Right in San Francisco

The Essential Mike Pompeo

    Mike Pompeo's Easter weekend meeting with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang is reminiscent of Henry Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing in 1971, preceding President Nixon's world changing meeting with Mao Zedong seven months later. Both trips by the American president's foreign policy advisor sought to redirect a highly adversarial relationship; to reflect a sensitivity to the customs of Asian leaders; to place a premium on personal relationships; and to lay the groundwork for agreements of world-changing importance. By all accounts and subsequent statements from both sides, Pompeo accomplished his objective. 

    It will be critical to manage scope and focus. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are on the verge of being capable of delivering warheads anywhere in the world - or of selling the technology to others. This cannot stand - whether by military means or by diplomacy. There are other issues with North Korea - the incarceration of three Korean-Americans on espionage charges; repatriation of Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago; computer hacking; the murder of Kim's half-brother in Malaysia; North Korea's chemical and biological programs; sanctions and economic development. Legitimate, but extraneous,  issues must not be allowed to distract from the purpose, although they may serve as indicators of good will and quid pro quo's.  

    Fortunately, we have examples of success to emulate, and failure to avoid. 

        - For success, there was the controlled dismantling of the nuclear capabilities of  former Soviet states (Kazakhstan; Ukraine; Belarus; and, to a lesser extent, Russia) in the 1990s. International structures were established for verification. Economic rewards were timed to performance. Scientists were provided alternative employment. 

        - For failure, there is the 2015 Obama / Kerry agreement with Iran, where there are no limits on missile development, nuclear facilities are not dismantled, inspections do not extend to military sites, and the agreement expires without future commitments beyond a decade.  

    This is a complex, multi-party process. While the United States has the lead, China has a major role to play in ensuring that North Korea understands their limited options, and in guaranteeing any eventual agreement. South Korea will play a major role in any economic development package, as well as in the new political / diplomateic order. Japan has a major interest. Russia borders North Korea, and has an interest. The US negotiating team will need to deal with military, economic, political, and technical issues. Fortunately, there are a lot of experts; what is needed is leadership. 

    Trump's Kissinger is Mike Pompeo: graduated first in his class from West Point; Harvard Law Review; successful businessman; three term congressman from Kansas; easily approved as Director of the CIA; has established a working relationship with Kim Jong Un. Perhaps most importantly, he has the confidence of the president, and knows his way around the Defense Department and the intelligence community. Unlike John Kerry, he will not come seeking "peace in our time".  

    What could go wrong? 

    1. The Democrats did their best to prevent Mike Pompeo from playing the crucial role, without any denial of his qualifications or glimmer of a better option. Objections fell into three categories: 

        -  He is too conservative (on Iran, immigration, and the Middle East) for the Secretary of State position, particularly when coupled with John Bolton, Trump's new National Security Advisor. Tradition, including the Republican Senate in the past administration, has overwhelmingly given the president the right to pick a Secretary of State who agrees with him. Not this time for 42 Democrats.    

        - He refused to engage with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the irrevelant question of whether legislation is needed to protect Special Counsel Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein from being fired. That says nothing about Pompeo, but much about Schumer.  

        - Trump and Pompeo might just succeed. Better that we have a nuclear North Korea than a second term of President Trump. 

    2. Despite effective sanctions, apparent alignment between Trump and Xi Jinping, and encouraging statements by Kim, he could be unwilling to give up his one international bargaining chip. We've been here (or nearly here) before. This time sanctions are real, and China is apparently on board. 

    3. Kim (and China) may believe that he can outlast Trump.  Unlike Kim who kills potential rivals, Trump has a special counsel searching for any wrongdoing, the political opposition calling for impeachment, potential loss of control of the House, and a Senate which will barely confirm qualified cabinet secretaries. One of the rules of dealmaking is to be sure that your counterpart can deliver; the leader of the Hermit Kingdom may have his doubts. 

    Confirmation of Mike Pompeo should be the news of the week, even more important than Comey's book tour, Stormy Daniels' upgraded booking fee, or Bill Cosby's conviction.  In our media system it is not, but in any case he can now get to work on the most important problem facing the world. 

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    This week's bonus video is an interview with former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, General Jack Keane, discussing the leadup to the North Korean nuclear negotiations. 

bill bowen - 4/27/18  

Losing General Ryan

    With apologies to Frank Sinatra, House Speaker Paul Ryan might be thinking "Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, enough to mention."  What went wrong and why? And might it be different in the future, if indeed there is a near term future for House Republicans? Some facts, some interpretation, and some conjecture:

Facts

    1. Ryan had impecable credentials. One of the Young Guns (along with former Speaker Eric Cantor and Ryan's endorsed successor Kevin McCarthy); chairman of the House Budget and Ways and Means Committees; the party's 2012 Vice Presidential nominee; a representative from a swing district in a swing state. 

    2. There was a chance for transformative legislation, with Republicans controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Unlike the Senate, Ryan's House can pass legislation with a simple majority. 

    3. When Ryan succeeded John Boehner in 2015, he inherited promises made by the Republicans in their "Tea Party Election of 2010" - term limits for committee chairs; elimination of "earmarks"; restoration of "regular order" in which legislation would go through committees, there would be floor debate and amendments, and enough time for members to study legislation before voting. 

    4. Ryan has had a difficult caucus, with a 24 seat majority, a disciplined hard right Freedom Caucus of some 30 members, and the shadow of the "Hastert Rule" under which the Speaker would not bring up legislation which did not have the support of a majority of his caucus. 

    5. He had a difficult Democratic Party opposition under Nancy Pelosi, committed to oppose anything which would forward a Trump agenda, and disciplined to the extent that not a single Democrat supported the 2018 tax reduction act. 

Interpretation

    1. The reforms of Newt Gingrich in the 90's and the Tea Party Class of 2010 have made it more difficult for Republicans to manage the House. Committee chairmen are less experienced and influential when their term is limited to six years. Without earmarks, the leadership is unable to buy the votes of members who are on the fence. Ideological differences become more important as the lubricants are removed.  

    2. The constant anti-Trump overhang makes it less enjoyable to be a Republican in Washington - particularly when the trips back home to meet with constituents are consumed by questions of the Mueller investigation and Trump's moral turpitude rather than what is being done to help the country. To date, eight committee chairs and 19 other Republican members have announced that they will not run for re-election or assume any other office, compared to 11 Democrats.  Some of this is a result of #MeToo problems; some is a political calculation of their reelection prospects; much is long term veterans deciding that  the limited accomplishments of Congress are not worth being part of a 20% congressional approval rating. 

    3. The $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill of 2018 was the last straw. Ryan has long since given up hope for his cherished Medicare and Social Security reform. Any movement toward a balanced budget is gone with projected trillion dollar deficits in good years. Ryan became the advocate for a spending bill second in size only to President Obama's stimulus bill, without anybody having time to read it under threat of government shutdown. 

    4. Caught between the White House and the Freedom Caucus with no Democratic support, things will not get better. Trump wants to claw back $60 billion of spending - Ryan cannot deliver. Trump and a bi-partisan group want to revisit DACA - Ryan cannot deliver. Trump is willing to take on the National Rifle Association - Ryan cannot deliver. 

    5. It is possible, although by no means assured, that the Democrats will win the House in 2018. If so, there will be a bloodletting among Republican leadership, and a fractured caucus.  

Conjecture

    1. Unlike Boehner's reesignation as leader in 2015, it does not appear that the Freedom Caucus, or any other group maneuvered for his removal.  If President Trump wanted a change, he was uncharacteristically discreet. This was Paul Ryan's unilateral decision. He will be remembered for the massive 2018 corporate and individual tax restructuring, but not much else. 

    2. It is better for the Republicans if Ryan remains speaker through 2018.  Not much is expected of Congress between now and November, but a lame duck with all of the right connections is better than a vacancy. 

    3. It would probably have been better for Ryan to wait until after the election to make the announcement. To the extent that the public cares, he is a gentleman and a steadying figure in a party which needs a broader visage than Donald Trump. The impact on party activist enthusiasm will be positive for Democrats and negative for Republicans. The seat may well be lost.  

   4. The primary contenders - majority leader Kevin McCarthy, majority whip Steve Scalise, and Freedom Caucus leader Jim Jordan - are all promising to put the fortunes of the party in the Fall elections ahead of their personal ambitions. The traditional Republican deference for the "next in line" may well prevail to the benefit of McCarthy who has a good relation with the President, demonstrated fundraising skills, and a "get along with everybody" personality. The key question is how much the Freedom Caucus - which torpedoed McCarthy in 2015 before Ryan agreed to serve - will want in terms of a more aggressive relation with Mitch McConnell and an ability to impact legislation.   

    Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader since 2002, is measuring the curtains while reminiscing about battles with Dick Armey, Tom Delay, Roy Blunt, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan.  

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  This week's bonus is an interview with Candace Owens - an articulate conservative African American who has taken Morpheus' "red pill".

bill bowen - 4/20/18

The Decline of American Democracy

    It is hard to get an objective assessment of how American democracy is doing. The daily media frenzy contributes to 80% "wrong track" public opinion polling and sub-50% approval ratings for everybody but kindergarten teachers, but it would be good to have an evaluation of our democratic processes trending over time and in comparison to other countries. We can discard any effort by think tanks funded by George Soros or the Koch brothers, but there is one source worth a look - the Democracy Index prepared by the British Economist Intelligence Unit. As to political bias, the Economist editors seek the "extreme center", having supported Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the Vietnam War, Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, decolonization, gun control, and gay marriage. Their coverage is truly global.   

    The EIU bi-annually rates about 165 countries on electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Much of the input is based on surveys and "panels of experts". Country rankings are divided into four categories:

    - Full democracies where civil liberties and basic political freedoms are not only respected, but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and media that is diverse and independent. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.  Most of the 19 countries in this cohort are North European, with Norway at the pole position.  

    - Flawed democracies where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honored but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement). Nonetheless, these nations have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance. South Korea, the United States, and Italy lead this cohort, along with Japan, France, and Israel and another 51 countries. 

    - Hybrid regimes where consequential irregularities exist in elections regularly preventing them from being fair and free. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opponents, non independent judiciaries, and have widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance. This cohort of 39 includes Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Nigeria, and Iraq. 

     - Authoritarian regimes where political pluralism has vanished or is extremely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meager significance, infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair and free, the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and the presence of omnipresent censorship and suppression of governmental criticism. This cohort of 52 includes most of the Middle East and Africa, Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam, with Syria and North Korea on the bottom. 

    Of particular interest, the ratings released in January 2017, dropped the United States from the "full democracies" category to the "flawed democracies" category. The accompanying explaination stressed the steady decline since the 1950's in Americans' confidence in governmental institutions as reflected in Pew Research, and a level of income inequality significantly higher than most developed economies. Rather than blaming the drop on the election of Donald Trump, Trump's election was attributed in part to a broad disaffection with government institutions - a result rather than a cause.  

    Next year's survey may drop off of the cliff. 

        - Whether or not there is ever a fair accounting for the corruption of the Clinton Foundation, the public can connect the dots between the hundreds of millions of contributions, the access to the state department decision making, the reasons for Hillary's illegal e-mail system, and the meeting of Bill Clinton with the Attorney General on the tarmac in Phoenix.   As exposed in the Nunes memo, the Justice Department and the FBI were engaged to spy on the Trump campaign during an election where the Democratic National Committee gave debate questions to one of their competitors. The use of the IRS to target conservative groups is old news. 

        - The un-ending Mueller search for collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians keeps expanding to include unsubstantiated claims of obstruction, decade-old wrongdoing by Manafort and his colleages, episodes with porn stars, raids to seize client-lawyer communications, and anything else that the full power of the politicized FBI and Justice Department can bring against the President. 

        - Many Democrats have abandoned any pretext of respect for our electoral system, with a Silicon Valley billionaire spending tens of millions on a campaign for impeachment, and some 65 House members signing on. 

        - The public's view of government effectiveness must include some measure of looming trillion dollar annual deficits.  

        - And then there is the much flawed Donald Trump, holding up fairly well under the pressure of a nuclear stand-off with North Korea, a trade dispute with China, and an escalating crisis in Syria while the FBI searches his lawyer's house and office. This is not the conventional poster boy for the leader of the Free World. 

     In assessing the trajectory of America's democracy, it is normal for the presidential election to have the results challenged through the final recount. It is improper, but perhaps understandable that agents of the outgoing administration would try to influence the selection of their successors.  What is wrong, and a sharp divergence from America's democratic principles, is the refusal of the losing party to accept the legitimacy of the president who won the election. 

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    This week's video is an interview with Diamond and Silk, two black women Trump supporters whose Facebook page with 1,200,000 followers was blocked as "unsafe to the community." Most of the discussion on the Zuckerberg testimony has been about protection of users' privacy; this reflects a concern about politically biased censorship. 

bill bowen - 4/13/18 

Despicables: A Reflection on Political Insults

        Not long ago I received a group e-mail from a Democratic political consultant who I have known for many years in which all Trump supporters were tarred as stupid, racist, misogynists who lack an interest in the values of the nation. Hillary's rants go by me - they are not posturing; her failure to campaign in vital Midwestern states demonstrates a disrespect for and deep lack of understanding of the American people. Articles by self-satisfied, incredulous liberal authors who have been touring Red states to examine Trump voters go by me - they do a lot of interviews, but generally do not listen to what they are told. But this guy bothers me - he knows my schtick that I am a Republican in San Francisco because I have a genuine interest in liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility, and that I will debate the issues.  What gives? What drives direct confrontational insulting of people with differing political views?

    Two theories:

        1. Bullying of Republicans by Democrats has worked for a long time in Blue states. (And presumably the reverse.) For a decade or so, "racist" was the term of choice. Traditional American values - the Scout oath; Norman Rockwell paintings - reflected a longing for a society of white privilege; any opposition to Barack Obama's liberal policies was based on his race; secure borders were code words for keeping Hispanics in their place. More recently, as the effect of an over-used racist invective has decreased, the gratuitous term  "misogynist" (strongly prejudiced against women, as if a 50 cent word makes the user smarter) has been brought in as a reinforcement. No further discussion; no evidence needed; bad motives supersede any discussion. Presented forcefully and loudly enough, the playground belongs to the bully. 

        2. Personal attack from a (self-perceived) moral high ground is easier than a factual discussion of policy. The latter requires recognition that most subjects have two sides, and a familiarity with both is necessary for an effective debater. One needs The Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times; Fox News as well as MSNBC; Rasmussen as well as Politico. And maybe a bit of intellect. Most importantly, one needs critical thinking skills which seem to switch off when the name Donald Trump is whispered in San Francisco.   

    A proud Deplorable has to be able to get to the meat of policy discussion. Yes, Trump is a sexual reprobate - as were John Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. Yes, his personnel management is terrible - the quality of some of his early selections; the slow speed of bringing forward quality candidates for senior administration positions; public criticism of subordinates. But it was hard to attract good people when opposed by the Establishment Republicans and under siege by the media and the Mueller investigation. Trump's personal shortcomings offer much grist for the media, and motivate the Democratic base, but they distract from what the country needs - a frank discussion of his disruptive policies.  Every week offers new opportunities.

    Perhaps the top this week is the trade conflict with China. Wall Street (volatile, but not panicked) seems to better understand the dance than do the political pundits. We have a $375 billion annual trade deficit with China which cannot go on; China has a state-sponsored plan to overtake us in numerous technology areas by 2025, in part by demanding that companies wanting to do business in China must form joint ventures and turn over their technology to Chinese partners. Presidents Obama and Bush allowed this unacceptable situation to arise; Trump is committed to restoring a sustainable balance. He has a qualified team in place at the Commerce Department and in the key trade negotiator. They have spent months developing a strategy which calls for a Chinese proposal on how to reduce the imbalance by $100 billion, a change of rules on joint ventures and technology transfer, and discussions of tariffs to address key industries. In the background Trump maintains a cordial relationship with Xi Jinping. It is a negotiation. To the Washington Post it is a reckless president seeking a trade war. To a dispassionate observer it is a careful approach to a necessary disruption of a status quo which cannot be allowed to continue.   

    There are plenty of other opportunities to get beyond personal invective and  argue policy: the expulsion of 60 Russian intelligence agents, while maintaining a personal relation with Putin by calling him to offer congratulations on his (fraudulent) reelection; calling on the National Guard (as Obama and Bush did) to help protect the Mexican border; re-starting the debate on sales taxes for e-commerce now that Amazon clearly no longer needs an advantage over the corner retailer. A large swath of the public understands that these have nothing to do with racism and misogyny no matter how loud my associate and the Washington Post yell. And it would not be a surprise if a majority of voters are coming to appreciate how much of what Trump does is intended to cause debate in Congress and in the public about issues that have drifted in an unsustainable direction for the past couple of decades under Democrats and Republicans alike. Insults only hinder that necessary debate.  

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    This week's video reflects PBS's coverage of the Chinese trade dispute - straight from the Chinese Ministry of Truth. Perhaps the next budget deal will question why we need a government-supported left-wing news organization.

bill bowen - 4/6/18