Lessons We've Learned in 100 Days, Just 7% of a Presidency

What’s the betting line on Donald Trump hoping, wishing, praying that TV writers go on strike May 2, thus silencing his many late night television critics including Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver and Trevor Noah? 

The last strike, from Nov. 5, 2007, to Feb. 12, 2008, gave President George W. Bush a little breathing room, a 100-day respite from nightly deprecation, disdain, ridicule and humiliation.

100 days. Hmmmm.  Where have I heard that time span before?  Oh, yeah—100 days, as in the first 100 days of a new presidency.

The obsession with Donald Trump’s first 100 days sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is suffocating. The media, naturally, have a stake in advancing this obsession. It makes for good copy. Strong ratings. But let’s not give the bloviator-in-chief a pass. He, after all, last October at Gettysburg outlined in detail what he would accomplish during his first 100 days as president. He even issued a contract with the American voter.

Given that Republicans have tricameral control of the government—the White House and both chambers of Congress (actually, now that Neil Gorsuch has donned his supreme black robe the GOP has quatracameral control)—I would rate Trump’s tenure in office a solid B, not for achievement, but rather for the learning experience it has accorded us.

Let’s face it. Any Republican elected president was going to nominate a conservative justice to the Supreme Court. As well, a GOP president would cut funding to Planned Parenthood and international abortion providers/counselors, as Reagan and Bush I and Bush II did. And he (a she is still not possible) would be dismissive of climate change, though probably not as ignorant as Trump is. And he’d suck up to the NRA.

What Trump has provided is a civics lesson on checks and balances as intended by the Constitution. Moreover, he and his cadre of acolytes have shown us what autocracy and dictatorship can sound like, as when Stephen Miller said the president can do what he wants, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions denigrated a state (Hawaii) and a judge for thwarting the administration’s plans to punish sanctuary cities. 

It was reprehensible during the campaign when Trump maligned a federal judge involved in a lawsuit alleging fraud at Trump University. Trump is not a lawyer. He reacted tempestuously, as he does whenever confronted. But Sessions is a lawyer; he’s supposed to be the nation’s top lawyer. For him to question the checks and balances role of the judiciary as defined by the Constitution is a clear reflection on what the Trump administration thinks.

We also cannot ignore the lesson we have been given on the Holocaust, first by Trump not including any mention of the six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany in his statement on Holocaust Memorial Day, but also by Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s outrageously inept explanation of why Bashar al-Assad’s chemical warfare attack on his people was worse than what Hitler did during World War II. 

Trump and family and his appointments are a continuing lesson in conflict of interest examples. Be honest—had you ever heard the word “emoluments” before Trump? 

We’ve also come to appreciate the insidious actions Vladimir Putin and Russia have inflicted on our democracy and other elected governments around the world.

For his part, Trump’s near 100-day tenure has enlightened him to the complexity of government, from his difficulty getting Obamacare repealed and replaced to the layered relationship between China and North Korea. It’s not as easy as he thought, he has admitted. Too, while he criticized President Obama for issuing executive orders instead of working with Congress to pass legislation, and for excessive golfing outings, Trump has fallen into the same trap. But unlike Obama, his party controls both houses of Congress.

Populism helped transport Trump to Washington. Populism also is behind resistance to Trump, though maintaining a high level of involvement will be difficult to sustain for four years, or even 18 more months until the next congressional election cycle.  

Perhaps the saddest lesson of Trump’s nascent presidency is the susceptibility of a vast segment of the public to fake news. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found slightly more than half of Republicans (52%) believe Obama wiretapped Trump Tower despite there being no evidence it happened and numerous statements by heads of intelligence and law enforcement agencies that it didn’t happen. They believe it because Trump repeatedly said it did. 

It’s the “big-lie-repeated-often-enough-becomes-truth” syndrome. How sad that the American public has lost faith in traditional media to expose falsehoods. How sad that the American public has become so bifurcated that extremists on both sides of the divide set the national dialogue. How sad that “compromise” has become anathema to politicians. How sad that gerrymandering has negated the need to compromise. Perhaps not since the Civil War have families been so divided on the outlook for domestic tranquility.

It may seem longer, but Trump’s first 100 days is just 7% of his term of office (assuming, he’s not re-elected). How much damage could he do? David Brooks of The New York Times ended his Friday column calling Trump a “political pond skater—one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.”

I disagree. Trump will have an effect that may not be reparable in four or eight years on the global environment, on domestic clean air and water, on America’s standing in the community of nations, on our internal ability to work together as a people toward a common good. 

If ever we needed the escape of political satire to get us through the next 100 days and beyond it is now, so please, let’s not have a TV writers strike.

What's at Stake In Iowa and New Hampshire

Let’s get down to brass tacks. For Democrats the presidential election is not going to be about a revolution. Rather, it will come down to protecting the domestic legacy of Barack Obama and the myriad of progressives who preceded him and extended equality and opportunity to millions of minorities, be they of color, religious sects or gender, not to mention the tens of millions of middle class families of all backgrounds created by legislation and regulations that supported and protected workers. A Republican victory, whomever is the GOP standard bearer, would roll back 80 years of progressive legislation and enforcement.

So the question boils down to, which Democrat has the best chance of keeping the Oval Office blue: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or Martin O’Malley?

O’Malley might be a good man. He has not aroused any semblance of passion behind his candidacy. On the other hand, as much as Sanders engenders passionate followers his phenomenon is reminiscent of the debacles fostered four decades ago by anti-Vietnam War candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Perhaps it is because too many Democrats are too young to remember or have not been taught the consequences of a quixotic candidacy, they are ignorantly eager to adhere to Sanders’ banner. They would follow him to sure defeat in a presidential election even against a divisive Republican such as Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I’m sorry, but the country is simply not ready for a Social Democrat, a Jewish Social Democrat, born in Brooklyn, to be president.

Clinton is not an ideal candidate. But her pluses outweigh the minuses. Last time out in 2008 her campaign engendered more passion. Fatigue might have set in this time among many of her supporters, but as November grows nearer I believe they will be re-energized by the prospect of electing the first woman president, especially someone who has the wide-ranging experience she possesses.

Her challenge once securing the nomination will be to bring into her tent disaffected Bernie-backers. Otherwise, as Hubert Humphrey and the nation found out, a less than solidly unified Democratic Party will result in a Republican victory and this time the winner would be much more regressive than Richard Nixon.

Nixon had to work with a Democratic Congress and Senate. Both houses will be Republican in 2017. Imagine the social network legislation, the worker-consumer-environmental protections and the civil rights laws that would be gutted by a triumvirate of conservative Republicanism. (Are you shuttering at the prospect? I did when writing that sentence.)

Most importantly, the next president may well have the opportunity to nominate two to four Supreme Court justices and countless lower court judges. If you cherish the advances of the last 80 years you cannot countenance the prospect of a judicial system tilted to the right for decades to come.

So as Iowans go to their caucuses Monday and New Hampshirites troop to the polls eight days later let’s hope they have perspective. Bernie has been a useful diversion, especially in this age of Trump when crazy passion seems to be restricted to Republicans.

Hillary doesn't need a coronation. But the party, the nation, will not benefit from sidetracking her nomination.

Supreme Court May Well Decide Next President. Again

History may be poised to repeat itself. For the second time in the last five presidential elections, the U.S. Supreme Court may well decide who will sit in the Oval Office.

The Court has accepted for review another challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The question before it—does the law permit federal government subsidies to the needy in states that do not have their own health exchange programs. In those states the federal government has stepped in to provide subsidies (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-new-challenge-to-health-law.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0). 

If the Supremes declare the subsidies to be illegal, Obamacare may tumble down from lack of sufficient funding. It also would mean millions would lose health care coverage. It’s pretty certain the four justices who voted against Obamacare two years ago would do so again, meaning Chief Justice John Roberts would be the deciding judge. Again.

If Roberts blocks the subsidies and the ACA ultimately succumbs to a Republican-led attack, universal health care once more would become a key campaign issue in 2016. As they have championed it for decades, Democrats, most prominently their presidential candidate, would benefit from such an outcome. 

Given a June 2015 court decision, Republicans would have just over a year to forge an acceptable alternative to a law that has extended health coverage to more Americans than at any other time in our history. That’s unlikely to transpire given the venomous reaction many conservatives have to such a program.

A negative decision and Republican antipathy toward a replacement ACA might also provide incentive to voters to elect more Democrats to the Senate and even possibly return the Dems to the majority in the House. 

It’s an intriguing state of affairs. Having injected itself into state election law in Florida and chosen George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000, the Supreme Court may wind up influencing who gets elected to the White House in 2016. 

Ah, I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Democratic leadership meetings as they discuss what would be better for the party, and the country, come next June.

What I'd Like to Hear, Part II

Having been disappointed by Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, I thought it only fair to delineate what I expect from Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats this week during their national convention. Yes, Obama inherited a blown up economy, two quagmire wars and mounting deficits. It won’t be enough to recount his successes in bringing home the troops from Iraq and setting a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. It won’t be enough to say he ordered the mission that killed Osama bin Laden and many other drone strikes that have decimated the leadership of al-Qaeda. It won’t be enough to say he saved the auto industry. It won’t be enough to say unemployment would be a lot worse without the stimulus package he pushed through. It won’t be enough to say Obamacare was passed. 

It won’t be enough because Americans always choose to look forward with nary a glance in the rear view mirror. So, Barack, what will you do for us in the next four years? How will you work with Congress? Will you vigorously stump for a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, or will you fight just for the Oval Office chair Clint Eastwood parodied last week? How will you convince us you would not squander a majority in both branches of the legislature if you’re lucky enough to get them? How will you show us you wouldn’t be an emasculated president if Republicans win control of the Senate? Or even if they just retain their House majority? 

Let’s be brutally honest. The last two years amply demonstrated that being chief executive vouchsafed your war powers and your foreign policy visions. But Republicans in the House and Senate effectively stymied your domestic initiatives once Democrats lost working majorities in both chambers. So as they say in Texas Hold ‘Em poker, are you going to go “all in?” Will you appeal directly to the American public and make the case for Democratic congressional and Senate candidates? Congress’ approval rating is at an all-time low because nothing, nothing is being done under the present configuration. 

You need to sell the total Democratic package. You need to set forth a vision and a program, a specific program, to get more people back to work. To create more jobs. To reduce the deficit. To prosecute white collar criminals in the financial industry with the same vigor that ordinary people face when they violate the law. To rebuild the infrastructure of our country, not with lofty words but with real projects that put people on the payroll. Will you fight for an increase in the minimum wage so working families can gain some additional purchasing power? How will you protect the solvency of Medicare and Social Security? How will you project American strength versus China and Russia? Romney has chosen belligerency. You must show strength, not appeasement. 

Romney tried to sell disappointment in Obama offset by trust in a largely unknown challenger. Obama must emerge from his convention as a battler, a leader who will fight not just to retain his job but as someone who will champion the middle and working classes with specific programs. Programs to create jobs. Jobs. Jobs.