The shutdown, or as David Frum put it, "the President's hostage attempt," goes on, revulsing and alienating government workers and the public on top of the revulsion and alienation they first felt when he took office and started to self-destruct the government. (The exception, or so we're told, is the ICE border agent union, which relishes the idea of moving from the backwaters of law enforcement to the closest thing we've ever had to Hitler's SS.) As I've noted before, the first and foremost job of every Chief Executive is to keep things working. In many regards Trump had already broken the organizations he was responsible for running before he shuttered offices and halted paychecks (e.g., see the story below on EPA prosecutions). His new cudgel is blunter, and dumber.
The first thing that popped into my mind when Trump insisted on shutting down the government is that this is why we don't negotiate with terrorists. Except I couldn't use that, because I believe that we should negotiate with terrorists, with hostage-takers, with all manner of brutes and bullies. I'd even be willing to quote Winston Churchill, something about "jaw-jaw" being better than "war-war." But Trump sees this as a test of power, to be resolved by bending Congressional Democrats into submission. The reason terrorists have such a poor reputation for negotiating is that, like Trump, they're insatiable. Republicans have played this budget chokehold card many times since 1995, always coming back for more, so what Trump is doing is completely in character. The difference this time is that Democrats didn't win a major election just to let Trump trod all over them. They were voted in to resist Republican tyranny, and this is their first serious test.
One thing I feel I need to decide this week (or, let's say, by the end of January, at latest) is whether I'm going to try to write my unsolicited advice book for Democrats in 2020. Say it takes three months to write, two to get edited and published, that gets us to July, by which time we'll probably have a dozen Democrats running for President. (I'm counting four right now: Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, and Tulsi Gabbard; Wikipedia lists more I wasn't aware of, plus an announcement pending from Kamala Harris tomorrow.) But that's just a measure of how soon what Matt Taibbi likes to call "the stupid season" will be upon us. I have no interest in handicapping the race, or even mentioning candidates by name. I'm more interested in historical context, positioning, and what I suppose we could call campaign ethics: how candidates should treat each other, the issues, the media, the voters, and Republicans. And note that the book is only directed toward Democrats who are actually concerned enough to get involved in actual campaigns. Even there, it won't be a "how to" book. I don't really know anything about running a campaign. It's more why we need candidates in the first place, and what those candidates should say.
Some rough ideas for the book:
I'm thinking about starting off with a compare/contrast between Donald Trump and George Washington. They are, by far, the richest Americans ever to have won office, and otherwise couldn't be more unalike (unless I have to deal with GW's ownership of slaves, which suggests some similar views on race). The clearest difference is how we relate to money, and how we expect politicians with money to serve.
I'd probably follow this up with brief compare/contrasts between Trump and selected other presidents. I might find various presidents that offer useful contrasts on things like integrity, diligence, intelligence, care, a sense of responsibility, a command of details, tolerance of corruption. I doubt I'd find any president Trump might compare favorably to, but it might be helpful to make the effort.
Then I want to talk about political eras. Aside from Washington/Adams, there are four major ones, each dominated by a party, each with only two exceptions as president:
There's quite a bit of interesting material I can draw from those periods. Each starts with a legendary figure, and ends with a one-term disaster. (I suppose you could say that about Washington/Adams as well, but that's a rather short descent for an era.) In each, the exceptions substantially resemble the dominant party. But the Reagan-to-Trump era does reflect an anomaly: each of the first three eras started with a shift to a broader and more egalitarian democracy, whereas Reagan was opposite. Each era had a mid-period nudge in the same direction (Jackson/Van Buren, Roosevelt, Kennedy/Johnson, but also GW Bush). Of course, the anti-democratic tilt of Reagan-to-Trump needs some extra analysis, both to show how it could run against the long arc of American history and why after 1988 it was never able to post commanding majorities (as occurred in previous eras).
I then posit that in 2020 the goal is not just to defeat Trump but to win big enough to launch a new (and overdue) era. This will be the big jump, but I think if Democrats aim big, they can win big -- and it will take nothing less to make the necessary changes. This is possible because Republicans, both with and without Trump, have boxed themselves into a corner where all of their beliefs and commitments only serve to further hurt the vast majority of Americans. It will be tough because Republicans still have a stranglehold on a large segment of the public. But this spell can be broken if Democrats look beyond the conciliatory tactics and marginal goals that marked the campaigns of Obama and the Clintons.
At some point this segues into a lesson on the need for unity and tolerance of diversity within the Democratic Party. I'll probably bring up Reagan's "11th commandment," which served Reagan well but has since been lost on recent Tea Partiers and RINO-bashers (although the post-election fawning over Trump suggests that Republicans will come around to backing anything that wins for them).
I'll probably wind up with a brief survey of issues, which will stress flexibility and feedback within a broad set of principles. I can imagine later doing a whole book on this, but this would just offer a taste.
Book doesn't need to be more than 300 pages, and could be as short as half that. It is important to get it out quickly to have any real impact. I would consider working with a co-author, especially someone who could carry on to do much of the promotion -- something I'm very unlikely to be much good at.
While I can imagine that this could be worth doing, I can also think of various reasons not to bother. The obvious one is that I haven't been feeling well, having a good deal of back pain, and having a trouble with my eyes -- things that have taken a toll from my normal workload over the last few months. I also seem to be having more difficulties coming up with satisfactory writing. I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to write up a response to a particularly annoying Facebook rant, and never did come up with anything I felt like sharing. I am especially bothered by self-destructive arguments I see both on the left and the right of the Democratic Party spectrum, and this sometimes tempts me to throw up my hands and leave you all to your fates. On the other hand, sometimes this tempts me to think that all the help you need is a little clarity that I fancy I can provide.
Just knocked this much off the top of my head, in two sets of a couple hours each, so this is very rough. Next step will be to try to flesh out a bit more outline, maybe 3-5 times the length, with a lot of bullet points. That would be the goal for the next 7-10 days. If I manage that, I'll circulate it to a few friends, then make a decision whether to proceed. The alternative project at this point is probably a memoir, which is something that can take however much time it takes (or however much I have left).
Comments welcome, and much appreciated.
Meanwhile, some scattered links this week:
Matthew Yglesias:
Michelle Alexander: Time to break the silence on Palestine: "Martin Luther King Jr. courageously spoke out about the Vietnam War. We must do the same when it comes to this grave injustice of our time."
Yoni Applebaum: Impeach Donald Trump: "Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals -- and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs." Even after the 2016 election made impeachment possible in the House, I didn't have any enthusiasm for this particular agenda. But I noticed this line: "The question that determines whether an act is impeachable, though, is whether it endangers American democracy." I'm not sure that really defines the principle, but it sure describes Trump. Long piece, pretty comprehensive.
Jonathan Blitzer:
Frank Bruni: BuzzFeed's controversial Cohen story raises question: Did Trump want to be President? "His campaign was a marketing venture. That's why he didn't want to put business on hold."
Will Bunch: The huge problem with Mueller's Trump-Russia probe that no one talks about.
Isaac Chotiner: The disturbing, surprisingly complex relationship between white identity politics and racism: interview with Ashley Jardina, author of White Identity Politics
Jane Coaston:
Jason Ditz:
US airstrike kills 23 in Eastern Syria, mostly fleeing civilians.
Trump announces US will develop space-based missile defense: Hey, you think the border wall is a stupid waste of money, offering false security bound up with unsound policy-- you ain't seen anything yet.
Ben Ehrenreich: To those who think we can reform our way out of the climate crisis: "Our only hope is to stop exploiting the earth -- and its people."
Robert Fisk: Bernie Sanders, Israel and the Middle East.
David A Graham: Trump's entire shutdown approach, encapsulated in one tweet.
Charles Glass: "Tell Me How This Ends" "America's muddled involvement with Syria.
Umair Irfan: How Trump's EPA is letting environmental criminals off the hook, in one chart: "Referrals for criminal prosecutions for environmental crimes are at a 30-year low."
Rebecca Jennings: The controversy around Trump's fast-food football feast, explained.
Cameron Joseph:
Trump's companies boosted foreign worker visa use to 10-year high.Fred Kaplan:
Trump's Star Wars fantasy: "The president is proposing the most ambitious and costly missile defense system since the Reagan era. It won't make us any safer." I lobbed my wisecrack under Jason Ditz's piece, above. If you look at this sanely, there are maybe 8-10 countries around the world that this system might theoretically defend us from, and they are (with good reason) more afraid of us than we are of them. Why can't we just negotiate a stand down where we each give up the offensive capability this prays to shoot down? That would be much safer and much less expensive, especially for the US (the only nation rich and deranged enough to try to deploy a complete defensive system, as well as the only nation with a trillion dollar plan to rebuild its entire nuclear arsenal; other nations wouldn't have to do more than countermeasures, such as the "dumptruck full of gravel" that Chalmers Johnson wrote about -- enough to destroy every satellite around the earth). Of course, it's possible that space-based anti-missile systems never were a serious technical idea. Back when Reagan first unveiled his "Star Wars" fantasy, Doonesbury suggested that its SDI acronym really meant SFI: Strategic Funding Initiative: i.e., a scam for contractors to soak up billions of dollars.
Trump and Putin's cone of seclusion: On the lack of notes on meetings between Trump and Putin. Title sounds like a flashback reference to Don Adams' TV spy comedy, Get Smart's cone of silence.
Dara Lind:
w/Li Zhou: Here's Trump's latest offer to end the shutdown -- and why Democrats aren't interested: Main points:
w/Javier Zarracina: By the numbers: how 2 years of Trump's policies have affected immigrants.
Even with the shutdown, the Trump administration is suing to take land for the border wall.
William Barr paved the way for Trump on immigration. Now he might help Trump go even further.
William Barr hearing: attorney general nominee's immigration record aligns with Trump's: "Barr was building a border wall back in 1991."
PR Lockhart: Supporters of Confederate monuments had a very bad week: "The battle over Confederate monuments is still raging -- and states are losing.".
German Lopez: There are no "feel-good" government shutdown stories: "The government shutdown is causing a lot of people to suffer. There's nothing good about it.".
Pankaj Mishra: The malign incompetence of the British ruling class: "With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine."
Andrew Prokop: The weekend's Trump-Russia news, explained: Big story here is Adam Goldman/Michael S Schmidt/Nicholas Fandos: FBI opened inquiry whether Trump was secretly working on behalf of Russia, but the timing says more about the FBI's defense instincts in response to the Comey firing than anything Trump had done.
JM Rieger: Trump used to brag about the click-in online polls his former fixer tried to rig.
David Roberts: Here's one fight the Green New Deal should avoid for now: "The smart political move is leaving the question of what counts as clean energy as open as possible."
Jennifer Rubin:
Aaron Rupar:
T-Mobile spent lots of money at Trump's hotel while awaiting approval for lucrative merger: "The chain of events highlights Trump's unprecedented conflicts of interest."
Trump promotes Pat Buchanan column that makes white nationalist case for his border wall.
Amanda Sakuma:
Why Trump and Pelosi are caught in a bitter, petty game of one-upmanship: "The Trump v. Pelosi shutdown travel fight, explained."
Rudy Giuliani just muddied the waters even more about the 2016 Trump Tower Moscow talks: "The president's lawyer says Trump Organization had 'an active proposal' in Russia until October, November 2016."
Dylan Scott:
Trump is looking for a new way to cut Medicaid -- without Congress.
Congress has 7 big ideas to cut drug prices. Here's how they work. Any/all would help (and I can think of a few more), but my preferred solution is: "7. Rip up our patent system and start from scratch." Actually, I'd be willing to phase the patent system out, first by incrementally reducing the 17-year term down to zero, in the meantime replacing the monopoly grant with arbitrated licensing fees. As this phases in, you shift research and development costs to "open source" public development, which in the long run will be more effective. I'd also try to internationalize this system, inviting other countries to share in, and add to, the cost savings and development bounty. The article talks about prizes as incentive for private development. I think there is a place for that, but it shares with patents the problem of being a high-risk, high-reward startegy, and tends to reinforce secrecy. I'd rather see more development subsidized up front, so there is very little risk, with prizes more as a way of recognition and reputation-building.
House Democrats are frustrated the shutdown is drowning out the rest of their agenda.
Emily Stewart:
The shutdown's effect on the US economy, explained: "The longer it goes on, the bigger the risk is of broader damage."
Nancy Pelosi uninvites Trump from the State of the Union until the shutdown is over.
Matt Taibbi:
Return of the Neocons! "The new 'Bulwark' is the latest signpost on the road back to power for America's most disgraced brand of politics."
Jeffrey Toobin: William Barr and the crucial role of the Justice Department.
Janie Velencia: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to raise taxes on the rich -- and Americans agree.
Alex Ward:
Felix Sater, the spy, criminal, and mafia-linked executive tied to Trump Tower Moscow, explained.
Trump Tower Moscow, and Michael Cohen's lies about it, explained.
The Pentagon extends US troop mission at southern border for 9 months
The US apparently kept no detailed notes of Trump-Putin meetings for the past 2 years. I'm not sure this is the "big problem" Ward claims, but it's kind of weird. It reflects the fact that Trump doesn't really make American policy on Russia, and doesn't trust his own government not to leak the dumb things he says. Ward is probably right that the Russians do have detailed notes. Perhaps some day we'll get to read them. Whether we believe them is another matter.
John bolton's obsession with fighting Iran is making Trump policy more dangerous.
A few days before the 2016 election, journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote this about Donald Trump: "He has no concept of a nonzero-sum engagement, in which a deal can be beneficial for both sides. A win-win scenario is intolerable to him, because mastery of others is the only moment when he is psychically at peace." . . .
Still, in Trump's hierarchy of bliss, dominance does seem to rank at the top. "I love to crush the other side and take the benefits," he wrote in a book called Think Big. "Why? Because there is nothing greater. For me it is even better than sex, and I love sex." He went on to observe: "You hear lots of people say that a great deal is when both sides win. That is a bunch of crap. In a great deal you win -- not the other side. You crush the opponent and come away with something better for yourself." . . .
Now we've got a president who not only resists playing nonzero-sum games but actively fans emotions that impede the wise playing of them. And as if that weren't enough, the fanning of those emotions can recalibrate the games, making lose-lose outcomes even worse than they would be otherwise. . . . Trump's policy instincts make good governance hard, and his political style makes the consequences of bad governance grave.
Most of the piece goes into Trump's trade deal strategy, which is a lot like his strategy everywhere else: to demolish his opponent no matter how much it winds up hurting himself. Then there is this:
Alternative histories are speculative. But the general principle makes sense: If your policies [Bush in Iraq, Obama in Syria and Libya] bring instability that in turn breeds fear and hatred, then candidates who thrive on those things are more likely to get elected. So if there's a chunk of international law designed to prevent instability -- such as the UN charter's constraints on transborder aggression -- maybe you should pay some attention to it, especially if you're going to go around singing the praises of the rules-based international order [he quoted Iraq War supporter George Packer, chastising Trump for this]. Yet many American politicians who sing those praises also championed the Iraq and Libya adventures.
That those people include Hillary Clinton -- the only alternative to Trump in the 2016 election -- tells you how far the American political system is from taking global governance seriously. On the one hand, we had a candidate who ostensibly supported the UN charter but casually disregarded it. On the other, we had Trump, who denounced various US military adventures but disdains the international law that stands in opposition to military adventurism.