The Wanna-Be American King

The concept of accountability has gone missing in Washington DC.

Donald Trump was never going to be held accountable.  He's probably never been held accountable in his entire life.  Certainly not since being sworn in as president.  The day after Robert Mueller testified in Congress about his involvement with the Russian government in the 2016 election (in which he only escaped being indicted due to DoJ guidelines), Trump was putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to uncover (or fabricate) "dirt" on the man who he assumed would be his opponent in the 2020 election.  Where a normal person might choose to lay low after such a close call, Trump decided to double down on his corrupt behavior.  He never made a secret of it.  Hell, he openly talked about it in televised interviews.  None of Trump's aides, advisors, or cabinet officials have been able to restrain his worst impulses except around the edges.

And Congress? The co-equal branch of government specifically designed in many ways to act as a check on the Executive branch? The House of Representatives took its responsibility seriously and impeached the president. But the Senate is refusing to do its job.  It ignored the evidence, refused to hear witness testimony, and will very likely acquit Trump in a speedy sham trial a few days from now.  The Senate didn't just fail to hold Trump accountable, it - specifically Senate Republicans - flat-out refused to do so.

So Trump will face zero punishment for attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.  Sure, he's been impeached, and that will be a stain on his legacy forever.  But as far as him suffering any immediate consequences that will prevent him from trying to rig it in his favor?

Zip. Zero. Nada.

Of course, there's the 2020 election itself.  Vote him out of office, right? That is, vote him out of office through the election he's actively trying to cheat in? Sure, piece of cake.

Now, I'm not telling anyone to give up in despair and not vote.  For god's sake, VOTE.  Because this election is probably the most important one in your lifetime.  But don't expect it the Trump campaign to play fair.  Don't be surprised by the traditional Republican tactics like voter suppression, selective voter ID measures, and limited polling sites in Dem-leaning districts.  Don't be surprised if Trump pulls out all the stops - like, say, deploying ICE to polling sites for the purpose of intimidating voters to stay home.  Or worse.

Additionally, Trump will probably do a whole bunch of idiotic, amoral, and illegal stuff between now and November.  And if the past has taught us anything, it's that Trump's antics will push his previous fiasco out of the public consciousness.  It's a well-established pattern at this point: Trump generates a controversy, it dominates the news cycle for a couple days, and is promptly forgotten once Trump makes another bonehead mistake.

Here's an example: have you heard anyone mention Trump's drone assassination of the Iranian general in the last 2-3 days? Trump nearly blundered the United States into a war, and hardly anyone is talking about it now.

Acquitting Trump will be giving him a green light to do whatever he wants, without consequences.  And given some of the things Trump has shown himself to be okay with doing (roughing up protestors, declaring martial law, curtailing the First Amendment, jailing his political opponents) make me extremely nervous.

I'm not saying it's certain that any of these things will happen.  But the chances that they do are a lot further away from zero than they should be.

So. . .thanks, Senate Republicans.

Speaking of that pack of worthless, unprincipled weasels - guess who else won't be held accountable?

Yeah, yeah, I know there's a lot of pent-up anger at the Senate over the impeachment trial's likely outcome.  There sure was after the Senate voted to not allow witnesses, therefore paving the way for the acquittal.  But will that translate to meaningful results at the ballot box? I'm not so sure.  First, there was a lot of anger in the 2018 midterms, too; but despite Democrats making significant gains (the much-hyped "blue wave"), Republicans managed to pick up two seats in the Senate.  They're probably counting on maintaining, if not increasing, their lead in the Senate.

Because despite all the angry phone calls and emails, and the op-eds rightly calling them cowards and worse, they have pollsters who have gauged the public's sentiment and know how their constituents feel.  They've known for a while, which is why they voted the way they did.  So aside from a few vulnerable Senators, they're not sweating reelection.  And if they do unexpectedly lose, they're not worried.  They can find a pundit gig, or a position on a consulting firm, or even just retire.  And in eight or twelve years, "Republican" won't be a dirty word anymore and they can reemerge from the political wilderness.  And Republicans have some experience being the minority party.  If Democrats do retake the Senate, they'll just go into opposition mode and make it incredibly difficult for the Senate (and the White House, if a Democrat gets elected) to do its job.

No, the only thing they're worried about is being excluded from the Big Club, and that only happens if they defy Trump.  Mitt Romney and John Bolton are quickly becoming cautionary tales.

So, to sum up, we've got a president who's unaccountable because his subordinates can't keep him in check, and the Senate simply won't; and fifty-three Senators who are unaccountable because they know the worst outcome for them is the unlikely chance that they don't get reelected.

Where does that leave the country going forward? Well, if Trump loses in 2020 (and that's a big "if" for multiple reasons), expect Republicans to "suddenly" rediscover all the principles and ideals they've been uniformly ignoring since January 2017.  And that creates a dilemma.

A Democrat president (and/or Senate) acting the way Trump has done will further erode the concept of presidential accountability and co-equal branches of government, so the right thing to do would be to heed those calls for accountability.  However, to anyone who remembers Republican behavior throughout the Obama administration knows that Republicans aren't making good faith arguments.  They only care about accountability to the extent they can use it to weaken Democrats and get themselves back into power. Consequently, there's a strong, justifiable argument for telling Republicans to sit down and shut up.  Additionally, if Republicans obstruct simply for the sole purpose of denying Democrats a legislative victory (it was Mitch McConnell's entire strategy from 2010 - 2016), a Democratic president may have to act unilaterally just to keep the government functioning.  It's happened before.

Thus, the Democrats' (and America's) predicament.

Of course, this all depends on the election's outcome.  If Trump gets reelected, it could very well mean the end of Constitutional democracy in America.  And that's not a dramatic exaggeration.  He's already been sent a message that he won't be held accountable no matter what he does.

How far do you think he'll run with that if he gets another four years?

Choose wisely this November.  Because a president that's not accountable to anyone is a king.

Torching the Rulebook

I'm starting to think Donald Trump really could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it entirely.  Not only would he not lose any voters, he'd escape any legal consequences as well.

Once I sat down and listed them all, the number of crimes and ethical transgressions he's survived unscathed is staggering.  Professionally, he screwed over American farmers with his trade war, disregarded co-equal branches of government and the concept of separation of powers, tapped his unqualified, un-appointed kids to perform government duties they have no business doing, shared highly-classified intelligence with Russian government officials (Note: as president, he has declassification authority and can legally share whatever he wants with whoever he wants; that doesn't make it a good idea, though), sparked a crisis with Iran, praised multiple dictators and authoritarian-leaning leaders, ignored the Saudi government's murder of an American journalist, obstructed justice by interfering with the Mueller probe, sanctioned the abuse & mistreatment of children, and attacked the free press. 

In his personal life - before and outside of the presidency - he's the subject of double-digit credible accusations of rape and sexual assault (including raping a teenager), accepted assistance from the Russian government during his campaign, raided the government coffers for his golf junkets, and has a track record of racism and sexism.

And those are just the scandals I could remember off the top of my head.  So where are the people and institutions that are supposed to hold him accountable? Well. . .

On one side of the aisle, the GOP is largely enabling him (and has been from the first day of his presidency). Republicans in Congress are reinforcing Trump's lies by repeating them in the media, creating lies of their own, undermining and attempting to derail legitimate investigations into Trump's crimes, shielding Trump and his appointees from oversight and repercussions, blocking attempts to exercise Congressional oversight.  And why? What does the GOP get out of this? The answer is conservative judges in lifetime appointments and continued support from its base.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are well-meaning but timid and ineffective. Based on my observation, they seem to be giving up too easy ("Oh shucks, the Trump administration ignored our subpoena.  Well, we tried.") or refuse to play hardball.  I get they impression they expect this whole mess to work itself out without their influence - that this will all blow over and things will return to normal.  And maybe it will.  I've never made a secret of how much I despise Trump, so maybe my resentment is clouding my judgment. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing about Trump refusing to leave the White House in 2021 or 2025. 

Then again, he's checking off a lot of boxes on the "making yourself a king" list: showing disdain for the separation of powers, grooming his kids as a potential successor, hinting at a possible 3rd term or rejecting an election's outcome if it's unfavorable. (Yes, he might have been joking, but it's telling that he keeps going back to that theme and a lot of humor is spoken in jest.) In just two and a half years, he's made Americans more accepting of undemocratic practices.  His base (somewhere around 35% of the country) supports whatever he does, and the rest are becoming numb to his antics. (Think I'm exaggerating? Less than two weeks ago, a woman came forward with a credible accusation that Trump raped her a few decades ago, and the story has already vanished from the headlines.  Think about that: someone accused the president of a violent crime, and it's already been forgotten.  I'm not the only one to notice this, by the way.) 

So if the public has become inured to that, what else is it downplaying? Unfounded allegations of voter fraud? Baseless criticism of law enforcement? Nepotism? Defying the Constitution and putting himself above the rule of law? Because Trump has done ALL of those things. Now, do I think we're going to wake up the day after the 2020 elections to find MRAPs and M4-toting police officers on every street corner? No. For his many faults, Trump seems adverse to bloodshed. That's what makes me believe he doesn't plan to declare martial law or anything radical like that.  But his conduct is paving the way for a more unscrupulous version of Trump down the road, someone politically savvier and less reserved about using force.  Maybe that's when we DO see the MRAPs and the rifle-carrying cops show up.

What people tolerate, they get more of, and Trump has shown that Americans will tolerate quite a lot. 

And here's another thing: whether you think Trump is an empty gasbag or an American Mussolini, his influence on government will take a long time to go away.  He's reshaped the country's political norms, and not in a good way.  He's made lying more acceptable, he's made bipartisan compromise less likely, and he's shattered future expectations of civility.

We've already seen what that looks like over the past two years - do we really want to see the "on steroids" version of that? I don't think any of us could call that a good thing. So if we want to avoid that fate, we need to fight back.  Hard. 

Even if that means breaking a few rules ourselves.  Because the Democrats need to stop "playing nice." They need to stop believing (or pretending) the GOP is acting in good faith. They need to get a bit more ruthless themselves, inflicting a few metaphorical broken bones and shattered reputations if necessary.  Steamroll over the GOP. If you wonder why I'm focusing on the Democrats instead of the Republicans, it's because the GOP's enabling of Trump has shown it's unfit to govern many times over. (Quick aside: I would not be bothered if the next Democratic president drew inspiration from Reconstruction, and instituted harsh measures like stripping GOP Senators of voting privileges, until such time that it becomes fit to govern again. Because, yes, the modern GOP is that bad.)

Because what we do now will affect what type of government we have over the next 20-30 years.

How America Got Its Mind Back

So, Roy Moore lost the special Alabama Senate race.  A creepy old man whose public image flaunts so many of the characteristics a lot of Alabamans love (a love of guns, racism and bigotry, pseudo-Christianity, ignorance as a virtue) was decisively beaten by Democrat Doug Jones.  That's a pretty big deal, since Alabama is part of the deep red South, a state where "Democrat" is a 4-letter word in many rural and smaller urban areas.  It's a big deal since Alabama is casually open when it comes to implementing voter suppression measures specifically targeting POC, and those POC still turned out in droves to cast ballots for Doug Jones.  That's what democracy looks like.  Also, huge "thank you" to all those POC for pulling this off - the Jones victory wouldn't have been possible without them.

Add tonight's election outcome to the results of the November 7 elections, and it's clear there's a trend emerging.  There were several elections that day, so here are a few of the important ones.  Ralph Northam defeated Ed Gillespie in the Virginia gubernatorial race.  Also in Virginia, Danica Roem became the first transgender candidate to serve in the VA legislature.  Maine residents passed a Medicaid expansion initiative.  St. Paul, MN, elected its first black mayor (Melvin Carter) and Seattle elected its first lesbian mayor (Jenny Durkan).  In many ways, the November 7 elections were a repudiation of Trump's first year in office.

A lot seems to have changed in a year.  In November of 2016, American citizens let their guards down, got complacent, bored, and disinterested, and let a raving racist moron sneak into the White House.  That was our dead serious, "Oh shit, we need to reexamine our lives" moment, and we've had a lot of time to clean up and ditch the destructive behaviors in the year and change since.  The results of November's and tonight's elections tells me that America might have learned a thing or two.

There's still a lot of work to be done, though. First, not electing a racist and accused pedophile isn't a high bar to clear for democracy - there shouldn't have ever been any doubt that a candidate with that baggage would lose.   So, we all need to keep taking that hard look in the mirror.  Second, the institutional corruption still runs deep throughout our government, at all levels.  Trump just brought it to our attention because he was so brazen and clumsy about it - like when a nagging ache becomes so excruciating that you can't put off seeing a doctor any longer.  Let's not pretend that replacing Republicans with Democrats solves some of the most pressing problems, like military interventionism or unsustainable spending; but putting the Democrats back in power is a repudiation of what Trump and the modern GOP stand for - which are some of the worst parts of human nature: intolerance, greed, cruelty and selfishness.

America's realized it has a problem, and has taken the first baby steps to correct it.

Party Before Country, No Matter What

So at the moment, both major political parties are dealing with their own sexual misconduct scandals.  The GOP's is Alabama Senator Roy Moore, who just over two weeks away from a special election in his home state, the winner of which fills a vacant United States Senate seat.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are dealing with a growing number of allegations against Minnesota's comedian-turned-Senator Al Franken, as well as Michigan Representative John Conyers, who also happens to sit on the fairly important House Judiciary Committee.  Or, he used to, anyway; on November 26th, Conyers stepped down from that committee as part of the investigation into the allegations against him. 

Amazingly (to me, anyway; Congress' complete lack of morality still shocks me, despite everything I've seen), key leaders from both parties found ways to excuse their colleagues' misdeeds - probably while contemplating the overall agenda.  On one side of the aisle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contemplated the idea of urging Luther Strange (Alabama's temporarily appointed Senator) to resign, as a way of avoiding the state's upcoming special election.  On the other side, Nancy Pelosi waffled and refused to mete out a harsher punishment than some stern language toward Conyers.

That's sad and disgraceful, especially by the Democrats.  Franken and Conyers's disgusting actions are nowhere near as bad as Moore's vile pedophilia, but neither of the two Democrats appear to be squeaky clean either.  Their punishments should be more severe, given the apparent patterns of misbehavior on both their parts.  I've long since given up expecting even the slightest shred of decency from the GOP - why would I think a party that condones Trump's behavior, associates with Nazi sympathizers like Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka, and panders to the worst parts of society, like racists and science deniers? The GOP is a lost cause.

But the Democrats want to take back Congress next year, and the Presidency in 2020.  A lot of Americans want them to, also.  But why should the country vote them back in, if this is the standard for acceptable conduct they're setting? Now, some of the rank-and-file Congressmen have known Franken and Conyers for years.  They've probably played together for Congressional softball games, or gone on "fact-finding" junkets together, or shot the breeze at weekend BBQs or after-work dinners at DC's finest restaurants.  Pelosi is not a rank-and-file Democrat, though.  She's in a leadership position, which means two things.  First, she's not there to be anybody's friend; her job is to take responsibility for problems and fix them.  Second, her colleagues and constituents look to her to set the standard for acceptable conduct, and she just told them all that bad behavior will still be acceptable, unless you really get out of control.

Unlike Kay Ivey, Pelosi is smart enough to not publicly state her reasons, but she's letting Conyers off with a light punishment for the same reason that the GOP won't abandon Moore: both parties consider keeping Congress full of their members crucially important.  And yes, it is important.  Trump and the GOP are pushing a lot of destructive policies: the tax plan, the ACA mandate repeal, judicial nominees.  Given those things, isn't keeping Franken and Conyers in play a necessary evil?

No.  NO.  This is bigger than the GOP's horrible governance.  Americans need elected officials to stop the GOP cold, but they (we) also need those same officials to start regaining our trust.  Part of what made the 2016 election stand out was that a large portion of the electorate rejected the status quo.  Voters sent a loud, powerful signal to Washington, and just over a year later, it doesn't seem like Washington got that message.  If the Democrats would clean out their own house, it would be a sign that they're hearing us.  The GOP legislation will hurt, but abandoning all sense of ethics to score a legislative win will hurt more in the long run, by further eroding Americans' trust in governmental institutions.  This isn't war, and the stakes aren't so high that you need to collaborate with the devil like FDR did, in order to win.

The Democrats have a choice.  They can cross any lines, abandon any morals, do whatever it takes to push back against the GOP, and probably gain some short-term victories.  Or they can act with honor, integrity, and decency, and show the American public they are fit to govern.  They can put the country ahead of a legislative "win" for their party.  They can help make Americans proud of their elected officials again, instead of being embarrassed of the current pack of miscreants and dirtbags.  That's worth more than a few legislative victories.

The Times, They Are A'Changing. . .

I want to start this post with a simple thought experiment, but before I do that, I want to mention an article I read earlier that inspired this post. This morning, I stumbled across an opinion piece by Leonard Pitts Jr articulating the direction he thinks the Democratic Party should take in response to  Donald Trump and the modern GOP.  That direction, in Pitts' opinion, should be a hard left.  I would probably mangle Pitts' main point if I tried paraphrasing it, so I will just quote directly from the article:

"What if Democrats were as bold and definitive as he, but for universal healthcare, sane immigration reform, a living wage, fixing the broken justice system, jobs training and day care for families on public assistance, addressing climate change, and not blowing up the world in manhood-measuring contests with Asian dictators? What if they were pugnacious and uncompromising in the service of simple decency? Of inclusion and compassion? Of just treating people right?"

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article178599721.html#storylink=cpy

Sounds more than a bit Bernie Sanders-ish, doesn't it? I'll come back to the quote later; now, let's perform that thought experiment.  Ask yourself a question: what do you think the founding fathers would do if we were somehow able to bring them to the present and give them the task of redesigning the government they had built? Do you think the government they would come up with would resemble the one they originally created? If so, how? Assume that we were somehow able to bring them up to date on the important events and advances that had happened in the roughly 250 years since they had founded the United States: the Civil War, the moon landing, the Great Depression, both World Wars, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, 9/11, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, airplanes, the internet, radio and television, automobiles, antibiotics, the interstate highway system, and indoor plumbing. Those are the major ones I could remember off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many others.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so let me also illustrate my point visually.  Here is the USS Constellation. The one on the left was commissioned in 1855; it still exists as a tourist attraction in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  The one on the right was commissioned approximately 100 years later, and was retired in 2003.
 

Quite a difference a century (give or take a few years) makes, wouldn't you say? Circling back to my thought experiment, what do you think the founders would think if they saw this side-by-side comparison? This image is a microcosm of how the United States, and also a great part of the world, has changed since the day that the ink on the Constitution dried.

And that is the heart of the issue, right there. The founders championed the concept of small government, as one way of safeguarding individual liberty (another principle they championed quite heavily). Here are a couple quotes to reinforce that point.

"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." – John Adams, 1765

The logic went that a small government would consist of fewer laws and regulations to stifle its citizens, and also lack the means to impose its will on them. There is certainly something to be said in support of that reasoning.  Let's use the National Security Agency as an example, because it's an obvious and important one. We all know from the Snowden documents that the NSA has been collecting and storing virtually all of our digital communications: phone calls, text messages, emails, social media posts - basically everything it could get its hands on. The NSA is "big government" in terms of its mission and capabilities, not really its size (it *probably* has fewer employees than the IRS, but more than the EPA), because its ability to access our digital communications is a very potent capability. Now, is the NSA a tool of oppression? As it stands now, not really. Five minutes ago, I Googled "How many employees does the NSA have?" so I could include a specific number in this blog post, before I decided I didn't need to. I'm not going to have some secret police agents show up at midnight because of that Google search, and to my knowledge no other American citizen has either. However, it's not difficult to imagine that it could happen some day (if you don't think it could, read up on Germany's history from 1920 to 1945), which is why the founders thought it was a good idea to remove the potential for such abuses of power, by keeping government small and also crafting a set of protections against oppressive government.

Now let's look at a more mundane category of big government: arbitrary and excessive regulations.  I've linked to a couple examples here, here, here, here, and here.  There are probably hundreds more out there.  Everybody has a story or a hundred about some frustrating and ridiculous government regulation in our everyday lives.  Want to start your own business? You'll probably need to get a few permits.  Want to build a garage on your property? You'll need permits for that too.  They rob us of hard-earned money and time, and the implication is often that we're not competent enough to run our own lives.  And more than that, they inhibit economic growth in a variety of ways.  Big government is also a self-reinforcing problem, since government agencies constantly look for ways to maintain and expand their mandates, so they can get bigger budgets year after year. And then, there's taxes, which are another source of irritation for a lot of people. (That's nothing new, remember the Boston Tea Party?)

So yes, a big, bloated government gets a lot of flack - which it deserves.  But here's the other side of it. Remember that picture of the two ships? Small governments don't build ships like that aircraft carrier. Small governments don't build cross-country interstates, air traffic control networks, university networks, or other things that help a country flourish. The concept of small government as it existed 200-some years ago is obsolete. No country that tried to operate that way would do well - there have been far too many significant technological changes.

In addition to technology, there's another key factor: population.  See the graph right above this? There are now approximately 320 million people in the United States. What do we do with them all? Those people need certain necessities to live: food & water, shelter, medicine, clothing. Forget everything else: cars, TVs, higher education (in fact, I'd like to see fewer people go to college; but that's another post in itself). People need the absolute basics so that they're not dying in the streets.  It's not just "unicorns and rainbows" generosity, either.  When enough people start having to go without, especially when they can remember better economic times, social unrest is just around the corner. There's a saying I've heard a few times that captures the concept pretty well: "Any society is only three meals away from revolution." So at minimum, the population needs to have safety nets in place to catch people who hit on hard times; and that falls on the government, since absolutely no other part of society has the resources or the responsibility to perform this task.  And if a country wants to do more than just get by, it needs to make investments in its citizens: quality education, health & disease prevention programs, environmental safety, and so on.

Of course, there are legitimate questions about limited resources and long-term costs. If the population keeps growing like it has, eventually it will break the bank or use up all the resources. It has to hit a peak sometime, because nothing can continue indefinitely. Then we're really in a bad spot. Certainly, we'll have to make some hard decisions in the future (maybe even the near future.)  But right now, I've got good reason to be skeptical of politicians raising those questions, because nearly all of them are not being honest about it.  The ACA, for example, was attacked because of its massive cost (among other reasons), but so far, efforts to dismantle or undo it have been shown to cost more than leaving it alone would have.  Also, recent proposed legislation included provisions that would have slashed tax revenue or tacked on billions in additional spending.  I have also heard very little about halting production on the F-35 program. These inconvenient facts make me question the urgency of "starving the beast." Maybe they're right, though. But I have trouble believing them when their priorities are so warped.

To circle back to my thought experiment from the beginning, I don't presume to know what the founding fathers would have done, because I could point to many primary sources that support my claim just as someone else could point to ones that refute it.  There are a lot of areas where big government has grown out of control, in potentially dangerous ways like the NSA's mass surveillance program, and in irritating ways like overzealous regulators and nonsensical rules.  But despite these drawbacks, Americans are still free in more ways than they are not, and the benefits we receive outweigh the costs.  Leonard Pitts' vision for the Democrats seems like a good one, one that will help America flourish.