Tag Archives: US presidency

Waiting for The Win

5 Nov 2020 By in Politics Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday was a long, uneventful day, a day of waiting for a conclusion that didn’t come.  The suspenseful process of counting the ballots for the presidency continued all day and into the night, with the frontrunner Joe Biden holding a good lead over Trump.  By the end of the day, Biden had won Wisconsin and Michigan, flipping them blue and preserving his path to victory.  Attention then shifted to Nevada (6 electoral votes), Arizona (11), Georgia (16), and Pennsylvania (20) where mail-in ballots outstanding are expected to run mainly in Biden’s favor, but where races remains too close to call.  Alaska (3) and North Carolina (15) are also still in play but more likely to end up in the president’s column.  At midnight, according to CNN, Biden had 253 electoral votes to Trump’s 213.

Today, the presidential contest will come to a climax, as Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona report additional returns.  If Biden holds his lead in Nevada and Arizona, he will have exactly 270 and Trump will have lost.  If Biden pulls ahead in Pennsylvania on the strength of the remaining 763,000 mail-in ballots still being counted in mainly urban and suburban areas, Trump will be toast.  It will be many days, however, before Pennsylvania completes its count.

Meanwhile, Biden leads in the popular vote, being the choice of  70,470,207 voters, or 50.3 percent of the electorate nationwide, and counting.  Votes for the president stand at 67,280,936 (48.0 percent).  Record numbers of Americans voted in this election, with about 67 percent of all eligible voters, or over 160 million citizens, taking part this time.  This enormous mobilization registers Americans’ verdict on Trump’s presidency and the direction they want the nation to take.

If Biden wins, the losing candidate and his supporters may cause mayhem and violence.  So far, state officials and the major news outlets (including even Fox) have wisely projected respect for the election process and the people’s will.  It is very important to the stability of the country that they have refrained from rash claims for one side or the other, instead reporting only full vote counts while urging calm.  Michigan is a prime example, where Governor Whitmer and her dynamic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, have been speaking out on the imperative need to respect every vote and the collective will of the people.  The protracted nature of this election count, and the fact that Biden has been leading the bulk of the time, is a good thing, in that it allows voters of all stripes to accept the final outcome as being authentic, if word of a Biden victory comes.

This morning the stock market is surging on expectation that Biden will win, while the Senate will remain under Republican control.  Whereas a plunging stock market would signal a foreboding of post-election violence and instability, the surge indicates investors’ confidence that the people’s will in selecting the president will prevail.

Image: C. B. Slemp, secretary to Calvin Coolidge,
receiving word of the election in 1924,
from this source.

 

Day 31: The Empty Shell

3 Oct 2020 By in Politics Tags: , , , , 4 Comments

What are your thoughts on hearing of the unexpected illness of a president who has pitted his fortunes against those of a majority of the American people? After flouting and dismissing measures known to protect the public against COVID’s spread, Trump has gotten the disease himself. He’s in the hospital and said to be doing well, but any outcome is possible. He could recover after just a slight case, or he could worsen; he could die.

Many in Trump’s Republican party mimicked his cavalier approach to the disease. Just as he became sick, so too have a passel of his Republican allies taken ill with COVIDat the same time: GOP party chair Ronna McDaniel; First Lady Melania Trump; Senators Thom Tillis (NC), Ron Johnson (WI), and Mike Lee (UT); Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s close aide Hope Hicks, his campaign manager Bill Stepien, and former Governor Chris Christie, who, with several others listed here, helped Trump prepare for last Tuesday’s debate.

The White House approach to COVID protocols was lax, leading to an outbreak that threatens the stability and security of the United States by sidelining, distracting, and disabling too many of its influential figures at once.

Yet one’s overall impression is how little any sick or healthy Republican cares. It doesn’t matter much to Republicans that the White House can’t do the work of the people, because that long ago vanished as top priority. The Republicans’ main focus since Trump tested positive has been on his suddenly changed situation and what it might mean for them. The party’s agenda consists of two main items: rushing Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court and making sure (by any means) that Trump wins re-election. No one cares whether Trump misses a few days of work at the White House, because, in all his tenure there, he’s avoided the chore of serving the people.

This has become clear as his schedule over the past week or so has been scrutinized for the bearing it might have on Washington’s contagion. Jetting around to campaign rallies, schmoozing at fund-raisers, preparing for the presidential debate, putting in a ghastly showing in it, and hosting a GOP love-fest for Amy Coney Barrett in the Rose Garden: such are the events that engross Trump most.

In the meantime, millions of Americans are out of work, running out of funds, and going hungry. Many are worried about losing their homes and access to medical care, even as winter comes on and the virus lingers and spreads. Businesses are folding, wildfires rage, and the bright possibilities of vibrant, solvent cities have evaporated. Cities like New York and Chicago, which represent some of the nation’s greatest concentrations of human and real capital, are barely holding together. Some vast piles of money that Congress set aside to help with these problems remain unspent or were spent improperly, attesting to Mr Trump’s ineptitude and indifference when he’s taxed with helping anyone but himself.

Under Donald Trump, the White House has become an empty shell. While he receives Cadillac treatment at Walter Reed, Americans can’t help but notice how little Trump and his ilk care about them.

Image: Currier & Ives print of the White House (1877),
from this source.

Day 37: Biden and A Return To Normalcy

27 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , 7 Comments

Joe Biden comes across as such a nice guy that it’s easy to discount how smart, capable, and hard-driving he is. Despite being blatantly imperfect and visibly elderly, he embodies several qualities–such as pragmatism, civility, and a deep familiarity with the nuts and bolts of governmental processes–that the US desperately needs in the presidency.

Biden isn’t trying to be overly charismatic.  He isn’t promising to fix everything that’s wrong with our culture and political system. He isn’t trying to have the most earth-shattering agenda.  He is, however, someone who thoroughly understands the issues the nation faces, and he approaches them in a sophisticated and thoughtful way. He knows the backstories and the players. Moreover, Biden abides by a tradition of statesmanship that has drawn men and women to dedicate themselves to national service in hopes of earning broad public gratitude, favor, and esteem.

Presidents are uniquely dependent on the American people for their position and prestige, a dependence that every president except Donald Trump has recognized by treating American citizens with honor, reverence, and consideration.

Trump is alone among American presidents in denigrating the people. Far from having an affectionate relationship with Americans, he has insulted, defamed, and even threatened violence against them and their state governments. This is so subversive of American norms and Constitutional order that most Americans are dumbfounded. Nothing will be left of this government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” if the people let the incumbent president usurp their power.

Climate change, health care, women’s rights, black equality: these are all important issues, but acting on them is mainly Congress’s job. This presidential election is about something far simpler and more urgently necessary. It’s about having a president who respects the people as the source of his power.  Biden will be a fine and honorable president: one who respects all the people, serves them, and makes them proud.

Image: Biden discussing a chemical weapons treaty
during a 1997 meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
as his Republican colleague Jesse Helms looks on,
 from this source.

Trump’s Health

10 Jan 2020 By in Governing Tags: , , , 1 Comment

One aspect of President Trump’s Iran message that I have yet to comment on concerns the words he stumbled on during its delivery.  While Trump came across for the most part more or less normally, he mispronounced several words in a very odd way, completely bungling the words “tolerated,” “accomplishments,” and “shape.”  He was huffing and sniffing as he talked, and his breathing and speech were labored, as though he had dry mouth and his nose was plugged.  It seemed like something more than a cold.

The president’s noticeable impairment comes after an unscheduled and unexplained weekend visit he made to Walter Reed Medical Hospital outside Washington less than two months ago.

Changes in the president, coupled with the administration’s unexpected and destabilizing military action against General Suleimani of Iran, have stimulated new concerns about the president’s state of health and fitness to govern.  Trump guards facts about his health carefully, a secrecy that only heightens alarm and fuels speculation.

Some observers on Twitter, including Tom Joseph of Chicago and others writing under the handle @Duty2Warn, tweet regularly about the President’s apparent medical and psychological condition.  In the absence of direct information, they attempt to assess the President’s health by scrutinizing video footage of his public appearances: his speech, affect, and gait.  They look at what he says and how he says it for signs of undisclosed illnesses such as dementia, stroke, or personality disorder.

In a related development, a group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals sent a letter to Congress this week, urging that Trump undergo a psychological evaluation to ascertain that he remains fit to exercise the powers of commander-in-chief.  According to the Independent, the letter warns that the stress of impeachment could drive an already tempestuous president to act in ways that are unwise and detrimental to the nation’s security.

 

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If the GOP Is Wise, It Will Dump Trump Now

23 Oct 2019 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments


From my vantage here in Chicago, I can sense the forces in favor of Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office building among Republicans on Capitol Hill.  Even as David Brooks has insisted that impeachment is a political mistake, even as Tamara Keith and other analysts see political “tribalism” as ineluctably binding Republican legislators to President Trump, one can read events as building toward a directly opposite result, and one very liberating and propitious for all the perplexed Republicans now “hiding in the tall grass,” uncharacteristically quiet and desiring at all costs to avoid the press.

One sign of a change in Republican sentiment is that vocal defense of the President has stopped.  Until lately, leading Republicans have eschewed impeachment as a spurious partisan maneuver, insisting in the face of the Democrat-led initiative that the president is innocent of any action meeting the Constitution’s definition of an impeachable offense (“treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors”).  Since September 19, however, when word of the President’s efforts to strong-arm Ukraine into giving him political dirt against Joe Biden began circulating, the White House has itself supplied prima facie confirmation of Trump’s determination to use his official powers for personal ends.

With remarkable speed, the president has moved from doing wrong in private to openly testing the proposition that he can do no wrong. He has breezily defended his actions as a matter of “style.”  He has gone so far as to make public statements at odds with his Constitutional duties and responsibilities, denying the legitimacy of, and declining to cooperate with, the House impeachment inquiry, and railing against the “phony” emoluments clause.

The President has moved onto dangerous new ground, all but thumbing his nose at anyone who would insist that he adhere to the Constitution.  This was the significance of Mick Mulvaney’s open admission of a quid pro quo: Trump expects his fellow Republicans to tolerate his dirty dealings and “get over it.”  As though the Constitution is something to go beyond.

Everyone who passed civics grasps that Trump is violating federal election laws.  Once fair elections go by the boards, nothing will be left of the republic, either.

As public servants who have their own oaths to uphold, their own powers to wield, Republican lawmakers can hardly fail to notice how Trump is blossoming into a fearful liability: a president without fealty to their own political needs or principles, an interloper who, having cannibalized their once “grand” party, is intent on desecrating its remains, as in his disastrous unilateral decision to withdraw US troops from Syria and abandon the Kurds.  Trump wants Republicans to do more to defend him.  Yet why should congressional Republicans remain loyal to a president deviating so wildly from his Constitutional job description, which is to execute the will of Congress and respect its laws?

Republicans are supposedly afraid of cutting Donald Trump loose.  What, really, would the downside be?  After Trump’s removal from office, the very conservative Mike Pence would be the incumbent president.  Trump’s much-talked-of base supposedly wouldn’t like this, but let’s face it, this is something no one can know.  What will Trump be, when the amplifiers are turned off?  The Republican Party is still lousy with political talent (much of it in abeyance).  Boosted back into a commanding position through a gutsy act of patriotism, the GOP could find redemption, enjoying a new and more broad-based popularity.  It could even remake itself in time to beat the Democrats in 2020.  Nikki Haley, anyone?  She’s on a long list of Republican alternates published the other day in the Rolling Stone.

Image: Black and white screen-shot of Donald Trump just before his inauguration,
© 2019 Susan Barsy

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