Right in San Francisco

Thanksgiving: A Reprise

    Well, that was hard. Like most sentient beings, this student of life knew enough to avoid political discussions at a relative's Thanksgiving weekend get together. No upside - no minds to change; no interested people who hadn't thought about the big issues; little understanding of relatives and guests leanings and hot buttons. As long as everybody understood the groundrules there were enough ballgames to carry the day.

    But there is always one, fortunately not a relative, and fortunately a short conversation with a limited audience. California Democrats approach political discussions knowing that they are right and assuming that everyone that they would be associating with agrees with them. We San Francisco Republicans are inured against the misplaced confidence, and recognize the futility of real engagement. Trump makes any potential discussion even more fraught - support his policies, and you share his real and imagined personality defects.  Thus, the battle was not joined. 

    Question 1: Were you disappointed with the election? 

        - The polite response: Yes. 

        - The real answer: In San Francisco, where compassion always trumps prudent management, the Board of Supervisors moved to a progressive majority and we voted to double the $300 million budget for homeless services. California was a disaster, well beyond expectations. The moderating hopes for the "top two" primary system - quality women Republican candidates; qualified "decline to state" candidates like Steve Poizner for Insurance Commissioner; and qualified non-machine Democrats like Marshall Tuck for the Department of Education - all lost to the Democratic machine. Nationally it was a somewhat negative mixed bag, given the norms for the mid-term elections after a president's first election. Progressive members of the House will try to create all nature of problems for the President; likely speaker Pelosi might try to legislate by finding common ground on a few items like prison reform and infrastructure spending, but mostly it will be a tune up of people and themes for the 2020 presidential election. The expanded Senate majority will facilitate judicial appointments and block any real stupid stuff coming from the House. 

    Question/Assertion 2: How could anyone support Trump, given that he is morally reprehensible, devoid of empathy, and mentally ill? 

        - The polite response: I supported Romney, Rubio, and Kasich, and did not like Trump.  But I have grown in my understanding that the political establishment of both parties has not governed in the interests of the working class. (Pause for the interruption that it is "the white working class", as if that makes Hillary's "deplorables" morally inferior or politically irrevelant.) 

        - The real answer: This is like the school playground where the "cool" kids have been bullying the kids from the other side of the tracks forever. Suddenly a bigger, tougher kid takes the side of those who have been the victim of the bullying - by the media, by Hollywood, by the universities, by the Democratic party. The "flyover states" realize that they should have more Senators than the cool coastal states. Norman Rockwell and the Boy Scout Oath are OK again. We have a president who unapologetically puts the interests of American citizens above the globalists who have governed for decades while the American manufacturing base has eroded, our borders have been badly compromised, our trade policies have helped China and others at our expense, and we have been engaged in foreign wars without end or strategic purpose. Trump's attraction really isn't about any specific policy; the globalist direction has gone too far and the pendulum has swung back. As for analyzing Trump - mammoth books will be written about Trump Derangement Syndrome and the total inability of his enemies to understand or accept what has happened. 

    Question/Assertion 3: You have to agree that Barack Obama was a great president.  

    - The polite response: He was a gentleman and a great orator. He represented American progress, being the first African-American president.  

    - The real answer:

        - From a partisan Republican perspective he was great. During his time in office the Republicans captured two-thirds of the state legislatures, three quarters of the governorships, a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and ultimately the presidency and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Seeing Obama's vision and ineffective leadership, the country turned to the right. 

        - There are two policy perspectives:

            -- He was a globalist, noting that American exceptionalism was no different than the perspectives of other countries. The son of a Kenyan father, an Indonesian stepfather, an expatriate mother, and a communist tutor in Hawaii, he grew up with little understanding of or appreciation for Americana.  To understand who he is, one need only read his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." 

           -- With the skills and experience of a community organizer, he was unprepared for the role of president. Domestically, he inherited a financial mess, threw $1 trillion "Stimulus Plan" at it, continued President Bush's budget deficits, oversaw an unusually slow recovery, and allowed the FBI to get involved in the politics of the 2016 presidential election. His healthcare reform - for better or worse - actually belongs to Nancy Pelosi.  Internationally, he was a pushover, empowering ISIS, allowing Putin to seize the Crimean peninsula, dithering over Syria while a humanitarian crisis unfolded, and doing nothing about North Korea or the global trade deficit. 

    Silence is golden. The healing process has begun. The easy answers were provided.  It is unlikely that the longer answers would change any California Democratic minds,  but they encapsulate a lot of thought for a centrist Republican.   

                                                                                                    -----   

    This week's bonus is the real highlight of the Thanksgiving weekend - highlights of #3 Gonzaga's victory over #1 Duke. 

bill bowen - 11/30/18 

      

Nikki Haley: A Warm Good-bye

     Good-bye Nikki, we hardly had time to know ye. Truth be told, I first met Governor Haley at a Red State Gathering in Austin in 2011, and she spoke at a couple of Bay Area Republican events as a guest of now Republican National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon a year or two later. She was smart, soft-spoken, full of accomplishments, and politely ambitious. That was before she burnished her national reputation by taking down the Confederate flag at the capital in Columbia, and by appointing Congressman Tim Scott to replace Jim Demint in the US Senate. And long before she joined the tumultous Trump administration as Ambassador to the United Nations. 

    Haley had a very difficult job at the UN, representing a president who is highly unpopular with the domestic and international foreign policy establishment. She worked with a Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who had no government experience and who had a mission of dismantling the State Department. She worked with a difficult series of National Security Advisors - Lt General Michael Flynn; Lt General HR McMaster; John Bolton. She was required to defend policies which were internationally unpopular - withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords; scrapping of the Iranian nuclear agreement;  withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership. International trade policy is largely managed elsewhere, but the background of conflict with friends and foes alike has made the United Nations job more difficult.  She had to deal with an antagonistic liberal press eager to criticize her for issues as large as supporting the president, and as small as installing expensive curtains in her office - which were ordered during the Obama administration. 

    Haley elevated the stature of the office. Despite her opposition to Donald Trump during the Republican primaries, she had direct access to the president and helped to formulate as well as to implement foreign policy. She demanded and received a seat in the cabinet - a stature generally granted, but not by either of the Bush presidents, and opposed by John Bolton.  She played a key role in convincing Russia and China to institute sanctions which drove Kim Jong Un to negotiations.  While leading efforts to maintain sanctions on Russia for their behavior in Ukraine, she was a consistant advocate for a Syria policy which would protect anti-Assad elements, and highlight Russian misbehavior. She has calmed the waters following the decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, enhancing a relationship with Jarred Kushner and Ivanka in the bargain. 

    The theatrics of the resignation were well orchestrated - plaudits all around; defusing thoughts of any incident by disclosing that the decision was discussed months ago; disavowing any intention to run for office in 2020; displaying apparent sincerity of a wish to spend more time with her teenage children. With voters approving her job as UN ambassador by 63 to 17 percent (55% among Democrats), her ability to remain in Trump's good graces while occasionally challenging him, and the Republican need for a young, accomplished, conservative woman, she will not be on the bench for long. Governor? - been there; Senate? - two seats filled by capable youngish conservatives; vice president? - now that's something that candidate Trump will need in 2020. (Sorry Mike.)  

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This week's bonus is a compelling advertisement of Fresno California Republican House candidate Elizabeth Heng -  the daughter of Cambodian immigrants - which was originally banned on Facebook. 

bill bowen - 10.12.18

Of Democrats and Star Chambers

    Most of the political and legal underpinning of the United States came about as a response by the Founding Fathers to the injustices which they had seen in the British political system. The division of authority between the federal government and the states and between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches was intended to prevent the consolidation of power by which the monarch could oppress the citizens. Abuses by the British Star Chamber - a superior court originally intended to keep the aristocracy in line, but later used to arbitrarily mete out punishments for the king's enemies - led to protections for defendants such as the fifth amendment to the American constitution, guaranteeing protection against self-incrimination. The Founders were also conscious of the risk of mob rule with democracy run amok as in the French Revolution and the Salem witch trials of the 1690's. The presumption of innocense and the rules of evidence evolved as protections for the individual against both the establishment and the mob. They form the cornerstone of our individual liberty, and for centuries have been a key part of our national concept of justice. 

    Fast forward to 2018 with Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Democrats' obsession with preventing the establishment of a conservative Supreme Court. There are many downsides to the circus which Diane Feinstein unleashed by bypassing the Senate Judiciary Committee's process for investigating nominees and withholding sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Kavanaugh - the damaged reputation of an exemplary person; the emotional stress on the judge's wife and daughters; the emotional stress on Dr. Ford and her family; the further cheapening of civil discourse in the country; the heightening of animosity between men and women of good will; and the public's continuing low esteem for politicians and Congress. 

    The reality of the events described by Dr. Ford are unknowable. She says he did it; he says he didn't. The potential corroborating witnesses - including her female friend who was allegedly at the party - have no memory of the event, and she told nobody until decades later. She seems to have come forward in good faith, but fell afoul of the national political system in which the Democrats, particularly Senator Feinstein, held her story for maximum political effect, leaking it without permission at the last minute in an attempt to delay or derail Judge Kavanaugh's appointment. Seeing an opportunity to drive up their standing with women prior to the November elections, they seized it. Driven by political deadlines the Republicans refused to delay to allow further investigation which would have been marginally helpful, but which would have kept the window open for other unsubstantiated claims to come forward. Little in the handling will encourage other victims of sexual abuse to subject themselves to public inquiry.   

    The real damage to the nation is the abandonment of the presumption of innocence in the absence of credible evidence - at least in the case of conservatives. (Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Keith Ellison are a different story.) Prior to hearing either side of the case, Senator Chris Coons proudly placed the "burden of proof" on Judge Kavanaugh, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared that there was no "presumption of innocense." In the heat of the political moment that may garner support from the women of the #MeToo movement, but it represents a repudiation of the rule of law as it has been practiced in the United States since our inception. Thoughtful Democrats - as well as Republicans and independents - should reflect on whether that is too high a price to pay for the rejection of a superbly qualified Supreme Court justice. 

                                                                                                            -----

  This week's bonuses are Judge Kavanaugh's lengthy opening statement and Lindsey Graham's emotional response to the Democrats' attacks. 

bill bowen - 9/28/18

 

 

Trump v Mueller: Round 15

   The August 21, conviction of Paul Manafort and the simultaneous guilty plea of Michael Cohen deserve some sorting out as the Mueller investigation grinds endlessly on and, at least for the moment, they seem to represent the beginning of the end. Two questions arise:

   1. What are the new learnings from these two cases, after a year of breathless Washington Post headlines about smoking guns?

       - The Cohen case provides clarity for those in denial that Trump made blackmail payments to two bimbos with whom he had affairs shortly after the time of his son Barron's birth. The Stormy Daniels payment came through Cohen, probably at Trump's request; the McDougal payment came through the the National Enquirer, and apparently originated with the Trump Organization. 

       - Cohen had a problem with taxi licenses going back several years. Manafort had a problem with tax avoidance on fees from lobbying on behalf of pro-Russia Ukranian politicians several years ago. Neither had anything to do with Trump, much less collusion between the Trump campaign and any Russians. Rather, Mueller used their offenses to squeeze out incriminating evidence on Trump - but none (except for the bimbo payments) was presented in either case. 

      - Lanny Davis, Cohen's lawyer who had a long relationship with the Clinton machine, falsely claimed - as an anonymous CNN source, and later directly - that he knew from Cohen that Trump had prior knowledge of the June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Donald Trump Junior, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. (E-mails released by Donald Junior shortly after the meeting revealed that Veselnitskaya had promised dirt on Hillary, but none was offered and her real purpose was to lobby on behalf of adoption policies. President Trump had denied knowing of the meeting in advance.) Davis also lied when he claimed that Trump was involved in the Russian theft of Democratic National committee e-mails. Even the Washington Post criticized Davis and CNN for the falsehoods and shoddy reporting, but to the extent that public attitudes were affected, "fake news" placed another brick in the anti-Trump wall. 

   2. What might come next?

    - Mueller's team and the Democratic New York attorney general will examine the mechanics of the bimbo payments, interviewing National Enquirer executives and the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization. Since Cohen pled guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution there will be an attempt to hang Trump on a similar charge; however, Trump's team will argue that he was just spending his own money to protect his wife and son from embarrasment. The option of Trump volunteering to testify under oath is in the rear view mirror, as the possibility of mis-speaking and being charged with perjury is obvious. 

     - Within a week or two Mueller needs to conclude or pause his investigation, lest he be guilty of Comey's sin of appearing to influence elections. All of the apparent avenues of inquiry have been exhausted, except for the role of Hillary's campaign in the Russia-related Steele dossier, and the anti-Trump behavior of the FBI leadership before and after the election - but there is no evidence that Mueller will go there. Mueller can claim vindication in indicting or getting guilty pleas from two batches of Russians for election interference, identity theft, and money laundering; Manafort for unregistered lobbying and tax evasion; Cohen for improper use of taxi medallions and illegal bimbo payments; Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI; and a few assorted lawyers and hangers on for helping Manafort and the Russians. That Mueller hasn't found a whiff of Russian collusion or obstruction of justice on the part of the Trump team will be a disappointment to many. 

     CBS kept As the World Turns on air for 54 years, proving that there is a market for soap operas. Fifteen months is enough for Mueller v Trump. The overhang on the Trump presidency has been significant, but the Energizer bunny has kept on going.                                                                 

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   This week's video is a brief discussion of California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom's commitment to include illegal immigrants in his free healthcare for all plan. For those keepng track, the state Senate passed a similar program this year, but the Assembly refused to consider it because there was no plan to cover the $400 billion cost. (For perspective the current state budget is about $185 billion.) Support Republican John Cox for governor. 

bill bowen - 8/31/2018

 

 

      

A Socialism Primer

   Rasmusssen's polling tells us that 51% of Democrats, 26% of independents, and even 21 % of Republicans have a favorable impression of socialism. Let's assume that there is something out there beyond the desire for open borders and free stuff; something beyond a charismatic candidate from an anomylous Congressional district; something more than an antipathy for President Trump. After all, surveys of millenials frequently show greater support for socialism than for capitalism. It is worth a primer. 

    Formal definitions don't always catch what is really in people's heads, but they represent a good place to start: 

        Capitalism: An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, voluntary wage labor, voluntary exchange of goods and services, a price system, and competitive markets. Versions include pure free market where supply and demand set prices without government, monopolies, or other interference; welfare capitalism which includes welfare services provided by the government or employers; and state capitalism where some of the economic activity is directly managed by the government, as in China.   

         Socialism: Collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods in which there is no private property and the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. Versions include different scopes of what is owned by the state (factories; farms; small stores) and the amount of central planning. Wages are based on work performed.  

        Communism: The highest form of socialism. A society without class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” 

    In the early stages of the 2016 presidential election, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont brought the far left wing of the Democratic Party to life, ranting against millionaires and billionaires while promising free healthcare, free college, and free child care; he certainly had the crowd energy, and might have won the Democratic nomination had not the party machinery put a heavy thumb (in the form of super delegates and debate management) on the scales for the more mainstream Hillary Clinton.  Over his career Sanders, once a member of the Young People's Socialist League and an admirer of Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, has advocated for just about every liberal cause possible, but has, in truth, not focused on government takeover of private enterprise. While frequently enjoying being called a socialist by his supporters, he has tried to identify more with welfare capitalist Scandinavia than with communist Russia - with a few forays into praise for Castro's Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  

    The next iteration of leftist activism is younger and less circumspect about identification as socialists. Brooklyn Congresswoman-in-waiting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the current star of the Democratic Socialists of America, but she is a beneficiary of the organization  rather than its leader. Founded in 1982 as an amalgum of aging socialist and communist organizations, the DSA left the Socialist International in 2017 because it was endorsing mainstream liberal economic policies such as deregulation and free trade. The largest socialist organization in the United States in over a century, membership in the DSA has risen to 47,000 by mid-2017 - sparked largely by the Trump election - with 181 chapters and a median member age of 33 as compared to an age of 68 in 2013. 

    It is worth digesting a few pearls from the  Democratic Socialists of America web site:  

       -  We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit.

        - We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population.

     - We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.

    - Like most political organization websites there is also a store selling swag - "Medicare for all" cups; "Abolish ICE" tee shirts; "Karl Marx 200th Birthday" tote bags. 

    In some regards it is good to have Ocasio-Cortez as the poster child of this race to the Left. Despite her degree from Boston University with emphasis in economics and international relations, she cannot get beyond DSA talking points, even when interviewed on sympathetic programs like the Daily Show. Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs; last year we gave the military a $700 billion increase (actually the total military budget); she favors a two state solution for Israel and Palestine - until liberal activists get her to talk about the "massacre" in Gaza and the Israeli occupation.  A couple of generations ago an international relations degree would have implied understanding that tens of millions were killed by Stalin, Mao, and Castro for their opposition to the imposition of socialism; today one would expect students would be taking the same lessons from Venezuela: not everyone is willing to give their posessions to the state, not everyone is willing to let the state determine where they work and live, and few central government bureaucrats are willing to really give "power to the people". 

    Conservatives expect that a clarion call from the Left will fall flat as it did with candidates such as George McGovern (who carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia against incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972). They should not be so confident. The pendulum swings - Donald Trump reflects to some extent a reaction to the globalism and smooth-talking liberalism of Barack Obama. Ocasio-Cortez will have a platform, and the mob crying "socialism" will have a voice in the Congress in 2019, potentially as an unruly part of the majority. To make it through the primaries and caucuses in 2020 the successful Democratic presidential candidate will need to sound like the Bernie Sanders version of socialism; to be elected they will need to convince the public that they believe in capitalism.  

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    This week's video is a New York Times story designed to promote the recent campaign visit of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to Wichita, Kansas, as evidence that the whole country is turning left.  

bill bowen - 8/3/18

 

The Most Interesting Politician in California ?

    California has a lot if interesting politicians - outgoing four term Governor Jerry Brown; rising youngish Democrats with presidential aspirations - Senator Kamala Harris, governor candidate Gavin Newsom, and LA Mayor Eric Garcetti; oldish House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; olderish senior Senator Diane Feinstein; House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy; prominent House members Darrell Issa, Ed Royce, and Devin Nunez. For a brief moment of time, one could make the case that Republican Representative Jeff Denham from the sleepy Central Valley city of Modesto is among the most important of the lot. 

    Denham - a four term "back bencher" - carries two distinctions: his district will be a major bellweather for whether the Democrats can crack the California Central Valley in their quest to take over the House; and he is a prominent leader of Republican House efforts to forge a solution to vexing immigratioin issues.

        1. The district. The heavily agricultural California 10th District lies east of the Bay area. Demographics are 46% white, 40% Hispanic, 4% African American, and 8% Asian. It is among the least secure of seven Republican House seats targeted by the Democrats - the others being held by southern neighbor David Valladeo, and five in southern California. (The other six California Republican seats are generally considered safe.) The Cook Partisan Voter Index rates the 10th as evenly balanced between Republicans and Democrats. In 2016 the district voted for Hillary over Trump by 48.5% to 45.5%, while Denham won by a narrow 4%. 

        2. The primary. In the June 5 "top two" primary, Denham got 38% of the vote, Democrat Josh Harder was second at 17%, a second Republican got 14%, and five other Democrats split 31%. Combined, the vote was 52% Republican and 48% Democrat.   

        3. The candidates. Denham fits the district - a small almond farmer who owns a plastics company; husband of a Mexican-American wife; a Cal Poly graduate; Air Force veteran; Spanish speaker; member of the Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Transportation Committees. Harder, a 30 year old fifth generation native of the district and a venture capitalist with degrees from Stanford and Harvard, is on the New Democrat PAC Watch List.  

        4. The issues. Harder highlights "Medicare for all", immigration reform, and job creation. While he also talks about water (which represents jobs and prosperity in the Central Valley), Denham has emerged as a leader on the search for compromise on immigration reform.   

    In May, Denham was central to a bi-partisan effort to solve the DACA impasse initiated by Congressman Will Hurt (R-Texas) and Pete Aguilar (D-California) with the Uniting and Securing America (USA) Act which married a path to legal residency for DACA beneficiaries with a comprehensive plan for border security. When Paul Ryan refused to bring the bill forward, Denham's effort to get 218 votes for a rare "discharge petition" which would trigger bipartisan floor debate about competing proposals fell a few votes short. This month he has been central to the failed effort by Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) to pass the Border Security and Immigratioin Reform Act  which would have provided robust border security and the funding needed to build a wall and infrastructure along the Southern border, contained more tools to help prevent illegal immigration and human smuggling, provided a legislative solution for those who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children without creating a special pathway to citizenship, created a new merit-based immigration program that rewards those with the skills, education and work experience the U.S. needs, and remedied current law and court decisions to keep children and parents together as much as possible when they are apprehended. The Freedom Caucus wanted more. 

    As this latest turn of the immigratioin unfolds, Jeff Denham is The Man, acting as if his political life and Republican control of Congress depends on his persistence and persuasive skills. Both do. Wish him well.

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   This week's video is a rare Stephen Colbert panning of an absolutely horrendous Democratic Congressional ad. 

bill bowen - 6/22/18

 

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. 

                                                                                           -----

    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.  

                                                                                -----

  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 State of State

    Rex Tillerson arrived as Secretary of State in 2017 with deep experience in the oil politics of the Middle East and Russia and a successful 42 year career at Exxon Mobil. The hope was that the responsible adult would bring gravitas to the cabinet as well as understanding and personal relationships which could help in the post-Iraq, post-Syria, post-Ukraine world of American foreign policy. The generals could handle the military clean-up work; Tillerson would handle the soft side. What went wrong?

    The complexity of foreign policy is reflected in the core membership of the President's National Security Council - the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the the Secretary of the Treasury, and the President's Assistant for National Security, advised by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence. The three dimensions of foreign policy - diplomatic, military, and economic - are all represented; each needs a champion who has the confidence of the President and a who can draw upon an experienced and motivated staff which prepares the briefing papers and implements the decisions. This assumes competent staff down several levels, and NSC members who are aligned with the president. Both requirements proved to be missing in the case of Rex Tillerson's State Department. 

    To be fair, the fixation about Russian meddling in the 2016 election has made it very difficult to engage with what Mitt Romney had rightly called our number one national security threat. Tillerson knew Putin, at least peripherally, understood the importance of energy in Russia's economy and foreign policy, and had direct experience dealing with Russian negotiators. Before the Democrats settled on the "Russia cost Hillary the election" meme and Mueller subpoened anyone who had ever talked to a Russian, there was a chance to sort out the interests of Russia and NATO in the former Soviet republics and to agree on a plan to stabilize the Muslim nations lying to Russia's south. Tillerson could have been central, but the Trump administration was denied the opportunity, and Tillerson's resume became less relevant.      

  Tillerson, Trump, and the Senate all deserve blame for the mis-management of the State Department. Trump has had an overall problem nominating people for positions requiring Senate approval, with no nominee yet proposed for one third of the 640 such positions. State, which is facing a 30% budget reduction, is at the forefront with no nominee yet recommended for 54 positions, 61 confirmed and 28 pending before the Senate. As happened to George W Bush, but not Obama, Clinton, or HW Bush, the Senate required resubmission of nominations after the end of the year - a sign that Mitch Mcconnell is as much of a problem as is Chuck Schumer.  At State, a majority of the senior positions remain unfilled, and no ambassadors have been nominated for Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Yemen, or South Korea - all hot spots requiring expertise and personal contacts.  If Tillerson has been complaining about White House interference, it has not made the media. 

    On broad policy, former Exxon CEO Tillerson would have agreed with the establishment, globalist wing of the Republican party in the Make America Great Again debate about free trade and the ability of American companies to prosper amid global competition. His experienced voice will be missed in the foreign trade debates which will follow the replacement of Gary Cohn by (choke) Larry Kudlow as President Trump's chief economic advisor, and the administration turns away from multinational agreements toward individual country negotiations. Down with the influence of the embassy staffs and the Foggy Bottom experts; up with their counterparts at the Commerce Department and the office of the Trade Representative.  

    The turn from Tillerson to Mike Pompeo - US Military Academy; Harvard Law; House Intelligence Committee; CIA Director - suggests closer alignment than with Tillerson for a hawkish approach to the remaining two members of George W Bush's "Axis of Evil" - North Korea and Iran. Each has a story, but Tillerson was apparently not in the loop with Mike Pence and Ivanka on North Korea, and would have cautioned against scrapping President Obama and John Kerry's Iran nuclear agreement which does not include inspection of Iranian military sites or cover missile development. The first may be an opportunity; the second a risk. 

    Tillerson left Exxon a little better than he found it when he became CEO in 2006 - up about 25%; he won't be able to say that about the State Department, but he will have his XOM stock to cushion the blow, unlike many others who have given up good careers to join the administration and found that they cound not navigate the Senate or the top CEO.  

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      This week's bonus video is for those who couldn't get enough of the curling competition at the recent Olympics. 

  bill bowen - 3/16/2018

The David Brooks Syndrome

    Two astute political friends recently sent me a David Brooks opinion piece from the New York Times titled "The End of the Two Party System", whose purpose is to explain the poison that has infected the American political system with Donald Trump and call for the replacement of our two party system with something approximating a parlimentary system. Back in the day I would have imbibed Brooks' expositions as informed wisdom; now either I have drifted away from him, or he from me. 

     In short form, Brooks contends that the world has changed from an attitude of optimistic abundance where everybody could prosper to one of scarcity where we divide into tribes to fight over limited resources. While he traces the change to the ethnic conflicts which accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the pressures following the 2008 financial crisis, he blames Trump for destroying "the pillars of conservatism: rule of law, fiscal discipline, global engagement, moral decency, the (Martin Luther King) idea that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin."

    This is perhaps a useful construct for Establishment Republicans who have made little effort to understand the Trump phenomenon, and have nowhere to go - as if George W Bush and Barack Obama were paragons of fiscal discipline, Bill Clinton were a moral exemplar, and Barack Obama's use of the IRS and the FBI to subdue his political opponents enhanced the rule of law. Let's examine a few of Brooks' premises more closely. 

        1. The 1990s were a glorious age. Yes, it was a good time for western and central Europe with the (Reagan-induced)  break-up of the Soviet Union, but it was a dark time for the people of Russia.  For those casting politics in global terms, the larger story of the past few decades is the rise from poverty of hundreds of millions of Chinese - aided in significant part by American trade policies. And the shift from optimism about the spread of prosperity with democratic capitalism to the mood of constraints?  Perhaps the greatest constraint of all is the meme of global warming - the American working class needs to bear the brunt for the byproduct of spreading industrial society.  

        2. The shift to "tribalism" on a global scale began with the break-up of Yugoslavia. That Euro-centric perspective ignores the mass genocides between the Tutsis and the Hutus in central Africa during the 90s, and the waves of virulent religious and ethnic violence which have roiled the Muslim world following the optimism of the Arab Spring. Those looking for blame among American presidents need to examine Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama. 

        3. The essence of Make America Great Again is racist. Many Establishment Republicans buy into the liberal Democratic construct that the descendents of the people who built America do not have a right to protect their religious, economic, cultural, and philosophical legacy. The attitude reached a peak under "globalist" President Obama, and is manifested in trade and immigration policies which have played a significant role in hollowing out the American middle class. For the first time in decades, a prominent politician has been willing to speak the politically incorrect and stand up for the working class.   

        4. The two party system isn't working. Actually, it is working just fine. The Democrats adopted a strategy of pandering to minorities on the theory that they had 10% sewed up with African Americans and they could garner a solid 30% with Hispanics. In the process, they lost working class America which has found a home in the Republican Party. Intellectuals like David Brooks speak to a declining segment of the party, have lost influence with what have become the mainstream Republicans, cannot separate Trump the person from the policies which he advocates,  and yet cannot rationalize moving to direct support of an increasingly "progressive" Democratic Party.  Brooks lost his party, but that does not mean that we should give him a new one. 

    The reality of the new American political alignment is that the Republicans have become the party of the middle class while the Democrats have become the party of the coastal elites, ethnic minorities, and the "lumpen proletariat". The transition long preceedes Trump, and is reflected in state legislatures and governorships across the country.  It is easy to understand where traditional conservative values such as liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility fit in this construct. Unfortunately, fiscal responsibility is an orphan at the national level.  

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    This week's summary of highlights of Sarah Huckabee Saunders' 2017 press conferences reminds us how fortunate we are to have her addressing the media as opposed to Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci, or Hope Hicks.  

bill bowen - 2/16/18 

     

 

Steve Bannon's Mental Condition.

      Back in July the American Psychiatric Association encouraged its members to evaluate President Donald Trump's mental condition without the traditional nuisance of a personal examination. It is time for a more credible evaluation of what disorder is afflicting former presidential adviser Steve Bannon who is calling for a Republican "Civil War" which would doom any possibility of Congressional passage of the Trump agenda in the second half of his term.  

    A couple pieces of background:

        - Bannon was apparently influenced by the The Tea Party revolution as it ricocheted through the Senate from 2010 to 2014.  To the objective observer it was a mixed blessing. Led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, using his Senate Conservatives Fund Political Action Committee, the objective was the unseating of  Republican Senators who were insufficiently conservative as well as a few Democrats. Early electoral successes included defeats of Republican incumbents (Mike Lee over Bob Bennett in Utah; Pat Twomey over Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania), defeats of establishment favorites (Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist in Florida; Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst in Texas), and promotion of adequately conservative candidates in primaries for open seats (Rand Paul in Kentucky; Ron Johnson in Wisconsin; Joni Ernst in Iowa; Ben Sasse in Nebraska.)  Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory were the Todd Akins ("legitimate rape") seat in Missouri, the Christine O'Donnell ("not a witch") seat in Delaware, and the Richard Mourdock ("rape is something that God intended") seat in Indiana. After the Republicans took control with 54 seats in 2014, the internecine warfare largely subsided.  

        - Following a stint in the Navy, time as a mid-level manager at Goldman Sachs, and numerous roles in the film and entertainment business, Bannon landed at Breitbart as executive producer after the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012.  Most importantly, he has been a player since 2009 on the team of "quant-nerd"  billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, whose network of think tanks, data analytic firms, media outlets, and Political Action Committees promotes the small government, anti-establishment, populist themes central to Bannon and Trump, spending about $40 million in the 2016 election cycle.  (Other Mercer favorites include Ted Cruz, John Bolton, and KellyAnne Conway.) Bannon didn't join the Trump campaign as chief executive until mid-August 2016, and lasted as Trump's "chief strategist and senior counsellor" until mid-August 2017. In his brief stay he fostered the conflict with Reince Priebus' establishment Republicans in the West Wing, leaked freely to the press, and wrote the first legally-flawed immigration directive.  When fired by General Kelly he returned to Breitbart, and reportedly still talks with President Trump.   

     Bannon has obviously not digested Otto von Bismark's observation that "Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best."  He never made the transition from outside bomb thrower to inside policy maker. He would have preferred Richard Mourdock to the highly popular Richard Lugar in 2012; given the opportunity to govern in 2017, he preferred to destroy establishment Republicans; now back on the outside, he has vowed to start a "civil war" to destroy the Republican Senate majority. Finally the Washington Post loves him. 

    So, what would a normal post-adolescent person do in Bannon's situation? 

        1. Chill out. Hang for awhile with the family - three ex-wives; three daughters. Go back to where he had success - Breitbart.  

        2. Focus energy on the handful of Republicans in the Senate who are opposing the few key things necessary for Trump's success. John McCain; Rand Paul; Susan Collins; Lisa Murkowski. Find intermediaries, common ground, or credible political threats. Support the president and Senate leadership. 

        3. Look to the 2018 elections. Rally support for vulnerable Senate Republicans, or work to replace them with stronger candidates. Jeff Flake of Arizona; Dean Heller of Nevada. Focus on the handful of vulnerable Democrats - Joe Donnelly in Indiana; Clair McCaskill in Missouri; John Tester in Montana; Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota; Sherrod Brown in Ohio; Joe Manchin in West Virginia. 

        4. Lean on the Freedom Caucus in the House to go along with the versions of healthcare, tax, and immigration legislation which can make it through the Senate. 

        5. Hold the replacement of McConnell until the routine organizing vote in 2019. Get commitments now.  

    And Bannon's actual plan: Support primary challengers for all of the Republicans running for reelection to the Senate in 2018, except for Ted Cruz. The problem - all of the incumbents running have supported Trump on healthcare, judicial appointments, administrative appointments, and tax policy. There is no transgression; no upside to replacement.  The first casualty ? Luther Strange of Alabama who was appointed to replace Jeff Sessions, losing the primary to the weaker candidate, Roy Moore. Claim credit whenever a moderate Republican is beaten.  

    That's the downside. There is a much bigger upside - if the Republicans can pass some legislation - with the Democrats defending 23 seats to the Republicans' 9, and the Koch brothers' network planning to spend up to $400 million on the 2018 elections. Even Trump understands the urgency of holding together the slim Senate majority, lunching with the ineffective Mitch McConnell, golfing with Rand Paul, answering McCain with a warning rather than an insult.  If Bannon is going to hang around, he needs to at least rise to the Trump standard of sanity.  

                                                                                                    -----

    Of no particular relevance, but with great humor, this week's video is a brief lecture by Andrew Klavan on the development of western civilization. 

bill bowen - 10/20/17.       

 

                    

Trump in Literary Perspective

    If the Trump presidency is a three act play, we are past the Set Up of Act I when the major characters are introduced, the setting and logic of the story are defined, and the nature of the conflict is established. We are probably in the Confrontation of Act II, where subplots are introduced, foreshadowing events occur, the protagonist leaves his comfort zone, there may be a change of direction, and the stakes escalate. The Resolution of Act III lies in the future with the protagonist coming face to face with the antagonist. 

    From Homer to Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald the concept of the hero's tragic flaw has filled literature. For Achilles, Macbeth and Jay Gatsby a lack of self awareness, a lack of judgement, or hubris brought down the otherwise heroic central character. Greek playwrights often had the gods intervene. There is also the conventional character arc, in which the protagonist grows and in the end is capable of things that were impossible in the beginning.

    For those hoping for a happy ending, the character arc will have to bend pretty significantly, or the gods will have to intervene for Donald Trump.  Consider: 

        - During the decade of Republican ascendancy, the blocking and tackling was led by Reince Priebus, first in Wisconsin and since 2011 as chair of the Republican National Committee.  Recruiting candidates, fundraising, organizing databases, supporting phone banks, building state and local party structures for Get Out The Vote. While the Democratic National Committee leaned over backward to help Hillary defeat Bernie Sanders, Priebus played it straight. When Trump triumphed over the party establishment's preferred candidates, Priebus eschewed the Never Trump movement, and swung all of the power of the party behind Trump's candidacy. While Trump had the big rallies and energized outsiders, Priebus had the database, the field offices, and the staff to guide the volunteers. When he appointed the party leader as Chief of Staff, Trump seemed to understand Priebus' value, but he is gone -  a victim of Anthony Scaramucci's 10 day wrecking ball, leaks by self-serving staff members, and his inability to get Congress to pass Healthcare legislation. Exit Stage Right. 

        - During the decade of Republican ascendancy, for Middle America the media came less and less to mean the New York Times and CBS, and more to mean talk radio and Fox News. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Mark Levin are still going strong, but in twelve short months Trump has declared war on the mainstream media, and Fox has become a shell of its former self. Anointed star Megyn Kelly, gone. Roger Ailes, gone. Top Ailes assistant Bill Shine, gone. Bill O'Reilly, gone. Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson still offer conservative advocacy, but the rest of the cast is either B Team or trying to truly be "fair and balanced" and there is nowhere to go for the viewer who wants a pro-Trump perspective on why Chuck Schumer and CNN are hyperventilating each day. Meanwhile those looking for clever star power are migrating to Rachel Maddow for their evening entertainment. If there is any evidence that team Trump would like to help their most loyal news partner, it is missing in the daily White House briefing room where most time is spent jousting with reporters from CNN, the New York Times, and others who have written their stories before entering the room. Exit Stage Right. 

        - Under Trump, FDR's "fireside chats" - speaking directly to the American people - have become midnight Tweets. Perhaps he is a victim of the technology. In a different era his utterings would have had limited distribution. But the gods gave us Twitter, and Trump gave us stream of consciousness in 140 characters. No Marc Anthony; no Churchill. Not even Mao's little red book. It is not as if Trump does not have great speech writers to polish his thinking - they have been evident at the inaugural, in the State of the Union address, and in several foreign speeches, but the hubris makes him believe that immediate dissemination of a midnight thought is more important than a reasoned argument. Each time that a day goes by without a tweet hope arises that the protagonist is growing, but it is a faint hope.

        - Perhaps because of his "sole proprietor" business background, Trump does not understand the need for a chorus. Six months into his term, he had Senate approval for only 50 department political nominees, about a quarter of the rate for recent presidents. Only 5 of the 15 departments have deputy directors. Some of this is due to Democratic obstructionism; some is due to avoidance of Establishment Republicans; some is due to a lack of appreciation for basic staffing functions.

     Hope remains that Trump will grow; that he will come to understand the importance of early supporters like Jeff Sessions; that he will let General Kelly impose much needed discipline on the White House staff; that he will coordinate legislative strategy with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Perhaps the loss on Repeal and Replace will serve as the plot turning point; perhaps the Scaramucci fiasco. He will definitely need to up his game before he meets his ultimate antagonist  - whether it be a united Democratic Party in the 2020 election, an out of control Special Prosecutor, or perhaps Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. 

                                                                                                    -----

    In this week's video senior White House staffer Stephen Miller tangles with CNN's senior White House correspondent in explaining the forthcoming change in legal "green card" immigration policy - reducing the number of unskilled immigrants to help current working class Americans, and focusing on immigrants who have skills which America needs rather than members of extended families. This is a problem for the Democrats who understand the need to reclaim working middle class American voters, but are wed to open borders.   

www.RightinSanFrancisco.,com

 

 

 

Mitch McConnell's Hapless Senate

    Back in the euphoric days of January, all good things were possible. The Republican House and Senate would promptly repeal and replace Obamacare, soon to be followed by tax reform. A parade of jurists acceptable to the Heritage Foundation lay in wait for quick appointment and approval to district and appellate courts across the land. The optimists on the fiscal conservative Right even saw the possibility of making Social Security and Medicare sustainable, and returning to the days of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich when budgets were balanced. Harry Reid had given the gift of simple majorities empowered to approve all appointees below the Supreme Court. "Reconciliation" could whisk most bills through the legislature without a blocking requirement of 60 votes in the Senate. President Trump would have many signing pens to give as mementos. Success depended only on Paul Ryan's ability to keep the Freedom Caucus from demanding ideological purity. That was then.

    Who would have thought that the problem would be the Senate? Wiley old Mitch McConnell had won his gamble of not allowing a vote on Merrick Garland for Antonin Scalia's Supreme Court seat ultimately taken by conservative darling Neil Gorsuch. The Republicans who had to defend 24 seats to the Democrats 10 in the 2016 election had surprisingly held all but two. Certainly a few Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Jon Tester of Montana, and Joe Donnelly of Indiana  could be relied on when needed. What went wrong?

    - First, the failure of Repeal and Replace, or Repeal then Replace, or just Repeal is not a repudiation of President Trump. Trump-haters in both parties will try to pin it on him, but Healthcare is not his issue; he would have taken anything. 

    - Most importantly,  Mitch McConnell has not been able to turn from being an effective opposition leader, capable of impeding the Obama agenda by a masterful use of Senate procedures and encouragement of unified opposition. It was easy to get Rand Paul to shout "NO" when that was the Republican game plan. It is more difficult to get him to stop shouting "NO" when the Republican agenda is on the table.  McConnell agreed to the overall strategy of putting Obamacare - a frontal assault on the cornerstone of the Obama presidency - ahead of tax reform or an infrastructure bill, either of which might have drawn some Democratic support. With 30 years in the Senate before becoming Majority Leader in 2015, he knows the pecadillos of all of the players in the 100 member club. He was central to drafting the Senate version. He was responsible for the necessary sausage making. He was shown to be wanting. 

    - When faced with the choice between party, constituents, and their own vision of a perfect world, a disappointing group demonstrated that they could not make the transition from opposition to governing by supporting the party on the most momentous vote of this presidential cycle  - Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Lee of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Rand Paul of Kentucky. Several with reservations understood the importance of supporting the party  and would likely have voted for the last gasp - Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John McCain of Arizona. Ted Cruz earned his stripes with his amendment to allow sale of low cost/low benefit insurance policies. The rest of the party leadership were AWOL - Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas and Health Committee Chair Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. New leadership is needed - preferably somebody who has not burned all of their bridges to the Democratic side of the aisle. 

    - Obama and Pelosi were right: With seven years to take root, it is nearly impossible to take back an entitlement. Unless it falls of its own weight. 

    So, where do the Republicans go from here?

    - There should be a recognition that the work of the Senate goes deeper than Obamacare. McConnell did manage to get all of President Trump's cabinet nominees approved - six by margins of three to five votes - but the pace was agonizingly slow in the White House and the Senate, and many secondary positions are yet unfilled. Fortunately, Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa is committed to aggressively filling the hundred plus district and appeals court vacancies which Trump inherited - with qualified conservative justices; with or without timely recommendations by the liberal American Bar Association; limiting the traditional "blue slip" veto power of home state senators; and requiring only 51 votes, thanks to the rules which Harry Reid established in 2013.

    - There must be a recognition that comprehensive legislation which changes the direction of society requires an element of bipartisan agreement. Part of the failure of Obamacare stems from an unwillingness of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid to compromise with Republicans, creating both unworkable features, and a bitterly hostile opposition. Likewise Repeal and Replace. Some like governor John Kasich have proposals which could garner bipartisan support, and might actually help people.   

   - Some accomplishments are necessary before attention turns to the 2018 elections.  (Actually, potential candidates are making their judgments based on what they see today.) The math in the Senate remains overwhelmingly favorable for the Republicans - of the 33 seats up for election, 23 are Democrats; 10 of the Democrats are in states carried by Trump; virtually all of the Republicans are expected to run for re-election. It would be nice to have a new leader for the class of '18.  

      - And in the shorter term the Republicans will have their margin trimmed to 51-48 until John McCain returns or Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey names a replacement. Pray for the best; plan for the worst. 

        Optimists would say that strength and wisdom come from adversity. This is a learning moment.   

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This week's video dealing with the burgeoning Trump "meme wars"  was submitted by an alert reader in San Francisco. 

President Trump Comes of Age

   Leftists of the #Resist stripe should not be too excited and conservatives of the populist stripe should not be too concerned about the ebb and flow of Washington politics. The change of policy direction from Barack Obama to Donald Trump has been broad and stark; the determination of the Democratic leadership to follow their angry base has denied any vestige of cooperation; the conservative optimism created by the Republican control of the White House, the House, and the Senate has gotten ahead of reality; and Trump's desire to carry every issue directly from the campaign into his yet-to-form government has led to more difficulty than was necessary. It is time for a deep breath. 

    A few realities that he has (hopefully) learned:

        1.  He has to be very careful in delegating in a management structure where there are so many egos fighting for power, and so many power centers looking for ways to attack the administration. The order temporarily halting immigration from war zone countries where vetting is inadequate was poorly handled, apparently with the direction of Steve Bannon - done while a hostile Obama holdover was still running the Justice Department; done with little involvement of the Secretary of Homeland Security; sloppily including "green card" holders; done without a clear implementation plan, a public relations plan, or coordination with Congress. Trump cannot be everywhere, but he quickly needs to figure out who he can trust.

        2. As part of delegating and trusting subordinates, he needs to allow his key advisers to select their own staffs. He is better off without Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, but - if reports are accurate - he has publicly botched the opportunity to replace Flynn with Vice Admiral Robert Harward, by insisting that Harward keep Flynn's chief deputy KT McFarland. With Mattis at Defense, Kelly at Homeland Security, Tilleson  at State, and Pompeo at the CIA he does have strong, competent, sympatico leaders, but he needs a strong leader in the White House - in part to keep Bannon in check. 

        3. There is an unholy alliance between the Democratic leadership who are incensed by Russia's release of hacked Clinton and Podesta e-mails during the election, rogue Republicans who see Russia as a Cold War adversary, those who are legitimately offended by Vladimir Putin's KGB management style, and much of the media who are looking for a Watergate-type story to take Trump down. He cannot be sucked in. Roosevelt worked with Stalin. Reagan "trusted, but verified". Trump's geopolitical priorities - crushing ISIS, rebalancing our trade relationships with China and others, stopping nuclear proliferation - require a pragmatic working relationship with Russia. An early firing of campaign director Paul Manafort and the recent firing of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn suggest that Trump understands the political poison of an apparent cozy relationship with the Kremlin, but his inclination to develop a good "eyes wide open"  relation with Putin is on target. 

        4. We will be challenged internationally - Iranian missile tests; North Korean missile and nuclear tests; Russian missiles threatening the Baltics and intelligence gathering off of the East Coast; Chinese bases and aggressive patrols in the South China Sea. With nary a supportive word from the Democrats or the media, Trump is showing much patience, not letting words outpace actions. His team needs to provide options to demonstrate that provocations will bring consequences.    

        5. It is very difficult to control information in the digital age - Snowden; Manning; hackers. It is doubly difficult with a large portion of the bureaucracy - Obama appointees and others further down the food chain - opposed to the Trump agenda. The first manifestation has been in the national security arena where laws have clearly been violated, but it will be worse on domestic subjects - EPA; Education; Obamacare; Energy; HUD - where internal deliberations stand to regularly appear in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

        6. The Trump public relations team needs to up its game. It is a tough job with the boss Tweeting, the media viewed as the enemy, and KellyAnne Conway being asked to continue the magic that she brought to the campaign. Strategic messaging is needed. 

    And a sanity check on where we stand after Month 1:

        1. Mitch McConnell is proceeding slower than his predecessors getting Senate approval of Cabinet appointees, and the Democrats are presenting more consistent opposition than is usual, but the one loss to date - Andrew Pudzer at Labor - is about normal, and replacement Alexander Acosta is clearly superior. 

        2. Trump is establishing candid, if not warm, working relationships with world leaders - Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Japan, China. He does not have Obama's gift for oratory, but he does have a direct personal style and immense capacity. NATO leaders understand that they must start paying their agreed share. He is digesting longstanding policies, accepting some (One China), and rejecting others (there must be an independent Palestinian state.) 

        3. With the confirmation of Stephen Mnuchin at Treasury and Tom Price at Health and Human Services, discussions with Paul Ryan's House can begin in earnest on tax reform and Obamacare replacement. There are many paper and electronic pages being filled opinions and insights about both, but the players are just now taking the field.

        4. A stellar Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch,  is making his way toward installation about April 1 - with Chuck Schumer to decide whether to force Mitch McConnell to change Senate rules to allow acceptance with 51 votes. 

        5. We have an Attorney General who will support law enforcement.

        6. And a Secretary of Homeland Security who will secure the border. 

      The road is bumpy, but it has been less than a month.

                                                            -----

    This week's video is an interview with crazy Left Dennis Kucinich, in which he expresses a largely accurate and disquieting interpretation of the firing of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. 

bill bowen - 2/17/17 

     

Neil Gorsuch - The Rest Is Noise

     Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision in March 2016, to sit on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia was the most consequential political act of the year. The tangible promise of a judicially and socially conservative Supreme Court justice was a critical factor in Donald Trump garnering an 80% share of white Evangelicals and 60% of white Catholics despite his substantial moral shortcomings. It also gave the conservatives an opportunity to hold their majority on the Supreme Court for at least a decade.   

 

First, some impartial thoughts:

  - By any objective standard, Judge Neil Gorsuch is an outstanding nominee for the Supreme Court. Columbia, Harvard, Oxford; young successful partner in a top law firm; clerked for Justices Byron "Whizzer" White and Anthony Kennedy; rated "Highly Qualified" by the American Bar Association; approved in 2006 without opposition by the Senate for the Federal Appeals Court in Denver.  

  - With the progressive Left in full revolt over the November election, and the Republicans able to confirm virtually all of Trump's cabinet cabinet appointments with no Democratic votes, Democratic Senate leadership is compelled to attempt to block the only position which requires 60 votes under current rules. After what McConnell did to Garland, they at least have a talking point for voting "no".   

  - It is best if the 60 vote threshold survives as it helps ensure that Supreme Court justices are not too far away from the mainstream. In the abstract, members of both parties like the 60 vote filibuster rule because it increases the leverage of each Senator. 

  - The Republic is best served if the Supreme Court contains at least one brilliant, articulate advocate from the judicial Left and one from the judicial Right. Gorsuch replaces Scalia, without the flair; the four judges on the Left - Breyer, Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan - do not have a match.

   - Nothing is forever. Republicans are riding high now and have a favorable slate in 2018, but in 2020 Trump would have to be re-elected and two-thirds of the contested Senate seats will be Republican. There is a reasonable path, however, to a conservative court for decades.   

 

And, some partisan thoughts:

  - Bring it on !!! After a week of protest marches and media hysteria it is good to have a paramount issue where the angels will win. 

  - Let the pundits and Senate vote counters opine, but Mitch McConnell has vowed that Gorsuch will be confirmed, hopefully with Democratic defectors.  Not surprisingly, Trump has advocated the "nuclear option", changing Senate rules to extend Harry Reid's "51 is enough" to include the Supreme Court. It is the Democrats choice whether it is 51 or 60, but it is not their choice whether Gorsuch will be approved.

  - With 23 Democratic senators and two Independents running for reelection in 2018 - 10 in states carried by Trump, and with Judicial Crisis Network spending millions to pressure exposed Democrats - they would pay a heavy price for symbolic opposition. It is conceivable that Republicans could gain a filibuster-proof Senate majority, opening the door for far less attractive nominees than Gorsuch or some others considered in this cycle. Mitch McConnell apparently does not believe that, whatever Chuck Schumer or George Soros wants, the party will be able to commit suicide. The "nuclear option" will not be needed. 

    - The Gorsuch confirmation will not change the Court which has long been 4 conservatives, 4 liberals, and Anthony Kennedy who votes with the conservatives much of the time. With the 49 year old Gorsuch, it does extend the time horizon, and if Kennedy (age 80) chooses to retire, the team of Roberts (age 62), Alito, (age 66), and Thomas (age 68) could gain a fifth vote to carry it for a decade. While Kagan (age 56), and Sotomayor (age 62) will be around, the Ginsberg (age 83), and Breyer (age 78) seats could make it as much as a 7-2 conservative majority before Trump leaves office.    

 

     The other issues of the day are transitory: how long it takes Cabinet secretaries to be approved; perhaps one or two defeats (DeVos?); the poorly handled roll out of temporary immigration procedures; the official membership of the National Security Council. Even the details of the Obamacare replacement legislation and the tax code revisions will have less lasting importance than a Supreme Court which believes that our liberty is best protected by the simple premise that the oath "to support and defend the Constitution" means the document as intended by the authors. 

    

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  This week's video of Betsy DeVos' Senate testimony with Senator Tim Kaine reflects the type of answers which caused Republican Senators Murkowski and Collins to declare against confirmation.  

 

bill bowen - 2/3/17 

 

  

Assessing Trump's Cabinet - Part III (Conclusions)

   The last two weeks' blogs have covered appointments in National Security and Economics. This week will briefly address the remaining appointments, and highlight some key themes.  

    Doctor David Shulkin for Secretary of the Veterans Administration. Prior to being appointed as Undersecretary by President Obama, Shulkin was very successful in turning around major hospitals in New York and New Jersey. This position is highly sensitive to a major Trump constituency - a non-partisan, "get it right" imperative.  Shulkin, a practicing doctor, but not a veteran, favors preserving the essence of the VA, but allowing use of "out of network" providers where the VA falls short. Dr. Ben Carson might have liked this gig, but Shulkin has immensely more demonstrated executive experience.  

    Linda McMahon for the Small Business Administration. McMahon (former Chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment, and failed Senate candidate from Connecticut) and her billionaire husband have been business friends of Trump for decades and early major contributors to his campaign. The SBA guarantees some $7 billion in loans, provides counselling, and advocates for minorities, women, disabled, veterans, and general inclusion of small businesses in government contracting. McMahon will do no harm.  

    Betsy DeVos for Education. Like the Environmental Protection Agency (Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt), and the Department of Energy (Governor Rick Perry), the appointee to run the federal Department of Education is intended to take direct aim at the mission of the department. Another billionaire, DeVos has been a substantial and successful advocate for charter schools and vouchers (which can be used in private schools), has supported numerous "school choice" candidates around the country, and will be a strong advocate for decisions being made at the state and local level. The teachers union and the liberal media hate her. Jeb Bush - a strong advocate for K-12 school reform - endorses her. In her Senate hearing she showed little understanding of special education laws, the student debt crisis, or how success should be measured. An unnecessarily combative selection.  

   Former agribusiness-owner and Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue for Agriculture. This is a key appointment for rural America which has endured four years of depressed grain and meat prices brought on by over-production. The department oversees food safety, food stamps, and the Forest Service, and advocates for exports. Perdue is an experienced expert in agriculture and politics, and will be a player in Trump's foreign trade deliberations.  

And some overall themes:

           - Trump has chosen what he considers to be the strongest candidates, with little concern for the "political correctness" of diversity. He does like successful generals and business people, but has done little to cater to political subsets. Among the "top 50", there are one African American (Dr Ben Carson), two Asian Americans (Elaine Chao; Nikki Haley), no Hispanics, and a smattering of high powered women (Betsy DeVos; Linda McMahon; Elaine Chao; Nikki Haley). Some Hispanics have been considered for Agriculture, the Veterans Administration, and other secondary posts, but the leading minority Republicans have not been part of the process - Senator Ted Cruz of Texas; Senator Marco Rubio of Florida; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada; Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico. Trump's claim of having the smartest cabinet ever may be true. 

         - As a corollary to favoring competence, he accepts disagreement from his key lieutenants. Much of this is because Senate questioners are trying to engage nominees in criticism of the President-elect on statements which he may or may not have meant at the time. But, to the credit of Trump and the nominees, there are disagreements to be worked out on a broad array of subjects: tariffs, the corporate tax code, interrogation techniques, "reform" of NATO, nuances of Russia and China policy. He obviously likes to be able to take extreme positions, then back off as appropriate.

     - There is a low standard for personal financial transparency - reflective of Trump's own approach. DeVos did not submit the traditional "Conflict of Interest" forms before her hearing. As House Budget Chair, Price maintained a diverse stock portfolio with at least the appearance of trading on inside information. The federal Office of Government Ethics has complained about the fast pace of review, particularly with so many wealthy appointees having complicated financial dealings - but the complaint sounds more partisan than substantive.    

  -  Russia has emerged as the bete noire - for the Democrats because Putin can be used to de-legitimize Trump's election; for the liberal media because Trump may succeed where Hillary and Obama failed miserably; for the Establishment Republicans because the Russians have been the arch-villains since the beginning of the Cold War. Trump and his national security team have come across as worldly wise, seeking an accommodation which would settle Syria and the buffer states of eastern Europe, allowing attention to be focused on ISIS and China. 

     - To the dispassionate observer, several of the Democratic questioners - Elizabeth Warren; Bernie Sanders; Corey Booker; Al Franken - have come across as partisan bullies. None of the nominees has risen to the bait to provide a disqualifying response. It seems that all will pass, with the Republicans holding 52 Senate seats. The Democrats will consider it a victory if they can delay the repeal/replace of Obamacare by slowing down the appointment of Tom Price as HHS Secretary; hopefully they will understand that delaying State, Defense, and Homeland Security would have real consequences - for the country, and for them. 

    Enjoy the inauguration. Happy day!!! 

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  This week's bonus video is an excellent example of the partisan bullying - in this case by Al Franken - which has been common in the hearings for Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, and others.

bill bowen - 1/20/18  

    

Assessing Trump's Cabinet - Part II (Economics)

    The election of Donald Trump was based on a promise to disrupt the multi-decade, bi-partisan direction of the American economy. The manufacturing base has been decimated; the $600 billion annual foreign trade imbalance has hollowed out the economy; the $20 trillion national debt is unsustainable. This is a complex undertaking. The Executive Branch has the lead on trade and regulatory policies, but the House has the lead on budgetary and fiscal policy. The independent Federal Reserve dominates monetary policy. This is the swamp of lobbyists and self-interest. This is where populism meets the bi-partisan corporate establishment. The administration will succeed or fail based on the performance of Trump's economic appointments. 

    Trump's team has a mix of high powered Wall Street types, successful business outsiders with conservative agendas, and an inordinate number of "advisers" with vague portfolios and ample opportunity to sow confusion.  Weaving together the conflicting threads will be a major challenge.

General Economic Direction - the top dogs. 

    - Former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund operator Steve Mnuchen for Treasury Secretary. (Jack Lew) The Treasury Department collects the country's taxes, pays its bills, and oversees the banking system. The Secretary is the country's Chief Financial Officer. It is one of the top three or four cabinet positions. Highly qualified. 

    - Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn for Chairman of the National Economic Council. (Jeff Zients) This Chairman, part of the White House staff, coordinates positions and meetings attended by the Vice President and relevant cabinet secretaries - State; Treasury; Agriculture; Commerce; Labor; Housing and Urban Development; Transportation; Energy; Health and Human Services. Highly qualified. 

      - Congressman Mick Mulvany of South Carolina for the Office of Management and Budget. (Shaun Donovan) The OMB, the largest agency in the White House, prepares the President's budget proposal, and oversees its implementation in the executive departments. It also coordinates the administration's procurement, financial management, information, and regulatory policies. Mulvany is a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, and an extreme deficit hawk with little executive experience. His ability to reach agreements with Paul Ryan will be a key to the success of the Trump presidency. An ideological risk.

       - Son-in-law, real estate developer Jared Kirshner to be a senior adviser on trade and Israel policy. Hopefully he will not have an end-run around Mnuchen, Cohn, Mulvany and the other appointees with specific positions and responsibilities. A help if he moderates Trump's behavior; a significant problem if he has his own agenda.   

  Cabinet Positions 

    - Former surgeon, House Budget Committee Chair, and author of numerous "Repeal and Replace" bills, Tom Price to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. (Sylvia Burwell)  He will have one task - replacing Obamacare - for which he is eminently well qualified. 

    - Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for Commerce Secretary. (Penny Pritzker) Commerce is the voice of the business community with a mission to promote job creation and economic growth. Ross made his fortune restructuring companies in Rust Belt industries, and was an early Trump supporter. Questionable.  

    - Former Texas Governor Rick Perry at Energy. (Physicist Steven Chu). He will lead the resurgence of carbon-based energy - although Texas also leads the nation in wind energy. Energy also oversees the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories. Excellent choice.

    -  Fast food industry magnate Andy Puzder at Labor. (Tom Perez) The department advocates for workers. On issues such as minimum wages and overtime pay Puzder will be a poke in the eye for the department's traditional constituency. A good lawyer/businessman, but a questionable choice. 

    - Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, at Transportation. (Anthony Foxx) Her focus is safety and infrastructure. Qualified; popular. 

    - Surgeon and presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development. (Julian Castro)  He's a smart and inspirational guy who grew up in public housing, but otherwise has no apparent qualifications. A risky choice for a low risk position. 

    - The Secretary of Agriculture, generally a non-controversial appointment, has not been named. 

Trade

     - Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will oversee the largest group of officials responsible for foreign trade, with a network of consuls around the world whose job it will be to support American companies wishing to sell abroad. The "America first" focus will be quite different with a businessman in charge instead of a traditional diplomat. 

    - Reagan administration veteran, and trade litigator Robert Lighthizer for Trade Representative. (Michael Froman) A hard line with China is anticipated. Well qualified. 

    - Trump Organization chief legal counsel Jason Greenblatt for Special Representative for International Negotiations. (new position) Hopefully he will work on specific deals under the direction of Tillerson or Lighthizer. 

    - Economist and author of "Death by China", Peter Navarro to head the new National Trade Council in the White House. (new position) Navarro advocates for a fundamentally different trade relationship with China which currently has co-opted our major corporations. This could be good; the current "free trade" rules have been much to the benefit of China and to the detriment of American workers. 

Regulation 

    - Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton to the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Mary Jo White) Clayton will change the focus away from enforcement, much to the chagrin of Elizabeth Warren. Qualified, but probably too much an advocate for Wall Street. 

    -Oklahoma Attorney General and leading climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt  for Environmental Protection Agency. (Gina McCarthy) Dismantling Obamacare and the assault on the EPA rank as the two most direct efforts to eliminate the Obama legacy. Well qualified. 

    - Eighty-year old billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn for Special Advisor for Regulatory Reform (new position) Much of this work will be done in the first six months. 

   This is an A-list, whether one agrees with the policy direction or not. There are two risks: too many cooks with undefined roles; and the yet to be determined battle between the budget cutters and those who would cut taxes and increase military spending. There is adequate intellectual heft and proven experience to massively improve the trade balance. Lets be optimists for a while. 

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  This week's video is a brief clip about illegal immigration from President Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union Address, back before the Democrats prioritized Hispanic voters over white middle class voters. 

 

Assessing Trump's Cabinet - Part I (National Security)

    You can't tell the players without a scorecard! Real Clear Politics provides an updated list of those selected for Cabinet and senior administration positions, and those under discussion for yet-open slots. With the Democrats planning to oppose everybody in order to highlight policy differences, there is little chance that they will be able to block anyone unless something unexpected comes out in their confirmation hearings. (Cabinet appointments require confirmation by a simple Senate majority under rules adopted by Harry Reid. White House appointments do not require confirmation.) The process will, however, show that this is an unusually strong group of achievers, with most having been selected for their focused experience rather than for their connections to a political constituency. 

   Let's start with the National Security team - broadly defined. This is a serious group, unconnected to the establishment which has driven American foreign policy for the last several decades. That will bring criticism from Republicans (John McCain; Lindsey Graham; the Wall Street Journal) as well as Democrats, but two decades of failure in the Middle East and the reemerging nuclear arms race require a new team.  

    An observation: Three generations removed from the existential challenge of World War II, many in America and Western Europe have lost track of how high the stakes are and how important a strong, judicially engaged America is to the world. Adolph Hitler was responsible for 30 million deaths, many in his own country. Joseph Stalin was responsible for 40 million deaths, mostly in his own country. Mao Zedong was responsible for 65 million deaths, mostly in his own country. A generation later, Pol Pot was responsible for a million deaths in Cambodia. The barbarity of ISIS is not unique; nor is Kim Jong-un, who executed the entire family of his uncle who had managed the ascendancy of Jong-un after his father's death in 2011. These are real problems: ISIS does want to kill as many Westerners and impure Muslims as possible; Kim Jong-un really does want to be able to incinerate Tokyo or San Francisco; Iran really does have a nuclear weapons program.  Speeches are not adequate.

    Trump's key selections have been unconventional, but significant upgrades from the Obama administration in most cases:

        - Gen Jim Mattis for Secretary of Defense. (Ashton Carter)   Mattis, a Marine's Marine, has successful senior command experience for the Middle East, Northeast Africa, and Central Asia. If the mission is to eradicate ISIS, he is the guy. If the intent is to shift the personnel focus from diversity to traditional combat capabilities, he is the guy. If the plan is to redirect procurement or downsize the Pentagon bureaucracy, a good deputy will be needed. 

        - Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.(John Kerry)  Tillerson's job at Exxon Mobil was not marketing, engineering, or finance - it was geopolitics. In order to make multi-year, multi-billion dollar commitments, he needed to profoundly understand the national interests and politics of the locations where Exxon-Mobil operated - Russia; Iraq; Venezuela; Nigeria; the South China Sea. He knows the players personally and is a realist. 

        - Gen. John Kelly for Secretary of Homeland Security. (Jeh Johnson) After appropriate Iraq experience, Kelly has run Southern Command, responsible for our military engagement in Latin America. He knows the Mexican border, gangs, drugs, weapons trafficking, and Guantanamo.  He will have everything from the Coast Guard to TSA, to the Border Patrol - all of whom he knows.  

        - Lt General Michael Flynn for the head of the White House's National Security staff. (Susan Rice) Flynn had a strong record in Iraq and Afgnhanistan, and ran the Defense Intelligence Agency, but has had issues with unauthorized sharing of intelligence with allies, has a reputation as a loose cannon, and was fired by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in 2014. Most relevant, he was an early and vocal supporter of Donald Trump. A more stable voice so close to the President would be better. 

        - Representative Mike Pompeo for the Director of the CIA. (John Brennan)  Pompeo graduated first in his class from West Point, graduated from Harvard Law, was a Tea Party activist, and is outspoken about radical Islamic terrorism. After 9/11 the position of Director of National Intelligence was created to oversee all federal intelligence functions, including the CIA which had previously loosely coordinated the work of other agencies as well as its primarily responsible for collection of Human Intelligence and covert operations. Trump has not yet named a Director of National Intelligence, and will be restructuring the community to make it less political and to push Washington staff into the field. 

        - Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. (Loretta Lynch) An early Trump supporter, Sessions is a hard liner on immigration and a defense hawk. Where President Obama has issued executive orders to avoid immigration laws, Sessions will favor strong enforcement. Where Obama thought terrorists should be treated under the criminal law, Sessions will see them as prisoners of war.

    There are a number of lesser players who represent question marks. Tom Bossert, an aide under George W Bush's NSC staff, will be Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism - perhaps with a focus on cybersecurity. KT McFarland, a former NSC staffer and Fox News analyst, will provide experience and reason. General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will continue as the primary military adviser to the National Security Council in a limited role.

    Nothing is certain, but as a group the national security team surrounds Trump with experience and gravitas. He has avoided potentially disruptive players like Rudy Giuliani and David Petreus. They are well prepared to address Russia, ISIS, and the southern border. What hey will do with Kim Jong-un is to be determined.

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    This week's video is a short speech by Senator Chuck Shumer, promising to lead a strong Senate Democratic opposition to Donald Trump's cabinet nominations.

bill bowen - 1/6/17  

   

Conversations with Democrats

   This holiday season we can be thankful that Donald Trump is acting presidential, and that there is good reason for hope across a broad swath of policy areas. The best to you and your family. 

    Living in San Francisco provides a unique opportunity to view the response of the Left to the election of Donald Trump. Most are still in shock, accepting that what happened happened, but not being able to process the causes or implications. Some have adopted a confrontational, angry perspective - a broad swath of the country is racist/Islamophobic/sexist/homophobic; eliminate or subvert the Electoral College; secede from the country; take to the streets. Most are questioning what the Trump administration will do, and even a few are re-thinking assumptions about the direction of the national political parties and their own sources of information.  This blog is inspired by the latter two groups. 

    Getting a fair reporting on the transition to the world of Trump is difficult. Democrat sources like CNN fed Democratic debate questions to Hillary Clinton; MSNBC makes no effort to understand the Trump voters. Mainstream Republican sources such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review are suspect - some opposition was to Trump the person, but much was due to his economic populism or his less interventionist approach to Russia and the Middle East.

    Speculation on the cabinet is appropriately rampant - and a simple Google search provides the basic background on each applicant. (Wikipedia is a good starting point.) Divining policy direction is more fraught, with much of the media discredited after their blatant Clinton bias, many columnists  trying to develop story lines to weaken Trump's standing, and a few on the hard right complaining about backtracking. The "Muslim registry" story is a good example, with many in the media distorting Trump's desire to track immigrants from areas of the world experiencing conflict to a false claim that he wants a registry of all Muslims. Each citizen should find a commentator that they trust - troll the list at the bottom of Drudge. Of the fact checkers, Fact Check.org is fair, Snopes is definitely not, and Politifact is somewhere in between.

Some Obvious Directional Changes

    The Obama administration has reached cul de sacs in two major policy areas - the failure of the policy is obvious to all, but the administration has not been able to retreat or alter its path. 

        -- Obamacare is collapsing. There will be a transition in the 2018 enrollment cycle to Health Savings Accounts, competition across state borders, tort reform to reduce costs for hospitals and doctors, and replacing the crushing costs and regulations of ObamaCare. The change will be phased in; it will include high risk pools, coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and the option of keeping young adults on their parents policies. The individual cost will be less for the middle class; the poor will get less coverage. 

        -- Half-hearted intervention in the Middle East has been a disaster for the locals, for Europe, and for the United States. The foreign policy team being assembled favors agnostic support for local governments, with all attention turned to obliterating ISIS and al Queda. (A specific prediction: within six months, and by the agreement of Russia, Syria will be carved into zones controlled by Assad, the Kurds, and the anti-Assad opposition. ISIS will promptly be driven out of Raqqa.)

    We will have an "all of the above" energy policy as a cornerstone of the plan to resuscitate the American economy. Presidential executive orders expanding the power of the EPA will be quickly overturned; the Paris Climate Change agreement - never having been submitted for Congressional approval - will be disavowed. Drilling will be allowed on federal land. Pipelines will go forward. 

    We will soon have a "constitutional conservative" majority on the Supreme Court. It will likely last for at least a decade.  

Some More Nuanced Directional Changes

    The southern border will be secured. Those liberals claiming foul because some of it will be a fence instead of a wall show the truth of Peter Thiel's statement that conservatives took Trump seriously, but not literally, while liberals took him literally, but not seriously. Time limits on legal visas will be enforced. Employers will be held responsible for confirming legal status of employees. Guest worker programs will be expanded. 

    The sorting of illegal immigrants in the country will take a year or two. Hopefully a set of principles will be articulated shortly after the cabinet is appointed. Hopefully those principles will include a distinction between refugees (who face danger if returned home) and economic migrants; hopefully they will include harsh treatment of criminals and more benign treatment of non-criminals; hopefully they will include permits (but not citizenship) for those who have roots in the community. This problem could have been solved years ago if the Democrats had not been lured by the future Hispanic voting block; the Republicans can solve it to the satisfaction of most, but need to establish a new paradigm while they control the executive and legislative branches.  

    Trade deals will be re-negotiated with an objective of equal benefit. In the 1960's and 70's there was an understanding with Japanese car manufacturers and their government that they could only grow their market share in the United States if they made cars here - the profits went to Japan, but the jobs stayed here. Since the passage of NAFTA, we have had a trade imbalance of $1 trillion with Mexico. The trade imbalance with China remains almost $400 billion per year. The transfer of wealth and jobs will not continue at anywhere near the current pace. Some balancing will be from tariffs which make Chinese goods less competitive; other will come from an understanding that American products (like Liquified Natural Gas) will be the preferred source. Individual companies will be lobbied by the administration. 

    Corporate tax rates will be reduced to be competitive internationally; profits held offshore will be repatriated. Hopefully hedge fund managers will be taxed at ordinary income rates. Paul Ryan's thinking will dominate on tax policy. 

Some Unknowns

    In his final days Barack Obama appears intent on removing any possibility of blocking Iran's path to nuclear weapons in another decade. Hopefully, Trump's team will find a way.

    The "trillion dollar infrastructure stimulus plan" will attract much opposition in Paul Ryan's House. Many conservatives see our current $20 trillion national debt as an existential threat for future generations. Many remember the trillion dollars that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi showered on well-connected companies like Solyndra and the eventual admission that "shovel ready" projects didn't really exist. 

    There will be an effort to de-politicize core governmental institutions which have suffered under the Obama administration - the IRS; the FBI; the police. This will be the greatest task facing new Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

    This administration will be very good for those who prioritize liberty, opportunity, security, and personal responsibility. Not so much for those who prioritize support for the poor or see America as an equal player among the 193 members of the United Nations. 

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    This week's video explains Trump's decision to not appoint a special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton, but to allow the legal processes unfold - a good sign for those who have concern for the fundamentals of American democracy.

www.RightinSanFrancisco.com  

     

     

    

         

   

Hillary: The High Risk Candidate

    First, we are all suffering from overload - too many polls; too many e-mail/WikiLeaks stories; too many advertisements; too many ballot initiatives in California. How do we keep the big picture in focus? 

       - The outcome of the presidential election is unknowable. Hillary has a small lead in the key states, but it is shrinking at a slowing pace. With two highly un-liked candidates, Trump has benefited from the last week's attention on Hillary and the slow collapse of Obamacare.  The Republican electorate is more highly energized; the Democrats have a better Get Out The Vote machine. 

        - Most voters will, in the end, revert to their team. The Supreme Court and federal judges matter. While they once were viewed as non-political, control of the Justice Department and the IRS matter. Appointment of bureaucrats to manage healthcare, education, transportation, and housing matter. Attitudes toward domestic and international security matter. Attitudes toward business matter. In the swing states the teams are equally matched.

        - No matter who wins the presidency, they will not have a mandate. For the majority of voters in the middle, the election is about which of two highly flawed candidates is less objectionable. 

    With Trump's early uninformed and bombastic statements about national security - NATO; nuclear proliferation; bombing the Middle East - contrasted with Hillary's long experience in government and at the State Department, he was seen as the "high risk candidate".  So wrong!

    1. National Security. Hillary's term from 2009 to 2013 as Secretary of State coincided with the failed "reset" with Russia and the disastrous spreading of civil wars across the Middle East. Clintonian historians may blame Iraq on Bush, Syria on Obama, and Afghanistan on the two of them, but Libya is squarely hers. And, she has not expressed any ideas about how to deal with North Korea, Iran, or a post-Crimea Russia. On a micro-level, many experts are fearful that her call for a "no-fly zone" in Syria would result in armed conflict with Russian aircraft, and that she would be generally more interventionist than Obama.     

    2. Economics. The root of the Trump argument is that the Establishment, Democrat and Republican, has broken faith with mainstream America.  There is some legitimacy to criticism of the the North American Free Trade Agreement; China's ascendancy can be traced in significant part to the admittance to the World Trade Organization at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency in 2000; Hillary was a strong supporter of the Trans Pacific Partnership until it became a political liability. She is no friend of the energy industry, agriculture, or manufacturing. Our annual trade deficit remains at $500 billion per year; our national debt is approaching $20 billion; she is advocating for new entitlements of free college and child care; she has no ideas to fix Social Security or Medicare. Trump is an unknown. Hillary is a bad known. 

    3. Immigration. In a May 2013, speech - made available through Wikileaks - Hillary effused “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders." The primary policy position which initially catapulted Trump was his promise to build a wall. Whether the motivation is compassion for the poor of the hemisphere or a desire to permanently shift voter demographics toward the Democrats, Clinton shares Obama's desire to create a path to citizenship for the 11 million current illegal immigrants without stanching the flow. Traditional America is at real risk. 

    4. Corruption. The e-mails have been about process - generally a confusing and boring subject. The Wikileaks revelations, on the other hand, provide a comprehensive, detailed, and documented explanation of the relationship between donations to the Clinton Foundation, speaking fees for Bill Clinton, access to Hillary as Secretary of State, and policy decisions favoring donors. (For a complete list with events, links to e-mails, and explanations of content, see the attached.) Obama's Justice Department was unable to silence the FBI agents who were pursuing a criminal indictment through their own investigation. The legal guns will be trained on her from Day 1. 

    There are better answers - FH Buckley (a Canadian columnist) on immigration; Peter Thiel (a libertarian Republican) on economics; Cenk Uygur (an outspoken Progressive) on corruption - but Hillary will not be looking for them. Maybe Trump will. If the Cubs can win the World Series, anything is possible.

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 This week's video is the most articulate and convincing pro-Trump interview which I have seen - a Black woman on WGN in Chicago. (Thanks to an alert reader in Connecticut.)

bill bowen - 11/4/16 

A Libertarian Perspective for Debate Watchers

   With so many people struggling to rationalize their vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in November's election, there is a need to look beyond the tactical issues - who has a better tax plan; how much force should we apply in Syria; who can best handle Vladimir Putin - to contemplate the broader direction of the country. Personalities aside, debating skills aside, detailed staff-written position papers aside, that is the context in which the projected 100 million viewers should watch Monday's presidential debate. One suggestion is to use the filter of the individual versus the collective.

    At one end of the spectrum is Barack Obama's view of a world no longer dominated by America. On the one hand this is reflected in Obama's October 20 United Nations speech which Richard Hass, long time president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the crew on Morning Joe characterized as dispiriting for it being a 35,000 foot faculty lounge survey of the world's problems with no hint of American leadership. On the other hand it includes Obama's desire to turn over control of the internet to some international agency, his embracing the Paris agreement on climate change with no Congressional input, and his willingness to negotiate broad multilateral trade agreements which establish international tribunals' authority over commercial issues currently handled by American courts. George Soros would be proud that the American 300 million citizens would no longer dominate the 7 billion global collective.

    The "equal and opposite reaction" is Donald Trump, an Ayn Rand character with a life dedicated to self interest, who rejects and is rejected by the political establishment of both parties. For the political moment he defines the collective as the United States of America, but his life's experience does not offer a lot of confidence that he understands or respects the valid underpinnings of his populist appeal. He has said little to suggest that he grasps the libertarian benefits of small government or the "subsidiarity" principle of placing decisions as close to the citizens as is possible. There is hope that Paul Ryan and the Republican House would set the direction domestically, but fear that the inexperienced bully would bumble into international confrontations. A credible foreign policy team would be a major help. So would some straight talk about the rights of individuals. 

    And then there is Hillary, who would define the collective as a coalition of self-interest groups large enough to generate 270 electoral votes. For those on the left who like Obama's view, there is her early work with Saul Alinsky, her negotiation of the "gold standard" Trans Pacific Partnership, her globe-trotting experience, and the good work done by the Clinton Foundation. There is enough pandering and free stuff to attract the "what's in it for me?" voters. Optimists would say that she is a pragmatist, that she would mold herself to work with anybody necessary to establish her power, and that she would reflect the amalgamated collective interests and opinions of the American voters. Pessimists would say that her corruption will destroy the American collective. 

    The influences on the thinking of a generation are complex - wars; financial catastrophes; advances such as the moon landing; tragedies such as the assassination of Martin Luther King.   Millenials grew up with Star Trek's Annika Hansen, who somehow escaped from being Seven of Nine in the Borg collective.  There was no individuality; the Borg captured creatures from various civilizations and used medical and psychological technology to incorporate them into their collective being. Existence was bleak; resistance was futile; there was no liberty or individuality. Perhaps at least for this generation the rejection of the artistic metaphor resonates in their politics. 

    As we enter the final stages of the campaign, it is good to look for the bigger themes - things that we know to be true rather than the discrete promises by lying or unempowered politicians which we know will mostly fall by the wayside. One very important, but currently very unclear differentiater is the commitment to liberty. Purists have favored Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders, and Gary Johnson, but none are relevant. We are down to a choice between Clinton and Trump. For a "future of America" perspective, observers of the debate should look and listen for the candidate who believes in the individual rather than the Borg.

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    This week's video is a clip from President Obama's final speech to the United Nations. As a maker of speeches he can be inspirational; would that his inept leadership did not lead to the chaos in the Middle East and in American cities.  

bill bowen - 9/23/16

The False Premise of Integrity

    Aside from whatever other problems the Trump campaign may have, the premise that the American voters will reject Hillary Clinton because of her corruption rests on a questionable premise. While the two candidates are equally disrespected, it is far worse to be a crass bully than a self-serving liar. There are several reasons for that dour conclusion. 

   1. The public expects politicians to be corrupt in one way or another.  Dick Nixon had his Bebe Rebozo, and, after Watergate, left office declaring "I am not a crook". Lyndon Johnson had his Billie Sol Estes and retired as a millionaire after entering politics as an advocate for dirt-poor rural Texans. John Kennedy was the son of a bootlegger and spent much of his short career as president chasing women around the White House. Bill Clinton .... well. Like Reagan, the Bushes were a dull aberration - nothing for personal gain; no notable friends who got fabulously rich through the White House connection; no sexual peccadilloes.  It is an easy argument that Hillary is more corrupt than any of her recent predecessors, but it is a matter of degree. 

    2. People have come to expect the president to make knowingly false claims in the face of compelling conflicting evidence. The Obama veil was pierced with the "you can keep your doctor" claim, followed by the Benghazi video story, and the claim that an unmarked plane landing at night  in Tehran with $400 million in foreign currency did not deliver ransom for four Americans who were simultaneously released during the nuclear negotiations. The job of White House Press Secretary comes with a requirement of being able to tell a lie that everybody knows is a lie without cracking a smile or displaying any pangs of conscience. The public's reaction? Obama's approval ratings are over 50% despite 65% of the public thinking the country is on the "wrong track".  .

    3. The shock factor is wearing off.  Judicial Watch's recent disclosure of State Department e-mails showing long time close Hillary aide Huma Abedin arranging meetings between senior State Department policy officials and major donors to the Clinton Foundation is not a surprise. That Abedin received a policy waiver to work concurrently for Secretary of State Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and a billionaire Foundation donor is, as Hillary is wont to say, "old news".  Now we find, thanks to WikiLeaks, that Hillary's State Department was following the recommendations of major donor George Soros  to intervene in Albanian unrest. While the e-mail scandal has endless chapters, each one has less impact. 

   4. Much of the media has decided that it is better to dwell on the most recent Trump absurdity than to explore the implications of a corrupt Hillary as president. Some of that is fair - Obama was able to divert billions of appropriations to supporters through companies like Solyndra because he had Nancy Pelosi in control of the House; Paul Ryan will likely have the House at least through 2020, so at least money would not be directly appropriated for Hillary's friends.  That said, the donation spigot will be wide open with the Clinton Foundation. (Bill and Chelsea are still managing the machine, although he has opined that he might consider stepping back if Hillary is elected.)  

    5. Democrats who might be offended by the corruption are so appalled by the alternative of Trump that they adopt a "ends justifies the means" approach - perhaps unconsciously.   

    Those hoping for an "October surprise" are likely to be disappointed. What might it be - the texts of Hillary's $250,000 speeches and promises to Goldman Sachs?  Cancelled checks with memo's from contributors/international "businessmen"/advisors Sidney Blumenthal or Gilbert Chagoury?  Conclusive proof that Julian Assange is right  and the Clinton campaign killed the Democratic National Committee employee who gave the DNC e-mails to WikiLeaks?  It's all old news anyway, and the product of the vast right wing conspiracy. 

    Perhaps there is a "what's difference does it make to me?" filter as voters ponder corruption. If it is lies to promote policy goals that liberals support (the predominant Obama offense), liberals can rationalize that "all politicians do it."  On the other hand, if it is selling access to government decisions (the predominant Clinton offense), the average person understands that the rich and well connected have the power and the general public is disenfranchised. This looks about the same whether you are a supporter of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Black Lives Matter. And there-in lies the damage to the Republic. 

                                                                                    -----     

       This week's video, provided by an alert reader in San Francisco,  is from a 1995 speech to Congress on the scourge of illegal immigration by President Bill Clinton in which he sounds very much like Donald Trump.

bill bowen - 8/12/2016  

Trump: The End of Rationalization

    We all have a breaking point. The agonizing of what to do about Donald Trump is a discussion among Republicans and conservatives; the presence of Democrats and liberals in the conversation makes it more difficult to come to the decision, but eventually the decision comes to us - both in the "what do you want to have happen" and in the "what do you think will actually happen". For the top names in the Party it is a difficult political/career calculation;  some of the activists arrived at the #Never Trump conclusion while there was still a reasonable chance that Donald Trump could be elected; for many, the "want to happen" and "actually happen" questions are being answered simultaneously.  

    The protracted attack on the parents of a slain Army officer for his Pakistani heritage was probably more important than any of Trump's earlier transgressions.  For a couple of weeks he seemed capable of submerging his crass bully persona and letting his campaign rest on issues like the economy where he has an advantage.  If there is a constituency likely to support any Republican after the disaster of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, it is those engaged in national security. That Trump chose to spend four days of the news cycle so diametrically opposed to the sentiment of those affiliated with the active duty or retired military is probably fatal to his campaign; it also is a further indicator of what a Trump presidency would look like.

    Where does that leave the responsible voter?  Let's use a little two-by-two matrix:

        -  The Republican candidate's personality.  The psychiatric schools will use Donald Trump as a case study for decades. Narcissistic - yes, but certainly not a dis-qualifier for the presidency. Stakes out extreme positions as a beginning for negotiations - probably a partial explanation. Bigoted - certainly. Devoid of empathy - yes. Compelled to self-destructive behavior - apparently. He needs allies, but won't endorse the Republican Speaker of the House. Perhaps Charles Krauthammer, a trained psychiatrist and a brilliant political analyst, can offer some explanation.  

        - The Democratic candidate's personality. The most corrupt major party presidential candidate in at least a century. One can forgive the Democratic Party of tilting against Bernie Sanders who was, after all, an Independent and a socialist with a long career of opposing Democrats - but that has drawn focus from the Hillary of Watergate, Whitewater, the attack's on Bill's sexual predator victims, the Rose Law Firm, the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, the e-mail system, and enough fill-in details to occupy the Library of Congress. An insult to the American people. 

        - The Republican candidate's policies. Trump properly offers a focus on President Obama's illegal and destructive immigration policies. He has prompted necessary re-thinking of the impact of foreign trade on American workers, but he has not offered any detailed proposals except the type of tariffs that brought on the Great Depression. Beyond that there is little policy direction - but we do know that foreign military alliances would be diminished, constraints on nuclear proliferation would be loosened, tax cuts would increase federal deficits, and most of the other stuff would be left for Congress to figure out. With a Republican Congress and a pliant president real progress could be made, but that opportunity is rapidly fading.   

        - The Democratic candidate's policies. Assumptions are necessary. The Hillary who negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and called it the "gold standard", or the one who now opposes it?  The Hillary who skoffed at Bernie Sanders' free college but now claims that the cost doesn't matter? The Hillary who the media accepts as a foreign policy expert, but who is in a real sense "The Mother of ISIS"? (If you have any doubt, read this New York Times article which snuck out before the embargo.)  With Bill as First Dude it is more complicated yet - would his more centrist policies prevail, or would Hillary more closely resemble Barack Obama with a party that has moved to the left? How much would be moderated by a Republican Congress - as was Bill with Newt Gingrich's House in the 80's?  Like Obama's "Hope and Change", the voter is free to project their wishes on the candidate - not only in the absence of evidence, but in direct conflict with it. 

    With that stand-off, it is hard to put much emotional energy or personal reputation into Trump. Wisdom is knowing when to acknowledge that you cannot rationalize your candidate's behavior with your values, and that the best efforts of a broad array of knowledgeable and influential people have made little difference.  But there are a few alternatives for Republicans and conservatives who choose to not simply focus on the baseball and football seasons, the stock market, and the last flailing efforts of the Obama administration. 

        1. Think locally, act locally. This is hard in places like San Francisco where local politics is a battle between the liberal Democrats and the progressive Democrats, but the vast majority of candidates nationally running for mayor, City Council, or School Board have contested elections that make a difference. Pick one and improve something that directly affects you and your family. 

        2. A few close races will determine control of the Senate, and perhaps limit how far left of center the Supreme Court moves in the next four years. I like Rob Portman in Ohio and Joe Heck in Nevada, but one could make a convincing  argument for Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, John McCain in Arizona, Richard Burr in North Carolina, Roy Blunt in Missouri, Michael Bennett in Colorado, or even Mark Kirk in Illinois. The Kock brothers network  will apparently spend some $250 million in this direction, and nothing on Trump. 

        3. And there's always Libertarian  Gary Johnson if you need to pull a lever. He has allowed support for the legalization of marijuana to define his campaign, but he actually does have a set of policies which should be attractive to most Republicans. 

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    This week's video - about the $400 million ransom paid in cash to Iran for the release of four hostages concurrent with the signing of the nuclear deal - provides one more example of President Obama's foreign policy incompetence. We can only go up from here.

bill bowen - 8/5/16  

Trump's Economic Advantage

    Pew Research polling shows that Americans identify the economy as the most important issue in the presidential election; according to Gallup, Donald Trump is seen as better than Hillary Clinton on ability to guide the economy by a 53% to 43% margin. Let's develop that thought.

        1. The obvious and undeniable: Trump is a businessman and Clinton is a career politician. There is nothing to build up on Clinton's personal resume, so the effort is to drag down Trump's - the lawsuit against Trump University; the bankruptcies; some other expose yet to come, maybe his tax returns. Trump doesn't have the breadth of experience or strategic perspective that Mitt Romney had with Bain Capital, but he definitely has been successful in a difficult industry in difficult markets - and internationally. He knows how to select talent, negotiate, and hold managers accountable. He has made a few billion dollars.  His recent riff with the VFW that he would clean up the Veterans Administration rings true - woe be to the bureaucrat who fudges his or her customer service data. 

        2. Wall Street prefers Hillary. Some of this is obvious - Michael Bloomberg endorsed her; the Wall Street Journal is sounding like the New York Times in its coverage of the election; rich New York bankers have long been among the strongest supporters of the New York Senator; she has a long history of being bought - Whitewater; the Marc Rich pardon; the Clinton Foundation; her 91 speaking fees of $200,000 or more; the hedge fund that Goldman Sachs set up for her son-in-law. .

    While Clinton's hard-earned reputation for dishonesty turns off many; with this constituency in this election,  it is a cynical pre-requisite. Of course she supports the Democratic platform's call to break up the banks; of course she supports Elizabeth Warren's crusade against Wall Street; of course she agrees with Bernie that the system is rigged in favor of the millionaires and billionaires. No problem - she is a known quantity. The fix is in. Trump is an unknown who might actually do something to constrain the financial elite.

     Maybe there was a time that people believed that what was good for Wall Street was good for Main Street, but certainly nobody makes that argument after the crash of 2008. Clinton sides with the lenders; Trump the borrowers. 

        3. The United States does have large economic issues. George W Bush and Barack Obama took the accumulated federal debt from 55 % of GDP to over 100 %. While the Republican Congress has constrained Obama to manageable annual deficits of about 3%, nothing has been done to rebuild the buffer which will be needed in the next major downturn, or when interest rates on the debt return to normal levels. Social Security and Medicare remain on a glide path to bankruptcy. Neither candidate sees any up-side in addressing the macro picture, so the question for the concerned voter is which candidate would be most likely to work with Paul Ryan to implement some form of his agenda. The logical answer is "the Republican", but it would be nice to see a nod in that direction.

        4.  The Obama meme - Michele and Barack - is that Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan is off base. The country is doing fine; GDP is growing; unemployment is down; the stock market is up. Here's the great disconnect between the establishment economists and the real people -  the median family income of about $54,000 is some 7% below what it was when Barack Obama assumed office; during the "Obama recovery"  nearly 15 million people have dropped out of the labor force, yielding the lowest workforce participation rate in 38 years; prudent retirees who are trying to live on bond income are earning well less than the rate of inflation. Real people understand - some 24% of Rasmussen's survey participants think that we are on the "right track".  Advantage Trump.

        5. Trump's signature issues - foreign trade and immigration - are largely economic. On most tax issues either candidate will have to work it out with Congress and there probably isn't much difference which is elected -  taxing hedge fund managers on "ordinary income" rather than "capital gains"; lowering the corporate tax rate to be more competitive internationally; a few points movement on tax rates for most individuals.  The issues where Hillary has been pulled to the left - free college; a step toward universal health care - are dead on arrival with the Republican Congress which promises to last until at least the 2020 election.

    To a large extent the Clinton and Trump campaigns bob along on the surface while the currents below determine the direction. A collapse such a that which doomed John McCain in 2008 is highly unlikely, Janet Yellen will do everything that she can to help, and the Clinton-oriented media will continue to tout the good data while dismissing the bad as aberrations. But in the wisdom of James Carville's "It's the economy, stupid", the strength of the Trump movement and the "wrong track" polling suggest that the people understand. 

                                                                                            -----

    This week's video is a stark reminder of how little Hillary Clinton (and Barrack Obama) understand about how jobs are created. 

bill bowen - 7/29/2016

 

Nobility's Low Ebb

 

        Merriam - Webster presents two definitions for the adjective "noble":

1. Belonging to a hereditary class with high social or political status; aristocratic.
2. Having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.

       The etymology of the word would show the second definition developing from the first - in part because in past eras the "one per cent" were provided with liberal educations and taught manners as a condition for their acceptance in the ruling class, and in part because they controlled the flow of information about their behavior. Leadership rested on power, but also on a bit of carefully managed moral validity.  One might assume that nobles were noble. 

       No more in 21st Century America - at least as reflected in this presidential campaign. The "race to the bottom" is accelerating with the presumptive Democratic nominee being officially recognized as an "extremely careless" liar, and the presumptive Republican nominee careening from one offensive comment to another.  

       If there were any doubt about whether Lady Liberty still was blindfolded it was erased on July 5, when FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not seek an indictment of Hillary for her behavior which appeared to violate espionage statutes on the grounds that she had not demonstrated intent (which is not required in the law) and it would be inappropriate to use the 1917 Espionage Act under which "gross negligence" would be adequate. Most of the House Oversight Committee questions were political, but Trey Gowdy made the compelling point that, even if specific intent were required, prosecutors regularly view pervasive false exculpatory statements as evidence of consciousness of guilt and intent. Comey acknowledged that Hillary had lied when she had claimed that:

          - Classified information had not been sent or received on her e-mail system;

         - No messages marked as classified were sent or received;

         - She had used the private server for the convenience of having just one device; 

         - All work-related materials were returned to the State Department;

         - No work-related e-mails were deleted from her personal account;

         - Her lawyers read every e-mail in the process of ensuring that a liberal interpretation was used     

               in determining what was to be turned over to State.

       By normal legal standards Hillary Clinton demonstrated specific intent, which Comey relied on and which is beyond what is called for in the statute, and the FBI should have sought prosecution for violation of laws protecting classified information. Beyond that one can conjecture what Attorney General Loretta Lynch thought after conversations with President Obama and Bill Clinton, whether she shared her views and intentions with Comey, whether Comey looked to the lesser evil of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, or if he just thought it would be damaging for the country to have the presidential nominee of one of the major parties be indicted during a run-up to an election.  What is clear is that he held Hillary Clinton to a lower standard than called for in the law and which would be applied to virtually any other citizen.  Ignoble behavior is legally - and probably politically - acceptable from the nobles in 2016.   

      The Republic will survive.  It survived William Henry Harrison, Warren Harding, and Andrew Johnson. It survived the personal corruption of Lyndon Johnson and the progressive incompetence of Barack Obama. It can survive preferential treatment of the political aristocracy - without people being particularly surprised.  It could even survive the increasingly unlikely election of the boorish lout Donald Trump. The real problem is not with the leaders, it is with the potential loss of nobility among the people. 

       The greatest immediate damage  lies in the "little people" who make up the security establishment. What happens to the FBI agents who have spent the last year observing first hand the lawlessness of the Democratic presidential nominee, only to see a different standard applied? What happens to the people of the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office who see their top secret work exposed to foreign hackers with impunity? How do our intelligence and military leaders recruit the foreign nationals who have seen their predecessors abandoned when convenient? What happens to the CIA interrogators who know that Lynch's predecessor wanted to prosecute them, or the members of the military who saw the President and his inner circle abandon an ambassador and his defenders under fire, and then lie about the cause?  These folks need a hug from the American people. 

       The door is open for a generation of cynical nihilists. Maybe this was inevitable after the disappointment of the vacuous promise of “hope and change”. Maybe this runs in cycles and the bottom is being hit. Maybe in the next presidential cycle the public will be ready for a leader with nobility.  A good starting point would be equality before the law.  

                                                                               ----- 

  And continuing on the theme of justifiable cynicism, this week's bonus video is chilling discussion of Google's manipulation of search results in favor of Hillary Clinton. 

bill bowen - 7/8/16

Trump v Clinton: A Baseball Analogy

    Long before George Will decided to resign as a leader of the out-of-favor moderate Republican establishment, he wrote a marvelous book about "America's pastime" - Men at Work: The Art and Craft of Baseball. His understanding of baseball is his most useful perspective in thinking about the presidential election. 

    There are at least three applicable lessons to understand from the profession of baseball:

        1. The game is played in such a way that the successful team does not just "play its game", it tries to maximize its strengths and exploit the opponents weaknesses.  

             The professional basketball regular season (unlike the playoffs) is a series of one night stands - each team does what it does best, then moves on to play another team a night or two later - there is little time for analysis and adjustment of strategies and tactics. Baseball is different. The season has a rhythm of 3 to 4 game series - a better chance to tailor the approach - perhaps play more left handed batters if the opponent is heavy in right handed pitchers; perhaps play a more aggressive base-running game based on the other team's catcher or the strength of the arms in the outfield; perhaps take more pitches if the other team has strong starting pitchers and a weak bullpen; perhaps use more right-handed power hitters with Fenway Park's left field wall or infielders with more range with the Oakland Coliseum's expanded foul territory. Successful teams adjust to Denver's Coors Field where the thinner air causes fly balls to go further and breaking pitches to break less. It is a game of nuance and adjustment, seeking to take advantage of the other team's weaknesses and the conditions of the ballpark. It is not just doing what you do best.  

        2. It takes a long time to make it to the major leagues. With rare exceptions, even the top draft choices are consigned to a few years of learning the trade in the minor leagues. 

         This is also unlike professional basketball where most of the better players have at most a year or two of college experience.  By agreement between the NCAA and Major League Baseball, players at four year colleges must complete at least three years. With very few exceptions, everybody goes through a (sometimes truncated) progression from the rookie league to A to AA to AAA before arriving at the major leagues. Rookie sensations like Mike Trout, Kris Bryant,  and Jacob DeGrom,  spend at least a year or two in the minors honing their skills before entering the big stage. 

         Almost everybody has weaknesses that can be exploited by an adversary. Catchers, who call the pitches, must learn how to vary the pitches to keep batters off balance; pitchers must learn how to make it difficult for fast runners to steal bases and develop a slider and change-up to go with their 95 mph fastball; batters who can clobber a fastball must learn how to tell from the pitcher's grip in a split second what movement will be on the ball. 

        3. Professional athletes have help. They rely on agents to evaluate their worth and negotiate contracts. They have equipment managers to keep track of their bats, gloves, uniforms, and assorted protective devices. They have strength coaches and trainers for the off season. They have advisers to tell them about the best steakhouse in Kansas City and to protect them from the pimps, con artists, and opportunists who prey on wealthy young celebrities.   

    So, what does it mean for politics?

     Trump is a rookie. He learned at his father's knee how to manage the politics of real estate development in New York.  He added a little variety expanding to tourist destinations, but he skipped all of the training of running for office himself at any level - trolling for contributions, organizing volunteers, managing the legal constraints, developing a platform, handling hostile interviews.  He learned a great deal about inciting the public in reality TV, but he has never had to build coalitions or deal publicly with a hostile audience on a national stage.  He has never seen a 92 mph slider from a left-hander or a high tight fastball. Hillary owns a stable of pitchers. 

     Trump hasn't learned how to play in somebody else's home park. He understands the relative powers of the borough presidents, the mayor, and the planning commission in NYC, and he has passed out millions of dollars in an effort to buy access with politicians, but he didn't understand the nuts and bolts of how delegates get selected in primaries and caucuses. He doesn't know how balls bounce off of the left field wall at Fenway Park. Hillary does. 

     Trump doesn't have a trusted agent who understands this game. He doesn't have a bag man; somebody to help him decide whether to have the elbow surgery or to tough it out; somebody to tell him when to be aggressive and when to play defense. (How different the world would be if Romney had played offense in the second and third debates.) Hillary has Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills;  Obama had David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. Trump has his family with no experience in politics and a questionable ability to privately call him to task when he needs it. He now has campaign manager Paul Manafort - a journeyman lobbyist and consultant who at least understands the mechanics but has no particular relationship with the candidate. 

    As a potential president, it is important that Trump doesn't understand the details of public policy issues. His supporters would say that he deserves a break - this is new to him, he is a rapid learner, he's got the big picture, and he can delegate. One can judge whether he can learn in the job, but the near term challenge is that he doesn't have the experience in politics. He skipped from the rookie-league Brooklyn Cyclones to the New York Mets without first going through Port St. Lucie, Binghamton, and Las Vegas and he is facing a 30 year veteran in her own ballpark.  

                                                                                    -----

  This week's bonus is Nigel Farange's "I told you so" UKIP speech to the European Parliament - perhaps right on the substance, but counter-productive on the form.  

bill bowen - 7/1/16

"What Difference Does It Make?": Foreign Policy

    This is the most challenging presidential election ever for people of conscience. The first instincts are to rationalize away the personal shortcomings of your presidential candidate and get behind your team. When the magnitude of the Trump offense (or conversely, the Hillary offense) expands again, the answer is to sit it out - concentrate on other races; think about what you will tell your kids; tell yourself, to coin a phrase, "What Difference Does It Make?" That may work on domestic policy, but not internationally. 

    On domestic issues the direction of the country is a compromise between the president and the Congress and having Hillary in the White House with a Republican House and potentially a Republican Senate would represent four years of muddle with somewhat moderate union-friendly Democratic executive appointees doing battle with Republican budgets, oversight hearings, and occasional policy dictates.  It would look a lot less like the first two Obama years when the Democrats controlled everything and gave us Obamacare, a hugely corrupt "Stimulus Plan", and trillion dollar deficits;  and it would look more like the years of gridlock which have followed. That is not satisfying for the Republican base; it would be a missed opportunity to roll back regulations and move toward balanced budgets; it would be a missed opportunity to accelerate the growth of the economy and fix healthcare; it would be a missed opportunity to restore the balance between public safety and civil rights. But all of that would be temporary. If deficits are controlled the damage can eventually be reversed.

    Not so internationally. There are two good reason to believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be an unmitigated disaster:

        1. Hillary Clinton was a primary architect of the policies which have caused more pain and suffering in the world than any period since World War II.

        2. In the calculus of Democratic Party internal politics, she has determined not to criticize Barack Obama (except to note that Obama's doctrine of "don't do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle for foreign policy), and Bernie Sanders has avoided foreign policy except for criticizing Clinton's vote fore the Iraq War.  

    Let's take a quick survey with conjecture about what a Republican president might do differently from Obama / Clinton: 

        - Everything starts with the Middle East with the unlearned lesson about deposing tyrants that we do not like and leaving chaos in the wake - Iraq; Libya; Syria. Support the Muslim Brotherhood over Hosni Mubarak in Egypt prior to the counter-coup. Lead from behind in combating the JayVee ISIS. Trump would be less frequently engaged, but more forceful. There might be more tyrants, but there would be more stability. If that offends you, hold the thought. 

        -  The United Nations sets the number of refugees globally at a record of some 65 million in 2015, over half of which came from Syria, Somalia, and Afghanistan - two of which which were relatively peaceful when the Nobel Committee gave the incoming US president their Peace Prize. If there is any introspection in the Obama / Clinton brain-trust, it has not made its sway into the news and Madam Secretary has offered no solutions to the human disaster which she helped create.

        - Mitt Romney was famously ridiculed for claiming that Russia was our number one international threat. Hillary knew better and presented Foreign Minister Lavrov with the red "Reset" button, erroneously labeled "overcharged." That was before Putin carved up the Ukraine and bombed our proxy army in Syria, and before NATO launched the largest military exercises in decades in Eastern Europe. Some of the execution belongs to Obama and Kerry, but the vision and groundwork belong to Clinton. Trump thinks that he could negotiate with the Russian czar - that would be a fun discussion to watch.

        - In the broad sweep of history, the main feature of the Obama/Clinton  years may be a nuclear North Korea and soon-to-be nuclear Iran. The only answer on North Korea (aside from some key assassinations) is to get China to lead on stopping proliferation in their neighborhood - Clinton and Kerry failed; maybe Trump could do better. Clinton supports the "peace in our time" deal with the ayatollahs; Trump would tear it up - maybe too late, but the current path leads to a nuclear Middle East within a decade.

        - One could add a Trump "eyes wide open" approach to the immigration of young Muslim males from jihadi countries, Obama and Clinton welcoming Cuba back into the world community while the Castro brothers retain their dictatorship, and the massive refusal to enforce our immigration laws.

    Actually, on foreign policy where the executive branch plays the singularly dominating role the choice between Clinton and Trump makes a great difference. It is ironic that Trump beats Clinton on management of the economy while she wins on foreign policy where she can paint Trump as mentally unstable - and ignore her inability to name any accomplishments during her disastrous gig at the State Department.  

                                                                                     -----

    With an X-rated warning to more genteel readers, this week's anti-Brexit video offers a warning as to the developing tone of the US presidential election. 

bill bowen - 6/24/16    

Trump's Nuclear Vulnerability

    There is every reason to believe that as the direct Hillary / Donald campaign heats up, the Clinton camp will make a significant issue of Trump's temperament controlling the nuclear trigger.  While it has been a long time since nuclear weapons have been in the front of the public mind, they represent an issue which can transcend others - other failings can be corrected over time (even ObamaCare), but the "steady hand" is important if the public is focused on the nuclear risk.  As much as those concerned about national security dislike the Obama administration - efforts to prosecute CIA interrogators at Guantanamo; the refusal to come to the aid of those under attack at Benghazi; dangerously restrictive rules of engagement in Afghanistan; politically correct personnel policies in the military - the nuclear issue should give reason to pause. 

    With different emphasis and result, past campaigns have raised the specter of a president without the background and stability to be in charge of the national defense in a major crisis. 

        - In truth, John F. Kennedy was unprepared. In his brief term as president, he supported, then abandoned the Cuban opposition to Fidel Castro. When Nikita Khrushchev tried to use the opportunity to place intermediate range nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the world came perilously close to nuclear war. Fail Safe (1964) and  Dr. Strangelove (1964) reflected the public mood. When Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, he was painted as being too eager to go to war - both in Vietnam, and with nuclear weapons. In the "Daisy ad", perhaps the most famous political advertisement of all time, Johnson effectively cast the election as between his peace and Goldwater's nuclear war. 

        - Hillary doesn't need to go very far to recycle her 2008 "3 am phone call" ad which touted her experience as First Lady and in the Senate in contrast to Barack Obama's equally brief Senate record. It isn't about accomplishments (or lack thereof) - it is about having developed an even hand that is required when momentous decisions need to be made unexpectedly. Not Trump's forte. 

    Voters may forgive Trump for his habit of speaking offensively about things he has not studied. He can learn; he can have good advisers; he is negotiating and will back away from extreme positions; errors can be corrected. But national security, and particularly the nuclear component of national security, does require being ready on Day One. The source and nature of a crisis are unknowable in advance and the nation needs a leader who can be relied on to make reasoned, difficult decisions based in large part on what they already know. Usually there can be briefings and advice, but the person making the decision needs to synthesize information quickly and apply it against a set of understandings and policies which they have previously digested. Trump has offered some troubling examples:

        - In one of the early debates he seemed unfamiliar with the term "nuclear triad" - the combination of bombers, missiles, and submarine-launched missiles. In truth, most of the candidates other than John Kasich, Lindsay Graham, and Marco Rubio would not have understood the nuances of each, but Trump was portrayed as an amateur. When the time comes to prepare for presidential debates, we will see if he understands the deficiency and has done his homework.  

        - A more troubling example of Trump's unpreparedness is his riff in late March about how we have protected our allies for too long, and it might be time for Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia to develop their own nuclear weapons. Perhaps this is an opening bid in a negotiation to gain greater compensation for our efforts, or to convince China that they need to rein in North Korea, but the discussion itself is destabilizing. Japan and South Korea quickly rejected the thought, but the Saudi's will be tempted, given the Iranian nuclear and missile programs approved by the Obama administration. 

    Hillary's direct approach will be to claim credit for the negotiation of the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia which called for capping the number of deployed nuclear warheads at 1550 for each side. Since then, the deployed US warheads have been reduced from 5916 to 1481, while the Russians have been reduced from 3897 to 1735.  The Heritage Foundation finds many flaws with the treaty, such as the exclusion of tactical nuclear weapons (particularly in Europe) where the Russians have a large numerical advantage. Others note that the warheads have been returned to inventory rather than being destroyed. Expect an exchange of expert white papers and  a lesson on negotiating. 

    For those willing to stay with the subject for awhile, Hillary has several other negatives.  

        - For decades the nuclear club has consisted of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, and Pakistan. Others - South Africa, Libya, former Soviet republics - gave up their programs voluntarily, and Israel took out Syria's development facilities in 2007. Beyond "the club", others were made to understand that nuclear weapons would make them tempting targets, and that protection by the West was better than trying it themselves. The overthrow of Khaddafi in Libya and the West's reticence to support the Ukraine against dismemberment by Russia were direct refutations of that Faustian bargain, and have served as a spur for North Korea to accelerate its rogue program. Whether the fault lies with Hillary or Obama can be debated.  

        - John Kerry and Barack Obama deserve the blame for the unverifiable, temporizing, "peace in our time" Iran deal, but Hillary will of necessity be a defender and Trump will be an attacker. He will need a proposition beyond "tear it up".  

    For those sincerely concerned about the nation's policies in the nuclear arena, as well as those simply interested in the political contest, there are several things that Trump needs to do. 

        - He needs to identify a serious national security team. Thus far his announced advisers amount to little known third tier players. He needs a David Petreus, a Condi Rice, and a few top academics. 

        - He needs to prepare for the presidential debates in an entirely different way than he prepared for the Republican contests. Mitt Romney's sessions with Rob Portman before the first 2012 debate provide a good model. He could start now. 

        - He needs to moderate his foreign policy pronouncements - particularly those touching on the global nuclear balance.  Other countries are actually influenced by what a major party nominee for the American presidency thinks and says.

                                                                           ----- 

   This week's video is a first (and probably last on RightinSanFrancisco) discussion with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

bill bowen - 6/3/16 

Explaining Trump to Democrats (and a Few Republicans)

    Lots of Democrats like to ask "What is going on with Trump and the Republican Party?" Some are really curious; most are just enjoying the discomfort of mainline Republican Party adherents, and gloating over what they perceive as the suicide of their political opponents. Just one week removed from the pivotal Indiana primary, however, there is a decent response to the question - one which is very attractive to the Sanders wing of the Democratic party.

    It is helpful to think of the presidential election contest in three dimensions: personality; party loyalty; and policy.

    Personality. Granted, Donald Trump is a deeply flawed human being. So is Hillary Clinton. If this is to be the discussion, equal time should be devoted to both. Democrats do not want to talk about Clinton's dishonesty any more than Republicans want to talk about Trump's bombast. Move on.

    Party Loyalty. There is legitimate reason for Democrats to vote party lines for the president, given the power to appoint judges, promulgate regulations, and negotiate foreign relationships. Ditto for Republicans. That is a short discussion. Move on.

    Policy. Here is where Democrats who get their news and opinions from only their traditional sources get blindsided by not understanding or caring that Donald Trump represents a significant move away from traditional Republican policies. It is this shift as much as his personality which causes tension within the Republican Party - and political opportunity to attract voters not firmly attached to the party of Obama and Clinton. Again, three components of Trump's "America First" policy theme. 

        - Foreign Policy. Since at least 2002 Republican and Democratic administrations alike have pursued policies in the broader Middle East of deposing leaders which we did not like without a clear plan for a replacement - the Taliban in Afghanistan; Hussein in Iraq; Qaddafi in Libya; Assad in Syria. (Bush was at least a bit more competent, winning the wars and tamping down the opposition to the successor governments.) Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War and was a chief architect for the Obama administration's policies in Libya and Syria. Trump sounds like Bernie Sanders.

        Since World War II the United States has been the world's policeman, maintaining bases in Europe and Asia and paying about 4% of our gross domestic product for the military while our allies are generally in the 2% range. With $19 trillion of debt, we can no longer afford to continue this disparity. Trump sounds like Bernie Sanders.   

        - Domestic Policy. Since the beginning of the George W Bush administration the median family income in the United States has declined about 8%. The top economic tier has done quite well; the bottom tier has benefited from a growing range of welfare programs; the middle class has been screwed - by Democrats and Republicans alike. Obamacare; the "War on Coal"; regulations on small business; an unaccountable Wall Street; paltry returns on retirement investments; a flood of immigrants pushing wages down. All would be part of Hillary's "third Obama term".  

    The big kahuna is foreign trade - Bill Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement; Hillary Clinton's Trans Pacific Partnership (the "gold standard" when she negotiated it); the rise of 200 million Chinese from poverty while millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost amid a decades-long trade imbalance of $60 billion per month. The commercial relationship with the rest of the world needs to be renegotiated. 

        - Social Policy. Trump utters nary a word about abortion or gay rights. In fact, it is easy to argue that Trump's women employees have been better treated in his companies than those at the White House, and that the Bill and Hillary team have done more to degrade women than any pronouncement attributed to The Donald.  Within the Party, the evangelicals went with Ted Cruz and will be among the hardest to re-recruit to a unified party. Bad for the Party; good for independents and Democrats contemplating Trump. 

    This will, indeed, be a transformative election. Many Republicans would have preferred a different standard-bearer, but on policy, Donald Trump has tapped into the mood of the American public. Just think what he could do if he knew how to get access to the public dialogue. 

                                                                                    -----

        This week's video is a timely book review by Jimmy Kimmel. 

bill bowen - 5/13/16

The End of Hope and Change

   

                                “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
                                         Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
                                   Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
                                         Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

                                                        Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) 

     The Republic will apparently survive Barack Obama. We can thank the Founding Fathers for devising a system of checks and balances between the executive, the legislature, and the courts, and between the federal government and the states. We can thank past Republican presidents for appointing judges who respect the Constitution. We can thank the people who have reacted to Obama's excesses by electing a solidly Republican House, a Republican Senate, and strong Republican majorities in the governorships and state legislatures. 

     Nine months before he leaves office, there is ample evidence that Obama will not leave much of a stamp on the country:

        - The Affordable Care Act, his signature legislative achievement, is dissolving despite Herculean efforts to impose it and ongoing propaganda from the Department of Health and Human Services. Of the net 16 million who have gained insurance, about half come from employers with decreasing unemployment, and a quarter come from expansion of Medicaid. Many of the co-ops set up under the Act have gone out of business. United Healthcare, the largest national healthcare insurer, is pulling out of most of the state exchanges amid indications that the high cost of those enrolling will continue to lead to substantially escalating losses and rate increases.   The majority of the public now understands that "you can keep your doctor" was a lie, and favor significant changes to the legislation. 

         - Reality is forcing Obama to reverse what he considered his signature foreign policy objective - ending American involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Troop levels are back up to 5000 in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan, and the role of the "boots on the ground" is looking more and more like combat with Apache helicopters flying close air support for Iraqi troops fighting ISIS. Neither war is going well (not to mention the war in Syria); both have deteriorated during the seven years of Obama's presidency. 

         - The death of Antonin Scalia has saved the Democrats from a set of likely 5 to 4 conservative votes, but the result of a likely 4 to 4 tie will be to let stand a lower court invalidation of Obama's executive order suspending deportation of 4 million illegal immigrants.

        - President Obama's traditional exiting world tour demonstrates how little influence he has internationally.  He is received coldly in Saudi Arabia where he thinks that he can help mediate the Sunni-Shia divide despite his overtures to Iran; he is will be received coldly in Britain where he tries to engage in the upcoming election on membership in the European Union; there will be no reprise of his triumphant 2008 speech in Berlin or his 2009 Cairo speech where he  promised a kinder and gentler American role in the Middle East.    

        - He has called Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to the White House to discuss the benefit of keeping interest rates near zero through the election. Once this opiate is taken away, a more accurate picture of the Obama economy will emerge. 

        - The country had looked to the first African American president as a healer of ethnic rifts, but the Democratic Party strategy has been the opposite - using the divisions to drive voter registration and turnout - with the result that the relation between police and inner city residents has hit a multi-decade low. 

    Obama's role in electing his successor has been muted while there is a contest within the Democratic Party, but that will change once the conventions are over. While the "wrong track" reading has reached about 69 %, the president's approval rating has been hovering around  50 % - he is, after-all, a likable enough fellow in contrast to Hillary, Donald, and Ted. The president will play a role in unifying the Democratic party while the Republicans have no senior statesman who can appeal to both sides after a divisive convention. Advantage Democrats. 

    For those that are optimists, the institutions created by Jefferson, Madison, et al have been strong enough to withstand the perfect storm of an economic collapse and the ascendancy of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the legion of those who would look to an increasingly powerful federal government to take care of the needs of a submissive people. The first step of recovery is recognition - Bernie Sanders' followers on the left recognize the corruption of the establishment led by Hillary Clinton; Donald Trump's supporters recognize that the system has been increasingly structured to the detriment of the traditional middle class. Unfortunately, those sounding the alarm have no experience in governing and lack the realistic policy solutions to the problems that they rail against. At least it is a start. 

    Barack Obama will leave a more dangerous world than he inherited: Iran and North Korea on the path to nuclear missile capabilities; the Sunni-Shia divide leaching out into civil wars, an immigration crisis, and an expanded terrorist threat against the West; a national debt of $19 trillion which is manageable with interest rates near zero, but a huge problem when they return to normal levels; an American public which is divided and restive. The country needs to nominate and the country needs to elect the person most qualified to lead the nation and the western world back to security and growth. I am in the John Kasich camp.   

                                                                            -----

   This week's bonus is a detailed analysis of the remaining Republican primaries by Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley at Rasmussen Reports. Essentially, New York stopped the bleeding for Trump; he will likely need a share of the 200 or so uncommitted delegates to reach 1237, and the remaining states to focus on are Pennsylvania (April 26), Indiana (May 3), and California (June 7.) 

bill bowen - 4/22/16 

Explaining Trump to the Brits

    This week, as we are in London visiting family, the question for any American is "what's up with this Trump thing?" When people will listen, I like to first ask about the upcoming British vote to continue or exit the European Union.

    Brexit: A Brief Explanation

        - As part of his campaign for reelection as Prime Minister in 2015, Conservative leader David Cameron outflanked Neil Farage's small but rapidly growing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) by promising that he would support a referendum on continuing membership in the European Union after he renegotiated the terms of British participation. The Conservatives won a surprisingly large victory; Cameron negotiated the ability to deny government benefits to newly arrived immigrants and eliminate the commitment to an ever increasing integration of the 28 EU countries; and the referendum - which is a toss-up - was set for June 23.

        - What motivates so many Britons to consider scrapping the structure which has successfully fostered peace and prosperity for nearly 70 years? (There are parallel "Euroskeptic" movements in several other countries, particularly France, Holland, and Denmark.)

            - Since its inception in 1992, the EU has witnessed a relentless transfer of regulatory and oversight responsibilities from the capitals of the member countries to the parliament and bureaucracy in Brussels.  The European Commission takes direction from the 728 member legislature and oversees 34 Directorates, each engaged in aspects of government throughout the Union. For example, the Directorate General of Economic and Financial Affairs " strives to improve the economic wellbeing of the citizens of the EU - through policies designed to promote sustainable economic growth, a high level of employment, stable public finances and financial stability", while the Environmental Directorate ensures that member states apply environmental laws correctly "to enable EU citizens to live well, within the planet's ecological limits, in an innovative, circular economy, where biodiversity is protected, valued and restored and environment-related health risks are minimized in ways to enhance our society's resilience, and where growth has been decoupled from resource use."  The reality is that every area is a push and pull between the politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels and those in the local capitals, with the most powerful politicians in the major countries remaining national amidst the inexorable movement of what affects people to the central government.

            - Migration provides two distinct policy issues for the UK. Citizens of the EU have a right to travel and work anywhere in the Union and are eligible for government benefits wherever they live; as the EU has expanded to central Europe, the number of unskilled workers living in the UK has swelled. Secondly, the UK (and Ireland) opted out of the Shengen Agreement which eliminates internal borders on most of the European continent; with over 1,000,000 illegal Middle Eastern migrants, Europe is overrun and faces a major security threat, as efforts by the central Brussels government to stem the tide and require resettlement quotas have thus far fallen flat.

            - Britain also dodged a problem by remaining out of the common currency which is an eventual goal of the European Union. The Greek drama of 2014 and 2015 highlighted the problem of leaving fiscal policy (taxing and spending) to the individual countries while centralizing monetary policy (control of the currency). Many believe that the European Central Bank policy of printing money and taking on debt to support the weaker economies of southern Europe will not end well.

        - In sum, the policies which have governed Britain's relation with Europe for 70 years are being called into question. The political establishment has not been responsive to the fact that low skilled immigrants are taking the jobs of Britons in a post-industrial nation. The central government in Brussels has no cohesive plan to defeat Islamic terrorists. More and more decisions affecting daily life - education; agriculture; healthcare; transportation; housing - are subject to the wisdom of distant bureaucrats. The economic system is fragile and disconnected from British values of work and responsibility. Neil Farage and UKIP gave voice to these concerns - often with offensive rhetoric - and the Conservative Party leadership is attempting to respond.

    The conversation about Donald Trump becomes much shorter.  The American political establishment has been less responsive to the public than has the British. If Trump is elected, unquestioned bipartisan support for "free trade" is over; the Democratic and business  "open borders" policy (Latino and high skilled visas) is over; the American role as the world's unpaid policeman is over. Neither major political party has been willing to address these issues;  it would be nice if the advocate of the fundamental policy shifts had some relevant experience or a presidential temperament, but at least with Trump - like with Farage - the policy choice is clear.

                                                                                       -----

    This week's video is a short sample of United Kingdom Independent Party leader,Neil Farage, more articulately paralleling Donald Trump's call to "make Britain great again".

bill bowen - 3/31/16

Trump v Clinton: On Policy

    Analysts have been slow to peel the onion on the reasons for Trump's success - other than that people are mad (the current conventional wisdom pertaining to both Trump and Bernie Sanders) and he "tells it like it is" (the refrain of Trump fans.)  For the moment, let's put personality aside and dig a bit deeper on why people are mad - and how that might affect a race between Trump and Hillary. 

    First, this has been building for a long time, and shame on the political establishment for not offering a response before it hit them over the head. I'll be simplistic. 

        1. The median family income (half above; half below) in 2014 was $53,657, 3% below when Barack Obama came into office and 7% below when George W Bush came into office. The causes are complex - globalization; demographics; technology; (bipartisan) governmental policies - but the average American understands that things are not getting better, that the country is on the "wrong track" (Rasmusssen 65%), that the next generation will be worse off, and that the political and business establishment is indifferent, in part because the S&P 500 companies are doing fine as over half of their earnings are from abroad and profit margins are at record levels while domestic wages stagnate.   

         Bernie Sanders (and to a lesser extent Hillary) has a set of policies to address the symptoms - tax the rich and redistribute it to the poor; increase the minimum wage. Donald Trump has a set of policies to address the root causes - stop immigration which increases downward pressure on jobs and wages; bring jobs home by reducing the foreign trade gap of $40 to $50 billion dollars per month.  Hillary is trapped as will become clear in a head-to-head contest: as part of the long term ethnic strategy the Democrats favor a large, low wage Hispanic immigrant population; regardless of what she advocates now, her State Department negotiated the "gold standard" increasingly unpopular Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement - much like her husband negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement two decades ago, creating what third party presidential candidate Ross Perot called "a giant sucking sound".  What goes around comes around.   

    2. The Unites States has been bogged down in (bipartisan) endless Middle Eastern wars since 2001 while our global power is declining relative to Russia, China, and Iran. The president refuses to acknowledge international Islamic terrorism while ISIS expands in the Middle East, claims supporters in Africa and Asia, and fosters attacks in western Europe and the United States. With no draft the boil of the American public is slow, but the human and multi-trillion financial cost is real, and security is eroding at home and globally with the likely proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

    Trump talks tough, believing that he can negotiate with Vladimir Putin while giving no quarter to ISIS. More significantly, he departs from the neocons and aligns more with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party favoring limited American involvement in foreign wars - and increased compensation when we do act as the guarantor for our allies. Hillary voted for the Iraq invasion and was Secretary of State as Barack Obama put his "leading from behind" imprimatur on the world order. She was a central architect of the failure in Libya, advocating for the removal of Kaddhafy and botching Benghazi. It will be hard for her to hide on the removal of troops from Iraq, the totally failed policies in Syria, and the failed "reset" with Russia. In a campaign "experience" will translate to "responsibility". 

    3. Nobody has been held accountable for the financial collapse of 2008. Millions lost their houses, while the perpetrators at the banks, the mortgage companies, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, the rating agencies, and the regulators kept their bonuses. The "too big to fail" banks are bigger and we have a new bureaucracy in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but the real changes advocated by Elizabeth Warren have gone nowhere and nobody went to jail.  

    Bernie Sanders is all over it - and if this were the only issue in the election, he might well win. In fact, Warren would have been hard to beat had she run. Trump's policies are unknown - but will undoubtedly catch the national mood, whether they actually survive an election or not. Hillary again is on the wrong side of history - as the senator from New York she actively advocated for her constituents; she dominates the political contributions of Wall Street; her husband was the overseer of eliminating the Glass-Steagal Act which kept the investment banking speculators out of commercial banks. 

    4. There is definitely an overlay of the disrespect for the "flyover states" writ large. For decades The coastal elites have, with an air of moral superiority, disparaged people who hold traditional American values. Any response to the Democrats pandering to minorities has been met with cries of "racism". Any effort to curb abortion is met with cries of "a war on women". Americans travelling abroad are told that they should apologize for our country - the most powerful, wealthy, diverse, generous, free, and open to upward mobility in the history of the planet.

    After seven years of President Obama's disconnect with the American psyche, we are met with Hillary Clinton's promise of a third Obama term, with a more strident appeal to ethnic minorities and ongoing battles over social issues to energize her constituents.  Trump promises a return to greatness.  

   None of this says that Trump would be a good president - he is unprepared, badly damaged, and divisive. But, on the policies that are turning out record numbers of voters in the Republican primaries he is pitch perfect, and Hillary will be unable to avoid not only her status as part of the establishment, but also her history on the issues. 

                                                                                     -----

    This week's video is Donald Trump being as presidential as he can be - but still not enough on torture. 

bill bowen-3/11/16

     

Stop Trump - Get Out the Vote

   The 26 states and territories voting between now an March 15 may well determine whether or not Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and voters in November will be forced to decide between an unprincipled blowhard and a terminally corrupt failure as Secretary of State. We have suffered from one amateur imperial president; let's not elect another. 

    - If you live in one of these states, please vote - generally, whether you are a Republican or not; 

    - Please forward this request to friends who live in any of these states;

    - Note that Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Minnesota, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia have "Open Primaries" where all can vote. "Unaffiliated" voters can vote in the Republican primaries in Massachusetts and North Carolina. Ohio voters can select their party on election day.   

    - Most of these states allocate delegates proportionally (including by congressional district), so every vote counts;

    - Texas is particularly important, with 155 delegates, a 20% hurdle rate to get any delegates and a 50% level to get all of the delegates; 

    -  A "stop Trump" objective also calls for somebody else carrying the "winner take all" states of Florida (Rubio) and Ohio (Kasich). 

      This is a chance for Republicans and independents to make a difference.  Let's get a nominee that we can be proud of. 

                                                                                   -----

     March 2 - Alabama (50); Alaska (28); Arkansas (40); Georgia (76); Massachusetts (42); Minnesota (38); Oklahoma (43); Tennessee (58); Texas (155); Vermont (16); Virginia (49). 

    March 5 - Kansas (40); Kentucky (46); Louisiana (46); Maine (23).

   March 6 - Puerto Rico (23)

   March 8 - Hawaii (19); Idaho (32); Michigan (59); Mississippi (40). 

    March 12 - District of Columbia (19)

    March 15 - Florida (99); Illinois (69); Missouri (52); North Carolina (72); Ohio (66).  

Italics indicates caucuses. 

  Bill Bowen 

 

If Donald Meets Hillary

     OK!!!  OK, already !!!!  With Donald Trump leading comfortably in all of the polls (except the latest outlier  WSJ/NBC poll) and three quarters of Republicans anticipating that he will be the nominee, it is time to think about him going head to head with Hillary. It is way too hard to envision him as President Trump, but it is worth getting one's head around Nominee Trump.

    Let's start in the easiest place - foreign policy. The New York real estate mogul who has some gambling and resort connections in the Caribbean and knows folks in Monaco and Macao versus the former Secretary of State who has met with every important foreign leader in the past 30 years.  By winning this discussion Trump can obliterate Hillary's perceived "experience" advantage which has lurked in the background unchallenged in a Democratic debate season which has focused on ways to expand the federal government and take down the evil rich. As strange as it seems, foreign policy should be Hillary's greatest vulnerability.

    Carly Fiorina started down this road a few months ago, but nobody was listening to her beyond her clever tag line that frequent flyer miles do not equate to accomplishments. Trump has a different skill - he understands the use of pithy statements to strike at central unspoken truths which most people understand, and he yells them. Get ready for the breakout puncturing of the competence balloon.

    Let's take a short tour of the world before and after Hillary:

        - Trump can start with the Middle East and an unlikely and uncomfortable turn for most Republicans - Hillary voted for the Iraq War while Trump claims that he opposed it. Obama and Clinton snatched defeat from the jaws of a hard won victory by removing all US forces, watching a Shia government align with Iran to marginalize the Sunnis, and opening the door for ISIS. Trump will sound like Bernie Sanders about the decision to go in and Lindsey Graham about the decision to get out. Trump can have it both ways.

        - Hillary will own Libya. Her State Department advocated for the removal of Gaddafi without a plan for his replacement. She and the President fumbled Benghazi - leaving diplomats unprotected, refusing to come to their aid, "leading from behind", and lying to the public about the cause of the attack.

        - Syria - the greatest humanitarian disaster in a half century - over 250,000 killed; millions of refugees; foundations of the European Union challenged. The blame rests mainly with President Obama - "Assad must go" with no plan; the "red line" with no consequences; inability to mobilize the Sunni Arabs, the Turks, the Kurds, and NATO. If Hillary makes a break with the administration, this will be it, otherwise she owns ISIS.  But then she has to explain where she was when the decisions were made.

        - Egypt - She supported the overthrow and prosecution of a long time US ally and stood by while the Army reasserted control.

        - The much-hyped "re-set" with Russia.  After a few tests of the Obama/Clinton weakness, Putin acted in the Ukraine, then in Syria. Eastern Europe remains exposed. This is one area where Trump is probably right - Putin would treat him very differently.

        - The diplomatic initiative with Mexico and Central America to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. What initiative?

        - The abandonment of the Keystone XL Pipeline - with its required State Department approval - and the vision of North American energy independence. And the good will of the Canadians.

        - The "pivot to Asia" with the only tangible result being the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement which she once championed and now opposes. And the increasingly fortified Chinese presence in the South China Sea.

        - Let's have somebody come forward who claims a better relation with the United States from Hillary's time at State - the Saudis?; the Brits? the Germans?; the Japanese? the Indians? the Pakisanis? OK, maybe the Cubans.

    While Trump isn't really a process guy, there are easy pickings there too.

        - The e-mails are the obvious place to start. Lawyers view it as a question of whether her violation of the laws on protecting secrets (and perhaps maintaining public records) rises to the level justifying prosecution, but that is not the question. The FBI may recommend indictment, but the Democratic Attorney General and the president will not initiate a war with their candidate. What the public understands is that she used her own server to avoid scrutiny and that doing so exposed deliberations and sources of information to our adversaries. The Russians knew our thinking on the Ukraine; they knew what we would accept in Syria. The Chinese listened in on administration discussions of Snowden's exposure of NSA practices. More important to the intelligence community, sources of information were exposed in Hillary's e-mails.  People probably died and the CIA's ability to recruit informants was greatly compromised.

        - And the Clinton Foundation - with Bill taking large fees from foreigners with business before the State Department - Uranium One for one easy example. Expect a blunt conversation about what donors expect in return for their largess. Bernie Sanders is making a big point of Wall Street donors; foreign donors are more universally offensive - and illegal.  Trump is a believable expert on why people donate to politicians.

    - Maybe there is even a barb about things as simple as the "Reset" button - mistakenly translated "overcharged" - which Hillary gave to Soviet Foreign Minister Lavrov. One can hear Trump mocking rank incompetence.

    Others have more experience in foreign policy - Marco Rubio who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee or John Kasich who served on the House Armed Services Committee. Rubio has called her unqualified because she lied to the relatives of the men killed at Benghazi, but that has pretty much been ignored in the swirl of competing stories.  Trump cannot be ignored.  

                                                                                           -----

   In answer to the current assault on capitalism by the Bernie Sanders Left,  this week's bonus, is a welcome takedown of a young Phil Donahue whose rant about income inequality runs into the wisdom of Milton Friedman.

bill bowen - 2/18/16

The Republican Debates Writ Large

    They may not compare to the Lincoln-Douglas debates - I didn't attend and Fox didn't carry them - but the 2016 Republican presidential debates will certainly be remembered as a classic in American political history. Some thoughts:

    Republicans have completely captured the political discussion. Past televised presidential debates have drawn an audiences of 5 to 8 million viewers; these have drawn an average of 17.4 million for the Republicans; the Democrats have been about half of that. The swing state of Iowa presented good evidence that the interest can translate into votes - the 2008 caucuses drew 220,000 Democratic voters and 119,000 Republican voters; in 2016 the Democrats were down 50,000 and the Republicans were up 65,000. Similarly in New Hampshire, the Republican turnout was up 18% from 2008 while the Democratic turnout was down 12%.  The Democrats, who had originally tried to downplay head-to-head confrontations have decided to add four more of their own.   

    The surfeit of candidates has actually been a blessing, maintaining viewers for the extended process. The Democrats have Hillary and Bernie - first avoiding any controversy, and then throwing well-worn barbs with little "new news" or suspense. With the Republican "undercard" there has been the ongoing question of who would be thrown off of the island; what would the Donald do if he showed up; would those falling behind in the polls attack strategic opponents; would a gaffe knock out a contender as with Rick Perry in 2012? With Trump blowing away political correctness, tough subjects actually get discussed. It is made for the times - a blend of "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" - and only for one season.

    The debates have also been good for serious observers. 

        - Those who began with a generic preference for governors over senators and amateurs are now getting beyond the polish of the orators. In talking about medical care for veterans, some of the candidates talk about having met wounded warriors at town hall meetings; the governors talk about what they have done in their states to establish meaningful programs. Bush and Christie can talk about their experience with natural disasters. The governors can explain why they accepted or rejected Obama's Medicaid expansion. The discussion gets beyond how much taxes have been lowered and how many jobs were created to examples of what governors actually do.

        - After two months the public has become accustomed to seeing two Cubans and an African American doctor argue about things which have little to do with being Cuban or African American. They are just Republicans who have risen to the upper tier of their party. The subtle implication for Mexicans, Guatemalans, Puerto Ricans and African Americans has to change their view of the party. A bit of this happened with Bobby Jindal for awhile; also a bit with Carly Fiorina. On the Republican side young viewers see a range of ages; on the Democratic side they see their grandparents.  At the top level, the Republicans are the party of diversity.

        - The Democratic meme that the Republicans have no ideas is dead. Everything is on the table, and the nuances of differences are argued in detail. Candidates like Bush and Cruz have detailed proposals for just about everything, and several candidates are learning to give brief answers with referrals to their web sites. Admittedly, the Donald is weak on details, but the winner will have heard every argument battle tested and will know the logical and polling strengths and weaknesses of each.  

            --  The immigration debate  begins with "secure the border" and ends with a path to legal status, with flavors of removal and return.

            -- The ISIS argument - one of Hillary's great "experience" exposures - includes a consensus for greater engagement and a stronger military, different views on Saudi Arabia and the Kurds, the limits of air power, and the importance of Sunni allies. 

            -- Positions on abortion range from the purist "life begins at conception"; to exceptions for rape and incest; to protection in the third trimester; to a unilateral decision by the woman. Handled properly, most Americans would not agree with the extremist "partial birth abortion"  position that Planned Parenthood and the  Democratic candidate will espouse. The issue will e used or not as the candidate sees best. 

           -- There is enough discussion of taxes, the Iran nuclear deal, climate change, Obamacare, and any other issue to satisfy the greatest policy wonk.  Most try to draw contrasts with Obama and his third term as Hillary; as Bernie Sanders rises and Hillary tacks left, the contrast gets even better.  

       - Among the most striking results - Ted Cruz was able to win in Iowa after opposing the federal mandate to include ethanol in gasoline.  A political profile in courage - at least with staunch, unyielding conservatives. 

      The Christie - Rubio dust-up about whether President Obama is ideologically misdirected or just incompetent will be remembered for Rubio's robotic repetition of his talking point and it has certainly stopped his path to consolidating the moderate voters. Both are right, but Christie's debating skills are superior and he has the obvious examples of the Veterans Administration, Fast and Furious, the Stimulus Plan, the roll out of Obamacare, Syria, Libya, and on and on. It would have been nice if this had been a theme for more discussions.  Some of us think that we are lucky that the ideological Obama was incompetent.

    The Donald has certainly tapped into a mood of discontent after seven years of the domestic and international failures of the Obama administration. To the extent that his presence has contributed to the unprecedented opportunity to expose the American public to Republican ideas and the diversity of the party's leadership, Reince Priebus owes him a debt of gratitude. On the other hand, he might not have broken upon the scene if not for the free opportunity to speak directly with millions. Whether we can avoid having him as the spokesman remains to be seen.

                                                                                              ------  

   This week we have Chris Christie's last hurrah which ended Marco Rubio's consolidation of the moderate segment of Republican voters. 

bill bowen - 2/10/2016

 

 

 

Reconsidering Bernie

    Is it time to reconsider Bernie Sanders?  Maybe that's not quite right - consider him for the first time?

    Many of us have been operating on the assumption that Hillary was inevitable; that the socialist 74 year old junior senator from Vermont was a throw away place holder for Elizabeth Warren who (like Mitt Romney) is probably regretting a decision not to run; that Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 primaries and general election was entirely about him and his campaign, and not about a strong left wing of the Democratic Party; that the Democratic electorate would again want an historic candidate, this time a woman; that the Democratic party machine had the fix in for the Clintons. 

    Well, Bernie Sanders is no Donald Trump (that's not meant as a compliment or an insult), but there is enough going on to give a brief flight of fancy:

        -- Recent polling has Sanders running ahead of Clinton and gaining momentum in Iowa as well as in New Hampshire, and the national gap is down to single digits from 20 points a month ago.  As the primary season moves on to South Carolina on February 27 and largely-southern Super-Tuesday on March 1, where African Americans are dominant on the Democratic side, Clinton will have a major advantage, but the earlier victories would guarantee Sanders' survival into mid-March when the campaign becomes national. 

        -- At this point in 2008 the senator from New York had support of 45% in a crowded field, with an 18 point lead over the junior senator from Illinois - and the active support of a younger and more popular ex president. We all know how that worked out. 

        -- Money isn't a problem. Success breeds success. Sanders raised $73 million in 2015 compared to Hillary's $112 million, and the gap was closing in the fourth quarter; recent attacks by Hillary's camp have generated a surge in Sanders grass roots donors. These are mostly smaller amounts from a broad group of donors and he doesn't have a well-funded supporting PAC, but the breadth of donors matches that of Obama in 2008. I cannot get to my e-mail without first clicking off a Sanders ad. 

        -- Hillary has a difficult balancing act on policy - Sanders will own the progressive left; 20% of the (remaining blue dog) Democrats say that they would vote for Trump against her; she cannot alienate the Obama administration; she felt it necessary to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement which she helped to negotiate as Secretary of State; she is vulnerable on healthcare where Sanders is for single payer and she is tied to the unpopular Obamacare; being the largest recipient of financial industry donations, she has no credibility as a controller of Wall Street. Her only advantage with the progressive wing is on gun control where she supports Obama's push for more restrictions, but loses the 20% who would defect to Trump.

        -- And then, there's the corruption with its many ugly faces. She met her match with Trump when she opened the door for discussion of Bill Clinton's sexual predations, and her role in attacking the victims. She may not be up to playing three dimensional chess. 

        -- And the final argument - like the Republican establishment's argument against Trump - the socialist Sanders is not electable. For what it is worth, the current Real Clear Politics averages have Sanders doing about as well as Hillary against the leading Republicans. 

      You know that the ice is cracking when Joe Biden praises Sanders for his genuineness on the current Democratic theme of "income inequality" and calls Hillary "relatively new" to the subject. Permission to defect from the establishment's choice has been granted, and voice will be given to the lifetime of enemies that Hillary has accumulated. Meanwhile, MoveOn.org's endorsement of Sanders confirms George Soros' support.  

    It is early. Hillary may be exposed as harmless, like the Wizard of Oz - as she was in 2008 - but the odds are against it. Either of the septuagenarians may have health issues which set off alarm bells. Bill may be a surprisingly good asset or a liability. The millenials who favor Sanders may decide that politics is kind of interesting after all and actually vote. Some 20% of the Democratic convention delegates are party insiders, and Hillary has half of them locked up already. We really just don't know, and in fact we know less about the Democratic nomination than we did a few months ago.  

    One thing that may change is that the ratings for the Democratic debates on January 17, February 11, and March 9 may reflect the fact that they are actually worth watching. In the meantime, the interested observer might pick up a glowing biography about Sanders in the Huffington Post, or ongoing coverage in Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, or the New Yorker. He is not scheduled to appear on Fox. 

                                                                                 -----

    This week's video - in case you missed it or want it for your archives - is Nikki Haley's 10 minute response to President Obama's State of the Union speech. 

bill bowen - 1/15/2016

    

Pondering Donald Trump

   A conundrum indeed!  It is time for the political establishment to acknowledge that Donald Trump is here to stay, to understand why he has not imploded, and to embrace the positives while mitigating the negatives. That involves a bit of humble pie, summoning up respect for his followers, and making commitments as the voice of the voters is about to be heard in Iowa and New Hampshire. Let's try.

The Good:

    - Trump has shown that there is an opportunity to play offense. For at least a decade Republicans have been on the defensive, accepting the Democratic mantra that demographics is destiny, the Hispanics and other minorities would soon become a majority, that they would vote liberal, and the only path for Republicans was to do as little as possible to offend them. Trump has shown that there is still a lot of political capacity in the traditional white middle class.

    - Trump can make a credible case that he can self-fund, or at least not become beholden to the evil forces of money in politics. He owes little to the lobbyists or the political establishment. 

    - Trump is a consummate marketer - the best by far on the stage in 2016. He understands the hot buttons of the electorate; he can attract and satisfy a large audience; he has had a successful career as a television personality.

    - Trump expands the national profile of the Republican Party. Ratings for the debates are a multiple of past cycles and the Democrats. The public is seeing Republican ideas, a mix of Republican ethnicities and genders. Public perceptions of Republicans are being formed by direct observation rather than being filtered by a liberal media.

    - Trump is crushing the liberal concept of Political Correctness that has increasingly limited discussion for the past few decades - on campuses and in the public square; making it impossible for society to seek balanced compromises on subjects from climate change, to immigration, to abortion, to health care.

    - Trump has management experience, but is not tainted by the cesspool of Washington. Many would like a governor with government experience, but at least he understands selling, budgeting, and managing people. Rookie senators have not worked out so well.

    -  He is an optimist.    

The Bad:

    - Trump really has no ideological core. He has donated more to Democrats than to Republicans, and is a Republican of political convenience.  He has been a practitioner of political corruption. He has been for a single payer healthcare system. He is for Donald Trump. 

    - His limited understanding of international affairs does not impede his willingness to speak decisively. He thinks that he understands Putin because they were both interviewed (continents away) on the same television program. By now he gets the Sunni - Shia divide, but doesn't know who the Kurds are. He will talk about increasing military spending, but doesn't know that the "nuclear triad" refers to missiles on aircraft, in silos, and on submarines. The observer should pay close attention to his pace of learning - and whether he sees the need to learn. 

The Ugly:

    - There are two questions - who would be the best president, and who can beat Hillary Clinton. The first doesn't matter if the answer is a clear "No" on the second. Of the Republicans, current polling shows Rubio beating Clinton by 1.3%, Cruz being a toss-up, Trump losing by 4.8%, and most of the rest losing by one or two per cent. Perhaps the Republicans will do better as their field consolidates; perhaps Hillary's extreme numbers on likability and trustworthiness will doom her against anybody. But Trump has a clear ceiling on his potential and is the least likely to win at this point. (Proponents claim that Hillary is so flawed that she will lose to anybody, that Trump will decimate her in debates, and that his marketing expertise is still under-rated. It is a risk.) 

    - When Trump insulted John McCain for being captured in Viet Nam it served as a warning that he relished the "You're Fired" line from The Apprentice, and that he would be insulting anybody if it gave him short term advantage. Bullying is a big part of his schtick - and it comes naturally.  

    - In terms of the American political setting there is a short term answer and a long term answer. When Pete Wilson used Proposition 187, targeted against use of state-funded services by illegal immigrants, to turn out support and win reelection in 1994, he earned four years in the governors mansion, but he poisoned the state for Republicans for at least a generation. 

    These are serious times with the hangover from 7 years of Obama, an economy which has disappointed a large portion of the lower and middle class; a hostile Middle East; nuclear proliferation; and a resurgent Russia. It is a perfect setting for a demagogue, and we have one. It is also a unique opportunity for a Republican transformation with control of the House, a majority in the Senate, control of most state governments , and a workable Supreme Court. This is the prize that conservatives should look to - and Trump minimizes the opportunity.

                                                                            -----  

    This week's video was smuggled out of a November Republican National Committee meeting. (Adults only.)

bill bowen - 1/8/15 

Saving Chairman Ryan

    John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan must look at Nancy Pelosi with envy and admiration. With a 257 to 178 majority after the 2008 election, Pelosi was able to pass the Stimulus Plan and Obamacare; with a 247 to 188 majority after the 2014 election the Republicans are barely able to elect a leader. Some of this is due to the recalcitrance of the 40 member Freedom Caucus, but other factors are also at play. Some considerations:

    1. The Republicans have some structural disadvantages of their own creation. When John Boehner talks of his commitment to the institution of the House of Representatives, he means it, having insisted on "regular order" in which legislation makes its way through committees rather than Pelosi's tactic of having large continuing resolutions and omnibus bills which were dictated by the leadership. Secondly, Pelosi had the carrot of earmarks to buy votes - a tool discontinued by the Tea Party-influenced Republicans. A Republican speaker has less authority and fewer tools.   

       2. Beyond the threat of a veto, it is more difficult when the Speaker does not have the White House on his side. When a vote is close, a call from the President (or his Chief of Staff) can make a difference - particularly if it comes with an offer for help in some other area, like fundraising. 

    3.  Pelosi was highly accomplished and ruthless:

        - She came from a safe district which gave her the latitude to take whatever position was necessary. Back home no Democrat or media outlet dares criticize her, regardless of whether she deviates from Democratic orthodoxy to the left or to the right. 

        - She is a prodigious fundraiser for other Democrats, representing the northern end of Silicon Valley and a major financial center with heavy liberal leanings. 

        - She has had a strong parliamentary partner in the Senate, capable of bottling up Republican initiatives with the requirement for 60 votes to break a threatened filibuster. 

        - She can count votes, knowing when she can afford to allow a Congressman to break ranks to appeal to folks back home, and when it is necessary to require that they commit political suicide as she did with Joe Stupak the leader of anti-abortion Democrats whose votes were needed to pass Obamacare. 

    So, where does this leave a Republican leader facing a need to increase the current $18.1 trillion debt limit by November 3, and reach some 2016 budget accommodation with the President who just vetoed a popular defense budget to bargain for more domestic spending.  

    Let's be positive:

    Paul Ryan has apparently received assurances of support from a super-majority of the 40 member Freedom Caucus, and anticipates endorsement by the 170 member mainstream conservative Republican Study Committee and the 50 member moderate Tuesday Group. He will not travel extensively for fundraising, but had to moderate his demand for a guarantee that there would not be a vote to "vacate the chair" if the Freedom Caucus becomes upset with him. 

    It would be hard to find a candidate with better conservative financial credentials - having fought as a Vice Presidential candidate, chair of the House Budget Committee, and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee budget for proposals to reform the tax code, balance the budget, and reform entitlements. He has gravitas.

    In the House, politics is a team game. Boehner ran out of gas; McCarthy's comments on the Benghazi Committee demonstrated a lack of political acumen; the other candidates for the office received precious little support - even within their sub-caucuses. Hopefully Whip Steve Scalise, Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rogers, and the rest of the leadership team will be up to the task of maintaining order - perhaps with someone from the Freedom Caucus invited to the decision-making meetings. 

    Few politicians are truly stupid or have a death wish. Unlike the pundits like Rush Limbaugh who make a living creating dissatisfaction, even the Freedom Caucus members understand that their disarray increases the power of Pelosi's Democrats and provides good talking points for presidential candidate Hillary and the New York Times. 

    And, with 218 votes needed to pass legislation and a total of 247 to work with, the leadership nose counters can give a pass to a few members who need to look over their shoulders at potential primary opponents. 

    It looks as if Ryan has allowed the House Republicans (and indirectly, the presidential candidate) to dodge a bullet. And he has the potential to be truly outstanding. 

                                    -----

    This week's video is a Fox critique of Hillary's Benghazi testimony. Judge Napolitano's comments at minute 2 are the most interesting - if we had an impartial Justice Department. 

bill bowen - 10/23/2015

     

 

   

    

     

Hillary's Enduring Benghazi Problem

     Well, it is nice to have the Democratic presidential debate season over. If there were any doubt, Hillary will be the nominee unless she is indicted (kicking in Plan B - Joe Biden). So, what lies ahead? 

    Hillary's October 22 appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi will offer the best and last opportunity to get the Secretary's answers surrounding the attack at the consulate and the CIA annex on September 11, 2012. Fortunately, the chair of the committee is Trey Gowdy, probably the most accomplished prosecutor in the House. (See this clip as an example, after ICE leadership claimed that Congressional budgetary limits were responsible for the release of felons.)

    Gowdy has some difficulties to overcome to maximize the impact of this hearing:

    - Kevin McCarthy's unforced error in tying the committee's ongoing investigation to the decline of Hillary Clinton's popularity; 

    - An effort by Democratic-leaning media to discredit the work of the committee; 

    - Hillary's e-mail scandal which arose when she first refused to provide information to this committee, and which has pushed the more substantive complaints out of the public eye. 

    On the latter point, Bernie Sanders' call for an end to discussion of Hillary's damned e-mails reflected a unanimous Democratic objective of changing the dialogue to other issues where they believe they can be successful. The issue will remain toxic to Hillary through the election with the Republican candidate hammering the underlying reasons (and lack of judgement) for her choice in the first place, her dishonest claims that she has made to explain it away, and the substantive problems created by using insecure communications to conduct the business of the State Department. But that was not the objective of this committee, and if this is the focus of Clinton's October 22 testimony, it will be possible to claim that it is all political and an opportunity to get at the bigger issues of Benghazi - where she was centrally responsible - will have been missed.  

    So, what should be the focus of the questioning:

    1. Why did the consulate operate in an insecure environment, contrary to State Department standards, and contrary to the decision of all other countries who had withdrawn from Benghazi because it was unsafe? Money will be offered as part of the answer - but $750 million was concurrently spent on the embassy in Baghdad. 

    2. What decisions were made, and by whom, to not do anything to reinforce or extricate the ambassador and other personnel. Over the seven hours there were options, but clearly someone (President Obama?) gave a "stand down" order. 

    3. Why did the administration - led by a State Department subordinate - promulgate the story that the attack was due to a video. Plenty of subsequent evidence demonstrates that this story was known to be false at the time that it was told. 

    4. What did she learn that would be applied to other circumstances in the future? 

    It is possible that Hillary can change the tenor of the discussion - at least as it relates to the video story. The annex near the consulate was managing the transfer of weapons from Libya to a CIA-supported opposition group in Syria. (Obama's demand that Assad must go had at least a bit of muscle behind it.) Even with the fullness of this disclosure, the decision to leave Americans unprotected in Benghazi, and then to do nothing to help them under fire deserves full discussion under oath. This is the last chance. 

                                        -----

   This week's video is President Obama's announcement that US forces will remain in Afghanistan past his presidency. With ISIS to the west and an unstable nuclear Pakistan to the east, common sense (and the public advice of the his top local general) prevail. 

bill bowen - 10/16/15

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hillary's e-Mails: An Intelligence Perspective

    The Barack Obama / Hillary Clinton years have indisputably been the worst for the American Intelligence community at least since the Office of Strategic Services was created in 1942 - the 2010 WikiLeaks release of thousands of State Department communications; Edward Snowden's 2013 exposure of the gruesome details of NSA surveillance programs; the decision (apparently made by President Obama) to not come to the aid of CIA agents and the ambassador in Benghazi; the administration's Guantanamo-driven policy of killing jihadi leaders rather than capturing them for interrogation.  Whether a future president is trying to discern the status of Iran's nuclear program, the implications of Chinese expansion in the South China Sea, Russia's deployments across their western periphery, or the strengths and vulnerabilities of ISIS, the capability to rely on solid information has been diminished.

    While there are political and legal implications of Secretary of State Clinton's decision to use a vulnerable personal e-mail system to hide her communications from governmental and public inquiry, her behavior compromised both our leverage in ongoing international negotiations and, once more, the viability of intelligence gathering capabilities.

    First, particularly in light of the flurry of recent hacking incidents affecting the Office of Personnel Management, the Pentagon's Joint Staff e-mail system, and the IRS data base, it is inconceivable that the Clinton system would not have been found and targeted. And what might have been of interest to the Russians and Chinese between 2009 and 2013? Perhaps discussions with Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland about missile defense systems? Perhaps potential reactions to Russian intervention in the Ukraine?  Perhaps our reaction to Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria? Perhaps the erosion of support for sanctions against Iran? Perhaps discussions with Japan about China's expanding military capabilities?  Hillary made much of her "reset button" in the Russian relationship; a good poker player would have understood that the opponent was looking into our hand.

    But what of the damage to the intelligence system itself? There are several dimensions:

    - The intelligence community inspector general found that two of the forty e-mails which he reviewed contained Top Secret / Special Compartmentalized Information, using the designations for communications intelligence, satellite photography, and "no foreign dissemination".  Beyond having the necessary security clearances, there are strict rules about "need to know", further dissemination, and copying of the material which would be well known to any government employee with access. We do not want adversaries to know the capabilities and nuances of these collection sytems.

    - Less technical is the need to protect human sources, particularly when the information points back to a limited number of potential originators. Think Russian general staff plans for deployment in the Ukraine, or a dissident scientist's perspective on the status of Iran's nuclear program. In the real world the recruitment of informants in sensitive places is difficult, and the life expectancy of compromised spies is short. Lower level analysts do not want to know this information lest they inadvertently expose it. Strategy discussions at the Secretary of State level would have access to all that is available. 

    - Intelligence deals primarily with capabilities; diplomacy also deals with intentions which are subject to conjecture and opinion. Inherent to the State Department role is the sharing of conjecture and opinion with representatives of allied government - frequently with the understanding that the information and the source will not be passed on beyond a limited group. Like in the fifth grade, an inability to keep a secret excludes one from the information loop.

    This controversy about Hillary Clinton's e-mail will not go away. In fact, if there is ever a debate between a Republican candidate and Secretary Clinton, the question will no longer be "what did you accomplish"? It will be "what did you give away, and why?" 

                                        -----

    This week we have two short interviews with Carly Fiorina - with Chris Mathews and Katie Kouric - for anyone looking for a Republican who can make mince-meat out of an antagonistic media.      

 

bill bowen - 9/4/15       

San Francisco: Sanctuary City - A Background

     Politicians pander ... and in a jurisdiction where there is one overwhelmingly dominant party, they pander to the extreme. While San Francisco is probably the "worst case" example of ideology run amuk, it is clear that San Francisco's leaders consider themselves above the national law, and that reform will not happen without outside intervention.

    The facts of the nationally famous case are largely undisputed:  

        - An illegal immigrant who had been convicted of non-violent felonies (illegal entry; drug dealing) seven times, and deported five times was turned over by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to San Francisco (at the sheriff department's request) in connection with a 20 year old marijuana charge which was too old and minor to prosecute. (It is unclear why the request was made, but longstanding personal disputes between the sheriff, the mayor, and the district attorney prevented internal coordination.) 

        - Consistent with San Francisco policy, the Sheriff's Department released him in April without informing federal law enforcement, despite an ICE detainer order to keep him in custody.  

        - Two months later he fatally shot to death a randomly selected young woman at a common tourist location.

        - The Sheriff insists that he was operating within City and state policies. 

    So, how did San Francisco get to this insane policy?

        - As mayor in 1985, in response to civil wars in Central America, Diane Feinstein signed the local "City and County Refuge Ordnance" barring city employees from helping federal immigration authorities with investigations or arrests unless there was a court order or state law requiring them to do so. The ban was expanded to include all immigrants in 1989 under uber-liberal  mayor Art Agnos.   

        - In 2012 Governor Brown vetoed the Trust Act, originally introduced by state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, which would have restricted California's cooperation in the federal Secure Communities program, which relies on local police to hold undocumented immigrants detected upon arrest until ICE can pick them up.

        - In 2012 State Attorney General Kamilla Harris - a former San Francisco City Attorney and current US Senate candidate - issued instructions to state law enforcement officials, clarifying that federal immigration detainers issued under the Secure Communities program "are not mandatory, but are merely requests enforceable at the discretion of the state and local agency".  Court-ordered warrants are required.  

        - In 2013 the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee unanimously approved legislation to prohibit the release of illegals to ICE unless they have committed serious or violent felonies. (Lee, a moderate by San Francisco standards, is running for reelection in 2015.) 

        - In late 2013 Governor Brown signed Ammiano's second attempt at the Trust Act, limiting cooperation with ICE deportation hold requests to those convicted of a serious or violent felony. (Ammiano is out of office due to term limits, but is a potential front-runner for the state senate.)  Harris issued updated directions emphasizing the legal risk for local law enforcement agencies that voluntarily comply with federal detainer requests.

        - In 2014, President Obama, without Congressional agreement, revised immigration procedures to greatly expand amnesty for children, and to replace the Secure Communities Program with the Priority Enforcement Program which replaced federal requests to have local agencies detain felons with requests that they be notified prior to the felon's release.    

        - In March 2014, Sheriff Ross Mirkirimi barred his staff from giving immigration agents "information or access to records of detainees including their citizenship status, their booking and arrest documents, and their release dates." (Mirkirimi is facing a difficult reelection campaign due in part to an admission of domestic battery and departmental performance issues.)  

    And what is the local response to the murder - aside from the broad ducking for cover by City leadership?

    -  A small poll by Survey USA of 625 San Francisco adults surveyed, showed that 46% of Hispanics felt San Francisco should stop being a sanctuary city, 52% of Hispanics think our current sanctuary policy goes too far, 53% of Hispanics say that any undocumented immigrant who commits any crime should be turned over to immigration officials, and that 72% of Hispanics believe in light of last week's shooting, the city should change its sanctuary city policy. (As much as Republicans are embarrassed by Donald Trump, Hispanics are offended by criminals in their community.)  

    - In what is considered as courage worthy of front page coverage, Senator Feinstein declared "I strongly believe that an undocumented individual, convicted of multiple felonies ... should not have been released." No kidding? Also, no indication of what specific policies should be changed. 

    - The liberal leadership of the Board of Supervisors expressed regret to the family of the murdered woman, but emphasized that the "no federal cooperation" policy encourages interaction between the Hispanic community and the police and should not be changed. 

    - The San Francisco Chronicle editorial page contains four arguments:

        -- The fault lies with the Bureau of Prisons for releasing Sanchez to the City when he should have been directly transferred to ICE. 

        -- The root cause is the refusal of the Republican Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. 

        -- This is another example of the need for stricter gun control. 

        -- Donald Trump is a racist. 

    There are a few things that the American people can do:

    1. Elect a Republican president in 2016. A Clinton presidency would not differ greatly from the Obama presidency in refusing to enforce immigration laws. Securing the border requires more than building fences. 

    2. Pass legislation outlawing "Sanctuary Cities" where local law enforcement agencies refuse to enforce federal laws.

     3. Demand that common sense prevail. 

                                        ----- 

        This week's video is a not-too-technical discussion of the Chinese Communist Party's so-far futile effort to control trillion dollar markets. Like the Greek euro crisis, this collapse of a bubble calls into question the economic / political viability of a 21st century economic model. Unlike the Greeks, it could have broad international consequences. 

www.RightinSanFrancisco.com

   

Hillary's Four Dwarfs

    Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Despite odds worse than The Donald on the Republican side, Martin O'Mally, Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chaffee, and (probably) Jim Webb are running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Their egos demand it. The grass roots Democrats who want something to do other than watch the Republicans for the next 12 months demand it. The media who need something to talk about - so long as it is not a real threat to the Anointed One - demand it. For a brief moment let's see what this is about. 

    The candidates (for the snarky know-nothing Democrats who like to call the Republican field a bunch of clowns):

        - Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Fitting to the role as stand-in for the absent Elizabeth Warren, Sanders finds the left wing of the Democratic Party to be too conservative for his taste, and the self-proclaimed socialist is registered as an independent. 

        - Former Governor Martin O'Malley of Maryland. After an initial positive reception by the liberal media, O'Malley's star has been tarnished by the defeat of his hand-picked successor as governor by political novice Republican Larry Hogan, and by the Baltimore anti-police riots which cast some doubt upon his legacy as mayor. 

        - Former Senator and Governor Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island. Linc had the good fortune of choosing popular liberal Republican Governor and Senator John Chaffee as his father, but has otherwise had an undistinguished career. At the moment his signature issue is a commitment to convert the US to the metric system.  

        - Former Senator and Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb of Virginia. A decorated Vietnam War veteran, Webb would seem to be well outside the liberal mainstream of his party, but he (or Rick Perry, the only other veteran in the crowded field) could bring a dose of reality to the discussion of ISIS, the NSA, and other national security issues - if he runs.  

    These third-tier players (perhaps other than the thrice-married Webb) have a difficult challenge - how to craft a message which will distinguish themselves from each other and from Hillary without offending the New York Times rationale that contested primaries will make the eventual Democratic nominee a better candidate. 

    There is no room for the Democrats to gain traction among themselves on the core liberal issues - gay marriage, immigration, early childhood education, voting rights, "income inequality", health care, and campaign finance reform. Expect this competition to be how high above $15 the minimum wage should be, how many illegal immigrants can be granted legal status by executive orders, how many kids should qualify for free day care, and how best to overturn the Citizens United decision which granted Political Action Committees (and unions) unlimited political spending as free speech.

    Hillary has thus far ducked several issues which potentially divide Democrats, leaving room for a challenger who actually wants to challenge. Sanders would go beyond Obamacare to convert Medicare into a universal government-run health care system, offer free tuition at public colleges and universities, and break up the big banks which bought off the Obama and Clinton administrations. Other Democratic divisions which Hillary will avoid if at all possible include K-12 education (teachers unions versus school accountability) and the fast track foreign trade agreement being pushed by Obama and Republicans in Congress. That's before we get to her national security legacy where only Webb would be worth listening to.     

    A couple of other observations:

    - The geographic dispersion of these candidates - as well as Senator Clinton of New York, and Joe Biden of Delaware and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts who are apparently not running - is frighteningly narrow for a national party. They've got the Amtrack Northeast corridor covered, but the other 90% of the country is blank. If this were the Republicans, the media would be full of articles about their demise as a national party.  

    - For a party which makes its way by stoking ethnic divisions such as the anti-police demonstrations to solidify the African American vote and the "path to citizenship" for 11 million illegal immigrants to solidify the Hispanic vote, it is noteworthy that these challengers are all "old white guys". The one and only minority candidate in the broad Democratic stable - former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro - is awaiting a Vice President invitation while he pads his resume as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. No African Americans need apply despite their 90% plus Democratic voting record. Asians? Forget it!  

    The fading presidency of Barack Obama will be the backstory once the gears shift in mid-2016 to a Republican versus Democrat contest. That is difficult territory for the party of a two-term incumbent to navigate with a public where both the left and the right are dissatisfied with the results and the presumptive candidate of the incumbent party was an integral part of the administration's biggest failure. The Republicans may have too many candidates and too wide a range of policy prescriptions, but they will own the nation's political attention for the next year - to their likely benefit. 

                                      -----

    In a good harbinger for Marco Rubio, this clip from the Daily Show suggests that just maybe some of  today's pop culture leaders won't automatically be squarely in the Democratic camp. 

 

bill bowen - 6/12/15 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Culling the Republican Presidential Herd

    With the first Republican presidential debate scheduled for August 6, the great sorting is about to begin. The Republican National Committee set the schedule at 12 sanctioned debates (as opposed to 27 various forums for 2012), leaving it to the media sponsors to determine how many candidates to invite. The first sponsor, Fox News, will thankfully take a step toward cutting the mushrooming field in half, inviting the top 10 based on national polling as of early August. CNN will follow in September.

    Were the cut-off today, Real Clear Politics average of major polls would look like:

    Jeb Bush - 15.4%

    Scott Walker - 13.2%

    Marco Rubio - 13.2%

    Rand Paul - 9.2%

    Mike Huckabee - 8.6%

    Ted Cruz - 8.6%

    Dr. Ben Carson - 7.8%

    Chris Cristie - 5.4%

    Rick Perry - 2.4%

    Rick Santorum - 2.3%

    Others above 1% - John Kasich; Carly Fiorina; Bobby Jindal; Lindsey Graham. 

    Other notional candidates - George Pataki; Donald Trump; Peter King; Rick Snyder; "None of the Above".  

    A few observations about this unwieldy field: 

    - Each election cycle is a bit different. With a broad field, early televised debates, and the use of national polling to determine who gets to participate, it is important for any wannabe to be driving national name recognition between now and August. For better or worse, only a few of the people polled will know much of anything about most of the candidates who they will be indirectly selecting.   

    - The top tier - Bush, Walker, Rubio - will probably adhere to Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" - "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican". Rand Paul takes the most joy in violating the rule (complaining about the state of the Republican brand and George W Bush's creation of ISIS), and others in the middle tier or lower will undoubtedly give the New York Times fodder as they vie for attention. 

    - There are "optics" reasons for the RNC to want an African-American (Carson), an Hispanic-American (Cruz; Rubio), an Asian-American (Jindal), and a woman (Fiorina) on the stage. Carson, Cruz, and Rubio will apparently make it; Jindal apparently won't. Fiorina does not qualify at the moment. 

     Back in The Day when Heisman Trophy-winning and academically-challenged running back Joe Bellino played for Navy, there was an understanding (at least at the other service academies) that there was a "Bellino Curve" - if you got a grade above Joe's you would pass any course. For Republicans facing the inevitable Hillary, there needs to be  a "Fiorina Curve".   

    At the moment Fiorina is below the water line, but she has recently received very positive reviews for appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina where she has focused on the shortcomings of Hillary - her lack of accomplishments; the corruption of the Clinton Foundation; the illegal e-mail system; the disastrous Obama/Clinton Middle East policy; the fact that women on her Senate staff were paid 72% of what men were paid. Fiorina is not a new Sarah Palin or Michele Bachman; she is a Newt Gingrich, a talented speaker focused not on the opponent of the past, Barack Obama, but on the opponent of the future, Hillary Clinton.     

                                         -----

This week's "special" is a thoughtful article by Michael Barone of Rasmussen which puts today's war casualties in the context of World War I. 

bill bowen - 5/29/15

Rand Paul in TechLand

    This past weekend Rand Paul opened a small office at an incubator in a gritty neighborhood in the center of San Francisco, and spent an hour with a crowd of about 100 giving a short stump speech and answering questions from San Francisco Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci and a representative of one of the event organizers. The sponsors were Brigade (a nascent social network company devoted to voter engagement at the federal and state level), and Lincoln Labs (committed to bringing together the best of the political and tech worlds). The audience was a mix of Millenial software engineers / entrepreneurs, and political types trying to figure out how to attract young techies to the Republican banner. The event had both local and national flavors.

    First, a note on the local politics. With the booming economy of Silicon Valley there is a growing resentment among the progressive Left against the 38,000 young employees of Google, Twitter, SalesForce.com, Zynga, Airbnb, and the hundreds of other recent start-up companies who work in San Francisco and the many more who live in the City for the social scene, but commute to jobs in Palo Alto (Hewlett Packard), Redwood City (Oracle), and other nearby locations. Recent protests against the "Google Buses" run by the external companies have abated with agreements about fees paid for the use of municipal bus stops, but the opposition to gentrification is  rapidly growing with calls for a moratorium on development in the traditionally poor, significantly Hispanic Mission District just to the west of Rand Paul's office location, and a $250,000,000 or more bond to build more publicly subsidized housing. Vilified by the Left, entrepreneurial and libertarian in attitude, economically upward looking, certainly these folks are Republicans in waiting. Well..... 

    It is dangerous to extrapolate from a small sample, but it is not obvious from the attendees at this meeting that they care about much partisan politics  - and that's the ones who spent their Saturday afternoon with Rand Paul rather than staying at home working on their app or heading down to one of the hottest new clubs on Yelp - if they still use Yelp. What they did care about is the "Next Big Thing".  

     One of the thoughts - perhaps more clever than true - is that 2008 was the Facebook election, 2012 was the Twitter election, and 2016 will be the Periscope election. What is Periscope the reader asks?  As folks have become bored with 140 character tweets, computer power has progressed to the point that the marriage of video and mobile phones allows people to be voyeurs, observing the world through the eyes of someone else. How that impacts politics is unclear, but so was Facebook before David Axelrod.  The continuing progress of "Big Data" seems to be more real, as does the prospect of a web site such as Brigade and All Sides which will provide competing perspectives on a political issue - if there is an audience for that.  What the computer engineers at the Rand Paul event do know is that there are hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around the political world in search of the technical advantage which Barack Obama seized in 2008.  

    And how does the libertarian Republican presidential candidate go over with this crowd?  He gets kudos for being the most interested of all the candidates of either party in understanding the potential for another round of technologically-driven disruptive change in politics. His staunch opposition to the NSA's program of warrantless collection of millions of phone records is the central message of his presentation, and rings well. On the other hand, he was on the opposite side of the vast majority of the audience on their major issue with his opposition to the Federal Communications Commission's recent decision in favor of "net neutrality" - the principle that the major internet service providers (AT&T; Comcast; Verizon) cannot provide preferential service to larger companies who can pay for it. One suspects that this position reflects libertarian, "get the government out of the way", principles rather a big business donor base; but the impact is the same. And that was before Marinucci's question about his Kentucky-esque view of gay marriage.   

    With a crowded field each of the Republican candidates must offer a reason for being. Paul has his with the libertarian wing of the party, but it is not obvious that that extends to the politically agnostic, but self-interested technology crowd.

                                                                -----   

      This week's video offers the cornerstone of Paul's foreign policy view - that decisions by the Bush and Obama (Clinton) administrations to remove dictators in the Middle East has resulted in worse situations in Iraq, Libya, and potentially, Syria.

bill bowen - 5/15/15

Hillary's Prospects: How Cynical Are We?

    Bret Stephens recently wrote a troublingly insightful column in the Wall Street Journal, titled "Hillary's Cynical Song of Self".  His premise is that everybody understands her moral bankruptcy - Whitewater; acceptance of Bill's womanizing;  Benghazi; the Clinton Foundation; her e-mails - but that it is accepted for expediency - by the Democrats because she is the only one who can win; perhaps by the public in general because we have no base morality and the idealists who voted for Barack Obama are so disenchanted that they will now put morals aside and vote for whoever projects that they can get things done.  

    Let's think about that.

    The Obama legacy:

        - In the 2008 election the voters had a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain whose strong suit was a muscular foreign policy. The election result was largely driven by the economic collapse at the end of George W Bush's second term, but withdrawal from the Muslim world was certainly popular. Chaos, the rise of ISIS, and the confrontation between the Sunni and the Shia leave a general impression that the objective was good, but that the author was naïve and there was no realistic understanding of the implications of leaving a vacuum in a world populated by folks who don't share our values or play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. In short, Hobbes was right - in the state of nature life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

        - In the 2012 election the voters had a choice between Obama and Mitt Romney whose strong suit was financial management and a promise of economic expansion - as well as a spotless record of personal integrity. The 47% comment and a number of other campaign errors cost Romney the election, as did Obama's ability to blame the ongoing economic doldrums on Bush. Now six years in we still have record high numbers who have opted out of the work force, declining real income, and GDP growth that badly trails the normal economic recovery. The Democrat mantra is about "equality", but the underlying angst is the Obama couldn't get the job done.   

        - People of good will can disagree on how important it was to the voters in 2008 and 2012 to demonstrate their social consciousness and elect an African American president with the hope that he could put ethnic divisions behind us, but it was an undeniable factor in Obama's success. So much for idealism in that direction - despite the best efforts of Obama, Eric Holder, and Democrat congressional majorities in 2009 and 2010, African Americans have been the most hurt by the economic malaise, and the current turmoil in Baltimore demonstrates that 50 years of Democratic rule and policies has not led to racial progress.  

    The public's view of Clinton's ethics:

      Recent Rasmussen polling shows that 63% of voters believe that Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State were influenced by foreign contributions to the Clinton foundation, 39% believe that she is less ethical than other politicians (with 38% saying she is about normal), yet 57% believe that she will be elected president in 2016 anyway.   

    And that's before the publication of Peter Schweitzer's "Clinton Cash". There were 1100 unreported contributions to the Clinton foundation by foreign governments, despite Hillary's agreement upon becoming Secretary of State than any such contributions would be publicly disclosed. The New York Times' reporting belongs in a Tom Clancy novel: a network of Russian and Canadian uranium mining interests, tens of millions of dollars of unreported related donations to the Clinton Foundation, the State Department's approval of the sale of assets to the Russians, and Russian sales to Iran. 

    Clinton's paid apologists make White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest look good. The Chairman of Hillary's presidential campaign, John Podesta, was actually a paid lobbyist for the offending Canadian uranium company when Clinton was Secretary of State. While the Clinton foundation is refiling 5 years of tax returns to include the missing 1100  foreign donations, Podesta has dismissed author Schweitzer's disclosures as "nothing new", praised the transparency of the Foundation, and attacked the journalistic ethics of Schweitzer, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News. Maybe we are numb.  

    Stephens' explanation provides a clear lens through which to view the 2016 election: the Democratic leadership understands Hillary's moral bankruptcy, accepts that it is painfully obvious to everyone, and yet believes that they can get the voting public to look beyond it because she is a woman and (maybe) a liberal, and she can return the economy of the 1990's. One would hope that the American people are better than that.

                                                    -----

  This week's video of the mayor of Baltimore offers a world's record disconnect between an elected public official and what most would consider to be common sense.

bill bowen - 5/1/15

   

Ready for Carly

    In the 2016 presidential election the Democrats are betting everything on one candidate whose only real selling point is that she is a woman. The crowded Republican field which will dominate national politics for the next 19 months solved its ideological, ethnic, generational, and geographic diversity problems, but the gender problem remained. Enter the antidote - Carly Fiorina.

    The advantages:

        - Fiorina is not the Party's spokesman, and in all likelihood will not be. She can speak for herself, and doesn't need approval from any group of Party Elders. She also doesn't need to be concerned about the keepers of the flame of Political Correctness. Her voice will be unadulterated. 

        - She is a marketer. Prior to her stint as CEO of Hewlett-Packard she made her name as a marketer with AT&T and their spin-off, Lucent Technologies. Since leaving HP a decade ago she has been a prolific speaker in forums ranging from business, to technical, to educational, to religious. She knows how to give a serious talk to an interested group.

        - She has direct experience in political campaigns - as John McCain's leading business advisor in 2008, and in her run for the Senate in California in 2010. Neither ended well, but both offered insights to all of the mechanics and personalities of electioneering at a high level. This is not her first rodeo.

        - She has a serious story to tell about the role of women in business. In her early years she worked in a beauty solon, as a secretary for Kelly Services, as a receptionist in a real estate office, and as a broker.  More prominently, she rose to senior VP at AT&T overseeing their hardware and systems division and to president of Lucent's consumer products business, before becoming CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 1999. During her peak, she was named by Fortune as "the most powerful woman in business", by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in America, and by Forbes as one of the 10 most powerful women in the world.

        - She ticks off a number of other boxes - degrees from Stanford, the University of Maryland, and MIT; founder of the One Woman Initiative with Condaleeza Rice; major sponsor of global micro- lending with Opportunity International; direct experience with leaders from Russia, China, and Israel during her days at Lucent and HP.    

    And the disadvantages:

        - By most measures, she failed as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She was hired in 1999 over internal favorite Anne Livermore because the Board wanted change - and change they got. The largest initiative of her tenure was the acquisition of Compaq Computer - opposed by Board member Bill Packard - with the subsequent restructuring costing some 18,000 jobs and damage to the paternalistic "HP Way" She favored R&D and outsourcing, and ultimately lost her job in 2005 when the stock got cut in half, a disgruntled Board member leaked internal debates to the New York Times, and her investigation of the Board became public.

        - Fiorina's role in the McCain campaign was also problematic. She joined to run fundraising and serve as a surrogate on business matters, but her star faded after she opined that neither McCain nor Sarah Palin - nor Barack Obama nor Joe Biden - were qualified to run a large corporation, noting that that is not what they were running for. True on both counts, but guaranteed to make negative headlines. Before the selection of Sarah Palin she may have had VP aspirations; later, perhaps a cabinet position; with McCain's defeat it was back to boards and the lecture circuit.  

    The swords have come out swiftly - The New Republic uncharitably comparing Fiorina to Sarah Palin; the San Francisco Chronicle complaining about unpaid bills from her 2010 campaign, the Huffington Post complaining about Fiorina's statement that environmental-driven policies have exacerbated the California drought; CNN's claims that her time at HP disqualifies her; the Daily Caller complains that the race doesn't need two women.  

    The toughest challenge lies ahead for Reince Priebus. The stage is too crowded, and there need to be real requirements for getting into sanctioned debates. It is important for the Republican brand to have a woman with Fiorina's business credentials to lead the debunking of the "war on women", but she may not make the cut with enough polling support to qualify. Between now and August when the first of nine sanctioned debates takes place,  she must develop modest polling traction or the Republican National Committee must decide whether to loosen the rules for a few months to maximize the impact of her important voice.

                                                                -----

    This week's video offers a chance to hear Fiorina speak about her background and approach to national and international issues. It is 30 minutes long; the introduction and minutes 8 to 10 are perhaps the best.

bill bowen - 4/24/15

 

    

Hillary: In Search of a Case

    Any serious presidential candidate needs to be able to make a simple case as to why their party should nominate them and what they would offer the electorate as a president. Mitt Romney had demonstrated mastery of the economic system; Rand Paul can broaden the appeal of the Republican party by bringing in younger voters and libertarians; Scott Walker had demonstrated that he can win contested elections; Jeb Bush has demonstrated that he can mount a broad, well financed campaign; Marco Rubio will attempt to demonstrate that he can broaden the reach of the party with Hispanics and a new generation.

    What about Hillary? Why should she get the Democratic nomination? That part is easy - there is nobody else. But why should the electorate support her? That is a bit harder.

    Some of the traditional reasons don't hold much promise of surviving a year's scrutiny and challenge:

        - Experience. The gig as Secretary of State was intended to put her above the Argentine model of First Ladies inheriting their husband's political machines. Then came Benghazi; then came the Russian "reset button"; then came the disintegration of the Middle East. A mantle became a shroud.

        - Personality. Not since Ted Kennedy killed Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick have the liberal media had such a difficult challenge in resurrecting a badly flawed character. Her complaints about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" and the "what difference does it make" response about Benghazi show an unattractive prickly side when challenged. It will take more than a charm consultant.

        - Broad Policies. Depending on what the Republican challenger brings, Hillary may be able to make some hay on the major two pieces of unfinished domestic business  from the Obama administration - healthcare and immigration - but most voters want significant changes to Obamacare and oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. Elizabeth Warren has demonstrated that Hillary and her New York donors are on the wrong side of financial system reform. Maybe there is something on education - unless Jeb Bush is the Republican opponent. Global warming anyone?

    So, maybe "fairness" is the silver bullet. The economic version didn't start too well when she claimed that she was broke when she and Bill left office - despite their mansions, her $200,000 speaking fees, and the jet-set lifestyle compliments of the family business, er the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.  Nevertheless, those of us in San Francisco can attest that the politics of envy play well with the dominant liberal political establishment and newly-minted billionaires decrying the declining fortunes of the middle class despite their good intentions, best efforts, and total control of the government.

    That leaves the obvious choice for Hillary's simple case - now that we have elected an African American president, it is time that we elected a woman. There are few problems with this line:

    - It is not obvious to the untrained eye of the casual observer that Barack Obama and Eric Holder have done a lot to improve race relations in America, or that the economic status and social standing of African Americans in general has been improved. Relying on the good will of the American public may be good politics, but there probably will be fewer voters in 2016 than in 2008 willing to make the leadership of the Free World a testament to their enlightenment.

   - One could ask the question why the top eight paid workers at the Clinton Foundation are men, and why women on Senator Clinton's staff were paid 72% of what men were paid for comparable jobs.  Perhaps  the White House can share their explanation as to why the average man on President Obama's staff makes $10,000 more than the average woman. Perhaps it just demonstrates that the system which the Republicans created leaves so much more work to be done.

    - The media's recent efforts to underpin the "war on women" theme has suffered setbacks with the exposure of Rolling Stone's fraudulent story about gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity and a San Francisco jury's decision that venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins - the paramount example of Silicon Valley meritocracy - was not guilty of gender discrimination in firing a junior partner.  Maybe political correctness has gone one bridge too far.

   - And the final problem - Carly Fiorina. One cannot be sure why the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and failed US Senate candidate thinks that she should be president, but there should be no doubt that her role in the Republican pantheon of candidates is to be the first responder to the "war on women" theme. For that, the next president and the nation will owe her a debt of gratitude.

                                                                    -----

    This week's "bonus", rather than a video, is an excellent, concise analysis by Stratfor of the complicated and momentous civil war in Yemen.

bill bowen - 4/10/15

     

2016: Thinning the Republican Herd

    Reflecting the fact that there are more political reporters than legitimate news, mentions of the large field of Republican presidential candidates are again on the rise. Maybe you will read an article about Donald Trump; maybe you will pay attention to some idiotic statement by an outlier trying to break through. It is a transitory problem. There will be good grazing lands through the summer for those who have nothing better to do, but the thinning of the herd will begin in earnest by autumn.

    Reince Priebus and the RNC have significantly shortened the period from the first delegate selections in February (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) to a July 18-21 convention  making it much more difficult for an unknown (and underfunded) candidate to break through in one of the first four states, raise money, and mount a campaign in the rapidly accelerating primary schedule. Up to a dozen debates will be scheduled with the first this August - down by at least 8 from 2012, and with penalties for participating in non-sanctioned debates.      

    The race for funding to survive the winter is well underway with only a handful of candidates having the capacity to attract the $40 to 50 million  needed to assemble staff, run advertising,  and wage reasonable campaigns in the early states. That is not a problem for Bush, Walker, and perhaps Rubio, Paul, and Christie, but for the rest is a stretch.  The wild card is the super PACs, particularly the network controlled by the Koch brothers which intends to raise almost $900 million for 2016, who could conceivably carry a favorite as Sheldon Adelson did for Newt Gingrich in 2010.     

    Some reflections on the field:

        - In this era when Russia, ISIS, and nuclear Iran should be center stage for the voters, and there is much State Department failure to wrap around Hillary's neck, there is only one Republican candidate with any foreign policy or military background - Rick Perry who spent five years as a pilot in the Air Force. One can make a point about the children of privilege skipping the all volunteer military or a general decline in patriotism, but that is for a different blog.

        - The only woman in the Republican field is Carly Fiorina who failed as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, got trounced by Barbara Boxer in her 2010 run for the Senate, and has been largely invisible since. Nevertheless, she does add value to the field for her ability to speak truth to the impending "Hillary as feminist" mantra and joins Nikki Haley and Susanna Martinez as potential VP candidates.

        - Opposition researchers are out in full force, more of a threat to those on the national stage for the first time, and either have unknown issues or prove unable to respond to lesser attacks. Most at risk would seem to be Chris Christie, whose Bridgegate reflects the reality of being a politician in New Jersey. 

       - With apologies to some on the populist Right, politics is the art of the possible and the great majority of Republican primary voters will place a high priority on perceived ability to win and help the Republican Congress roll back the worst of President Obama's legacy. Restoring the balance between the executive and the legislative branches will hang on one or two Supreme court appointments.

    And an assessment of the recent New York Times list of potential candidates:

        - Eliminate as unable to raise the money necessary to make a serious run: Dr. Ben Carson; Ted Cruz; Carly Fiorina; Mike Huckabee; Bobby Jindal; and Rick Santorum. Add to that list Lindsey Graham, John Kasich, and Mike Pence.

        - In a loose prediction in January Nate Silver of 538 who famously predicted almost every state in the Obama-Romney election has Bush and Walker at around 20% probability, Rubio and Paul at around 10%, Rick Perry as a sleeper and the rest of the field as improbable. In a more peaceful world Rand Paul's isolationism might be more acceptable.

    For those obsessed with beating Hillary,  most voters - and 36% of Democrats - believe that the Democrats should nominate a new face. Walker, Rubio, or Paul would represent a popular generational change against the aging grandmother.

                                                                    -----

    This week's video is a summary of the 2014 NCAA men's basketball tournament which was won by UConn.  This year my University of San Francisco Dons fell a bit short. Go Zags.

bill bowen - 3/20/15 

     

Hillary's Moral Bankruptcy

    Mitt Romney's 47% gaffe was fatal because it played into the Daddy Warbucks caricature that had already been created. With even the  New York Times now willing to speak some truth about Hillary's ethical vacuum, the "morally bankrupt" narrative is so rich that there are actually three varieties: that which she inherited from husband Bill, that which she shares with him, and that which she has earned all by herself. Since most current voters were underage when she first entered public life, and a sympathetic media will support the "that's old news" defense, it will be important for Republicans to develop all three.

    The Bill Clinton stuff - Jennifer Flowers; Paula Jones; Monica Lewinsky; countless other "bimbo eruptions"  - can probably be dismissed  as the suffering of the wronged, yet faithful wife. She has come to grips with it, and even jokes about his behavior in a Hillary Clinton White House.  One would think that feminists would be offended, but the allure of having  a woman Democrat president seems to trump any rejection of Bill as a "First Husband."

    The shared type of ethical failure is a bit trickier - but she may be able to deflect most blame to the guy who was governor or president while she was a "powerless supporter". Some examples:

  - The Whitewater investment fiasco occurred when Bill was governor of Arkansas and they use his influence to help with financing an investment in the Whitewater Investment Company. Accomplice Susan McDougald went to jail, but the Clintons escaped prosecution; when president, Bill Clinton pardoned McDougald who had refused to testify against them.  In an aftermath popular with conspiracy theorists, Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found to have committed suicide early in the first Clinton term as president.

    - The "Travelgate" episode in 1993 in which Hillary led the firing of the White House staff responsible for arranging official travel, to replace them with cronies. She was cited for lying to investigators, but the employees were rehired and no charges were brought.

    - The Marc Rich pardon on Bill Clinton's last day in office. Rich, who had evaded some $48 million in taxes and acted as a go-between on large deals with embargoed countries like Libya, was recommended for a pardon by deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, and later made major contributions to the Clinton Library and Hillary's Senate Campaign.

    - The Ed Mezvinsky affair in which Chelsea Clinton's future father-in-law pled guilty to 31 counts of bank, mail, and wire fraud, for using his Clinton connections to dupe investors of millions.

    - The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Foundation, peopled by Clinton-machine regulars and the recipient of some $2 billion in donations, much from foreign governments seeking access in circumvention of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; much intertwined with consulting and speaking fees which have made the Clintons multi-millionaires; much going to political staffers between assignments.  The initial claim was that foreign contributions were suspended during Hillary's time at State, but it turns out that was only for new contributors.  

    But the "Hillary did it" category cannot be deflected to Bill, and must be defeated by relying on the "that's old news" or "vast Rightwing Conspiracy" lines of defense. Unfortunately for Hillary and the Country, this category also has a growing list of good stories for the Republicans.

     - The oldest (other than her early affiliation with Saul Alinsky) is her role as a junior lawyer for the Congressional panel investigating Nixon's Watergate break-in. Her role revolved around an effort to deny Nixon the right to defense counsel. After hiding recent legal precedents from the panel, she was fired by long-time Democrat Jerry Zeifman for lying and conduct which he described as unprofessional and unethical.

     - Most recent is her unfathomable e-mail saga - violating State Department protocols and basic security concerns by installing a private server in her home to bypass any government access to any of her e-mails sent while she was Secretary of State. She has since deleted half of the e-mails and had her staff review the rest to determine what should be turned over to Congressional committees looking into Benghazi and other activities during her term at State.

    One really does have to wonder about the moral climate of our country. Some foreign leaders have lamented that the American people are lost if we would elect Barack Obama twice. Electing morally bankrupt Hillary would be well beyond people wanting to elect an African American or taking a big ideological jog to the Left for awhile. It would be a clear admission by a majority of Americans that personal ethics and morality do not matter. As he leaves 21st century American politics,  Mitt Romney must be compelled to look over his shoulder at the pillar of salt.

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    Robert Gibbs' comments about it taking 8 days for Hillary to respond to the e-mail furor reflects the real concern of Democrat operatives - not that she is corrupt, but that her public relations operation is not ready for prime time.

bill bowen - 3/13/15 

Scott Walker's Education Ace

    Amid the Democrats' furor about Income Inequality there is a huge, obvious gap in the discussion. It exists; it is becoming greater; it is largely a result of globalization and technology. So, what can be done?  One major, obvious answer is education reform, but that offends the teachers' unions so no Democratic politician dares go there. Into the void come Jeb Bush and Common Core with national standards and funding on the one hand, and Scott Walker with a record of state-level reform on the other.

    At first blush, people think of Walker in terms of being a union-buster (good among conservatives, but not among the broader public). The more lasting question, with potential presidential implications, is why the people of near-purple Wisconsin elected him three times. Much of the answer lies in his education reforms, and the speed with which they have obtained results.

    At the heart of Walker's agenda is the premise that government workers were taking too large a slice of the tax pie before delivering services to the public - particularly schools. Among the broad provisions of Act 10, of 2011:

    - Public employees must pay 50% of the cost of pensions and at least 12.6% of the cost of healthcare;

    - Pensions for elected officials and appointees were reduced;

    - Bargaining rights for public employee unions were limited to wages, with increases limited unless approved in a referendum;

    - Union membership for public employees became optional and payroll deductions for union dues were eliminated;

    - Collective bargaining for the University of Wisconsin faculty was eliminated;

    - Existing General Obligation bonds were restructured;

    - Additional funds were allocated for Medicaid, the Department of Corrections, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

    The immediate effect was to reduce costs for the local school districts, particularly those  where union contracts required that healthcare be provided by very expensive contracts with the union-affiliated  Wisconsin Education Association Trust.   In systems like Milwaukee where projections had healthcare and retirement costs doubling in the next decade, a future crisis was averted. In the first year, school districts across Wisconsin hired a net 1799 teachers, and reversed trends by holding or improving class sizes, extracurricular programs, and student fee requirements.    

    Walker's FY2016 budget contains further financial and philosophical changes which will appeal to conservatives:

         - Funding for the University of Wisconsin, which employs half of the state's 70,000 workers, will be reduced by 2.5%, or $300 million over the next two years. In exchange, the chancellors are freed from much legislative oversight giving them the ability to adjust programs, manage costs, and raise tuition.  

        - The requirement that school districts utilize Common Core standards is eliminated, and funding for "Smarter Balanced" testing in line with the Common Core curriculum is eliminated in favor of state-developed tests. What those tests will be is unclear, but those opposed to Common Core's federally-mandated tests are happy.

        - Caps on school vouchers for private, largely religious schools (up to $7800 per student for families with incomes up to $44,000), are also eliminated with requisite increases in state funding.   

    As is true in the rest of the country, it will take years to establish baselines for new tests to determine whether educational reforms are really resulting in better learning by the students.  That said, since Scott Walker became governor in January, 2011 he has done all of the things that conservative reformers would like to see - local control and accountability; reduced union influence; parental choice - and the financial results are good. It is good for the politicians; let's hope it is good for the students.

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This week's video is a clever campaign ad by Congressman Roger Williams of Texas.

 

bill bowen - 2/19/15