Tacitus Speaks: The Lesser of Two Weevils
The coming election will, in no small part, be decided by who decides not to vote. Hot Air explains:
Good thing neither of the two parties is depending very heavily on young adults to replicate their high turnout in 2008 and 2012, eh?
Democrats must be wondering what it’s going to take. Bernie Sanders is on the trail, Clinton is doing dopey “Funny or Die” segments, Katy Perry even took her top off. How can these darned millennials be convinced that their corrupt, charmless, dishonest nominee is worth turning out for?
That is… quite a trend. The glass-half-empty view for Clinton is that the great question of the election, whether she can reassemble Obama’s coalition, is being answered and that answer ain’t good. Young adults won’t turn out. She’ll have to hope there are enough college-educated white women at the polls to balance Trump’s gigantic margins among the white working class. The glass-half-full view is that she’s already [slightly] ahead in the polls nationally with plenty of room still to grow among the young before November. And not all of the decline in enthusiasm among millennials is necessarily attributable to her. Romney won 37% of the 18-29 vote in 2012 but Trump routinely polls terribly among that group, to the point that he trails [Libertarian] Gary Johnson in some surveys. It may be that Republican millennials are deserting Trump at rates similar to or greater than Democratic millennials deserting Hillary, which would blunt the effect of the downturn in turnout on her overall numbers.
Current polling shows about 7% of voters supporting the Libertarian and 2% the Green candidate. That’s a fair piece of the electorate but history tells us the third/fourth party vote will likely shrink somewhat by election day. In terms of major candidate advantage from this, it probably helps Mr Trump most, albeit only to a small degree.
Far more important will be the number and demographic breakdown of deliberate non-voters. Millennials are key here, although they aren’t the only demographic wherein turnout is uncertain. Most within the young adult slice would normally be Democrat voters (this reflecting their thorough indoctrination by the clerisy) but not-voting will also be a phenomenon among college-educated Republican women. Sadly, they take the Donald too literally.
Back to Hot Air:
One other thing. The number of voters aged 18-34 who said they would definitely vote was also down sharply at this point in 2012 from the heights of 2008, throwing a scare into Obama that even he couldn’t reassemble the “Obama coalition.” In the end, though, they showed up for him. According to the exit polls, the 18-29 group four years ago was actually a slightly larger share of the electorate (19%) than it was in 2008 (18%). Either they were more prepared to vote in 2012 than they let on when Gallup asked them that fall or they rallied in the final weeks of the election.
The last-minute surge in Millennial Obama voters in 2012 can be attributed almost entirely to the role of colleges in herding their students to the polls, which were typically located on campus. That, and peer pressure. The former will probably be repeated in 2016. I’m not sure the latter will be so powerful this time.
Still, any downturn in young adults’ enthusiasm to vote is good news on balance for Trump. What’s not good news for Trump is this new analysis of voter registration by Dave Wasserman… The potential for a Trump surge this fall lies in the fact that there are enormous numbers of white voters who didn’t vote in the last election… How enormous a number are we talking about? Try 55 million, more than 10 times Obama’s national margin of victory over Romney in 2012. By Wasserman’s best estimate, 47 million of those white nonvoters have no college degree, making them prime candidates to support Trump. The number of potential Trump voters out there (whites without degrees who didn’t vote last time) is so vast that Trump would only need to turn out small percentages of them in key states to swing the entire election – 2.9% in Florida, 7.5% in Ohio, 11.8% in Pennsylvania. The problem is that most of the nonvoter pool, 40 out of 55 million, isn’t registered to vote at all. And as best as Wasserman can tell, there are no signs yet that they’re starting to register this fall in order to vote for Trump.
…[This is] not a disaster for Trump that they aren’t since there are still 15 million or so whites – three times Obama’s 2012 margin of victory – who are registered to vote even though they chose not to cast a ballot last time.
A sharply improved turnout in 2016 compared to 2012 by non-college white voters is absolutely needed for a Trump win. I don’t know if he’ll get what he requires. However I would note the RNC has been reporting excellent results from their state-level voter registration drives. The data below is two weeks old. Still, it’s instructive:
Note the drop in Democrat registration in Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Does this reflect party-switchers? For sure it suggests lack of enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton.
…Trump’s appeal to working-class whites is stronger than any Republican’s since Reagan but his lack of a sophisticated turnout operation might end up with him leaving lots of potential votes on the table, easily enough to mean the difference between victory and defeat…
Ohio is traditionally the swing state. Trump is ahead there. Breitbart News has more:
Now that Trump is winning the “must-win,” the New York Times has revised its view of Ohio’s importance: “After decades as one of America’s most reliable political bellwethers, an inevitable presidential battleground that closely mirrored the mood and makeup of the country, Ohio is suddenly fading in importance this year,” writes Jonathan Martin, who notes that Clinton has basically conceded the state.
Apparently the Clinton campaign’s central problem with Ohio is that they’re losing badly with white voters. Sometimes bellwether states really are bellwethers.
Then there’s the black vote. The Clinton minions are very worried about reduced black turnout this year, especially in Florida. Hillary’s problem there is exacerbated by an issue that Haitians have with her and Bill – to whit, that they took charge of the post-earthquake reconstruction effort in Haiti then funneled the money to corporate cronies while doing essentially nothing for the Haitian people, many of whose relatives are now registered Florida voters.
Given the above, the the obvious strategy for both candidates is to drive up their opponent’s negatives in the hope of getting large numbers of traditional Republican or Democrat voters to stay home on election day (or not cast a vote at the top of the ticket). Both sides are at this. A related and perhaps more important issue will be which candidate sustains the most self-inflicted damage over the next five weeks. And then of course there will be “events, my dear boy, events,” since each piece of new news has the potential to shine an unflattering light on either Donald or Hillary.
Me, I don’t think it’s ethical to abstain. I believe we’re obliged as citizens to choose the lesser of two weevils.
Don’t know the old joke? Well, here it is, circa 1809. The setting is the wardroom of HMS Surprise, where the Captain is dining – and drinking, heavily – with his officers as the ship labors its way into the South Pacific Ocean from Antarctic waters. From ‘Master and Commander:’
Dinner in the officers’ mess. The captain is inebriated but asks, apparently seriously:
Captain Jack Aubrey: “Do you see those two weevils doctor?” [they are crawling in some ancient hard bread there on the table]
Dr Stephen Maturin: “I do.”
Aubrey: “Which would you choose?”
Maturin: [sighs, annoyed] “Neither; there is not a scrap a difference between them. They are the same species of Curculio.”
Aubrey: “If you had to choose. If you were forced to make a choice. If there was no other response…”
Maturin: [Exasperated] “Well then, if you are going to push me… [the doctor studies the weevils briefly] I would choose the right hand weevil; it has… significant advantage in both length and breadth.”
[the Captain thumps his fist in the table]
Aubrey: “There, I have you! You’re completely dished! Do you not know that in the service… [pauses] one must always choose the lesser of two weevils?”
The officers burst out in laughter.
– Tacitus
Copyright 2016 Tacitus
www.vicsocotra.com
Tacitus Speaks: The PFD
Editor’s note: the reflections of an ancient Roman orator and philosopher do not necessarily reflect the views of the Socotra House Editorial Board, the Department of Defense or the American Red Cross. The views expressed are those of the noted lecturer. But I worked for the PFD, too.- Vic
Tacitus Speaks
The PFD
I’ve been wanting for some time to explain why I’m not worried by the prospect of a Trump presidency – indeed I’m comfortable with it. The reason stems from my experience with the PFD.
Who was the PFD? How did I get to know him? Well, he was my boss once upon a time. PFD is an acronym which, when expanded, was his nickname – one only spoken behind his back. I got to know him when the PFD was the J2 – the Director of Intelligence – on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. I was his Executive Assistant. Not that I volunteered for the job. No, he picked me, much to my surprise. And, honestly, fear. I knew the PFD’s reputation and had really hoped to avoid the basilisk gaze. For the first couple weeks of my tenure as EA I expected to be executed momentarily (professionally or maybe literally). Then I realized that I really could do this thing, exacting thought the PFD’s requirements were. Then I began to find the whole thing fascinating, an extremely valuable experience. By the end of my time with him I felt, if not comfortable, at least valued. He treated me very well. And, to be purely mercenary about it, I received as quid pro quo for my work a very substantial career boost from the PFD’s patronage.
The PFD’s style was all go-go aggressiveness. The pace was furious from the first moment to the last, although happily he was no workaholic and managed to package his typical day into a mere (by Joint Staff standards) twelve hours. While his predecessor as Joint Staff J2 had demanded little of the hundreds of people working for him – choosing instead to depend on his personal skills – the PFD expected a great deal from J2 personnel. He actually had them running sometimes. Miracles were demanded at close of business, deliverable first thing the next morning. Failure to produce drew ferocious rejoinders from the PFD, scathing commentary which, while it may have been true, was certainly not nice. Nobody liked being on the receiving end of the PFD’s wrath. Some wilted immediately. Others nursed grudges. He was unloved by his peers and a problem child for his administrative superior, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. On the other hand he was warmly appreciated and fiercely defended by his operational boss, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chairman wanted good intel and didn’t care too much how it arrived. The PFD always delivered good intel.
Some other factors concerning the PFD: He was a homely fellow with a lovely (and rich) wife. He had two fine daughters. Near as I could tell his home life was harmonious – this in stark contrast to most of his peers, who were divorced. The PFD was a big believer in “genes.” He thought capabilities were innate, not learned. Certainly he operated primarily on instinct. He dominated other people because it came naturally to him. He offended them because that came naturally too. He was totally honest, which of course contributed greatly to the matter of giving offense. He had no use for bureaucracy and little for staying in his organizational lane. In 1992 – the year I went to work for him – the PFD voted for Ross Perot for President. He was drawn to mavericks and out-of-the-box solutions. I don’t think he had a motto, but if he did it would have been “fortune favors to bold.”
The way to succeed with the PFD was to do your job quickly and well. There really was no other way to get on his good side. Who suffered under his regime? The mediocre, mostly. Intelligence bureaucrats in general. Any rival. His sorting process for subordinates and peers was swift – and occasionally unfair. It was good to win, bad to lose.
I see parallels between the PFD and Donald Trump. Trump too has an intuitive style, a penchant for aggression, a willingness to offend, and is relentless in pursuit of success. Like the PFD, Mr Trump is a homely guy with a lovely wife and some first-rate children. Trump of course is rich as Croesus and loves to flaunt it. He has a crude sort of honesty, making no real concession to the conventional graces. If the PFD supported Ross Perot back in the day, the Donald is the Perot of our day – and then some.
If you look closely at Trump’s approach to his work as a new-made politician, one observer described his method as “pace and lead.” He paces the public by picking up on their concerns and giving voice to them, often with hyperbole. Once he’s demonstrated that he’s with us, he then leads by quietly shifting toward less extreme – but more doable – solutions. The mainstream media likes to call this “flip-flopping” or “backtracking” but as usual they’ve got it wrong. Another way to look at the Donald’s method is in business terms. He stakes out a going-in position, usually extreme, and then negotiates his way to the final deal, always less extreme. He certainly doesn’t expect his going-in position to be his final one. It’s all in the art of the deal, you see.
Success in a Trump Administration, I expect, will be a matter of performance, not posturing. He’ll expect his subordinates to deliver. He’ll demand the moon and stars but be quite satisfied when the sensible Secretary of Whatever returns with something that meets the President’s broad objectives but isn’t exactly what he ordered. Who will suffer under his regime? Stuffed shirts. Process men. Conventional thinkers of all varieties. The thin-skinned. Betrayers. Oh, yeah, and anybody who crosses him and some who didn’t mean to.
Rush Limbaugh said that his opponents takes Mr Trump literally but not seriously. Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally. I think that’s correct in both cases.
Bear in mind that, unlike Democrat Presidents, a President Trump will face significant limiters. The “you can’t say that, you can’t do that” crowd will be out patrolling every day. More significantly, checks and balances will return to government. The principle of separation of powers will return to the fore. People right, left, and center will insist on scrupulous adherence to every word and clause in the US Constitution. Trump will be bound by all that. Even if he wanted to rule as a royalist (which I don’t think he does) he won’t be granted that dispensation.
This election comes down to a choice between risk and certainty, between change and the status quo, between the not-so slow slide toward systemic failure and Trumpian turmoil. Me, I choose risk, change, turmoil. I’ve already figured out where the other choice is taking us and I don’t want to go there. In 1980 I knew I didn’t want Jimmy Carter to be retained as President. But I was sufficiently buffaloed by leftist propaganda – masquerading as conventional wisdom – to think I couldn’t vote for that unsteady actor-cowboy Ronald Reagan. So I cast my ballot for third party candidate John Anderson. What I did was throw my vote away. I won’t make that mistake again.
If I could survive and indeed prosper under the PFD you can do well with the Donald. So take a chance on success. Don’t worry too much about the rough edges.
Copyright 2016 Tacitus
www.vicsocotra.com
Tacitus: 4200 Miles
Gentle Readers,
Tacitus, our Roman correspondent, has been out to see America on the ground these past few weeks. He has just returned from an epic road trip, of which correspondent Arias and I were a small part. We shared the view from the road, at least a thousand miles of it, anyway, and I think I can safely say that a good time was had by all. Sit back and enjoy a travelogue of what is arguably still the coolest nation on the planet. The Daily Socotra stream will also continue in parallel.
-Vic
Well, 4202 miles exactly, if you want to get all fact-checky about it.
While I was on the long drive east I paid little attention to the news. But I paid enough attention to see that the left has a new buzzword, a new propaganda meme: the fact-check. This is no less than a brazen attempt to reverse Mrs Clinton’s worst trait – her unfailing, calculated dishonesty – and turn it onto Donald Trump. Mr Trump, they want us to believe, is a liar. Everything he says must be fact-checked by the mainstream media. Fairness in treating the two candidates, you see, is unfair to Hillary. So away the fact-checking teams, away. Their duty is to take the Donald’s exaggerations, his hyperbole, his lack of precision, and twist those into intentional serious dishonesty. Thus, when Mr Trump says Hillary has been in public life for 30 years and has done nothing to fix the national problems she harps upon, the fact-checkers say “Oh, no-no. Hillary has only been on the national stage since 1992. That’s not 30 years. Just 24. Trump you terrible liar.” Setting aside her years as First Lady of Arkansas – a public position – what the media is trying to defect you from is the fact that she really has spent decades achieving nothing. Scandal management notwithstanding, of course. She’s achieved a lot there. But then she has help, doesn’t she?
In any event, I thought I would pass on a few anecdotes – observations, really – from my September trip. I have no photographs for you. OK, I do but I choose not to share them. They’re too spotty and unrepresentative. It’s hard to stop on the interstate to snap a photo of the passing scene. So I’ll try word pictures instead.
The West is always beautiful, the long vistas a pleasure to behold, coming and going. This time the highlight was the pronghorn antelope, who seem to group into bigger herds in the fall. I saw perhaps 60 of them in three herds beside US 87 in northern New Mexico outbound and another 100 in three herds on US 24 as I drove west into the Front Range region. They’re handsome animals.
I wish to report that I got through Texas without being stopped by the state police for Driving While Colorado. Maybe I was just lucky or maybe they’ve decided that profiling is simply too hot a topic these days.
Speaking of which, it was hot in Mississippi. Little Raymond was as pleasant as ever. I tried to get out and take a long walk every day while I was visiting my mom. That worked, but the humidity…
I slanted north and east from Mississippi to Virginia via Birmingham, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and the southern Appalachians. It was a good long drive. What stood out along the highways were the flags. They weren’t there last year when I took the same route. They are now – one in Tennessee and two in Virginia: huge flagpoles set atop hills, each flying an over-sized Confederate battle flag. You’d think some people are feeling defiant.
I took an evening walk on the shaded brick sidewalks of Abingdon, Virginia. This town is on I-81 just north of the Tennessee line. The core dates from the early 19th century. I recommend it as a stopping point for travelers.
The next day my Mazda greatly enjoyed the 414 mile run down-country from Abingdon to Virginia Beach. How do I know the car was happy? It achieved an average 44.5 mpg on that tank of gas. That’s pretty good, even allowing for the fact that the day’s trip was more or less all downhill. All that and great acceleration, tight handling. Zoom-zoom.
In Virginia Beach I visited my brother. But before that I had some time on my hands and so decided to make the two-block trek from my motel to the beach near Lynnhaven Inlet. The last bit was a wooden walkway between two close-set multistory condo buildings. Thus my first view of the sea in years was neatly framed. Gray-green it was, on that cloudy afternoon. “Thalassa, “ I murmured, “Thalassa!” The view had called to mind Xenophon, that old Athenian. As you may recall he unexpectedly found himself in command of 10,000 Greek mercenaries stranded in Mesopotamia on account of some, shall we say, employment difficulties. The solution was to march and fight their way north to the Black Sea, from which they could take ship home to Greece. It was a long walk. Here’s the relevant passage from ‘The Persian Expedition:’
When the men in front reached the summit and caught sight of the sea there was great shouting. Xenophon and the rearguard heard it and thought that there were enemies attacking in the front. However, the shouting got louder and drew nearer. Those who were constantly going forward started running towards the men in front, who kept on shouting. And the more there were of them, the more shouting there was. It looked then as though this was something of considerable importance. So Xenophon mounted his horse, and taking Lycus and the cavalry with him, rode forward to give support.
And quite soon they heard the soldiers shouting out thalassa, thalassa, “The sea!, the sea!” and passing the word down the column. Then certainly they all began to run, the rearguard and all, and drove on the baggage animals and the horses at full speed; and when they had all got to the top, the soldiers, with tears in their eyes, embraced each other and their generals and captains.
History tells us that Xenophon retired thereafter, having had enough of adventure. He got himself a country estate where he passed the remainder of his life raising horses and daughters. It seems like a good choice.
For my part I I took US 17 north from the Tidewater area, which meant crossing the York River bridge. I didn’t quite make it across. The barriers came down and the bridge slowly opened to allow a destroyer to pass downriver from the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station. I enjoyed the view, although it seemed to me the ship was moving rather too slowly. What happened to driving ships with panache? Probably the Coast Guard has imposed speed limits on the river, the killjoys. Either that or in our now-chickafied Navy they’ve forgotten that fast ships are supposed to go, you know, fast (within reason).
I stopped for lunch at Horne’s, a cafe located at the crossroads of US 17 and US 301 in Port Royal. There I met an old counterpart from the headquarters of the US 5th Fleet, where he was once N3 and I was N2. Really he was more a respected big brother than counterpart. It was a pleasure to see him again after 18 years.
I also took the opportunity that day to stop at the Vawter Church, which is near Port Royal and close to the Rappahannock. This is the ancestral church of my good wife’s family. The afternoon was sunny, the church and surround in fine shape. Probably the place looked better than it did in the 1730s since we have lawnmowers now and they didn’t back then.
Beyond Virginia was Maryland, and between me and dinner that evening was Washington traffic. Even though it was early afternoon, with good weather and no accidents, the congestion on the Beltway and I-95 north was appalling. I truly don’t know how people endure that every day.
Allow me to digress for a moment on the matter of yard signs. On my travels I saw many Trump-Pence signs, almost all of them suitably “yuge.” I saw only one Clinton-Kaine sign – this despite spending some time driving through the upscale, smug-Democrat neighborhoods west of Baltimore. I doubt this portends much in terms of the vote come November but it sure says a lot about the degree of enthusiasm abroad in the land for one Hillary Milhous Clinton.
I appreciated my interlude with the rightful Baroness Trematon and her intended. I’ll just say it’s good to be young. It’s even fairly good to be old and in the company of the young.
It was time to start west. I took the I-68 route over the Cumberland Mountains on a sunny Sunday morning. The leaves showed the first hints of fall colors. Here and there morning mist lingered late. Up and over I went, and a lot faster than the pioneers of old. My destination was Berea, Kentucky. If the rendezvous in Port Royal was a meeting of the two Captains, then the stop at Boone Tavern, an upscale small hotel in Berea, was the meeting of the three Captains. My two old Hawaii comrades arrived late, having been delayed by their choice of a more circuitous southern route from Virginia. I had a consolation prize waiting for them in the hotel lobby: two glasses of Buffalo Trace bourbon. We were in eastern Kentucky, after all. The bourbon was justified.
The next day saw me transiting Louisville in a downpour, southern Indiana and Illinois in bright sunshine. I navigated St Louis without incident, but was, alas, detained briefly by St Charles County sheriff’s deputies on I-70 just west of the city. They said I’d changed lanes without signaling, which is possible. I don’t think it was another case of Driving While Colorado since they didn’t take time to run my plates, nor did they show any interest in searching the car for weed. I guess they were just into total road etiquette.
My last overnight of the trip was in Higginsville, Missouri, which is just east of Kansas City. I allocated time to watch the first presidential debate but in the event could only last 15 minutes. I couldn’t stand watching Mrs Clinton’s fixed smirk, which became an actual smile only when – frequently – the moderator intervened on her behalf, loyal and obedient clerisy minion that he is. So, instead, early to bed and early to rise. I was through Kansas City before dawn and while the thug class was safely abed.
It was a beautiful day in Kansas – 75, sunny, a modest breeze. At one point I passed a field of sunflowers, at least a hundred thousand of them, every blossom turned to catch the rising sun. We live in a beautiful country.
And so here I am: safe and sound at home again. I’m cured (for now) of the urge to get out and travel. Which is a good thing with winter not far ahead.
– Tacitus
Copyright 2016 Tacitus
http://www.vicsocotra.com
Tacitus Speaks: Anticipating the PRI
Editor’s Note: This morning’s outing with the famed Roman rhetorician attempts to come to grips with the implications of the Obama legacy. The essay mines a concept also articulated this morning by Angelo M. Codevilla, a naval officer, Foreign Service Officer and senior fellow at the Claremont institute. His essay “After the Republic” discusses where the the government of the United States is likely to go, regardless of the outcome of the election on November 8th. I intend to vote tomorrow before leaving the farm and get my contribution to the affray out of the way. Cordevilla’s thoughtful piece is at:
http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/after-the-republic/
Tacitus effectively works some of the same themes this morning. In any case and regardless of the results of the election, we should prepare for life after the Republic.
-Vic
Tacitus Speaks: Anticipating the PRI
Historian Victor Davis Hanson, writing for National Review, considers the risks attendant to the selection of our next President. I think he’s on the right general track. However he’s fallen into the rhetorical error of false equivalence. More on that later. Here’s his article with my comments:
There is reason to worry about both candidates abusing power as President, because Obama and the press normalized executive overreach.
Not just them. You really have to add in the legislature and the judiciary, both of which failed in their sworn duty to safeguard the Constitution from the aforementioned overreach. And I suppose as long as we’re apportioning blame I should throw in the American people, who opposed the overreach in 2010, endorsed it in 2012, and opposed it again in 2014. We’ve sent mixed signals. As to 2016…
Donald Trump’s supporters see a potential Hillary Clinton victory in November as the end of any conservative chance to restore small government, constitutional protections, fiscal sanity, and personal liberty.
Clinton’s progressives swear that a Trump victory would spell the implosion of America as they know it, alleging Trump parallels with every dictator from Josef Stalin to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler mostly – leftists prefer not to mention Stalin, for obvious reasons. At some point I’ll take an essay to explain why the Hitler parallel is mendacious, but not now.
Part of the frenzy over 2016 as a make-or-break election is because a closely divided Senate’s future may hinge on the coattails of the presidential winner. An aging Supreme Court may also translate into perhaps three to four court picks for the next president.
Yet such considerations only partly explain the current election frenzy. The model of the imperial [I would say royal] Obama presidency is the greater fear. Over the last eight years, Obama has transformed the powers of presidency in a way not seen in decades. Congress talks grandly of “comprehensive immigration reform,” but Obama, as he promised with his pen and phone, bypassed the House and Senate to virtually open the border with Mexico. He largely ceased deportations of undocumented immigrants. He issued executive-order amnesties. And he allowed entire cities to be exempt from federal immigration law. The press said nothing about this extraordinary overreach of presidential power, mainly because these largely illegal means were used to achieve the progressive ends favored by many journalists.
The Senate used to ratify treaties. In the past, a president could not unilaterally approve the Treaty of Versailles, enroll the United States in the League of Nations, fight in Vietnam or Iraq without congressional authorization, change existing laws by non-enforcement, or rewrite bankruptcy laws. Not now. Obama set a precedent that he did not need Senate ratification to make a landmark treaty with Iran on nuclear enrichment. He picked and chose which elements of the Affordable Care Act would be enforced – predicated on his 2012 reelection efforts. Rebuffed by Congress, Obama is now slowly shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center by insidiously having inmates sent to other countries.
This is a very incomplete list of Mr Obama’s unconstitutional actions.
Respective opponents of both Trump and Clinton should be worried. Either winner could follow the precedent of allowing any sanctuary city or state in the United States to be immune from any federal law found displeasing – from the leftist Endangered Species Act and federal gun-registration laws to conservative abortion restrictions.
Could anyone complain if Trump’s Secretary of State were investigated by Trump’s Attorney General for lying about a private email server – in the way Clinton was investigated by Loretta Lynch? Would anyone object should a President Trump agree to a treaty with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the same way Obama overrode Congress with the Iran deal? If a President Clinton decides to strike North Korea, would she really need congressional authorization, considering Obama’s [really Mrs Clinton’s] unauthorized Libyan bombing mission? What would Americans say if President Trump’s IRS – mirror-imaging Lois Lerner – hounded the progressive nonprofit organizations of George Soros?
The precedents are certainly in place for things like these to happen.
Partisans are shocked that the press does not go after Trump’s various inconsistencies and fibs about his supposed initial opposition to the Iraq War, or press him on the details of Trump University. Conservatives counter that Clinton has never had to come clean about the likely illegal pay-for-play influence peddling of the Clinton Foundation or her serial lies about her private email server.
Here is the false equivalence. The media is highly partisan and 80% leftist. They’ve done everything possible to demonize Donald Trump, even if he has occasionally outmaneuvered them.
But why, if elected, should either worry much about media scrutiny? Obama established the precedent that a President should be given a pass on lying to the American people. Did Americans, as Obama repeatedly promised, really get to keep their doctors and health plans while enjoying lower premiums and deductibles, as the country saved billions through his Affordable Care Act? More recently, did Obama mean to tell a lie when he swore that he sent cash to the Iranians only because he could not wire them the money – when in truth the Administration had wired money to Iran in the past? Was cash to Iran really not a ransom for American hostages, as the president asserted? Did Obama really, as he insisted, never email Clinton at her private unsecured server? [He did, using a pseudonym.] Can the next President, like Obama, double the national debt and claim to be a deficit hawk?
Remember the media’s new mantra: It’s unfair to be fair in covering Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Only Democrats get a pass.
Congress has proven woefully inept at asserting its constitutional right to check and balance Obama’s executive overreach. The courts have often abdicated their own oversight.
But the press is the most blameworthy. White House press conferences now resemble those in the Kremlin, with journalists tossing Putin softball questions about his latest fishing or hunting trip.
Not just White House press conferences. Have you seen questions the media pool poses to candidate Clinton? They are pathetic sycophants.
One reason Americans are scared about the next President is that they should be. In 2017, a President Trump or a President Clinton will be able to do almost anything he or she wishes without much oversight – thanks to the precedent of Obama’s overreach, abetted by a lapdog press that forgot that the ends never justify the means.
Well, almost never…
Back to this matter of false equivalence. I’ll remind you what I wrote in my 30 September essay ‘The PFD:’
Bear in mind that, unlike Democrat Presidents, a President Trump will face significant limiters. The “you can’t say that, you can’t do that” crowd will be out patrolling every day. More significantly, checks and balances will return to government. The principle of separation of powers will return to the fore. People right, left, and center will insist on scrupulous adherence to every word and clause in the US Constitution. Trump will be bound by all that. Even if he wanted to rule as a royalist (which I don’t think he does) he won’t be granted that dispensation.
If anything I understate the limiters. But yes, there will still be those precedents and the temptation to follow them. The Donald can be baited into intemperate words so the potential for intemperate action is there. It’s a risk.
Post-first debate – a two-on-one event, with Trump given an intentionally maladjusted microphone – the Real Clear Politics average of polls now has Mrs Clinton at +3.1 (a hair outside the margin of error) so I think we should focus more on the risks of a Clinton presidency. Her motto will be “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.” In this case “mine” will be all the bad precedents set by the Obama presidency and the Clinton scandals. “Yours” refers to our system of government and our rights as codified in the Constitution. She will be a status quo President. What does that mean? A continuation of the trends already extant – toward royalism, toward the suppression of dissent, toward the progressive (irony intended) narrowing of personal freedom, and toward overall decline.
She’ll have limiters too, including ill health, more scandals, and the fallout from inevitably corrupt and incompetent governance. She’ll be protected by the media, by a supine Congress, a packed Supreme Court, and – above all- by an electorate permanently unbalanced by waves of welfare-hungry immigrants from the Third World. We’ll be looking at extended one-party rule.
In envisioning this prospect, the best model may well be another political party, the PRI. You see I have studied Mexican history, and not just the amazing, tragic drama of the 16th century collision between Spanish steel and neolithic Mexico. In the 20th century the socialist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or Partido Revolucionario Institucional (hence PRI), held power uninterruptedly for 71 years – from 1929 to 2000. That period was characterized by a steady slide into institutionalized (irony intended) government corruption and incompetence. In the late 19th century crime hardly existed in Mexico. By the late 20th century it was all-pervasive. Criminality fed on a partnership at the local level between PRI politicians and drug lords. The malign trifecta of bad governance, bad crime, and economic malaise (a byproduct of the first two factors) led to the departure of the best and brightest – or at least the most motivated – for points north. Mexican citizens had ever-lower expectations for their government. Even when they tried to vote out the PRI they were persistently stymied by election fraud. This is hardly something to look forward to, comrades.
But, as they like to say, vote your conscience.
Tacitus
Copyright Tactus 2016
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