MEET THE MESS

MEET THE MESS

Well, "Meet the Press" it wasn't.

More like "Meet the Mess".

Yesterday we witnessed an unhinged President at his first solo news conference since assuming the office.  Ordinarily this would be news. In the case of Donald John Trump, however, it is par for the course. Failure is always success.  Whatever he has done is always great. He is always the victim . . .

And someone else is always to blame.

Yesterday, it was the "dishonest media," "bad courts" and, of course, "Hillary."  No one cares anymore.  The 30-40% who are with him 'til the last dog dies just laugh at the so-called "urban" elite, mocking the supposed mockers who for years, it is claimed, have turned up their noses at all those Trump travelers in outside-the-beltway America . And as for the rest of us . . .

We've stopped being surprised . . .

Even as we gape in amazement at the sheer idiocy of it all.

By any objective measure, Trump's first month in office has been a disaster.  

The tweets and lies continue unabated.  

At yesterday's press conference, at least fifteen of his claims were either flatly false or so removed from reality as to amount to that. He repeated the claim that he had won the Presidency by the largest electoral college margin since Reagan (in fact, Obama (twice), Clinton (twice), and the first Bush all exceeded his count).  He took credit for the stock market being at record highs (after having decried as one big "bubble" all the gains during Obama's tenure).  He claimed the press has a lower approval rating than Congress (it doesn't; in fact, the two aren't close).

He asserted that Hillary as Secretary of State -- one of his go to pinatas -- had given away 20% of the nation's uranium (she didn't); that Wikileaks' information dump last year contained no leaks of any classified information (false; it leaked hundreds of thousands of classified State Department cables); that he as President had "inherited a mess at home and abroad" (nonsense when compared to what Obama "inherited" -- a 7% unemployment rate and two wars -- in 2009); that he has "nothing to do with Russia" (he and his campaign spoke to numerous Russian operatives during the election; he for years sought business in Russia, as do his sons to this day);    and that . . . 

The roll-out of the travel ban Executive Order two weeks ago was "smooth."

Cue the laughter.

And the subpoenas.

His Cabinet and White House appointees count among them a rag-tag bunch of the uninformed (DeVos at Education, who knows nothing at all about the subject, and Pruitt at EPA, who thinks climate change is a hoax), the uncaring (Price at HHS, who has no replacement for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that could leave 20 million without health insurance, and Mnuchin at Treasury, who made millions as a "foreclosure king" in the wake of the 2008 financial implosion), the unethical (Sessions at Justice, who along with former NSA chief Mike Flynn was part of the Trump campaign's "national security advisory council" but who is now pretending he does not have to recuse himself in any investigation of Flynn's -- or Trump's -- Russian connections, and who won't appoint a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of his boss's love affair with Vladimir Putin), the unconfirmed (Puzder at Labor, who withdrew amid allegations of long ago domestic violence), and the now uninvited (Flynn, the erstwhile National Security Adviser, who was fired after he lied to Mike Pence about what he, Flynn, told a Russian ambassador on the question of sanctions).

Meanwhile, his chief political adviser (Stephen Bannon) has told the media to "keep its mouth shut," his "senior" policy adviser (the guy is 31, looks like he's 17, and basks in ignorance) has claimed that "the powers of the President . . . will not be questioned," and Himself more or less equated the US to Russia when FOX's Bill O'Reilly pointed out that Putin was a killer.  

Said the Donald: "There are lots of killers.  You think our country's so innocent."

The courts have stopped his travel ban. Though he promised yesterday to come up with a new one next week that tracks the Ninth Circuit's decision staying enforcement, that too will be subject to litigation given the known-fact that its purpose (as with the initial order two weeks ago) is to turn the campaign's unconstitutional "Muslim ban" into a rule that can get through courts. There is no guarantee this approach won't work.  Presidents have a lot pf power when it comes to aliens at the border, even if --  pace Stephen Miller  -- that power can be questioned.  

Nevertheless, it is generally a bad idea to start with the notion that your goal is to stop Muslims from coming here.

Or that your Executive Order is merely designed to clothe that illegal object in legal dress.

The Muslim ban itself, along with "the Wall", Trump's grotesquely false view of immigrants as job stealing criminals, and the sad spectacle of mothers being deported as routine office visits turn into deportation ambushes, resulted in yesterday's nation wide "Day Without Immigrants".  

This was a sort of wildcat strike by the nation's bodega owners, gardeners, workers, DREAMERS and their parents. It showed us all where life in America would be without them.  Namely . . .

At a standstill.

Trump is imploding . . .

Claiming he isn't ranting and raving . . .

Even as he rants and raves.

His popularity is at historically low levels (he lies about that too).  His administration is under investigation by the FBI for its contacts with Russia during the election.  His employees are leaking like sieves, so much so that he is threatening the group of them with criminal prosecution.  

And he is getting nothing done.

No budget.  No tax bill.  No ACA replacement. No trade deals.

And no more jobs at middle class wages for all those old economy workers who put him in the Oval Office.

The Republicans in Congress will tolerate this for a long time.  Far longer than the Republicans in 1974, who finally took out Nixon.  The class of '74 was independent and contained some giants (Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater, and Hugh Scott come to mind).  Today's GOP, however, is too sycophantic and those with real courage (McCain, Graham, Sasse) need more company.

The press, however, will be relentless.  They will leave no stone un-turned as they attempt to unearth what's in Trump's tax returns, who said what to whom in Russia during the campaign, what the President knew and when he knew it on Russian hacking, or what portion of that MI6 dossier is true. Trump can squeal "fake news" all he wants. His base may buy it. The rest of us won't.  

And the free press doesn't care what Trump thinks about them . . . or how often he insults them. 

I grew up with journalists.  My father was one and my grandfather worked for a newspaper.    They're used to abuse.  It comes with the territory.

Yesterday Trump tried to control the day and the news cycle.

He didn't.

Mostly because . . .

He can't control himself . . . 

Or the facts.

EXECUTIVE DISORDERS

EXECUTIVE DISORDERS

There's that famous scene in JAWS when Roy Schneider, having come face to face with the great white, returns to Quint in the bow of the boat.  For seconds, Schneider stands in stunned silence. Then he tells Quint: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Well, I'm gonna need a bigger thesaurus.

Because I'm running out of words to properly describe Donald Trump.

We're ten days into the new Administration and the running adjectives are "childish",  "arrogant", "incompetent" and "embarrassing".

The running noun is "lies".

First there was the divisive Inaugural Address, where an inaccurate picture of American "carnage" became the stage for illusory promises to the "forgotten" that will not be kept because there are no policies planned or in place to do so.  The next day, the President went to the CIA, stood in front of its Memorial Wall to  un-named heroes who have died in our service, falsely blamed the media for divisions between him and the CIA (which in fact were based on his early refusal to accept findings regarding Russian hacking), and then spoke about . . .

The size of the crowd on the mall at his Inaugural.

Later that afternoon, because he is obsessed with size, Trump sent Sean Spicer, his Press Secretary, out to claim, contrary to unequivocal photographic evidence, that his Inaugural crowd had been the biggest in history and that anyone broadcasting evidence to the contrary was "shameful".

Meanwhile, Trump watched TV in the White House and became enraged as the Woman's March generated crowds in Washington and throughout the country and the world that truly were historic in size, giving notice in the process that (i) there will be no honeymoon for this Administration and (ii) Congress had better stand up and take notice or it would not be invited back come November 2018.

And then the new week started.

We tried to catch our breath but couldn't.  

On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway told Meet the Press that Spicer's lies were just "alternative facts."  

On Monday, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal and re-issued the gag rule prohibiting Planned Parenthood, all other NGOs, and foreign nations from receiving any federal monies for abortion services.  This gag order went further than those issued by the two President Bushes and President Reagan because it also de-funded family planning.

That night, in a conversation with lawmakers at the White House, Trump repeated the lie that he had lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton only because three million illegal aliens had voted.   On Wednesday, he announced that  there would be a "major investigation" into that issue and that night again repeated the lie in an interview with ABC News.   When pressed, Trump did what he always does when one of his lies is exposed.  He claimed that "many people" believe this.

Which, even if true (it isn't, once the sycophants are eliminated), would merely prove that he is not the only idiot or liar (or both) out there.

Meanwhile, and also on Wednesday, Trump issued instructions to various agencies to begin building the promised wall between the US and Mexico.  Mexico's President, Enrique Pena Nieto, then warned Trump that he might cancel the meeting he and Trump had planned for the next week, and on Thursday morning, Pena-Nieto did so.  

Because Trump can't admit he was -- as my kids say -- "dissed and dismissed",  he then announced that the cancellation had been mutual, indeed necessary in view of Mexico's unwillingness to pay for the wall.   Back at the ranch, Spicer said that the wall could be paid for with a 20% border tax on imports from Mexico.

That  tax -- of course -- would fall on Americans. 

Who would then be paying for the wall.

As we headed into Friday, one would think that nothing could top the week that had been.  

But Trump, being Trump, had to out-do even himself.  

So he did . . .

With the Executive Order banning refugees from anywhere for 120 days and banning anyone from seven nations -- Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya -- indefinitely.  

Neither the new Secretary of Defense, the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, nor the new head of the CIA were asked to weigh in on this Order.  Instead, it was written by the White House's resident white-supremacist, Steve Bannon, and Bannon's assistant and Senior Policy Adviser, Stephen Miller.

(Bannon is the guy who, mid-week, called the free press the "opposition party", which Trump then later repeated, said that it should "keep its mourth shut", and admitted he had been behind the earlier idea to ban the press from the actual White House.  As one of my friends, Jack Levin,  wrote on reading an earlier version of this post, "Why don't they just tell the truth.  Why don't they say the words 'President Bannon'?")

The refugee order and seven-nation ban is both incredibly foolish and un-constitutional.  It is foolish because it alienates our allies in the Middle East, who now must field claims that US policy is targeting all Muslims and not just terrorists, and whose adversaries -- including ISIS -- have now been handed a gold-plated recruiting tool.  And it  is unnecessary because refugees and anyone else coming to the US from the seven named nations are already subject to multi-layered review prior to the issuance of any visas. This program, initiated by Obama, has been working fine.  There have been no terrorist attacks here by nationals coming in from any of those target states, or by any refugees.  There have, of course, been attacks from those who came from other states (e.g., Saudi Arabia, which was home to fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists; the other four came from Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates), but none of those other nations were on Trump's list.

The Order is also unconstitutional because it effectively utilizes a religious test.  Trump claims this is not the case because the ban is on refugees and others from target nations, not a target religion. The targeted nations, however, are all majority-Muslim nations.  More to the point, however, the Order also instructs the Department of Homeland Security, after the 120-day hiatus on refugee entries, to favor refugee applications from those in the targeted nations that belong to minority religions, i.e., Christians.  This, of course, is a religious test, and it is unconstitutional.  Christians are by no means the only religions persecuted by ISIS (ask the Shia Muslims)  and to separate them out for favorable treatment violates the Establishment Clause.

The day Trump announced his Order, three federal judges issued stays against it.  The case filed in Brooklyn featured as a lead plaintiff an Iraqi interpreter who had worked for ten years with the American military in Iraq and who, it appeared, had been targeted for assassination. He was blocked from entering the US at JFK airport on account of Trump's Executive Order and  was released only after a federal judge ordered his release. (Meanwhile, Trump's Defense Secretary, General Mattis, is reportedly livid that he was not consulted more fully in the run-up to the Order, and is now trying to get the Order revised to exclude such individuals.)  

The next day, thousands showed up at airports and in cities across the country to protest the Order. And yesterday, Sally Yates, the Acting Attorney General (Jeff Sessions has not yet been confirmed), announced she would not let the Justice Department defend the Order because she was not convinced it was legal.  

For this act of courage, Yates was fired.  

The last time a Justice Department attorney was relieved of his job after refusing to take action to implement an illegal Presidential Order was in 1973, when Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus resigned, seriatim, from their positions as Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, respectively. 

Their boss had to resign less than a year later.

Donald Trump . . .

Meet Richard Nixon.

THE ART OF THE SPIEL

THE ART OF THE SPIEL

So, the art of the spiel . . .

It wasn't.

Trump went to Washington today and was inaugurated as America's 45th President.  All was sweetness and light.

President Obama and the First Lady warmly greeted Trump and his wife as they arrived at the White House for the traditional pre-Inaugural morning coffee.  Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush and their wives, Trump opponents all, dutifully showed up at the Capitol to give real witness to the peaceful transfer of power.

The Inaugural stand, looking west to the Washington Monument and thinner but still large crowds compared to some inaugurations past, was filled with bi-partisan bonhomie.  Legislators, justices, ex-Presidents and Vice-Presidents (Quayle and Cheney showed up), along with clerics, choirs and even the geriatric set (in the presence of Bob Dole), rubbed shoulders at America's unique quadrennial celebration of its experiment in republican government.

And then he spoke.

And all the good will evaporated.

Inaugural addresses are supposed to unite.  This one divided. Incoming Presidents are supposed to be graceful.  This one was loud and angry.  The new President's rhetoric is supposed to uplift.  This one just deflated.

Instead of speaking to the entire country, Trump did what he always does.  He spoke to his base. They are a substantial group.

But they aren't the rest of us. And they are by no means a majority of the country, most of whom do not like or trust the new President.

Many to whom President Trump spoke today are hurting and angry. They've lost jobs and watched their standard of living decline.  They are right to blame -- in part --  globalization in the form of trade deals that did not protect manufacturers and wages here at home. They are also right to embrace Trump's claim that the establishment has let them down.

The problem, however, is that the establishment which let them down are the same Republicans now running the show, and their leader, for all his bluster, is just another member of that establishment.

Trump prospered to the tune of billions on the same globalized order he is now condemning. He hired the same cheap labor he today told us would never again steal jobs from Americans.  His party went all in on NAFTA and the other trade deals and was opposed to any riders that would have enforced fair labor or environmental standards and thus narrowed the gap between first and third world wages.

And all those years ago, Trump was right there with them.

So his speech today, catnip for his base, was like most of the speeches he gave during his campaign.

Empty and hollow.

Look at the words:

For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth.

Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's Capital, there was little to celebrate all across our land.

He is right.  But he has no program to solve the problem he identifies.  And neither does the political party under whose banner he won the Presidency.

His promises were all highfalutin.  For the unemployed and the broke, he was emphatic:

That all changes -- starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment; it belongs to you . . . The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer . . . Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.

And how -- precisely -- does he propose to do any of this?  He has not said.   Or what he has said -- tax cuts for the very wealthy and a wall -- won't do it.

Let's be clear here.

All those pseudo-illegals (they aren't real because more are leaving than coming) aren't stealing $30-$50 dollar per hour wages from auto workers or anyone else.  Tax cuts for billionaires may create jobs for Wall Street brokers but they don't for Pennsylvania's ex-steelworkers. And the repeal of the Affordable Care Act will actually make things worse for precisely the people Trump claims to represent.

Trump's tip of the hat to the "forgotten man" was cribbed from Franklin Roosevelt.  Here is FDR in 1932:

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but indispensable units of economic power, for plans . . . that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

The difference is that FDR had a program to lift the forgotten man up.  It came in the form of social security for the aged, unionization and collective bargaining for workers, price supports for farmers, and a host of programs in his famous alphabet soup of initiatives that put artists, construction workers and conservationists to work on federal projects.  The very road in New York City Trump took to LaGuardia Airport yesterday -- the East River Drive -- was built by Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA).  In fact, so was LaGuardia Airport.

On what would pass for foreign policy, Trump's Inaugural was even worse.

The would-be heir to Truman's Marshall Plan, four decades of bi-partisan engagement that won the cold war, and a liberal world order that has improved the lives of billions, was all about flooding the moat and drawing up the bridge.

Here is President Trump's isolationist vision:

For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry;

Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military;

We've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own;

And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay;

We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon . . .

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this moment on, it's going to be America First.

The number of lies in the above paragraphs is difficult to count:

• Truman's Marshall Plan re-built Europe.  It created a market for our goods.  It did not enrich foreign industry at our expense.  And globalization has on balance been an enormous win for American consumers.
• Our military is the largest in the world.  We spend more on defense than all other nations combined.  The military is not remotely "depleted".
• And we haven't "refus[ed] to defend our own" borders.  The Obama Administration more than doubled spending on border control and it also deported record numbers of illegals; what it refused to do was deport innocent children whose illegal status was no fault of their own.

Trump is the latest American First-er.  But he is not the first.  The term itself was born in the isolationism of the pre-World War II '30s, and the group that took its title -- the America First Committee (AFC) -- created substantial roadblocks to efforts to assist England and the other allies prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Had they succeeded, the western alliance might very well not have been formed.  And but for Hitler's declaration of war on the US the day after the Japanese bombed Hawaii, they very well might have.

To some, all of this is ancient history that should not be laid at the feet of President Trump.  In other words, his America First and the AFC's do not fly in the same orbit.

To our NATO allies, however, the term is anathema.

Because they look at Trump, see a US Commander-in-Chief in love with Putin who is more focused on whether an ally is current on their dues than on  who has seized Crimea, hear today's "from this moment on . . . America First" rhetoric, and . . .

Are scared to death.

Meanwhile, Trump is all in on "eradicat[ing]" "completely" "Radical Islamic Terrorism" " from the face of the earth."

Fabulous.

But we still haven't heard a word about how this will be done.  Or what Trump will do different from what Obama has done . . . 

Other than use the words -- all with initial capitals -- "Radical Islamic Terrorism."

Which makes Republicans happy . . .

Even if it inflames peaceful Muslims not happy with the fact that our 45th President is painting an entire religion with the brush of terrorism, while they are trying to make sure their young are not radicalized or their civilization destroyed.

Toward the end of his speech today, Trump said "The time for empty talk is over."

Actually, Mr. President, that alarm clock rang long ago.

You just keep hitting the snooze button.

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week.

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself.

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound.

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway."

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved.

Which has, of late, got me to wondering.

What for?

And the best answer I can come up with is . . .

Tomorrow.

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then.

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow.

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different.

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it.

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all.

And I have a shovel ready.

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas.

(This post was first published on Christmas Eve 2008.  A lot has changed since then. But not my view of Christmas.)

THE BIG DOG CAN STILL BARK

THE BIG DOG CAN STILL BARK

So, there I was on Saturday, walking into my favorite independent bookstore in Pleasantville, NY.

And there he was at the check out counter,  buying a hundred bucks worth of books and . . .

Holding forth.

This was surprising at two levels.  On the one hand, it's not very often that you run into  Bill Clinton dressed down for a lazy Saturday afternoon sauntering about the local bookstore.  And on the other, given that we know the soon-to-be President doesn't even read books, I'm certain I will never run into Trump in that bookstore . . .

Or any other.

Bill Clinton is approachable.  And he is smart.  And he likes to chat.

So for about forty-five minutes that day, a group of us -- maybe a dozen or so in number -- did that.

Here's what he said.

(Caveat emptor -- I wasn't taking notes and nothing that follows is a quote (unless it is). It's my memory, now three days old, of the basic sense of what was said.)

Why did Hillary lose?

My take on his take is that there were basically three reasons -- Comey, a media that ignored policy in favor of emails, and the larger problem that we now live in a "fact free" world.  

Comey violated Justice Department policy when he announced ten days out that the FBI was looking at new evidence on the email front. And he set a dangerous precedent.  Clinton thinks that mattered big time. People believe the FBI plays it straight.  So when they don't, it hurts. And that, Clinton thinks, is why Hillary didn't do as well as she should have in the Philadelphia suburbs, especially with women, or in Michigan and Wisconsin and Florida and Ohio.  

It's also something we all need to worry about going forward.

Because the day law enforcement stops being politically neutral is the day we start down the slippery slope to illegitimacy.

I agree.  

On both counts.

Ten days out, Hillary was seven points up in the polls and poised to go positive.  In other words, instead of telling us why Trump shouldn't win, she was going all in on why she should.  Her policy menu -- which so many said sounds canned but in fact is real and do-able -- would have been manna from heaven in that last week. 

Because increasing the minimum wage, making college affordable, expanding health care and forcing hedge funds and the mega-rich to pay taxes would have spoken to exactly the concerns all those struggling members of the middle and lower middle class claim went unnoticed.  

Comey upended all of that.  Instead of being able to tell us what she would do, her numbers tanked and the only remedy was to remind voters of how bad Trump was.  Most of us got that message and voted for her. 

About a hundred thousand strategically placed fellow citizens did not.

The larger problem, and President Clinton spoke on Saturday to this as well, was that the whole email issue was made entirely too much of.  As Clinton put it, the issue was a "nothin' burger."  Hillary's use of a non-state.gov email was the same thing two of her predecessors -- both Republicans -- had done, and no one ever complained.  She also didn't imperil national security.  Indeed, some of the after-the-fact "classified" material turns out to have been  attachments of articles from the New York Times, and the rest seems mostly to have been more or less a matter of agencies -- and some politicized Inspectors-General in those agencies -- protecting their own turf vis a vis their perceived competitors. In short, it was more about bureaucratic in-fighting than anything else.

So why did it matter?

Here, I think, was Clinton's largest point of the day, one that counts far beyond its effects on a single election.  We now live, says the President, in a "fact free" world.  People read fake news.  Media outlets report it. Would be candidates can now thrive on it.  

This is what Trump did. 

His lies never mattered because facts no longer matter.   It's a pretty basic point.  If facts don't exist ... or can be made to not exist . . . or are so malleable that they may as well not exist . . .

The first casualty is truth.

You can, as Casey Stengel would say (this part is me, not Bill Clinton), look it up.

The dictionary says a  lie is a false statement of fact.  If there are no facts, there can be no lies.

At the same time, the media-- easily played by the endless charge of "liberal" bias-- often ignore lies in their ostensible search for balance, which largely means reporting something bad about one candidate if you report something bad about the other one. 

Trump relied on this as well.  His reported negatives, which were endless and easy to ignore given their sheer volume, always had to be served up with one of hers, and since she had so few, the email "nothin' burger" became the media's go to staple. 

The media do not work this way because they favor one or the other political party.  

They work this way because a close election is an inherent part of their business plan.  

Or, as the President more or less put it, they aren't interested in a blow out. 

That's also why there was so little coverage (32 minutes as it turns out) of policy by the three major networks during the campaign, and why Hillary-as-wonk got so little traction.  A politician who talks about policy and getting issues resolved is boring.

A politician who curses is not.

Where to from here?

Clinton is careful.  And, despite the current cultural fad, he won't speculate or make judgments that extend beyond the facts. 

Thus . . .

Whether the Democrats should oppose all the extreme right wingers making their way into Trump's cabinet, or just pick a couple and focus their energies, he won't say.  He doesn't know all the people and won't speculate.  Whether the Democrats are ready to do battle, he also won't say.  In his opinion, the Senate's new minority leader, Chuck Schumer,  thinks he, Schumer, can negotiate with Trump because he knows Trump.  Clinton does not appear convinced.

The real push-back, Clinton thinks, could come in the courts.  

He believes there may be numerous legal challenges to the new Administration, especially if it goes the fact-free route on policy.  He also believes there are many judges more than up to the task of keeping Trump honest.

The other real push back could come from Republicans.  In fact, Clinton thinks the two most important Senators these days are Republicans Lindsey Graham and John McCain.  Neither likes Trump and both have standing among their fellow Senators.

On policy, he's not entirely anti-Trump.  Infrastructure was a big piece of Trump's campaign.  The Trump approach is to get private equity to pay for it.  If that happened, it would amount to a two-for. The roads, bridges, airports, railroads and broadband would be re-built, but the deficit wouldn't go up. So Clinton understands why Trump wants to do it this way, and thinks it's not entirely a bad approach.  In other words, it can work in some places.  The only problem, and the President pointed this out as well, is that it won't create new infrastructure in rural communities or in sparsely populated ones because the projects can't be monetized in those areas. Meanwhile, we'd be fools not to go all in here, especially on improved broadband, which creates enormous economic growth.

On jobs, his eyes rolled when the Carrier deal was mentioned.  He negotiated deals like that "every month" while he was Governor of Arkansas.  The real key is to get the economy zooming.  He thinks we are on the cusp, but I did not get the impression he thought GOP trickle down would provide the energy to push us over the edge.  It certainly hasn't in the past.

As he was leaving and half way out the door, one of our group shouted out that he should stay involved.  He turned back with a last piece of advice -- "You stay involved, that's what's necessary." Among those 65 million plus who voted for Hillary on November 8, that's a big ask.  Most of us are still in shock.

And, frankly, pessimistic.

But not Bill Clinton.

He still does believe . . .

In a place called Hope.

MR. SECRETARY

MR. SECRETARY

I'm running for Secretary of State.  

I'm not qualified.  But Trump isn't qualified to be President and Rudy isn't qualified to be Secretary of State.

So let's not get picky.  

I understand one does not usually "campaign" for an appointive Cabinet position.  But I have also noticed that all of the cable news stations have been breathlessly reporting on who the "front runners" are for State.

And Trump himself keeps parading his potential nominees before the cameras, their hats in hand as His Hairness assumes the throne and gives his thumbs up.

So it looks like a campaign.  

Plus, there have been no exhaustive analyses of each "candidate's" positions .  Just the de riguer ten seconds where the stand ups outside Tower of Trump -- or the golf course -- tell us whether so and so supported Trump or hates him. 

So not only does it look like a campaign.

It also looks like a Trump campaign. 

I have analyzed all the candidates and am pretty certain I can beat them.

First, like Rudy, I have foreign policy experience.  Rudy's comes from walking north on Church Street in New York City  on 9/11 after the towers fell.  I too walked that day, in New York City, north from near my office downtown to Grand Central Station to go home after the towers fell.  

It wasn't on Church Street.  

It was on Broadway.  

But they are parallel.

Rudy claims he has security experience, also because of 9/11.  Far as I can tell, however, his only experience was locating the City's Office of Emergency Management in Tower 7 over the objections of security experts who knew  the site was a terrorist  target on account of the fact that it already had been.

So, Rudy's security experience is more or less of the boneheaded variety.

Me too.

Before my walk on 9/11, I made the foolish decision to actually take the subway downtown knowing at least one tower had been attacked. The train stopped between Brooklyn Bridge and Fulton Street for over a half hour, and then reversed itself back to Brooklyn Bridge. When I left the station, the gray ball was moving toward me as hundreds of people ran away from it. 

Anyway, the Judge I once worked for called me his "stupidest law clerk on 9/11" on account of that decision.

Yeah, sure, Your Honor.  

But I bet you never thought I'd be competing against Rudy for State.

Second, like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman and Robert Gates, three other mentionees, I can't stand Trump.  I criticized him non-stop during the Presidential campaign.  Thought he was a con, charlatan, totally unqualified to be Commander in Chief.  Of the ten blogposts I wrote about the campaign, all of them went negative on Trump. 

Like Gates, I also voted for Hillary.  

Romney and Huntsman probably left the ballot blank or wrote in some other Republicans.

What chickens!

Third, like General Petraeus, I have made mistakes and learned from them.  True, my mistakes have not involved criminal violations of the Espionage Act.  But I am younger than Petraeus and was a Hillary supporter.  So once at State, who knows what trouble I can get myself into.  I mean, according to Trump, Hillary out-Petraeused Petraeus.

Fourth, I know more people from Taiwan than PEOTUS.  

While I'm on the subject, as we all know, PEOTUS is an acronym that stands for President-elect of the United States.  It's a take-off on POTUS, the acronym for President of the United States.  Anyway, how is PEOTUS pronounced?  Is it "Pee-oh-tus"?  If so, that sounds mildly obscene.  

Which, in this unique case, is perfectly appropriate.

Anyway, back to Taiwan.

Pee-oh-tus should know that I know lots more Taiwanese than he does.  It looks to me like he knows one -- the President of Taiwan. He says she called him yesterday to congratulate him, a call that has now caused quite a kerfluffle.  Everyone at Foggy Bottom is worried that Trump is flying blind and has no idea how upset this makes the other Chinese, you know, the ones with nukes.

I can help here.  I know at least a dozen  Taiwanese.  For ten years I worked with a Taiwanese lawyer and represented Taiwanese clients. And they're probably people Beijing won't mind Trump talking to.

Also,  just so you know Donald, I've never been to China. And haven't borrowed any money from the Bank of China.

Never even used one of their ATMs.

Finally, I have met John Bolton and Kellyanne Conway.  They were both at a dinner I em-ceed honoring that Judge I worked for, who is friends with Bolton and once hired Conway's husband. 

I am certain they laughed at all my jokes that night. 

So, whaddaya say Mr. Pee-oh-tus?

Did I mention I grew up on the streets of Brooklyn . . .

Before Hillary ruined them.

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

In 1996, a friend of mine was on her way to Albany to cast her vote as a member of the Electoral College in the State of New York.  

She was travelling with the then Chairman of the Democratic Party of the county where she worked. She was also driving and going a little too fast. When the inevitable State Police vehicle pulled her over, the Chairman told her to let him do the talking.

The policeman approached and asked for her license and registration. She gave it to him.  When he asked if she knew why she had been pulled over, the Chairman stepped in, explaining that she was on her way to the Electoral College and a little late.

The cop said nothing and went back to the squad car to write the ticket.

When he returned, the Chairman tried one more time.  "But officer," he said, "there really should be an exception here.  She's on her way to the Electoral College and cannot be late."

The trooper handed her the ticket and said "Buddy, I don't care what school she is going to.  She was speeding."

Then he walked away.

Prior to 2000, not many people knew what the Electoral College was and even fewer could explain how it worked.  Then George W. Bush received 500,000 fewer votes and, for the first time in more than 112 years, the popular vote loser became president because he won enough states to give him an Electoral College majority.

Now, Hillary Clinton has beaten Donald Trump by more than 2 million votes but Trump will presumably be the next president by virtue of having won enough states to garner more than 270 electoral college votes. Unlike in 2000, however, there has emerged at least a modest movement to encourage the electors to vote their consciences and deprive Trump of the Presidency.  

Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig wrote a Thanksgiving day op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that the Electoral College "is meant to be a circuit breaker -- just in case the people go crazy."  In his view, they didn't. Clinton received more votes, a lot more votes, and the electors should confirm that by making her President.  At the same time, a lawsuit is about to be started by a Colorado elector who wants the courts to declare unconstitutional laws in twenty-nine (29) states binding electors to cast their Electoral College vote for the candidate who won in that state.  So now, unlike in 2000, there is at least some effort afoot to, as it were, free the electors.

Would this be legal?

The answer is almost certainly . . . 

Unclear.

The Electoral College was established in the provision of the Constitution -- Article II, section 1-- that sets forth how the President and Vice President were to be "elected." It provides that "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress"; that the "Electors" were to "meet in their respective States and vote by Ballot for two Persons"; that the signed and certified list of those for whom the electors voted was to be transmitted under "seal" "to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate";  that the Senate President -- "in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives" -- was to open the certified lists and count the votes; and that the person having the majority of votes was to be designated the President and the runner-up the Vice-President. 

In 1804, following the embarrassing election of 1800 in which both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were named by an equal number of electors despite the fact that they had run as a ticket with Jefferson in the top spot and Burr his vice-presidential second,  Article II was amended to require the electors to actually cast two ballots, one naming the individual for whom they voted for President and the other the individual for whom they voted for Vice-President.

As with many other provisions of the Constitution, the first to comment at length on the Electoral College was Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68.   Though Hamilton assumed that the electors who formed the Electoral College would be "chosen by the people," he no doubt thought popular input could take the form of either a legislative appointment of electors, the legislatures themselves having been popularly elected, or a direct vote of the electors by the people. In any case, however, that was where popular input was to end insofar as electing the President and Vice-President was concerned.  

As to the actual election of President and Vice President, that -- Hamilton thought -- was to be "made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstance favorable to deliberations," and by a body which would exercise "a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."  In his mind, "[a] small number of people, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass" would "most likely . . . possess the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an investigation." 

Hamilton clearly believed the choice made by electors would be deliberative and considered.  He praised the Electoral College as an instrument that would "afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder," a possibility he deemed "evil" in selecting a President.   He also thought that dividing the choice by selecting groups of electors who then convened and deliberated in each of their respective (but separate) states made it less likely that the election of a President would "convulse the community" with the type of "violent movements" that a focus on one candidate might create. His theory was that meetings in several states would limit the possibility that a single populist demagogue could control the ultimate outcome.  

He believed that the college, by virtue of being a newly elected and temporary body formed solely for purposes of  a single Presidential election,  helped guard against "intrigue and corruption," especially by "foreign powers" who might otherwise find it easy to "gain an improper ascendant in our councils."  To that same end, he praised the fact that Senators, members of the House of Representatives, and all other "officers" of the United States were excluded from the Electoral College; their absence made it less likely that they could control the President via their electoral votes.  He also thought the college would generate independence in a President, essentially by making it unlikely that, once elected, the President could identify (and lobby or help) those who would be responsible for his re-election.  

For Hamilton, all these advantages flowed from the Electoral College members' "transient existence and . . . detached situation." They would be free  from  "sinister bias, " a phrase he took to include both corruption and the failure to do one's "duty,"  and would elect the President and Vice President based on "reasons and inducement . . . proper to [the] choice."  He thought this would eliminate from the office of the Presidency those who only possessed "[t]alents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity".  Instead, the mechanism chosen would create the "constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue."

Thus spaketh Hamilton.

His view of how the Electoral College would proceed  had a very short shelf life. 

It worked as he predicted in the initial election of Washington in 1788.   Thereafter, however,  the notion of independent deliberation by a council of wise electors more or less ended and electors simply voted for candidates to whom they had previously committed their votes. Commitment, however, was not required by the Constitution, and today commitment is only required by statute in twenty-nine (29) states.  All the others, in theory at least, allow electors to vote as they please. 

Are those twenty-nine (29) commitment statutes constitutional?

For Hamilton, the answer would be "No."   It is clear that he thought the right of state legislatures to determine the "manner" in which each state appointed its electors merely entitled those legislatures to establish  the mechanism through which one became an elector. States could decide to have the legislature itself appoint the electors; they could have those electors chosen by popular vote and they could decide the districts in which that vote could be taken. What they could not do is instruct the electors how to vote.  That, for Hamilton, Article II forbade.

Whether the Supreme Court agrees with Hamilton is another story.  

There has never been a case testing whether any of the various statutes which order electors to vote a certain way are in fact constitutional.  The closest we came to resolving that issue was in Ray v. Blair, a 1952 case in which the Supreme Court held constitutional an Alabama statute that required those running to be nominated as  electors on the Democratic Party line to sign an oath committing, if elected, to vote in the Electoral College for the national party's nominee.  

Over dissents by Justices Douglas and Jackson, the Court said this was permissible.  On the question of whether the Constitution "demands absolute freedom for the elector to vote his own choice," the Court noted that, though the Constitution "says the electors shall vote by ballot," it doesn't "prohibit an elector's announcing his choice beforehand."  The Court also noted that even if such pledges were "legally unenforceable because violative of the assumed constitutional freedom of the elector under  . . .  Art[icle] II," that would not make such a  pledge by a candidate in a party primary unconstitutional.  As the Court put it, "Surely one may voluntarily assume obligations to vote for a certain candidate."

So, if Hamilton is your guide, the electors cannot be committed by statute to vote for any particular candidate for President and instead must be free to choose.  If, however, the Supreme Court is your guide, the rule is uncertain.  So far as we know now, an elector can voluntarily commit to voting a certain way beforehand.  

Whether he or she can be ordered by statute to do so has not been decided.

Stay tuned.  

Professor Lessig, that Colorado elector ready to file suit, and millions of disaffected Hillary voters are hoping enough members of the Electoral College will disregard any commitment statutes and refuse to give Trump the Presidency.  For them, Trump is a bridge too far, an amoral, narcissistic demagogue to whom the country's future, let alone its nuclear codes, cannot be entrusted.  With them, it's not about ideology or party or policy; it's about the  inherent danger of appointing as President a pathological liar who has utter contempt for the rule of law. 

On this view, Hamilton's Electoral College is all that stands between the country and utter disaster. And Federalist No. 68 is a road map on how that body should work to avoid such a disaster.  In fact, for them, Hamilton was prescient. During the election, Trump showed little other than "talent for low intrigue"  as a "foreign power" tried to manipulate the electorate in favor of a demagogue.

If they are right, and can convince enough electors to refuse Trump, the notion of "all hell breaking loose" will acquire new meaning. Republicans will sue and the case will get to the Supreme Court in five seconds.  It will also get to a Supreme Court with only eight justices, so the way in which any case comes up will matter.  In fact, whether a Circuit Court of Appeals enforces commitment statutes in its circuit or holds such statutes unconstitutional and frees the electors to vote their conscience, if the Supreme Court later deadlocks on whether that appellate decision was correct, the Circuit Court decision will stand.

In that case,  the next President will have been chosen not just by unelected judges ,  but by unelected judges neither appointed to nor working in the Supreme Court , whose jurisdiction as  Circuit Court judges is limited to only a small part of the nation.

None of this has even happened before.

The way to bet is that it won't happen now.

That, however, was also the way to bet on November 8.