Month: October 2019

Democrats are outraged by President Trump’s actions, but few Republicans are saying anything against him.  In fact, many Republicans are defending the President, even using disproved “conspiracy” theories to justify his actions.  What will it take to get Republicans to acknowledge his abuse of power?

Figures

Pete Nix, my first Principal, had a favorite phrase:  “figures lie, and liars figure”.  He knew that you could make numbers say whatever you wanted them to say, and that sometimes you had to use something simpler:  common sense.

I’m going to use some figures here, and hopefully in the end it will make common sense.

Columbus

Franklin County is in the center of the state of Ohio.  The State Capital, Columbus, is located there, as is THE Ohio State University (along with Columbus State, Capital, and Otterbein.)  It’s a big, sprawling town, with the Columbus city limits pressing up against farmland on the edges.   And it’s not just Columbus City. Dozens of smaller towns from Grove City in the south to Worthington and Westerville in the north house the suburbs for the industry and businesses that thrives there.

More than 1.2 million people lived in Franklin County in 2016.  799,673 of them were registered to vote.  That’s a pretty high number of registrations. When you subtract those less than 18 years old and those who aren’t US citizens, over 90% of eligible voters were registered.  

Primary Elections

In Ohio, the Party candidates for office are chosen by an election called a Primary.  Only those voters who declare that they belong to a political party can vote for the candidates in that party.  The “declaration” is made at the table where they get their ballot: they ask for Democrat, Republican, Green, or Non Partisan.  Then they get to vote in that party’s primary.

The March 15^th 2016 Primary election on was important, a “high-turnout” Presidential Primary.  On the Democratic side it was in the middle of the Hillary versus Bernie battle. On the Republican side Donald Trump was just emerging as the eventual winner.  Still, less than half of the registered voters showed up to vote, in fact, only 41%.

That 41% was split pretty evenly between Democrat and Republican, about 20% and change a-piece, with less than one percent voting in the Green Party. 

In a “high-turnout” primary election, 20% of the registered voters determined who was going to be the candidate for office for each political party.   The turnout in the general election in November was closer to 70%, but by then the candidates was already picked.  It was down to the “binary choice,” Republican or Democrat.  There wasn’t a menu of options.

After all of this figuring, so what?

The Twenty Percent

Franklin County is pretty evenly divided between the political parties.  But most of the Congressional Districts in Ohio are not.  They’ve been “gerrymandered” to heavily slant to one Party or the other, so that Jim Jordan’s 4^th District will always be Republican, and Joyce Beatty’s 3^rd will always be Democrat.  Since the “party outcome” of the general elections is pre-determined, the representative in those districts is determined in the majority party primary election.

And who votes in those primaries?  It’s the twenty percent, the most highly motivated “members” of the political parties.  And those most motivated tend towards the more extreme, less moderate voters.  In those “gerrymandered” districts, it is that high motivated twenty percent who determine the outcome.

Mark Sanford

It’s not just true here in Ohio.  In South Carolina the First District dilutes the Democratic town of Charleston by including the southern half of the town with the beaches and islands up and down the Atlantic Coast.  It stretches from the Georgia border, through Hilton Head and Edisto Islands, up through Folly Beach, Fort Sumter, and on up the vacation coast.  

For six years Republican Mark Sanford represented the First.  Sanford was a conservative Republican, but as a former Governor of the state, had a higher profile in Congress than most.  He was known for his strong stands against public debt, and his unusual (for a Republican) criticism of President Trump.  Sanford spoke out against the Muslim ban, and Trump’s frequent “untruths.”  Regardless, only four Republican Congressmen voted for Trump proposals more than Sanford did.

Public Criticism

But Sanford’s criticism was too much for the President.  In the 2018 primary election, Sanford had an “easy” opponent in Katie Arrington, a state representative.  But Arrington received a tremendous boost from a last minute Presidential tweet.  Trump called Sanford “very unhelpful” and “nothing but trouble” just hours before the polls opened.  

It was a primary election, and the “motivated few” chose the candidate.  In a surprise upset, Arrington won, 33,153 to Sanford’s 30,496.  When the “most motivated” voters got to pick, they followed the President’s advice.

From the Republican Party perspective, Arrington’s victory wasn’t helpful.  She wasn’t as strong a candidate as Sanford, and she was seriously injured in a car accident midway through the general election campaign.  In November, for the first time since 1981, a Democrat won the seat.

Profiles In Courage

But that didn’t do Mark Sanford any good.  And perhaps more importantly, it taught the rest of the Republican Congressional delegation a lesson: go against the President, and get “primaried” out of office.  Donald Trump could lay a heavy “Twitter” blow on any opponent:  either stay in line or face “the base” aligned against you.

As the actions of the President become even more outrageous, Congressmen confront the question of impeachment and removal from office.  The Democrats are filled with legitimate indignation, but most Republicans are silent. 

John F. Kennedy authored a book about taking principled political stands called Profiles in Courage.  He chose eight Congressmen or Senators, who stood up for what they believed, often to their own political detriment.  It began with John Quincy Adams leaving his (and his father’s) Federalist Party, and ends with Ohio Senator Robert Taft criticism of the Nuremburg Trials that costs him the 1948 Republican Presidential nomination. 

But the message politicians get from the book is this:  almost all of these courageous “profiles” damaged or destroyed their political careers.  The tale of Mark Sanford tells them the same thing.  

Perhaps silence is the best we can expect.

The Facts

President Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son.  He tied military aid that Ukraine desperately needs to “a favor.”  We know this, because he said it; it was on the modified transcript of his phone conversation with the President of Ukraine, issued by his own White House.  Who knows how much more the actual transcript would show.

President Trump then asked China to investigate Joe Biden and his son.  We don’t know what’s tied to that “favor,” though the US will begin negotiating with China over trade issues next week.  We do know that it happened, because he asked for it on the lawn of the White House, in front of the press corps.

The Spin

But when you listen to some Republican leaders, it sounds like what we all saw or read is not true.  Senator Marco Rubio thinks that Mr. Trump was simply “pulling the media’s leg” with the request from China.  And Congressman Jim Jordan seems to believe it was perfectly acceptable for Mr. Trump to ask the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponent.

And of course, they all believe that the Mueller Report showed their was no “collusion” or “cooperation” between the Trump Campaign and Russia; and, of course, no obstruction.  This is despite Mueller’s statement that he only evaluated criminal conspiracy not “collusion,” and he wasn’t empowered to determine obstruction at all.

But it was on NBC’s Meet the Press that a real window into their “alternate world” was opened.  Host Chuck Todd interviewed Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson. Earlier in the week, Johnson revealed that he knew that Ukrainian military funding was being held up by the Administration, and “winced” when he found out about it.  Johnson has been a strong supporter of Ukraine’s battle against Russian incursions, but is also a strong supporter of the President.

Senator Johnson of Wisconsin

When Todd asked him about “wincing,” Johnson went on a minutes long tirade, shouting claims that the Ukrainians worked with the Clinton campaign against Trump in 2016.  He went on to bring up the “deep state conspiracy” led by former CIA Director John Brennan, and the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.  When Todd tried to bring Johnson back to the “wince” question, he went on a different rant against the media.

After minutes of airtime, Todd said: “Senator, I have no idea why a (sic) Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up here. I have no idea.  I have no idea why we’re going here.”

Johnson replied:  “Because this is underlying exactly why President Trump is upset and his supporters are upset with the news media.”

When Todd finally got back to the original question, and asked whether the President was holding up the military aid, Johnson stated: “When I asked the President about that, he completely denied it.  He adamantly denied it.  He vehemently and angrily denied it, he said I’d never do that.  So that’s the piece of the puzzle I’m here to report today.”

Then Johnson went onto present what he thought the President’s goal was:  “So unlike the narrative of the Press that President Trump wants to dig up dirt on his 2020 opponent, what he wants is he wants an accounting of what happened in 2016, who set him up.  Did this spring from Ukraine?”

CrowdStrike

Todd finally ended the interview, but it raised the question:  what are they talking about?  I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of news and discussion, read millions of words and written over half a million myself, but it is all “news to me” that the Ukraine was on “Hillary’s side.”  So to an “alternate world” we go, to figure out what the Hell they’re thinking.

The Democratic National Committee computers were hacked before the 2016 campaign.  Thousands of emails were stolen, and later published by Wikileaks and others to embarrass the DNC and the Clinton campaign.  The hack clearly impacted the results in the election of 2016.  The Mueller Investigation not only showed that Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU, hacked the computers and stole the emails, but actually brought indictments against multiple Russian officers.

CrowdStrike was the computer security company out of California, brought in by the DNC to investigate, clear the hacks, and secure the computers.   One of the actual hacked computer servers is on display today at the DNC headquarters, right next to the file cabinet that was opened during the 1972 Watergate break-in.  It’s not in Ukraine.

So here’s the theory.  The Ukrainian Government in 2016, under a different President and Party, were at war with Russia.  They wanted to make sure that the US would be against Russia and pro-Ukraine. “The Theory” states that CrowdStrike conspired with Ukrainian Intelligence to hack DNC computers, and then blame the Russians. (There’s a long article in the New York Times of 10/3/19.)

False Flag

Dmitri Alperovitch founded the CrowdStrike Company.  He came as a child to the US with his Ukrainian parents.  He is also a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington DC.  There is also a Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk, who serves on the Atlantic Council international Board. 

According to George Eliason, a US journalist based in east Ukraine, Ukrainian Intelligence made a deal with CrowdStrike by contacting them through the Atlantic Council connection. 

The deal was to stage a “false flag” operation, with the hacking and email release done by CrowdStrike in Ukraine, but made to look like the Russian’s did it.  That way the US would continue to be inclined to support Ukraine over Russia.

That the Mueller Investigation found this to be complete fantasy is one thing.  But the fact that the entire operation was damaging to the Clinton campaign, the candidate more likely to support Ukraine as President, makes it even more unlikely.  

But the President and his cohorts, particularly Rudy Giuliani, are determined to take George Eliason’s word over Mueller’s, the US Intelligence and the “Five Eyes” intelligence agencies (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.)  It fits their narrative.  They insist that the “intelligence community” is hiding the “real” truth. It’s at the heart of the “Deep State” conspiracy.

So when the President asks for an investigation of CrowdStrike, he’s asking the Ukrainian Government to own up to their supposed transgressions, and absolve Russia from 2016 election intervention.  Even if it the “theory” were true, the Ukraine “confession” seems unlikely. It’s not in their best interest, and the theory isn’t true.

Ms. Alexandra Chalupa

The second concern that the President’s apologists’ raise has more basis in fact.  There is a former DNC staffer named Alexandra Chalupa who is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants to the US.  She was doing legal work on her own behalf in Ukraine starting in 2014.  Over the next two years, she became a contact and source for government officials, reporters, and private operatives working in the Ukraine. She also passed information to her former employers at the DNC.

Paul Manafort worked as the political consultant to the Russian backed Ukrainian President, Victor Yanukovych.  When Yanukovych was forced out and fled the country in 2014, a journal was found that showed Manafort was paid millions of dollars under the table.  

Chalupa helped the journal make it to US media. Its revelation led Manafort to resign as Chairman of the Trump Campaign.  Ultimately, Special Counsel Mueller indicted Manafort with failure to pay taxes on those funds.  It was one of the charges that put him in jail for seven years.

Chalupa was helped by US Embassy personnel to connect reporters to Ukrainian Government officials.   Through the “Trump prism” that sounds nefarious. But at the time, the US Government policy supported the Ukrainians against Russia.   The US was “against” Yanukovych, and so against his employee, Manafort. But, according to Giuliani and Trump, this is proof of the “deep state” plot against the Trump campaign.

Their claim of proof that Democrats “colluded” with Ukraine is based on questions raised in a Politico article from January of 2017. It was written before Trump’s inauguration and five months before the beginning of the Mueller investigation.  

The Bidens

And, of course, there is the claim that Joe Biden intervened to have a Ukrainian Prosecutor fired. The conspiracy states he did that before charges could be filed against his son, Hunter, who was working in Ukraine.  

The facts are that as Vice President, Biden did intervene to have the Prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, removed. Biden even threatened to withhold US funds unless Shokin was fired. This was because Shokin wasn’t investigating corruption in Ukraine, particularly Russian backed corruption. Biden not only represented the US view, but also the European Union. They all wanted Shokin gone.

 However, Shokin now states in a sworn affidavit that he was investigating Biden’s son. Rudy Giuliani waives the affidavits around in interviews on Fox News.  The problem is, Shokin wrote the self-serving affidavit as part of a Ukrainian court case to get his job back.  Other investigations by the Ukrainian government and the press show that Hunter Biden didn’t do anything illegal, and that Shokin wasn’t actually investigating his company, Burisma.

Back To Reality                      

CrowdStrike, Chalupa, Biden:  the three “pillars” of the Alternate World of Ukraine and Donald Trump.  Like any good propaganda, it has just enough of the smell of truth to make it seem real.  

But it requires this of the reader. They need to say that the FBI, the CIA, Robert Mueller, and almost all of the “real news” in the world are wrong. They need to believe a chosen few like Mr. Elaison have the “right” answer.  That is the essence of this conspiracy theory.   The scariest part: President of the United States believes this, and he sets the policy of the United States.  No wonder it seems like someone is in an alternate world.  

It’s either them, or us.

Fifth Avenue in New York City just south of Central Park has some of the most expensive stores in the world.  Armani, Dior, DeBeers, Omega, Gucci, Tiffany: they all are lined up just two blocks south of the Park and north of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  In the middle of all that opulence with gold tinted windows is Trump Tower, the headquarters of the Trump Organization, and home of the President of the United States.

So when Donald Trump said, “…I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he knew exactly where he would be standing:  right outside Trump Tower, aiming down the street towards St. Patrick’s.  

No Consequences

Trump believes that if he did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, he is protected from legal consequences.  What we didn’t know is that this would be Trump’s overarching philosophy:  as long as he acted in full public view, his core backers would stay with him and he was safe.  And it’s not just his supporters; he depends on the Attorney General, Bill Barr, to protect him from Federal investigation, and even intervene in state and local matters.

So on Thursday, on the White House lawn, in full view of the world, God, and MSNBC; Donald Trump asked China to investigate his potential opponent in 2020, Joe Biden.  He called for a foreign nation to intervene in the US elections, in direct violation of US campaign laws.

Trump can be unpredictable on many issues, but when he’s in trouble he always follows the same pattern.  It’s “double-down,” time. It’s as if he was saying, “if you think that was bad, watch this.”  He then proceeds to accuse someone else of doing exactly what Trump himself has done.  “Corruption, I know they’re corrupt, and you do too.”

In His Own Words

We know that President Trump linked desperately needed military aid to Ukraine to the Ukrainian government’s willingness to investigate Joe Biden and his son.  That’s in plain sight, in the summary transcript of his phone conversation with President Zelensky. It’s backed up by the text messages from Ambassador Volker.  

Trump was always doing this.  “Russia, if you’re listening, find Hillary Clinton’s thirty-thousand emails,” wasn’t a joke, it was asking “for a favor.”  The Russians attempted to do exactly that, within hours of Trump’s request. 

And when the President told George Stephanopoulos of ABC that he would accept foreign information in aid of his election campaign, in his own mind he was simply stating the facts.  That it would violate Federal Election law didn’t seem to be a problem.  He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and do that.

When the President Does It

This isn’t a unique situation in American history.  We’ve had Presidents willing to break the law before.  Richard Nixon made the famous statement to interviewer David Frost,  “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”. 

 Nixon acted on this, setting up a squad in the basement of the White House who broke into homes and offices, sabotaged political enemies, and organized disinformation campaigns.  One of the victims of Nixon’s “Plumbers” was the leading Democratic candidate for President in 1972, Senator Edmund Muskie.  As “Deep Throat” said in All the President’s Men:

“…they were frightened of Muskie and look who got destroyed–they wanted to run against McGovern, and look who they’re running against. They bugged, they followed people, false press leaks, fake letters, they canceled Democratic campaign rallies, they investigated Democratic private lives, they planted spies, stole documents, on and on…”

Nixon’s actions echo through today’s news.  The Trump team is trashing the man they see as their strongest opponent. Whether Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination or not, his candidacy is damaged by Trump’s false allegations.  Trump has calculated that making Biden look dirty is worth the risk of his own impeachment.  As poker players say, “he’s all in.” 

Nixon ultimately left office in disgrace, caught by his own voice orchestrating the cover-up of the Watergate burglary.  But not every President committing crimes has suffered Nixon’s fate.

Plausible Deniability

Ronald Reagan committed much grander violations of law.  In what we now call the Iran-Contra Affair, He decided to ignore Congress by selling weapons to Iran in violation of US sanctions. He then used the sales profits to support insurgents in Nicaragua, also breaking the law. 

 Reagan insulated himself from the legal ramifications, making the term “plausible deniability” famous.  He wasn’t accused, but eleven of his subordinates were charged with various crimes. His National Security Advisor, John Poindexter, was convicted.

Many of those convicted were pardoned by Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush.  And here’s another echo in our present conflict, the Attorney General then who recommended those pardons is back today, Attorney General Bill Barr.

Constitutional Duty

The US Constitution states that the President can be impeached and removed from office for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.  Most Americans think that “high crimes” are legal felonies, and they can be. But the Founding Fathers had a very different definition in mind.

 A “high crime” is a crime that impacts the state, the government, and the Constitution.  It could be a legal felony, but it could be a less legally defined action as well.  Abuse of power for personal gain might be difficult to prove under the US Criminal Code (though there is a statute addressing that action, 5 CFR § 2635.702) but it clearly is an action that threatens the government.  And this President has openly admitting to doing so.

The current President of the United States has used his power for personal gain. He is using government money, our taxpayer money, to promote his personal campaign.  The proof is in his words, and buttressed by growing evidence.  Just like a shooting on Fifth Avenue, it’s in plain sight.  

The House of Representatives will do their job, and bring the President up on charges.  Will the Republican controlled Senate act, or will they hide their eyes to what is plainly in view?

Would we really let him shoot a man on Fifth Avenue?  That is America’s question.

We’ve been talking and debating politics for weeks.  There is no doubt, whatever side of the impeachment issue you’re on – it’s intense!!  So let’s take a break, and reminisce about forty years ago.  Even that can be controversial. Let’s talk about – beating kids!!!!!

Back in the Day

I first started teaching in 1978, in a rural school in Licking County, Ohio.  Cornfields surrounded the high school; the joke was you had to push a cow aside to get a parking spot.  One of the big events of the fall was tractor day, when the seniors drove their tractors to school and paraded them in the parking lot.  A senior “prank” involved dumping dozens of live chickens in the school’s enclosed courtyard.  Each had a name tag, with the name of a faculty member written on it. We taught class looking out at the “chicken coop.”

Only a few years before I arrived, the school had been out of control.  There was little student discipline; freshmen took their lives in their hands even going to the restroom.  They hung from the hooks in the stall by their belts, kicking to get back down, or got wrapped in duct tape to the flagpole in front of the school.  (If you’ve ever watch the movie “Dazed and Confused” you’ll get the idea.)  The new Principal and Assistant came in to regain control.  They did it at the business end of a three foot wooden paddle.  

When I showed up as a student teacher, there wasn’t a whole lot of paperwork involved in discipline.  You gave a detention, fifteen-minutes before or after school.  Or, you the student went to the office, where they generally got paddled. One or two “swats” was standard, boy or girl, freshman or senior, it didn’t matter.  There was one senior who proudly had the record, fifty-four swats in a year.  I imagine he had callouses in the appropriate places.

Swats

Get in a fight:  two swats.  Cheat on a test:  one swat.  Skip school, a swat for each period you skipped.  Often students knew that they were going to get it when they came to school in the morning.  Some were better prepared than others.

The process was simple.  The student would go in the office, and the door would shut.  The principal would say, “is there anything in your pockets, empty them on the desk.”  Then the student would turn around, and place their hands on the desk, leaning slightly forward.  The paddling would begin.

Senior Skip Day

The principals weren’t interested in a “senior skip day.”  But the seniors were serious about it, and decided they were going out no matter what.  There was a problem for the track team members; they had to be in school for half a day to run in the meet that night.  So rather than skip the “skip day,” they came in at the end of fourth period.

The highly annoyed principals determined the punishment was one swat for every period missed.  Four swats:  my hurdler ruefully showed me the welts in the locker room before we went out on the track.  It didn’t seem to hurt his times though!

Equipment Failure

We were having a pep rally; the whole student body of over eight hundred kids stuffed int0 the five hundred person capacity gym.  We called it the “snake pit”.  The cheerleaders were on the stage getting everyone fired up, when one senior boy decided to have fun by going under the bleachers and poking up through the seats.

I was on duty, and dragged him down to the office.   During pep rallies there was usually one administrator left there: his job was to be “the goalie.” Kids misbehaving during the rally were sent down to him (or her) for punishment.  Thirty years later as Dean of Students, I often had that “goalkeeper” duty.

It was in the early 1980’s and paddling was growing more controversial.  So this time the assistant principal asked me to stay around and witness the punishment.  The boy followed the procedure, emptying his pockets on the desk, and “assumed the position” (thanks to Animal House for that catch-phrase of paddling.)  The Assistant Principal took the paddle back like Sabrina Williams going for a forehand winner, and swung.

The paddle hit, split in half, and fell to the floor.  The boy looked down, first left, than right, with a look of shocked surprise more than pain on his face.  The Assistant in his deep voice said, “take your wallet, you are dismissed”. The boy dashed from the room.  It was a good thing he left quickly; it was hard to keep a straight face as we picked up the paddle pieces.

Smack or Thud

The principals got pretty good at metering how hard they hit. They knew what a “good swat” sounded like.  The idea was a stinging “smack” that would remind the student about the cost of transgression.  Even the toughest senior guys left with tears in their eyes.

So when students attempted to pad themselves, the principals were usually aware.  It was the difference between “smack” and “thud.”  A “thud” would send a student to the office restroom, to get down to one layer of underwear.  It all sounds almost medieval now, but it was the standard process in those “ancient” times.

The Smart Kid

One boy decided he could beat the system.  He knew what was coming, and he went into the office with unusual confidence.  Wallet on the table, he placed his hands and faced the music.  The principal laid the first hit, a satisfying “smack.”  As he did, the boy’s t-shirt slid slightly above his belt, revealing something more than a Fruit of Loom label.

The principal asked, “…What is in your pants;” another question that couldn’t possibly be asked today.  Not smiling now, the boy reached back, and pulled out his “cheek chaps.”  He had cut off the top section of a western boot, split it, and placed leather “chaps” over each “cheek.”  The principal laughed, and gave the boy credit for creativity.  He then administered another swat, without leather protection.

We stopped beating students by the early 1980’s.  It did maintain discipline, but as the community became suburban, corporal punishment became unacceptable.  That made sense; if parents weren’t using corporal punishment at home it wasn’t going to work at school.  Besides, as an educator I never did understand how we could hit one student for hitting another.

But the concept has come down through time.  To that “beaten” generation of Watkins Memorial High School students, now well past fifty years old, they know what they need to “cover their ass.”  They need “cheek chaps.”

Agnew

Spiro Agnew, the Vice President of the United States resigned in disgrace. The former Governor of Maryland and Executive of Baltimore, he took bribes in each of his public offices.  The payments didn’t end when he moved into the White House; a man arrived once a month with a white envelope stuffed with cash.

It was October of 1973.  Nixon was trying to scratch and claw his way out of the Watergate scandal.  It must have been some relief to him for the spotlight to leave his Presidency. For just a moment, the glare was off him, even if it was on his own Vice President.

With Agnew gone, Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert was next in line for the Presidency.  But unlike any of his predecessors, Nixon had the opportunity to pick a new Vice President. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, was ratified in 1967, in response to the assassination of President Kennedy. It allowed the President to fill a vacancy in the Vice Presidency, with two-thirds vote confirmation from the House and the Senate.

Nixon’s Pick

Nixon, with the shadow of possible impeachment darkening the White House, got to choose the next Vice President.  He passed over the obvious strong Republican candidates, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, or Ronald Reagan.  Instead he chose a Congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the House Minority Leader, Gerald Ford.

Why pick Jerry Ford?  Ford was a standout football player at Michigan, who turned down offers to go pro.  Instead, he became an Assistant Coach at Yale, and enrolled in the Law School there.  He graduated with a law degree and entered the Navy in World War II. After the war he returned to his hometown Grand Rapids to run for Congress.

Nixon knew that Ford would easily pass the two-thirds requirement in the House and Senate.  Ford wasn’t seen as a political obstacle for Republicans who wanted to run for President in 1976.  He would be a “place-holder” throughout the rest of the Nixon Administration.

He was a conservative Congressman, at the time known best for demanding the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren because of his liberal leanings.  President Lyndon Johnson summed up the general view of Ford:  “He’s a nice guy but he played too much football with his helmet off.”

And Nixon also knew that Ford was regarded by many as a “light-weight;” a man both parties in Congress would consider not qualified for the Presidency.  Ford was Nixon’s “trump card:” impeach and remove Nixon, and you get Ford.

It didn’t work.   The audiotapes showed Nixon planning and executing the Watergate cover-up were released under Supreme Court order. Congress had the smoking gun to remove him from the Presidency.  To avoid impeachment, and the loss of his retirement income, Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became the 38^th President of the United States.

Pence

Mike Pence has similarities to President Ford.  He too is from small town Columbus, Indiana, and graduated from Hanover College and Indiana University Law School.  Mike Pence was a radio and television talk show host who, after two unsuccessful bids, was elected to the US Congress.  He then served as a conservative Governor of Indiana, and considered a run for the Presidency in 2016.

Pence’s selection for Trump’s Vice President put a “mainstream” conservative Republican and devout Christian on the ticket.  It was just what Trump needed to contrast to his own cosmopolitan background.   But now, to Republicans concerned about impeachment by Trump’s extorting campaign information from the President of Ukraine, Pence might offer some welcome relief.

Trump’s Plan

The White House is executing a strategy to counter that possibility.  We already knew that Vice President Pence met with the President of Ukraine soon after Trump’s fateful phone conversation where he asked for information about the Biden’s.  We also know that Pence explicitly tied US military aid funding to “cleaning up corruption.”

But now the White House has leaked that a Pence aide was on the phone with Trump during the conversation, and that the “summary transcript” of the conversation went into Pence’s briefing materials before his meeting.  Pence knew, or should have known, that Trump demanded information on Biden.  That means that Pence was the one who made the “quid pro quo” offer for that information out in the open.

The White House has tied Pence into the scandal.  Their strategy seems to be, if Congress were going to impeach Trump, then they would have to impeach Pence as well.

A Bridge Too Far

The Democratic House of Representatives may be faced with multiple candidates for impeachment.  The President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General:  all seem up to their necks in abusing the powers of their office.  But if the Democratic House were to impeach ALL of them, then President Trump could convince his base that it’s a “coup d’état” with the Democrats trying to throw out the entire Administration.  

But it’s not just his base that would be influenced.  The Republican controlled US Senate actually decides whether the President, or the others should be removed from office.  If all of the Democrats and Independents there vote for removal, it would still take twenty Republican Senators to join in.  

And President Trump would tell them:  remove me and you must remove Mike Pence.  Remove the President and Vice President, and the Speaker of the House becomes the President of the United States.

It’s even better than Nixon’s strategy.  If Trump and Pence are a package, removing them makes Democrat Nancy Pelosi the President of the United States.   Regardless of what Trump and Pence have done, that would be a “bridge too far” for Republican Senators.  

Trump will bind himself to Pence, making sure they share the same fate.  Then he will dare the House Democrats to impeach them both.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other  – Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, – 6/16/1858

…. If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”  – Pastor Robert Jeffress,  – (re-tweeted by President Trump, 9/29/2019)

A War over Slavery

In the 1850’s the United States became irrevocably divided over slavery.  The Southern economy was based on growing cotton.  The problem:  growing cotton drained the soil of nutrients and after decades of growth fields would no longer produce good crops.  To continue to profit from cotton, growers had to move to new ground. 

The Southern “model” of cotton growing was based on massive amounts of manual labor.  In the 1850’s South, that meant enslaved black people.  So for the South it was simple:  cotton growers needed to expand into new territories, and they needed to take slavery with them.  

In the North there were Abolitionists who demanded that slavery end.  But the vast majority of Northerners weren’t that radical.  They were more interested in slavery staying in the South, and not expanding into the new territories opening up in Kansas, Nebraska, and the rest of the West. 

So the argument for the majority of the nation wasn’t Slave or Free, but rather expand slavery or not.  

The Law Takes a Side 

The South maintained a fierce balance of votes in the United States Senate.  That power enabled the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, a law requiring all citizens, including those in the North, to support efforts to capture runaway slaves and return them to their owners.  This forced Northerners to directly participate in slavery, essentially expanding the rights of slavers into the North. 

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was a novel about the conditions of enslaved people, and their frustrated attempts to escape.  Even though it was fiction, the book caught on as a “gospel” description of slave life. The South saw it as Abolitionist propaganda (what we would call Fake News today) and multiple “Anti-Tom” books were published lauding the “gentle plantation life.”  To the North, that was Fake News as well.

The United States was further polarized by the violence in Kansas between Free and Slave forces, and literally hundreds of newspapers espousing their particular side.  Radical Abolitionists took extreme actions, with John Brown attempting to arm the enslaved people.  The US Supreme Court ruled that enslaved people were property, with no civil rights, even in Free states.  There was no room for compromise, and with the election of a “no-expansion” Republican candidate in Lincoln, war became inevitable.

History Rhymes

It all should sound vaguely familiar to the “Trump World” of today.  A United States Senate and US Supreme Court that stand as bastions of conservative power.  Information published as “news” but with little relationship to “facts.”  People picking their “news” based on their political views, rather than sharing a common basis of knowledge.

And now, a President placed under impeachment inquiry, actually suggesting that his removal might cause a Civil War.  

We are a nation divided.  Are we on the brink of a division, a civil war?

Red and Blue

A civil war wouldn’t be as simple in 2020 as it was in 1860.  While we are a nation divided, we are not split in convenient geographic patterns.  Free and Slave in 1860 was pretty clear, but Red and Blue today are not.  Ohio is a Red state, but in 2016 almost 44% of the state voted Blue.  Massachusetts is a solid Blue state, but 31% voted Red.  

We are a nation divided, but we are urban, suburban, exurban and rural rather than North and South.  And, of course, we are a nation divided by race and ethnicity as well.  Part of our current great divide is the “browning” of America.   “White people” will no longer be a majority in the next twenty years.  Many of them feel incredibly threatened by that fact.

Reality today is that Donald Trump may be impeached, but unless there is a sea-change in public sentiment, the Senate will never reach a two-thirds vote to remove him.  And even if he were removed, Mike Pence, a perhaps even more conservative Republican, would become President for the short time remaining until the 2021 inauguration.  Would there be a civil war over that?

The real question is, could the divide created by Donald Trump turn into some form of physical violence?   Much like John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, there likely will be some who determine that if Trump doesn’t remain President, somehow the Constitution was thwarted.  That will be true even if actual Constitutional processes: impeachment and removal, or election, are followed.  But most will recognize the legitimacy of the Constitution. Even if their “news sources” screams something different, they will stand with the red, white and blue of the United States, not the Red or Blue of ideology.  

I hope.

Adults in the Room

Last week, we discovered that the President of the United States was using federal money to “leverage” foreign nations for help in his 2020 campaign.  To paraphrase House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, “…you want money to defend yourself against Russia, I need you to do me a favor.  Give me dirt on Joe Biden.”

The evidence of Trump’s conversation really isn’t in dispute.  The White House itself provided a summary of the transcript with him saying it.  They wrote the summary themselves. It will be fascinating to see the actual transcript, currently buried on a super-secret, super-secure computer normally used for America’s highest security operations.  It’s not likely to be more favorable to the President.

And in the past week, we discovered that the Trump Administration is even more deeply involved than simply the President doing his lousy “Godfather” imitation to President Zelensky.  

The three highest ranking Administration members aren’t “the adults in the room”.   Vice President Pence, Attorney General Barr, and Secretary of State Pompeo are all being dragged into the abyss ofBreitbart backed nonsense.  They are focused on re-writing the history of the 2016 election, and looking to somehow rig 2020.

The highest officers in the American Government are spending their time investigating the farthest alt-right conspiracy theories. While they’re doing that, they are trashing international confidence in the United States, and engaging in the kinds of acts that could put their jobs and careers on the block along with the President’s.

Pressuring Ukraine

There are two different alt-right schemes supposedly going on in Ukraine.  The first is the Administration’s attempt to trash former Vice President Joe Biden, the “proximate cause” of the impeachment inquiry.  We know that Trump himself was pushing for damaging information.  And we know that Rudy Giuliani, acting as a surrogate for the President, has been pushing that narrative on the Ukrainian government for months.  

But Vice President Pence has a piece of this story as well.  He met with Zelensky in September, discussing US aid to Ukraine.  He presence was also used as leverage on the new Ukrainian government, with Pence cancelling his planned attendance at the Ukrainian inauguration in May.  Secretary of Energy Rick Perry was sent in his place.

Ukraine is not just a possible source for dirt on Biden.  In the alt-right world, Ukraine is the alternate site for election hacking in 2016.  The story goes, that despite the exhaustive findings of the Mueller Report, the actual hacking came from Ukraine and was backed by the Democratic Party, liberal bête noire George Soros, and, of course, Hillary Clinton.  

Barr’s Revenge

After Mueller indicted fourteen Russian operatives and described down to the street address in St. Petersburg how election interference occurred, the facts seemed set.  But the Trump Administration, led by Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr, are determined to re-write the narrative, leaving Russia out.  Russian leader Vladimir Putin told Mr. Trump he wasn’t involved at the Summit in Helsinki, and Trump, Giuliani and Barr are intent on proving him right.

Attorney General Barr is currently in Italy talking to their intelligence leaders.  His goal seems to be to find a “deep-state” conspiracy in US Intelligence to stop the Trump candidacy.  He has already pressured the Australian government for information, and has two other on-going Justice Department investigations looking at the issue.  US Attorney John Durham leads one, analyzing the FBI counter-intelligence investigation of Trump campaign operatives.  Inspector General Michael Horowitz leads another, looking at the same issue.

It’s all about Carter Page, his contacts with known Russian agents, and a FISA warrant. It also involves George Papadopoulos’s drunken conversation with the Australian Ambassador, and the more than one hundred contacts the Trump Campaign had with Russia.  But it’s mostly about the fact that the FBI dared to investigate a campaign for President that was apparently colluding with Russia.  That campaign won the Presidency, and the levers of power that comes with it.

Barr tries to exact revenge for the Trump Campaign. Pence quietly pressures Ukraine to “play along”. What about the State Department?

Enabling Trump

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a man of acknowledged brilliance and ambition.  He sees himself as the Republican candidate for President in 2024.  But surprisingly, Pompeo was on the call, listening to President Trump pressure Zelensky for cooperation.  

But it makes sense.  Giuliani states that he has had help from the State Department for the two years he “investigated” Ukraine.  He specifically got help from the US Special Envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, as well as the US Embassy in Kyiv.  Volker resigned this week.  

The President of the United States withheld US taxpayer dollars to extort information from Ukraine, information to further his own 2020 campaign.  But he didn’t act alone.  The Vice President and the Secretary of State actively participated in pushing Ukraine.  And the Attorney General is seeking revenge for imagined 2016 affronts.  

Trump isn’t acting alone.  The “adults in the room” are enabling this renegade President.