Many Things Considered

2024 Election, Trump

America’s Great Mistake …

Posted on November 15, 2024by 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 November 3, 2024by 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 112^th Regiment of the 28^th 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 28^th 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 28^th 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 October 27, 2024by 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 October 12, 2024by 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 September 29, 2024by 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.

—-0—-

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 September 15, 2024by 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.’ ”

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.

—–0—–

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.

2024 Election, Churchill, GOP, Trump

Loving Putin, Hating the U.S. Military …

Posted on September 8, 2024by mjohnson

At this stage of a presidential campaign it can become difficult to keep up with, let alone keep straight the flood of noise and bombast dominating the television screen or interrupting your dinner with one final desperate plea for – pick one or more – money, a vote, a response to a survey, an attack on a candidate …

I’ve come to value the days when presidential candidates campaigned from their front porches, greeting delegations of visitors and largely ignoring the kind of bat crappery that has become the essence of American political campaigns.

**^{Warren Harding campaigning from his Ohio front porch in 1920}**

Our campaigns don’t really tell us much about the candidates, but they sure tell us a lot about the country, which is why it’s important to find the few nuggets of enlightenment in our political sewage treatment plant of nonsense.

Two bits of current enlightenment seem important with both casting light on fellow Americans who seem willing to embrace, for the third time, the fake everyman from Queens who promises to be a dictator, but only on his first day back in office.

The first ray of enlightenment involves the former Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson, a trust fund man of the people whose present shtick involved serving as a propaganda vehicle for the Butcher of Kiev, Vladimir Putin. (You may recall that Carlson interviewed the great man a while back, an interview that largely consisted of Putin schooling the Swanson TV dinner heir on the fine points of Russian history – Putin style – since the days of the Czars.)

In every conceivable way the interview was embarrassing, particularly if you understand Carlson’s motive for traveling to Moscow to interview a dictator, which was, of course, to simply kiss up to a dictator. And not just any dictator, but one who has – remarkably – grown in favor with many far-right Americans while trying to wipe Ukraine off the map.

Not incidentally, the Justice Department moved this week to shutdown Russian disinformation schemes again designed to effect the November election.

Wow, it really is the Russia thing – again.

Carlson, a featured speaker at the recent Republican National Convention who helped convince Donald Trump to select J.D. Vance as his running mate, has now doubled down on normalizing historical revision.

On a recent podcast Carlson featured a two-hour interview with “historian” Darryl Cooper – “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” Carlson said – who declared Winston Churchill the true “villain” of World War II and preposterously claimed that Adolf Hitler really didn’t seek the most gruesome war in human history.

**^{Winston Churchill WAS NOT the villain of World War II}**

“He didn’t want to fight,” Cooper said of the man who invaded Poland 85 years ago this month, beginning World War II. For good measure Carlson’s “honest” historian threw in a big dose of Holocaust denial, while the Trump whisperer let him talk and talk and talk.

“Actually, this is pro-Nazi propaganda,” said the conservative truth-teller Liz Cheney, the former congresswoman from Wyoming who was run out of the Republican Party for opposing Trump.

But it is actually worse than mere propaganda. It is calculated Kremlin-inspired disinformation on a vast scale designed to confuse and misrepresent history in the interest of elevating a view that western democracy is at fault in the long twilight struggle against authoritarianism.

Moreover, Carlson is the leading media figure in Trump World, a confidante of the former president, who crackpottery seems to know no boundaries. Carlson speaks and the Trump base responds, no matter the level of offensive BS that tumbles out of his microphone.

Yet, when you consider that the party that once celebrated American exceptionalism is now led by a man who avoided military service, trashes military heroes like the late John McCain, sides with Putin and bases his current campaign on the ridiculous notion that America has failed, it somehow follows that the party’s most prominent media figure is Tucker Carlson, crackpot.

But there is more.

Donald Trump’s gross and grossly incorrect 2015 comments about McCain not deserving hero status because he had been captured should have, in any sane world, ended any thought of him in the White House. That did not happen because party leaders tolerated the McCain slander that only grew, as his Marine general chief of staff confirmed, into calling Americans killed in World War I “suckers and losers” and climaxed with Trump questioning the value of the Medal of Honor.

But since Trump World has no bottom, there is always room to go lower as Trump did with his blatant political stunt at Arlington National Cemetery, a photo op designed to give a draft dodger a platform to criticize his opponent for the pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Like the authoritarian leader he intends to become, Trump’s campaign ignored laws about not using hollowed Arlington ground for political purposes, and when confronted manhandled a civilian employee of the cemetery attempting to enforce the law. In the process, as the Washington Post detailed, Trump systematically misrepresented his own role in the Afghan departure to the very people who lost loved ones there.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has written extensively about Trump’s attitudes toward those who have served their country. “The record is plain,” Goldberg says. “This is the truth of Donald Trump: He has contempt for men and women who serve their country.”

The military men who served under Trump – Generals John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Mark Milley, among others – confirm his unfitness for office.

So here is a nugget of enlightenment at the dark heart of our politics: Conservatives, up and down the Republican Party, have tolerated and embraced a truly unfit and unAmerican individual as their candidate. And most of them will easily shrug off the Carlson holocaust denial, the Hitler revisionism and the Arlington stunt for reasons that I cannot adequately explain.

We are left with this, again from Jeffrey Goldberg.

“If you could count on anything in America, and especially in Republican politics – if you had a list titled ‘Things Republican Candidates Cannot Do’ – I think ‘insulting war heroes’ would be near the top of that list. Our society venerates combat heroes. Trump very often treats them with open contempt. Just think about how he has repeatedly demeaned wounded veterans, demanding that they be kept out of parades, out of his sight. And yet Republicans have nominated him for president three times. I still cannot adequately explain it.”

There is no explaining such nonsense.

—–0—-

Additional Reading:

If Republicans Want to Win, They Need Trump to Lose — Big

I have little expectation that a Trump loss, even a big loss, would cause a redirection of the Republican Party, or a return to more traditional conservatism. But in this piece Jonathan Martin of Politico makes the case, as I do believe, that many GOP officeholders are sick and tired of the Trump nonsense and chaos.

They want him gone. They just can’t – or won’t – say it.

As Martin writes: “As they’ve demonstrated for going on a decade now, Republican leaders will repeatedly bow to the preference of their base over their own judgment when it comes to Trump.”

Therefore, no reason to think that is going to change. Read the entire piece.

The Baseball Hall of Fame

I had one of my “bucket list” experiences recently during a day-long visit – I could have stayed longer – at the fabulous baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

What a great, great place.

I was particularly moved by an outstanding exhibit devoted to the great Henry Aaron, a great player and I think an even better person.

***^{Hank Aaron is an all-time great}***

If you enjoy baseball. Go to the Hall. You won’t be disappointed.

Here’s a story about the dedication of the Aaron statute earlier this year.

“The Hall of Fame wanted the Aaron statue at the entrance because that’s how it’d make the greatest impact. As thousands enter the Hall each year, they’ll first be greeted by Aaron, in his Braves uniform, propping himself with a bat.”

Thanks for reading. Do what you can to impact the coming election. Democracy is on the ballot.

GOP, Idaho Politics, U.S. Senate

A New Right Darling …

Posted on August 25, 2024by mjohnson

Steve Symms was a politician ahead of his time. And that is no compliment.

Symms, an Idaho Republican who served in the House of Representatives and the Senate for 20 years, died August 8 at age 86. The former Canyon County fruit farmer was remembered by current Senator James Risch as a “staunch defender of conservative values in Washington, D.C., for the people of Idaho.” Idaho Governor Brad Little, who announced Symms’ death, called him “a true patriot … God bless this fighter for Idaho values.”

There is no question that Symms was a political figure of consequence, and not because of any list of legislative accomplishments — there are none — but because Symms was one of the earliest and most effective practitioners of the so-called “New Right’s” politics of grievance and resentment.

***^{Steve Symms, here surrounded by reporters, was a true darling of the New Right}***

As effective a retail politician as almost anyone in the state’s history, a back-slapper who was quick with a quip, Symms knew how to work a room and charm voters, while often peddling genuine nonsense — or worse.

Beneath his sunny personality beat the heart of a cultural warrior ready at any moment to flay the liberal enemy. Symms’ defeat of four-term Democratic Senator Frank Church in 1980 marked a decisive turning point in Idaho’s political trajectory as well that of the national Republican Party. In many ways, we are living with the politics that Symms and others on the 1970s New Right ushered in.

Symms was a charter member of a group of young, far-right conservatives who came to Congress in the messy years when Richard Nixon was forced to resign the presidency. In the view of many of these sharp-elbowed conservatives, moderate Gerald Ford, who replaced Nixon, was little more than a RINO (Republican in name only).

When Ford nominated former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as vice president in 1974, Symms opposed the appointment. Rockefeller, Symms said, was evidence “of the rapid movement to the left by the Ford administration.” The choice of Rockefeller was “abrogation of liberty,” Symms said, “what we can expect from the mish-mash of unphilosophical ooze that the two-party system has degenerated into.”

You might think the incessant Republican attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS or the media are a 21st century phenomenon, but Symms was regularly attacking the same “enemies” 50 years ago.

In 1980, for example, Symms supporters sported bumper stickers reading: “I’m voting for Steve Symms, the Statesman made me do it,” a reference to Idaho’s largest newspaper that had reported extensively – and fairly – on the support Symms received from New Right groups.

It was little noted in Idaho before 1980, but Symms was deeply involved with the founding fathers of the ideological, grievance-obsessed movement that engineered the GOP transformation in the mid-1970s.

“The late Paul Weyrich was the foremost political strategist of the movement,” columnist Stuart Rothenberg has written. “He was joined by people such as Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation, Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus, televangelist Jerry Falwell and direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, all of whom … wanted to steer the country dramatically to the right.”

Symms, along with North Carolina’s Jesse Helms, Indiana’s Dan Quayle and the only member of this group still in the Senate, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, were darlings of the New Right. Symms attended their trainings, utilized their talking points, sat on their advisory committees and, of course, vacuumed up their campaign money.

You hear echoes of these original New Right warriors in the current assaults on higher education, libraries, climate science and reproductive and voting rights. And that list doesn’t really get to the main feature of the modern GOP – total disdain for basic character and decency.

GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance was born during Symms’s first Senate term, but the generational difference doesn’t mean they aren’t members of the same ideological family.

The political brilliance of people like Weyrich and Viguerie — and the racist Helms — resided in their understanding of how to appeal to “low information voters,” who are, not incidentally, the largest group of Donald Trump followers. These folks display only passing interest in politics and governing, but are mad as hell about immigrants, the “deep state” and “communists.” The New Right’s originalist strategy was to rile up these infrequent voters with dystopian visions of a country going down the toilet because of guys like Frank Church, who, after 24 years of distinguished service, was accused of being “too liberal for Idaho.”

**^{Richard Viguerie used incendiary direct mail to target low information voters}**

The National Conservative Political Action Committee — Roger Stone was a founder — saw in Symms a vehicle to remake the national party. NCPAC’s landmark — and grossly unfair — attacks on Democratic incumbents in 1980 seem almost quaint by today’s smashmouth political standards. Yet, the histrionic direct mail, distorted television and big lies worked. And they still work.

The issue mix in Symms’ 1980 race against Church included, of course, opposition to abortion, challenging whether “liberal” New York City deserved financial help from Washington, D.C., undermining the treaty that returned control of the Panama Canal to Panama and promoting the wholly invented Sagebrush Rebellion, an issue that worked particularly well in Idaho with Symms talking constantly about federal government overreach allegedly destroying the state’s economy.

There is, of course, some irony in Idaho’s governor praising Symms’ support of “conservative values,” not including apparently Symms peddling the entirely fabricated but widely disseminated story that Kitty Dukakis, the wife of the 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, had once burned an American flag.

And missing from most Symms obituaries was any reference to why he left the Senate in 1993 after two terms at age 54.

**^{This 1991 Twin Falls Times-News editorial helped end a senate career}**

“He duped her, then he dumped her,” editorialized the Twin Falls Times-News after it broke the story in 1991 about Symms campaigning with his wife, Fran, to get reelected in 1986 and then, after being romantically linked to a staff member, filing for divorce.

That interview with the Times-News in June 1991 was the only one Fran Symms gave regarding the divorce and the rumors of her husband’s affair.

“Steve Symms is under fire, not for the divorce, but for being two-faced,” wrote Bill Hall of the Lewiston Tribune. “He has cynically used, not only his wife, but the people of Idaho to whom he has also been legally linked for two decades. They should copy their remedy from him: Divorce him.”

The senator announced his retirement two months later.

This much of Governor Little’s tribute was correct: The Symms who trafficked in smears, was concerned about Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment because of her views on abortion and said that when all else fails, American justice should come from “the cartridge box,” exemplified what surely have become Idaho’s political values.

Steve Symms was a man before his time.

—–0—–

By the way …

I wrote about Symms and the New Right’s influence on American politics in my book Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party. The University of Oklahoma Press published the book in 2021.

Additional Reading:

A few other items I found of interest …

Lessons in Leadership from Howard Baker

Remembering a different kind of Republican.

“Although Baker is best remembered as one of the heroes in the Watergate drama, his most remarkable work came when Jimmy Carter decided to negotiate two treaties by which the Panama Canal would be returned to Panama. Five presidents before Carter, starting with Eisenhower, had recognized the damage that anger about American control of the Canal was doing to America’s relationship with Panama and Latin America but chose to do nothing about it. With tensions rising in Panama, Carter decided it was imperative to act. Many years later, Baker would remember his reaction to Carter’s call in August 1977 asking for his support. ‘I wished he hadn’t asked,’ Baker said. ‘It was an unwelcome challenge.’ He wondered then: ‘This has been kicking around for years. Why now, and why me?'”

A very nice piece from the Washington Monthly.

Trump’s visit to Montana demonstrates he’s all bluster and no policy

My friend Darrell Ehrlick writes about Donald Trump’s recent visit to Montana and concludes it’s a fool’s errand to try to fact check the former president. As Darrell writes:

“We shouldn’t inform people of when Trump misstates or gives the wrong information: That happens so often that when fact-checkers report them, they hardly have any time to register before the next fact-free statement is made.

“Instead, fact-checkers and journalists may want to consider only reporting what Trump said that is tethered to verifiable facts.”

Good idea. Here’s the full piece.

How to Start a Professional Sports Team, Win Games, and Save the Town

I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. But I have always liked the team across the bay in Oakland, and it is a sad, sad fact that the A’s are going – apparently and eventually – to Las Vegas.

This is awful news for a loyal fan base and for an entire city, but the actions of one rapacious owner, John Fisher, has stimulated something in Oakland. Great story about two guys, Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel, and their perfectly crazy and wonderful idea.

“What Fisher sought to dispossess Oakland of, in Paul’s mind, was far more than just a business or even a beloved team, but a cornerstone of the East Bay’s self-conception, and its importance to Oakland felt well-evidenced by the reverse boycott. The boycott had been designed to prove that Oakland remained a vociferous sports town deserving of teams that loved it back. Paul left convinced and inspired. He texted Bryan, who was in L.A. (Bryan, a member of the WGA, was on strike.) “I have a crazy idea,” Paul wrote. “I like crazy ideas,” Bryan replied.

Read the whole thing.

See you again soon. Many thanks for reading. All the best.

2024 Election, Andrus, Trump

The Politics of Nice and Normal …

Posted on August 12, 2024by mjohnson

Two things have struck me about the recent selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket.

The first was the guy’s resume before politics – high school social studies teacher and football coach, National Guard sergeant major, duck hunter, state college graduate. Walz won a Minnesota congressional delegation cooking contest with his hot dish recipe. If Walz is what he seems to be – and if he’s faking it he’s doing a really great job – he is a remarkably normal American, something increasingly rare in our politics.

**^{Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz}**

[The original version of this column was filed before the Trump campaign attacked Walz’s military record. It’s hard to believe the attacks, or better yet smears – managed by the same guy who “Swift boated” Senator John Kerry in 2004 – will stick to Walz who, after all, spent 24 years in the Guard.]

The second was the obvious joy he brings to politics. Enough to remind you of Hubert Humphrey, another Minnesota vice president. Walz smiles a lot. He laughs. He seems to enjoy the personal interactions of retail politics. He’s the kind of politician who can “work the room,” engaging with total strangers and enjoy it. This, too, has become extremely rare.

I worked for a politician with the same characteristics. His name was Cecil Andrus, and I have always thought he was the most comfortable person in his own skin that I have ever known. Tim Walz reminds me of Cece Andrus, a politician who spent a career overachieving as a Democrat in a very conservative state.

Andrus, the four-term Idaho governor and secretary of the interior, never met a stranger. He loved, absolutely loved, the small personal interactions that can make or break a retail politician. If Andrus walked into a room and spotted a political adversary, someone he had a political difference with, he made a beeline for that person. He’d extend a hand and crack a joke, totally disarming the other person. It was a skill most of us lack, engaging with someone we disagree with.

People still tell me stories about the first time they met Andrus. They remember the details, and while he had a legendary ability to recall names and faces he wasn’t perfect, but most everyone thinks he was.

He could make a joke at his own expense. When was the last time you heard that from our national real estate developer and serial sexual abuser? Or literally anyone in national politics, come to think of it?

Andrus freely appropriated an old joke attributed to the great Arizona Congressman Mo Udall who related walking into an Iowa barber shop in 1976 while campaigning for president. “Good morning, I’m Mo Udall and I’m running for president,” Mo would say. And he would then relate the barber’s reaction: “I know, we were just laughing about that this morning.”

Who doesn’t like a guy who can tell that kind of joke on himself?

**^{Andrus in a typical frame of mind}**

After riding a horse in the Eastern Idaho Fair parade, a supporter said to Andrus: “Boy, you got a warm reception.” His replay, “Yup, and some were waving all five fingers.”

The Republican ticket is populated by two angry sourpusses. Donald Trump is a raging insult machine. A man selling darkness. He’s running for one reason: to stay out of jail. His running mate is a shape shifting 40-year-old who reinforces the negative. America is going to hell. Dark skinned people are taking your jobs. Meanness is a virtue. Angry cat ladies are ruining the country.

There are two kinds of political campaigns: campaigns built on anger, grievance and destroying the opponent and campaigns centered on hope and the future.

I suspect Kamala Harris chose the former high school teacher from Nebraska because he doesn’t display any grievance. Like Cece Andrus he isn’t a hater.

J.D. Vance, the GOP vice presidential candidate, went to Yale, made a bundle working as a venture capitalist in California and said he despised Trump before he didn’t. Tim Walz went to Chadron State College, taught school in Alliance, Nebraska – I know that place and it is conservative and rural – and later coached a high school football team to the Minnesota state championship.

What do those who have observed him up close say about Vance? “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney told journalist McKay Coppins, who pegs Vance an opportunistic phony. “How do you sit next to him at lunch?”

As Aaron Sanderford wrote in the Nebraska Examiner, “Walz coached linebackers and signaled the defense at Alliance High School under coach Jeff Tomlin.”

“Tomlin said he remembers Walz as an amazing coach and social studies teacher. He called Walz ‘an ordinary guy with the extraordinary ability to have a vision for who he is and who he wants to be.’

“He was an exceptional teacher, one of the best I’ve been around,” Tomlin said.

The Republican campaign has only two gears: negative and nasty. It’s not morning in America, it’s a vision of a shithole country, populated by vile people who, as Trump said this week, “want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner.”

That’s preposterous Trumpian BS, a convicted felon and Putin apologist telling the rest of us about law and order. The Republican campaign will continue to disintegrate day-by-day with Trump, if it is possible, growing more and more unhinged.

One reason Walz will be so effective over the next three months is that, again like Andrus, he’s both decent and tough. He can make a joke, as he did while trolling fellow Governor Kristi Noem, she of South Dakota puppy killing fame, and never mention the subject of the jab. Walz posted a photo of his own dog taking a treat and saying “show me you didn’t shoot your dog and dump it in a gravel pit. I’ll go first.” Noem wasn’t mentioned. Everyone knew. Noem, of course, wanted to be Trump’s vice president and, as if to compensate for not making it, immediately labeled Walz “radical.”

Another inviolate rule: Politics is a matter of addition. Tim Walz is additive to the Democratic ticket. We’ll be talking about the high school course he developed on the Holocaust, while Vance is still answering questions about calling Trump “America’s Hitler.”

Hope is additive. Grievance is exhausting. We’ll see soon enough if America wants a future of hope or something much darker.

—–0—–

Additional Reading:

A couple of other items of note …

Utah outlaws books by Judy Blume and Sarah J Maas in first statewide ban

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think we should ban books – period. But Utah is going full speed ahead. Aren’t conservatives always demanding parental control. Let parents decide what their kids can read

“Books by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, Rupi Kaur and Sarah J Maas are among 13 titles that the state of Utah has ordered to be removed from all public school classrooms and libraries.”

What a travesty. Read the full story.

Steve Symms, senator who was voice of conservative ire, dies at 86

I knew the former Idaho senator pretty well, covered some of his campaigns and moderated the debates Symms had with Senator Frank Church in 1980. He was an Idaho original, and an early adopter of the kind of ruthlessly negative campaigns that now define politics at every level.

^{Symms at his best delivering a quotable soundbite}

The first graph of his obit in the Washington Post is really rather stunning.

“Steve Symms, a former Republican lawmaker from Idaho who made staunch conservative views his political brand and rattled the 1988 presidential campaign by falsely claiming that the wife of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis once burned an American flag, died Aug. 8 at his home in Leesburg, Va. He was 86.”

Read the full piece.

More soon. Thanks for reading. All the best.

2024 Election, Trump, Vice Presidents

The Crap Shoot that is the Vice Presidency …

Posted on August 4, 2024by mjohnson

Nine times in American history a sitting vice president has risen to the presidency on the death or, in Richard Nixon’s case, the resignation of a president.

Those nine men represent a cross section of the worst and best of American political history.

Theodore Roosevelt, a rambunctious 42-year old when he became president, clearly fits in the best category. In many ways after succeeding the assassinated William McKinley, Roosevelt transformed the presidency, using the bully pulpit and his well-developed political skills to conserve vast amounts of public land in national forests, parks and wildlife refuges.

^{Roosevelt was a popular leader and the first American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded for his mediation in the Russo-Japanese war. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)}

Teddy had a vision about America’s role in the world and arguably was a principal architect of the American Century. Roosevelt was a scholar/politician who read and wrote books. He remains a supremely engaging character.

John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Chester A. Arthur also became president following the death of a president and there is ample reason none of them are on Mt. Rushmore.

Tyler was a southerner who welcomed the Civil War, effectively committing treason after leaving the White House. Fillmore was a non-entity, best forgotten. Johnson was a horrible racist even by the standards of his time.

Arthur, surely you remember Chester Arthur, was a machine politician who may have been the best of this fairly sorry lot. Sympathetic historians have concluded that Arthur tried hard to be competent and failed to get credit for clearing that low bar. One biographer concluded of 21^st president that, “some people just do the best they can in a difficult situation, and sometimes that turns out just fine.”

Calvin Coolidge following Warren Harding, Harry Truman following Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson succeeding John Kennedy and Gerald Ford replacing Nixon have all enjoyed a generally positive historical reassessment.

Coolidge gets graded on the curve in part because Harding, to quote Alice Roosevelt Longworth, “was not a bad man. He was just a slob.” Truman suffered in FDR’s shadow but proved his mettle by staging arguably the greatest presidential comeback in history in 1948. He also recognized Israel, desegregated the armed forces and pushed back against southern segregationists in his own party. Johnson’s record of domestic accomplishment, including the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, compares in impact only to FDR’s. Vietnam was Johnson’s downfall and without it, as has been said, he would have been a great president. That remark caused the eminent economist John Kenneth Galbraith to quip “and except for the mountains Switzerland would be a flat country.”

A new biography of Ford, the accidental vice president, makes a strong case for the man’s decency and common sense. Biographer Richard Norton Smith notes Ford’s decency by remembering that in the last year of his presidency he had the good grace to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a remarkable collection of great Americans: Jesse Owens, Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keeffe, Norman Rockwell, Lowell Thomas, General Omar Bradley, Irving Berlin, Martha Graham and historians Will and Ariel Durant.

Texan John Nance Garner, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s three vice presidents, reportedly said of the vice presidency that it “isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.” But, ol’ Cactus Jack was wrong. Sometimes it’s worth everything, the whole enchilada. (By the way, Garner used a word other than spit.)

Presidents do die in office (or in one case resigns) and the understudy is elevated to the pinnacle.

While we contemplate Donald Trump’s increasingly wrong footed selection of an untested 40-year old former venture capitalist as his running mate it is worth remembering that J.D. Vance could be a heartbeat away from the presidency, while serving with a guy who will be 82 should the country survive him serving out another term.

Vance is being pilloried, and properly so, for what appears to be his voluminous writing and speaking – before become a vice presidential candidate – about gender roles and birthing babies, including his particularly incendiary crack about “childless cat ladies.”

Here’s the full Vance quote: “We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Vance seems like nothing so much as an apostle of the far right fringe Claremont Institute of cultural studies, represented enthusiastically by Scott Yenor, the Boise State University professor who has effectively argued that professional attainment is lost on women whose real place, were it not for “feminism” and civil rights laws, is barefoot and in the kitchen.

Yenor – Vance, too – has argued for a return to a simpler, and in his view better time when old “stereotypes” – man the breadwinner, woman the mom – were in vogue. Make America 1950 Again.

“The problem is this,” Yenor has written. “We have replaced the old ‘stereotypes’ with new, confused ones. Men are thought to be scum. Independent women are taught to have interests that are difficult to reconcile with men and marriage. Education and careers come first. Overcoming old stereotypes becomes the new stereotype. Marriage is delayed. Childbearing is deferred.”

Vance is about as popular right now as Andrew Johnson was when he replaced Abraham Lincoln, with his post-convention polling numbers worse than any vice presidential candidate ever. The first rule of the vice presidency is, of course, “do no harm.” By that token Vance has failed, and with spectacular speed, and he will soon be compared to whatever man Kamala Harris selects as a running mate.

Harris could stumble with her VP pick. It does happen. George McGovern, for instance, bombed with his pick of Thomas Eagleton in 1972 over concerns that seems all these years later a lot less important than arguing that millions of American women – cat lovers or not – should know their place.

Meanwhile, Trump is busy insulting Black Americans and dismissing the guy he’s running with. “Virtually never has it mattered,” Trump said of his strange pick with a beard Chester Arthur might envy. “Historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference.”

Right. Just ask that famous vice president Sarah Palin.

—–0—–

Additional Reading:

A few other things I found interesting this week …

Publisher’s Note | Trump and NABJ: What Did We Learn?

It’s hard to tell what impact – if any – Trump’s contentious interview before an audience of Black journalists last week will have on the campaign.

What seems pretty clear to me, at least, that it was a prime example of Trump being Trump, but the nasty exchanges were also calculated. Get the attention off Kamala Harris and back on Trump, even if the attention is altogether negative. And, of course, Trump is a racist appealing the absolute worst instincts of some of his followers. So, he knew precisely what he was doing.

Kimberly Griffin is a Black journalist and publisher of the Mississippi Free Press, a small news operation with a big reach.

I thought her take on the Trump outburst was interesting. Here’s the link.

Sure, 2024 has had lots of news – but compared with 1940, 1968 or 1973, it’s nothing exceptional

Think we’re living in unprecedented times? Check out 1940 or 1968 or 1973 …

Some perspective. Link here.

Walter Shapiro, Political Columnist With a Contrarian Streak, Dies at 77

Walter was one of my favorite reporters, a great sense of news, a fine writer and very funny.

The tributes have flowed following his death recently at age 77.

Here’s an obit worth your time.

See you again soon. All the best for August.