathomably rich men – always men – who used the power of their money and prominence to shape the way we live. A thousand efforts to prevent the kind of outsized influence the uber-rich employ in Russia or the oil kingdoms has given way to a South African immigrant, Elon Musk, becoming the un-elected co-president of the American republican.

The corruption, if you care to see it, will cause eyes to water. In a true oligarchy – and we’re getting there – guys like Musk don’t abide any rules. They act to preserve their wealth and status and polish their egos, even if it means shutting down the government by Tweet.

Journalist David Samuels had it right when he wrote, “Defining ‘corruption’ as a personal hunger for luxuries or stuffing cash in one’s pocket, as Americans often do, is to mistake the essence of the offense, which is to destroy public trust in the institutions that are supposed to keep people safe.”

CEO’s are watching all this and then making the trek to Mar a Lago to hand over their protection checks to the American mob boss. And we ain’t seen nothing, yet.

Add in the retribution, the promise to prosecute Liz Cheney, while suing an Iowa pollster, the coming pardons of January 6 rioters – many convicted for vicious acts – and blatant bullying of the press and you begin to see clearly the next four years, or more.

“Recapturing the presidency in 2024,” says Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, “is Donald Trump’s ultimate safe haven from the legal consequences of his prior crimes. He believes it will give him all the immunity he needs for the rest of his life.

“And if you think he ever plans to leave office and let the justice system come near him again, you’re too innocent to be let out of the house by yourself.”

The worst people, retribution and rampant corruption. The American mob. Not quite what the Founders had in mind.

So … Merry Christmas.

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Additional reading:

A couple of other items of interest …

Climate of fear is driving local officials to quit

A truly frightening reality in a study from California.

“In simple terms, our research suggests that at least two of every three people who serve in public office in Southern California will be threatened, intimidated or harassed during their tenure.

“Survey results suggest the average female elected official who experiences abuse is threatened or harassed at least six times as often as her male peers. Men reported being on the receiving end of abuse about once a year, while women suffer abuse almost monthly.”

Read the full story.

In praise of Christmas

The great George Orwell writing of the first post-war Christmas in 1946.

Orwell about the time he wrote a Christmas essay in 1946

“I only add in passing that when we gorge ourselves this Christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings, or thereabouts, who will be doing no such thing. For in the long run our Christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a Christmas dinner as well. But I will come back to that presently.”

Orwell was a terrific writer. Read the whole thing.

And a Happy Christmas to all and very best wishes in an uncertain New Year. Thanks for reading.

Trump, U.S. Senate

The Senate Exists for a Reason …

Posted on by mjohnson

The United States Senate is arguably the least democratic (small “d”) institution in any democracy in the world, with the possible exception of the British House of Lords.

The Senate exists without proportional representation. Every state has two senators without regard to population. Wyoming’s two senators represent 586,000 citizens, while California’s 39 million citizens are represented by two senators.

The Senate has quirky rules: unlimited debate (the filibuster); much happens by unanimous consent (or doesn’t happen when one senator objects); seniority rules, meaning a cranky old senator like Chuck Grassley of Iowa, age 91, will soon chair the powerful Judiciary Committee. Grassley has been a senator since 1981, meaning the youngest senator, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, wasn’t alive when Grassley took office.

The Senate has six-year terms, a function of the Founders unfortunately naïve belief that a longer term of office insulates senators from the worst of grubby political pressures.

The Senate has extraordinary powers, again thanks to the original thinkers who came up with the idea of an institution to balance the rambunctious House of Representatives. Senators have the Constitutional duty to “advise and consent” – or not consent – on presidential appointments to the Cabinet and judiciary. The Senate, by super majority vote, can ratify treaties. The Senate judges, when it cares to, the impeachment of high governmental officials. The Senate traditionally has had a major voice in foreign policy. And the Senate, when it cares to, has the power to investigate. Google Watergate, the CIA, Teapot Dome or even the sinking of the Titanic to see what the Senate has historically done to expose and inform.

Now, as the Founders would certainly have appreciated, the Senate faces an enormous historical test – a power-hungry president committed to vastly enlarging executive power at the expense of the legislative branch. Donald Trump has signaled that he expects a GOP Congress will do his bidding no questions asked.

Questions must be asked.

The widely floated idea that the Senate should allow “recess” appointments to critical executive branch jobs should be dead on arrival, but incoming majority leader John Thune of South Dakota hasn’t ruled out the Senate rolling over for Trump.

“I think that all options are on the table, including recess appointments,” Thune said recently while disingenuously suggesting that Republicans might need to forego advising and consenting because Democrats might not “play ball.” But caving on the Constitutional demand for Senate concurrence in major appointments isn’t about Democrats. It’s about Trump.

Still, there are modestly hopeful signs that Republicans won’t diminish their own and the Senate’s power by simply giving a grasping president who he wants in his Cabinet – a sex abuser, vaccine denier or Russian stooge just to flag three of the worst of the nominees.

Guardian columnist Kate Maltby, reviewing the latest release of the hit TV series “Wolf Hall,” compares Trump’s picks to Henry VIII’s loyal hatchet man, a collection of “Thomas Cromwells: the yes men and enablers who will frame US law to fulfil his wishes.”

The incoming chair of the Senate Finance Committee is one of these modern-day Cromwell’s.

“No, I’ll let that be a decision that President Trump makes,” Idaho Senator Mike Crapo told CNN when asked if he would insist on FBI background checks of cranks like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”

Kash Patel, a manifestly unfit nominee to head the FBI

Idaho’s James Risch, easily one of the most partisan Republicans in the Senate who spent the first Trump term defending the administration’s feckless foreign policy, has – so far at least – refused to commit to supporting some of Trump’s craziest nominees, a group properly termed by commentator Charlie Sykes as a “cabinet of zealots, toadies, and cretins.”

“Ask me this question again after the hearings,” Risch said regarding support for the inconceivable nominations of a Fox New host, Pete Hegseth, to be Secretary of Defense and a Putin apologist, Tulsi Gabbard, to head the national intelligence agencies. “These appointments by the president are constrained by the advice and consent of the Senate,” Risch said.

And demonstrating that he recalls his oath of office, Risch added. “The Senate takes that seriously, and we vet these.”

—–

Note: Risch’s entirely reasonable comments about withholding judgment drew almost instant pushback from the ultra right in Idaho. “U.S. Senator Jim Risch, who is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a political dinosaur who has been using doublespeak to grift conservative Idaho Republicans since 1974,” fumed a far right website in northern Idaho. “To Senator Risch and the rest of D.C. political swamp: Confirm Trump’s nominations and support the Make America Great Again movement or resign. It’s that simple.”

Prediction: Risch, almost certainly in his last term, he’s 81 years old, will ultimately fold and end up supporting ALL of Trump’s “zealots, toadies, and cretins.” His oath of office is less important than avoiding abuse from his own voters.

—–

Despite his earlier comments Thune has also shown a hint of backbone, telling a home state audience recently, “Every president is going to come in and try to do as much as they can by executive action … Congress, in some cases, is going to be the entity that sometimes will have to put the brakes on.”

Trump’s return to the White House will test, sooner than later, whether the Senate has the ability – meaning individual senators possess the courage – to use its substantial power to constrain Trump’s most dangerous inclinations, including appointing a gang of woefully compromised incompetents.

Congress also, of course, has the power of the purse and should scotch any Trumpy plan to illegally “impound” dollars appropriated by the legislative branch. Expect Trump to push this issue to the limit. Hope for the sake of the Constitution that Thune and fellow senators resist more effectively than they did when during his first administration Trump diverted military funding to his border wall, a project you may recall that Mexico was never going to pay for.

Republican senators know, certainly better than most of their voters, that Trump cares nothing about the nuts and bolts of the federal government. Trump’s an agent of chaos and destruction.

But the Senate was designed to obstruct and delay would-be tyrants just as it was designed to give small states like Idaho and South Dakota outsized influence in the business of the federal government.

Mike Mansfield, the great Montanan who led the Senate for 16 years, spent his tenure gently persuading fellow senators to behave as national legislators and not merely as partisan representatives of individual states. Mansfield’s perspective has never been more important.

What would Mike do?

“In the end, it is not the Senators as individuals who are of fundamental importance,” Mansfield said in 1963. “In the end, it is the institution of the Senate. It is the Senate itself as one of the foundations of the Constitution. It is the Senate as one of the rocks of the Republic.”

The rock of the Republic must be solid if the Constitution is to hold.

—– 0 —–

Additional Reading:

A few other items worth your time …

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

“Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following 2009.”

illustration with 1679 engraving of the tower of babel with pixellated clouds and pieces disintegrating digitally
Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: “Turris Babel,” Coenraet Decker, 1679.

Notre-Dame reopens in Paris 5 years after fire – its reconstruction preserves the past and illuminates France’s modern ambitions

I was fortunate to walk around the great cathedral in the heart of Paris recently, it wasn’t yet open. And the restoration is truly remarkable.

“Notre Dame today embodies the nation’s past and present. A bronze plaque just outside the cathedral’s base marks France’s ‘kilometer zero‘: It is the point from which all distances in France are measured.

French media sometimes refer to Notre Dame as the ‘chantier du siècle.’ It is a phrase that means both the ‘project of the century’ and, more ambitiously, ‘history’s construction site.'”

From The Conversation website.

‘I feel I’ve upset a few people over the years’: actor Brian Cox on overrated co-stars, charmless politicians and the joy of smoking weed

Actor Brian Cox …

“I ask him why he so often gets cast as grumps. He holds his hands up, nonplussed. Is it because he is one? ‘No, I’m not like that at all. It’s the antithesis of who I am, actually.’ He stops to think about it. ‘No, that’s not entirely true. Of course, I get grumpy. Particularly about politics, I get very grumpy. A lot of that makes me angry. The failure of the Labour party in particular.’ Pause. ‘But I don’t want to get into that.’ Another pause. ‘Listen, I could go on for ages.’ And another.”

A Guardian interview with a great actor.

Don’t give up. See you soon. And thanks for reading.

2024 Election, Trump

America’s Great Mistake …

Posted on by mjohnson

“Robert F. Kennedy’s formal merger with Trumpism will have the effect of making his view of vaccines a de rigueur tenet of MAGA politics. People who pledge fealty to Trumpism will discover that in addition to being required to believe that Trump won the 2020 election they are also required to oppose vaccinations of all types.

“That’s coming. There’s no avoiding it.

“And as sure as day follows night we will see the large-scale reappearance of preventable diseases such as measles and polio. Children will die.”

Jonathan V. Last

—–

America has made a great mistake.

One Trump presidency was an historic aberration, an absurdist romp with a conman TV huckster that was the result of half the country hating Hillary Clinton.

But a second Trump presidency is something else – a great mistake. The millions who voted to return this tragically narcissistic, hopelessly ignorant and blatantly corrupt man to control of the nuclear codes don’t know it yet – and many will never figure it out – but they have imperiled the future of their country, and the world.

The same kind of thinking – magical thinking – that treats Trump like some kind of normal political personality is ignoring the enormous consequences of November 5. Logic attempts to explain his election logically. There is no logic.

The election was about the price of bacon, some will say. Or Joe Biden’s obvious need to earlier disavow a second term. Social media elected Trump. Or the Mexican border did. The traditional media blew it. Democrats lost the plot with white, working-class voters. That explains it.

But all these “explanations” avoid the reality of Trump and Trumpism. We made this decision with eyes wide open. We didn’t elect an adjudicated rapist because Safeway’s bacon is overpriced. We didn’t elect a man who sent a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol and hoped to hang his own vice president because desperate migrants still see our America as the last best hope on earth.

Nope, we wanted more of the distracting non-stop Trump reality show with its Hannibal Lecter rants and shark stories. We chose to believe his lies. Blame the Democrats, blame the press, blame social media, blame the elites, but in the end none of it matters. We chose a leader of vile temperament and odious corruption. We chose our American fascist.

“Elites” didn’t make us want more of the vulgar rhetoric and the obvious lies. Many of us enjoy how he summons up hatred with the absurd claim that the gender of school children is being changed during homeroom. We found comfort in the putdowns of an accomplished Black woman, and we laughed along when he joked about Nancy Pelosi’s husband being nearly killed by a hammer wielding nutjob. We chanted “lock them up” because it felt good to hate and demean and threaten. We saw it and we accepted it.

We embraced – for the second time – what journalist Susan Glasser has correctly termed “the most vicious campaign of lies, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia ever waged.”

We liked the promises of revenge and retribution. It feels good, after all, to go after “those” people, because our side is right, and what harm could a little revenge do?

When the deportation round ups begin how will we feel about the “illegal” people who roof the houses, milk the cows, landscape the lawns, work in our restaurants and pay their taxes? Will we notice when families are separated, and children discarded as collateral damage? Will we laugh at the concentration camps?

One Trump term was an aberration. This Trump term was a choice.

In authoritarian and fascist systems there is a daily need to justify the unjustifiable. They must make the absurd and dangerous normal, so we blame it on the price of bacon, or Joe Biden. We console ourselves that it is just vile talk. It can’t possibly hurt me. My side won. The “other” has it coming.

From the beginning there has been one great failure regarding Trump. We have lacked from his first day the imagination to see where his villainy has taken us and will now take us even farther. Or perhaps we really do see and elect not to care. What’s worse?

Before January 6, 2021 the vast majority of Americans could not have believed the seat of American government might be attacked by a violent mob willing to harm and kill police officers in order to halt the peaceful transfer of power. We couldn’t image it, so now many rationalize it and all the lies he’s told about it.

It wasn’t that bad. Trump really didn’t incite the riot. Maybe you believe that.

But it was bad, and he did incite a riot. And now he will pardon those who committed those outrages. He told us repeatedly that he would do so, and he will. And we elected him again.

He promised to fire thousands of career federal employees who are not “loyal” to him, an unprecedented break with American history, and he will do it.

He will threaten Ukraine just as he did before. He will weaken if not destroy NATO just as he did before. He will politicize the American military just as he tried before and will try again.

Few presidential candidates have been so explicit about their aims. We heard it. We saw it. We embraced it, and not because bacon costs too much.

As the historian Timothy Snyder writes: “It was predictable that Trump would deny the results of the 2020 election. It was predictable that his Big Lie would change American politics. It is predictable, today, that he will give free rein to the oligarchs who, he knows, will continue to generate the social and digital bases of a politics of us and them. It is predictable that, in returning to power, he will seek to change the system so that he can remain in power until death. It is predictable that he will use deportations to divide us, to accustom us to violence, and to make accomplices of us. It is predictable that he will create a cult out of the martyrs of January 6th. It is predictable that he will cooperate with similarly minded rulers abroad.”

We knew all this. Many warned us, especially people – many now in danger – who worked with him at close range. They aren’t traitors or partisans, but military leaders and elected officials and Americans. And yet we chose to ignore and embrace all this.

The ultimate collapse attendant to our enormous mistake will appear to come slowly, but then it will immediately be all around us. It is as predictable as his corruption and his revenge and his hate. And we did it to ourselves.

—-0—-

Thanks for reading.

If you are a regular follower of this space you know – or must have concluded – that my nearly 50 years in politics tells me this is the big one – a true existential crisis for our country. Prepare yourself for an America that we could not have imagined a few years ago.

I’ll be back soon …

2024 Election, Democracy, Eisenhower, Foreign Policy, GOP, World War II

The Price of Democracy …

Posted on by mjohnson

“All who shall hereafter live in freedom will be here reminded that to these men and their comrades we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and with the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live eternally.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower at the American Cemetery in Luxembourg

Private First Class Clarke E. Krivanec went missing in action on December 20, 1944, four days into the bloodbath that became the Battle of the Bulge.

Krivanec was 21 years old, an infantryman in 112th Regiment of the 28th Division, part of General George Patton’s Third American Army. Private Krivanec was from Rupert, Idaho, a graduate of Rupert High School.

Clarke Krivanec never came home from Europe. Never married. Never had a chance for a career or a family. He almost certainly never again saw his mother and father after shipping out for the European Front in September 1943.

Private Krivanec is a name lost to time, a statistic, one of the 400,000 American dead in the greatest war the world has known, a war against fascism.

When nine Nazi divisions launched their surprise offensive in the early hours of December 16, 1944, Krivenac’s 28th Division was spread along a 25-mile front in the Ardenne Forest, a dense wood that had four years earlier provided the Nazi invasion route into western Europe.

By December 20, the 28th Division – nicknamed the Keystone Division – “had been pushed back from their initial positions and was scattered across a new defensive line.” The fighting had been as brutal as the winter weather. Battling frozen hands and feet, great coats caked with snow, the division delayed the German offense, but it had been bloody costly.

Photo Credit: After making their way to the crossroads town of Bastogne when their position was overrun by the surprise German attack, Private Adam Davis and T/S Milford A. Sillars of the 110th Regiment, 28th Infantry Division’s appear exhausted. The soldiers of the 28th Division largely held their ground against the German onslaught during the opening hours of the Battle of the Bulge.
—–

As a unit history recounts the delay, “had allowed reinforcements like the 101st Airborne Division to arrive and secure the critical junction at Bastogne,” a place that lives in World War II history.

I happened upon Krivenac’s grave last weekend during a Sunday visit to the big American cemetery on the outskirts of Luxembourg City, not far from where Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces staged the Third Reich’s last great offensive of the war. A fascist offensive. Private Krivanec got in the way of that offensive and was apparently seriously wounded in the left leg and then taken prisoner by the Germans.

We will never know whether Krivanec died of his wounds or was left to die as the course of this awful battle finally turned against the Nazis. That he was there, a young man with a life ahead of him fighting a war against evil thousands of miles from southern Idaho, is what we do know.

The U.S. War Department told Krivenac’s parents in January 1945 that he was classified as missing, and then they heard nothing for months. The brief newspaper story detailing these slim facts reported that Krivanec has been selected to attend a special, nine-month engineering training course at Washington University in St. Louis, but the story then cryptically noted, “when the program was discontinued he was assigned the infantry.”

Finally, the following January – 1946 – the Twin Falls Times-News published another story about Clarke Krivanec. “Missing for a Year, Private Listed Dead.”

The War Department’s straightforward communication simply said, “in view of the fact that 12 months have now expired without the receipt of evidence to support a continuing presumption of survival” the government’s conclusion was that the Idaho soldier had died. Sometime later Krivanec’s remains were identified and interred in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg.

PFC Clarke Krivanic’s cross in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg

It is fitting that one of the major American war cemeteries in Europe, including a simple and beautiful chapel and other monuments is located in the tiny nation in the heart of Europe. Krivanec’s simple white marble cross resting on immaculate green grass marks the final resting  spot of one of the more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers and airmen buried there. The most famous grave is that of Patton who died as the result of an automobile accident after the war ended. Patton’s wife decided it would be appropriate that he be buried where so many of his men rest in this quiet, solemn spot in Luxembourg.

The American Cemetery’s location in Luxembourg is also fitting since that nation both suffered grievously during five years of fascist occupation and emerged from that experience as dedicated as any nation to a free and democratic Europe.

Luxembourg was one of the six original members of NATO and although the pocket-sized nation has a tiny army, the country dutifully contributes two percent of its GDP to national defense, the NATO standard. It was no surprise to see flying next to the Luxembourg and Europe Union flags at city hall the flag of Ukraine.

For decades after World War II, it was an article of bipartisan political faith that American national security interests were inextricably linked to the security interests of a democratic Europe. Collective security, as demonstrated by NATO, the most effective military alliance in history, was not a subject of debate during any presidency from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

Dwight Eisenhower, who praised the sacrifice of the dead when the American Cemetery in Luxembourg was created, was the first commander of NATO. The Alliance came to America’s aid after the attacks of 9-11. NATO has been the linchpin of collective security against Putin’s Russia, and member nations have supplied billions to Ukraine, a democratic non-member, as it fights off the continuing terror of Putin’s war.

Clarke Krivanec, the 21-year-old Idaho soldier from Minidoka County, died fighting fascism 80 years ago in Europe. By the time he died there was little question that the United States and its allies would prevail over fascist Germany. The only question was how many more Americans would die to insure the victory. Krivanec paid the ultimate price.

Eighty years on, an American political party – once the party of Eisenhower – is running a NATO-bashing fascist, a Putin apologist who has denigrated the sacrifice of American veterans as its candidate for president. Simply remarkable.

Seeing Clarke Krivanec’s white marble cross in Luxembourg is enough to make one weep for such callous disregard for his sacrifice and what it continues to mean for all of us and the world.

Clarke Krivanec was no doubt a young man imbued with many characteristics. No one in their right mind would call him a “sucker” or a “loser.”

—–0—–

One more before the election …

Inside the Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign

A must read from one of the best political reporters of his generation, Tim Alberta.

Read this piece in many ways, including that Trump’s senior advisors can’t stand the guy.

“People are calling this the most disciplined campaign they’ve ever seen,” Trump remarked to friends at a fundraiser this summer, according to someone who heard the conversation. He smirked at the compliment. “What’s discipline got to do with winning?”

Read the article.

Wish the country good luck. Make sure you vote.

2024 Election, Fascism, Trump

American Fascism …

Posted on by mjohnson

A dictionary definition of fascism: “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

—–

Sinclair Lewis, the celebrated novelist and playwright, entitled his dystopian 1935 story of American fascism It Can’t Happen Here. But Lewis knew it could happen here.

One suspects Lewis would not be surprised that American fascism is happening in the form of a corrupt charlatan from the outer boroughs of New York.

It makes sense. Donald Trump is not really an original, but a Hollywood-like character who captures the fears and imagination – and bigotry, of course – of many Americans and Trump rode that to political power, and for him that really means grifting his supporters, padding his enormous ego and getting even with anyone in his way.

American history has had its Huey Longs, and Strom Thurmond’s, Pat Buchanan’s and David Duke’s. Only Trump was fortunate to have arrived at a time when American culture and politics were willing to fully embrace a performative clown, a rapist, a racist, a convicted felon, a guy who inherited his wealth and has made his life’s work celebrating himself.

He failed at selling steaks and vodka and casinos. He is a serial philanderer and a world-class liar. Without his inherited wealth he couldn’t qualify to manage the night shift at a 7-11. No one in their right mind would hire this guy who talks only about himself and his grievances. Yet, he’s mastered what other charlatans of an earlier age also mastered.

He’s got the fascism thing down cold, particular the big lies, the illusion of power and the huge grievances.

Most American journalists and many commentators long resisted calling Trumpism what it is – fascism – but not any longer.

“Donald Trump has been on a fascist romp,” writes The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols. “At rallies in Colorado and California, he amped up his usual rants, and added a rancid grace note by suggesting that a woman heckler should “get the hell knocked out of her” by her mother after she gets back home. But … he outdid himself in an interview on Fox News, by saying that ‘the enemy within’ —Americans he described as ‘radical left lunatics,’ including Representative Adam Schiff of California, whom he mentioned by name—are more dangerous than Russia or China, and could be ‘very easily handled’ by the National Guard or the U.S. military.”

Too many Americans – way too many – have become numb to this completely unprecedented language from an American politician, particularly one trying to return to the White House.

Anne Applebaum, a scholar of Stalin’s war against his own people, says: “In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes.”

Mussolini … as cynical as Trump and just as dangerous

Say it out loud. Donald Trump is a fascist, a modern-day Mussolini, using the precise phrases of El Duce and Hitler. No politician in American history has described his political opponents as “enemies of the people” or an entire class “as vermin,” or threatened to turn the military on opponents. This is the language of fascism.

In addition to the dictionary definition fascism depends, among other factors, upon:

Discrediting an independent press. Trump has done this repeatedly, most recently saying CBS should “lose a license” and be liquidated for broadcasting an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That attack on the press, only the latest from Trump, drew a sharp and rare rebuke from the chair of the Federal Communications Commission. “While repeated attacks against broadcast stations by the former President may now be familiar, these threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored,” the FCC’s Jessica Rosenworcel said.

Perpetuating an enormous lie. Trump has many big lies, including the whopper about a stolen election in 2020, and his latest lie attempts to rewrite the history of his insurrection. “His attempt to recast the events of Jan. 6, 2021,” as the New York Times reported, “came on the same day that he compared his supporters who were arrested, convicted and imprisoned for their actions at the Capitol to the victims of the Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II. And it followed a recent remark in which Mr. Trump declared Jan. 6 a day of ‘love.’”

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” George Orwell wrote in his novel 1984, “It was their final, most essential command.”

This Trump lie is beyond belief. His asking his supporters – indeed all of us – to ignore the riot at the Capitol that he instigated, hoping apparently that an enormous lie will help him avoid his own legal jeopardy as the only president ever to oppose a peaceful transfer of power.

A subservient political and business elite: No sitting Republican member of Congress dares take issue with Trump’s American fascism, and the wealthiest man in the world, South African-born Elon Musk, is spending millions to curry favor with Trump and elect him. He’s not alone. Those who intend to clean up with AI technology or crypto currency are all in. Even those who recognize the folly of Trump’s promise of immense tariffs on imported goods convince themselves it’s just a little fascist rhetoric.

“The Republican officials I talk to are hoping that this is just Trump’s bluster — that he’s not actually serious about imposing tariffs but is rather using tariff threats to bully other nations into becoming more friendly to the U.S.,” Brian Riedl, a former aide to GOP senator Rob Portman of Ohio told the Washington Post. “But they’re in denial about this.” Much like the business elite of Weimar Germany believing a buffoonish Adolf Hitler would be useful to them, but also under their control, were wrong, too.

Fascists depend on perverting the legal system, a tactic Trump has mastered by using the judicial branch’s own rules – and his appointed judges – to stymie any day of reckoning. His hand-picked Supreme Court has, in the most frightening ruling since Dred Scott, given Trump broad immunity for past and future crimes.

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, calls Trump “fascist to the core.” His former chief of staff, John Kelly, a Marine general says, “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Make no mistake. The election on November 5 is not about inflation, housing prices or a migrant crisis, all issues that are international in scope that require hard work and bipartisan cooperation to solve.

The election is about Trump and his fascism. Mark me as an “enemy of the people,” an enemy of the people who would subvert the Constitution, use the American military against political opponents and those who lie about what can be observed with their own eyes.

It’s not as though we haven’t been warned. Trump says he wants to be a dictator, wants to deport 12 million humans – think about the police state that would require – and free the January 6 rioters.

Is this American fascism really the future we want for our country?

—–0—–

Additional Reading:

A couple of items for your consideration …

Take the Trump-Vance Deportation Policy Seriously

It’s been said – more than once – that we should take the Republican candidate for president seriously, but not literally.

If you read nothing else before the election read this post from Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian and democracy advocate. He takes Trump seriously and literally.

“As an American, and as a historian who writes about forced population movements, I believe that we are not taking the Trump-Vance deportation plan seriously enough. 

“This failure of imagination could allow extreme repression within our country as well as a fundamental change in its society and politics.”

It is a chilling piece of writing. Take it seriously.

We needed courage. We got cowardice.

There are few people in American journalism I admire more than Margaret Sullivan. She has held a number of high profile positions with important newspapers, including a stint as media columnist for the Washington Post. She has an almost unique perspective on what is happening with Big Media in America,

Sullivan writes about the decision by the Post and the Los Angeles Times to not endorse a candidate for president.

(Stunned silence from me … )

As Sullivan writes:

“Here’s a statement from a group of columnists at the Washington Post — people I really admire, including Eugene Robinson, Ruth Marcus, Perry Bacon, Catherine Rampell and quite a few others. At the heart of it is the knowledge of what the Post stood for since the Watergate era when — under the great publisher Katharine Graham and editor Ben Bradlee — the paper bravely revealed the corruption of the Nixon administration and had a hand in bringing him down.

“Trump is much worse than Nixon. But the paper is no longer a beacon for democracy.”

I’ve admired the Washington Post for nearly as long as I’ve paid attention to politics. Not always right, but a fierce advocate for facts and accountability. Jeff Bezos, a super-billionaire blew it up on one Friday afternoon.

Read Sullivan’s take here.

Be concerned. Be active. Do something. Democracy is worth fighting – and voting – for.

GOP, Idaho, Idaho Politics

The Curious Appointment of the NRA Mouthpiece

Posted on by mjohnson

Why did Idaho Gov. Brad Little appoint the longtime spokesman of the scandal-plagued National Rifle Association to run two of the state’s most image- and management-sensitive cash cows — the Idaho Lottery and the state liquor dispensary?

It’s a good question that the governor’s office isn’t answering.

On Aug. 22, with no fanfare, Little announced the appointment of Andrew Arulanandam, who served for a few months this year as the interim president of the NRA and before that for years as the organization’s top public affairs official, to run two Idaho agencies that over the last 10 years have produced more than $2.1 billion for Idaho’s public schools, building, local governments and the general fund.

The announcement of Arulanandam’s hiring was so low key that as far as I can tell no Idaho news organization published a story about the hiring, and only the Lewiston Tribune commented on the appointment, noting correctly that Arulanandam had no apparent qualifications for running a lottery or a state liquor system, and that the appointment smacked of the rankest kind of political cronyism. Arulanandam nearly 25 years ago, before going off to flak for the gun lobby, served as executive director of the Idaho Republican Party and worked for Gov. Phil Batt.

One has to have been living under a rock for the last half-dozen years not to know the NRA that Arulanandam recently left is a corrupt, obscene mess led until January of this year by a corrupt grifter, Wayne LaPierre.

As the Associated Press reported in January, Arulanandam became the NRA’s interim president when LaPierre resigned on the eve of a civil trial in New York “over allegations (LaPierre) treated himself to millions of dollars in private jet flights, yacht trips, African safaris and other extravagant perks at the powerful gun rights organization’s expense.”

A New York judge banned the 74-year-old LaPierre from holding any position with the NRA for 10 years, saying that NRA leaders displayed “a stunning lack of accountability” regarding their own responsibility for years of financial mismanagement.

Arulanandam, as he confirmed during a deposition in another case that resulted in a $12 million settlement paid by the NRA to its longtime PR/marketing firm, reported directly to LaPierre. As Arulanandam said when asked about a typical day on the gun lobby payroll, “I interacted a lot with my boss, Wayne LaPierre.” He also confirmed he often traveled with LaPierre on private jets, part of the grift that finally caught up with LaPierre.

The NRA culture of corruption runs deep. As ProPublica reported in 2019, the NRA used member dues to settle a sexual harassment suit against another top NRA official. While the settlement amount was not disclosed, Arulanandam was quoted in news accounts defending the NRA’s actions and downplaying the incident.

Arulanandam is making $200,000 a year in his new position, a big comedown from the more than $330,000 he made at the NRA, but still one of the highest paid jobs in state government. Jeff Anderson, Arulanandam’s predecessor, was making $186,000 when he retired effective July 26. And Anderson held the job for 17 years.

So the real question for Idaho’s governor is why he thought it’s appropriate.

Who recommended Arulanandam? The governor’s office isn’t saying.

Was there some type of process to select the person to operate the technology and security-heavy lottery or the retail and warehousing operations of the liquor dispensary? No response from the governor’s office.

Given the sensitivity of the positions, was there a background check or even a reference check? There is no indication such prudence was applied. None of my requests for more detail or explanation was answered.

What little that is known about Little’s decision to put the NRA’s longtime mouthpiece in charge of two big money-making state operations comes from reading between the lines of what appears to be less than full compliance with Idaho’s public records law.

I requested email, correspondence and text messages related to Arulanandam’s appointment. What can be pieced together from the documents is that Arulanandam sent a text to Little’s chief of staff, Zack Hauge, on Aug. 3 thanking him “for the consideration” and saying he would send his resume, another document the governor’s office refused to provide.

The two appear to have spoken about the liquor and lottery positions on Aug. 5. On Aug. 13 Arulanandam and Little spoke by phone and the governor offered the job. Arulanandam accepted. The next day Hauge emailed a formal offer of employment. It is important to note that all these exchanges, email and text, are dated and time-stamped.

Yet, the final text message the governor’s office released is different. There is no date or time stamp on a message from Arulanandam who was responding to someone in Little’s office, almost certainly Hauge.

“Ha,” Arulanandam wrote in his text. “That’s a name bestowed on Dyke Nally back in the day! Thanks so much for the opportunity. I will work hard. I know I have big shoes to fill and am determined to try and do better.” The reference to Nally, another former liquor director who is a close friend of former Gov. Butch Otter, is truly curious.

Repeated requests that the governor’s office follow the disclosure law and release the other half of this text exchange were stiffed. Arulanandam did not respond to a request that he clarify what he was talking about.

Yet, Arulanandam was clearly responding to someone. And in doing so, he felt compelled, shortly after accepting his new high profile job, to say he was “determined to try and do better.”

Who says that even before officially assuming a new position? And was his reference to Nally a diss of the former director or something else?

In any event, the governor’s office is engaged in an evasion about a significant appointment. Why?

—–0—–

Additional Reading:

For your consideration …

How Jack Smith’s New Case Against Trump Works

The hour is late. The election is upon us.

The U.S. Senate could have done the right thing and convicted Donald Trump for attempting to overthrow and election by encouraging insurrection.

That the Senate abrogated it’s Constitutional duty will forever be an ignominious milestone in American history. Now, Jack Smith, the special counsel, tries to hold him to some account.

“A CAREFUL READING OF SMITH’S MOTION is a stark reminder that Trump and his criminal gang knew that the entire Big Lie was a big lie from the get-go. In fact, they plotted to plant the Big Lie even before the election results were in. To this day, it’s still stunning to realize that the former president and his slew of enablers managed to get as far as they did with their scheme, which only failed in the midst of a bloody insurrection because Pence adhered to his oath to the U.S. Constitution instead of falling on his sword for a craven and treasonous man like Trump.”

Read the entire piece here.

The Moment of Truth

Tom Nichols, a conservative and very clear headed thinker about the current threat to democracy, has written a remarkable piece in The Atlantic about our first president, George Washington.

“Forty-four men have succeeded Washington so far. Some became titans; others finished their terms without distinction; a few ended their service to the nation in ignominy. But each of them knew that the day would come when it would be their duty and honor to return the presidency to the people.

“All but one, that is.”

If your read nothing else before November 5, read this.

Thanks. Be well. Vote.

Idaho, Oregon, Washington

The Three Amigos of the Pacific Northwest …

Posted on by mjohnson

In the early 1970’s voters across the Pacific Northwest – Idaho, Oregon and Washington – could boast, and often did, that the region was home to three of the most accomplished, most interesting and most engaging governors in the country.

Cecil Andrus in Idaho, Tom McCall in Oregon and Dan Evans in Washington – the self-described three amigos – formed a political and personal partnership that hasn’t come close to being replicated in the intervening 50 years.

McCall of Oregon, Andrus of Idaho and Evans of Washington

Ironically, the most conservative Northwest state, Idaho, elected Andrus, a Democrat, in 1970 – the first of his four terms – while the more liberal coastal states elected two progressive Republicans. Washington voters put Evans in the Statehouse in 1964 for the first of three terms, while Oregonians gave McCall the first of his two terms in 1966.

Andrus and Evans defeated incumbents to win the governorship, while McCall defeated a popular Oregon secretary of state. Each man became a vote gathering machine, often defying their own national parties and in the process developed legacies unmatched in the region. 

All three were pioneering state-level conservationists. McCall’s landmark efforts to preserve public access to Oregon’s magnificent beaches continues to mean to this day that the public interest in the state’s shoreline is paramount. McCall, like Andrus and Evans, believed not every tree had to be cut or mountainside despoiled in the name of economic progress.

The gruff McCall famously told a television interviewer that Oregon was a special place, too special to be ruined by too much development and too many people. “Come visit us again and again,” McCall said. “This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.”

Andrus’s four terms were the bookends for his history making tenure as Secretary of the Interior, a time that saw Jimmy Carter, with encouragement and strategy by Andrus, champion protections of millions of acres of wilderness, wildlife refuges and national parks in the nation’s last frontier, Alaska.

All three governors championed public and higher education and wise economic development. McCall and Andrus were early champions of land use planning. And each man understood the wisdom of joining forces on issues of regional importance, putting aside partisan considerations to give the region greater clout and more ability to attract national attention and money.

Their mutual regard extended so far that Republican McCall came to Boise in 1974 to headline a fundraiser for Idaho’s Democratic governor. When Evans was appointed and then elected to the U.S. Senate after the death of legendary Washington senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Andrus endorsed Evans as the only man big enough to fill Jackson’s shoes. When Andrus made his gubernatorial comeback in 1986, Evans endorsed his Democratic friend with such conviction that the Andrus campaign turned the endorsement into an incredibly effective political ad.

A bipartisan endorsement for Andrus in 1974.

McCall, a terrific writer whose early journalism career included a job at what is now the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, was the first of the amigos to go, dying of cancer in 1983. McCall was a one-of-a-kind character, brash, outspoken, clever with a quip and determined to make change.

As McCall’s biographer Brett Walth has written, “McCall dominated everything around him … because of all he represented in his state.”

Andrus was a similar personality. Quick with a quip and just as quick, as he often said, to “throw an instant fit” when he encountered unfairness or ineptitude. Andrus dominated the politics of his conservative state through three decades because he was the genuine article – tough, empathic, a strategic thinker determined to make a difference while keeping the trust of voters who just plain liked “Cece.”

Andrus’s death in 2017 left only the last amigo, Dan Evans. And now that towering figure has died at 98.

Evans, who demanded in the 1960’s that the hard right wing of his own party, including the John Birch Society, just leave the Republican Party is the last of a breed: the determined individualist, willing to buck party and ideology in the cause of genuine progress.

Dan Evans with former Bonneville Power Administrator Peter Johnson

Long-time Washington journalist Joel Connelly wrote of Evans: “He was a lifelong Republican, part of a now critically endangered species of conservation-minded members of the Grand Old Party. Nowadays, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference has panels debunking Theodore Roosevelt.”

The legacy of the three amigos will not diminish. You’ll continue to see it in the Andrus White Clouds wilderness in central Idaho, the Alpine Lakes in Washington and a dozen other places championed for protection by Evans and the waterfront park in Portland that carries Tom McCall’s name.

It requires courage and vision and action to make our fractured politics work. The get-along, go-along types can win elections by catering to the worst instincts in their party and appealing to the lowest common denominator in the electorate, but in the end these types merely occupy a place on the ballot or hold down a desk. They do little or nothing for democracy and the next generation.

It’s tempting to say that we’ll not soon – or perhaps ever – see the like of Evans, McCall and Andrus again. And ask yourself why?

The answer won’t be found in partisan politics or fealty to a corrupt leader or even the obvious desire for popularity that too often requires trimming and hedging. Leadership of the type Andrus, Evans and McCall demonstrated was all about character – the moral and ethical qualities of any individual.

Scandal never touched any of these men. They kept their word to their voters. They stood for real and important things like clean air and water and the thrill of wide open spaces where humans are but temporary visitors. They built schools, spoke candidly about challenges, demanded excellence of themselves. They behaved honorably.

The Pacific Northwest once had three amigos and we are better, much better for having had them.

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Some additional reading:

For your consideration …

The Polling Imperilment

Political historian Rick Perlstein dissects what is wrong with the polling industrial complex and concludes, well, pretty much everything.

“W. Joseph Campbell’s Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections demonstrates—for the first time, strangely enough, given the robust persuasiveness of its conclusions—that presidential polls are almost always wrong, consistently, in deeply patterned ways.”

Worth your time.

A Rule for the Ages, or a Rule for Trump?

A scathing take down of the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling.

Trevor W. Morrison, a dean emeritus of the New York University law school, writes: “A majority of the Court has now embraced a rule that may make it impossible to prosecute any future president for any official act, no matter how egregious. That is a drastic holding, fundamentally changing the place of the president in our system of laws.”

Can this possibly be what the Founders intended? Link here.

The Truth About Emmett Till Wasn’t in Your History Book

I don’t have any sense any longer about how many Americans are even vaguely familiar with the Emmett Till story, the brutal murder of a Black teenager in Mississippi in 1955.

Fourteen year old Emmett Till with his mother

This piece from Politico is very hard to read, but you should read it.

“The most proximate cause of Emmett Till’s murder was the political system of Mississippi. Ruled by the pledge to keep Black citizens locked in a caste system, it was as guilty for what happened to Emmett Till as the brothers who beat and shot him to death. Seeing that history whole is an essential reminder, a warning to all Americans as we approach our own fraught election, a lesson unlearned about the danger of reckless speech, how the hysteria of language on the stump inevitably becomes violence in the streets.”

From the author of a new book on these sad and horrifying events.

This Defeated Presidential Candidate, Once the ‘Best-Known Man in America,’ Died in a Sanatorium Less Than a Month After Losing the Election

“Newspaper editor Horace Greeley unsuccessfully ran against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant in November 1872. Twenty-four days later, he died of unknown causes at a private mental health facility.”

From Smithsonian Magazine.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve used this space many, many times over the last many months to try and create – in my own small way – a sense of urgency about the coming election. It is a frightening, anxious and, yes, even hopeful time, but Americans must take the election with grave seriousness. So much is at stake.

One party is offering a deeply troubled candidate, a convicted felon, a serial liar who instigated an insurrection in an attempt to stay in power.

The other party offers a candidate who was a former prosecutor, attorney general of the nation’s largest state, a United States senator and for the last four years the vice president of the United States. This candidate is broadly within the traditions of American politics, a serious, stable, experienced person.

You don’t need to like the policy positions of either candidate, but you simply must evaluate the character of each candidate. When you do, and strip away all the bluster, bombast, racism and hate the choice becomes crystal clear.

See you again soon.

2024 Election, Harris, Johnson, Trump

A Choice: Enlightenment or Division …

Posted on by mjohnson

I’ve long been a fan of the late journalist Tom Wicker, a Washington, D.C., fixture for a quarter century who covered presidents, assassinations, Watergate, even a deadly prison riot. Wicker’s southern charm — he was born in North Carolina — didn’t prevent him from offering sharp, preceptive and critical comments about presidents of both parties.

Wicker was a truth teller, including his quote that I use to assess today’s politicians:

“The first and most fundamental task of the American politician ought to be that of public education — the enlightenment of the electorate he represents, a constituency that in the nature of the case and in the process of its own business will not have the time, opportunity or inclination that he had to inform itself about the realities of an ever more complex and shrinking world.”

That’s the job — enlightenment — and the recent remarkable presidential debate made it, at times painfully obvious, that the Republican Party’s candidate has no such ability and indeed displays precisely the opposite characteristics.

A good deal has been written since Tuesday night about Vice President Kamala Harris’s mastery of former President Donald Trump, almost all of it bad for Trump.

To cite just one example of post-debate analysis, Jeff Greenfield, writing in Politico, said: “Harris made it Trump’s night — in the worst possible way. The campaign armed Harris with a series of trip wires hoping that Trump would be unable to resist setting them off. Not only did Trump take the bait, he brought a couple of his own, which he tripped over again and again. It was as if Lucy showed up with half a dozen footballs for Charlie Brown to kick, and Charlie himself brought a few more for good measure.”

Media analyst Margaret Sullivan noted: “Even over on Fox News, there were some abnormal glimmers of reality, as when Brit Hume allowed that Trump had ‘had a bad night.’ ”

A race of division vs. decency

What Harris accomplished on the biggest possible stage was, as Wicker said, the business of enlightenment, reminding a country that seems to suffer short-term memory loss that Trump is all about himself and about as stable as his hairstyle becomes in a windstorm.

Peter Wehner, a former George W. Bush staffer, wrote in The Atlantic that “Trump savaged people he had appointed to his administration who have since broken with him. He repeated his claim that Harris wasn’t Black. And then there was the piece de resistance: Trump spreading the conspiracy theory, weird even by his standards, that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian migrants are abducting and devouring their neighbors’ pets. ‘They’re eating the dogs!’ he roared. ‘The people that came in — they’re eating the cats!’

And he still couldn’t stop himself. When one of the moderators, ABC’s David Muir, rebutted Trump’s claim, the former president said, ‘I’ve seen people on television! People on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food!’ ”

What a ridiculous and easily debunked conspiracy theory that at heart is, not surprisingly for Trump, profoundly racist. The fantastical fable wasn’t a George Wallace-style dog whistle; it was literally the blare of a Klaxon. Trump might as well have been saying, “White people don’t eat dogs, only brown-skinned Haitians eat dogs.”

Racism is at Trump’s core and, sadly, is also the beating heart of much of his appeal to many Americans. Trump is running the most openly racist campaign in recent American history, doubling down on the Obama birther smear he literally peddled for years to now openly questioning Harris’ heritage. How galling it must be for him to be soundly shamed by, of all people, a woman of color.

Harris wisely has refused to take Trump’s racial bait other than to raise eyebrows and a “I can’t believe this stuff” smile as he flayed away with nonsense.

If we could wipe away at least some of America’s profound case of historical amnesia, we might have both candidates rather than just one making the case for turning the page on a too long period of division that too often boils over in rage. In a better world, we would remember the still unfinished business of the Civil Rights Act, passed 60 years ago this summer.

Wicker was an astute observer of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the man who signed that landmark legislation. Johnson was, as Wicker wrote, “By blood and geography, a Southerner.” Yet, once in power, Johnson bucked his own region and many of his historic allies to become a civil rights champion. He explained why it was so critically important to move the country on from its old, often deadly past. Johnson was not a naturally gifted speaker, but he could tell a story as he did in one of the greatest political speeches I’ve ever read.

Late in his 1964 campaign against Barry Goldwater, an ultra-conservative who opposed the Civil Rights Act, Johnson knew the once solid Democratic South was no longer solid. To try to reach the region that broadly opposed his civil rights efforts, Johnson sent his wife, Lady Bird, on an eight-state, 47-stop train trip from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans where LBJ met her train.

Lyndon Johnson meets the “Lady Bird Special” in New Orleans in October 1964

In a speech to a packed crowd at a New Orleans on Oct. 9, 1964, Johnson invoked his own history, imploring the many skeptical Southerners listening to embrace a hopeful, pluralistic America, to cast off the old ways and build a stronger, better country.

“There is work to do, and we can either do it together, united, or we can do it divided, eating on each other.

“Now, the people that would use us and destroy us first divide us,” Johnson said. And “if they divide us, they can make some hay. And all these years they have kept their foot on our necks by appealing to our animosities, and dividing us.”

In winning a historic landslide, Johnson lost Louisiana in 1964. There the old divisions won again.

And the same issues confront us today. The Great Debate this week served one critical mission. It was a rare moment of political of enlightenment. In stark contrast, we are offered a candidate promising more division and another recognizing the work to be done.

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Additional Reading:

A couple other items of interest this week …

How Democrats are making a mistake in rural America – by not showing up

There are signs that Vice President Harris’s campaign has read the memo: “Don’t write off rural America.”

As I – and many others – have argued, the Constitutional reality of the Electoral College demands that Democrats craft appeals to voters in rural America. The first task is to merely show up.

“As the owner of MLB Research Associates, Matt Barron specializes in rural Democratic races and is considered one of the nation’s leading political strategists on the rural vote.

Beyond the policy debates, Barron said the blame falls on the Democrats.

A good story to understand what needs to be done in rural America.

Vance, Yost targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio with ignorant fear-mongering disturbs me deeply

An Ohio journalist, a native of Springfield, writes with passion and clarity about the appalling, fake story that made it all the way to a presidential debate stage.

A mural adorns a wall in the city of Springfield, Ohio, U.S. September 11, 2024. REUTERS/Julio-Cesar Chavez

“Sometimes the disgusting sewer of presidential year politics hits a little too close to home, and you end up watching a national conversation play out largely divorced from reality or the actual experiences of communities intimately connected to your own life.

“That’s what happened to me Monday as I watched Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance lie about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and — displaying no sense of conscience whatsoever — make an abhorrent insinuation about them. His purpose, it appears, was a trollish attempt to mislead the public and prey on people’s hatreds and fears. I suppose he thinks that’s good politics.”

Read the piece from David DeWitt., editor-in-chief of the Ohio Capital Journal.

And for good measure, J.D. Vance used his appearance on Sunday morning TV today to double down on this BS. God help us.

Horrified Taylor Swift Realizes Football Happens Every Year

A spoof from The Onion.

And, yes, I am too old to “get” the whole Taylor Swift business, but if you were advising the Republican presidential candidate would you tell him to attack the most popular woman in the world?

Read the spoof. Good for a laugh.

Thanks for reading. Stay engaged. All the best.