The Path Forward

Sometimes the path forward is so obvious that we miss it in the search for more complex or subtle solutions.   

We are still, however imperfectly, a democracy.  Yes, Citizens United, gerrymandering, voter suppression, fake news, and hyperpartisan media silos all have undermined the foundations of our democracy.  But it hasn’t crumbled yet, and voting remains the best means for effecting change.

So if you believe that Trump is unfit for office and/or abhor the agenda of the so-called “alt-right,” then – regardless of your ideological preference or traditional party affiliation – I suggest that your path is clear: you must vote in every election and you must tick the box for every candidate up and down the ballot, regardless of personality or party, who has the best chance of defeating the Republican.   Let me be clear.  This means that if your sister is running for dogcatcher on the GOP line, you pull the lever for her opponent.   It’s not personal.  The point is that as long as the GOP is the party of Trump and the alt-right, you should treat pulling the lever anywhere on the GOP line as a morally indefensible act.  

The game plan of the Trumpist movement is clear:  if a GOP politician fails to swear fealty to the strongman, she or he will be primaried from the alt-right and lose, and – unless things change – nearly half the time the winner of that GOP primary will continue to be the de facto winner of the general election (FairVote calculated last month this continues to be the case in 208 of 435 House seats).   This could well lead to 16 years of Trumpism and the inevitable collapse of American prestige, leadership, and prosperity. 

The only way to derail this result is to break through normal voting patterns and achieve a temporary but massive re-set of voter behavior.   First, show up (the Trumpies will, that’s for sure).  Second, the 72% of Americans who now self-identify as independent or Democrat, hopefully joined by millions of patriotic morally centered Republicans, must treat any candidate’s Republican Party affiliation as toxic for so long as the GOP is providing a home for Trump and the alt-right.  It will take decisive defeats of GOP candidates up and down the ballot to persuade the party that Trumpism is not the horse to ride into the future.  It will take multiple elections evidencing overwhelming repudiation of Trump and the alt-right in order to put the genie of populism back in the bottle.

It grieves me to have to advocate for a solution that is even superficially partisan, when excessive partisanship is part of what caused the present train wreck.   I say “superficially partisan” because in intent and in the longer-term, what I advocate is not partisan at all.   If you were a Republican before your party was high jacked by Steve Bannon, this is the only way to get your party back.  Once the GOP escapes the unholy alliance between a narcissistic moron and a fringe movement with a repugnant agenda, then my many GOP friends can begin the important work of building a competitive center-right party for the 21st century.  And they again can be free, if they wish, to vote Republican for the rest of their lives.  But not now.  

To those who choose to ignore the ugly side of Trumpism on the expectation that your profits will increase and your taxes decrease, I can only ask that you rehearse in your own minds the defense you will offer when discussing the matter with St. Peter at the gates to heaven.

Roy Moore

In my 2013 dystopian novel, Christian Nation, one of the first actions by the authoritarian populist who defeats Hillary Clinton in 2016 is to nominate Roy Moore to the Supreme Court.   For many readers this was a step too far.  Moore is one of the crankiest of the far-right fringe cranks; they found it unimaginable that he could be elevated to a position of national power and prominence in America in the 21st century.  How times have changed.

Moore was, is, and always will be disqualified for high office by virtue of his record and beliefs.   This truth has been largely ignored by the national media, which now has put all its anti-Moore eggs in the basket of 40-year-old sexual crime and/or misconduct.

Forgive me for quoting myself, but I re-read this morning what I had to say about Moore in Christian Nation, and want to share with you an excerpt:

“Roy Moore was one of the greatest heroes of the evangelical movement but was only vaguely known to the rest of the country . . . . Moore was a fundamentalist Christian of the more robust sort, having worked as a cowboy and kick-boxer, attributing his pugilistic successes to divine favor and intervention.  As a state judge in Alabama, he displayed wooden Ten Commandments plaques in his courtrooms and opened his judicial sessions with prayers, sometimes calling on a clergyman to lead the jury members in conversation with God prior to the start of jury deliberations.  . . . To drive home his fundamentalist belief that God was the sole legitimate source of law, and that all civil institutions must be subservient to God’s will, in 2001 he arranged for a five-thousand-pound granite monument to the Ten Commandments to be placed in the rotunda of the state courthouse.  The federal courts ordered its removal, and Moore responded that the orders of the federal courts on such a matter had no legitimacy and that he obeyed only the orders of God and the great state of Alabama.  The great state of Alabama responded by establishing a judicial commission that proceeded to remove him from office.  . . . ‘Roy’s Rock’ then began is peripatetic travels in the American heartland, including appearances in thirty-one different states in one year alone.  Moore became a folk hero to the Christian right, and in 2003 drafted the Constitution Restoration Act.”

For those who don’t remember, the “Constitution Restoration Act,” among other things, denied federal jurisdiction in any case where an official action is challenged because it is based on “acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.”  In other words, it seeks to dismantle separation of church and state. 

Subsequent to the publication of Christian Nation, Moore was re-elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, found guilty of the following, and again (permanently) suspended:

1. disregarding a federal injunction
2. demonstrating unwillingness to follow clear law
3. abuse of administrative authority
4. substituting his judgment for the judgment of the entire Alabama Supreme Court, including failure to abstain from public comment about a pending proceeding in his own court
5. interference with legal process and remedies in the United States District Court and/or Alabama Supreme Court related to proceedings in which Alabama probate judges were involved, and
6. failure to recuse himself from pending proceedings in the Alabama Supreme Court after making public comment and placing his impartiality into question.

Over the years Moore has navigated the far right fringe (what we now legitimize as the “alt-right”) espousing the view that President Obama is a Muslim foreigner (among a putrid stew of other conspiracy theories) and bizarre opinions on everything from preschool (a precursor to totalitarianism), evolution (“no such thing”), homosexuality (should be illegal), 9/11 (punishment by God for tolerance of gays and the rest of the liberal agenda), and Muslim representatives (should be barred from Congress).

U.S. senators are required to take an oath to “support and defend the constitution of the United States.”  Moore, who has affirmed that he will not defend, or even obey, any part of the constitution or other laws that, in his view, conflicts with the word of God, cannot in good faith take the oath.

I fear that the exclusive focus on unproven long-past sexual crime and/or misconduct, which will strike some in Alabama as unfair, will backfire.  Instead, we should focus on the person, his record, and his views.  Like the President who now supports him, he is unfit for office, regardless of the truth of the recent allegations. 

We face a freely-admitted, well-funded, brilliantly executed attempt to convert the Republican party into a Trump-centered alt-right populist movement that disregards the rule of law when it conflicts with its agenda.    It is no surprise that Steve Bannon is so focused on this race.  The election of Roy Moore could be a tipping point after which -- untethered from the norms of truth, reason, decency, or our traditional political culture -- we tumble precipitously into the abyss.    

Korea

America’s allies quickly discovered, as we did, that Trump the President is exactly the same as Trump the man: an untrustworthy ignorant braggart without the sophistication, knowledge or temperament to participate in matters of state.  

The idea that any head of state would defer to his judgment as “leader of the free world” is laughable. And yet the country he leads, by virtue of the size of its economy, its traditional values and its military might, is the indispensable player in any world crisis. And there you have the conundrum faced by the world today, brought sharply into focus by the crisis with North Korea.

Imagine the nightmare being lived by the leaders of South Korea and Japan, whose populations face annihilation should Trump make an impetuous move. Imagine the nightmare of waking up to find the ally on which they have bet their existence, the most reliable of countries, the nation built on checks and balances, now led by a fickle buffoon whose capricious whims go unchecked by the institutions of government or established practices of our political culture. A man uninterested in the collective wisdom and experience of the tens of thousands of foreign policy professionals employed by his government. A man utterly convinced of his ability to manage the crisis single-handedly in the only way he knows:  dangerous bluff and bluster unleashed via Twitter that escalates, as opposed to diffuses, the risk of conflict. 

The crisis is of course a political gift to Trump. The instinct of the nation is to forget the niceties of the constitution and rally around the President when facing a significant threat from abroad.  

But there is something greater at stake here. Over ten million people inhabit Seoul.  Nine million people inhabit Tokyo. They must not be treated as pawns in a celebrity feud. History will never forgive the Secretaries of State and Defense if they don’t force the President to change course, or lose their jobs in the attempt. If Congress stands by without asserting its authority, it will create a stain on our democracy that can never be erased.

Illegitimate

Illegitimacy is defined as “the state of not being in accordance with accepted standards or rules; lack of authorization by the law.” We have crossed some kind of line when serious people on the right start down the path of questioning the “regularity” and “legal soundness” of Trump’s presidency.

Jack Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer and scholar. A fellow of the Hoover Institution and Professor at Harvard Law School, he served as a senior official in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush. A serious man and a leading conservative voice.

In an extraordinary eruption of 17 Tweets yesterday, he wrote “Trump’s actions since January, and especially in [the] last month, take us so far beyond normal that it’s hard to have any faith in [the] Executive Branch.” He argued that the President’s personal actions have undermined the deference that our political culture says we owe to the Presidency and the Executive Branch.   “The impulsive, uncontrolled, ill-informed President infects the legal soundless of everything his administration does. As best I can tell, no President’s actions have ever so adversely affected trust in his administration, including Nixon during Watergate.” So we now have a presidency that has deviated so far from accepted standards and rules that it does not deserve even the simple presumption of regularity and legal soundness. In other words, a presidency that has squandered its legitimacy.

This is an extraordinarily consequential analysis. Goldsmith argues that the incessant lying, the manifest instability, the firing of Comey, the intemperate attacks on judges, legal process, long-standing allies, the intelligence services and the press exonerate us from having to afford the office the normal presumption of “regularity.” We – the people, the Congress, the courts, even the lawyers charged with representing him and Executive Branch employees who work for him ­– no longer need to presume that any of his words or actions are taken in good faith or constitute the regular lawful exercise of Executive Branch authority. 

As a result, Goldsmith writes, Executive Branch officials find themselves in a nearly impossible position. Is it morally or legally acceptable to defend Presidential prerogative when the President has proven he cannot wield it responsibly? How far can they go before resignation is their only option?

With Goldsmith’s analysis, we are starting to get a clearer picture of the slowly emerging constitutional crisis. This type of illegitimacy is not anticipated by the constitution. It is not simply incompetence; it is willful incompetence. It is not simply mis-government, it is the systematic undermining of government. It is a profound corruption, where the corrupt spoils are not so much in material gain as in the satisfaction of the ego; where the interests of the nation are traded for the indulgence of the man’s momentary impulse, narcissistic self-image and lust for attention. It is a pervasive and corrosive bad faith, where the crime is not just convenient mendacity, but a willful disdain for expertise and even objective truth. It is disinterest in details. It is disdain for advice.  It is failing to take the business of governing seriously. It is a perpetually raised middle finger aimed at our political culture and traditions.  At our friends and allies. At the very idea that relations with others can be anything other than a zero-sum transaction. At a world order painstakingly built over generations. It is “the state of not being in accordance with accepted standards or rules.” It is illegitimate.

Trump is no longer a president in any conventional sense. His tweets and words deserve no more respect than the blather of a reality TV star or the ignorant ranting of a crank. He is viewed as ridiculous by virtually all the rest of the world and by the majority of Americans. In that respect he is no longer a president. He may be the president under law, but he is not a president.  

Nothing in our constitution or political culture suggests how to deal with this. Nixon resigned because his confrères in the party told him it was over. Even if today’s Republicans had the same wisdom and courage, he would mostly likely refuse to go. He will hole up and lash out. We must prepare for the constitutional crisis that will follow.

June 1, 2017

In my book Christian Nation, the fictional narrator writes, “They said what they would do, and we did not believe them. Then they did what they said they would do.”

Trump told us what he believed about climate change and told us what he would do about the Paris Agreement. And now he has done it.

Ironically for a man who purports to be dedicated to the restoration of America’s prestige and power, he has at a stroke squandered much of the moral authority and prestige built up over the past century. America may be “first” in his alternative universe, but in the real world we now inhabit an exclusive club of climate non-participants with Syria and Nicaragua.  

Mr. Putin’s authoritarianism, supported mainly by fossil fuel sales, is now assured. China will pivot cynically but effectively into a climate leadership role, assuring that its workers, and not the disgruntled Americans who handed Trump the Presidency, have the millions of 21st century jobs in green energy.      

Earth is of course the biggest loser here. But close behind is American democracy. In polling after the election, 69% of voters said they supported remaining in the Paris Agreement. This included a majority of voters in every state. And even among voters who voted for Trump, only 28% said they favored withdrawal. 

Post-enlightenment civilization has been based on reason and science. Today my country repudiated both. I often wondered what it felt like on August 24, 410, when Rome fell to the Visigoths.   Now I know.

Europe

I learned everything I needed to know about Donald Trump years ago when an environmental organization whose Board I chaired opposed his plan to build gated gilded skyscrapers on the Hudson River waterfront, blocking views and waterfront access for the rest of the citizens. He wrote me a letter in which he stated that his new buildings would be terrific, that if we withdrew our opposition we would receive a great contribution, and that if we didn’t he would destroy us. Sound familiar? The art of the deal. 

So now “Trump First” has morphed into “America First” and European leaders last week were on the receiving end of the only way of behaving the man knows.   

A few things are notable about the trip. After only five months of Trumpism, U.S. foreign policy has ceased to exist. Since the end of World War II U.S. foreign policy has reflected a complex vectoring of national security, commercial, ideological, and political objectives. The official positions of the U.S. government emerged and evolved from a broad and inclusive process played out within the framework of a professional State Department and national security staff, the constitutional role of Congress, the limitations of multilateral and bilateral commitments, and the participation of a wide variety of private sector and political interests. Today, U.S. foreign policy appears to be whatever slogan pops into the head of a single spectacularly ill-informed man, who exists in a cocoon of ideologues and billionaires, does not read or absorb briefings, and has ignored and marginalized the entire foreign policy establishment. “I alone,” he says, will decide.   

Imagine what they were thinking. The leaders of Europe, all sophisticated, serious, informed, briefed. All facing critical challenges such as the future of the EU, the refugee crisis, climate change, and the terrifying specter of a newly assertive Russia. Now the door closes and they are alone with Trump, one moment behaving like a star struck B-lister giddy with excitement that he’s reached these rarefied heights, and the next moment a sneering bully, compensating for his ignorance and insecurity with aggression and bombast. Even the Wall Street Journal called his behavior on the trip “undiplomatic, and sometimes rude,” “embarrassing for most Americans,” and “dangerous.” And that from a conservative publication that attempts daily to put a positive spin on each day’s debacle.

So there they are, the leaders of Europe. For 60 years they relied on their U.S. ally as the bulwark against a repeat of the catastrophic 20th century. And now: NATO is obsolete (maybe, depends on who he spoke to last), extortionate threats that the US will not fulfill its mutual defense commitments unless they pay up (at the end of the day it’s all just about money, right?), and abandonment of generations of GOP and American support for free trade. After all, who cares about all these foreigners, since “from this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.”

Is it any surprise that Angela Merkel, citing “what I experienced in recent days,” uttered the obvious? Europe can no longer rely on America. Welcome to the club, Angela. America can no longer rely on America.

The Press Conference

All you need to know is this: there is and always will be only one Donald Trump. Thinking that he can or will suddenly become fit to be President is like thinking that a paraplegic will leap from his wheel chair at any moment. Just as a damaged spinal cord disables a person from walking, Trump’s life-long severe narcissistic personality disorder disables him from accepting any truth that contradicts the narrative of his greatness, taking advice, or behaving in public in any manner that is remotely appropriate for a head of state. It’s not going to happen because it cannot happen. Character is destiny and the flaws in Mr. Trump’s character are so deep that his presidency is destined to be – at best - a chaotic lurid spectacle.

All this was apparent prior to the election. And to those who indulged in the fantasy that he might change, it should be apparent now that he will not. If you still have doubts, just watch the video of yesterday’s bizarre and terrifying press conference.

In September, I wrote that Trump world is “a type of theater of the absurd, in which the boundaries of the possible dissolve. It is the world of the preposterous.” Is there a better word to describe the nonsense which we face daily? The White House said five days ago “We have a president who has done more in three weeks than most presidents have done in an entire administration.” What can you say other than preposterous. Yesterday the President said “This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.” He has already made the world a better place through his “great conversations” with foreign leaders. Yup, a few incoherent phone calls from the Donald and the world is already a safer place. Plants and factories “are already starting to move back into the United States, and big league.” “Jobs have already started to surge.” And he solved the problem of attacks on cops, “directing federal agencies to ensure they are protected from crimes of violence.” That is sure to do the trick. 

Perhaps most revealing at yesterday’s news conference was his defense of his incorrect assertion about his Electoral College margin of victory being the biggest since Reagan: “I'm skipping that information, I don't know, I was just given . . .Well, I don't know, I was given that information. I was given -- I actually, I've seen that information around.” And there you have it. We have a President who makes public assertions about matters of objective fact based on “I’ve seen that information around.” It is shocking when he states it so plainly, but no one should be surprised. Many of the core arguments of his campaign were based on information he saw around the dark fringes of the Internet, such as Breitbart. And now the purveyors of that information sit in the West Wing, having discredited and marginalized the 16 intelligence agencies on which a president usually relies, giving the man the false facts required to feed his voracious vanity, indifferent to whether it becomes apparent to the world that the President of the United States lives in a world of fantasy and misinformation.   

And Mr. Bannon is not the only person who has learned how to manipulate our President. Trump said this in response to the stew of Russia related issues that has already brought down his National Security Advisor: “President Putin called me up very nicely to congratulate me on the win of the election. He then, called me up extremely nicely to congratulate me on the inauguration, which was terrific. But so did many other leaders, almost all other leaders from almost all of the country. So that's the extent. Russia is fake news. Russia -- this is fake news put out by the media.” Got it? Putin flattered him twice, nicely and then extremely nicely, including taking his side on the question of whether the inauguration was the best ever, so all the rest is fake news. 

In a moment that gave me hope for the future of journalism, CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked the obvious question: “You said that the leaks [regarding the Russia connections] are real but the news [that is, the reporting of the leaked information] is fake. I guess I don't understand. It seems that there's a disconnect there. If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake.” In a bit of revealing mental gymnastics, the President replied, “the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.” You understand? It’s really not so complicated. The media (other than Fox) are dishonest enemies. This is what makes their reporting about Trump “fake,” not the truth or falsehood of their reports.

There is one advantage to the man’s off-the-cuff style; it tends to be much more revealing about what he believes and how he thinks than the carefully prepared statements of most presidents. Consider this: “Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It's a disaster. I know you can say, oh, Obamacare. I mean, they fill up our alleys with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the Republican people that our representatives are representing.” Where to start? Were that it was merely incoherent ranting. But it’s not. Among the possible insights into the man’s mind: People who need health insurance are homeless people in alleys? Homeless people in alleys “got there” through some conspiracy? But the people who need insurance are not, in any case, Republicans? And therefore it doesn’t matter because Republican control means that the House is now representing only Republicans? Unfiltered Trump is the real Trump.

Finally, an attack on the press and the courts, really the only two institutions in our democracy that stand in his way, was woven through the long press conference. These were the themes to which he returned in his answers to many unrelated questions. Most ominously, he announced yesterday that the press is “out of control” and we have to “find out what is going on,” which I took as a promise to use the tools available to the Federal government to investigate and then solve the problem. As I argued in my book Christian Nation, authoritarians usually announce in advance exactly what they will do and then do it. As the narrator says, looking back from a future where American democracy has been lost, “They said what they would do and we did not listen.  And then they did what they said they would do.”

No Room at the Inn

On Friday afternoon the man in charge, seeking to burnish his tough guy image, took his limo to the Pentagon and signed a bit of paper that upended the lives of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable people, betrayed America’s deepest values, and is almost certain to harm the country it is designed to protect.   

The weekend’s events again demonstrate that the man’s personality flaws and personal history – not politics – will be the primary driver of what emerges from this administration.

·      He did not first attempt to forge an immigration reform policy that could attract the support of Congress, the representatives of the people.  President Obama signed executive orders regarding immigration, but only after years of attempting to work with Congress to accomplish immigration reform.

·      He acted without the analysis, planning, or preparation that normally would have preceded a similarly consequential change in policy. This has been his MO for years in business, where the frequent result was a moment of publicity for him, followed by chaos and failure.  

·      He took this action impulsively, without (or perhaps in disregard of) consideration of its many dangerous consequences. Apart from the human tragedy, American business, together with the thousands of Americans who live, do business, and travel overseas, all will suffer. And many experts believe that the jihadist narrative will be reinforced, domestic counter-terrorism efforts will be compromised, and America's global standing and leadership diminished.  

·      He left thousands of government employees, sworn to uphold the rule of law, struggling to understand what he had done, what it meant, and what they should do. Again, this is his hallmark:  leave others to pick up the pieces.

·      By giving preference to Christian refugees and contemplating that immigrants would be chosen based on their “attitudes,” he demonstrated a typical populist/authoritarian indifference to the niceties of the constitution.

·      The arguments proffered in support of the order (i.e., that his order would have prevented 9/11, or that current vetting can be improved, or that immigrants are more prone to crime than others) all are false. Welcome to the world where policy is made based on “alternative facts.”

·      The policy, like the man, is cruel and reckless. Like all severe narcissists, he lacks empathy.   The consequences of this are on full display.

The innkeeper, indifferent to the suffering of a pregnant traveller about to give birth, relegates Mary and Joseph to the stable. The Bible story celebrated each Christmas has inspired generations of believers and non-believers alike to the necessity of embracing -- and even sacrificing for -- the weak and vulnerable. Instead, exit polls showed 80% of Christian evangelicals again chose to slam the door of the inn. If He exists, Jesus weeps.