Wednesday, September 21, 2016

WORSE THAN NIXON

WORSE THAN NIXON

In the annals of American history, one President stands alone in his infamy.

That President is Richard M. Nixon.

Of the forty-four men to become President of the United States, only Nixon has resigned.  Among that same group of men, it is also clear that only he, upon being impeached, would have been removed after a Senate trial.  In fact, he resigned only after the House Judiciary Committee had sent a bi-partisan bill of impeachment to the full House.  Republican leaders in the the House and Senate -- Arizona's Rep. John Rhodes and Sen. Barry Goldwater and Pennsylvania Sen. Hugh Scott  -- then marched to the White House to tell their Republican President that the gig was up. 

The good news is that Nixon was unique in his ignominy.

The bad news is that, if Donald Trump becomes President, things will be worse.

Nixon's "high crimes," the standard required for impeachment and removal, are well-known.  He covered-up the break-in, burglary and bugging of the offices of his political adversary, the Democratic Party. His cover-up was explicit and fully endorsed.  Within days of the arrest of the burglars, the White House tapes show him instructing the CIA to have the FBI stop its investigation on the trumped-up ground that its continuation would impede national security, and promising to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush-money for those arrested. 

In July 1972, at the time Nixon committed his crimes, he was about to be re-nominated for President, and the Democrats were about to nominate South Dakota's Sen. George McGovern.  

McGovern favored American withdrawal from Vietnam, amnesty for draft evaders, a close to 40% cut in defense spending, and a de facto guaranteed annual income. He would become the most liberal nominee ever put up by the Democrats.  Consequently, he was Nixon's dream opponent --  an unwashed leftie whose supporters were at war with a mainstream America comfortable at that time with neither acid, amnesty nor abortion, the three-word sobriquet hung around McGovern's neck. 

Watergate, therefore,  was an act of unmitigated self-destruction.

Volumes of ink have been spilled attempting to explain Nixon's behavior.  He has been deemed paranoid, irredeemably dishonest, and at times unhinged.  In fact, though he may have been all of these at one point or another, his flaws were much more quotidian.  His lying was selective, his obsessions particularized.  As President, he had governed largely from the center, annoying conservatives not as much as liberals, the latter of whom by 1969 could not stomach any more (let alone four more) years of Vietnam, but a lot nevertheless. In fact, his creation of the EPA and OSHA and his endorsement of wage and price controls and the Family Assistance Plan (which would have guaranteed an income to all)  sent conservatives off the deep end.  And as a politician, he no doubt thought that what he was covering-up in the summer of '72 was nothing other than what his opponents had been doing for years.  

About this, of course, he was wrong.  

But not so wrong as to be deemed crazy.

Politics was dirtier then.

So, Nixon deserved what he got.  But withal, he was and remains a recognizable political entity.

Not so Trump.

Trump does not lie about a few things or select things.  He lies about more than most things.  Fact-checkers at PolitiFact have rated 69% of his statements as either false, mostly false, or "pant-on-fire" false. Unlike Nixon, Trump's narcissism knows no bounds.  His only apparent requirement (from anyone) is adulation.  Nixon obsessed about his enemies in general and the Kennedys in particular.  Trump obsesses about himself and condemns anyone who either refuses to join in the obsession or says anything at odds with its self-congratulatory assertions of personal triumph, unparalleled intelligence or sexual prowess. Nixon was stuck in some sort fear that Ivy Leaguers never respected his intelligence.  

Trump is just stuck . . .

At about age 13.

Despite his flaws, Nixon also was a student of policy.  He was at home in the world of legislative mark-ups, in-depth briefs, and give and take with  Henry Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, two of the many Ivy League intellectuals who actually worked for him. Trump has the attention span of a gnat and is at home with Steven Bannon, the alt-right take down artist adept at put-downs and put-ups.  To his credit, Nixon actually ended segregated schooling in the south and enforced the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.  Trump, on the other hand, was catapulted onto the national scene via the racist lie that Obama was born in Kenya, a lie Trump continued to tell until just last week.

Nixon turned out to be a crook.

Trump will turn out to be a lot worse.  

On foreign policy, which Trump somehow thinks is his strength in this election, the comparison is even deadlier.  Nixon spearheaded detente with the Soviet Union and the opening to Red China.  The opening was a product of strategic design.  He and Kissinger wanted to send a message to the Soviets that their monopoly on bi-lateralism with the Chinese was over.  And it worked.  After the Chinese thaw, Nixon began to negotiate SALT II (the second Strategic Arms Limitations Talks). President Ford achieved a significant breakthrough in those talks in 1974, and President Carter signed the SALT II agreement in 1979.  Though never ratified by the Senate, both the Carter and Reagan Administrations abided by it,  and ultimately President Reagan did his dance with Gorbachev that later brought the Cold War to an end.

Now, compare Trump.

On the one hand, he begins his negotiations with insult.  Exhibit A -- Mexicans are rapists.  On the other, he praises the autocracy that has emerged in Russian under Vladimir Putin.  Nixon is turning over in his grave (in fact, on this point, so is Reagan).  Were he going one on one with Putin, the last thing Nixon would do is give Putin leverage.

But that is exactly what Trump has done (and the reason Putin likes him).

Trump alienates NATO allies by turning American's unconditional defense against any Russian incursion into a defense conditioned on the payment of back dues, a move that simultaneously emboldens Putin into believing America will turn a blind eye to any designs he has on the Baltics and ultimately end the sanctions designed to reverse his seizure of Crimea.

Similarly, Trump weakens the leverage inherent in America's nuclear superiority by announcing that, maybe, the Japanese and South Koreans should go nuclear to defend themselves from North Korea, on the one hand watering down America's guarantee to defend Japan and South Korea and on the other endorsing nuclear proliferation in a world that needs to move in the opposite direction.

This is not strategy.

It is stupidity.

Trump constantly supports his absurdities with the line that he doesn't want "to show his hand" in any subsequent negotiations.  But in his all-the-world's-a-real-estate-deal that only he can close, he isn't holding his cards; he's just proving he has no idea what is in the deck or how to use it.  Nixon didn't weaken NATO before he went to China or negotiated with Brezhnev.  He didn't open relationships with China by insulting the Chinese.

And then, of course, there is Trump's temperament.  Solipsistic, mercurial, bombastic and totally unfit to be anywhere near the nuclear codes.  The list of seasoned foreign policy operatives opposing him grows by the day.  And that list is replete with Republicans, ranging from Brent Scowcroft and Robert Gates to numerous officials who served in the Reagan and both Bush Administrations, all of whom believe Trump does not have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief.

The verdict is in.  Trump has all of Nixon's flaw and none of his talents.

It did not seem possible in 1974.  But with Donald Trump as President, we would in truth have someone . . .

Worse than Nixon.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

THINKING

THINKING

I am tired of pollsters asking me what I think.

And I am tired of them asking you what you think.

We all need to stop thinking about what we are thinking.   We need to just . . .

Think.

This week's post-Labor Day, now-is-the-real-start-of the-campaign news is that Hillary and His Tweetness are starting to get pretty close in the polls.  No matter that Clinton still has a 75% plus chance of winning when all the relevant data is analyzed.  No matter that the Donald literally has to run the table on close to all of the eleven states in play to have any chance of winning.  No matter that he is close to losing in Texas, which hasn't voted for a Democrat for President in forty years.   No matter that Trump still refuses to disclose his tax returns . . . or his medical history . . . or, for that matter, any policies beyond those he can squeeze into 140 characters.  Indeed, no matter that, regardless of what he says, anything coming out of Trump's mouth has the half life of a mayfly.

We are now told the race is close.

This is also the new conventional wisdom.  Writ large, Trump's disaster of a Republican convention and Hillary's eight point bounce in the wake of her own has now supposedly  evaporated into the hair-splitter that campaign professionals always predicted.   Trump can do no wrong great enough to disqualify himself and Hillary can make no mistake  small enough to be ignored.  Neither is loved so both must be equally hated.

Hence the current cynical stalemate all the polls are selling us.

Are you buyin' it?

I -- decidedly -- am not.

Roughly 126.8 million Americans cast ballots in the 2012 Presidential election.  In the 2008 election, that number was 129.4 million and in the 2004 election it was 121 million.  If any of those numbers accurately predict the 2016 turnout, more than 60 million people -- and a lot more if the 2008 or 2012 turnout numbers apply -- will have to vote for Trump for him to win.  And a good chunk of those votes will have to come from non-white, Hispanic, female and college educated white male voters, all of whom Trump is now losing by large margins, in places like Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Colorado, where in all places he is currently behind.

That is not going to happen. 

So, what explains the current this-is-too-close-call narrative?

Here's my answer.

First, we have become so enamored of polls that we no longer understand they are just snapshots, and wildly divergent snapshots at that.  The real data driven wonks who accurately predict these things (think Nate Silver) long ago told us not to be taken in by any single poll.  They warned of outliers (polls consistently biased in one direction or the other), and constantly reminded us that the Presidential election is really fifty separate contests, making national polls pretty useless when it comes to predicting results (just ask Al Gore).  Polls fluctuate.  Turnout models can be wrong, as was the case with all the polls that predicted a Romney victory in 2012.  And these fluctuations and underlying models matter.  

If the notion that millions -- perhaps more than ten million -- of your neighbors changed their minds between August and now, and not once but twice, strikes you as strange, that is nevertheless what the polls are telling us.  These people went from liking Trump enough to get him close to Clinton, to hating him enough for her to be thinking landslide, to now liking him enough once again so as to once again make it close.  If this is the case, this race will not be decided by whoever wins the undecideds.  It will be decided by whoever wins the indecisive.

But I'm not convinced people are really that indecisive.  Maybe they're just tired of being asked about it so much and are just playin' with the pollsters.

Second, the political reporting class really cannot analyze anything other than the horse race.  Their collective expertise on issues of policy is embarrassingly shallow.  They simple do not have the ability to talk about the relative worth of each candidate's actual policies.  

Here's a good example.  Trump's economic policy is to cut income taxes and corporate taxes  (without touching Social Security or Medicare), as well as unspecified regulations in general, and repeal Dodd-Frank, all ostensibly in order to generate jobs. He would also impose high tariffs on imported goods from countries he thinks got the better of us on trade deals, and deport undocumented workers. Clinton's is to increase the minimum wage, cut middle class taxes, fund an infrastructure bank, pre-school and national R & D (principally on scientific research), and strengthen unions.  She would also retain Dodd-Frank and re-jigger the capital gains tax rate so that long term (but not short term) gains got preferential treatment.  The latter policy is intended to help change Wall Street's time horizon and wean it off its addiction to short term financial fixes designed to goose quarterly share prices. 

To evaluate either set of policies, journalists would have to analyze whether those policies would generate the fiscal stimulus needed to put money in people's pockets and boost demand.   This type of analysis is complicated and dry.  It has none of the excitement of shifting polls, His Hairness' latest insult, Hillary's meandering accounts of her emails, or Bill's sex life.

In my opinion, any fair evaluation would make it a no contest. Trump's approach will either weaken or at the very least not strengthen demand because it will raise the deficit, kill the ability of the government to fund infrastructure spending, put money in the pockets of the rich (who won't spend it) and corporations (who will hoard it, as they do now, waiting for a rebound in consumer demand that won't happen). It will not put cash in the pockets of the middle and lower classes (who need it and will spend it). Hillary's approach, on the other hand,  would increase short-term demand, albeit slowly depending on how fast the infrastructure bank and R & D is funded and the minimum wage hike comes on line; and it would increase long term demand assuming labor law reforms that actually boost the power and membership rolls of unions. The proper criticism of her approach is that it is still weak tea (or not enough immediate tea); the proper criticism of Trump's is that it is no tea at all.

Third, and for the same reason they focus on the horse  race, the media is in love with a "both of them are equally hated" narrative. Part of this love affair is due to the fact that it's true -- Hillary and Trump are the two most disliked candidates for President in polling history.  The problem, however, is that one of them will be President.  It would therefore be nice if the media were able to distinguish between the reasons each of them is disliked and provide something other than either the false equivalence that characterizes much reporting (as in the both of them are equally bad) or the grading-on-a-curve now being applied to Trump.

This last problem is critical.  As Paul Krugman pointed out in his Sunday column  in The New York Times, the media is doing to Clinton and Trump what it  did to Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000 . Clinton's mistakes are being magnified beyond reason and Trump's ineptness is being forgiven with abandon. 

This has to stop.  

The Clinton Foundation was not some pay to play adjunct of the State Department while Hillary ran Foggy Bottom. To the contrary, it has a stellar record of providing much needed medical and other assistance to some of the most impoverished parts of the world and has been given high marks for transparency and efficiency by all  the charity watch-dog groups.  Moreover, if helping Bill Clinton cure AIDS or malaria in Africa was perceived as the requirement for a ticket to see Secretary Clinton, I'm not particularly clear on why that was such a bad thing.  Similarly, Hillary's private email server was not remotely a crime, nor was it designed to allow her to avoid the need to archive her public records. The latter problem bedevils even today's government servers as we attempt to get our hands around the complex task of saving and archiving virtual data.

Similarly, Trump's demonstrated lack of knowledge about large swaths of policy and his penchant for lying and insult whenever he is challenged does not evaporate if he behaves for the next two months as his handlers (or, more likely, his kids) finally dog-house his inner beast. Put simply, Trump's demonstrated racism and sexism, along with his thin-skinned bullying that often appears to border on the psychotic and in any event simply shields enormous gaps in knowledge and attention to policy detail, has already disqualified him from getting anywhere near the nuclear codes.  And silence for the next two months will not etch-a-sketch away that disqualifying past.

Where to from here?

That's simple.

Hang up when the pollsters call.  Stop telling them whether you're still thinking, or what you're now thinking, or what you will be thinking about thinking in the two months ahead.

Just think.  

It will have the desired outcome.   Your eventual vote will not be the product of an ennui brought on by prognosticators telling you how bad the choices are.  Or the product of an ignorance brought on by a drumbeat of false equivalence.  Or even the product of a desperation born of the desire that it just be over.

It won't be any of this.

Instead, it'll  be . . .

Thoughtful.