Day 128 Nat'l Emergency: Is the Political Pendulum Swinging?

With just under four months till the election the pendulum has given signs it is ready to swing backward.

After more than four months of jabs and haymakers that have left his administration reeling, Donald Trump appears to have regained some energy. 

Conservative voices are saying woke movements have gone too far. A federal judge has strongly questioned the sexual harassment and abuse settlement against Harvey Weinstein. Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan is leaving New York Magazine. Bari Weiss is leaving The New York Times because she claims a bullying atmosphere that attacks non liberal stances is tolerated by management. Federal executions have begun anew with Trump threatening more. Trump is further threatening to send in federal forces to cities run by liberal mayors he says cannot control violence. He also is said to be supportive of a Missouri couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters. The CDC director is blaming visiting Northerners for the pandemic outbreak in the South. Trump administration lackeys are degrading the expertise of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Though Joe Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania polls is double digits pollsters say a majority believe there is a “secret” number of Trump voters who could keep the Keystone State red.

Trump is betting his base enjoys their White privilege even as fence-sitting voters will be repulsed by excesses of ultra-progressive woke groups. Their combined ballots will keep him in the White House for another four years

Trump is like that Philadelphia icon—Rocky. It is hard to knock him down. To keep him down.

Biden so far has played a version of Muhammed Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy against George Forman, keeping mostly to himself. He is letting Trump tire himself and the public out with outlandish tweets on all manner of national affairs alongside public displays of indifference to the personal, human losses from COVID-19, now totaling more than 138,000 lives from more than 3.48 million confirmed cases. Even now that he is wearing a mask in public the glower beneath it comes through.

The race for the presidency is a like a 15-round championship boxing match, not a three-round amateur bout. Polling can be illusory. Hillary learned that lesson four years ago.

Barring an international emergency or another vacancy on the Supreme Court, the election will be settled by three intertwined events: the status of the pandemic, the state of the economy, and the success, or lack of, school reopenings.

The pendulum might be swinging a little more in Trump’s direction but there is plenty time for it to swing back to Biden’s corner. 

Thoughts on Sexual Harassment and Racial Discrimination

If you believe in god, and perhaps even if you don’t, there are one of two prayers you are most likely reciting daily. If you trust in Donald Trump, you are praying the domino scandal of inappropriate male sexual behavior engulfs special counsel Robert Mueller before he uncovers any evidence of illegality involving The Donald. If your decency index swings the other way, you are hoping beyond prayers that Mueller has no sexual indiscretions in his closet.

Oh, how our stature as a country with morals and integrity has fallen in the last 24 months. To be sure, we always have had leaders with outsized egos and even larger libidos. Mostly, their sexual peccadillos were kept under wraps until their respective infidelities were exposed, as happened when House Ways and Means chairman Wilbur Mills drove his mistress Fanne Fox into the Washington Tidal Basin in 1974. The dalliances of FDR, JFK even Ike came to light only after they no longer graced the earth.

No less a family values proponent than Ronald Reagan managed to project wholesomeness despite divorcing his first wife and later marrying Nancy, whom he had impregnated before they exchanged their vows.

Would Bill Clinton get elected today if we knew of his indiscretions? Perhaps, for after all, we did know of them but chose not to believe his accusers. Similar revolting behavior did not stop evangelical communities from voting for Trump. And many in Alabama seem poised to accept a flawed sexual predator as their next senator, especially now that the predator-in-chief has endorsed him, as has the Republican National Committee. They believe being a Democrat is more evil than any other sin.

Hollywood Casting: When they make a movie of Hollywood’s, the media’s and Washington’s continual fall from social grace (get real people, it is only a matter of time until the film starts rolling), here’s the perfect actor for the role of the corpulent predator at the heart of sexual scandaldom: Jeff Garlin should play Harvey Weinstein.

For those who don’t immediately recognize Garlin’s name, he plays Murray Goldberg on ABC’s The Goldbergs. But that traditional sitcom portrayal is not why he would make the perfect Harvey Weinstein.

It is his role as Jeff Greene, Larry David’s lascivious, scruples-be-damned agent and co-conspirator-in-mischief on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm that earns him his Weinstein creds. Not to mention his girth and no neck physical resemblance. Put a few days’ scruffy growth on his face and he’s camera ready.

With apologies if any of my projected cast for the Weinstein-inspired sexual harassment flick fall victim—that is, are exposed as a sexual aggressor—before filming can begin, here’s a lineup of players for the depraved:

Jeff Garlin as Harvey Weinstein

Frank Langella as Roy Moore

Christopher Plummer as Charlie Rose

George Wendt (Norm from Cheers) as Al Franken

Leonardo DiCaprio as Kevin Spacey

Tom Hardy as Matt Lauer

James Belushi as Bill O’Reilly

Paul Giamatti as Roger Ailes

Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump

J.B. Smoove (from Curb Your Enthusiasm) as John Conyers

Austin Pendleton as Woody Allen

Macaulay Culkin as Ronan Farrow

John Lithgow as Louis C.K.

Rainn Wilson as Garrison Keillor

Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush

Ed Asner as James Levine

Kenan Thompson as Clarence Thomas

Larry Fishburne as Bill Cosby

Jimmy Kimmel as Roy Moore

Unfortunately, there no doubt are many more, known and unknown at this time, to be cast. As for the courageous women coming forward to reveal the sexual harassment they endured, they should play themselves so they could at least reap some compensation for their collective trauma.

Happy Out, Angry In: I happily traveled with Gilda down to Washington, DC, to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. I came back angry.

Fear not. There was no family squabble. No real life representation of countless movie or TV family meals turned into shouting matches.

Rather, my anger stemmed from a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. It was among the most moving, enlightening, and educational exhibits I have witnessed. It should be required viewing by all politicians and corporate leaders. 

Anyone who takes the time—half a dozen hours, as we spent the day before Thanksgiving, does not complete the experience—will come away with a deeper understanding of the contributions Afro-Americans have made to our country during their years of bondage, repression under Jim Crow laws, and the current contradictory phase of presumed equality masked by racial discrimination.  

I exited the museum angry that anyone could deny the righteousness of the fight for equality. That anyone could support laws that perpetuate inequality. That anyone could   work to suppress voting rights. 

I wondered what Trump took away from his visit last February to the museum, given the minimal time his schedule would have permitted him to spend there. I wondered if he was intelligent and curious enough to go back after hours for a longer, deeper dive into the history and culture displayed there. He did, after all, say he wanted to return for a more comprehensive visit. 

Based on how he has addressed issues affecting minority communities, from voting rights to programs to help the disadvantaged, I surmise he has not followed through. In his own favorite word, sad.

Four American Deaths Spark Another Controversy

They were surprised by the ferocity of the attack that claimed their lives. Questions about prior intelligence. Questions about how quickly military support could reach them. Questions about how and what the families of the fallen Americans were told.

No, I am not referring to the 2012 deaths in Benghazi of four foreign service professionals and the prolonged multiple investigations by a Republican-controlled Congress set on besmirching the integrity of Secretary of State and eventual Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

No, these deaths occurred October 4 in Niger, an African country I would venture to say perhaps one percent of Americans could locate on a map and probably fewer knew we had military personnel stationed there fighting Islamic militants.

One wonders how diligent and aggressive the still-GOP-controlled Congress will be in purusing the tragic events and pursuing accountability. We can only hope that statements about the need for committee hearings will produce more than momentary soundbites.

Into this now politically charged sadness comes White House chief of staff and retired Marine general John F. Kelly, not by his own volition but rather because of the extraordinary but now seemingly day to day bad and/or clumsy behavior of his boss, Donald Trump, who chose to politicize the conveyance of solace and a nation’s gratitude to the families of fallen soldiers. 

Kelly is a good soldier. By that I don’t mean he is a good tactician or a good leader of men. He probably is. Rather, he is a “good” soldier in the sense that no matter what his commanding officer says or does he will not disavow him. He will not criticize him. He will give him cover to continue behavior that is inappropriate. Maybe like what Quentin Tarantino just admitted to in the Harvey Weinstein scandal (https://nyti.ms/2l0ZZ2N). Hears evil. Sees evil but speaks no evil. Washington and Hollywood: two peas in a pod.

You don’t become a four-star general merely by way of military expertise. Politics plays a part. Schmoozing up your superiors. Making nice to elected officials. Press reports bend over backwards describing Kelly as above the political fray of instigator-in-chief Trump roiling the waters with whomever he has a beef, be it on legitimate matters of policy or personal peccadilloes transformed into public shaming and bullying. 

Throughout it all Kelly has remained steadfast. He dismisses as inaccurate reflections pictures of him pained and distraught as the fulminator-in-chief goes off on one of his tirades. He’s never considered resigning, he says.

But his defense of Trump’s conversation with the widow and family of Sergeant La David T. Johnson, killed in Niger, and his attack on a Democratic congresswoman has opened Kelly to the contentious nature of American politics. Kelly is learning that his words are subject to parsing, as well. He got caught in a big mistake when he wrongly criticized Rep. Frederica S. Wilson for taking credit for securing funding for an F.B.I. building in Miami named for fallen agents (https://nyti.ms/2l33Wnj). 

Here’s an example of what can and has gone wrong. From Thursday’s New York Times: “Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Kelly’s blunt remarks will have impact because of the stark contrast with an administration that has repeatedly lost credibility with the public.

“‘Its great power was you knew he was telling the truth, and in all specifics,’ said Ms. Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist. ‘Kelly comes to the podium and it was credible, and you felt a kind of relief, and respect and gratitude.’” 

I wonder what Noonan thinks now. I wonder how quickly Kelly will come to Trump’s defense the next time—and you can bet the farm there will be a next time—the provocateur-in-chief strains credulity.

My Man McCain: Let’s be grown up about this: Politicians generally are not the most upstanding, unselfish, heroic individuals. Their main pursuit in life is self aggrandizement, most visibly demonstrated by their quest for election, then reelection, through often sleazy deals with benefactors and policy positions crafted to appeal to narrow interest groups that do not necessarily have the public good as their paramount interest.

Which brings us to John McCain. He is an exasperating politician. He is a conservative Republican which implies a proclivity toward defense spending and a less than robust ratification of entitlement programs. Yet he has moments when he is downright noble and heroic.

In 2008 he rebuffed a supporter of his presidential bid after she claimed Barack Obama was not an American or a Christian, that he was “an Arab.”

“No ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

“He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president,” McCain said. “If I didn’t think I’d be one heck of a better President I wouldn’t be running, and that’s the point. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, I will respect him. I want everyone to be respectful, and let’s make sure we are. Because that’s the way politics should be conducted in America.”

With his last sunset visible on the horizon because of an aggressive brain cancer (the same type that felled Ted Kennedy), the 81-year-old Navy veteran, prisoner of (Vietnam) war hero, U.S. congressman and senator from Arizona and Republican presidential candidate has a biography that will fill a full page of a broadsheet newspaper. In many ways he is like Obama, “a decent person.” 

But I would be scared if he were president because for every intrepid vote to deny the elimination of Obamacare, McCain falls back into party discipline to, for example, support a budget that would reward the rich and gut assistance programs for the needy. From my perspective he keeps switching too often from occasional white hat to near constant black hat.

Tributes to McCain keep poring in. Here’s one from David Brooks in The Times (https://nyti.ms/2zohY5n). And his speech the other night when he accepted the 2017 Liberty Medal Award from the National Constitution Center was a stinging critique of the current state of national leadership and its withdrawal from what made America great. Here’s video of his remarks: https://youtu.be/RoQDCgE9HVU

Perhaps it would be appropriate if McCain had a one-on-one chat with Kelly. Someone, after all, needs to tell the general when it is his duty to correct his superior, even a president. For the sake of the country.