Month: May 2019

American Expectations

Harry Truman was known as the “Senator from Pendergast.”  Tom Pendergast was the leader of the Democratic political machine of Kansas City.  He controlled the patronage – the political jobs – for Western Missouri.  One of the politicians that Pendergast sponsored was Harry Truman, elected Judge (commissioner) of Jackson County.  

During the Great Depression, Truman moved from Judge to Missouri’s Director for the Federal Reemployment Program, a patronage job from the Roosevelt Administration.  Truman wanted to move onto Washington, DC, but he wasn’t Pendergast’s first choice for the US Senate in 1934 (actually he was the fifth.)  Pendergast eventually changed his mind, and Truman was able to win the Democratic nomination and the election.

Truman did solid work in the Senate, leading a sub-committee investigation of price gouging and abuses in military appropriations in the months before World War II.  As a middle-of-the-road, middle-of-the-country Democrat, he was the perfect “middle” choice in 1944 when the Party decided to drop the more liberal Henry Wallace as Roosevelt’s Vice President.

There weren’t many expectations for Truman as Vice President.  He was politically the right man; but Roosevelt did little to bring him into the critical decisions of 1945:  the end of World War II, the development of the United Nations, the atomic bomb.  Truman managed to get in some trouble with the press, allowing Lauren Bacall to pose on the piano while he played in the Press Club, and attending the now disgraced (tax evasion) Pendergast’s funeral.

Then Franklin Roosevelt died.  Truman rushed to the White House, asking Eleanor Roosevelt if there was anything he could do. The First Lady responded, “is there anything we can do for you, for you are the one in trouble now.”  Truman told the press later the next day:

“Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

There is an American traditional belief that the “man” will rise to the Presidency, regardless of his background or previous service.  Harry Truman has always been the greatest example of that story; the machine politician who through political happenstance fell into the Presidency at one of the United State’s, and the world’s, most critical times. 

It was Truman who decided to use the atomic bomb, develop the Marshall Plan and NATO, and encourage the United Nations.  It was also Truman who faced the economic impacts of the post-war America, as the wage and price controls of the Great Depression and war economy were released.  Prices went up, workers demanded higher wages, and the Democratic President found himself in direct conflict with the railroad unions.

And it was Truman who got the last laugh ay all of the polls that predicted he would lose to Republican Tom Dewey of New York in 1948.  The famous picture of a smiling Truman holding up the Chicago Tribune with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” opened his second term as President.

Like Truman or not, he was a President who steered America through the beginning of the Cold War.  And while he left the Eisenhower Administration with the twin concerns of Korea and McCarthyism, he is generally acknowledged as a man who “rose above himself” in his Presidential service.

Other American Presidents have risen to the office as well.  George W. Bush gained stature during 9-11, and a corporate lawyer and one term Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, became arguably our greatest President during the Civil War.

But, with the Trump Administration, we now know that it’s not “magic.”  Not everyone who enters the Oval Office emerges in greatness, and not every elected President gains the “gravitas” of the Presidency.  Certainly Donald Trump is the exception to prove that point.

And now there are even greater concerns that Donald Trump, the candidate who pointedly refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election in advance, might not accept defeat in 2020.  

Another American tradition is recognition of the will of the voters.  It started in one of the roughest elections in American history, where the governing party was faced with a diametrically opposed political force.  It was an election where the press attacked both sides, even accusing one candidate of having an affair with an under aged “employee.”  It was the election of 1800, and Federalist John Adams did everything he could to hang onto the Presidency against Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson. 

On inauguration day, Adams packed up and left the White House early. He didn’t stay to participate in Jefferson’s swearing in ceremony.  Adam’s wasn’t a “good sport” about it, but he did acknowledge Jefferson’s victory, establishing the tradition of peaceful transition of power.

Should the election of 2020 turn the Trump’s out, we can only hope he will do the same.  Will the President who created the phrase “fake news” cry foul against an election that went against him?  We know that was his intent if he had lost in 2016, now with the trappings of Presidential power, it is an open question what Trump will do.  

The power of the Presidency only resides in his authority to direct the government.  Regardless of who Trump appoints, we know that those leaders have sworn an oath:

“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”

It is an oath to the United States and to the Constitution; not to any individual leader.  If that tradition were to be lost, then we truly have lost America.  

Stay Small

My town, Pataskala, has a gun range.  It is a popular place where folks can shoot, buy weapons, and socialize.  Guns are a reason they get together, discussing, evaluating, and comparing.  It’s become a very successful business here in town.

The range has been around for a few years, but this year they opened an outdoor shooting area.  It’s two miles from my house, and I don’t really think we hear them on Sunday afternoons, though we occasionally hear shots. There’s enough farm fields and woods nearby, the sound may be coming from there.  But there are folks who live much closer to the range, and one of them had the temerity to complain about the noise on Facebook.

The town rose en masse to defend the range. There were over eight hundred comments, with very few defending the complainant. And, unfortunately, many seemed to personally attack the person who spoke out against hearing gunshots half a mile away.

“…you’re not a man if you don’t own a gun”

That was one of the comments on the post.  Here in Ohio, some young men in their twenties and thirties, walk around openly carrying pistols on their belts, even at kids birthday parties.  During the Renaissance, nobles wore a “codpiece” as part of their apparel.  The codpiece was an article of clothing worn over the groin of various shapes and sizes, implying, the size of the male equipment underneath.  To some today, the openly carried pistol seems to serve that same purpose.

But to others it is a sign of the fear that permeates many in our time.  Fear of the unknown:  of crime in the city, usually associated with people “different” than them, and with the threat of “brown people” from the border, or as columnist Mike Barnacle puts it, “…fear of the other.”  Many are afraid of “the other” who will come to hurt them or steal from them, and that “codpiece” on their belt is a visual demonstration of that fear.

Fear of the government coming to take something away:  that’s why some claim to need military type weapons.  That’s for some, but not all.  Many want assault weapons not for protection or defense, but because they are fun to fire. And that’s another part of the problem: there is a distinction between fear that demands a loaded weapon always close at hand, and firing weapons for fun and socializing.  

Perhaps the mass reaction wasn’t about the range, or the guns, but about the fear.  We live in an era where fear is “purveyed;” sold on television, by politicians, and in our social media.  The old newsroom saw, “if it bleeds, it leads,” has been around for a century, but today it seems even more prevalent.  On the Fox News webpage this morning:  murder in the Caribbean, bridge collapse, police kicked and kneed, eagles poisoned, Obama feels like mobster, Everest covered in bodies and trash, child abuser found hanged in cell, hospital drops newborn; that’s the scary and disturbing list of headlines.

We are being told to be afraid.  And we are being told to “Stay Small;” to keep a low profile, not stand up, not put yourself  “out” in the world.  Maybe that started after 9-11, when we all worried about where the next terror attack might be.  The caution still is apparent:  metal detectors to go the hockey game or Broadway plays, lockdown drills in schools, armed guards in the malls and at the games.  These are very real symbols of fear, symbols that keep people trapped in their familiar communities, afraid to “venture” into the city or the world. 

The person complaining about noise at the gun range, wasn’t demanding that the Second Amendment be repealed.  She wasn’t inviting a political discussion, nor was she asking for more than just a cessation of disturbing noise from a neighbor.  But it tapped into a wellspring of fear in the community; and challenged a lot of folks at a very core level.  It challenged the way they dealt with fear.

Don’t get in between people and their guns. They need to “Stay Small”:  not allow themselves to become a target, nor get in unfamiliar places or positions.  And if they have to go there, then bring a gun to balance the scales.

The Sullying of Bill Barr

Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country – John F Kennedy Inaugural Address – 1961

The New Moral Compass: not what is best for the country, but what is best for Donald Trump – former CIA Director John Brennan 5/1/19

The Attorney General of the United States said under oath yesterday that the President of the United States is above the law – former Senator Claire McCaskill, 5/2/19

William Barr, sixty-eight years old, is the Attorney General of the United States.  He is a product of New York City, with Bachelors and Masters degrees from Columbia University, and a law degree with highest honors from George Washington in Washington, DC.  He served in the CIA, as a clerk in the US Court of Appeals, and on the policy staff of President Ronald Reagan.  

He then moved to the Department of Justice, serving as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Deputy Attorney General, and in 1991was appointed Attorney General of the United States under President George HW Bush.

During his first term of service, he was instrumental in gaining Presidential pardons for six members of the Reagan executive branch who were convicted or charged in the Iran/Contra Affair.  The scandal involved selling surplus US military weapons to Iran, and spending the resulting profits to support insurgents in Nicaragua, both violating US law. Casper Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense, was the highest profile pardon recipient. The pardons effectively ended the investigation into the Affair, and Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel prosecuting the case, stated:

“[The] pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence. Weinberger, who faced four felony charges, deserved to be tried by a jury of citizens.”

With the election of Democrat Bill Clinton as President, Barr went into the private sector.  He was executive vice president and general counsel to GTE (now Verizon) then went into private practice as a consulting corporate attorney.  During that time Barr was also active in conservative Republican politics, including the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. 

In the beginning of the Trump Administration, Barr was secure as an elder statesman of conservative attorneys.  He weighed in on several issues, supporting further investigation of Hillary Clinton, and surprisingly sent a nineteen-page unsolicited memo to both the White House and the Department of Justice, questioning the legal underpinnings of the Mueller Investigation.   It was that memo that brought him to the attention of the White House. They were looking for a long-term replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who fell out of favor with the President by recusing himself from any Trump related issues.

When Barr’s name was first mentioned, many Republicans and more moderate Democrats looked at him as a Department of Justice “institutionalist,” who would protect the reputation and traditions of the Department as a quasi-independent executive agency.  He was seen as a safe pick who would bring balance to a Department still rocked by the Comey firing, the revelation of the Strozk texts, and under attack from the radical right led by Congressmen Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, and the President himself.  Barr would be the “adult” at the head of the Department.

But Barr’s actions in the Iran/Contra Affair, and his nineteen page memo to the White House should have been the “tell.” Democratic Senators in the Judiciary Committee tried to make that point in questioning Barr, but he was adroit in the testifying skills of dodging and obfuscating.  And many depended on Barr’s friendship with Mueller, reminiscent of Watergate days when Attorney General Bill Saxbe and Prosecutor Leon Jaworski testified side by side to the Congress.

But whatever that friendship signified, it didn’t apply to “business” when it came to Attorney General Barr.  His mischaracterization of the Mueller Report with a four-page summary that “cleared the President of any wrong-doing” allowed the Trump forces three weeks to press a false narrative of Presidential innocence. Mueller’s own protests, including a letter to the Attorney General that Barr summarized as “snitty,” came out this week, but Barr has consistently defended his own false interpretation of the clear language of the now public Mueller document.

Mueller outlines ten possible lines of obstruction of justice charges against President Trump.  Barr dismisses them all, not on the facts, but on his own interpretation that the President has the right to protect his own innocence, by disrupting any investigation into himself.  Barr seemed completely oblivious to the possibility that a guilty President might protect himself through obstruction.  He places the President beyond the purview of Justice Department inquiry, saying:  “ …the Department of Justice is out…there’s an election in 18 months.” 

In 1992, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh warned us that Barr believed that some were above the law.  In his statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Barr made it clear that he absolutely regards the President in that way, subject only to election or presumably Congressional impeachment.  

Bill Barr has returned to public service, not to stabilize the institution of the Department of Justice, but to serve as President Trump’s “protector-in-chief” from legal attack.  He has brought a radical view of Presidential power to the highest law enforcement office in the land, one that prevents any check on Presidential actions.  And now, he is participating in a “stonewalling” operation by the executive branch, refusing to give any information to the Congress.

He is doing the political bidding of the White House and the President.  They have determined that it is to their advantage to force the House of Representatives to openly impeach Donald Trump; their only remaining action that can force the White House to produce information.  Bill Barr, the Attorney General, has chosen to become Donald Trump’s “Roy Cohn.”  That will be his historic legacy.