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Snippets–Inaugural Edition

The inauguration was moved indoors because of extremely cold weather. What is your joke on hell freezing over?

Does this have any relevance today? “One left an encounter with Winston certain that Winston was the most interesting person alive; when one left a meeting with [Lloyd George] one convinced oneself of being the most interesting person alive.”David Reynolds, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.

I wonder if RFK, Jr., has been like me and thought that bacteria is the rear entrance to a cafeteria.

At least as defined by Mark Twain, the new president does not have good breeding, which Twain said “consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

I am frequently struck by Trump railing about a problem that he considers caused by Biden when the problem also existed during Trump’s first term. But as a wise man said, “Among the things that enable a person to be self-satisfied is a poor memory.”

Now that Elon is on the scene, I wonder if what Abraham Riesman wrote in RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America continues to be true. Reisman said that Vince McMahon may be Trump’s closest friend. McMahon “is said to be one of the only people whose call Trump takes in private, forcing his retinue to leave the room so the two old chums can chat in confidence.” Trump is a member of McMahon’s wrestling Hall of Fame. Will Elon enjoy the same access?

This is not just inauguration day; it is also the day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. There must be a site somewhere where I can bet how many times, if any, Trump mentions MLK today. We tend to think that King gave his great “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, but the complete name of the rally was the March on Washinton for Jobs and Freedom. Six decades later, the demands of that day are still incompletely met. For example, the March was asking that the Fair Labor Standards Act cover agricultural workers. That act still only partly encompasses those who till and pick our food. The rally also sought to increase the minimum wage to $2 an hour. We fall woefully short of that today. Two dollars in 1963 is the equivalent of about $20 today, and the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage was $1.25 in 1963, which would be about $13 today. We would honor King if we at least thought about how we treat the working poor. (And we should remember that when King was murdered, he was in Memphis to lend support to a sanitation workers’ strike that aimed to change some of their horrendous working conditions.)

I am anything but a Trump supporter. I think many of his policies will do harm to this country, but I hope that I am wrong. Although not expecting it, I wish him success. There is much in this country that could use improvement. I could make my list. You, no doubt, could make yours. But instead, I give you what David Leonhardt said in Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream (2023):

“We live in the only high-income country that does not provide parents with paid leave. We live in one of the stingiest countries for daycare, preschool, and the resources devoted to children. A typical thirty-year-old man is not much more educated than his parents were. The United States remains the only rich country without universal health care insurance. American women are more likely to die in childbirth than women in many other countries. American babies are more likely to die, too. Income inequality is higher than in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Kores, or Australia. Almost two million Americans wake up each day in a prison or jail. Our children consider it normal to spend time at school preparing for a mass shooting. Our opioid death rate leads the world. Our roads are more dangerous than in other affluent countries, which was not true only a few decades ago. In 1980, life expectancy in the United States was similar to that in other high-income countries. We have become a grim outlier.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

After the New Orleans New Year attack, Trump wrote that this confirmed that our country was unsafe because criminals were crossing the border. A Fox News host said that the country would soon be safer after Trump closed the border. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested the same. This was said even though the terrorist, an Army veteran, was an American citizen born and raised and living in Texas. Perhaps what Trump and the others were really suggesting is that we close the border between Texas and the rest of the country. This might not make the United States safer, but it would make me feel better.

I was surprised that the New Orleans terrorist was flying an ISIS flag. Trump destroyed that organization in 2019. Or at least that is what he said.

The Washington, D.C., homicide rate, which increased while Trump was president, has been decreasing.

His death brings to mind some Jimmy Carter trivia as well as a story about his mother. This is drawn from Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020). Because he was a veteran, Carter qualified for and lived in a new government housing complex shortly after leaving the Navy. He thus became the only president to have lived in public housing.

Carter is the last president not to have golfed while in office.

It was loudly proclaimed that the Carters did not lie. A reporter asked Jimmy’s mother about this, and Lillian Carter conceded that the family told white lies. When the reporter asked for an example, Miss Lillian replied, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” Walter Lippman.

I had a dream I was in hell; I was trapped in a corner at an endless cocktail party by a birder.

Given our divided country, I like to recall the words of some political and historical observers: “Conservatives are but people who learned to love the new order forced upon them by radicals.” And: “Radicals: Those who advance and consolidate a position for the conservatives to advance a little later.”

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Panama Redux

The Republicans almost produced a government shutdown again and may have merely postponed it for a few months. As a result, the Speaker of the House may be out in the cold in several weeks and the GOP may then show its fractures even more clearly. While this brouhaha was going on, Trump was talking about seizing the Panama Canal. This all brings to mind my previous post about the Panama Canal treaties, which I have reproduced below.

Knowledgeable people find the roots of the Republican Party’s current dysfunction in the hyperpartisanship practiced by Newt Gingrich when he became Speaker of the House in 1995. Others find tentacles spreading from the Tea Party movement, which emerged in 2009 and brought conspiracy theories into mainstream politics. But seeds were planted twenty years earlier with the now largely forgotten battle over the Panama Canal treaties. In his book, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right (2008), Adam Clymer explains how the fight over the Panama Canal Treaties helped fuel the rise of the modern Right.

Both treaties were signed in 1977. One treaty gave the United States the right to use force to assure that the canal would remain open to ships of all nations. The second treaty gave Panama control over the canal starting in 2000.

In order to take effect, the treaties not only had to be signed by the leaders of Panama and the United States. They also had to be ratified by appropriate bodies within those countries. After Panama did so in a plebiscite, a political battle ensued in the United States Senate over their ratifications. According to Clymer, this led to the emergence of Richard Viguerie, a founder of modern conservatism, the use of direct-mail marketing, and the rise of single-issue PACs designed to raise money and defeat moderate Republicans.

Although it was President Jimmy Carter who signed the pacts, the negotiations had started under President Nixon. The treaties were thought desirable because they gave America the right to assure the canal’s neutrality, and they removed a flashpoint for much of Latin America, and Panama in particular, by giving Panama control over the canal. Those supporting the treaties maintained that they would increase the security of the canal by helping to remove the threats of guerrilla attacks, which were almost impossible for America and Panama to prevent. 

The treaties were backed by prominent conservatives, including Henry Kissinger and William Buckley, but they were also attacked by other conservatives in near-hysterical terms. Opponents maintained that this was a surrender of American sovereignty, and furthermore, the military leader of Panama was pro-Communist. Marxists would control the canal and Panama, and the harm to the U.S. as a result would be disastrous.

What is surprising to a modern surveyor of the political scene is that some Senators supported the treaty simply because they thought it was the right thing to do even though they knew that their ratification votes would harm them politically. The single-issue PACs targeted some of these Senators, and, through direct-mail marketing (enter Richard Viguerie), inflamed a cadre of voters. Republicans who supported the treaties were defeated in primaries when they stood for reelection. Their overall record did not matter. Their vote on this one issue doomed their political careers. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan opposed the Treaty, and some, including Bill Buckley, maintained that the treaty controversy helped elect Reagan president.

This issue is now largely forgotten even though its aftermath continues to affect the United States. A lesson from the controversy has been absorbed, even if that lesson’s source is not remembered. Republican politicians now fear that if they don’t toe some single-issue lines, a portion of conservatives will target them and defeat them in the primaries. The result is that the politicians cannot develop nuanced positions; compromises are verboten. Instead, the “wrong” stance on individual issues can result in a primary defeat even if the politician accepts the conservative line on other matters. If I don’t completely accept the NRA’s positions, I may be defeated in the primary. If I adopt a moderate stance on abortion, I may be defeated in the primaries. If I have concerns about tax cuts, I may be, in today’s terms, “primaried.” And so on. The result is a lockstep, hard-right conservatism. Back in 1978, some conservative Senators studied a complex situation and decided that a ratification vote for the Panama Canal treaties was in the best interests of the country. What is remembered is not that their position was right, but that some lost their political careers as a result.

History, of course, has shown the proponents to be correct. The Canal functions just fine. Panama is not a hotbed of anti-American Communism. Those who were wrong, however, did not pay a price for their belief; they continued in office. And most of us have forgotten the debate.

In what now seems impossible, Democrats and Republicans joined together to ratify the treaties. Fifty-two Democrats and sixteen Republicans voted for ratification, while ten Democrats and twenty-two Republicans voted against. We have seen little of such bipartisanship since the Panama Canal treaties. On the other hand, since that 1977 controversy we have seen many conservatives benefit even when proved wrong.

The Republican party has been on a forty-year path to its present dysfunction.

Posted on by rjonakait

(Not) The End of Democracy?

I owe him an apology. My nephew asked if I thought we had just had our last democratic election. I arrogantly, churlishly responded, “Why would you say that?” I acted as if the question was paranoid, misguided. It was not.

My initial response was driven by several factors. First, we have no indication in the recent election that the Trumpista crazies who became election officials did anything to throw the election in Trump’s favor such as skewing the vote counts. If this did not happen with Donald Trump running, it is unlikely to occur with another candidate. The loyalties of those who want to upset our democratic norms are not to the Republican Party specifically nor to conservatism in general, but rather to Trump, and Trump will not be the running next time. And, thus, I had reasoned that the threat to our democracy would be minimal.

The nephew countered: Did I really think that Trump would not be a candidate in 2028? I referenced Trump’s age. He will be 82 in  four years, if he survives that long. Even many Trumpistas will think he is too old to be president. In addition, many other Repubs want to be president and will work to prevent a fourth Trump run. And, then, of course, the Constitution forbids it. The opening clause of the Twenty-Second Amendment is as clear as anything in our national charter: “No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice. . . .” Period. The end. I don’t see how even the most partisan Supreme Court justice could find a way around this unequivocal pronouncement. Trump won’t be running. And because he cares only about himself, not the Republican party or conservatism, Trump won’t be campaigning to overturn an election in which he is not a candidate. Without his efforts, we are unlikely to have fake electors or requests for changes in vote counts. So, I reasoned, Trump won’t be a candidate, nor will he be tampering with the election in 2028.

But then I had a horrific thought: What if Donald Trump, Jr. were a candidate? (Or Ivanka or maybe even Jared? Even the father couldn’t support Eric, could he?) Then take everything I said above off the table.

However, as I thought more about my uncharitable response to my nephew, I realized that true democratic elections require more than just an accurate vote count. They also need an active opposition and the free-flow of information. Those are threatened by the calls from Trump and his cronies and his nominees for retribution. Such retaliation will not only be a punishment for the past, but a deterrent for the future spread of ideas and information necessary for democratic elections.

It is important to note that the promised retribution is not for criminal conduct, or for any kind of illegal conduct; it is for speech. Speech. Kash Patel makes this clear when he says that he will “come after” the media for what they have said. While media may be first on his list, retribution against others will soon follow. And, of course, with threatened punishment for information and ideas, fewer will be willing to speak out. And democracy will suffer.

Will we have retribution for free speech, as Trump, Patel, and others desire? Certainly, harmful retaliation has become more likely because of the Supreme Court decisions giving once and future president Trump immunity forever — let me repeat, forever — from criminal and civil actions. While the Court-created exemption extends “only” to official actions, the Court’s vague definition of official action is incredibly broad and extends even to illegal conduct. The Court indicated that any presidential order to or conversation with anyone in the executive branch is an official act, and it garners immunity. This is so even if the command is to take an illegal action. In other words, Trump does not have to worry about criminal or civil liability for presidential orders to the Justice Department, the FBI, Homeland Security, and many other departments. (The Supreme Court immunity decisions do not address whether an executive branch official who performs an illegal act under a presidential order can be prosecuted. It would be a strange world, however, if the underling can be prosecuted but not the boss who issued the directive.)

Retribution does not have to be illegal to provide a powerful deterrent to a free society. Practically speaking, the executive branch can investigate whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants. If probable cause is found to believe that a person has committed a crime, that person can be prosecuted. Moreover, the federal criminal law is broad and often vague. Many, perhaps all, of us have committed crimes—ever take a pencil home from work?—and if enough resources are put into a retributive investigation, many people could be charged with a crime. Of course, such charges will deter others from criticizing or opposing Trump and his acolytes. And democracy will suffer.

Retributive investigations will deter freedoms even without prosecutions. Investigations by themselves can lead to onerous demands for documents and testimony. The target has to bear the costs in time and money, which can reach hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in fees and costs. Few organizations, much less individuals, can afford such harassment. Many of us will decide that it is better to remain silent rather than face the possibility of such retribution. And democracy will suffer.

It is not just investigations and prosecutions that can deter free speech and undermine democratic elections. Peter Hegseth promises to remove wokeness from the military services. From what I have seen from other conservatives, the goal would be to fire, or at least not promote, some officers, not for their actions or performances, but because they have spoken out in favor of diversity and inclusion. If this is what combating wokeness means, it seeks the suppression of ideas in the very same way as the promises of retribution from Trump and Patel do. When ideas are punished, democracy suffers.

The coming years can provide other dangers to our democracy. Trump has said that he will pardon the January 6 mayhem makers. This undermines our democracy by indicating that there might not be penalties for obstructing a fair election. Trump has been urged to invoke the Insurrection Act. Perhaps we will discuss that Act someday, but let’s just say now that the vagueness of that eighteenth-century legislation could lead to alarming results.

And it is not just the Trump administration that is concerning. There is the anti-democratic institution of the Supreme Court. It is frightening what it might do in the coming years.

I am not saying that we are about to lose our democratic elections and the rule of law, but my glib response to my nephew was injudicious. I am no longer quite so certain that our democracy is safe.

Posted on by rjonakait

Twelve Ways to Win

In the last post, “77 Million,” I wrote that the real story of the last presidential election was not the switch to Trump, which was not large, but the “lost votes,” the many who had voted for Biden but did not vote at all this year. A story in a Pennsylvania news source neatly illustrates the point. A Philadelphia district that is overwhelmingly Black had shifted to Trump, but in that district Trump had gotten only three more votes than he had in 2020. Harris, however, had received 81 fewer ballots than Biden had four years earlier.

After the previous post, a friend said that he agreed with my analysis but wondered what my explanation was for the lost votes. I thought more about that and realized that I did not have a single overarching explanation but only a collection of partial possibilities. Here are some of them.

One. Donald Trump is a remarkable politician. His dominant qualities—liar, ignoramus, bully, fearmonger, bad economist, embarrassing dancer—should make him a laughingstock, but despite these characteristics, or perhaps because of them, he connects deeply with a broad swath of Americans. They are devoted to him like teenage girls to a K-pop boy band. There’s a major difference, however: American devotion to him has not been a passing fancy; we don’t seem to grow out of it. Other presidents—Reagan, Clinton, Obama—had devoted admirers, but not like Trump. To me the attraction is inexplicable, but I recognize his draw.

Two. Americans have short memories, and Trump benefited. In 2020, almost all voters held strong and accurate images of the Trump presidency. Despite the pandemic, the economy was about the same as it was under Obama, with some indicators stronger and some weaker than in the previous four years. (E.g., inflation was low under Trump, but it was even lower under Obama.) However, all was not well in the country. Crime had started to increase under Trump which was disturbing. Life expectancy had started to fall even apart from the pandemic. The border was a problem, and Trump had failed to fix it. Even Obama had deported more people than Trump had. Trump’s wall seemed a joke. His attempts to erase the Affordable Care Act were disturbing. Deficits skyrocketed. He played footsy with dictators, which was disturbing. His many grift-like actions were disturbing. A lot of things were disturbing, but that was all forgotten four years later. Moreover, of all the bad things that were predicted to happen because of his four years did not happen. For example, Biden continued the China tariffs that liberals had decried ruinous. Biden continued Trump border policies that were labeled ineffectual and heartless. More and more politicians supported the border wall. Trump was still the same Trump, but to many he did not look as bad as he had in 2020.

Three. Americans are not only forgetful; they are ignorant. Americans want simple answers, and Trump benefited. The border problem has many causes. We need a reform of our immigration laws. We need more border agents. We need more immigration judges. The problem is fueled by criminal gangs and political unrest in various countries. The problem is exacerbated by poor economies in various countries. It is intensified by the wider spread of media coverage that tells more and more people that they can find a better life if they can get to the U.S. And so on. Americans don’t want to confront such complexities. They don’t want to concede that the problem has been years in the making. They want a simple answer. And to many, the border problem is simply the fault of the Biden-Harris administration. (When conservatives refer to 2017 to 2021, they never say the Trump-Pence administration.)

More simplistic thinking follows: If the border were tightened, for example, we could tackle our fentanyl problem. (We have already forgotten that Trump promised to solve the fentanyl crisis when he ran in 2016.) Inflation. Well, inflation was the consequence of many complex events, but Americans didn’t want to understand that. Neither did we want to know that many developed countries had a worse inflation problem than we had, and that perhaps our inflation, bad as it was, was not so bad. Americans did not want to hear that gas and oil trade in an international market, that supply chains are international, and that the U.S. government does not control these markets. Instead, we want a simple answer, and that answer was that inflation was the fault of the Biden-Harris administration.

Four. Fear sells, and Trump benefited. Many campaigns have tried to make the electorate fearful about the consequences of the other side’s actions. In the first election I paid attention to, JFK stressed a “missile gap” at a time when nuclear concerns were high. (That gap seemed to disappear once he took office.) This year Trump and his acolytes did a much better job of spreading fear than the other side—fear of crime generally, fear of immigrant crime more specifically, fear of immigration, fear of fentanyl, fear of transgender people. That last fear should not be underestimated. For most of the election season, I was in Pennsylvania, a swing state for the presidential election with a closely contested Senate seat and several close House races. It seemed as if every third political ad — and the ads ran nonstop — by those on the right brought up Democratic support for trans people. They damned Harris for supporting government payment for gender-transforming operations. They hinted that Democratic candidates were going to allow trans people to play girls’ sports and use girls’ bathrooms. This country may have become more accepting of gays, but many, many Americans see trans people as unsettling and dangerous. Trump and his supporters benefited.

Five. The media has had a fixation on Trump, and Trump benefited. News sources, including, or perhaps especially, liberal ones reported at length whatever Trump was doing or saying. This was not totally surprising. In the run-up to the election, Trump was on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits including his conviction of 34 felony counts in New York. Nevertheless, this coverage overwhelmed coverage of Biden’s accomplishments (how many of us can summarize what is in the Inflation Reduction Act?) and explanations for problems like rising prices or the border. Since memory-impaired Americans seemed less concerned about the bizarre and dangerous behavior of Trump in 2024 than they were in 2020, the media did Trump a favor by focusing on him and not other things.

Six. We don’t know how to handle misinformation, and that benefited Trump, too. A higher percentage of misinformation came from the right than the left, and listeners ate it up.

Seven. Liberals and Democrats are poor at messaging. Who named it the Inflation Reduction Act? I know. I know. It was meant to reduce inflation, and it certainly did help. But it was hard not to hear it as a laugh line when the cost of milk and eggs and gas and mortgages was unusually high. Why didn’t they change the name and start focusing on all the good the Act accomplished?

Eight. But perhaps the chief cause of Trump’s (narrow) victory came throughout Biden’s term. While Americans were concerned about the border and inflation, Biden seemed indifferent to those problems. He might have been able to do little or nothing about them, but he should have appeared more concerned about them. He did not. And Trump won.

Similarly, every third ad against Harris I saw featured her being asked what she would have done differently from Biden. The response was the blank look of a doe in the headlights with the answer of “nothing.” It was powerful each time, and I saw it many, many times. Such a question had to be anticipated. How could she not have had a better immediate response? (Later on — too later on — she did.) There was also the never-ending clip of her crowing about the success of “Bidenomics.” Democrats should have been ready to explain what they were hoping to accomplish and what they had accomplished. They did not. And Trump won.

Nine. In the eyes of many Americans the Democratic Party does not stand for anything, and Trump benefited. Worse: Democrats were seen as the party that stood for trans rights, defunding the police, DEI, and critical race theory. But what else? For many, Democrats didn’t stand for anything that benefited “ordinary” people. Biden’s support for the United Auto Workers made no dint in this perception.

Ten. Covid hurt Trump in 2020. It helped him this year. His inconsistent and bizarre reactions to the pandemic were fresh four years ago. Now many have selective memories of that time. Unless personally affected, few seem to remember that one million American died. Instead, today Covid is remembered by many as a time of unnecessary school closings that harmed kids and strained parents; of unnecessary face masks; of governmental overreach on vaccines and social distancing. These are all reasons to distrust the government, and Trumps surrogates did a great job of reminding us of this distrust. At the same time, some see the Democrats as the ones who believe in big government of the sort that made Covid more hellish. Trump benefited.

Eleven. Many are not ready for a woman to be the Commander-in-Chief. We cannot discount that this country continues to have a strong strain of misogyny. Trump benefited big time from it.

Twelve. What do you think contributed? I’d love to hear them.

Posted on by rjonakait

The World Series of the Electoral College

A recent post on a local social media site drew on an analogy to the World Series to defend the Electoral College. The poster referred to a decades-old article recently reprinted in Discover magazine that discusses the theories of Alan Natapoff, a physicist, who favored voting by districts instead of in one mass. Natapoff, thus, seemed to be defending the Electoral College over a nationwide popular vote, as the poster clearly did.

The baseball analogy refers to the 1960 World Series where the New York Yankees won three blowouts but lost four close games to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees scored more runs, but the Pirates won the series. The poster and the article (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/from-the-archive-math-against-tyranny) both noted, “Runs must be grouped in a way that wins games, just as popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states.” That was fair, they maintain. “A champion should be able to win at least some of the tough, close contests by every means available–bunting, stealing, brilliant pitching, dazzling plays in the field–and not just smack home runs against second-best pitchers. A presidential candidate worthy of office, by the same logic, should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.” Natapoff decided that “nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle.”

There is much wrong with this reasoning. If the 60s Yankees had won the fourth game in another blowout (they scored nine runs in the final game), they would have been recognized as champs without having won a close game. Moreover, winning single games or their equivalents is not always the rule in sports. Cricket, e.g., has multi-day contests. The winner is not decided by who “won” each day, but by the total score. Had it been set up this way, baseball could be a contest decided inning by inning, or football quarter by quarter, but those are not the rules of the game. The rules are not inherent in the way the game is played and certainly not divinely inspired. They are man-made and can be changed. At one time the team that had the most wins after 154 games was in the World Series. The end. That is no longer true. The season is now longer and there are multiple playoff rounds that allow, many believe, for the possibility that a lesser team can become champions.

The poster quoting Natapoff asserts that the “popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states.” That is not a requirement in all our elections. E.g., we use the total vote to pick our governors and don’t require the victor to have won a majority of counties or parishes. It is only because of the Electoral College that winning a state is required in our presidential elections. (I have no idea what is meant when the poster says, “A presidential candidate worthy of office should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.” I don’t know of a successful candidate who runs on only one issue, and when I look at the maps that will be produced of red and blue states because of our Electoral College, I see something like isolated blocs of voters. We would not have that with a nationwide vote.)

I seldom respond to any posts except occasionally to point out easily checkable misinformation. (For example, I might respond: Fact-checking sites have made it clear that FEMA workers are not eating the cats and dogs of isolated North Carolina hill folk.) I did, however, reply to this post by saying, “It would be interesting to see the reaction if a conservative won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. We are unlikely to find out. A conservative winning the popular vote???” Almost immediately someone who had already declared the post “great” said, “I couldn’t give a damn what the popular vote says as long as Trump is elected.”

This comment, of course, typifies why discussions of the way we select our president are fruitless. Alan Natapoff may have been sincerely exploring the best way to hold our elections, but most of the rest of us only want reasons for a system that will select our preferred candidate. Electoral College discussions these days are partisan ones with conservatives, like the poster, defending the Electoral College. They want the status quo because they believe it favors Republicans while reformers believe Democrats would benefit from a national popular vote. Recent history fuels these positions. Twice in the last generation we have inaugurated presidents who did not get the largest popular vote, and both were Republicans.

We did not always have this particular partisan divide. In the summer of 1968, polls indicated that 66 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats believed that the Electoral College should be replaced with a national popular vote. After the election where the popular vote was close, but the Electoral College was not, 80 percent of Americans supported changing the electoral system. In 1969, the House passed by a wide majority (339 to 70) a constitutional amendment to select the president by popular vote. The proposal, however, opposed strongly by Senators from small states, could not get the necessary two-thirds vote in the upper house.

If such an amendment could not make it through the Senate when the populace overwhelmingly favored it, a similar amendment has no chance today. Instead, those who wish to retain or change the Electoral College search for plausible reasons for their positions. The standpatters often refer to the goals of the founding generations, which, I am positive, did not use Mickey Mantle sports analogies. Many defenders contend that the point to the Electoral College was to preserve the powers of the small states in the presidential selection. Reading such comments, I pulled out The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, edited by Max Farrand, and The Federalist Papers to see what these sources said about the discussion over the methods of choosing the president.

The issue was debated again and again in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The delegates would agree to a method, but potential flaws in that method would circulate. A different scheme would be proposed and problems with the new proposal would be pointed out. This merry-go-round continued until near the end of the convention when the delegates finally settled on the Electoral College as it appears in the original Constitution.

The convention first voted to have Congress choose the President, but criticisms soon emerged. In James Madison’s words: “If the Legislature elect, it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction: it will be like the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals; real merit will rarely be the title to the appointment.” Madison and others maintained that an Electoral College, however selected, would obviate some of the concerns of a congressional selection. The electors would be chosen for only one purpose and would gather just once. In the adopted version they would not meet together in one place but in the separate states so that there would be little opportunity for cabals, intrigues, and foreign influence. The congressional selection of the president, they said, would also upset a basic goal of the Constitution — the separation of powers — since the President would be beholden to Congress for his selection.

Many other methods of choosing the president were proposed and rejected: The state governors should select the President; electors selected by Congress should make the choice; electors drawn by lot from Congress should choose the President. Madison did state that the “fittest” way to select the President was to have a direct election, but he then noted two problems: “The first arose from the disposition of the people to prefer a Citizen of their own State, and the disadvantage this would throw on the smaller States.” Madison did not find this problem insurmountable and said “that some expedient might be hit upon that would obviate it.” The next speaker, however, differed with Madison’s optimism by saying, “The objection drawn from the different size of the States, is unanswerable. The Citizens of the largest states would invariably prefer the Candidate within the State; and the largest States would invariably have the man.” The delegates thought that a direct election would prejudice the smaller states, but what concerned them was that candidates from small states could not get elected. (Reminder. In 2016, Trump was a lifelong resident of a large state, but New York overwhelmingly voted against the hometown boy. Perhaps the Founders were not familiar with the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”)

Madison also maintained that a direct vote would undermine the South. Many northern states had eased the traditional requirement that only white male citizens who owned real property could vote by allowing white males who paid taxes to also have the franchise. Thus, a higher proportion of people in the North could vote than in the South, and the South’s power would be diluted by a direct election. The Electoral College would prevent this calamitous possibility. It was not suggested that extension of the franchise might benefit the South as well.

Today many assert that the founders were protecting the small states by giving them a slightly greater number of electors than was justified by their populations. However, the founders addressed the small-state problem in a different way. The concern was that a candidate from a small state, even if worthy, would inevitably lose because the large-state electors would vote for one of their own. The solution: each elector would vote for two people, one of whom must not be from the elector’s state. The delegates thought that while one vote may go to the home state favorite, the second vote would be for the person seen as the best in the rest of the country. If that person was from a small state, he could be elected with a collection of second-choice votes.

The Founders added another “accommodation to the anxiety of the smaller States,” as Madison wrote in a letter in 1823. If no person got a majority of the appointed electors, then the House of Representatives would choose the President from the five highest on the electoral list with each state having one vote. The largest and smallest states would be equal in this process, which, according to Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers, would be “a case which it cannot be doubted will sometimes, if not frequently, happen.”

The constitutional convention delegates knew that the large states would dominate the Electoral College, and they did. Luther Martin writing to the Maryland Legislature after the draft Constitution was promulgated but before it was adopted said that the “large states have a very undue influence in the appointment of the President.” Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, writing in 1803, noted that it was recognized that the large states would dominate the Electoral College. Only if the matter went to the House of Representatives did the small states have a substantial voice in the presidential selection.

The major effect of the original Electoral College was not to give power to the small states but to the slaveholding states. Madison had said that a direct presidential election was “fittest,” but it would harm the South, citing the more “diffusive” franchise in the North, but the Virginian slaveholder continued with the curious comment that with a direct election the South would “have no influence on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty….” The “difficulty” was avoided by basing the number of electors on representation in the House of Representatives. The apportionment of the House, of course, incorporated the three-fifths clause where that percentage of slaves was used in the allocation of House seats.

The three-fifths clause was, therefore, incorporated into the Electoral College giving extra power to the large slaveholding states. The first census in 1790 found that New York had a free white population of 313,000 and North Carolina had a free white population of 289,000. Each state had the same electors, however—twelve—after that first census. While New York had 21,324 slaves, North Carolina had 100,572.  However, when 60% of the slaves were included to determine representation in the House, North Carolina’s “population” was larger than New York’s. South Carolina had a free white population of 139,000, but New Jersey had thirty thousand more. Even so, South Carolina had twelve electors and New Jersey eleven. South Carolina had 107,094 slaves and New Jersey 11,423. (New Jersey is the starkest example of why Madison feared for the effect on the South were there to be a direct election of the President. As Madison had to know, New Jersey alone among the states then allowed white women to vote, and its total vote might have been twice that of South Carolina’s. With the Electoral College as adopted, even though South Carolina had the smaller white population, it had more power in the presidential selection than did New Jersey.)

Virginia had a free white population of 441,000; Pennsylvania had 422,000, about a four percent difference. Virginia had 292,627 slaves and Pennsylvania had 3,731. Even though the enslaved people could not vote, because of them Virginia had forty percent more electors than Pennsylvania—twenty-one to fifteen.

A direct vote for President would have lessened the power of the South; instead, the Electoral College as adopted magnified it. Founders recognized and said that large states would dominate the vote in the Electoral College, but Southern states would have special influence in picking a President because of the peculiar way in which slaves were counted.

The Founders did not protect small states via the Electoral College, and their sop of requiring electors to vote for two people with one not from the state of the elector proved to be laughable. The Framers in adopting the Electoral College did not foresee the rise of political parties even though parties were in place only a few years after the Constitution was adopted. Partisanship was evident in the first contested presidential election, after Washington retired in 1796.* By then, two men ran as a team with one running for President and the other as Vice-President. The country made it through 1796 without a major problem, but the Electoral College caused a crisis in 1800.

Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr ran as a Republican team in the presidential election. The widespread understanding was that Jefferson was running for President and Burr for Vice President. John Adams, the Federalist incumbent, ran with his vice-presidential running mate Thomas Pinckney against Jefferson and Burr. Jefferson got seventy-three electoral votes to Adams sixty-five, making Jefferson the apparent victor, but of course, because each elector had two votes, Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Jefferson. With two candidates yoked together by party affiliation, it was not a surprise that they would get the same number of electoral votes. A tie, which was not foreseen by the Framers, was close to inevitable with the rise of political parties.

The selection of the President in 1800 went to the lame-duck Federalist-dominated House, even though the Federalists had lost the election. That losing party had to decide which Republican, Jefferson or Burr, was the lesser evil. Thirty-six ballots later, Jefferson became the third President. And we got the Twelfth Amendment to fix this major flaw. That Amendment required electors to cast separate votes for President and Vice-President.**

At least when it came to the method of selecting the president, the Framers’ wisdom was faulty. Perhaps there are good reasons today to have the Electoral College but not because the founding generation created a perfect system. It did not protect the integrity or sovereignty of the small states. Our first six presidents all came from large states. Four of them were Virginians. This was not a surprise for the original Constitution through the Electoral College gave the major slaveholding states the dominant power in picking the President.

——————

*The Framers also did not foresee that electoral votes would be allocated by a winner-takes-all approach where the candidate with the most votes in each state would get all of that state’s electoral votes. That development, however, did not come quite as quickly as the rise of political parties. In 1796, even though Jefferson won the most votes in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, one elector in each of those states voted for John Adams instead, and those three votes made Adams president. He received 71 electoral votes to Jefferson’s 68. Jefferson received the second most votes. Adams’s running mate, Thomas Pinckney, garnered 59 electoral votes. Thus, under the electoral system then in place, Jefferson became Vice-President under his political enemy, Adams, an uncomfortable result.

**Elections might be more fun if we still had the original electoral scheme as indicated by Alexander Hamilton’s devious actions in 1796. Although Adams and Hamilton were both Federalists, Hamilton did not want Adams to become President. Supposedly Hamilton approached electors in states Jefferson had won and urged those electors, after voting for Jefferson, to give their second vote to Thomas Pinckney. Hamilton was hoping that Jefferson-Pinckney votes plus Adams-Pinckney votes would give Pinckney the most electoral votes and the Presidency. Hamilton’s machinations seem to have borne some fruit, most notably in South Carolina where both Jefferson and Pinckney received eight electoral votes. The scheme failed because in several states that Adams won, the electors divided their second votes between Pinckney and other candidates or did not give any second votes to Pinckney. For example, Adams received nine votes in Connecticut, but Pinckney got only four, with five votes going to John Jay. New Hampshire gave six votes to Adams, but none to Pinckney. Pinckney received twelve fewer electoral votes than Adams. But think of the gamesmanship we might have if this original electoral edifice still existed.

Posted on by rjonakait

In the Realm of the Aged

I am a ‘tweener. I am older than Trump and younger than Biden. Knowing how age has affected me, I am concerned about the ages of both presidential candidates.

I, like almost everyone in my age bracket, suffers from the oft embarrassing tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. For example, an actor was in an ad. I tried to name him. I could say he was great in that movie with Jodie Foster, Silence of the Lambs. His name was on the tip of my tongue, but it did not immediately emerge. Of course, something like this happened when I was younger but not as often.

I have a related problem to the answer that won’t quite emerge. Sometimes I hear myself utter X and immediately know that X is not right. In a moment I may know I meant Y, and then I must quickly decide whether correcting myself is worth it.

This disturbs me, perhaps more than most others because I took pride in my trivia abilities. And, while I occasionally used to participate in trivia contests, I have vowed to eschew all future ones since they just make me feel old. Many of the questions have pop culture references that are too recent for me. That makes me feel old. I know I once knew the answer to some questions that I no longer know. That makes me feel old. And other questions produce that tip-of-the-tongue thing where only sometimes the answer emerges quickly enough to be useful. And that makes me feel old. The answers I can contribute to my trivia team do not make up for the inadequate, aged feelings, and I have retired from trivia.

Should these cognitive hiccups, which are normal in the aging process, disqualify me from being president? They should be put into context. I feel many of my cognitive powers are as strong — or at least nearly as strong — as ever, and perhaps some of the time even better now than before. I reason and think as well as any time in my adulthood. Whatever you might think of the quality of this blog, it would not have been better in 1980 or 2000. I no longer practice law, but I believe that I could write a brief of as good quality as I did in the past. I don’t believe that my mind has deteriorated in thinking about all sorts of problems and may even be better now because I bring more experiences and knowledge to bear.

The qualifying cognitive abilities to be president should not be determined by trivia gotcha questions, such as, Who is the leader of Kazakhstan? (Kazakhstan by land mass is one of the world’s ten largest nations. Can you name the other nine?) We should realize considering the magnitude of the job, that no person can know on their own everything they need to know to be an effective president. Instead, in judging a president or candidate, we need to know what kind of advisors he or she is likely to have. Will they be knowledgeable about Kazakhstan or whatever is the immediate matter of concern? Will they be able to present to a president in a comprehensible way what a president should know about the topic? Will they present all the information or only what they think the president will want to hear? If asked for opinions and recommendations, will they give unfiltered ones? Then our attention should turn to the president or presidential candidates. How well can these people absorb new information and analyze it? In other words, how well can the person learn and think?

However, we should remember that the learning and thinking required of a president is different from other successful folk. Generally, those who think and learn well do so only in a narrow path, and it is often embarrassing when they opine outside their lane. We have often seen the truth of what a wise person said: “Every person who has become famous for something ought to pray not to be interviewed on other things.” On the other hand, the president is a generalist. He or she must make decisions that span the globe and span multitudinous areas of expertise. A president must be able to learn and think about not just one subject but a whole world of subjects.

The public seldom gets direct knowledge about the crucial learning and thinking abilities of presidents or would-be presidents. We can only infer from other signals. How much a person does know about a range of topics is an indicator of how well that person has learned and, presumably, can learn. Whether a person indicates curiosity about a range of topics indicates a desire to learn.

There is another factor in this cognitive journey. I was once a trial attorney, and I believe that I could cross-examine and sum up as well as I did in days of yore. But a trial takes a lot of energy. Attention needs to be paid every moment during often long court days. After court ends, the attorney must retreat back to the office for hours of preparation for the next day. It can be exhausting. I know that I do not have the energy I once had, and it is possible, perhaps probable, that days of trial would sap my mental acuity. The energy to be a good president must be exponentially higher. Even if a person is able to think and reason well about a broad range of topics, energy, especially as the person ages, may wane in ways that affect mental acuity.

I am old. I believe that I still have a good mind. Even so, I am concerned about how the age of our candidates affects their mental abilities. However, the mental acuity of our leaders should always concern us. Gaffes in speech are not by themselves important. What truly matters is how well the person can learn, analyze, and make decisions and who the advisors will be.

Now. Examine for yourself the two gentlemen under consideration.

Posted on by rjonakait

Trump’s Uncanny Inheritance

Whenever I listen to a minute or two of one of his rallies (which is as long as I can tolerate), I admire Donald Trump’s speaking ability. This is not the speechifying of many public figures. It is not like the famous speeches we may remember. It is different from JFK’s pronouncing that the U.S. was going to the moon; different from MLK’s I Have a Dream speech; or Ronald Reagan’s, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The oratory of those other figures was carefully scripted, and we knew that this was a performance for a massed audience. On occasion, Trump tries something similar, but we can always tell that he is reading words written by someone else.

Instead what I admire in Trump’s rallies is his “conversational” style. He does not seem to be talking to the massed audience all at once, but to an individual. (I say “conversational” because, of course, we don’t really think he would ever have a real conversation with anyone at his rallies or perhaps anywhere.) He has the ability to make it seem as if he is talking only to you, not just to a faceless crowd.

This makes me think about something I read decades ago about the development of popular music. Before microphones, singers sometimes used a megaphone to reach their audiences, but mostly they just projected their voice so that it could be widely heard. They were singing for a massed audience without any individuals being singled out. Think opera today. I may feel thrilled to hear the soprano, but I don’t feel that she is singing just to me. I am just one of many who is hearing her at the same time.

When amplification started, the popular culture historian I read said that at first singing styles did not change. The music was still for a massed audience. Then, according to that writer, Bing Crosby changed everything. He used the microphone in a new way that felt not that he was singing to a group, but was singing to every individual in that group. Close your eyes and listen to Crosby singing about that white Christmas. He is singing to you. It is a personal experience, not a mass one.

Trump’s strength in his rallies is that he does not talk to a crowd. He makes it seem as if he is talking to everyone personally, and that has turned out to be a powerful ability to attract and keep followers.

Trump has benefited from speaking to large public assemblages in this way. He reads the room seeking laughter and outrage from his listeners, and this serves to acknowledge them. It gives them an identity when they feel overlooked and some sort of hope that he can make their lives better.

In these rallies he is an heir to a much older America where people got education and entertainment by hearing speakers and lecturers. America’s golden age of oratory was from roughly 1870 to 1925, a time before the mass media of radio and television had permeated the nation. What there was instead was an extensive railroad network. Able to appear in towns of all sizes, speakers utilized this network to entertain and inform. People like Frederick Douglass, Emma Goldman, William Jennings Bryan, and Clarence Darrow may have had other careers, but they all were on the lecture circuit. For example, Frederick Douglass edited a newspaper and wrote much, but he was perhaps most widely known for his oratory, which not only spread his views but earned him sizeable sums.

These speaking tours must have been exhausting because the speakers were almost constantly on the move. Emma Goldman, for example, made 321 speeches in a year. In breaks from the Scopes trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, Darrow road the rails to Chattanooga and elsewhere to speak, and Bryan also appeared at auditoriums whenever the trial was in recess. Wherever such speakers appeared, they gave audiences their money’s worth, speaking for more than an hour, eliciting laughter and outrage as they tried to get the audiences to adopt their views. Trump may not know who these people were (When president Trump said, “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”), and he certainly does not espouse the racial views of Douglass or the pro-labor, anti-capitalist views of Goldman, the true populism or religious faith of Bryan, nor the populism or agnosticism of Darrow. Even so, at his rallies he in essence shares a legacy with these and similar people. I can’t imagine he knows who they are, but if he did, he would not see them as kindred spirits; He would only despise them.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I once thought I understood proper tipping, but now I am confused. More and more the machines where I pay ask if I want to leave a tip at places where I seldom tipped before, such as a bagel shop or a coffee bean retailer. But I was very surprised when I went through a toll booth and I was asked if I wanted to tip.

The handwritten sign in the bar’s window said:

          Here’s to Strong Women

                    May we know them

                    May we be them

                    May we raise them

When inside, I said to a favorite server that the sign was offensive. She asked if that was because there was no reference to men, and I replied, “No. Because there should be another line: ‘May we love them.’ ” She gave me a thumbs up and a fist bump. When a bit later I saw the at-least-once-burned owner and said the same thing, she snapped back, “No one believes in love anymore.”

Until recently I was not aware that Stellantis was a major American car maker. Of course, until recently I did not even know that Stellantis existed.

I was only trying to spread hope, but the mother seemed upset when I peered into the stroller and said, “Some two-year-olds get better looking as they grow older.”

All those TV sports shows ought to interview college athletes about their favorite professors and then produce clips of those teachers both in the classroom and interacting with the athletes outside of classes.

A wise person said: “The fact that you cannot serve God and mammon does not seem to have hurt business any.”

The sidewalk sign for a neighborhood establishment said among other things that I could buy “esoteric products” on the second floor. Can you tell me what I could expect to find?

If a son is a “Junior,” is it psychologically harmful to him if his father is not “Senior?” Does this help explain Donald Trump, Jr.?

Trump Sr. boasts that gasoline prices were much lower when he was president than now. He is correct, but even when he is correct, he is wrong. He says that the prices back in his presidential days were much lower than now. They were, but he quotes prices that were much lower than they actually were when he was President and then quotes much higher prices than is true for today. Is there a name for this syndrome where a person tells falsehoods even when the truth favors him?

When Trump took office, the cost of gasoline (“Obama’s gas prices”) were lower than the averages during the next four years. I have never heard Trump mention this.

“The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them” Samuel McChord Crothers.

“The best liar is he who makes the smallest of lying go the longest way.” Samuel Butler.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Distinguished lawyers state that no attorney would allow Donald Trump to testify in his criminal trials. That is misleading. A criminal defendant has the constitutional right to testify at his trial, and the law is clear that the attorney does not control this decision. The accused decides. The attorney may advise against such testimony, and the defendant usually follows that advice, but the defendant has the ultimate authority over whether he testifies or not. Would you be surprised, however, if Trump did not listen to his lawyers?

Does Trump fully know what he is charged with in the last indictment? That charging document is forty-five pages long. It is about him, so there is a chance he read it, but not a good one.

“A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.” Lyndon B. Johnson.

“The American Presidency, it occurs to us, is merely a way station en route to the blessed condition of being an ex-President.” John Updike.

Several women are running for president. With our concern over inflation and deficits, we should elect a female. We could pay 70% of what we pay a man for  being president.

“I’d like to get to the point where I can be just as mediocre as a man.” Juanita Kreps.

“He told me that he was a self-made man. Later I discovered that he would have been wise to get some help.” Joan Rivers.

When a woman refuses to respond to a man’s advances, he is not disconcerted; he is merely astonished that she could be so blind to her own feelings. With a nod to Helen Rowland.

“In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman.” Nancy Astor.

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, that is not difficult.” Charlotte Witten.

“It’s sexy to be competent.” Letty Cottin Pogrebin.

“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.” Gloria Steinem.

“My life is not up for criticism, just my work.” Cher.

A wise person said, “Women who think they are the equal of men lack ambition.”

Behind every successful man stands an amazed woman.