Month: December 2018

A Republican Challenge

Note: this is the 350th Post on Trump World.   I was going to write maybe once a week when I started in February of 2017, but like any other good exercise, writing and thinking becomes an addiction.  And the subject, our politics and history, is compelling and constantly changing.   This is the first time I’ve actually asked for a response — though there have been plenty responses before.  Enjoy!!

So this is a challenge. I am looking at our politics, and what I am seeing is a dramatic attack on our American ideal of democracy. These attacks are not the ones made by the Trump Administration:  anyone who has read “Trump World” knows I’ve already written volumes about that. These are more subtle, done state by state by the Republican Party.

I have made it clear from the beginning that I am NOT an impartial observer.  I have constantly shared my opinions about our political world. But I try to keep a balance, and  am struggling in this particular essay, because I am unable to think of the counter-argument, a tit-for-tat that the Democratic Party has done.

It started in 2008, with Karl Rove’s (former Bush campaign manager and later nicknamed “Bush’s Brain) Redmap plan.  The Redmap plan was a Republican effort to take over the state governorships, statehouses, and other state elective offices that controlled the re-districting systems in each state by the 2010 election cycle.  By getting control of the levers of power, or more appropriately, the pencils that drew the maps after the 2010 Census, the Republicans were able to gerrymander Districts to their elective benefit.

Gerrymandering is nothing new, it was named for Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts back in 1812. Politicians have always known the basics:  concentrate the opposition into a few districts, or dilute them among many districts, so that your party wins the majority in most Districts.  But the Redmap plan took gerrymandering into the age of computers, using targeting data down to the block and house, in order to maximize the power of the Republicans over the Democrats.

An outstanding example of the power of Redmap is in the Wisconsin state legislature.  In the 2018 November election, Democrats won 55% of the votes for the State Assembly, while Republicans cast 44%.  However Republicans won 63 seats to Democrats 35 (64% to 36%.)   As anti-democratic (the ideal, and in Wisconsin at least, the Party) as it seems, Gerrymandering works.

In addition to Redmap, the Republican Party has made a national effort to keep the voting population Republican by making it more difficult for minorities and the poor to vote. This has been done through a variety of ways, including:  stricter voter identification requirements, reducing voting opportunities, complicated voter registration procedures, scrubbing the voting rolls, and voter intimidation at the polls.

While voter suppression has been done in many states, it is best exampled by the Georgia Governor’s race in 2018.  The Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, was the serving Secretary of State in control of the state’s election apparatus.  His work to suppress the Democratic vote was obvious, and successful enough to get him to the Governorship.  Other states, from Kansas to Michigan to Ohio have legally suppressed the vote at some level, though the Georgia election was the most drastic.

A third emerging Republican action is the “sore loser” plan.  This is occurring right now in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. Many of the statewide elective offices in those states have turned over from Republican to Democratic, and in response, the “lame duck” Republican legislatures and Governors are working to reduce the powers of the incoming Democrats.

In Wisconsin, the Republican controlled legislature and Governor Scott Walker are working to reduce the power of both the Governor and the Attorney General.  They are attempting to remove the power of the Attorney General to determine what lawsuits the state will support or not (specifically, the previous Republican Attorney General joined the Federal lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, a key issue in the Attorney General’s race that the Democratic winner pledged to change.) The Republican legislature will demand that the state continue to support the lawsuit, wresting control of this power from the Attorney General and ignoring the expressed will of the voters.

This only works in states where both houses of the state legislature and the governor are in Republican control, and Democrats will take over the executive offices while Republicans maintain control of the legislature, so they can protect the restrictive laws they created.

Redmap gerrymandering, voter suppression, the “sore loser” plan:  none of these actions are illegal.  But all of these seem to fly in the face of American traditions of “fair play” in politics; our tradition of encouraging voter participation and respecting the voters’ decisions.   Republicans would say they are only playing “hardball” and “for keeps” (please note: I have NOT included the North Carolina absentee ballot scandal – I think Republicans there are just as appalled as Democrats.) But it seems to me that they are playing a more dangerous game – one that attacks the basics of democracy.

But maybe my “blue tinted” glasses are so dark, that I can’t see the other side.  So the challenge I make is this:  what has the Democratic Party done that rises to the same level in the past decade?  Besides voter registration drives, ones that I would argue increases democracy by increasing voter participation, I’m not coming up with any.  Please educate me (and us all):  comment to make your views known.

 

 

 

 

The Trick is Not Minding

The President of the United States is the Chief Executive of the government.  That role includes “Chief Law Enforcer,” in the role of overseeing the Justice Department. Traditionally (whatever that means anymore) that means that the President is careful not to interfere in the conduct of criminal prosecutions.  The weight of his statements is considered prejudicial to a jury, and could alter a trial’s outcome.

The famous example came from Richard Nixon’s Presidency in the middle of the Manson trial. He said, in what was an off-the-cuff comment to reporters, that Charles Manson was guilty of the Tate-La Bianca murders.

Washington Post – August 3, 1970 – President Nixon today, speaking to news men on the importance of respecting the judicial process, said hippie leader Charles Manson was “…guilty directly or indirectly of eight murders.”  Manson is currently on trial in Los Angeles with members of his communal clan for eight murders, including Actress Sharon Tate.

Manson’s attorneys immediately moved for a mistrial, and Nixon and the White House spent a couple of days walking back the statement.  Ultimately the Manson trial proceeded and he was found guilty, spending the rest of his life in jail.  He died last year.

Noting this, it would be a surprise that the President of the United States would try to instruct a judge on how to sentence a defendant.  It would be even more surprising that the President would make that instruction in a case where he is personally involved.  Surprise: President Trump specifically tweeted instructions to the sentencing Judge for Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, who has made a plea agreement with the Justice Department.

Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time. You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence. – Donald Trump Twitter 12/3/18

This followed Cohen’s guilty plea for lying to Congress.  He lied about Trump’s involvement in a Russian real estate deal during the 2016 election campaign.  In his allocution to the plea, Cohen specifically cites President Trump, putting him in the center of a conspiracy to hide the Trump Organization’s involvement.

In our current era, where the “norms” of political conduct have been obliterated, it might be easy to let this tweet go by.  It’s one of thousands by the President, saying all sorts of outrageous things.  It’s Trump’s means of communicating to the people, supposedly akin to Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats.

But this one really isn’t.  It’s the President of the United States attempting to influence a judge through “ex parte” communication. Trump apologists would argue that this is just one more step in the Trump defense to the Mueller investigation, undermining the future value of Cohen’s testimony.  Maybe if Mr. Trump was still just a real estate mover and shaker from New York, this would be an acceptable strategy.  But as President of the United States, he has taken the power of his office and placed it on the “scale” of justice.

Cohen sees himself as the “John Dean of the Trump Era.” John Dean was the White House Counsel for Richard Nixon, and orchestrated the White House cover-up of Watergate and other campaign crimes.  When Dean saw himself being set-up by senior officials to take the fall, he made a deal with Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and “ratted out” the White House plans. Dean was instrumental in the downfall of the Nixon Administration,  pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, and spent four months in custody.  Cohen can only hope for the same, though with the President weighing in, and additional guilty pleas to eight other felony counts, Cohen must expect more.

And that was only one of several tweets yesterday.  The President also may have committed an overt act of obstruction of justice, encouraging Roger Stone to not cooperate with the Special Counsel.

“I will never testify against Trump.” This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!” – Donald Trump Twitter, 12/3/18

The President’s defenders will say that he is just encouraging Stone to “tell the truth” and not “lie” to get a deal from Mueller.  However, this is THE target of an investigation publicly encouraging a potential witness against him to “not talk:” the very definition of obstruction of justice.  And the fact that the “target” has the ultimate power of pardon, means that he can not only encourage, but back up that encouragement with a literal “get our of jail free” card.

Nixon established a group in his White House called the “plumbers.” There job was to “plug leaks” of information that Nixon didn’t want in public.  They took the task seriously, including “black ops” to try prevent information from getting out.  Famously, they broke into the psychiatrist office of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers. The “plumbers” went onto more break-ins including American history’s most famous one at the Watergate complex.

The leader of the “plumbers” was a lawyer and former FBI agent named G. Gordon Liddy.  Liddy was fiercely loyal to Richard Nixon, so much so that he refused to answer any questions about his actions.  Liddy ultimately served the longest prison sentence to come out of the Watergate prosecutions, four and a half years in federal prison.

Liddy was also famous for his “party trick.”  He would light a candle, then put his hand in the flame, leaving it there until people could smell his flesh burning.  When asked what the “trick” was, Liddy would say “…the trick is not minding.”  He wouldn’t talk, and he went to prison.    Nixon resigned before he pardoned any of his subordinates, and many spent time in jail, Liddy the longest.  The trick was not minding.

Stone, a young man when involved in the Nixon campaign, has taken on the “Liddy” role for Trump.  Whether Stone is the conduit to Trump in the Russia-Wikileaks-Trump campaign chain is still unclear, but if he is, you can be assured that he will follow his hero and not talk.  Stone will say:  the trick is not minding.  The trick may also be a “dangled” Presidential pardon, but Stone will know that, like Liddy, that may never come.

The Mueller Investigation is coming closer to the core of the Russia Investigation.  It may lead directly to the President.  If it does, you can be sure that the President will fight back with every tool at his disposal, legal or extra-legal.  The norms of the past; norms that even circumscribed Nixon’s behavior, are gone.  The outcome will depend on how much the American people care about the actions of their President.  Trump depends on the hope that to the American people; “…the trick is not minding.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sand Slipping Away

The 41^st President of the United States, George HW Bush, passed away this weekend.  He was 94 years old, the patriarch of the Bush political dynasty.  With his passing, another member of the historic Republican Party, the Party that rejected the absolutism  of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater; the party of Eisenhower, Rockefeller and yes, Richard Nixon; is gone.

We have seen this Grand Old Party; tough on foreign policy, free marketeers on trade; a party that still had a heart; slowly pass away before our eyes this year.  Barbara Bush, John McCain, and now the President, all revive memories of what a “kinder and gentler” Republican Party was.  And, as the speeches are made and the memorials articles are written, we see the stark contrast between the Republicans of then, and the Trumpians of today.

It’s not that President Bush 41 was soft.  Mike Dukakis, his Democratic opponent for President in 1988, would beg to differ: the raw racism of the Willie Horton Ad run by Bush, literally blaming Dukakis for murder, was as ugly as the ads of today.  And it’s not that the Republican Party of the era was so compassionate:  the “…thousand points of light…” was about volunteering to solve the problems the government wasn’t going to pay for.

But there was a class, and an understanding of service to America, that is missing today.  While Democrats might disagree with Bush, or Reagan, or even Bush 43; there was still a presumption that they were trying to do what they thought was best for the country, as opposed to what was best for themselves (OK, Dick Chaney might be the exception.)   Today, after a week of more Trump revelations of self-interest over country, it seems clear that the old GOP is gone.  Even the lesser leaders of the Party, McConnell and Ryan and Graham, have remained silent as the drip-drip-drip of the Mueller investigation hammers away at the Trump Administration.

I never voted for Bush 41: the truth is that I have never voted for a Republican President.  But, I could still have respect for them.  For Gerald Ford, who took on the Presidency at its lowest point after Watergate, for Ronald Reagan who seemed like the “harbinger of the apocalypse” before he took office (but we survived); for Bush 41, who was the last of the “Greatest Generation” to lead our nation.

All of them are in stark contrast to the President of today.  And that’s the problem President Trump has this week:  another funeral where by contrast his Administration will be held up to ridicule.  Another ceremony where the grace of American politics and politicians will demonstrate what we are missing, and the shadow of the Mueller Investigation will continue to darken this White House’s  door.

While I don’t agree with them, I do feel for Ohio Republicans like John Kasich and Rob Portman (he served as a Bush 41’s White House Counsel.)  They are Republicans of the “old school;” one dared to speak out in opposition to the President, and the political price has been that his Party has left him.  They must feel like they are standing on the beach, as the waves tumble onto the shore, and the sand dissolves into the sea under their feet.  The ideas they built their careers on; the mentors and leaders they worked for; all are slipping away, leaving them standing alone in the waves.

So we say farewell to George Hebert Walker Bush this week.  We know he is where he wants to be; a man who’s marriage was so strong he didn’t want to live without his love.  And we can admire the courage and the class of President Bush, and those others who will stand, gray and stooped, beside his casket.   Perhaps seeing this contrast once again will embolden other Republicans to stand up for the ideals of their Party, rather than knuckle under to the bully in the White House.  I’m not holding my breath, but those Republicans may soon need to, as the tide of history washes their current President, and with him their Party, out to sea.