Month: April 2020

Nikki Haley tells us in the NYT that the primary burden of dealing with a pandemic falls on the states, and that the federal government’s response has been, for the most part, appropriate. Is she right?

Not really. I’ve previously described the Trump administration’s actions as “bastard federalism.” Trump has refused to use the lawful powers he has in an emergency to create and distribute resources, sends mixed messages about the severity of the problem, demands fealty in exchange for assistance, rips the press and his critics instead of trying to unite the country in a crisis, and takes credit for any positive developments in the battle against the virus whether he is entitled to it or not. Responsibility flows down, and credit flows up. That’s not how the system is supposed to work.

How should it work? While the states are, as Haley asserts, the front lines in this war, only the federal government can be responsible for the following: controlling traffic in and out of the country; allocating existing national stockpiles of medical resources in a manner completely divorced from politics in order to avoid competition among the states; and compelling the production of essential medical goods wherever necessary. Trump has succeeded only in the first of these, and even his EU travel ban was clearly motivated more by spite than any principle.

(In honor of the Good Friday “Haleyday,” today’s posts will focus on Darling Nikki and the GOP)

Nikki Haley managed to survive about two years of the Trump administration without seriously damaging her reputation, which proves that she has some serious political skills. It will be a great surprise if she doesn’t run for president in 2024. Could she win?

No. The GOP is now driven by its reactionary wing, and Haley will never be acceptable to the far right, for two reasons. First, she’s a woman, which won’t fly with a large segment of the far right; and second, she plays ball to an unacceptable degree with the establishment. She will be the Marco Rubio or the Kamala Harris of the GOP in 2024; in trying to build bridges to both the far and the moderate right, she will satisfy neither.

Barring an unlikely Biden blowout win in November, the GOP nominee will be the Trumpiest member of the next generation: in all likelihood, Hawley or Cotton. Remember–you heard it here first.

William Barr has apparently expressed grave concern about the impacts of state stay-at-home orders on civil liberties. No, that is not a misprint.

What he really means is that responsible behavior during the pandemic will lead to an economic slump, and a potential Trump defeat in November. His record shows that what he really cares about is power, and imposing a social conservative agenda on an unwilling majority; protecting civil liberties for people other than “real Americans” is at the bottom of his list of priorities.

When FDR took office in 1933, the Great Depression had been going on for four years. There was never any chance he would take the blame for it. When Obama took office, however, the stock market crash was only a few months old, and most of the pain had yet to be felt. The GOP consequently succeeded, to some extent, in associating him with the Great Recession. You will probably hear some of that theme in Trump’s commercials in the upcoming campaign.

So what happens this time? If Biden wins, and the country recovers slowly over the next few years, will he get the credit for the improvement, or the blame for the initial problem? My guess is that the timing of the crash is more reminiscent of the Great Depression than the Great Recession; the image fixed in the public’s mind will be of Trump behaving erratically at daily briefings, not anything Biden might do subsequently. I could be wrong about that, however. We’ll see.

Let’s face it: Joe Biden is never going to win over the left, because, no matter what positions he takes, he will always be viewed as an incrementalist and an apologist for the Obama administration. He will need their votes, however. How can he get them to the polls?

Not by moving to the left, but by scaring the crap out of them about what happens in a second Trump term. Will you survive the virus when it returns with a corrupt and inept administration in charge? What happens to our political system when Trump and Barr are accountable to no one but themselves and the red base? Will we be at war with Iran or North Korea? Is holding out for socialism really worth those risks?

From his perspective, not mine, the decision to suspend the campaign was correct, because:

1. He couldn’t campaign in any meaningful sense due to the virus;

2. Under the circumstances, no one is interested in the campaign, anyway;

3. Wisconsin shows that a contested race will just put voters’ health at risk; and

4. His platform leverage consists of the loyalty of his supporters, not the number of delegates he amasses. Biden knows perfectly well that he needs the votes of the Bernie Bros in November, and so do we.

And so, when it was all said and done, in spite of the innumerable twists and turns in the campaign, my January prediction was right on target. Excuse me for a moment while I pat myself on the back and prepare for November.

Here is where the four factions would stand on “common good constitutionalism”:

1. CLs: The horror! The horror! This is almost as bad as socialism! America was built on individual rights and limited government–take your theocracy back to Europe and the 16th century!

2. PBPs: Ugh! We’re indifferent about the social conservatism, but the intense regulation of business and the wealthy for the benefit of workers–forget it!

3. Reactionaries: Most of this is fine with us, but it doesn’t recognize the difference between real Americans and everyone else. The absence of racism is a problem.

4. CDs: This is our agenda to the point that it goes way beyond our wildest dreams. We would love to see America turn into an updated version of the Holy Roman Empire, but is that at all realistic?

The essence of the devolution of a political system from a genuine liberal democratic state to an illiberal democracy is the erosion of effective independent checks and balances on the government. Thanks to the efforts of Trump and the GOP, where does America stack up today? Here is my analysis:

1. A POLITICIZED JUDICIARY: Check. This is the essence of the McConnell project. He intends to keep the GOP in power even if it loses elections, and it’s showing fruit. Another Trump term would probably do the trick.

2. A POLITICIZED SYSTEM OF LAW ENFORCEMENT: Bingo. Trump and Barr have taken clear steps in that direction in spite of a torrent of public criticism. Just imagine what they could do with a second term and an emergency!

3. THE REPLACEMENT OF AN INDEPENDENT CIVIL SERVICE WITH POLITICAL HACKS: What, you mean the deep state? It’s a tough nut to crack, but Trump is doing his best, and the Republicans in Congress are doing nothing to stop him.

4. AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM RIGGED IN FAVOR OF INCUMBENTS: The Senate and the Electoral College already give the GOP a built-in advantage. Throw in more effective methods of gerrymandering and voter suppression and a Supreme Court which tilts towards Republicans and you are teetering on the edge of a rigged system. One hopes that the disgrace in Wisconsin will provoke a backlash, but that remains to be seen.

5. THE DESTRUCTION OF INDEPENDENT MEDIA: Trump blasts the MSM on a daily basis and muses about changes to libel law, but nothing meaningful has happened here. Give him a second term and an unpopular war, and anything is possible.

My verdict: We are getting uncomfortably close to becoming an illiberal democracy. Another Trump victory and an emergency which justifies curtailing individual rights might well push us over the edge.

Thomas Friedman suggests that Biden announce in advance of the election his intent to create a cabinet of all of the talents, including Republicans. Would that be a good idea?

No, because:

1. It would be difficult to find a better way to keep the Bernie Bros away from the polls in November;

2. Based on Obama’s experience in 2009, the GOP will view a Biden government as illegitimate, and will refuse to cooperate with it in any way; and

3. To make matters worse, Trump will be screaming about voter fraud and crying for vengeance from the sidelines. The GOP establishment will want to move on without him, but the faithful base will make that impossible.

Biden would be wise to make it clear to the nation, including the far right, that he has more pressing concerns than fighting the culture wars. That should win him some space to work on his real agenda. Realistically, however, feeding the alligators on culture is as far as he can go to create a unity government.

A Harvard Law School professor named Adrian Vermeule has caused a sensation with an article advocating “common good constitutionalism” in The Atlantic. The libertarian right has reacted with horror, but blames progressives for his rejection of historical norms. The left’s reaction can be simply described as “Holy fascism, Batman!”

“Common good constitutionalism” has both legal and political components, as follows:

1. Vermeule’s ideal government consists of a powerful president, supported by a vigorous and ultra-competent bureaucracy; Congress is a minor player in this scheme. The president’s most important task would be to create a virtuous country by stamping out practices that (according to Vermuele) are self-evidently evil, such as abortion, homosexuality, and pornography. Corrupt, tyrannical, or incompetent presidents could be removed through periodic elections. Otherwise, there would be no effective checks on presidential power.

2. Legally, this approach requires a rejection of the prevailing right-wing originalist/textual approach to constitutional law. Judges would rely on natural law instead of history, precedent, and the text of statutes and the Constitution. Vague language in the Constitution, such as the general welfare clause, would be reinterpreted to make this possible.

My reactions to this are as follows:

1. Elizabeth Warren has to know this guy. It certainly would be fun to watch her debate him.

2. The intersection between “common good constitutionalism” and the unitary executive theory are obvious. Bill Barr would approve.

3. Vermeule acknowledges that a degree of coercion would be necessary to bring about his virtuous state. He thinks it would be worth it. It is unlikely that the majority of Americans agree. So how could this happen? He doesn’t lay out a blueprint, but it presumably involves voter suppression on a massive scale, probably during an emergency.

4. Left-wing jurisprudence is not responsible for this train of thought. The left criticizes right-wing originalism, not because it relies on history and the wording of texts, but because it inevitably involves unprincipled cherry-picking, and leaves out too much of the story. To use one painfully obvious example, freezing American values in 1787 means disregarding the outcome of the Civil War and the Reconstruction amendments. That is not a fair reading of the American experience. “Common good constitutionalism,” on the other hand, is a complete rejection of American history; if there is one thing the Founding Fathers all would have agreed on, it was the rejection of a theocratic state with an elected king.

How does this relate to Trumpism and the GOP factions? More on that in a later post.

In illiberal democracies, independent governmental entities and checks on central government power–most notably, a constitution, a depoliticized judiciary and law enforcement agency, free and independent media, and fair elections–still exist on paper, but have been rigged in favor of the government in actual practice. These norms and institutions are eliminated in a truly fascist state. One man is identified as the only authentic representative of the national will, and all checks and balances on his power are removed to permit him to pursue a reactionary agenda intended to make his country great again.

Hungary has been an illiberal democracy for years; with the decision to permit Orban to rule by decree during the pandemic, it may well be slipping into fascism. There are self-admitted supporters of illiberal democracy in America, too. More on that in my next post.

Trump plays all sorts of characters on TV, based solely on his infallible intuition, so why not a doctor? And it’s not as if he’s the only member of his administration doing it–it seems that Peter Navarro is also a doctor, and Larry Kudlow has been playing an economist for years.

Quack, quack.

Trump’s continued political survival depends to a large extent on people he has targeted for abuse over the last three years. So far, they have delivered for America, and, therefore, for him. Jay Powell has thrown all of the Fed’s firepower at the coming depression. Nancy Pelosi agreed to a huge spending package that will permit him to pose as Lord Bountiful shortly before the election without asking for much in return. Now, will the deep state deliver?

What he calls the “deep state” is actually a collection of federal experts and bureaucrats without which modern constitutional government cannot exist. A true populist who prefers his own uninformed gut feelings to norms and expertise, he has done his best to neuter them or drive them away. The recovery can’t take place without their assistance. Are they up to the task? Can they bring the virus under control and send out the Trump Bucks in time to save his bacon? We’ll see.

With the possible exception of the president, everyone acknowledges that social distancing only buys time; it is not, by itself, an end game. So what happens after the curve has been bent?

Going where few would dare to tread, this week’s issue of The Economist features a discussion of the potential trade-offs between additional deaths and a healthy economy. The writers admit that the current social distancing regime is cost-effective, but wonder how long it can be sustained in the future. Painful decisions are inevitable, they maintain.

If you insist in engaging in such a brutal and crass exercise, the key question is how to value the social contributions made by elderly people who are not technically part of the labor force. Do you just view them as unproductive members of society who should die and decrease the surplus population, or do you try to put a dollar figure on the value that they bring with unpaid labor within families?

Two facts are pertinent. First, The Economist notwithstanding, the trade-off is not, in the final analysis, up to the US government, or any government, for that matter; it is a question for each individual person as a producer and a consumer. The government cannot effectively order anyone to go out and spend money in bars if they don’t feel comfortable with the state of public health. Second, there are only two scenarios here. The first is consistent with Ross Douthat’s column in Sunday’s NYT: a half-open world with high unemployment and continued, but milder, social distancing until the vaccine comes. The second involves segregating, with confidence, the people who have the virus from the people who don’t, and letting the latter group get on with their lives. THAT CAN ONLY WORK WITH A VASTLY BETTER TESTING REGIME THAN WE HAVE NOW AND A STATIC POPULATION. Unfortunately, I see no evidence that it is being implemented, or even contemplated, today, so Douthat’s purgatory is by far the more likely option.

Do you remember when the right was outraged when Barack Obama was allegedly “leading from behind?” Doesn’t that seem kind of quaint right now?