Category: Politics

There is so much emotion out there right now: pain, hate, fear & loathing. As a friend recently reminded me, catharsis has its use. If there is a time for all things (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), then there is a time for rage, too. But then, too, “let us stop talking falsely now, the hour’s getting late.” (Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower)

When the dust settles and the smoke clears, we must put down our signs, our bricks and bottles, our tear gas and shields, and reason once again. In the end, there are truth, belief, and action; the first of these is truth.

Truth matters. There is only one truth, not your truth or my truth. We each have experiences which can be (in fact, always are) different. But there is objective truth. The truth is that a man was apprehended, then needlessly and intentionally murdered. Another truth is that thousands of people of all races and nations are so upset by this fact that they are peacefully protesting. A third truth is that a not insignificant number of people joining the protests are then fomenting violence, ending in destruction of property, looting, and violence to both police and innocent bystanders.

The problems start when we stop worrying about truth and start considering the term in vogue today: narrative. We used to call this a meta-story, or spin, or even propaganda. Narrative places truth at the service of a larger idea. This idea then colors how we understand the truth, sometimes directly undermining it. Which is dangerous.

How does it work?

If you’re a progressive, your narrative includes the ideas that the American system is fundamentally racist, that blind justice is not justice at all, that the system is rigged against minorities. The murder of George Floyd typifies an epidemic of police violence against African-Americans, the arrests at protests the willful authoritarianism of the American police state. Looting is the act of clandestine cells of Boogaloo boys or the understandable outrage boiling over after centuries of mistreatment and marginalization.

If you sport a MAGA hat, the suspect was a defrauder. You scan his autopsy for the tell-tale signs of alcohol or drugs and presume he resisted arrest. The protests are either the beginning of a race war or a carefully-staged provocation funded and organized by George Soros to undermine the President’s re-election. AntiFa is the cause of violence; looting is what bad people always do, given the opportunity.

Exaggerations? Hardly! I would provide links to these views, but then I don’t want to encourage their spread. But they are legion. You may have visited a site espousing them.

How do such narratives undermine the truth? Mr. Floyd was only a suspect–not a criminal–there is no evidence he ever resisted anything except to beg to be allowed to breathe. If you want to check the data on police violence, the Washington Post and The Guardian have the best data sets: but you won’t find evidence to support an epidemic against minorities. Believe it or not, the numbers haven’t increased for years. As to the protests, most were peaceful, and while no one doubts outside instigators were behind some of the violence, there is no evidence of a vast, coordinated conspiracy. As it happens, there was violence at protests long before the Boogaloo movement or AntiFa existed. It happens when masses of emotional people get together.

What both sides get wrong is their reliance on narrative in place of truth. See how the man, George Floyd, gets lost in the narrative? He becomes a symbol, a prop, a cudgel used to bash a competing narrative.

What was the simple truth? A man was accused of committing a misdemeanor crime. He was murdered, without resistance, by the police after being apprehended. All four policemen involved were fired twenty-eight hours after his death. None of the officers involved cooperated in the investigation (i.e., they all pled the Fifth Amendment), thus prolonging it. The policeman directly responsible for his murder was charged within four days. The other officers were charged five days later, and the initial charges upgraded to murder in the second degree. According to the Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, the decision to charge and the timing of those charges were unrelated to the protests. Don’t believe him? Google him and try to stick him in your narrative.

When people replace truth with narrative, bad things happen. People start to believe in narrative the way that honest people believe in truth. And that can have terrible consequences. Which leads to Part II on Belief.

If you never watched the original cartoon Rocky & Bullwinkle, you missed something good, so go find it on YouTube or Cartoon Network. If you did watch (like me), you’ll remember the original Sherman and the talking dog, Mr. Peabody, who had various historical adventures using the WABAC (Way-back, get it?) time machine.

As I was writing the last blog post on media bias, I had a WABAC moment: what was the media coverage like during the last pandemic: the 2009 H1N1 or Swine flu outbreak. To remind, this virus was a new strain of the infamous Spanish Flu bug which terrorized the world in 1919-1921. This time, it lasted about twenty months. Note this: confirmed cases worldwide were 1.6 million, deaths 18,000; estimated cases were 700 million to 1.4 billion with 284,000 deaths. Yes, ten years later, we still can’t narrow down the data within an order of magnitude. That might give some pause, even today, when making instant judgments about the coronavirus. But I digress.

H1N1 hit within the first hundred days of the Obama Administration, right next door in Mexico, oh, and simultaneously with that pesky little Great Recession. So I began searching the paper of record, the New York Times, to see how it covered the administration’s response and unfolding crisis.

Was I in for a surprise!

You will want to read the hyperlinks on this one. What I found was telling, in the “I can’t believe I’m reading this” way. My comments below are italicized.

Early on (in April) The Times published an opinion piece by a doctor entitled “Sound the alarm? The Swine Flu bind” noting “History teaches that the influenza virus mutates to cause worldwide spread about twice a century, on average. But scientists have yet to figure out what causes the mutations, when they will occur and what makes certain viruses more lethal than others.” and that public officials faced a damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don’t decision. Oh for that sane, balanced perspective today!

On May 1st, the Times noted how seriously the Obama administration was taking the threat. The Times reported the President was deliberate in trying not to cause a panic:”It was no coincidence, his aides said, that he played golf the day his administration declared a national emergency.” Oddly enough, no reporter asked about the recently eliminated NSC staff position covering infectious disease. Yes, believe it or not, it happened first way back then, but no one seemed to care. Golf as a crafty signal: yes, that’s it!

White House spokesman Robert Gibb was asked about the fact that there was no Health and Human Services Secretary and only five Presidential nominees (out of twenty positions, none confirmed) in the department, he said “‘Our response is in no way hindered or hampered.’ When pressed to say whether White House officials would prefer to have a full team in place, he said, ‘We’d rather not have a swine flu.'” There was no follow-up on how the Department could possibly be effective without any appointees, nor any opinion from the Times.

Asked about Mexico’s more drastic actions responding to the outbreak, CDC acting director Richard Besser said “You don’t know if this is a virus that will fizzle in a couple of weeks or one that will become more or less virulent or severe in the diseases it causes.” Perhaps President Trump should have suggested the coronavirus may “fizzle.” That appears to be the scientifically appropriate term, or at least no one in the media objected when the CDC head used it.

Another Times story the day after the US declared a public health emergency noted that “only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case” and that Besser “praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.” Only two labs, but no follow up about why, or when would more come on line? And no questions about the lack of a national policy? Enquiring minds apparently didn’t want to know!

In October, HHS Secretary Sebelius was asked to account for the fact that only 23 million of the 120 million promised doses of vaccine were available, she responded, “If we could wave a magic wand or have the tools in our government shop to fix this, I think there would be a different expectation.” Noticeably absent from the questions was any mention of the Defense Production Act of 1950, which was ready and available for use. Maybe it grew into a magic wand later?

Regarding that shortage, the Times created a helpful video explaining that it was due to “old technology” and “an inefficient process.” The video says the federal government “responsibly” contracted with all five vaccine producers, but “in a weird confluence” all five had problems. “Some people will die” due to the vaccine shortage, the video intones, and the federal government has confirmed that. That’s it. Nobody at fault? People will die. Move along now.

When the President’s daughters got the coveted, in short-supply vaccine shots, the Times did cover it by saying, “The vaccinations could raise questions about whether the Obama girls were given special treatment” but quickly noting “The White House may be trying to set a good example amid concerns about the vaccine’s safety. Sharing the news that the president has allowed his daughters to receive the shots could ease the fears of ordinary Americans who are wondering whether to get vaccinated.” This was simply embarrassing. President Obama’s daughters were in a high-risk group and deserved the vaccine; couldn’t the Times have left the defense to the White House Spokesman?

Finally, an otherwise irrelevant opinion piece by Gail Collins, which has this jewel: “The swine flu scare has made it clear why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden for vice president. As the White House’s unfiltered talking head, Biden is the perfect warning bell to show the White House when things are veering out of control. A kind of mental canary in the governmental mine shaft.” It also provides the following Biden story: “‘If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing,’ Biden babbled happily on the Today show. He also assured Matt Lauer that he had warned his family away from subways and that he ‘wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,’ but unfortunately Lauer did not inquire whether the Oval Office counts as free range.” This has nothing to do with my point, but I bet you a stiff drink that this quote will show up in an ad during the campaign, whenever the former Vice President attacks the President about coronavirus.

I could go on, but you get the point. Look at any of these articles (less the last one) from the paper of record and compare how the coverage was different. Assertions left unquestioned. Off-hand comments unexamined. Difficulties and challenges highlighted; failures explained away. Note I am NOT comparing how the Obama and Trump administrations performed; just how the media covered them in remarkable similar circumstances. The Obama administration response is on the books: probably a “B+” for messaging (smooth, reassuring, consistent), a “C+” for actual work (slow to enact national guidance, failure in vaccine mass production). Most importantly, the swine flu that year didn’t turn out to be the big one; extending the analogy, swine flu was a quiz, not the final.

in comparing that coverage to today’s, one could assert today’s media was only responding to the incompetence of the Trump administration, but that assertion fails because Obama’s team was new and unproven, understaffed, and made similar mistakes (e.g., reorganizing out the NSC staff position, failing to respond quickly with respect to vaccine production, making bold/rosy projections).

You might say the media treats the Trump administration differently because it acts differently. There is no doubt the President sees the media as an antagonist, if not an enemy. But this is not a personal relationship, it’s an institutional relationship. I don’t claim the media is a neutral observer; they do. If you’re going to make that claim, you forfeit the right to say “we have to be confrontational because he was first.”

Read those articles again. Read any article today. Tell me this is the rightful, impartial role for the media.

We all know how important it is (from the Times coverage) that the US has the most deaths from coronavirus. Bonus quiz, before you look at this graphic: who had the most deaths (worldwide) from the H1N1 pandemic, despite having only the fifth highest number of cases?

Of course, the Times went back and did an in-depth review of the Obama administration’s performance based on the discrepancy between how the US did and other nations. Well, I am sure they will eventually.

The New York Times masthead proudly proclaims “All the news that’s fit to print.” Some call it the newspaper of record, the official version of what’s happening, and to some extent that’s true. Some call it the home of “fake news.” I dislike the later term, only because it seems to have become shorthand for “news I don’t like.” Several friends have asked me my views about media bias. The Onion captures it well:

As I’ve said many times, everyone has bias. Bias is simply the accumulated opinion of your experiences. It’s what makes you, you. Media personalities like to claim they are unbiased, but of course they aren’t. A day does not pass that I could not find three examples of biased coverage in the news sections of the major media sources.

What does media bias look like? Much of it is subtle, shaded by determining what is news and what is deemed not news. One example:

Two marches happened in Washington DC in January: the Women’s March (January 18th) and the Annual March for Life (January 24th). Both gathered “tens of thousands” but local traffic reports confirmed the second was somewhat larger. The Times had one news report on the March for Life, one on the Women’s March. Under normal circumstances, neither of these events may be news. In this case, the President spoke at the March for Life, the first to do so (and a major change). One march had a precedent-shattering speech, which several Times opinion writers commented on; absolutely nothing of news importance happened at the other march. This even but unequal coverage represents an improvement: almost every year since 1974, generally, the only coverage the March for Life gets is arguments over the crowd size.

Earth-shattering? Hardly. I chose this example because it’s one I have been following for decades with consistent results. The media usually covers larger marches, but somehow neglects this one even when the total surpassed half a million marchers. In this case, the media determines that the views of one side aren’t newsworthy–or as newsworthy–as the other side: bias. A worse type of bias is only telling one side of a story. Try these on:

• On Saturday, March 14th, ABC’s Weekend News led with a story of chaos at US airports, as Americans fled back to the States on the eve of the President’s just announced travel ban from Europe. I was deeply interested, as I had a pending flight stateside. They repeated the story, with the same videos and images, on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Now it’s not unusual for networks to rerun stories from the weekend, as their viewership on those days is different and much lower. And the chaos was certainly newsworthy on Saturday. Except, it wasn’t newsworthy on Tuesday, or Monday, or even Sunday. Because the ICE and CBP personnel at the airports adjusted and eliminated the lines . . . before Sunday morning! In this case, the Times led its Sunday edition thusly “After a night of chaos at some of the nation’s busiest airports on Saturday, officials scrambled on Sunday, with some apparent success, to reduce lines . . .” ABC went days and days and never reported that things were fixed. How come?
• No doubt you heard about the April 15th coronavirus outbreak at the meat packing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When the national media caught the scent, they descended on the story with a vengeance: The Times cited it as the #1 coronavirus hot spot in the nation, and lamented the poor immigrants (some war refugees) who were about to lose their lives or jobs. Other media called out Smithfield Foods for endangering its workers, and ridiculed South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for resisting stay at home orders for her state. This much of the story was well covered. There was palpable glee by some that the rubes were finally getting their just desserts. What happened? Over eight hundred employees were infected, most asymptomatic. Two died. The county reported under two thousand cases and eleven deaths linked to the plant. Sioux Falls hospitals weren’t stressed. The President declared the industry vital and the employees are cautiously getting back to work with new policies. You can only find local news coverage of this part of the story.

Another bias is how much attention the media pays to a subject and why. As in:

Are you embarrassed by the President’s hawking of various treatments or cures for the coronavirus? #Metoo. Even with all the disclaimers he makes, he shouldn’t be highlighting anything that hasn’t come out of a reliable, properly conducted and peer-reviewed study. Get this! Have you heard about the positive effects of Remdesivir? The problems with Hydroxychloroquine? Clinical use of HIV/AIDs drugs? #Metoo! And all these results were initially covered extensively in national media despite being preliminary: not final, not peer-reviewed. Even the President’s ludacris observation about UV light and disinfectant: how many of you saw that press conference live (I did)? How many of you saw the clip during the entire week when the media continuously covered it? Now riddle me this: if the point is it’s dangerous for the President to say such things (because people might do something stupid), who has given more people the opportunity to do something stupid? In this case, the need to ridicule the President (however deserved) outweighed the life-and-death calculation the media claimed as the reason for the coverage.

And of course there is sensationalism:

As the US and nearly every other country on the planet begins to reopen, we’re starting to see stories like this: why we are heading into trouble reopening. This was a Times opinion piece, but it got picked up by various news sites and networks. Look at the key chart:

The point is clear: the decline in CoVid19 cases is illusory, driven by a decline in several major metropolitan areas. Now look at this chart:

During the same time period (March-May) the US went from almost no tests to over eight million tests total. And what happens, the more you test? The number of confirmed cases goes . . . up. The original opinion made no reference to it, but that’s ok, an opinion piece is trying to convince you. It’s like a lawyer’s summary, not a judge’s ruling. But then several news media outlets reprinted the chart, and made no mention of the testing issue. I did see one article where an expert commented that ‘tests had greatly increased, but that wasn’t the reason for the increase in confirmed cases.’ Now I’m willing to follow experts, but I would an explanation based on some multivariate analysis, a little less “because I said so.”

Sensationalism bias is sometimes called “if it bleeds it leads,” meaning bad news gets the headline. Some might see several of these examples as simple sensationalism. But when was the last time eleven deaths over the course of a week in South Dakota elicited front page NYT and major television network coverage? Heck, a tornado killing twice that in an hour would merit 30 seconds or a weather section article.

I have little problem with bias or partisanship in editorial or opinion pieces, (except when they then get cited by the straight news side). Television networks have news and entertainment departments, and people who get them confused have nobody but themselves to blame (if you get news from Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, good luck!). No, of course I don’t think Fox News is unbiased, either. Fox was explicitly created to provide a different bias.

Some media do better at times: look at the NYT lead on the airport chaos story: solid work! PBS NewsHour generally only displays the “what we cover” bias, so kudos to them, too. All that said, if you don’t think the media is biased, if you’re not taking all your media reporting with a big bag of salt, you’re too gullible! The key is to access multiple media sources and to know and account for their biases . . . not to believe they’re unbiased.

Coming next, an extra-special bonus: something I stumbled across while researching media bias! Stay tuned!

Can make you look foolish.

It’s starting. To be fair, it never ended, but I thought for a few brief moments sanity and restraint might rule, as the world faced a deadly virus. Perhaps people would realize that there is something more important than politics. But no.

Politicians, pundits and the talking-head classes are doing what they always do, taking credit and laying blame in the middle of a global crisis. Sadder still (to me) are the number of Facebook friends who are doing the same. You might think they would know better. But no.

There are two kinds of these instant analyses: those which hedge and identify the uncertainties and still try to make a call about what happened, and ones which grab some little factoid and run to the extreme to make a political point. Hey, pundits got to . . . pundit, right? Isn’t this what they do for a living? Don’t doctors and government officials make such statements? Yes, but no.

Emergency Room doctors have to make snap judgments with the data at hand., and they don’t always have time to explain all the assumptions under which they are working. Government leaders (and doctors speaking to the public) have to make similar policy decisions under great uncertainty, but must also appear to be confident. It is a fine art, and one which is on display (both for good and ill) right now.

Why be a tad humble, a little hesitant, a bit shy about certainty? Let me count the ways, for here is a short list of things we DO NOT KNOW about the coronavirus in particular and the crisis in general:

• How many people have been infected? Because testing is miniscule everywhere, estimates are we may be orders of magnitude (100x) wrong in our number of cases, which puts all our other data under suspicion.
• How many people have died? Seems like this would be a no-brainer, since the dead are pretty countable, but the recent addition of 3700 deaths in NYC (from nursing homes and at-home deaths) is a reminder we’re only catching the reported deaths. Eventually, we will be able to estimate total deaths much like we do for the seasonal flu, driving the total up. Silver lining: increases in deaths are a percentage, not an order of magnitude, so the net effect on the final data is to drive the case fatality rate down.
• Does infection effect immunity? For how long? Nearly every virus confers some immunity between months and years. If this coronavirus provided no immunity, we would expect to see many re-infections, since it is so infectious. We don’t see that, and those cases we do see are more like resurgence (where a person appears recovered but the same infection lingers and then rebuilds). But we still don’t know how much immunity.
• Who was patient zero and how/where/when did the virus originate and cross the species barrier? We know it was Wuhan, but China’s origin story has holes in it. Medical researchers have determined this coronavirus was not developed in a lab, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t come from one. China has two labs near Wuhan. Not everybody who got sick initially was associated with the wet market in Wuhan. Some doctors who would have known more have disappeared. We essentially know almost nothing about the initial outbreak, and that is very suspicious.
• How effective are various prophylactic medicines and treatments? Still under varying trials, so again we don’t know. The President’s confidence in hydroxychloroquine is a case study is needlessly going too far: he may be wrong, he may be right. But there are consequences nonetheless.
• What are the tolerances of the many new viral/antibody tests? People scream for more and faster testing, but all new tests come with a caveat: if you want it done faster, you must accept lower tolerances and accuracy. Every country makes a decision on how “good” is good enough for their tests, with resulting implications. A false positive and someone kills himself; a false negative and somebody visits grandma and kill her. Most oversight organizations are approving tests provisionally, arguing that the data derived from the increased number of tests is more important than the accuracy of those tests. It’s an interesting approach, but understand this is another unknown.
• What policies mitigate the spread: border closures, social-distancing, business closures, stay-at-home, isolating the vulnerable, quarantine, case tracking? All do, but how much? Still unknown. We are engaged in a massive experiment as countries all over the world select from a menu of options. It seems obvious that early adopters gain an advantage in mitigation, but what happens if we have to keep the measures in place for an extended period of time? Eventually, people will cease to comply, and infections will re-ignite (see Singapore).
• What roles do demography and culture play? Undoubtedly huge, but not yet measured. Older populations will suffer more than younger ones. Smaller and more compact states should benefit, as well as places nobody wants to–or can–visit. Urban areas might be more vulnerable, but may facilitate government action and response. Authoritarian states can lock people up or intimidate them into compliance, but then they don’t tell the truth or share information well. Some peoples practice social distancing as good manners; others the reverse. Even per capita comparisons (normally used to compare dissimilar countries) will be challenged as useful data.

All of which is to say, if you see someone saying “look how well Germany is doing” or “why can’t we be like South Korea?” or “here’s what works” be cautious. We are in the first half of the coronavirus game, and we don’t even know how to count the score. When all is said and done, there will be enough good data to make real comparisons and assess performance. And there is a small glimmer of hope we will learn the right lessons, as two of the countries which apparently are doing better this time (South Korea and Taiwan) were ones which suffered under a previous contagion and spent time learning from it.

People love to make heroes and villains. But the coronavirus is serious business, not politics. If you think anything is obvious about this crisis, think again.

This is a nonpartisan post, believe it or not.

Most of the country is divided into two camps. The first camp sees an outsider President trying to “drain the swamp” and being thwarted by a conspiracy of bureaucrats dubbed “the Deep State.” The second camp sees a proto-fascist “Stable Genius” held in check by the likes of courageous, patriotic bureaucrats like the character Anonymous (insider author of articles and books about thwarting the President).

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Looking at those two statements, you might conclude that if one side is correct, the other must be wrong. This is normally the case with two apparently exclusive theses. I would like to suggest a third possibility: both are wrong, at least about the bureaucracy.

Before I do, let me state my bona fides. I worked within that federal bureaucracy for thirty-eight years. I attended nearly every available type of training for bureaucrats, from the typing course offered by the Department of Transportation (it never took!) to the Federal Executive Institute, the Harvard Seminar, and the National War College. I worked in three different Departments and an independent office. I attended countless interagency meetings from windowless rooms in Langley to the marble halls of the Old Executive Office building to the White House SitRoom. I served under every President from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama. Over half my career was in positions of executive authority, where I got to meet with leaders (political appointees and career civil service) across the government bureaucracy and help make decisions about “the sausage.”

New administrations often distrust the career bureaucrats who welcome them to power. I participated in the transition team from Bush ’43 to Obama, and I guarantee you it happened then. It is hard for some incoming political appointees and staffers to grasp the concept of a nonpartisan group of technocratic experts there to “help you.” If you come from the political world, there are two sides: the “good guys” and the opponent to be defeated. There is no room for neutrals on the sideline. It is equally difficult for political types to understand when the bureaucrats tell them “we will do every (legal) thing in our power to make your policies succeed, including telling you when they are misguided or likely to fail. But we will do so privately–to you–and not in a manner supporting any particular political perspective.” (The word “legal” in that last sentence is very important, but there are oodles of lawyers and ombuds ((I was one for thousands of analysts)) there to assist any bureaucrat who wonders where the line is–it is not a decision anyone needs to make by themselves!)

The politicos may be distrusting, yet this is exactly how the bureaucracy works. It isn’t that the bureaucrats don’t have political beliefs, and don’t bring some bias to the table. Rather, they subsume those personal views in order to support the legal–there that word is again–policies of the duly-elected or appointed officials. That is the way the federal government is supposed to work, and the way that it does work, even today . . . mostly.

So there is no Deep State. Nothing that has happened so far in the Trump administration requires a Deep State in order to be explained. What about the “Russia hoax?” I have spent hours reading every document about that story: the Steele dossier, the Mueller report, the Horowitz IG report, various FOIA releases from the DOJ, FBI, etc., the dueling reports from all the relevant House and Senate committees. What happened, if not a conspiracy to ensure Mr. Trump was never elected or impeached if he was?

Simple. A small group of FBI counterintelligence analysts and the senior executives who supervised them saw what they are always looking for: a “Tom Clancy” style Manchurian candidacy that they were going to expose and become heroes. They went after it with a passion, even skewing the FISA process and swallowing whole the dossier which is so rife with error as to be laughable. In hindsight, they got caught up in the very real Russian attempts to divide the electorate and thought they had found the super-secret pièce de résistance: a Putin mole named Donald Trump. No conspiracy, just overzealous analysts with poor leadership. There is a reason one outcome from this entire affair was the Attorney General’s decision to limit the ability of his agents to begin such an investigation of a Presidential candidacy: previously, it required nothing more than a single executive to initiate!

I have friends who share “Q” or Q Anon” material on social media, and I have yet to see a single thing which (1) makes any sense and (2) isn’t easily explainable by means other than a Deep State. I invite anyone unfamiliar with Occam’s Razor to click on the link: vast, intricate conspiracies make great novels or Netflix dramas, real life is far more mundane and explicable. Most administrations have a cadre of former government officials who can help facilitate the relationship with the bureaucracy; this one has few. Thus this administration is uniquely suited to seeing any disagreement or discussion of countervailing issues as disloyal or political. That doesn’t make it so.

By now my MAGA buddies are considering unfriending me while my Progressive amigos are high-fiving: not so fast, my friends!

Before anyone gets too excited, no one should celebrate the actions of Anonymous (the writer detailing a resistance to the administration within the bureaucracy). This is not principled action or even peaceful noncompliance. If someone in the bureaucracy disagrees with a policy, they can (1) go to the IG or ombuds and file a complaint, (2) resign, or (3) swallow it and do their job. Actively trying to undermine the policy is NOT a morally acceptable option.

For one thing, I have heard so many times that ‘what Trump just did is unconstitutional’ only to have the issue adjudicated by the courts as . . . constitutional. You may disagree with it, but you (as a bureaucrat) don’t get a say on it; the courts do. Second, I hear ‘Trump’s action is unprecedented so (I get to do something unprecedented too).’ I think we all learned how wrong this logic is in kindergarten, not to mention I often find precedents for the actions which negate the premise. Notice nothing I said suggests the policies are good or that you (as a bureaucrat) have to like them. Just they are legal and you cannot undermine them.

Furthermore, the public disclosures suggesting an active effort to thwart the administration in fact undermine the nonpartisan character of the career civil service. As I said, in the best of times, we had to convince new administrations we were there “to help.” That will be infinitely more difficult in the future. This goes double for the many former senior leaders who are so active now in media. I understand they feel the times are perilous and demand action. I ask only that they consider the long-term ramifications for the career civil service, and limit their very public criticism to when it is absolutely necessary. Which would not be every night on the round of talking-head shows.

Or publicly endorsing candidates. Think it’s not a growing problem? Check out this WaPo article. I know (and respect) many of these people. It is not that past leaders of the civil service didn’t face serious challenges. Just to keep it within living memory, Watergate anyone? Grouping together and endorsing a candidate–nay, more so explicitly opposing the sitting President–is the type of partisan activity poisonous to the standing of the bureaucracy.

It is true these individuals retain a first amendment right to offer political opinions. But not everything we HAVE the right to do IS right to do. It is one thing to imagine a hypothetical situation where only members of the civil service were privy to something, and therefore believed they had an obligation to make it public. That’s what happened with the whistleblower and subsequent impeachment. I disagreed with how serious that issue was, but not with the whistleblower making a complaint. But what we see now is political complaints coming from the bureaucracy (past or present), and it is not like there isn’t plenty of criticism already.

Some career civil servants have chosen to resign and explain their decisions publicly. This is appropriate and honorable, whether one agrees with their reasoning or not. In the end, their choices to act within the system (and leave it) support the nonpartisan nature of the civil service, even if they are publically critical.

On the other hand, there is leaking classified information. Now there’s a story citing government officials stating the intelligence community provided warning of the nature of the coronavirus and the inadequacy of China’s response back in January. Assuming this is true, kudos to the community; job well done. However, the fact that this information has now been leaked to the press? For what purpose? There is no value in this information in responding to the virus today. When we are safely past this crisis, we need an in-depth investigation of who-knew-what-when and what-did-they-do/not do. This is a leak of sensitive intelligence information solely for the purpose of criticizing the administration’s response. And some wonder why others see a conspiracy.

One side claims the public disclosures of Anonymous prove there is a Deep State, while the other side suggests it is patriotic and shows the need for active resistance by the bureaucracy. Such reasoning evinces the greater danger: the politicization of the career civil service bureaucracy, much to our collective regret.

The nonpartisan career civil service is a treasure. If you scoff at that comment, read a history of the federal government in the 19th century before civil service reform: a stinking mass of corruption and nepotism likely to ruin everything it touched. Today’s civil service is full of dedicated experts trying their best to work in the public’s interest. A real tragedy would ensue if we let our political differences lead to politicizing the federal bureaucracy: that would truly be a national disaster.

I have a confession to make. I spent thirty years in DC. That makes me a swamp creature. I was part of the deep-state back when we just called it the bureaucracy; deep-state sounds so much sexier, no? Let me re-engage my deep-state, lizard brain and try to explain what’s going on.

The intersection between high-minded idealism and cynical political calculation exists at the power of position. You can have all the right ideas and best policies and accomplish nothing if you lack the power of office and majority. Likewise, the one who wins can implement even the most hare-brained schemes. You would like to think that the best ideas always win, but we know this is not the case.

Why would Speaker Pelosi change her mind on impeachment? Remember, she and Senator Mitch McConnell are among the most successful Congressional leaders in American history. People hate them for their ruthless pursuit of their respective agendas. What is she up to?

• First, impeachment rallies the Democratic base, especially in the suburban districts which went from purple to blue in 2018. It might imperil some of the new members in districts which voted for Trump in 2016 but elected a Democrat in 2018; she left those members an out by allowing them to vote their consciences, but their fate is probably sealed. I believe she has read the tea-leaves, done the math, and thinks she has secured the Democrats a majority in the House after 2020. Think I’m wrong? Have you noticed all the red state, safe-seat Republicans in the House who are retiring (twenty at last count)? They don’t intend to sit around for another two years as powerless ranking members.
• Second, impeachment plays for time and moves the spotlight off the party’s Presidential nomination. Yes, it does pull several Senators off the campaign circuit, but it also gives them a chance to shine during the Senate trial. Meanwhile, the party may be able to pare down the list and start to get behind a nominee. While Speaker Pelosi would prefer a Democratic President, arranging for one is not her job, so if impeachment retains the House majority but loses the Presidency . . . “Oh, well!” as my lovely wife likes to say!
• Third, it lays a trap. The President will trumpet (sorry, couldn’t resist) his exoneration in the Senate, but the obstruction claim will only be considered by the Supreme Court between March and June next year. If they hold (as they did for Nixon and Clinton) that the President must release information, his refusal would come just before the election, and even if he won re-election, it would set the stage for another impeachment!
• Finally, it pacifies the progressive Democratic members who have bridled at the Speaker’s reticence to impeach, and willingness to work (e.g., USMCA, appropriations, Space force) with the President. No Speaker wants a loud caucus constantly tweeting against her. She can tell them to sit down and relax–and if it doesn’t work, she can (figuratively) purge them as the cause of the disaster.

I will bet the Speaker has a few more political reasons up her sleeve: I have only a half-lizard brain, and she is a political genius. If you want to believe this is all about military aid to Ukraine, God bless you. I missed where all that fervor was when the Russians were actually invading Ukraine, and all we sent was non-lethal support. This was politics (first Trump, then the Democrats), pure and simple.

Why did the Democrats focus on impeachment? From the election night when the nightmare began, many Democrats could not stand the notion of another moment of a Trump presidency. That is why they started from the conclusion (getting him out of office) and looked for justifications. Remember the discussion of the 25th amendment (removing the President for incapacity)? Much the same thing.

What should they have done? Before I answer that question, I want to remind all my friends that I believe that President Trump should have resigned long ago, when he realized he was not suited to this peculiar job. Yes, he won the position, but it’s not El Jefe, it’s more the persuader-in-chief. He should have said this isn’t right for me (he probably would have said “it’s not good enough for me”) and moved on. As a businessman, he certainly knows that not every leader is right for every situation. But he didn’t.

So-o -o -o -o ? The Democrats should have made it clear his mafia-esque phone conversation with President Zelensky was beyond the pale. They should have censured him, a symbolic punishment which only Andrew Jackson received. Don’t knock this as only symbolic: this impeachment will end up being only symbolic. They should have passed a bill defining –using the President’s own language in the phone transcript–this type of activity as a “high crime or misdemeanor” as used in the Constitution, thereby notifying him (and his successors) that any repeat of such activity would result in impeachment. Imagine the latter scenario: forcing Congressional Republicans in the House and Senate to either support the Bill or explain why this behavior is ok with them! It’s one thing to vote against impeachment or conviction; it’s another thing altogether to vote defending unethical behavior in general. Imagine President Trump with that Bill on his desk, forced to either swallow his ego and sign it or veto it and face being overturned.

The Democrats lacked imagination, because they remain obsessed with a single thing: removing the President. It is not a condition unique to them: the Republicans did the same thing with President Clinton. For all the evil that Richard Nixon did, he had real respect for the office, and his resignation–short of impeachment–was laudatory even if forced. He did the right thing in the end. If Bill Clinton had a shred of human decency, he would have resigned when his affair with an intern became public. If he had any respect for the office, he would have resigned before lying under oath. If his Republican opponents had any imagination, they would have censured him and passed a Bill defining the reception of oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office as behavior so disgusting it qualifies as “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

After all, that is what Congress does: it makes laws. Imagine Congressional Democrats defending that one; picture President Clinton facing the same Hobson’s choice.

But no, here we are. The streetcar is pulling up to the station. The outcome is predetermined and will satisfy no one. We have set several terrible precedents: looking for reasons justifying impeachment, impeaching before the relevant court cases are completed, and simply making impeachment a more routine thing. Based on recent political history, I guarantee the next Republican-majority House under a Democratic presidency will be a real circus. Meanwhile, the morning news brings word that the House may simply hold on to the Bill of Impeachment and not forward it to the Senate. I wonder how many additional weeks of coverage they can get out of that move?

The Progressives’ singular focus on President Trump is misguided, if only because he is a symptom, not the problem. Impeachment, even if it succeeded in removing the President, would not resolve the issue. There is a political realignment going on in the Western world, and until it shakes out, there will be little tranquility. But that is a topic for another post, another day.

Some have complained that President Trump thinks he’s a king. Remember Emerson’s quote: “When you strike at a King, you must kill him.”

+1 to anyone who recognizes this title. +1 more if you can anticipate the quote I’ll introduce below. +1 more still if you guess where the analogy leads! Take credit in the comments, please.

In August, 1964, the US Navy reported that it had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam. President Johnson responded by deploying US ground forces into South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacked these forces, but the President resisted a major response until after the Presidential election in November (foreshadowing here). In February, 1965, the Viet Cong attacked Camp Holloway, an American helicopter base in the central highlands near the village of Pleiku. The battle was little more than a large raid: it lasted about twelve hours, involved some fierce hand-to-hand fighting as the Viet Cong penetrated the perimeter, resulted in eight American KIA, 126 wounded, and US military escalation. It was the first blood of the US war in Vietnam.

McGeorge Bundy was one of Kennedy’s “best & brightest” who argued for greater US involvement in Vietnam under Johnson. When asked years later about the importance of Pleiku, he said “Pleikus are like streetcars” in that one comes along regularly, and you just pick one to get where you’re going.

Where’s this going? In case you have been out of contact the last week or so, there is an impeachment going on in Washington. The proximate cause is President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. But that phone call was just a streetcar called Pleiku: a way to get where some always wanted to go.

Let’s get one thing out of the way here: what President Trump did on that call was anything but “perfect”–his term. It was base, demeaning, and unethical. He placed personal objectives above national security concerns. He crudely bargained with a foreign political leader for domestic political advantage. Is that impeachable? Sure, since impeachment is a matter for the House and Senate to define and try. Impeachable is whatever the House majority decides it is; guilty is whatever two-thirds of the Senate says it is. It is a political activity using judicial terms and methods.

That said, the hand-wringing about mixing politics and national security is overwrought. Recall Johnson’s actions before Pleiku: US forces were attacked prior to the election but didn’t get the airpower/retaliation the administration had already planned, because it was before the election. Nixon lied about a special plan to end the Vietnam war leading up to his 1972 re-election. Leading up the 1984 election, Senator Edward Kennedy offered to arrange favorable news coverage for the Soviet leadership hoping to forestall Reagan’s re-election. President Trump’s actions were (as usual) over the top, but hardly unprecedented. If you’ve never been to Washington, ***Newsflash***: politics happens there, even with national security issues.

Just eight months ago, Speaker Pelosi said “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.” (that last part was an A+ troll, btw). I don’t care which party you party with, those conditions are not met, especially when it comes to last one (bipartisan). It could have been different (has in the past), but it isn’t.

If the Speaker was serious about impeachment, she would have delayed the process long enough to get court rulings on the “obstruction of Congress” charges. Remember it was the Supreme Court’s decision against Nixon along the same lines that paved the way for his resignation in the face of a bipartisan impeachment. Trump’s cases remain in the courts, so there is no there, there (yet).

And of course, this impeachment did not occur in a vacuum. Calls for impeachment (including petitions, websites and a leadership PAC) started before Trump’s inauguration. Democratic Representatives introduced a motion to begin impeachment proceedings in December 2017; it received 58 positive votes (all from Democrats). Reasons for impeachment changed over time: foreign business ties, collusion to undermine the 2016 election, the emoluments clause, obstruction of justice, fomenting racial hatred, bribery and finally abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

In the few choice words of newly-elected Representative Rashida Tlaib, “we’re gonna impeach the m*therf*cker!” There are numerous other, less pithy but equally adamant quotes from Democratic office holders.

So we’re all riding a streetcar to get to the same destination: impeachment. Oddly enough, we all know exactly what awaits us there. There will be no surge in public opinion, for or against. There will be no conviction in the Senate. What is really going on here? What were the Democrats supposed to do, just ignore President’s Trumps gross overture in Ukraine? What else could they have done?

If you haven’t shut down my blog’s window in partisan disgust yet, I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for part two and my thoughts on the answers to those questions.

Maybe it was the annual 4th of July celebrations. Maybe it was the “USA-USA-USA” chants as the American Women’s team won the World Cup. Maybe it was the hyper-patriotism evinced by President Trump (I think this is certainly the case). Whatever the cause, I noticed the return of an unfortunate and misguided meme: “Don’t call them Americans.”

The meme is usually accompanied by a map of the Western Hemisphere, clearly labeling the two continents, and the accompanying text patronizingly explains that since all residents of said hemisphere are Americans, it is incorrect to call the citizens of just one country in that hemisphere “Americans.” Sometimes it is someone trying desperately to be clever. Sometimes it is a washed over Latin American Marxist seeking redemption. Sometimes it is just someone “Trumped.”

Let’s finish this pedantic argument off once and for all, shall we? It is entirely correct to refer to all inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere as Americans, when differentiating them from other continentals. When referring to groups as Europeans or Asians or Africans, it would make sense to refer to Americans, too. However, it would not make sense for a European to argue that they should be called “humans” instead of Europeans, not because it isn’t true (probably, not sure about the French), but because “human” is part of a different classification and does not distinguish by continent. Clear so far?

What about the particular use of the term American to designate citizens of one country, the US of A? Peoples the world over adopt naming conventions for themselves; they are not assigned by others. Sometimes these conventions make sense, other times they don’t. Canadians are not from Canadia (despite my then-young daughter’s claim) but from Canada. People from New Zealand choose to be called Kiwis after a native, flightless bird…ok? In Naples they’re Neapolitans not Niples, in Liverpool, Liverpudlians not Liverpoodles, and DC is filled with Washingtonians, not swamp creatures.

As the peoples of the Western Hemisphere became independent nations, they each chose a national title. Only one chose a title with the term “America.” Perhaps it was something of a early-adopter advantage for the US, which dissuaded others from so choosing, but that is the history, cut and dried. It’s not like the USA was a behemoth striding the globe in 1776! As a result, people from the USA call themselves Americans, as does the rest of the world. It is not at all confusing, which might be a valid reason for suggesting an alternative.

I read where someone suggested people from the United States should be called “United States-ians” which IS the official term used in Spanish (estadounidenses). Now for some real irony: there is another country in the hemisphere with the moniker United States–Los Estados Unidos de Mexico, or Mexico. Anyway, estadounidenses is a bureaucratic term; even Mexicans refer to “americanos,” “norteamericanos” (wait, isn’t Mexico in North America?) or “gringos” (¡smile when you say that, amigo!)

Brazilians are free to call themselves Americans, when it makes sense. And you can call an Egyptian an African, if you’re trying to distinguish them from a Asian, like from Israel (really).There are no Argentinians, just Argentines, Berliners are something you eat (still), Czechs come from Czechia (betcha’ didn’t know that one!), and Bolivians come from the Plurinational State of Bolivia (Nobody knows that one!).

The argument against calling people from the United States “Americans” is not technically correct, is not clever, and is not worth repeating. It is tendentious at best, simply a way to trigger some of the worst chest-thumping responses from average Americans.

And anyway, it’s pronounced ” ‘Muracan. “

We’ve been waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report for some two years. I avoided commenting during the media speculation; now that we have the results, it’s time to form an opinion. Predictably, political hacks on both sides have manned their positions and resumed trench warfare. Sometimes they switched which trenches they occupied (see “Mueller, straight arrow and savior of the country” vs “Mueller, partisan hack and political coward”).

There are few real surprises in the report. It is not well-written, so I don’t suggest you read it all. I have done that for you (ahh, retirement)! Here are six key points to consider:

1) The Trump campaign was a clown show, totally unprepared to function before or after the election. At one point, the media noted that the campaign had no foreign policy advisers, so they quickly pulled together a team which included George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, hardly experts. The former bragged at a bar to a foreign diplomat the Russians were going to help Trump, the latter continued to exaggerate his access for personal gain even after he was fired! The report also relates the story of Putin calling together Russian business oligarchs with the mission to find someone who can establish contact with Trump’s transition team (hardly the action of a case officer running his agent!). Oh, and Mueller explains that Don Jr. was probably not savvy enough to know that accepting “oppo” research from a Russian might be illegal!

2) President Trump had no idea how to govern. He asked his Intelligence leaders to stop the Mueller investigation (they don’t do such investigations). Trump is quoted by his staff as saying he thought firing Flynn, or Comey, or even Mueller would stop it. The President and several senior officials thought they could lie anytime, about anything, without consequence. Oftentimes the lies were inconsequential, unnecessary,and easily detected, yet they continued.

3) Believe it or not, Mueller got the most ethically-challenged targets, even if none of it had anything to do with conspiring with the Russians. Paul Manafort was a grifter in it for the money: Mueller actually quotes Manafort warning others about dealing with the Russians! Michael Flynn talks to the Russian Ambassador, lies about it to the FBI, oh and forgot to register as a foreign agent for Turkey (he a former senior intelligence officer!). Don’t get too excited about the investigation’s thirty-seven indictments, because most of Mueller’s indictees (twenty-eight) will escape justice: they are Russians indicted for hacking, and will probably never see the inside of a US courtroom, let alone jail.

4) Mueller’s report clearly demonstrates the importance of professional civil servants, both civil service and political appointees. They are the people, like White House Counsel Donald McGahn, Deputy National Security Adviser KT Mcfarland, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who refused to enact the President’s whims. Without them, President Trump would have committed obstruction of justice or worse.

5) If you asked most people what the Special Counsel’s investigation was all about, they would say “whether Trump colluded with Russia.” Hours of speculation on cable channels connected every dot. The NY Times and Washington Post did major stories with elaborate charts of all the relationships. The Steele dossier detailed all the dirt. Mueller had all that and a crew of trained FBI agents, and over two years he found: nothing. Setting aside the legal-technical argument over collusion vs. conspiracy, Mueller didn’t find any. He even noted that some in the campaign did welcome Russian support, but they couldn’t figure out how to make it happen (see point one, above).

6) Presidential obstruction of justice is difficult to prove, absent intent. The President has many authorities and when using those authorities, it is hard to say he is obstructing justice unless he leaves a clear piece of evidence to that effect. President Trump publicly said all kids of outrageous things (which are admissible) but these were all ambiguous and Mueller found no smoking gun on intent. He did uncover a vast body of evidence.

6) Mueller admitted he was never going to indict the President, based on current Justice Department policy. However, he made a great point that the Congress can enact a change that certain laws (for example, obstruction of justice) do apply to the President, which would override the Justice Department policy for future cases. This is a reasonable recommendation, and should receive bipartisan support. Let’s learn from our current predicament.

The bottom line: there was Russian interference, but no Russian conspiracy. The President is an ego-maniac (shocking, that) who was willing to do anything–including obstruct justice–to end the investigation which he deemed baseless. FBI counterintelligence agents surveilled associates of a Presidential candidate during a campaign. There better be some hot-stuff intel implicating those associates or the first step in all this was a serious failure of judgment. A former UK intel officer (Christopher Steele) accessed Russian sources to create and share a dossier to affect the election (his stated intent in a defamation deposition in the UK): anybody ok with that?

Lost in all the posturing is the Mueller report’s confirmation of the extensive Russian effort to influence the 2016 election, and the late and ineffectual response by the Obama administration. Their explanation to date is that the administration felt anything they did would seem to be political in advance of the election, but that explanation is undermined by their admission that they expected Secretary Clinton to win. That is, they failed to act forcefully because they thought their actions would undermine the legitimacy of a Clinton presidency. Reread that sentence and just think about it for a moment. It was more important to appear impartial than to dissuade or deter the Russians…after all, Clinton was going to win. I wonder if they would have felt the same way if they knew candidate Trump was going to win?

Where do we go from here? The House of Representatives has more than enough evidence to begin impeachment proceedings. I agree with Speaker Pelosi that they probably shouldn’t, since there is no chance the Senate will convict. Much as prosecutors sometimes decide against bringing a case to trial because they feel the judge or jury will never convict, impeachment should be reserved for the most extreme cases; President Trump may be extreme in his behavior, but this case is not. As the wise bumper sticker said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

I though President Clinton should have resigned rather than lying to a grand jury, which would have avoided his eventual impeachment. I think President Trump should resign, as he clearly does not know what he is doing. The fact he has some good ideas or nominees does not outweigh his overall incompetence.

Investigations by the federal Southern District of New York and State-level agencies can and should continue: justice must be done for any pre-election crimes committed. That justice should wait until the Trump presidency is over. In so doing, we must be careful what precedents we set. Actions taken to “get Trump” will set new standards for opposing future Presidents, whether we think they should or not. Can you imagine what a Republican-led Senate or House would investigate under “President” Biden (just google “Hunter Biden Ukraine” to get an idea)?

Do I think President Trump should remain in office? No, I thought he should have resigned when it became obvious he did not know how to govern. It seems clear his campaign was a stunt which he has been unable to develop into a meaningful administration. Do I think “The Resistance” should pack up and go home? Yes, they pursued a proven falsehood (Russia collusion) and they are discredited. It is fine and good to oppose the President’s policies and his objectionable tweets and blatant falsehoods. But he remains legitimate as President, even though he should have resigned.

There are serious issues like entitlement reform, the opioid crisis, immigration policy, and infrastructure investment that need to be addressed, rather than another obstruction investigation or impeachment proceedings. It is well past time to return to more normal politics, awaiting the next election cycle in just another 550-some days!