No Serenity

O God and Heavenly Father, Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen – The Serenity Prayer

Faith

I am not a religious man.  For those who find that concerning – it’s not from “want” of knowledge.  I’ve studied religions my entire life. I was the son of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, and raised in the Episcopal Church. The joke was it was as close as Mom could get to Catholic without Dad getting mad.  I’ve read from the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible and the Talmud. 

For me it’s always been a question of finding faith, not knowledge.  And I haven’t made that great leap of “faith,” at least, not yet.  But it doesn’t mean I can’t draw some knowledge and understanding of human nature from the beliefs I’ve studied, and try to gain wisdom from the prayers and stories I’ve heard.

Change

But this week there is so much to change.  Here in Ohio we find that some of our political leaders sold us out. At least it was for a good price, $60 million.   We are all “on the hook” for the debts of First Energy and their aging nuclear reactors. It’s now a part of our energy costs for the foreseeable future.  And in return, we gave up programs encouraging renewable resources. So instead we empower gas, oil and coal, and push the two remaining nuclear plants far beyond their shelf life. 

And we find that a US Senator, Republican Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, is accepting Russian disinformation as an excuse for investigating the Democratic candidate for President, Joe Biden.  After years of opportunity, Johnson is only now trying to use his Committee to put his thumb on the scale of the Presidential election.  He is naive or cynical: trading on disinformation to impugn Biden’s reputation.  

Courage

This week we discovered that the Department of Homeland Security is sending “flying squads” of “officers” into American cities.  The President determined that those particular cities aren’t governed effectively.  Instead of working towards improvement with the local and state officials, Mr. Trump has decided that HE, who left the United States completely vulnerable to COVID-19, knows better how to run them.  So these anonymous, camouflage clad “troops” are in the streets, using their “muscle” to enforce Presidential will.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stated, President Trump is using this to deflect America from the COVID disaster. It’s a Wag the Dog scenario, except this is no foreign war. Donald Trump is going to wage a war against Americans in America, all to get votes in November.

Acceptance

And this week we are told that political bullying is just fine. Some Senators spent an entire year blocking any consideration of President Obama’s selection of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. Now they have made it clear that if a vacancy occurs while Trump remains in office, they will fill it.  It lays bare what we already knew:  that McConnell was lying when he said we shouldn’t choose a Justice in an election year.  And somehow, it elicits a bully’s sick “giggle” when he and other Senators are confronted with their prevarication.  

This week the President’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, was given the choice of returning to jail or giving up his First Amendment freedom of expression.  There isn’t any legal support for that, just a Justice Department demand. The Attorney General wants to do whatever he can to tilt the scales for Trump in the 2020 election.  The Cohen book certainly won’t be saying much good about Trump. Keeping Cohen in solitary confinement thru Election Day will solve one of the President’s many problems.

Wisdom

And finally this week, the President told us that it was OK to risk thousands of students by re-opening schools under all conditions. “Only .004% of students who get COVID-19 will die,” he said.  There’s 50 million some students in the US, and if only five percent are infected, it means two and a half million get COVID-19.  That tiny little percentage, .004 of a percent, amounts to eight thousand, five hundred kids who may die.

So what we are told is not only are some willing to kill off the elderly, but those kids as well.  Of course the deaths will be spread across the nation, and are likely to be “only” those with existing weaknesses.  We call them pre-existing conditions, but while everyone is waiting for “herd immunity”, I guess the disease will “cull” the herd too.

Serenity

All of these make me angry.  I hate the fact that the nation I love; that I swore loyalty to since I first placed my hand on my heart in kindergarten; whose emblem adorned my pocket as an Eagle Scout; and whose history I have studied and taught my entire life, is letting this happen.  I hate that we need the “Courage” to change in November, and then, God willing, the “Patience” to wait until January, to begin to confront these injustices.

The Serenity Prayer asks the Lord to grant us the serenity to accept all of this.  I prefer a quote from a 1980’s Brat Pack movie,  Red Dawn:

“Hate keeps me warm”.  

And this summer is hot enough already.

The Economy

The Trump 2020 campaign strategy has been the same since 2017:  win the Dow Jones and win the Presidency.  It’s not new.  Clinton Svengali James Carville coined the phrase in 1992:  “it’s the economy stupid”.  For Clinton, that became more important than the recurring campaign crises over “bimbo eruptions”, and with the help of Ross Perot, gained them the keys to the White House.

Win the Dow Jones and win the Presidency.  With records broken on Wall Street, it was strong enough to overcome Trump’s bimbos (or is it bimboes?).  It was enough to overcome child separation at the border, and it might even have been enough to overcome Russia, Ukraine, and impeachment.  

But COVID-19 changed everything. It wrecked the “beautiful” Dow Jones, though pump priming from the Federal Reserve has managed to regain most of what was lost there.  But the claim that “more Americans were working than ever” was done.  From unemployment of rates of 3%, we reached 15% and, but for statistical slight of hand, maybe even higher.

The Virus

And of course, a whole lot of people were dying.  They still are:  yesterday the US had 1000 deaths from COVID-19 once again. We will soon reach the next grim milestone, 150,000 lost to the virus in six months.  And over 4 million have been infected.

Up until yesterday the Trump corona-virus strategy was clear:  “get over” COVID and let’s get back to work.  The weeks long battle over re-opening the public schools hasn’t been about the “welfare” of the poor children who need to learn.  It’s much more basic.  Compulsory schooling began in the late 1800’s in order to get children out of the labor market.  Sure it was nice that they went to school, but it was even nicer that their parents got the factory jobs that little hands were taking.

The Trump Administration can’t get Americans back on the job when kids are at home online.  That won’t work, because their parents can’t.  So schools need to open – damn the virus and full speed ahead.  So what if, as the President said yesterday, ONLY .04% of children getting the virus might die.  Gee, that’s only four out ten thousand.  So Columbus City Schools has 50,000 students.  If only 25% of those kids get the virus, that means five kids will die – and that’s just Columbus.  Oh well, back to work, they probably had some pre-existing condition, asthma, diabetes or something. 

Scientist in Chief 

Opening the economy is still the overarching Trump 2020 strategy.  It drives everything else that’s happened as the United States has worked itself into the greatest public health disaster in modern history. But yesterday, the President stepped alone in the White House Press Room, and tried to flip the script.

After months of ignoring the scientists, and weeks of denigrating Anthony Fauci, all of a sudden the President was the “Scientist in Chief”.  He encouraged folks to wear facemasks; in fact, he had his Presidential mask in his suit coat pocket.  He seemed to almost apologize for all of his ignorance that has come out of Washington for the past several months, from Chloroquine to bleach.  Now he was standing there, with newly drawn graphs showing America’s “successful” COVID strategy, touting his program and the soon to be “magic vaccine”, tested and produced faster than ever before.  

Flip the Script

The political Trump narrative of 2016 was that for the last 30 days of the campaign, the candidate actually “stuck to the script”.  This is the “pride” of KellyAnn Conway, that she convinced Donald Trump to follow her strategy, and with all of the other events of that fateful October, ended up in the White House.  Now the Trump team is trying to get him to do it again.  He stayed “on script” for an entire thirty-five minutes in the Press Room yesterday, with only one “blip”.  Wishing Ghislaine Maxwell, an accused child sex trafficker, “well”, probably wasn’t a great idea. 

It doesn’t change what’s happened in the past six months.  The virus isn’t the only issue:  the nation is in the throes of a new awakening to racial injustice.  The President made his stand on that, claiming “law and order” as he put secret police on the streets of Portland.  And no one really thinks that Trump can stay “on script” for the ninety plus days remaining until the election.    

But give Trump 2020 some credit.  They’ve taken six months to do it, but they’ve finally figured out what the President should be doing in a COVID-19 world.  He should be helping science fight the virus.  

I should have happened in December.

“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” – Alexandre Ledru-Rollin– a leader of the French Revolution of 1848

Ahead of Opinion

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had already served seven years as President of the United States by 1940.  He had come into office facing the existential crisis of the Great Depression. There was near 25% unemployment, the banks failed and closed, and Americans starving in the streets.  Now in 1940 the unemployment rate was still at 17%. And though the New Deal had managed to reduce much of the raw suffering, times were still tough in America.

The United States was a nation turned inward.  World War II in Europe began in September of 1939, but most Americans wanted no part of another European conflict.  The scars of World War I, and the aftermath of the failed peace plan, led them to turn away from the threat of Nazism.  And while Japan had been waging war in Asia since 1932, it was still an ocean away.  Americans didn’t see Japanese imperialism as a threat.

Roosevelt did. And he saw Nazism for what it was: an overarching world peril. He knew that ultimately it would be the United States that would have to stand up to Hitler. But he also knew that the American people, and the United States Congress, weren’t prepared to make that commitment, yet. Congress was already hamstringing his efforts. If Roosevelt moved too fast or pushed too hard, Congress would further restrict him. So he had to maneuver American actions and policies, staying carefully “neutral” while knowing full well what would need to be done.

It wasn’t until September of 1940 that the draft was instituted to build up the armed forces.  And it wasn’t Germany at all, but Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, the ultimately pushed the American people into war.

Governor DeWine

Last week, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine spoke to the people of the state about the COVID-19 crisis.  Many thought that DeWine would institute a statewide mandate to wear facemasks in public, or might even call for a “shelter-in-place” order for the most affected counties.  But while some mandates were issued for counties that had dramatically increased infection rates, the Governor mostly urged Ohioans to take action on their own, without “orders” from the state government.  

 “…I’m asking you, I’m calling on all of you, to once again unite. This virus is real. It’s killing our family members, our friends, our co-workers. We must take the long view in a response to it and remember that Ohioans have always been a strong, determined, resilient people who time and time again have overcome adversity and beat the odds” (Governor Mike DeWine, July 15, 2020).  

In that speech he also referred to Franklin Roosevelt and James Cox, the Governor of Ohio during the 1918 Flu Pandemic.  Cox, much like DeWine today, referred health responses to local cities and counties, rather than a statewide approach.  And much like Roosevelt in 1940, DeWine was careful not to outdistance his support.

A Strong Stand

In the first round of COVID-19 reaction in March, the Governor took a strong stand. Along with the Amy Acton, the Director of Public Health, DeWine stopped the Ohio Primary election in March, and mandated a general state closure.  Ohioans responded well, virtually “closing down” the state for more than a month.  Unlike states on the east coast, Ohio had fewer infections, and the hospitals had plenty of capacity to handle incoming cases.

And DeWine was cautious about letting the state reopen.  Unlike Arizona, Texas, Georgia or Florida, Ohio waited until late May to reopen its economy.  But when it did, the Governor who had been so strong in March and April, all of a sudden became tentative.  What originally was a mask “mandate” became a “strong suggestion”, and the Dr. Acton, was sidelined.  So what happened?

Legislative Will

There were a series of demonstrations in the state, by folks demanding that DeWine allow things to reopen.  Often, those demonstrators combined their signs with legal arms, making for an intimidating force on the Statehouse lawn.  And the demonstrators were not only Ohioans but also Republicans, the same voters that supported DeWine and the majority Republican legislature in the first place.  

In early May, the State House of Representatives passed a bill severely restricting the Director of Public Health powers, and ultimately the Governor’s ability to deal with the crisis.  Speaker of the House Larry Householder made it clear that he thought Ohio had to follow the lead of the Southern states and reopen as soon as possible.  The proposed legislation moved much of the power to make those decisions to the legislative rather than the executive’s hands.

Ultimately the bill did not pass the State Senate.  But for DeWine the writing was on the wall.  Like Roosevelt in 1940, he might know what needed to be done.  But DeWine couldn’t get too far ahead of the legislature, or the citizens.  And he knew, even if he had the political courage to risk losing an election, the State Legislature would respond to their supporters.  It wasn’t the minority Democrats demanding the state re-open; it was his and the majority’s own political party.

A Piecemeal Solution

So Governor DeWine continues to use a county-by-county response to this “first wave” of the COVID-19 infection.  As rates rise in urban areas, those counties:  Hamilton, Montgomery, Franklin, Lucas, Summit and Cuyahoga are moved onto the “Red” alert list.  But the virus doesn’t respect county lines, so the surrounding counties, and those of other smaller Ohio cities, are also on “Red”.  

It’s probably the best that the Governor can do.  If he gets too far out ahead of the Legislature, then like Wisconsin, he’ll find that he’s lost his authority to act at all.  The present “color coded” plan responds to the virus, for the moment.  It will take a greater crisis, one that the citizens of Ohio recognize as undeniable, to give the Governor the strength to act.

Let’s hope it doesn’t cost too many Ohio lives.

The Void

It is in times of turmoil and stress that we most appreciate our leaders and role models.  And it is during those times that we feel the loss of those leaders even more intensely.  First it was John McCain, the Senator who seemed to represent the best traditions of the Republican Party and of America.  Next it was Elijah Cummings, the “moderator” who could speak to both sides of the political divide in Congress, just as we entered our greatest era of political upheaval.  Then Friday we lost John Lewis, the moral compass of our times.  

A Lifetime

John Lewis seemed to be the “Forrest Gump” of the Civil Rights movement, at every high point and nadir of the struggle for freedom.  It’s because he started so young, a seventeen year old leader of sit-ins, an original Freedom Rider at twenty-one.  John Lewis was at Martin Luther King’s side on the Lincoln Memorial steps for the “I Have a Dream” speech.  And he wasn’t a spectator, he helped organize the march, and at twenty-three, he addressed the assembled masses there as well.

But it was in 1965 that John Lewis literally placed himself in the center of American morality.  Lewis and Hosea Williams led a march trying to get from Selma to Montgomery to gain voting rights.  The march crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a Grand Wizard of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.  It was on the south side of the bridge that the State Troopers and the Klan attacked the peaceful march with tear gas, and then charged into the line of marchers with bats and nightsticks.  

Lewis was among the injured, suffering a fractured skull.  The attack was aired on national television, and galvanized the voting rights movement.  The pressure reached President Lyndon Johnson, and lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  

The Power

John Lewis was an activist for his entire life. He had put that life on the line to prove his moral point.  That certitude was his power:  to use a Civil War phrase he had “faced the elephant” of racism and hate, and demonstrated his own rightness.  When he spoke, in slow, measured terms, he always spoke with that power.

Lewis was history personified.  But he wasn’t a relic:  even at the last days of his life, he was as involved in the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter as he was in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the 1960’s.  Jim Clyburn, a colleague and friend in Congress related a story this weekend.  They were talking about the highs of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement, how non-violent sit-ins and marches achieved so much, but still fell short of equality.  Clyburn related their frustration of many turning away from Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience to violence and “burn baby burn”.  

The killing of George Floyd brought Americans back into the streets against discrimination again.  Lewis and Clyburn saw both the hope of black and white marching together, and the fear of rioting destroying the whole movement.  They spoke from their experience; it was why Clyburn stood against the “Defund the Police” phrase so vehemently.  

To The End

In the last months, when Lewis faced his own mortality with pancreatic cancer, he continued his “mission” to America.  He spoke at the Pettus Bridge once again, and he continued to condemn the actions of President Trump.  Like McCain and Cummings, he worked to the last moments of his life so much so that his inevitable death still took us all by surprise.

We live in an era of stark contrast.  The shining example of John Lewis stands against the angry and attacking Donald Trump interviewed this weekend.  We feel the void left by all these losses as we move toward the critical moment of the 2020 election.  But John Lewis would want us use what we he taught us.  Face “the elephant”.  Stand up against what is wrong.  Be willing to stand against those who would deny “The Dream” just as Lewis faced hate and violence at the bridge.  That is his legacy to us.  And it is our obligation to him, and to our country.

Late Night Terror

You walk the city streets late at night. A van pulls up, and out jumps camouflage suited men, heavily armored and with automatic weapons. They stop you, question you, then place you up against a wall. Your handcuffed and taken away in the van.

Sounds like a grim scene from Cold War East Germany, the Columbian drug wars, or present day Russia.  Nothing like this could happen in the United States, and if it did, it certainly wouldn’t be government sponsored, right?  To detain someone you have to have “cause”, the legalism for a reason.  To place someone under arrest, you need to have “probable cause”, a good reason to believe they have violated the law.  

We grant the police authority to question, detain, arrest and charge based on a “social compact”.  They get their especial authority, in return for only using it within the confines of the Constitution.  The law goes both ways:  neither side is supposed to violate it.

Federal Units

But dark vans are patrolling the streets of late night Portland, Oregon. And those camo suited men are stopping cars and pedestrians, seemingly for the “crime” of “being out”. Some of those stopped try to resist, not understanding who is trying to “kidnap” them. One was shot by a “non-lethal” weapon, and is in the hospital with a fractured skull. And in those dark vans aren’t the Portland City Police, nor the Multnomah County Sheriff, nor even the Oregon State Police. They are agents of the Federal government (WAPO).

And they aren’t even the group we regard as the Federal police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  No, they are U.S. Marshals from the “Special Operations Group”, and the Customs and Border Patrol’s “Tactical Unit”.  They aren’t even cops.  They are chosen for Portland because of their “special” skills.

The Government of the United States of America has sent a “special operations group” to terrorize the streets of Portland.  They are acting at the behest of the President, and against, (yes against), the specific requests of the Mayor of Portland, the Governor of Oregon, and a US Senator.  But the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, stated that since, “…local politicians refuse to restore order to protect their city” his agents will get the job done.  And his acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, added: “…we’re going to do what needs to be done to protect the men and women of this country”. There’s a lot of “acting” going on.

There have been protests in Portland since George Floyd was killed.  And Portland has a history of violent protests over the past few years.  But the local authorities have dealt with it.  The police in Portland have been tough when they needed to be, using tear gas and force to clear the streets.  But they aren’t moving fast enough for Donald Trump.

What Trump Needs

The local strategy doesn’t fit into the narrative of the current Administration in Washington, DC.  The “Feds” have to prove how tough they can be, at least, prove it to their political base.  They threatened to send Federal troops into Seattle, but backed away at the last moment.  They used Federal agents to clear Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, so the President could have his “upside down Bible” photo-op outside of St. John’s Church.  And now they are trying to prove their “manhood” in Portland.

It might be different if the Oregon National Guard was Federalized, or the “Insurrection Act” was triggered and the US Army went in. But it is the camo suited “special operations” units. And instead of confronting the protestors to end the protests, they are driving around in the night, terrorizing folks going home.

When the US Government took down right-wing groups in Montana and Idaho, the far right screamed about their First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights being violated.  But when the dark vans unload their “tactical squads” in the streets of Portland, not a whimper is heard from the right.  Where are Rand Paul and Ted Cruz now?  Why aren’t they standing up against Federal government intrusion into state authority?  Shouldn’t they be defending Americans against what some might even call terrorism?

Playing for the Base

No, all we hear from them is the chuckling of bullies, getting what they want.  From the President on down, we have folks willing to squash the Constitution.  A photo-op in front of a church, or frightened protestors up against a wall in Portland: it all plays well for the base.

There’s a contemporary term called “Godwin’s Law”.  It says that in any Internet argument, ultimately someone will make a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.  At that point, Godwin states, the discussion is over.  A corollary to the “law” is that whoever made the comparison loses the argument, because, nothing is comparable to Hitler or the Nazis. 

So there will be no references to “Black Shirts” in this essay.  

But it should be a cautionary tale to Americans. These are the sanctioned actions of the government of the United States, our government. If the Trump Administration is willing to do this for largely political gain, what more are they capable of doing? Will the results of November be enough to end this slide into authoritarianism? Will they even accept those results? Or will the camo suited henchmen from DHS and Justice be needed then too.

Mom’s Saying

My London-born mother had an expression, when there was so much to do that it never seemed to get done: “There’s no rest for the wicked”.  It must have been from her Roman Catholic upbringing, something the nuns would say in school when there was far too much work to do.  That would have been right after they administered the cod liver oil, and before they made students hold out their hands for rapping knuckles with a ruler.

Even in retirement there seems to be times when there is “no rest for the wicked”.  We always thought retirement would be boring, but somehow days fill up fast, and it seems as tiring as the eighty hour weeks we routinely worked back “in the day”.  “No rest for the wicked” though, we’ve got things to do.  Even “sheltering in place” hasn’t really been “restful”.  I wouldn’t say there was home remodeling, but the utility room and garage got a complete overhaul, there’s a new hot tub off the deck, and lots of little things are getting done.  Installing new blinds to cut the sun baking into the family room was today’s mission.  That was after hours picking up “lost dog” signs in Lancaster.

Resting on the Polls

With all we are doing, it’s easy to get a little complacent about politics.  It’s not like I’ve ignored what’s going on in the world, if you’re reading this essay you’ve probably seen several (dozens, hundreds) of essays about everything that’s happening.  But I do find myself saying:  “… we’ll have to fix that in January, after the election”.  I’m certainly not letting the current Administration off the hook:  there’s been two impeachable offense THIS WEEK.  But the House won’t waste its time with another impeachment. And the Senate could never find the testicular fortitude to convict, even if they knew they should.  

No, the complacency comes from the polling.  Every public poll shows Joe Biden leading by wide margins.  And it’s not just the national polls, Biden’s leading in the key polls:  Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.  He’s even leading in Texas, and purple-red Ohio.  And it’s not the “soft” polling we had with Hillary; it’s a solid trend across the nation.

Core of 2020

“25% of world COVID infections are occurring in the Southern United States,” Peter Hotez, Dean of the Baylor Medical College just said on Meet the Press.  And that may be the best reason for Democratic complacency, as awful as it may be. Donald Trump is doing nothing to gain control of the COVID pandemic.  His lack of action, and lack of compassion, is burying him.  In an election about competency, Trump gets a failing grade.

Joe Biden is playing it perfectly.  He is acting “Presidential”, standing up and saying what a President should do.  He is presenting the perfect contrast:  what he would be doing as the Chief Executive, versus what is happening now.  The Trump 2020 campaign is desperately seeking a way to attack Biden, but the COVID crisis simply buries everything they try.  It even buried Russia paying a bounty for American soldiers lives in Afghanistan (that happened last week – remember?)

Ninety Days

But the election is ninety days away. That’s almost a quarter of a year, in an era when one week changes the entire narrative.   No on wants COVID to be the only story of this election.  If it is, then that means we are in for an historic tragedy in our nation.  I’m hoping others, like Republican Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio, will realize that they have the power to stop the viral growth.  If they don’t step in who will:  certainly not the man in the White House.

Democrats can’t depend on the “obvious” to win the election.  We have to turn over every stone, bring out every voter, and call every number.  Volunteers can’t knock on every door in a pandemic, but we need to find a way to reach out and get the voters out for Biden.  We need to remember this: Hillary didn’t lose because Trump won, Hillary lost because too many stayed at home.

Voter Suppression

The Trump campaign will do everything it can to suppress the vote.  It’s a sad commentary on the modern Republican Party:  fewer voters equal a better chance of winning.  What kind of political party is that for a democracy?  And it won’t just be making the voting process itself more difficult.  Don’t be shocked if there’s an “October Surprise” about Biden, just like FBI Director Comey provided against Hillary in 2016.  It’s not to get people to vote for Trump, just to get folks to stay home instead of voting for Biden.

Our Job

Don’t let your Never-Trump friends off the hook.  Don’t let them buy the “Joe Biden is going to defund police” or “Joe Biden is a child molester” crap.  Just quietly explain that the national disaster that is the COVID pandemic was largely avoidable.  And make sure they get the point, that Trump made it far, far, worse than it ever had to be.

Voter registration ends on October 5^th.  Early voting in Ohio starts on October 6^th.  And you can (in Ohio) always request an absentee ballot.  It’s “no fault” absentee here, you don’t need a reason like the “old” days.  

And for those doomsayers who say “the polls looked this way in 2016 too”:  remember this.  We’ve already had a national election since then.  It was 2018, the year of the “slow motion blue tsunami” in the Congress.   The people “spoke” once already, and they spoke Democrat.

So get to work.  Get talking, get persuading, and get folks to vote.  There’s no rest for the wicked.

Desperation

How desperate is the President to win re-election in November?  He’s desperate enough to ignore all medical advice about COVID-19.  Desperate enough to risk the health of millions of Americans in a losing bid to keep the economy running and schools open, all for the purpose of getting re-elected. Trump is attacking the very institution that serves as America’s bulwark of health, the Centers for Disease Control, wresting control of the “facts” away from those who know them best.

The President is willing to burn all his bridges in his quest to win re-election. And sadly, he is desperate enough to attack the one man who has stood up for the reality of pandemic. Anthony Fauci is not perfect.  But he has done what any good scientist would do:  adapted to the changing virus that has attacked America.  So of course, what he said in February may be different that what he says in July.  He is learning about the “novel” corona-virus.  That’s why it’s called “novel;” because it’s new.  And Dr. Fauci is the best we have, giving his level best advice to the nation.

Of Horses and Carts

But that advice ran dead on into the Trump 2020 re-election strategy.  Even before the pandemic, the sole path to re-election was Trump’s so-called success with the economy.  (By the way, if you’re not in the “monied” class, it wasn’t that much of a success).  But the pandemic crashed Trump’s great edifice on Wall Street, and even now, it’s the huge outpourings from the Federal Reserve that support gains in stock indexes.  Today, the Federal borrowing rate is one quarter of one percent.  They are literally giving money away to prop up the economy.

Sure it would be nice if the economy didn’t have to tank.  It would be great if the unemployment rate was lower than the 11% reported in June.  The real rate is probably much higher than that, with the increase in COVID-19 impact nationwide the last half of the month.  There is an old phrase:  “don’t put the cart before the horse”.  In our modern age it might be hard to visualize, but horses pull carts, they don’t push them. 

The economy is the cart in our world today, and and horse has COVID.  Our “horse” is sick; until we deal with that, the cart “ain’t going nowhere”. We better get our response to COVID right first, before we try to “open” our economy.  Otherwise, the act of opening empowers the virus to spread even more.  Ask the hospitals in Arizona, Florida, California, and Alabama.  The ICU’s are overflowing, the PPE is scarce, and the staff is exhausted.  It’s New York, or Italy, only worse.  The refrigerated trailers are being brought in.

Bad Choices

Europe, even Italy, ultimately got the word.  They dealt with the virus, suffered the economic and social consequences of an extended “lock-down”, and now seem to have COVID under control.  Their economies and schools are re-opening, and they are living an altered but less risky life.  But here in the United States, where the Trump Administration tried to “force” economic reopening, we are now paying the price, in health, lives, and livelihoods.

We hear small businesses scream that they cannot survive.  But the problem is, they will not survive unless the United States, acting as a nation, gets a handle on the disease.   When Mr. Trump abrogated his responsibility for acting against the virus, he pushed the responsibility onto the Governors.  Many Governors, including Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia and others; emulated the President and further pushed responsibility to the counties and cities.  

But when Governors and County Executives and Mayors did try to take action to limit infection, they were immediately met with resistance from “above”.  Trump says states should control the schools, and then tells them he’ll cut funds if they don’t open.  Governor Kemp in Georgia tells the Mayors to control their cities, and then tells Savannah and Atlanta they cannot mandate masks. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine pleads with Ohioans to “follow the rules” and control the virus, but doesn’t feel empowered to issue orders.

Doing the Work

And Dr. Fauci has been removed from the public eye.  He no longer stands on the podium addressing the nation, nor is he “allowed” on CNN or CBS.  But he is still working, still warning America about the results of governmental ignorance. Dr. Fauci is challenging the President’s plan.  And for that – he must be destroyed.

It was bad enough that Internet conspiracy nonsense tried to call Fauci a “shill of Big Pharma”.  Now the President is waging an all out negative campaign against America’s senior scientist, with attacks from the White House led by economic advisor Peter Navarro and Press Secretary and former campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany.

Anthony Fauci is a bigger target for Trump 2020 then Joe Biden right now, and for good reason.  Joe Biden is a political opponent, but Fauci brings facts to the fight.  Those facts show that the President’s plan of blissful ignorance will only bring more pain and disruption.  The economy can’t recover until we are healthy.  And that’s the one thing that Trump 2020 cannot tolerate.  The truth not only hurts, but it proves the President incompetent.

Dr. Fauci needs to stick to his guns and keep doing the work.  As he himself said “…I’m really good at it” (Atlantic).  It’s the best hope we have.

1858

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  – Abraham Lincoln, September 2, 1858

One hundred and sixty two years ago, at the crest of another national crisis, Abraham Lincoln described the American people.  It was during the Senatorial election of 1858, and Lincoln was the candidate of the new Republican Party.  Republicans were not quite an “abolitionist” Party, but they tended towards limiting and ultimately ending slavery.  As Lincoln said, only a week after his “fool the people” phrase: 

“I have no doubt that (slavery) would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but re-adopted the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already covered–restricting it from the new territories”.

Lincoln was running against his Illinois rival, Stephen Douglas.  “The Little Giant”, standing 5’4” a full 12” shorter than Lincoln, was the incumbent.  He already had served in the United States Senate for eleven years.  During that time, he made his name as a man who could reach the middle.  His best-known legislation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing the people of the territories themselves to vote to determine whether to be slave or free states, a concept called popular sovereignty.   This altered the almost forty-year old “Missouri Compromise”, the agreement that drew “a line” across the nation:  north free, south slave.  

Who’s the Fool

Lincoln lost the Senate election, and Douglas returned to Washington as the Democratic Senator from Illinois.  But over the next two years “popular sovereignty” created division, the Dred Scott Decision emboldened the South, and the era of compromise finally ended.  Lincoln and Douglas would compete again, this time for the Presidency in 1860.  And this time, it was Lincoln who won.  We know the rest of that story.

So the question is:  were the American voters of the 1850’s, fooled to  vote for compromise, or were the voters who voted for or against slavery the fools? Lincoln would say that in 1860, the American people stopped being fooled.  However, Lincoln earned less than 40% of the popular vote in a four-way election. 

Modern Fools

I believe in another Presidential characterization of American people: the “righteous might” of Franklin Roosevelt.  For the past several years, our citizens have had to learn to deal with a “fire hose” of Internet information, some of it real, and lots of it faked.  What we thought of as “true fact” in 2012; we now understand was faked by those with an axe to grind, a joke to tell, or even by foreign agents.  

It still goes on today.  We are told that “Wayfair” is selling children as furniture on its website, that wearing masks is the ultimate infringement on our First Amendment right to freedom of expression, and that President Obama abandoned testing of COVID-19.  

But there is a change.  The “fake news” is now an Internet “sport”.  We are titillated by the rumors, the marshaling of disparate facts to create a believable argument.  But we don’t really buy it anymore, just as we stopped believing that President Obama was somehow born in Kenya, not Hawaii.  We were fooled “some of the time,” but we are reaching that “all of the time” moment.

Fools of 2016

And in that way a large minority of Americans was “fooled” by Donald Trump.  Some believed that he was a successful businessman.  We now know, that he squandered billions on bad deals, so much so that no American bank would touch him.  Some believed that Trump understood the “common man”.  We know now that Trump’s only interest was in mouthing the words that gained him votes.  The “common men” cheering at the rallies, were only fodder for Trump’s version of “fake news”.

There were those Americans so disenthralled with the concept of Hillary Clinton as President they took whatever alternative was offered.  They are still there, chanting Benghazi and Pizzagate, full-whole fool swallowers of the Internet conspiracies.  Or there are those who cannot imagine that a woman can fill the role.  They aren’t the fools of the Internet, but rather stuck in a misogynistic era of the 1950’s, that Trump likes to harken back to as “the good old days”.  

And finally there were those supporters of the Grand Old Party, who stepped up and supported the “R” on the ticket even though they had doubts.  Now their doubts have been fully justified.  Whatever else that can be said about President Trump, his maladministration of the COVID-19 pandemic has left America broken.  His continued strategy of pretending it’s going away, playing us a fool, simply makes our condition worse.  

Righteous Might

The American people have been “…fooled some of the time”.  A small portion remain fooled now, the “all of the time” crowd.  But all of the American people are not “fooled all of the time”.  The time has come for them to rise up in their “righteous might” to change the course of our nation, and our history.  

Or, as George W. Bush and The Who said:

“We won’t get fooled again”. 

Football

I am not really that much of a football guy.  I coached for forty years:  Cross Country and Track.  Football was my “escape” after a Cross Country meet on Saturday, or my way to recover on Sunday afternoon.  And when the Cincinnati Bengals, my “hometown” NFL team, had their usual disastrous season, I could turn football off.  There were enough frustrations with my own teams on Saturday without more on Sunday. 

Football was also a “part of the job” as a Dean of Students in the local high school.  Friday nights were work nights.  I seldom saw the game:  I was busy making sure that the “fight under the bleachers” didn’t happen, and that the kids smoking dope in the woods got surprised.  Away games were better.  I’d get a chance to see our kids play, and maybe scout out a new “track star” for the spring.

The Buckeyes

But I live near Columbus, Ohio; home to THE (I think that’s copyrighted) OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY.  If you have any knowledge of college football at all, you know that OSU IS FOOTBALL!!!  And if you live here in town, and want to be a part of any random conversation, you better have a clue what’s going on with the BUCKEYES.  Otherwise, you’re doomed to talking about Ohio weather and traffic construction.

So I have a passing knowledge of college football, and a little better understanding of the NFL.  Both are struggling in this year of pandemic:  struggling to find a way to get on the field.  The Buckeyes just suspended their voluntary on-campus workouts for seven sports teams:  football, men’s and women’s basketball, field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, and women’s volleyball.  An undisclosed number of athletes have tested positive for COVID-19.

The Ivy League has already decided:  no sports in the fall of 2020.  And the Big Ten, the conference for Ohio State, Michigan, and twelve other major schools (I know, that’s fourteen) has called for League games only, without non-league opponents through this fall season.  That puts the start of the college season for them near October, buying time to see what’s going to happen.

Cash Talks

But keep this in mind:  the Ivy League isn’t making money on football.  But for many of the Big Ten schools, Football is cash.  For OSU it was $57 million last year, with over $31 million in ticket sales at their stadium, the Horseshoe.  So for them, this is about football, athletes, fans, and money, money, money.

The NFL doesn’t plan to open summer training until August, and the schedule is still flexible.  They, like the NBA and baseball, will try to put their players in a bubble, and keep COVID out.  They’ll need some luck for that.

The pro sports could make enough money on television revenues to survive playing to empty stadiums.  If, and that’s the BIG IF, they can keep their players, coaches, and other personnel COVID free in their bubble.  But college football doesn’t have the same revenue structure.  There is a whole lot of TV money, but it’s not like ticket sales profits at Ohio State, or Michigan, or Wisconsin, or Penn State.  

So the Athletic Directors need fans in the stands.  And the fans sure would like to be there, as hundreds of thousands fill the Horseshoe, the Big House, Camp Randall, or Beaver Stadium.  We used to call that a great college game day, but right now there’s a new term for it: a super spreader event.

Politics Aside

Gene Smith, the Athletic Director of Ohio State, led his coaches in urging folks to wear masks if they want to see sports in the fall (Eleven Warriors).  All of the political debate about masks aside, Smith is trying to make wearing a mask a sign of Buckeye loyalty.  Scientists are clear: the current rate of infection will prevent fans in the stands, and maybe even teams down on the turf.

The Ohio State University Athletic Department is not trying to make a political statement.  This isn’t about Fauci or Trump, or even really about the COVID-19 virus.  It’s about whether fans, and communities, are willing to put away their little conspiracies and vanities and politics, and wear masks to slow the spread of infection. 

Slow the spread, and athletes can go to practice.  Slow the spread, and fans might be able to be “socially distant” in the stands. And slow the spread, and maybe THE OSU makes $15 million in ticket sales instead of $31.  That’s more than zero.  Wear an OSU mask, do it for the team!!!!!

And for all of those folks who are demanding that public schools open, five days a week, teachers facing kids in class, guess what?  You too can get a mask with your high school logo (oh yes, my old employer, Watkins Memorial has them).  Wear a mask to slow the infection rate so your kid (or kid brother or sister) can go to “real” school.  And, if you won’t wear a mask for that, wear it so you can watch “Football Friday Night!”   Maybe it’ll be on TV.  Or better yet, so I can go to a Cross Country meet on Saturday.  Social distancing is a little bit easier to do in the woods.

John Legend

Aretha Franklin

Howard University Choir

Black National Anthem

In the past couple of weeks, I learned something new. There is a song many call “The Black National Anthem”.  Lift Every Voice and Sing is a beautiful, “old church hymn” type of song, written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson.  Johnson was an early leader of the NAACP, an author, educator and lawyer from Jacksonville, Florida.  Born in 1871, as a young adult he spent a life-altering summer teaching the children of former slaves in backwoods Georgia.

The NAACP adopted Lift Every Voice and Sing as their anthem in 1917. The first line of the song, like many church hymns, is the title:

Lift ev’ry voice and sing
‘Til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty

The lyrics describe the trials of black people in the United States.  It speaks of the past:

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past.

And sings of hope for the future:

‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

And faith in God that has carried them through:

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

National Football League

This isn’t new; in fact, it’s one hundred and twenty years old.  But for many white Americans, it’s new to them.  That is another sign that there is an entire narrative of American history and culture that is “hidden” and ignored in their education.   But since they didn’t know, it’s “new” and different.  The song represents change in a time when there is a great deal of resistance in our nation.  

In a relatively small reaction to the killing of George Floyd, the National Football League has announced that in the opening games, Lift Every Voice and Sing will be performed along with the Star Spangled Banner.  This had produced an outcry in social media; a backlash from the same folks who demanded the Confederate Battle Flag be returned to NASCAR events.

America the Beautiful, another anthem of the United States, has been performed at football games for years, including at the 2020 Super Bowl.  The Battle Hymn of the Republic, the unofficial anthem of the Union Army in the Civil War, has been altered to become the “fight song” for the University of Georgia football team.  And at every high school and collegiate game, the crowd stands for the playing of that institution’s alma mater. 

So it’s not like we don’t honor other songs besides the Star Spangled Banner at our sporting events.  We do it all the time.  

Black Players, White Audience

Sixty-eight percent of NFL players are black.  It is an important point of contact between blacks players and white spectators in America.  When San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a black man, kneeled during the Star Spangled Banner in 2016, it created a major crisis.  Kaepernick was protesting the deaths of black men at the hands of the police, and doing it on one of the biggest stages in America.  Stopping Kaepernick and other players from kneeling became a dramatic talking point for the Trump campaign.   

At the end of the season, Kaepernick was out of the league.  Despite his qualifications as a Super Bowl quality Quarterback, he was shut out.  Clearly no NFL team was willing to face the criticism of hiring him.  

With the death of George Floyd and the success of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the NFL has apologized to its players for failing to recognize their legitimate concerns.  But there has been no apology to Kaepernick.  Instead, the League is looking for other ways to get “on the right side” of the issue. 

Lift Every Voice and Sing is a small way for the institution of professional football to recognize the movement that is changing America, and the majority of their own players.  The sad part of that is, it will cause some white Americans to miss the point, and turn away in anger.  Like removing Confederate statues, banning the battle flag in NASCAR, and a single black man kneeling during the National Anthem, it is delivering another message they choose not to hear.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift ev’ry voice and sing
‘Til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on ’til victory is won

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land

Doug Collins

“A Clock and a calendar” was  the term made famous by Republican Congressman Doug Collins during the Donald Trump Impeachment hearings, so long ago (six months in real time).   Collins constantly referred to it, trying to use it as a cudgel to beat the Democratic majority.  “It’s not a fair investigation,” he’d cry, “They (the majority) have denied the minority and the President representation and due process.  They are controlled by a clock and a calendar”.

What he really meant was that the Democrats in the House were well aware that the closer to the 2020 election they came, the less likely (and more unseemly) the impeachment would be.  The only penalty of conviction from impeachment is removal from office.  As the 2020 election approached, that becomes the ultimate power of the voter, not to be usurped by the Congress.  

Doug Collins wasn’t wrong about that part.  As far as representation was concerned, the President’s representatives refused to cooperate enough to earn participation.  The Supreme Court just ruled that their theory of “Absolute Immunity” from subpoena was false, and that was the issue the Democrats in the House held it as key to giving them a say.  And the Republicans in the House certainly got a lot of “say”.  From Jim Jordan to Louie Gohmert to young Matt Gaetz, and of course from Ranking Minority Member Collins himself; we heard from the Republicans aplenty.

Voter’s Choice

The clock was running, and the calendar turning.   Now, no matter what the President might do it is up to the voters.  Whether he grants a commutation of sentence to Roger Stone for lying to the FBI and Congress, throws Michael Cohen back in jail to keep him silent, or “pardons” Vladimir Putin for putting a bounty on American lives in Afghanistan; the decision will be made by ballot, not Senatorial vote.

But the “clock and calendar” are running for the Trump Campaign as well.  They have found an “event” they cannot falsify, spin, or call “fake news”.  The COVID-19 pandemic is relentless.  They can demand what they want, but the virus doesn’t seem to care.  And the infection numbers are growing, in spite of social media obfuscations and the loyalty of Governors in Arizona and Florida.  

Manafort and Stone

And the clock and calendar were definitely running out for Roger Stone.  He was days away from reporting to the Federal prison system, probably a shaky place to be for a sixty-seven year old man with a portrait of Richard Nixon tattooed on his back.  From Trump’s political standpoint, it would have been better to let Stone serve a few months, until after the election.  That’s because while for Trump’s true enthusiasts Roger Stone’s commutation was well deserved, for those less enthralled it might seem a bit too political and friendly.  It might impact the few who haven’t made up their mind about voting for or against Mr. Trump.  But that really didn’t matter.  Roger Stone didn’t want to go to jail, and he had a choice.

Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort, had been “good soldiers” for Trump.  They had stuck to the story, not giving prosecutors anything they could use against the Trump campaign of 2016.   Manafort even pretended to “cooperate” with prosecutors so he could get more information to share with Trump’s attorneys.  And when that came to light, Manafort went to prison, still closed mouth about Trump 2016.

They would say that they are emulating one of their mentors, G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame.  But Manafort was also indebted to Russian oligarchs.  There might well be a separate threat on his life, keeping his mouth closed to reporters and those who could reduce his sentence.  So he did time, and when the first hints of COVID-19 reached the federal prison system, he was released to home confinement.  He too may receive a pardon or commutation, but it can wait until after November.

Going to Jail

But Stone was going to jail.  If the Trump Administration didn’t find a better way to intervene, Stone could talk.  He could talk about his communications with Wikileaks, he could let the world know about his telephone calls with Trump himself.  And it’s Roger Stone:  so if the facts weren’t “juicy” enough to convince prosecutors to keep him out of jail, he would make up something better.  And that would have an impact on the November election:  a Stone admission of cooperation with Wikileaks as the intermediary for the campaign could influence those few undecided votes. 

Stone represented a threat to the Trump 2020 campaign.  So how to give him what he wants, no jail time, and still keep him obligated to silence?   Loyalty to Trump wasn’t enough anymore.  A full pardon would have freed Stone to say whatever he wanted.  Stone could have written a book, timed to come out in October for maximum sales that would have set him financially for life.  It’s not like Stone’s going to work as a political operative anymore.

A full pardon would have relieved Stone of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.  But a commutation isn’t a pardon; it doesn’t clear the verdict of guilty.  It simply removes the penalty.  Stone can’t “confess” to crimes that he could still be charged for, and he can walk into the Grand Jury and demand immunity for any acts he might have done.  Stone’s commutation keeps him out of jail, but still on the hook.  Exactly where Trump wants him.

Time’s Up

Because the clock and the calendar have run out for the Trump campaign.  They are facing a mountain far steeper even than the one they climbed in August of 2016.  And, regardless (or irregardless – it’s in the dictionary now!) of the politics, competence in dealing with COVID will be the ultimate determiner of who wins in November.  The clock has already run out for Trump on that.

Warren G Harding of Ohio

“Return to Normalcy” was the great campaign-rallying cry of Republican Senator Warren G. Harding. A native of Ohio, Harding didn’t leave his front porch in Marion as he campaigned for the Presidency.  He was running against another Ohioan, Democratic Governor James Cox of Dayton.  Neither was the acclaimed nominee of their party. Harding won the nomination on the ninth ballot after a backroom deal was cut:  the origin of the term “smoke filled room”.   Cox’s nomination at the Democratic Convention took forty-four ballots.  

While Harding ultimately won the Presidential election, both Vice Presidential candidates would become President soon.  Calvin Coolidge of Vermont would succeed to the Presidency when Harding died of a heart attack at fifty-seven years old, only two years into his term of office.  And Cox’s running mate was the thirty-nine year old Franklin Roosevelt, twelve years away from his successful Presidential run.

Voter Fatigue

“Return to Normalcy” resonated with the American people.  The past eight years under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson included rapid financial growth, World War I and the Flu Epidemic of 1918 (not 1917 as the current President continues to say). It also saw the growth of American radicalism and anarchism, the creation of a Socialist Party, debate over the new League of Nations, and, probably most importantly to the voters, a post war recession.

“Normalcy”:  back to the “good old days” when things were calmer.  Even activist President Teddy Roosevelt, in office from 1901 to 1909, didn’t stir America up as much as the events of the Wilson Administration.   

Harding let Coolidge do the campaigning across the nation, but he didn’t invent the “front porch campaign”.  Another Ohioan, Republican Governor William McKinley, successfully won the Presidency from his porch in Canton, Ohio in 1896.  In fact, Harding modeled the front of his home after McKinley’s, perhaps foreshadowing his own campaign.

And Harding was careful not to say too much, or the wrong thing.  Famed writer H.L. Mencken grew frustrated with Harding’s statements:

“…(the statement) reminds me of a string of wet sponges, it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a kind of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm … of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of tosh. It is rumble and bumble. It is balder and dash.”

Harding knew he had a winning formula, and he wasn’t going to be pushed into saying something that might screw it up.  He won with over sixty percent of the popular vote.

Biden’s Porch

Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware has a lovely front porch.  In fact, it has a lovely back porch as well.  Biden has a beautiful home in Wilmington, and another beautiful place in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on the Atlantic.  It has porches too.

Joe Biden’s campaign slogan isn’t “Return to Normalcy”.  In fact, there isn’t an official slogan for the Biden Campaign yet, but a front-runner is a portion of Biden’s speech announcing his candidacy:  “Restore the Soul of America”.   That certainly is the modern equivalent of “Return to Normalcy”, and Biden is well aware that the election of 2020 is as much a referendum on Donald Trump, as the election of 1920 was about Woodrow Wilson.

Trump’s Failure

The biggest Trump failure is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Again and again, the President has acted in ways that serve to increase the severity of disease.  Every campaign rally, all the pressure to open schools and the economy, every time the President denigrates the impact of COVID on America, he increases the risk of more illness and death.

So Joe Biden does the opposite.  He refuses to have public rallies, warning of the danger of “super spreader” events.  He religiously wears a mask, not just because of his age and risk, but because it highlights the President’s cavalier disregard.  Biden has laid out plans for a national strategy to combat the epidemic.  He knows how to mobilize the nation to respond to the virus.  But mostly, he sits back and lets Donald Trump shoot himself in the foot.  

Biden knows how to shoot too.  He’s found his own foot, sometimes inserted in his own mouth, plenty of times in his fifty plus year political career.  But Biden knows that if he literally sits on his porch and lets Trump go, he keeps Trump in the spotlight.  And that’s bad for Trump.

Fatigue a Century Later

The voters of 2020 are just as fatigued as the ones a century ago.  It’s not all bad news, but our nation has been on a rollercoaster since the contested election of 2000.  Then, the Presidency was determined by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court.  Since then there’s been 9-11, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and the first African-American President.  We’ve had the Great Recession under Bush, then a gradual recovery under Obama.  

We almost elected a woman to the Presidency.  But instead, we ended up with a Reality TV Star.  We had the great boom under Trump that seemed to impact the stock market, but not the average American.  And all of the craziness of the Trump Administration, characterized by the term “governing through chaos”.  And now, it’s the pandemic.

Americans are tired of the constant upheaval.  They are frustrated with a government that doesn’t seem to work.  We are looking to “Restore the Soul of America”.  It sounds calming:  a “return to normalcy”.  

Joe should stay on the porch.   It’s his clear path to victory.

The 2020 Presidential election was going to be the most consequential choice Americans would make since the election of 1860, the one that preceded the Civil War. America was faced with a clear choice:  endorse Donald Trump, or turn away from his outdated and extreme views.

Laissez Faire

The current President’s philosophy is one that has played through our history.  From William McKinley to Herbert Hoover, Donald Trump has followed their example of laissez faire capitalism, assured in the faith that what’s “good for General Motors” is good for the country.  He’s also used the blunt instrument of tariffs and trade wars to try to bully other nations into line. 

In the Reagan years it was called “trickle down” economics.  Put the money in at the top, to the wealthiest Americans, and like a “drip” coffee pot, eventually it would drip down to the poorest.  It didn’t work in Reagan’s years; but what it did do was start a trend in “income inequality” that results in today’s extremes.  The top one percent of Americans owns more wealth than the entire middle class (Forbes). 

And Mr. Trump has corrupted the Teddy Roosevelt view of “speak softly, but carry a big stick”.  Mr. Trump does everything but speak softly, streaming tweets like vomit from a drunk, and while he brags about his “big stick” (the military), he continually demonstrates his disdain for them, and is unwilling to actually use their power.

Racism

But the perhaps the most significant trend of the Trump Administration is one towards white extremism.  Stephen Miller, a known white supremacist, is a key advisor to the President (NPR).  The policies they have shaped in immigration and civil rights are ones that are more familiar to the America of the “Know Nothings” in the 1850’s, or the Ku Klux Klan era of the 1920’s. 

 Mr. Trump is not directly to blame for the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent civil unrest, but his statements, often written by Miller, gave license to police brutality.  And he now is trying to use the unrest to agitate his supporters, spouting Richard Nixon’s dog whistle line of “law and order” as a way to suppress minority rights. 

And this President has made it clear that there are “no rules” or norms that will restrict his behavior.  His campaign sought aid from foreign nations, and he trampled on the independence of his own Justice Department.  He had dismantled the internal checks and balances of many executive departments by firing their Inspector Generals, and brought a “Roy Cohn” in as his Attorney General.  He is a President of the United States who was impeached on clear evidence of using the finances of the United States to further his own personal political goals.  And now, we find he has been silent as the Russian government placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Oath

All of these issues and many more (health insurance, for example) would have made for a lively Presidential campaign.  But now they pale before the President’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, and the ensuing economic collapse.  

The Presidential oath is sworn in front of the nation at the inauguration, and calls for the President to “…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”.  To do that, the President must first protect the nation.  Donald Trump, forty-fifth President of the United States, failed in that task like no President has ever done before.  He ignored warnings about the COVID-19 virus from his intelligence and scientific advisors at a time when it might have been possible to control the spread.

And he did it for political reasons.  He didn’t have time for a pandemic; he had an impeachment removal to avoid and an election to win.  And he didn’t have time for problems with China; he was too busy negotiating his “fantastic deal”.   So by the time there was a federal response to the virus, it was too late, and too embedded.

A Clear Failure

COVID-19 was not Donald Trump’s fault.  But the failure of the United States to react and control the disease is at his doorstep.  It only takes looking at other nations in the world to see what might have been. France, Germany, and most of the rest of the European Union have COVID under control.  Even the United Kingdom and Italy, who had a difficult time with the disease, now are reopening carefully.

But here in the United States, the President applied his “laissez faire” philosophy to dealing with disease.  He ignored it, and then after it was too late to control it, passed responsibility for action to state governors.  He then proceeded to hamstring the governor’s responses, causing the disease to have even more opportunity to spread.  His malpractice hasn’t stopped yet:  even yesterday he demanded, yes demanded, that  public schools open.  This even though his own scientists tell him that they could provide a hotbed for COVID transmission in the community.

Campaign 2020

But if schools don’t open, parents can’t go to work.  If they aren’t working, the economy cannot begin to recover before November.  And if the economy isn’t getting better, then Mr. Trump doesn’t think he can win reelection.  So open “the damn” schools; that’s the only choice the Trump Administration wants to offer.

Joe Biden’s not campaigning from his basement.  He’s actually in the “garden room” in his home in Delaware.  And he should stay there.  Donald Trump is so busy shooting himself in the foot Biden doesn’t need to do anything.

Wealthy Chicagoan

One wealthy man in Chicago had his fortune protected from the Stock Market Crash of 1929.  As the economy tanked, many workers lost their jobs.  The banks closed, and savings vanished. Thousands of Chicagoans were left without a way to pay the bills, cover the rent, or even buy food.  

But the wealthy man in Chicago still had money and felt their pain.  He opened up a soup kitchen that served thousands perhaps their only meal of the day.  He also made sure that clothing stores took care of those who couldn’t afford the literal shirts on their backs.  

But there are no statues to this generous and worthy man in Chicago.  Despite the lack of city gratitude, we still all know his name, albeit for a somewhat different reason:  Al Capone. 

His example serves two points.  First, it doesn’t take a monument to remember history. Even the most vicious criminal, who used a baseball bat to kill two associates at a dinner, is not forgotten.  And second:  even evil people sometimes do something worthy of praise.  Capone is remembered in Chicago; in fact, he visage is replicated in the wax museum.  But he’s not handing out meals.  

The Dam Tour 

(The dam video)

Herbert Hoover was a proponent of the Colorado River dam long before he was President of the United States. As Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of Commerce, he pressed for the structure, both as a water conservation measure, and as a way to control floods in the California valleys where the river flowed.  It took nine years, and his election to the Presidency to get it done, as well as complex deals with three states and Mexico for the water rights.  

And the dam itself took five more years to build, creating Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States (when its full).  Ninety-six men lost their lives in the construction process. When it was completed, Hebert Hoover was out, a failed Presidency in the light of the Great Depression.  The new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, dedicated the dam on September 30th 1935, with 10,000 spectators there for the ceremony.   But Roosevelt was not interested in honoring his predecessor.  The engineering marvel was called the Boulder Dam for the first twelve years of its existence.

It wasn’t until FDR was gone, and Republicans gained control of the post-war Congress, that the name was changed to the Hoover Dam.  So Hoover’s role wasn’t forgotten.

Call it What?

Mt. McKinley was the highest peak in North America.  While it took until the late 1800’s for humans to know that, it was there for hundreds of thousands of years before.  McKinley peaks at 20,310 feet high, and was named in 1896 by a random gold miner who arrived at its base.  He liked the Governor of Ohio, a Republican candidate for the Presidency.  William McKinley won the election, and the name stuck.

But it’s the highest mountain in North America, so it’s not like it was “discovered” in 1896.  The native peoples of Alaska were well aware of the peak that they called Denali.  Alaskans wanted to restore the original name to the mountain for decades, but Congress blocked the change. Politics being politics, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Congressman Ralph Regula of Canton, Ohio led the campaign for “McKinley”.  President McKinley was a native of Canton; his tomb is located there.  

In 1980 the National Park surrounding the mountain was renamed Denali National Park, but the mountain itself remained Mt. McKinley.  It wasn’t until 2015 during the Obama Administration that the name Denali was restored to the mountain itself.

Erasing

History wasn’t erased by not placing a statue of Al Capone on the Magnificent Mile or down by the “Bean” in Chicago.  And Capone’s good acts could not erase the criminal actions of his life.  No one forgot the role that Herbert Hoover played in the building of the dam that now bears his name.  Politics prevented his immediate recognition, but Hoover lived to see his name placed on the dam he was so instrumental in developing.

And the almost random naming of a mountain in Alaska for the Governor of Ohio running for President took over a hundred years to undo.  But today, it is the ancestral name of Denali now graces the maps, the Park, and the Mountain itself.

Who Writes Your Story

(Hamilton, of course)

Names change, and monuments and statues go up and come down.  They are not history:  they symbolize a view of history.  That’s why it is perfectly appropriate to take a statue of Robert E. Lee down in Richmond, while one remains on Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg.  It’s not erasing history, in fact, its laying history bare for all to see.  Lee was a fine soldier, and an honorable man.  But, as modern day General Stanley McChrystal laid out in his essay explaining his own changing view of the Confederate general:

“Lee’s own statements on slavery are conflicting, but his overall record is clear. Although he repeatedly expressed his theoretical opposition to slavery, he in fact reflected the conventional thinking of the society from which he came and actively supported the “peculiar institution” of slavery. Well before joining the Confederacy, Lee loathed abolitionists, and his feelings hardened as the Civil War dragged on” (Atlantic).

Lee’s statue in Richmond and other towns was erected as part of re-writing history in the 1890’s, the revisionist movement to erase the stain of slavery.  But just because it was rewritten in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t be revealed in the present.  McKinley became Denali.  Boulder became Hoover.  And Lee’s statues to racism should come down.  His place in history won’t be erased.  But we can remember him for what he really did.

Pandemic Reality

We are in the middle of a global pandemic.  As much as many American leaders have tried to deny it, the growing number of COVID-19 diagnoses, over three million, and deaths, almost 133,000, tell the tale.  The infection rate is growing, particularly in those states that seemed to try to deny that the virus was serious.  The newest “stat” that helps to reveal the increase: the number of new infections diagnosed in each state per 100,000 people every day (WAPO).  Arizona is the “winner” right now, with fifty-five new cases per 100,000.

By the way, I’ve used the quote from my old boss, Pete Nix, before, “Figures lie and liars figure”.  And yes, I’m figuring.  So do the COVID deniers, who now are boasting on social media that the “death rate” is going down:  “Woo-Hoo”!!!  As more and more folks get infected, yes fewer of them are dying.  But drop by any hospital in Houston or Phoenix.  They are at capacity, and physicians are making life and death treatment choices multiple times a day. Doesn’t sound like a “Woo-Hoo” moment to me. 

We Blew It

The European countries seem to have the virus under control.  So does Canada.  Mexico seems to be in trouble.  But the big world “failure” in COVID-19 control is the United States of America.  How do we know for sure?  Well, for the first time in my memory, Americans can’t travel out of the country in most cases.  Europe doesn’t want us, neither does Canada, and Mexico is moving to block the border as well.  They don’t want Americans, because they don’t want the brushfire of COVID to spread.  Can’t blame them.

But we are desperate to get back to normal.  We want baseball and football; we want to go to restaurants, beaches and bars.  And for many Americans, we absolutely want our kids to go back to school in the fall.

School Bells

There’s good reason for that.  I spent a career as a public school teacher.  Most kids learn better in a classroom in a school.  They need to be around their peers, and taught be professionals, in person. And most parents need their kids to go to school, so they can go to work.  Every good educator can make a strong case that schools work, and kids need to be there.

I had the surprising “honor” of being back in a classroom when the COVID crisis began.  I took on a long-term substitute position, and started on March 9^th.  A week later, we were checking out of the building, and I entered a whole new world of online teaching, Google’s classroom application, and Zoom meetings.  So I have some first hand knowledge of what it’s like to be a “remote” teacher.  And, for most kids, it’s not as good as the real thing in person.  It’s not as good for most teachers either.

So, in a normal world, school bells should be ringing in August.  Parents should be shopping for back-to-school, and teachers getting their classrooms and lesson plans ready for the year.  But it ain’t a normal year.

Egg Crate Incubators

We know that when we put people together in close groups, we dramatically increase the rate of COVID-19 infection.  Most have carefully tried to control their “circles” of exposure, but “normal” school will throw all of that out the window.  Try passing through the hallway of any school at the beginning or the end of the day – there is no such thing as “social distancing” there.  

And our schools “egg-crate” design puts dozens of kids together in relatively small rooms.  Sure there’s the new nursery rhyme: “Your mask helps me, my mask helps you, social distancing helps us both, and staying at home helps us all”.  And teachers are capable of keeping masks on kids, particularly in middle and high school.  We stopped them from chewing gum for years, and the mask won’t stick to the bottom of the desk.

But in the end, it doesn’t seem like just wearing masks will be enough.  We can reduce the number of kids in a building, but by doing so, we are keeping kids at home.  “Educationese” has a new term: “hybrid learning”.  Two days in school, three days online at home:  that’s the proposed new school week.

We can all “rest easy”.  The kids are going to transmit COVID-19, until we have a vaccine there will be no way to avoid it.  No matter the prevention efforts, there are going to be outbreaks.  Any given year’s flu season is evidence of that.  But kids don’t seem to be too impacted by COVID, so it’s OK – right?

The Staff

There are two major issues that make this NOT OK.  Issue one:  kids go home after school.  Sure it’d be all right for most kids to get COVID and get through it.  But when they go home, they’re going to give it to Mom and Dad, and maybe Grandma and Papa.  That’s not going to be OK, as Mom and Dad head to work before they know they are infected, and increase the spread. And while kids normally have good outcomes from COVID, their parents, well not so much, and their grandparents may be facing death sentences.  So there’s that.

Issue two:  what about all of those adults who are standing in front of those kids in class?  What about the teachers, and the custodians, bus drivers, principals, and support personnel?  They are the age of the parents and grandparents.  How much risk are they supposed to assume?

Get a Shot

I know medical personnel have been assuming risk for COVID for months.  So have other “essential workers”.  But few other workers are set into the “hotbed” of a school environment.   As a substitute teacher last year, I got a flu shot for the first time.  I did it for three reasons.  First, I hadn’t been in a school environment for a few years, and I lost my “natural immunity” built up through forty years of hanging out with kids, sick or not.

Second, as an older teacher, I know I’m more vulnerable to the illnesses that I would have ignored in my earlier years.  And third, I have a wife at home, not seasoned by years of exposure.  I needed to protect her from whatever was floating around the building.

But there is no vaccine for COVID.  And all of the risks that convinced me to get the flu shot last year are compounded by the potentially fatal illness, for me, and my family.

So that’s easy for me, don’t substitute until there’s a vaccine.  But what about the other teachers who aren’t retired, and are required to go back to work?  What sacrifices are we asking them to make?

Public Education

It’s public education in the United States.  You know there won’t be the resources to reasonably protect the kids or the adults.  Will there be a new mask for each kid each day?  Or even for the kids who “forgot”?  And when they take kids temperatures at the front door, how are the kids getting off the bus going to get back home?  For parents already stressed by a shaky economy, whose going to leave work because the kid’s at 99.7?

What happened in the “old days” before last March?  Kids went to school with fevers, and when the school personnel found out, the kids hung out in the “clinic” until parents arrive to get them – maybe for hours.  But you can’t do that in a COVID world; they can’t be in the building.  

I don’t have many good answers to all my questions.  What I can say is this.  We better be ready to do online schooling, and we better be ready to do it better than we did before.  Because we didn’t do what Europe did.  We didn’t make the sacrifices to stop the disease.  And the price to pay is that we are going to live with it until the vaccine arrives.

So better get a decent computer and high-speed Internet.  Your kids are going to need it.

Revelation

This is an era of revelation, in the truest sense of the word. We are “revealing” to the world, and to ourselves, the reality of American history. Like any honest reckoning, it is painful, not the childhood story we remember and want it to be. George Washington didn’t chop down the cherry tree, though many “Muricans” want to believe in our historical fairy tales. Now, from those who are descendants of the suffered, we are hearing out loud some of the searing, honest, truth.

President Trump intentionally emphasized these revelations by his actions on Fourth of July weekend.  First, he went to Mt. Rushmore to give a speech and create a spectacle.  It was all summed up in one photo, the President and the First Lady standing on the stage, the monumental faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt staring over the scene. 

Six Grandfathers

Mr. Trump gave a speech defending the Founding Fathers, the mythical story of “Murica,” and defending the “right” of privilege.  And he did it at the “Six Grandfathers”, the Lakota name for the peak renamed “Rushmore” by the men who violated the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.  The treaty guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota Sioux for their exclusive use.  It lasted almost six years, before a brash young Colonel George Custer took his Seventh Cavalry in to “protect” the miners and settlers who were breaking the terms of the agreement.  

We know how that turned out for Custer, but the real tragedy is that the sacred land of the Lakota was soon lost to them forever.  So Mr. Trump’s appearance, driving away the Native American protestors and mandating fireworks in spite of the threat of forest fires, just amplified the point.  ‘Murica is for winners:  the Lakota were the losers, in 1874, and today.  That’s what our “history” should be.

Immigrants

America is a miraculous nation.  There is an immensely positive story to tell of American exceptionalism:  a nation founded by immigrants, searching for a better way of life.  Emma Lazarus defined it well in “The New Colossus”:  

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

Immigrants, both voluntary and involuntary, built our “more perfect union”.   That’s the story we have learned.  But in this recent era of revelation, we are being held to the “lightning flame” of our original sin.  Our nation was built upon the bodies of the aboriginal peoples, the “Indians” as Columbus called them, even though he was far from India.   Thank you, Mr. President, for making that so clear by ignoring it completely at Six Grandfathers.

Slavery 

On this Fourth of July, I watched a 1972 movie about the writing of the Declaration of Independence.  1776 glosses over many of the Founding Fathers imperfections (though their interest in sex was made abundantly clear).  But it does confront the second original sin of “our more perfect union”, slavery.  Benjamin Franklin laid out Founding Fathers choice outright when John Adams threatened to lose the vote for independence over slavery:  “…how dare you risk our revolution”. 

 And John Rutledge, delegate from South Carolina made sure that everyone knew their complicity.  Yes, it’s the men of the South who owned the slaves, but it’s the Boston merchants of the North who make “shillings” in the “Triangle Trade”.  Bibles and rum to Africa, Slaves and Bibles to the West Indies, molasses back to Boston for rum, silver in the pockets of the Northern traders.  The colonies depended on slavery, even from the very start, from South to North.  No region was innocent. (If you’ve got the stomach for raw honesty – here’s the Rutledge song of the Triangle Trade).

Slaves, the “involuntary immigrants”, were as much a part of our “more perfect union” as the Germans, and the Irish, and the Italians and the Chinese.  Their labor built America; slave hands set the bricks of the White House and the Capitol. Their sweat and blood is literally the foundation of our government.

Disrespect

And Washington DC is almost 50% African American.  The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, a Black woman, is tasked with trying to control the COVID-19 pandemic in her town.  Common sense dictates that in a pandemic, social distancing and masks reduce the spread of the virus.  It’s also commonsense that large crowds should be avoided.  And that’s what the Mayor has said.  

But the President determined that there would be a National Fireworks display on the Mall in Washington, and that there would be crowds for him to speak to.  So there was an air show on the Fourth at the National Mall, and a Presidential speech, and not one but two sets of fireworks.  The fireworks “bracketed” the speech.  I imagine they thought it would give Mr. Trump a better crowd.

Hard to figure who “won”:  the Mayor or the President.  There were fewer people than the normal Fourth of July crowd, and most who came showed up for the second set of fireworks, after the President’s speech.  But it was clear that the President disrespected the Mayor, and the majority-minority city.  He did that with full knowledge of the message it sends.

Good Old Days

Mr. Trump, in both speeches, called for a return to the “good old days” when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America (Trump even remembered it was 1492) and the slaves were happy on the plantations.  That mythology has long passed by:  even back in the 1960’s I learned that as far as Europeans were concerned, Leif Erickson came to North America far before Columbus mislabeled his charts, and that the “Indians” didn’t really sell Manhattan for twenty-four dollars worth of beads and trinkets.  

It is no accident that a portrait of Andrew Jackson now overlooks the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.  Jackson acted without regard for human rights.  He was a slave owner, and the prime mover behind the Indian Removal, only a part of which was the Trail of Tears.  Jackson saw himself as a general in charge of a nation.  When the Supreme Court, led by venerable Chief Justice John Marshall, ruled against him; Jackson said, “John Marshall has made his decision, let him enforce it”.

Trump’s Strategy

Can’t you see Mr. Trump saying the same to John Roberts should they require him to turn over his tax returns?  Or release those held in the border “camps”?  Or demand that he vacate the White House after Joe Biden’s inauguration?

President Trump has determined that his political strategy is that white people want to go back to the 1950’s.  We recognized it in 2016.  In the first month of Trump World  I wrote about it in Trump World and the Beaver.   But in 2020, he is doubling down on that emphasis, willingly giving up any façade of recognizing discrimination and altering “the truth” to embolden his minority base of white people to come out and vote. 

He is encouraging hate, and lies, and privilege:  all in plain sight.  He doesn’t want a multi-cultural America.  That America won’t vote for him.  He’s settling for ‘Murica – because they want Trump.

Politics

The reality of American politics is that sometimes your candidates win, and sometimes your candidates lose.  Get involved and committed, and the wins are incredible.  That same commitment means that the losses are even more devastating.

But the other reality of American politics is that sometimes we have to compromise, to take less than we want, both in our policies and in our candidates.  Bill Clinton was that kind. He was a tremendous disappointment as a Democrat.  Sure, he was better than George Bush Sr., or Bob Dole, or Ross “Can I Finish?” Perot.  But Bill Clinton was as moderate a Democrat as they come, really Republican-lite.  In fact, he helped drive the Republican Party to the “right”, because he absconded with their positions in the center.  

Clinton

And, of course, Bill Clinton “sullied” the Presidency.  Impeachment and removal was definitely too much, especially when driven by three Republican leaders:  one who cheated on his wife with cancer, another who just cheated on his wife, and a third who molested the boys he coached in wrestling.  They were Republicans:  ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich, Speaker-elect Bob Livingston who replaced him, and Dennis Hastert, the Speaker who ultimately got the job.  They definitely lived in “glass houses” and shouldn’t have thrown stones.  

And Clinton should have resigned.  It would have been the honorable thing to do.  But he didn’t, and Al Gore, his Vice President and the Democratic candidate in 2000 took “the heat” from the American public.  Gore won the popular vote, but, like Trump in 2016, George W Bush managed to eke out an Electoral College victory.  The Supreme Court, in a party line 5 to 4 vote, stopped the count in Florida giving the election to Bush. 

Bush

So George W Bush became the President of the United States, and perhaps worse, Dick Cheney became the Vice President.  What was “Republican-lite” under Clinton, became hardcore American “might makes right” under Bush-Cheney.  

As a Democrat it was all too much to swallow.  The almost panicked, bug-eyed vote counter in Palm Beach County, searching for “hanging chads” seemed to characterize the whole election.  Bush felt illegitimate, a President by the choice of five Republicans on the Supreme Court, not the American people.

But there was one saving grace.  If you didn’t like the President in the White House, there was a much better one on TV. Martin Sheen played Jed Bartlet, the Democratic President in the The West Wing, and for seven years helped us remember what “big D” Democracy was all about. 

The West Wing

While Bush was banning “partial birth” abortions, giving trillions of dollars to the already rich, and costing senior citizens with the Medicare drug “donut hole”, the cast of The West Wing was pursuing better policies for America.  They too had to compromise, and take only a portion of what they hoped to achieve.  But they, unlike Dick Cheney, listened to America, even the crazies on “Big Block of Cheese” day, and made you feel like the country could be good again.

When 9-11 hit, there were the first hours when Bush was shuttled from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska.  Who was in charge?  Dick Cheney seemed to be running things, from the basement of the White House or some undisclosed location.  It wasn’t until that lone plane with fighter escort passed overhead, that the President returned to take command.  And when he spoke at Ground Zero in New York, and then at the Islamic Center in Washington, we started to have some confidence in our leadership.

The West Wing helped nursed us through the attack as well.  The first show back after the attack, Isaac and Ishmael, helped educate the nation about who really attacked us.  The simple equation:  “Islamic Extremists to Islam = KKK to Christianity,” explained a lot.  I used it in class later on.

Obama

So for six of the long years of George W. Bush, including another heartbreaking defeat with John Kerry in 2004, The West Wing helped get me through.  And when The West Wing left us in 2006,  they did so with the first Hispanic President, Matt Santos and a Republican Secretary of State, Arnold Vinick, the close loser in the Presidential race.  The show also left us with real life sorrow, as the venerable Chief of Staff turned Vice Presidential candidate, Leo McGarry, died in real life of a massive heart attack.  And so he did on the show, on election night.  We mourned both.

Did life imitate art, or art imitate life?  Barack Obama, the first African-American President, won in 2008.  And while the next eight years had frustrations, both with the President, and more often with the Republican led Congress, there wasn’t the need for a theatrical alternative to the reality of the White House.  Yes they compromised, and they made mistakes in the Obama Administration, but like The West Wing, the muddled through in the right direction.

Trump

And then came the world of Donald Trump, and the ugly, bitter, down in the dirt election of 2016.  Like 2000, the vote was so close.  Hillary won the popular vote, Trump the Electoral College.  But for the thumb of Jim Comey on the scale on October 28^th, perhaps we would have had four more years of Democrats.  But Comey did what he did, probably because the investigation would have leaked anyway, and Trump was President.

It wasn’t a TV show that helped me through this political existential crisis.  Instead, it was a Broadway production, a musical of all things, grounded in what American democracy (little ‘d’) might be.  A “hip-hop” version of the life of Alexander Hamilton, with the roles of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the all-white founding fathers played indiscriminately by African-American, Hispanic, or white folks.  When I heard that description originally I thought it was a joke, some kind of farce.  

Hamilton

But then I heard the songs, and I caught the spirit of the story.  In a time when immigrants were being locked up at the border, their children ripped away, Hamilton was describing immigrants, “We get the job done,” helping start America.  The Trump Era, when government seemed nothing except a self-serving way to increase the profits of the rich, and most importantly the Trump family, there was the story of the sacrifice “for the Revolution”.

It’s a story of strong women and flawed men.  But most importantly, it’s a story of hope.

Hope is what I sorely needed for the past three years of Trump.  I saw the touring show of Hamilton twice, first in Cleveland, and then later in Columbus.  We were headed back to Cleveland for a third time, when the pandemic changed our plans.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the author and original lead in the Broadway show, is very much aware of the impact of his creation.  It is no surprise then, that in the midst of the pandemic, the original cast Broadway version of the movie was released for the Fourth of July.

Friday night, my wife and I had a “pandemic” date night.  We had early drinks, shrimp cocktail, and filet mignon.  Then it was onto Hamilton, a show we know now by heart.  But it was even better.  If immigrants “get the job done”, then the original Broadway cast really does it even better.  We soared, and cried, and were uplifted by their performances, and the message of Hamilton.   It once again helped get us through this tragic political time.

It gave us hope.

I hope we won’t need on the Fourth of July next year.

Another in the “Out My Window” series about life in the COVID-19 pandemic

Shopping

So we ventured forth into Columbus yesterday.  While we haven’t been “hermits” for the past few months, we haven’t gone into the city too often. Recently our trips have been going to some woods or abandoned factories to try to trap lost dogs.  But today, as we travelled through town, we heard the news from Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine.  On a COVID crisis scale of 1 to 4, Franklin County (that’s Columbus and the surrounding suburbs) is at a ‘3’, and seems headed to ‘4’.  Four is the worst, back to the lockdown mode of March.  I don’t know what that means as far as businesses are concerned, but I expect restaurants and bars will be so limited that they are either forced to close by the state, or by the economics.

We were out buying a new hot tub.  For those who remember the days of track team parties and Cross Country winter runs at five in the morning, after twenty-one years my old hot tub finally bit the dust.  There are lots of memories and scars on that thing.  It’s onto a new one, and it will be here on Monday.  But the old standing invitation to use it anytime, even three in the morning or during a snow storm, isn’t in effect.  Not, at least, for a while:  not until COVID-19 is no longer a big part of all of our lives.

Not Normal

And, for only the second time since the fifteenth of March, we ate at a restaurant.  We were outside, on the patio, carefully placed away from others.  It wouldn’t really have mattered; three o’clock isn’t rush hour in most places, and certainly not at Fado’s Irish Pub.  But it still felt good to be out, to be drinking beer from the tap (Harp’s – it’s summer) and eating food someone else made “right there”.   But with the virus growing, it’s probably like that March 15^th meal… the last time out for a while.

One of our favorite places to visit is a little fishing town called Sebastian, Florida.  We liked it so much, we spent the winter camped nearby (camper, not tent!!) a couple of years ago.  The prime nightspot in Sebastian is Captain Hiram’s Hotel and Restaurant, along with the “Sandbar” bar.  Just got an email:  first a restaurant employee was diagnosed with COVID and the restaurants were closed. Now a hotel worker has it too.  Captain Hiram’s Resort is closed for the unforeseeable future.

Figures Don’t Lie

The numbers are staggering:  50,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the United States — every day.  Sure we are testing more people.  But more people are “failing” the tests too.  Statistically speaking if you test more, you should have a lot more negatives.  But that’s not what’s happening.  In places that tried to ignore the first onslaught of COVID, like Florida, and Texas and Arizona, now hospitals are getting maxed out with patients.  And it’s not just a “red state” phenomenon. California is also seeing staggering growth in disease diagnosis.  

2,787,038 Americans have been diagnosed so far.  130,906 have died.  You do the math – but to save time – it’s about 4.6%.   That’s 2300 deaths per 50,000 diagnosed.  And the number diagnosed is growing exponentially (ncov2019.live) (WAPO). 

We are far, far from over the COVID pandemic.  In fact, it seems we are really just beginning. 

Heigh Ho Silver!!

There is some good news.  President Trump yesterday actually said, “…I’m all for masks”.  That’s a sea change from the “I don’t need one” that we’ve heard for the past four months.  Now, he thinks it makes him, “…look like the Lone Ranger”.  That’s fine if it works for him.  And I’ve already seen movement among his devout supporters, who until now have spent paragraphs on social media trying to disprove the value of masks.  All of a sudden, they’re wearing them.  If mask wearing stops being a Red/Blue symbol of ideology, and starts being the “human” thing to do, I guess I don’t care how it happens.

Wearing a mask is the right thing to do, though nowhere near a perfect “preventative”.  Your mask helps me, my mask helps you, social distancing helps us both, and staying at home helps us all.  I know there are folks who can’t tolerate an N-95 mask.  So use a bandana.  And I have a good friend who cannot hear, and reads lips.  Masks cut her off from the spoken world.  Our world needs to accommodate her needs.  Social distancing and pulled down masks can work while we keep her in the conversation.

Play with COVID

We’ve missed the time when we could “stop the virus”.  Now we have to wait until we have a cure, and a vaccine.  And for those who cruelly say, “…well we’re all going to get it anyway, so let’s get it over with”:  I hope it’s not your mother, or wife, or father or son that can’t “beat the odds” and dies.  

And while I’m ranting, stop making fun of the college kids in Tuscaloosa.  They had a “COVID Party”, like the anti-vaxxers “chicken pox parties”.  One person has the virus and everyone paid into the pot.  The next person diagnosed wins the cash.  Let’s hope they don’t win the big “jackpot in the sky”.  The story reeks of “privilege”, the privilege of ignoring science.  That got us in this mess in the first place.  Sure they’re kids and they’re being stupid.  But there are plenty of elders who’ve been just as stupid about this too.  At least someone will get “silver” in this deal.

Home Bound

It’s tough to travel:  how do you stay in a hotel, or eat in a restaurant? Yes, we can haul the camper, but just being “on the road” means we are going to be in more “social contact”.  And if we can’t go into the local pizza place, or the neighborhood bar, or the “Piggly Wiggly” grocery store without worrying, or creating worry, it’s just not as much fun.  

So we’re going to hang here at home.  We’ve got a new “foster” puppy, but the “foster” title fell away pretty quick.  She’s won a place on the bed, and in our hearts.  “Keelie” is the newest member of our pack.  And we keep doing home improvement projects.  The utility room is redone, the garage is insulated and shelved, and the new hot tub is on the way.  The salesman said that seems to be the “way of the world” right now.  Everyone is doing home projects:  what else can they do?  He’s selling hot tubs and outdoor furniture so fast that folks are on waiting lists for months.   

“Months” is probably about the right amount of time.  It will be months until a potential vaccine can begin to put an end to COVID.  Months before we can have a national strategy for dealing with the crisis.  And months before we can even start thinking about “back to normal”.  

Guess we’ll be hanging here at home, playing with Keelie and soaking in the new hot tub.

At the suggestion of a good and old friend, here’s a “what-if” story!!!!  There’s a lot to talk about – you can check out part one here: The Clinton Years – Part One.  So here’s part two: 

In the Year 2020 

Can’t help that this song got stuck in my head (In the Year 2525)

Impeachment

It was towards the end of 2019. The Republican dominated House of Representatives moved to impeach and remove Hillary Clinton from the Presidency.  Congressmen Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz turned down lucrative media offers to stay in the House.  They joined the other “crazies” of the right, Jim Jordan, Mick Mulvaney, Mark Meadows and the rest.  All wanted nothing more than to remove a Clinton from office.

The case against Hillary Clinton was not based on the 2016 campaign. They were unable to find charges against getting aid from foreign powers, or using hush money to pay porn stars (Bill, if he did, was “slick” at it).  The Republican Judiciary Committee brought a single charge against the President: abuse of power.  That charge was based on subversion of the Constitution. They claimed the use of executive orders circumvented the legitimate legislative authority of the Congress.  

The hearings began in the fall of 2019, with the predetermined full vote of the House at the beginning of 2020.  The timing wasn’t about when the alleged abuse occurred, but as an opening gambit to the 2020 Presidential campaign.  

Still in Office

The Republican leadership of the House, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, stood back and let it happen. The impeachment hearings went on just as the Benghazi hearings, ad naseum.  As McCarthy said before the 2016 election:  

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

Hillary Clinton became the third President of the United States to be impeached (and the first Presidential couple to share the dubious honor).   But the Republicans had only a narrow majority in the Senate.   After a long drawn out hearing with multiple witnesses, they could only muster fifty-four votes for removal, far short of the sixty-seven needed. She remained President.  But the Senate did drag Hillary Clinton through the mud, putting dirt on for the 2020 campaign.

Pandemic

The administrative prowess of the first woman President proved important when US intelligence sources reported to her about the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China back in November of 2019.  She immediately put travel bans on China, and demanded that American scientists from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the World Health Organization, be admitted to the scene.  These early actions gave Europe and America a fair warning of the impending pandemic.  By Christmas world health organizations were tracking the virus, and isolating any cases that spread out of China.

Testing and tracing became commonplace in the United States.  And while there were outbreaks of the disease, quick and decisive quarantines led to limited social upheaval, and controlled the spread.  The United States adapted to a new normal, a world of facemasks, temperature taking and constant testing. Actual infection rates remained low, with hospitals able to handle the additional burdens, and the fatality rate stayed at a “flu like” fifty thousand. 

The economy took “a hit”, with a modest increase in unemployment and a fall in the stock market.  But, with some modifications, most Americans were able to continue their normal lives, jobs, schools, and recreation without too much disruption.  Like the “bird flu” of 2005, or the Ebola outbreak of 2014, the COVID-19 virus was contained and controlled.  

The leading virologists praised the Administration’s efforts.  They spoke of the catastrophe that was avoided, having to shut down the entire country and hundreds of thousands dead.  On “Trump TV” though, the ex-candidate and others were quick see the government action as overreach, making conspiratorial claims that Clinton was trying to assume dictatorial powers.  The ugliness of 2016 was still here.

Violence

Hillary Clinton shared the frustration of Barack Obama when it came to mass shootings.  Unable to pass any meaningful gun restrictions through the Congress, she tried to regulate guns through changes in the administrative codes.  High capacity magazines and bump-stocks were banned, but shootings continued in a nation now even more divided.  The Supreme Court, in spite of the addition of Garland, upheld the Second Amendment right to own weapons, and pro-gun activists joined in organizations even more extreme than the National Rifle Association.  

Law enforcement, aware of the divisions caused by social upheaval, tried to gain control by the use of “broken windows” philosophy.  Small crimes were swiftly and dramatically punished, with the idea that action would prevent more serious behavior.  But the death of several unarmed black men at the hands of the police caused mass demonstrations in the streets.  Clinton agreed with the demonstrators in her famous “Black Lives Matter” speech, but “Trump TV” and other sources encouraged counter “blue lives” and “all lives” demonstrations. There were violent clashes between the forces. The National Guard was back at work, trying to maintain order.

Summer of 2020

Donald Trump chose not to run for President again, saying that he was too old, and so was Hillary. After the declaration, he famously picked up a golf club and teed off on the first hole at Mara-Lago. House Speaker Paul Ryan “reluctantly” accepted the “draft” of “moderate” Republicans to run for President. He was able to overcome more extreme opponents like Rand Paul and Trey Gowdy to gain the nomination.  But the cost of his victory was acceptance of a “pro-Trump” type agenda, putting him firmly on the side of gun and police rights.  

Hillary Clinton ran for a second term, though she dropped moderate Tim Kaine from the ticket.  In solidarity with minorities, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is the new Democratic candidate for Vice President. As we enter a 2020 election the need for that change demonstrates how divided the nation really is.   

Clinton Report Card

The first term of the Hillary Clinton administration had successes.  She has proven to be an able administrator, and an effective leader of American foreign policy.  The alliance with the European Union and NATO are stronger than ever, even more so with the collapse of the Putin regime in Russia.  It is still unclear what will follow his demise.

The goals of the Paris Accord are slowing being reached.  Only China and India remain as the world’s great polluters, and the combined economic pressure of the European Union and the United States is gradually forcing them into compliance.  There is great hope that the radical climate changes caused by carbon pollution might be avoided after all.

But domestically the nation is torn.  The Republican dominated Congress has done little to aid the racial strife, and the constant friction between Congress and the Presidency is wearying.  That, by the way, is the basis of the Ryan for President campaign slogan:  “Return to Normalcy”.  It should surprise no one that he reached back to Warren Harding to find a theme.  It worked for Harding in similar circumstances.

America’s Choice

The other question to be determined by the American people is whether they are in favor of a divided government, with the Presidency and the Court controlled by moderate forces, and the Congress more conservative ones.  The outcome of the Clinton-Ryan choice is unclear, but just as unclear and important is who will control legislation when the dust clears in November.

So America, 2020 offers a choice.  Vote Republican, for Ryan and the Congress, and get a government that can act as one.  Or vote for Clinton, and change the Congress to do the same.  Or reflect the current state of the nation, and continue a divided government that doesn’t seem to work at all.

At the suggestion of a good and old friend, here’s a “what-if” story!!!!  There’s a lot to talk about – so here’s part one: 

A Nation Divided

January 20, 2017

The view from the Capitol steps was awe-inspiring.  The crowd size rivaled Barack Obama’s 2008 inaugural. It packed in from the front of the Capitol back to the Washington Monument and onto the side streets beyond.  Most were dressed in white, in honor of the suffragettes who fought for the vote. They matched the color of the President-elect’s pantsuit.  While the clouds threatened rain early, as midday approached, the sun peaked out.

A little before noon, three former Presidents took their places behind the podium.  Outgoing President Barack Obama, along with the First Lady Michelle, sat beside former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.  Then former President Bill Clinton emerged from the Capitol, accompanying the incoming forty-fifth President, Hillary Clinton.  They smiled as they shook hands and worked their way down the stairs to meet Chelsea in the front row seats.

The 2016 election was a near thing.  Donald Trump tapped into a vein of extremism in America, and did much better than polls predicted.  And it wasn’t just Trump:  America was still a misogynist nation.  Hillary Clinton faced an uphill battle from the start as the first woman to earn a major party nomination.  

She hadn’t helped herself with the email scandal, dragged out by seven different Republican Congressional investigations.  The FBI cleared her in the summer before the election, but there could have been an “October surprise”. The Bureau discovered more emails on an aide’s computer.  FBI Director James Comey followed Department of Justice policy and kept that discovery a secret. He faced withering criticism after the election. He hadn’t revealed the discovery to Congress, and was forced from office. But no additional information was gained, and Clinton squeaked to victory.

Competence

Hillary Clinton wasn’t a great campaigner.  Her analytical mind didn’t lend itself to the campaign “pep rallying”, and unlike her predecessors, she was unable to empathize with voters.  But the one thing Hillary Clinton had, was competence.  She knew how Washington worked, even from her early days as a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee in the Watergate era.  Her years as First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State gave her insight into the system beyond any previous leader.  It was as if William Seward succeeded Abraham Lincoln, instead of Andrew Johnson.

The first test of the new administration was the still open seat on the Supreme Court.  Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow President Obama a final appointment to the Court, hoping that a Republican would gain the Presidency.  But with Clinton’s election, McConnell was faced with the prospect of holding a vacancy for four years.  

Clinton knew that this nominee would set the political tone for the entire first term.  And she was acutely aware that she was replacing Anton Scalia, the archconservative anchor of the right.  So instead of a Ginsburg or Sotomayor type nominee, the new President followed the lead of her predecessor.  She re-nominated moderate Merrick Garland, who was confirmed to the Court by a wide majority of the Senate.  A few Republicans held out. They were led by Senator Rand Paul’s filibuster, but ultimately McConnell allowed the choice to go through.

Legislation

It was the last legislative cooperation for the Hillary Clinton administration.  The Republican House and Senate passed bill after bill, trying to repeal the successes of the Obama Administration.  The Affordable Care Act was on the block multiple times, but neither house was able to reach a veto-proof majority. Americans became comfortable with the protections it provided.

Meanwhile President Clinton continued the Obama trend of governing by Executive Order.  The Dreamers remained protected despite the failure of Democratic backed legislation. And the United States became world leader in repairing the environment, following through on the goals of the Paris Accord.  Emissions standards on vehicles were increased, and the costs of automobiles went up.  The cost of gasoline went up too. Consumers found they were spending more for energy.  

Environmentally dirty energy sources such as fracking and offshore drilling were regulated out of business.  This caused higher unemployment, and strengthened the hand of Republicans going into the 2018 mid-term elections.  House Speaker Paul Ryan led his Party to an even stronger majority in the House and McConnell was able to keep his control of the Senate.  So the US had a divided government, forcing Clinton to nominate moderate judges, and strangling Administration legislative plans.

First Man

A new issue for America was what to do with a “First Man” in the White House.  Bill Clinton had to create a new role, a former President now out of command.  Hillary realized that Bill could best be utilized in foreign policy. The “First Man” spent a great deal of the first years travelling overseas.  His already established relationships with world leaders helped solidify American leadership, but rumors of extra-marital affairs ultimately caused the President to keep him back. He spent the last two years exiled at their Chappaqua, New York home.

Clinton strengthened America’s role as world leader, but also commanded greater US military involvement.  She kept the US out of direct action in Syria, but American troops were committed to protecting the Kurds in the North. A standoff with Turkey and Russian-backed Syrian troops ended in a short but decisive battle.  Russia and Turkey backed away from the confrontation, but the US lost key NATO bases in Turkey, particularly at the Incirlik airfield.  

The Clinton State Department, led by Secretary Jake Sullivan, developed a Western coalition to block continued Russian interference in elections.  With the coerced cooperation of Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders, Russian social media manipulation was cut off.  Additional Russian failures in the Middle East and the failure of the Russian kleptocracy due to strengthened sanctions over Ukraine, led to the collapse of the Putin regime.

Polarization

President Hillary Clinton was an effective administrator, but was unable to “unite” the nation.  It wasn’t helped by the continual House investigations, led by Congressmen Chaffetz and Gowdy. They scoured every Clinton Administration action for possible wrong-doing.  It also didn’t help that Congress was frustrated by Clinton’s avoidance of Congressional power through executive orders.  

Meanwhile former Presidential candidate Donald Trump found a new resonance on “Trump TV”.  The network, founded in the closing days of the 2016 election campaign, gave the New York real estate mogul a new public platform. He spoke from his Trump Tower Boardroom or the eighteenth green at his Mara-Lago resort. His signature signoff line of:  “Hillary, You’re Fired” became an American catch phrase.

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President led to racial divisions. The election of Hillary Clinton polarized the nation even more over women’s rights.  Anti-abortion groups grew more militant as they recognized that with Garland on the Supreme Court, abortion rights were secured law.  

Growing protests and even terrorist actions occurred near women’s health clinics. Several state Governors refused to use National Guard troops to protect them, so Clinton nationalized the forces and sent them in.   Social media and television were filled with images of suburban white Americans, even children, standing face-to-face with helmeted and armed soldiers. 

All of this led up to 2020, a year of pandemic, fire, upheaval, and racial tensions. Oh, and by the way, another Presidential election.