Month: January 2019

An Imperial Presidency

My freshman year of college at Denison University in 1974, I had the opportunity to immerse myself in politics. I took courses like “Advanced Legislative Process” and “Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century.” I got to delve into government, structure, and history; all combined to explain where we are and where we came from. That might sound like a sentence to the depths of Hell to some, but for me it was a dream-come-true.  

It was the year that Nixon resigned, after two full years of Watergate hearings and crisis. During that fall, I read a book by Arthur Schlesinger, an historian and advisor to President Kennedy.  It wasn’t part of any course, just another swim in the political pond.  It was called “The Imperial Presidency.”

Schlesinger described the growth of the Executive Branch and the office of the Presidency, particularly the growth since Roosevelt’s New Deal era.  For example, during the Civil War, Lincoln’s “White House Staff” consisted of two secretaries and five other assorted personnel.  Today that number is three hundred and seventy-seven, backed up by four thousand employees in the Executive Office. 

I marveled that Schlesinger foresaw the overreach of the last year of Nixon’s tenure.  And I also recognized the inherent contradictions that liberals like me were faced with:  while the executive branch gaining increased power helped in areas like improving civil rights and reducing poverty, it also brought us the excesses of the Vietnam War and Watergate.  

Neither Korean nor Vietnam were ever “declared” wars by Congress.  Vietnam was managed by Presidents as an “executive action”; they were given war-making authority by Congress through the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.  Congress gave up its ability to control the war and gave the Presidency a blank check.

In some ways, that made sense in the nuclear age.  Beginning with Russia’s detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949, war was no longer a “six week to mobilize” process.  The joke: “…Moscow in flames, bombs on the way, film at eleven,” was more than dark comedy, it was a real possibility. With the advent of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, the launch-to-strike time came down to thirty minutes.  Presidents had to act, they couldn’t wait for a session of Congress to debate a war resolution.

And yet, that became a long term Presidential power.  The Gulf of Tonkin resolution turned into the War Powers Act; it allowed the invasion of Granada, the Balkans, and Iraq.  That was succeeded by the War on Terrorism authorization after 9-11, justifying the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq again, and ultimately Syria. Though Congress debated and discussed from time to time, the President waged war literally on his own authority.

Congress has transmitted its authority to the President in other areas as well.  Setting tariffs, dealing with natural disasters; in fact Congress created a law in 1974 called the “National Emergencies Act” giving the President extra-ordinary power simply by his declaring an “emergency.”   Once declared, a “national emergency” and the authority that comes with it doesn’t go away. There are currently TWENTY EIGHT declared emergencies  ranging from Iran, Narcotics Trafficking, the Balkans, Terrorism, to Venezuela  (CNN).  

Democracy is messy and time consuming.  Presidents and the Congress have wanted to streamline more than just military actions: but to get that speed, Congress has ceded much of its authority to the executive. They wanted, to use the slogan of Musollini, “…the trains to run on time.”  More recently, the partisan deadlock in the Congress has encouraged Presidents to find “executive” means of furthering their agendas.  A recent example was President Obama’s DACA orders given children of illegal immigrants legal status.  He couldn’t get Congress to act, so he did it himself.

So here we are, with a Congress that has tied itself in knots, and a President anxious to further his agenda, or as Trump would say, keep his campaign promises.  Congress has essentially given him the authority to legislate through “emergency” declaration and executive orders.  If you liked what President Obama did with DACA, it will be hard to argue against a President Trump “emergency.”  The “check and balance” for both has been given away.

Don’t expect the Courts to be the ultimate protector of Congressional authority either.  It would be hard to blame even the Federalist Society majority on the Supreme Court, if they said “…Congress gave him the power, Congress is the only one that can take it back.”  If this is an inter-branch fight, why should the Supreme Court intervene when one side has already conceded.

It’s an Imperial Presidency, and we’ve let it happen.  When Donald Trump declares an “emergency” at the Southern border, and proceeds to build “WALL,” he may well get his way and a victory in the current shutdown crisis. The House of Representatives can scream, but the McConnell led Senate will likely be silenced, giving away even more authority.  It takes both House and Senate to defend the power of the Congress, and the 116^thisn’t likely to do so.

In the years after Watergate, Congress legislated against the excesses Nixonian extremes in campaigning and executive influence.  Whatever comes of our current crisis with President Trump; when it’s all over, Congress should look at the larger issue of Presidential authority, and take back the power they have so easily given away.  We need our President to be less Imperial, and more bound by law.  It may prove to be cumbersome and inconvenient, but it will safeguard real democracy.

Rambo Would Be Shocked

So an old history teacher and student of the Cold War has to lecture one more time!!!

President Trump rewrote history this week with a rambling public dissertation on the fall of the Soviet Union.  He placed the virtual bankrupting and collapse of the Communist empire on the war in Afghanistan, a war the President said was justified by terrorist attacks from Afghanistan on the Soviets.  It fit in perfectly with current Russian propaganda, and gives Trump an excuse for withdrawing from our seventeen-year war in the region.  The problem is: it’s not true.

Before we enter the alternative past that the President has created let’s get one thing clear:  finding our way out of Afghanistan is a good idea. We are on our second generation of Americans fighting and dying there, and are battling for a vague and distant goal. We went there for two reasons: destroy Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda for 9-11, and punish the ruling Taliban tribe for allowing him to stay there.  It took a while, but both of those goals have been achieved, and while we are now propping up our allies in the current government, we need an exit strategy (not to be confused with a tweet saying we are leaving.)   

But let’s get a few items of history clear.  One of the long-term strategies of the United States in the conflict between “the free world” and “communism” called the Cold War was a plan of encirclement.  The US wanted to contain the Soviet Union by surrounding it with nations allied with the US in one way or another.  It was an alphabet soup of alliances: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO.)   It stretched from Norway’s Artic border, through Eastern Europe (the old “Iron Curtain”) into Turkey, and central Asia, then on into the Pacific.  

It denied warm water ports to the Soviet Union, allowing only a base in the Crimea on the Black Sea (the same base the Russians took from Ukraine), the Artic port at Archangel, the Baltic port at Kaliningrad and the Pacific port at Vladivostok.  The Premier of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, was constantly searching for ways to expand Soviet influence and break out of the “noose around the Soviet neck.”  In 1978, a Soviet backed Afghan group took control of the country.  There were opposed by multiple other tribes, including fundamentalist Islamic groups that saw the Communist changes as violating Koranic law. When the Soviet picked Afghan President was killed in 1979, the Soviet Army invaded.   

It was an ugly war of oppression, with the Soviet Army using the most advanced weapons against the “Mujahideen,” the guerilla fighters, often on horseback.  Over the next ten years the Soviets discovered what many other occupying armies in Afghanistan already knew (and the United States would find out):  that controlling the rugged mountainous regions of the country is near impossible.  It also is near impossible to create stable alliances within the country, with varying tribal interests and traditional rivalries taking precedence.  And, of course, US aid and weapons to the Mujahideen, brought over the passes from Pakistan, helped keep the fight alive.

Americans will remember this war from the “Rambo III” movie, where Rambo was sent into Afghanistan to rescue his mentor.  The Mujahideen were portrayed as heroic, a far cry from how these same fighters would be seen thirty years later.

An estimated 20,000 Soviet troops were killed with another 50,000 wounded in the ten year struggle.  Mujahideen losses were more than triple those numbers.  After ten years with little gained, the Soviets finally withdrew, leaving their puppet government to quickly fall.

But they didn’t leave because the war broke them economically.  It was another strategy of the Western Alliances that achieved that, the Ronald Reagan arms race.  Reagan pressed advanced weapons technology, from stealth aircraft and submarines, to the “Star Wars” space defense system (that never worked.)  The US was spending trillions of dollars on weapons, and the Soviet Union was forced to try to match it.  At the height of this Cold War expansion, the US was spending 6.8% of our GDP (gross domestic product.)  To try to keep up, the Soviet Union was spending as much as 20% of GDP, an unsustainable amount.

The resulting economic disaster forced Soviet leaders to withdraw from not only Afghanistan, but also Eastern Europe.  The Berlin Wall came down in 1989:  the Red Banner of the Soviet Union came down for the final time in Moscow on Christmas Day 1991.

This revisionist view of history President Trump shared is accepted by no one except the current occupants of the Kremlin (and I’m sure Mr. Putin was pleased to hear it.)   While the Soviet War in Afghanistan was ugly, the Soviets did not intervene to stop terrorists, and the War did not destroy the Soviet Empire.  But Trump’s revision certainly does fit with the Putin’s overall plan for regaining their former Soviet glory, and should lead Americans to question:  what side is President Trump on?  The answer might shock even Rambo.

Through His Eyes

Best when read accompanied by In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel 

So for all of us Democrats, it seems the President has placed himself in an impossible position. He’s defended “WALL” using the Vatican as an example, tweeting that “WALLS” and “wheels” have worked for thousands of years, and creating stories about the Obama’s home protection (not a ten foot wall.)  He has let Vice President Pence and Senator Lindsey Graham float possible compromises, and then quickly denounced their ideas.  He gave a twenty-minute rambling explanation on national television during the cabinet meeting, then called Democrats to the “Situation Room” to tell them how they should vote.  Not surprisingly, they didn’t agree.

It seems unreasonable, unthinking, and unhinged.  He has closed parts of the government, holding hundreds of thousands of paychecks and national parks hostage for “WALL.”  From any reasonable political standpoint he has backed himself into an unwinnable corner; if he doesn’t get his $5 Billion for “WALL” and reopen the government, he loses. Even the Republican leaders, notably Senator Mitch McConnell, are silent on the issue.  

Let’s look at the numbers. According to Gallup Polling, the President’s overall approval rating is 39% approve, 55% disapprove (and a poor 5% don’t have an opinion.)  89% of Republicans approve of his Presidency, with 39% of independents and 8% of Democrats (really, Democrats?)  And finally, 26% of American voters consider themselves Republican, 32% Democrat, and 39% Independent. 

Just a little math from an old government teacher (check the figuring.)   What President Trump’s Republican approval number really represents, is 89% of 26%, or 23% of the total voting population.  So why does that give him so much confidence?

The reality is that it doesn’t, but there is one more figure that needs to be noted.  In the 2016 primary election the overall voter turnout, according to Pew Researchwas 14.8% of registered voters.  This is compared to the 61.4%turnout in the general election.

14.8% of American voters chose the candidates for President.  14.8% also chose the candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives. That small sliver of the voting population controls who gets to go on the general election ballot; they are the motivated party voters who clearly identify.  In the Republican Party, they are the 89% that approve of the Trump Presidency.  

So the President has this weapon remaining:  his approval (or disapproval) still controls the Republican Party electorate.  His tweet, or off-hand comment, really does have the power to end a political career.  Ask Republican Congressman Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a career politician who had been Governor of the state.  He had the audacity to criticize Donald Trump, and the President successfully backed his primary opponent.  Sanford retires today from the Congress (notably, Democrat Joe Cunningham won the seat in the general election.)

Newly minted Republican Senator Mitt Romney criticized the President in a Washington Posteditorial.  But Romney is in a unique position as the Senator from Utah, one of the “reddest” states in the country that does not strongly support the President.  The Mormon influence in the state does not blend well with the President’s background and actions; Romney is politically safe to criticize.

So while the President’s position on the “WALL” is not popular (62% of Americans do not support it) it absolutely does resonate with the Republican base.  Keeping that base happy is essential to the President’s survival, as their happiness gives him power over Republican Senators.

It is foreseeable that the Democratic House of Representatives will find it necessary to impeach the President.  Impeachment is the bringing of charges to the Senate, it is up to the Senate of the United States to determine whether to remove the President from office (historically no President has been removed from office, Andrew Johnson survived by one vote in 1869, and Richard Nixon resigned prior to being impeached.)  

The Senate requires two-thirds vote to remove from office, sixty-seven Senators.  Currently the Senate has fifty-three Republicans, forty-five Democrats and two Independents (Sanders of Vermont, King of Maine) that caucus with the Democrats.  To remove the President it would require all the Democrats and Independents, plus TWENTY Republican Senators.  

The WALL isn’t about security on the Southern Border.  It isn’t really even about the President showing his muscles to the new House of Representatives.  What it is about is solidifying the Republican base to maintain control of the Republican Senators.  This has been the President’s “Russiagate” strategy since Rudy Giuliani was hired; it’s not about the law, or the facts, but about keeping the BASE to keep pressure on the Senate when impeachment comes up.

To my fellow “Resistance” members; this is not time to despair.  The Mueller report is not completed, we don’t know what Robert Mueller knows, and neither does the House or the Senate.  Until that information is revealed, and the Nation gets to see what really happened, we can’t determine the impact.  The “concrete wall” that Trump is trying to build around his base may turn out to be a slatted fence, or bamboo, or simple a dirt line in the sand. 

When the Report arrives, we may well see the view change through Republican Senators’ eyes.

The Setup

Let’s be clear about the current United States’ strategy on the Southern Border:  it’s a setup.  The Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have established policies that are designed to get exactly what we are getting:  a crisis on the border.  Here’s how it works.

Prior to the current policies, the United States abided by the treaties we signed on immigration and asylum.  We recognized that when an immigrant gained US soil they had the right to claim asylum. Then, their asylum claim would be adjudicated in a Federal Court (Immigration Court) and they would either be allowed to stay, or deported.

Before, when we became aware of a surge of immigrants hitting the border crossings, we would send additional judges.  Immigrants who crossed illegally were apprehended, processed, and released until their hearing, often with an ankle monitor, a commonly used court technique to keep track of folks on parole or probation.  Ask Paul Manafort, he had two monitors awaiting trial; when he still violated his parole conditions, then they put him in jail.

The key to the current crisis is the term “gained US soil.”  It has always been illegal to cross the border into the United States outside of the controlled ports of entry.  That crime is a misdemeanor offense (8 U.S.C. Section 1325, I.N.A. Section 275.) The current Administration decided that instead of releasing illegals before trial, they would arrest and incarcerate everyone who crossed illegally.  They also decided that they would NOT increase the number of Immigration judges available for asylum hearings, and they executed a slow-down at the legal port of entry locations.  The results of this policy were readily foreseeable.

There was a rapid increase in the need for places to hold illegals, basically some form of jail. And since many illegals were bringing their minor children, the government was placed in the position of caring for all of those children.  The Federal District Court in San Diego had long before ruled that children could not be held in custody (the Flores Decision) by the Department of Homeland Security for the actions of their parents, meaning they could not jail the kids with the parents. 

So the Department of Health and Human Services was dragged into the fray; they were tasked with the care of all of those children.  The sheer number of kids was overwhelming:  Health and Human Services ended up using facilities all over the nation to house them.  Parents were in one place, kids in another, two different agencies were trying to keep track of them; it was the guaranteed disaster we saw last summer.  And it still continues.

More recently, the Administration has further slowed the legal entry process at the points of entry. This has caused a “stack up” of immigrants in the most vulnerable location; the border towns of Mexico. They are dependent on locals for food and shelter, at risk from criminals and literally “trapped” up against the US border.  It should be no surprise then, that they are easily persuaded by “coyotes” to attempt an illegal crossing.

But to have a chance of success, the crossing needs to be made at a remote location, far from the well-guarded bridges and legal crossings.  The American Southwest is mostly arid wilderness; immigrants are pointed north and sent out ill-equipped to deal with the conditions.  So people die, children suffer, folks who live there feel threatened by the often desperate people who appear at their doorstep:  the Administration has “squeezed” immigrants into taking huge risks.

Again, this was all foreseeable, but the policies that created this were intentionally designed. Senior Administration officials have said again and again; if getting in the US is dangerous and hard, they think immigrants will stay home.  Those officials have missed the important point:  the conditions the immigrants are leaving are so intolerable that the risks of staying outweigh the risks of leaving.  

And it is just possible that the Administration enjoys political benefit from the crisis.  It keeps the Trump “base” involved and concerned, with each new event on the border generating more need to build “WALL.” Of course, “WALL” won’t change any of the other issues on the border, it will simply squeeze the immigrants into even more dramatic actions.  Whether it’s tunnels (already in San Diego area) or ladders and ramps, a simple “WALL” neither secures the border nor stop illegal immigration.  

So the crisis is created, a setup to keep Americans focused on the border.  And like any distraction, it begs the question:  what are we missing?

I Can’t Be About Hate

It’s New Year’s Day, 2019. I was born in 1956, so for my generation it’s kind of amazing — 2019: where are the Dick Tracy wrist-radios and the robot maids?  For those of us who once marked punch cards to run on the “main frame” computer and used a slide rule, we now have more computing power in our pocket than filled those main frame rooms.  Wrist “radios” are now common place, and that thing running around the floor annoying the dogs, well that IS the robot maid!  

My generation has been through a lot.  The children of World War II veterans, many of us grew up in suburban “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhoods.  We hid under desks from nuclear bombs, and became more aware of our societies inequities. We marched for civil rights, against the war in Vietnam, and for a cleaner world.  We lived through the assassinations, Watergate, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union.  We thought that would be the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity, both here at home and abroad.  It didn’t quite work out that way.

That inequities thing came back to haunt us.  Here in America, one percent of Americans has 40% of the wealth.  While the US may be the wealthiest nations in the world, with almost one and a half times the GDP of China, the next on the list, our standard of living is only ranked seventeenth.  Our income inequality creates enormous tensions.

In the world these same kinds of inequities have encouraged extremism.  In the Middle East, that extremism can be seen in the political radicalism of Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the increasing authoritarianism in Turkey and Egypt.   Just as Marxism spread through the upheavals in the Colonial world of the 1950’s and 60’s, political extremism in the guise of  “religion” has found fertile ground from the teeming streets of Gaza to the far mountains of Afghanistan to the slums of Manila.  

As a political science student at Denison University in the 1970’s, I learned a theory of Revolution. Revolutions; movements that overthrow governments and societies, don’t happen when things are “at their worst.” Revolutions aren’t born out of despair, they arise out of crushed possibilities; they happen when there is “hope for change” and that hope is dashed.  In our world today, where the farthest regions are connected together by wireless communication and the internet may be more prevalent than running water; inequality is on display.  The farthest flung village can see what they cannot have.

In the United States many have turned to “tribalism,” a euphemistic term for blind loyalty to a “side.” I heard it described as politics turned into religion; it no longer is a question of policy and program, but of unyielding “faith” in a political group.  No wonder it’s so difficult to have discussions, we aren’t talking about issues anymore, but our “religion.”  Mom always said not to talk religion at the dining room table, it was the surest way to ruin the meal (we weren’t allowed to criticize the Queen either, Mom was very British.)  Our “tribe” is now our politics; we talk among our fellow “tribesmen” like new acolytes to the faith, and disdain the “non-believers” on the other side.

It can’t be about hate. We may disagree with “the other side” either here in our nation or in the world, we may hate some of the actions they take, but we cannot hate them.  If there is hate, there is no opportunity for redemption; we cannot show mercy or understanding for those we hate.  We need to see why they have chosen “their side.” Here in the United States, Trump supporters have lost trust in our institutions, and are looking to a “1% of 1%” man to lead to greater equality.  If that’s not “your tribe,” still recognize that our nations inequities have made Trump possible, and encouraged the growth of racism and intolerance.  

In many parts of the world, where unmanned weapons can rain cold death from the sky, we must recognize that those “tribes” might well turn to extremism as the only alternative to powerlessness.  They see inequity, and they follow leaders who offer “easy” solutions.  It is to overcome powerlessness that a seventeen year-old boy is convinced to strap on a suicide vest; we cannot change what we cannot understand – so understand.  It is the same for the school-shooter here at home.

I can’t hate.  I can’t hate here at home, but I can continue to try to reason and explain.  I can’t hate abroad, but I can continue to reach for those who have not chosen extremism. I can work for a better nation and world, for more equality in wealth and values.  I am a small voice, but if small voices band together, they become powerful.  Powerful not with the short-term destructive power of hate, but for the long-term improvements brought by compassion and understanding.