Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

If It Feels Right, It Is Right.

Near the end of his book Madoff: The Final Word, written shortly before our president won his second term, Richard Behar asks comparative questions about the con man Bernard Madoff and Donald Trump, including: “Do the 2020 presidential election deniers have anything in common with investors who blindly followed Madoff? And can denial be contagious and transmissible across huge segments of society?”

It may seem that Madoff investors have much in common with the election deniers and others who accept Trump’s falsehoods, but there are different dynamics at work for each. With Madoff, many have said that the investors should have known that their returns were too good to be true. Gains of fifteen percent or more every year, every quarter no matter if the market or the economy was up or down were beyond belief, so how could anyone believe them? The question ignores human nature. Few challenge something that is benefiting them. Human nature and history have produced relevant adages. Don’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Madoff apparently delivered golden eggs. Such a goose is unbelievable, but if I had one, I would not probe it to see how it was constructed in case the eggs would no longer come.

Behar tries to find out why the Securities and Exchange Commission was not on to Madoff much earlier than it was. The SEC does not have enough resources to monitor closely all the investment businesses in the country. Their investigations are invariably triggered by complaints, and those invariably come from those who lose money. No one complained about Madoff. Investors only thought that they were making gains.

There are reasons that since the time of Charles Ponzi over a hundred years ago (and no doubt before), humans have been willing to believe the promises of Ponzi and related pyramid schemes. That is human nature for many of us.

Unlike Madoff investors, Trump supporters who accept his falsehoods do not get a direct material reward. But many of them have a sense of grievance. They feel that their lives are not as good as they should be, and America is not as great as it should be. It does not matter if Trump is divorced from factual truth as long as what he says feels true about their grievances. After all, what are facts compared to what I honestly feel?

Think back, if you are old enough, to Ronald Reagan when something similar happened. Reagan was politically popular even though polls often showed widespread disagreement with many of his specific proposals and policies. Even so, Reagan was able to project an overall message that resonated with many. Ethan Bronner in Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America examines the phenomenon and finds this lesson: “People would go with you if they were attracted to the feel of your campaign, even if they disagreed with many aspects of it.”

The roots of these dynamics predate those Republican presidents. Sources can be found in the academy of a generation ago. How to read a novel was debated in graduate schools. Was the goal to find the author’s intentions? The response increasingly became that the readers should seek individual significance, what a book meant to them. Since each reader had unique experiences and perspectives, a book had no single meaning, and all the meanings discovered in the literary piece were equally valid. A novel did not have a single, objective “truth” but many subjective ones. Meaning was “contingent” depending on the reader’s perspective. This was said to be a “postmodern” reading.

Such thinking jumped the literary fence into other disciplines. Some maintained that societal truth varies depending upon your experiences and perspectives. Your viewpoint shapes what is true for you. There are multiple truths that should be respected. From the path seeking to broaden understanding of why people hold different opinions and viewpoints, this broadened into the assertion that there is no objective reality and that truth and morality were only “contingent.” This led to the conclusion that all opinions should be considered and analyzed, and that all opinions must be respected. However, this respect morphed for some into the idea that all opinions were of equal validity. If something were true for you, then it was true. Facts were always subjective. There was no objective truth.

This philosophy became associated with lefties who maintained that not only was history written by the winners, but that the winners, the privileged, controlled societal “reality” and “truth.” Their reminder that things looked different depending on where you stood in the societal hierarchies was valuable. “Truth” and “reality” were contingent, but conservatives lashed out and mocked those who could not tell right from wrong or could not tell there was a recognizable, firm truth.

We have had a switch. Now “conservatives” say something similar to what leftists said in the past. Rudy Giuliani, for example, stated that truth is relative. Other conservatives have spoken of “alternative facts.” Conservatives deny evidence about climate change suggesting that science, too, is relative–that it is only political. Conservatives seem to have adopted postmodernism, but they have gone beyond it.

In this postmodernistic world, we don’t have to go to the trouble of ascertaining what is true because what matters is what is true for me. Many of his supporters surely know that what Trump says is not only false but errant bullshit, but he says what the Trumpistas want to believe. The important thing is that what he says feels true to his audience. And if it feels true to them, then it is true.

The appeal and power of accepting falsehoods because they feel right, because they are true for me, should not be underestimated. We might think that when everybody has their own truth individuals are separated from each other and the world is atomistic. It is true that in the postmodernist world I don’t have to engage with those who hold other truths. I can remain segregated from them, but believing in falsehoods also brings people together. What Lawrence Wright in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief wrote about a new religious movement has broader applicability: “Belief in the irrational is one definition of faith, but it is also true that clinging to absurd or disputed doctrines binds a community of faith together and defines a barrier to the outside world.”

Wright’s insight helps explain our modern world. Many who believe that we should distinguish truth from non-truth to formulate policies and action have their own faith in rationality. They are surprised that as the breadth, depth, and frequency of Trump’s bullshit becomes increasingly apparent that Trumpistas have not fallen away. These rationalists see the falsehoods as a negative for Trump, but in fact they are a source of the president’s strength. His falsehoods have produced a feeling that such utterances must be true, ought to be true, are at least emotionally true. As a result, they have bound his supporters together, helping to define a needed barrier with the rest of society.

In this world, it is enough to say that it could be true, it might be true, or it has not been disproved to my personal satisfaction. This world does not have to abide by the standards of good historical, scientific, sociological, or anthropological inquiry. Acolytes don’t have to grapple with the strengths and weaknesses of sets of data. Well, yes. Life is a lot easier without that hard work. Others can foolishly spend their time looking for facts and truth, but we don’t need to. The truth is what we want it to be. And this prevents Trumpistas from having to change their views. They never have to confront what T.H. Huxley said about science: “The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” Leisure increases and life is simpler without a responsibility for discerning or establishing facts. I can just stop with my inquiry once something feels right for me. I don’t have to uncomfortably confront information or views I don’t like and the conflicts, external and internal, that they can cause. My belief is as true as yours. Discourse, analysis, and research are all a waste of time. My life is easier.

A sizeable portion of the population does not care whether what Trump says is true or not, much less whether he believes what he says is true or that he knows, like the liar, that it is not true. A sizeable audience is indifferent to how things really are. In words of Harry Frankfort (see post of August 22, 2025 “Trump versus Madoff”), this group is content to be fed bullshit, and that, alas, almost guarantees that bullshit will proliferate.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets (Tariffs and Other Stuff)

Tariffs were controversial before the Civil War. Their benefits and detriments were not equal throughout the country. Brenda Wineapple reports in The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (2019) that in 1832 the South Carolina legislature said that, if not repealed, a federal tariff was null and void and a ground for secession.

Tariffs were also controversial after the Civil War. They were the chief source of federal revenues until the early twentieth century. The issue was not whether tariffs should be applied but at what rate. As Troy Senik wrote in A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (2023), tariffs had conflicting goals. Should they only be high enough to fund government or go further to protect American industry from ruinous foreign competition? Industry was best protected when tariffs were so high that almost no foreign goods were imported, but then little revenue was collected. On the other hand, tariffs set best for funding the government did not protect industry as much as higher taxes.

Troy Senik also says that Grover Cleveland correctly saw another conflict in tariffs: They helped to raise wages in protected industries, but this gain was offset by higher prices workers had to pay for goods

Friends talk about fleeing to Canada. But what is the point if Canada becomes the 51st state?

No friend talks about fleeing to Greenland. Perhaps that will be different when Trump builds Mar-a-Lago Northeast there.

Deputy Attorney Genereal Todd Blanche said recently that the Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into a leak of “inaccurate, but nevertheless classified” intelligence about the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. It comes as a shock that anyone in the Trump administration wants to keep false information secret.

Present policies show that the Republican party has abandoned much of what Ronald Reagan stood for. Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s states that Reagan, fueled by anticommunism, had “a preference for more open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs[,] a stingier social net, [as well as] a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union.”

Under Reagan, the federal workforce grew by 200,000.

Because of tariffs, the United States has intervened militarily and politically in foreign countries. Sean Mirski in We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and Rise of the American Colossus (2023) maintains that our interventions in Latin America at the turn of 20th century and beyond were not primarily to protect American business interests but rather to keep European governments outside the hemisphere. Some Latin American countries borrowed profligately from Europe and often could not pay the money back. Under international law, the lender countries were entitled to use force to service the debts. This was often a simple procedure: Seize the customhouse and collect the tariffs. The United States was concerned about this potential European presence in the Americas and feared further that the Latin American countries would grant the Europeans concessions that would disfavor the United States. Consequently, the United States thought it was better to intervene in the debtor nations and use the customs revenues to pay the Europeans. Frequently, this was good for the invaded country since the Americans did not skim from the tariffs, or at least not as much as before, and the Latin American country often saw its revenues increase. Moreover, Europe learned that interventions in the Western Hemisphere were expensive. The European powers then often blustered about intervening to get America to do the expensive work. America soon recognized that the problems would recur unless the debtor countries became stable and lived within their means. As a result, the United States became more and more involved in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

Posted on by rjonakait

A Day for Presidents

Ulysses S. Grant liked to say that he knew two songs. One was “Yankee Doodle” and the other was not.

John Ganz in When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) says that George H.W. “Bush was the representative of a class bred to govern, not to lead.”

Grover Cleveland vetoed more bills in his first term than all previous presidents combined. (Many, however, were private pension bills.)Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

Lincoln said about General Phil Sheridan, who had a distinctive body, that he was a “chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch, he can scratch them without stooping.”Scott W. Berg, The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul (2023).

Warren Harding, when President, privately said that his vote for World War I was a mistake. Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022).

Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s summarizes President Ronald Reagan as being fueled by anticommunism, which gave him “a preference for more-open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs and a stingier social net. Anticommunism mattered more to him than democracy or small government. He wanted a sharp increase in military spending, a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union, and more extensive aid to right-wing illiberal regimes in place in South and Central America and Southern Africa.”

Hemmer also reports that Reagan’s 1980 presidential race was the first with a partisan gender gap.

Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) reminded me that Reagan, in response to Black Panthers, said there is no reason why anyone should carry a loaded gun on the streets.

Joshua L. Powell writes in Inside the NRA: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia within the Most Powerful Political Group in America (2020) that gun owners voted for George W. Bush by 25 points over Al Gore.

Al Gore is younger than Donald Trump.

Ted Widmer in Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington (2020) refers to a historian who said that to discuss Millard Fillmore was to overrate him.

One modern president who was religious believed strongly in the separation of church and state. Jonathan Alter writes in His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020) that when he was the Georgia governor, Carter canceled a weekly worship service for government employees because it violated separation of church and state. President Carter did not allow religious sermons in the White House because of separation of church and state.

Jill Lepore states in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) that Lyndon Johnson had broad support among evangelicals in 1964.

Something that would not happen today: Doris Kearns Goodwin reports in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s that she thought that she would lose her position as a White House Fellow in 1967 because she had co-authored a piece in The New Republic titled “How to Remove LBJ in 1968.”

Jonathan Alter maintains that Jimmy Carter had a photographic memory for names, which reminded me of a story a former colleague told me. Ed grew up in a small Arkansas town where his parents had a modest, but successful, business. When Bill Clinton ran for state attorney general, Ed’s parents attended a fundraiser in their hometown for the candidate. Eight years later, when Clinton was out of office between his non-consecutive gubernatorial terms, Ed’s parents were in Washington, D.C. They spotted Clinton on the opposite sidewalk. They debated whether they should go up to him because of their one meeting. Before they had made a decision, Clinton strode across the Georgetown street, stuck out his hand, and greeted Ed’s parents by their first and last names.

This is not the first time we have had an administration with strange opinions about vaccinations. Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) states that Dwight Eisenhower and his Health Secretary said that the free distribution of the polio vaccine was socialized medicine.

According to Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018), Trump in 2016 did best in counties with a public health crisis, especially where the suicide rate and opioid use was high.

Posted on by rjonakait

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

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

What We Didn’t Learn from 9/11

Conservatives contend that the “mainstream media” is liberal, but even if true, liberals are exceptionally bad at selling their message in any media. Quick: give me a liberal aphorism or quote that helps set the political agenda today. Compare whatever you remember with these: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” “The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.” “The problem is not that people are taxed too little; the problem is that government spends too much.” “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

These are all the words of Ronald Reagan, and this still-resonating rhetoric starts many political policy discussions today. Such debates are seldom founded on the thought that government does good things or that taxation can lead to a better society. Instead, the basic premises are that government is dangerous; government is too big; government is inept; government is incompetent; taxes are bad; taxation is too high; regulations destroy jobs. Reagan remains influential because he re-shaped the political dialog even though his actual policies often undercut conservative ideology. Thus, conservatives continue to maintain that economic growth spurred by tax cuts will cut the federal deficit and reduce unemployment. Reagan engineered a major tax cut, but the federal deficit and debt ballooned. Reagan then went on to support specific tax increases–on gasoline, for instance–in a failed attempt to lower the debt. Part of the deficit problem, in spite of his aphorisms, was that Reagan did not cut government spending; instead, the size of the federal government increased significantly under his watch.

The liberals have lost out on the political starting point for what should be an essential discussion: What is the role of government? Government should address a wide range of problems that markets alone are ill-equipped to tackle. Liberals and anti-conservatives, however, have not been good at producing a debate about the basic roles of government and, instead, seem able only to respond to conservative claims.

Al Franken in his book Giant of the Senate, gives an explanation: “Democrats always have a disadvantage in messaging—not because we’re idiots, but because we have complex ideas and, sometimes, a hard time explaining them succinctly. Our bumper stickers always end with ‘continued on next bumper sticker.’” For example, it is easier to proclaim simply that immigrants take jobs than it is to discuss with more nuance that our economy is not a zero-sum game where a job for one is not simply the loss of work for another; how immigrants help grow the economy by buying goods and services; how immigrants pay payroll and incomes taxes; how, as our birthrate declines, immigration is a force for necessary workforce expansion. Yes, no bumper sticker can do that. Democrats are not sparkling sloganeers.

However, there are many opportunities to examine the role of government and the fatuousness of conservative shibboleths. For example, weather tragedies—hurricanes, tornados, floods, and fires—provide an opportunity for such analyses. In the aftermath of natural devastations, someone will complain about price-gouging. That should lead to a discussion of market economics because price-gouging is simply the normal result of free market economics. The extraordinary, sudden demand for goods with a limited supply gives the seller the opportunity to make high profits. Conservatives who believe in unrestrained markets should accept such price-gouging. Interestingly, however, I have never heard any leading conservative who, in other circumstances mouths platitudes about the importance of free markets, defend this high pricing. Instead, what price-gouging could teach is that almost all of us have concerns about our free-market system and believe that it should be–oh, that fearful word–regulated at least some of the time.

The fight for FEMA funds could also be an opportunity for an examination of conservative platitudes. In accordance with their call for a smaller government, conservatives should be opposed to FEMA, and some conservative congressmen and think tanks have indeed proposed a more limited federal role in responding to natural disasters. But those in the affected areas–including conservatives–speak as if getting the Washington money is a right. Although it is never called this, the flood- or hurricane-affected regions see federal disaster assistance as an entitlement. In other circumstances conservatives would rail against such aid as wealth redistribution. Natural disasters and other emergencies do not occur at the same rate throughout the country; some states–Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, for example–are more prone to them than others. Yet Texas takes more funds out of FEMA than it puts in while many other states put more in than they get out. FEMA redistributes wealth by geography.

Another way to look at FEMA, however, is that it is part of a social safety net. People are in need because of a disaster, and we as Americans–and that includes our government–help people in need. As with any aspect of our social safety net, we should seek to lessen the demand for it in the future and seek to make those asking or demanding assistance more responsible for lessening their present and future need. However, as long as we are one country, even though fortune and misfortune do not fall equally upon us, we should aid the unfortunate. Let’s start talking about FEMA as welfare, as wealth redistributor, as part of our social safety net, and tie them into a broader discussion of Americans who might need help from, yes, the government.

More than natural disasters trigger thoughts about effective conservative messaging and its absence from anti-conservatives. With the two-score anniversary of 9/11, I am having many flashbacks to that day and its aftermath. For years my heart raced whenever a plane flew low overhead. I still cannot watch footage from that day or even see on old movie that has the Towers in the background. I remember that when I could return to work after the attacks I would always get a headache as I emerged from the subway facing the wreckage; that the burning plastic smells emitted from the lit ruins made me feel sick at the end of each work day; that I was separated from my family and wanted to see them; that I saw stuff come out of the burning Towers that I hoped were not bodies; that I saw people right after the attacks huddled in doorways a few blocks from the Towers hysterically crying; that I cried on 9/11 and every day for weeks, perhaps months, afterwards; that the sky was a beautiful late summer blue; and that people helped each other. But in all these memories and more, I also think that 9/11 was a lost opportunity for resetting the domestic political dialog.

(concluded September 10)

Posted on by rjonakait

The Wit of JFK

Is wit necessary to be a good president? I thought about that as I read The Kennedy Wit edited by Bill Adler, a book published eight months after the assassination. My paperback copy, which I found in an antique store in a Pennsylvania village, was printed in February 1965. Its cover proclaims:

THE LANDSLIDE NATIONAL BESTSELLER

110,000 COPIES IN PRINT AT $3.00. NOW ONLY 60¢!

 Reading this, I could not remember the last time I saw the cent sign. However, written in pencil on the first page was a three, so I paid the proprietor the cost of the original hardcover. That seller, in handing back a couple singles, said, “He was the last good president they produced.” (An inflation calculator tells me that $3 in 1964 equals $25.84 today, so I guess my purchase was still a bargain for an antique book.)

All presidents try to be witty, but in the age of the speechwriter, it is hard to know how much a president should get credit, or blame, for attempts at wit, which too often fall embarrassingly flat. Perhaps we can only gauge their delivery. E.g., Obama had great timing and Reagan told a good story. Both of them, I suspect, were truly witty, as was President Kennedy. JFK delivered droll, often self-deprecatory one-liners with a confident deadpan, and it was fun to read many of them again. Some of them:

“I do not think it entirely inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”

To the National Industrial Conference Board: “It would be premature to ask your support in the next election and it would be inaccurate to thank you for it in the past.”

“There is no city in the United States in which I get a warmer welcome and less votes than Columbus, Ohio.”

“Politics is an astonishing profession. It has enabled me to go from being an obscure member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the Football Hall of Fame.”

“Those of you who regard my profession of political life with some disdain should remember that it made it possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical competence.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I was warned to be out of here in plenty of time to permit those who are going to the Green Bay Packers game to leave. I don’t mind running against Mr. Nixon but I have the good sense not run against the Green Bay Packers.”

“We had an interesting convention at Los Angeles, and we ended with a strong Democratic platform which we call ‘The Rights of Man.’ The Republican platform has also been presented. I do not know its title, but it has been referred to as ‘The Power of Positive Thinking.’”

“Last week a noted clergyman was quoted as saying that our society may survive in the event of my election, but it certainly won’t be what it was. I would like to think he was complimenting me, but I’m not sure he was.”

“You remember the very old story about a citizen of Boston who heard a Texan talking about the glories of Bowie, Davy Crockett, and all the rest, and finally said, ‘Haven’t you heard of Paul Revere?’ To which the Texan answered, ‘Well, he is the man who ran for help.’”

Explaining to a little boy how he became a war hero: “It was absolutely involuntary. They sank my boat.”

“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.”

“My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial, beautifully coordinated and all the rest, it must be that there is not much going on.”

At the Gridiron dinner before he was elected: “I have just received the following telegram from my generous Daddy. It says, ‘Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.’”

Posted on by rjonakait

Principles and Partisanship

Ronald Reagan also changed the Republican party by proclaiming that government was the enemy. Following Reagan, Republicans did not promise to govern more efficiently or more wisely than Democrats. Instead they denounced government as the problem and promised to oppose government. When the GOP was primarily a party of big business, Republicans may have supported measures to improve capital markets or certain sorts of infrastructure spending that could help businesses. At one time, they might have been concerned about climate change because of the harm it could do to the economy. But no longer. Government is the enemy except, perhaps, for defense spending and building a border wall. It is bad or evil if it accomplishes anything else. And what better way to lessen government than by reducing taxes, especially on those who support me, the rich and the corporations. If you proclaim government is the enemy, then creating a dysfunctional Congress is a godsend.

It followed, then, if lack of government and dysfunctionality are desirble, Republicans increasingly used cloture. Cloture is the procedure that requires sixty votes for a Senate action. It was once the method of ending a filibuster. Even though the Senate no longer has those throat-draining, sleep-depriving filibusters of yore, the threat of a filibuster can still require cloture, or a three-fifths vote, for the Senate to move on. In 1970, there were fifteen cloture motions. In the 1980s, for a two-year Congress, the Senate never had more than eighty cloture motions, but when the Democrats gained the Senate majority after the 2006 elections, the Republicans seeking to block the majority filed 139 and 137 cloture motions in the 2007-08 and 2009-10 Congresses. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, had adopted the threat of a filibuster as a basic tactic.

By preventing the majority from acting, cloture conforms to the idea that government is the enemy, but it also fits the new conservatism in another way. Traditional conservatives pledged to support traditional values and practices. The new conservative Senate Republicans led by McConnell changed that. Traditionally, cloture was rare. Under McConnell, those Senatorial values were abandoned to the greater partisan good of denying Democrats the ability to act. Tradition be damned.

McConnell’s famous statement that his priority was to make sure that Barack Obama was not reelected elevates partisanship over country.  McConnell was not interested in whether an Obama proposal was good for the country, only in denying Obama victories that might get that president reelected.  Something similar was at work with the Dodd-Frank act, Kaiser indicates. Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, who was vulnerable to electoral defeat the following November, decided not to seek reelection. Kaiser concludes that Dodd’s decision greatly aided passage of the act that sought to prevent future 2008-like financial crises. McConnell did not do everything within his power to defeat the act. However, Kaiser maintains that if Dodd had sought to return to the Senate, McConnell would have spared no effort to defeat the bill. He would have wanted to deny Dodd a victory that Dodd could have touted in his reelection campaign. Partisanship before the good of the country.

The Dodd-Frank history also shows that partisanship came before honest debate. Republicans opposing the bill simply made up stuff about what was in the proposed legislation. It didn’t matter if what they said was true as long as it sounded like it was true to partisans. Distorting the truth kills serious discussion, for, Kaiser points out, “Without an agreed set of facts, meaningful debate is impossible.” The make-stuff-up crowd has only increased since then. It hardly matters if it is demonstrated a conservative’s facts are fantasy. (We are not just talking about the president here. The fact-checking sites have found that conservatives make “misstatements” more frequently than non-conservatives.) The fantastical just keeps coming. What Christopher Dodd found out a decade ago has even wider application today. He tried to shame Mitch McConnell about his indifference to the truth. Kaiser wryly remarks that shaming McConnell was “not an easy task.”

(continued March 27)