Cromwell

The single most important figure in the drafting, ratification, and short-term implementation of the Constitution was James Madison.  A year or two into the Washington Administration, however, he effectively joined the opposition, which leads us to the Madison question:  what happened to cause him to flip to the Jeffersonian side?

There are two plausible answers to this question.  The first is that the mild-mannered Madison was intellectually seduced by Jefferson after the latter’s return from France;  I believe there is a quote from Hamilton to the effect that Madison was always destined to be “a handmaiden to a greater mistress.”  The second is that Madison’s enthusiasm for the Federalist cause was motivated by misgovernment at the state level, that he saw the federal government largely as a mechanism to check state excesses, and that Hamilton’s vision for the use of federal powers, when put into practice, went beyond anything he had imagined. The two are not mutually exclusive, and I think there is some truth in both of them, but would lean more towards the latter explanation.

Matt Yglesias has a piece on Vox.com in which he essentially says that it is ironic that Trump is so critical of George W. Bush, because he is his ideological heir. While there are fragments of truth in the article, I think the logic behind it is flawed, for reasons which, as usual, return us to the structure of the Republican Party.

Bush 43 was a quintessential Romney Coalition candidate; in fact, you might just as well call it the Bush Coalition.  While his tax cuts and proposals for deregulation were standard PBP fare, “Compassionate Conservatism” is a good shorthand way to describe the Christian Democrat agenda, which involves the use of government, through market mechanisms, to assist the poor.  Trump, on the other hand, is a Reagan Coalition candidate; what makes him different from most such candidates is his tilt towards the Reactionary faction of the coalition. Reactionaries are not opposed to the welfare state so long as the “right kind of people” are the principal beneficiaries;  attempts to redistribute wealth for the benefit of the poor are anathema.  Reactionaries consequently object to cuts in Social Security and Medicare, which, in their eyes, are just a form of repayment to them (i.e., they are not a redistribution), but they loathe the subsidies in Obamacare.

Trump’s support of Social Security and Medicare do not, therefore, put him in the Bush camp.  The real heir to the Bush ideological legacy is Marco Rubio, with his neoconservative foreign policy leanings and his tax cuts for the working poor.

There once was a Justice named Tony.

His calls for restraint sounded phony.

His hard right-wing views

Would have fit on Fox News

But his writings were full of baloney.

Trump has pushed the envelope about as far as he possibly can in South Carolina.  If the polls are right, and he wins easily, it is difficult to imagine how he can be stopped.  That, of course, raises a question about how he would conduct himself as the nominee, and how the Democrats would run against him.

As the nominee, Trump basically has two choices:  he can either try to rebuild his bridges with the rest of the GOP, surround himself with establishment figures, and run a conventional race; or he can continue with his Captain Outrageous approach.  In my opinion, it is too late for the first option; his best chance of uniting the party at this point is to come out with his guns blazing and hope that tribal loyalty will take care of the rest.

Assuming, for purposes of argument, that Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I think her argument against him will consist of the following:

1. He has no experience that qualifies him to be President;
2. His temperament is such that he cannot be trusted to be the Commander-in-Chief;
3. His history indicates that, notwithstanding his rhetoric, he’s just another rich guy who tramples on less powerful people to get his way.  His tax plan, which is a huge gift to the very wealthy, is evidence of that; and
4. He’s a bigot who will tear apart our country and damage our standing in the world.  He may be popular with Putin, but not with our allies.

Most of this is proved by Trump’s own words.  It will not be necessary to do much research.

As the effective party leaders in an age that was even less genteel than our own, Hamilton and Jefferson heartily loathed each other.  Their views about the Constitution and the future of America were largely incompatible, and remain fodder for political argument today.

As I will discuss in a future post, the differences between the two largely mirror the differences between Whigs and Country Tories in early 18th Century England.  The question for the day is, where did they agree?  Here is my list:

1.  Government is a purely human contrivance, and can be ordered in accordance with the needs of the nation.  Divine right kingship was by no means dead as a political theory in the late 18th Century.  Both Hamilton and Jefferson would have rejected it and maintained that Americans could set up any kind of government they thought appropriate.

2.  The establishment of a state religion is inappropriate.  Neither man was an orthodox Christian.  Jefferson’s beliefs were fluid, but apparently leaned towards Deism;  when Hamilton was asked why God was not referenced in the Constitution, he put his tongue in his cheek and said “We forgot.”

3.  America is destined to play a great role in the world.  They would not have agreed on what that role was to be.

4.  Making war on a European power would be a mistake.  Hamilton favored the British, and Jefferson the French, but neither was stupid enough to think that war on either would be a good idea, given the military weakness of the new country.

5.  America should not have a rigid class system.  Hamilton admired Great Britain and might have had some sympathy for the notion of a Whiggish hereditary aristocracy, but his background would have made it impossible for him to support any kind of rigid system.

6.  For the foreseeable future, most regulation will take place at the state and local levels.  Hamilton, of course, supported a stronger federal government than Jefferson, but it would have been absurd, given the size of the new country and the state of its communications and transportation networks, to think that the federal government could be the predominant regulatory power in the 1790’s.

His obvious intellectual brilliance notwithstanding, Jefferson has always been an easy target, due to the discrepancies between his stirring words and his actual deeds. He wrote eloquently about equality, but kept a slave woman as his mistress; his greatest accomplishment as President, the Louisiana Purchase, was completely inconsistent with his avowed constitutional principles; he financed newspapers that opposed the Washington Administration while he was still a member of the cabinet; he professed to hate cities, while luxuriating in Paris; and so on.  The uncharitable could call him a hypocrite, and many did; more indulgent viewers would say that he was a practical politician, not a philosopher, whose actions were largely dictated by the necessities of the day.

The two most important questions about Jefferson are as follows:

1. Would Jefferson have supported or opposed the ratification of the Constitution if he had been in the country in 1788?  It’s difficult to say.  He clearly had reservations about the Constitution, but so did everyone else; it was, after all, a series of compromises.  He used arguments that were consistent with those of the Anti-Federalists when he was in opposition, but his governing practices as President did not diverge dramatically from those of his predecessors.  I guess what you can say is that it was a good thing both for his reputation and for the country that he was in France at the time, so we will never really know one way or the other.

2.  How should one apply Jeffersonian principles in a Hamiltonian world? Jefferson’s vision of America was dominated by small, independent farmers.  He was right in the short run, which meant that the Federalist Party was doomed, but wrong about the national economy in the long run.  How would he have reacted to a world in which national and multi-national corporations have the kind of economic clout that they do today?  Would he have supported increased governmental regulation as the only possible counterweight to their power?  If you are a Democrat, you say yes; if you are a Republican, you cite to his antipathy to the use of federal power, and say no.  There is no possible definitive answer to this question, but I have to believe, given Jefferson’s willingness to change tactics and his open-mindedness about the future, that the Democrats are right.

 

The centerpiece of Ted’s economic plan is a radical revision to the tax code that goes far beyond that of his rivals.  I don’t have the ability to model the proposal to determine its impact on the economy or the deficit, but some of its implications are fairly clear.

The key components of the plan are as follows:

1.  The adoption of a 16 percent VAT (he denies it’s a VAT, but that’s what it is);
2.  The abolition of the payroll tax;
3.  The abolition of the estate tax;
4.  The abolition of the corporate tax;
5.  The progressive income tax would be replaced by a flat tax over a specified income threshold; and
6.  It appears that capital gains and wages will be taxed at the same rate.

The winners and losers from these amendments would be as follows:

1. Big losers:  The non-working poor; the elderly; and charities.  If you don’t work, you will have to pay the VAT, but you won’t get any benefit from the elimination of the payroll tax.  Charities will lose because the value of charitable deductions will fall significantly.
2. Big winners:  The wealthy.  Anyone who doesn’t have to use most of his income for consumption is a winner here.  All of the taxes that are paid primarily by the rich are being reduced or eliminated altogether.
3. A wash:  everyone else.  For working middle-class Americans, the reduction in some of the income tax rates and the elimination of the payroll tax would be offset by the VAT.

On its face, I have to think that overall tax revenues would go down substantially, and that the deficit would rise pretty dramatically.  I don’t know that for sure, however.  I also can’t determine how Cruz proposes to tie Social Security benefits to contributions in the absence of the payroll tax, although I would have to applaud his efforts to eliminate the link between work and the funding of the welfare state.

This plan appears to assume that the biggest economic problem facing our country is a lack of saving and investment.  If you had asked me about that 20 years ago, I probably would have agreed.  We live in an environment in which corporations are piling up mountains of cash due to inadequate aggregate demand, however, so I think the assumptions behind the plan are out of date.  Fortunately, it is too radical to pass even in a Republican-dominated Congress.

There once was a Texan named Cruz.

Right-wing Christians, it seems, share his views.

He hopes that the South

Will reject Trump’s foul mouth.

If he loses, he’ll have no excuse.

In honor of Presidents’ Day, I will be blogging on the Framers all week, starting with Hamilton, whom I consider to be the most creative of the lot.  Whether you agree with his vision for America or not, there can be little doubt that he was a genius, while his origins as an illegitimate child in the West Indies make his prominence in our history a tribute to the American dream, and something close to a miracle.

Here are the questions, and my responses:

1.  Given his obvious affection for the British political system, why did he choose the Patriot side?   Opportunism, in two different senses.  He undoubtedly (and correctly) perceived that his chances of advancement in society, given the circumstances of his birth, were far better if he joined the side supporting the revolution.  In addition, he saw the Patriot side as being on the correct side of history, which it ultimately proved to be.

2.  What happened to his judgment after he left office?  I’m not a doctor, but I’m going to play one on this blog post.  Everything I have read about the man suggests that he was manic-depressive.  It is perfectly possible that his condition took a toll on his judgment as time went on.

3.  Should he remain on the $10 bill?  Absolutely.  Our financial system has its roots in his ideas.

It isn’t clear after New Hampshire that Rubio is going to be the consensus establishment choice, but, for purposes of argument, let’s assume that he is.  The candidates at that point will be limited to a social conservative (Cruz), an unpredictable wild card (Trump), and Rubio.  This starts sounding a lot like the 2012 campaign, with Cruz playing the role of Santorum, Trump standing in for Gingrich, and Rubio playing Romney, the eventual winner.  It sounds promising for Marco.  But is it?

There are several differences between 2012 and today:

1. Cruz is a stronger campaigner than Santorum.  He has far more money and a connection with evangelicals that eluded Santorum.

2.  Trump is a much more formidable opponent than Gingrich.  Gingrich never had the kind of following that Trump has today.

3.  The GOP electorate has moved further to the right since 2012.  The Reactionary component of the party is larger than ever.

4.  Marco doesn’t fit the GOP as well as Romney did.  Yes, Romney had the Romneycare millstone around his neck, but Marco has immigration, and the two are a wash.  Romney looked like Reagan, was fairly good at swaggering, and had lots of executive experience.  He fit the GOP vision of a nominee far better than Marco does.

5.  Romney had his lane to himself from the beginning.  By the time Marco clears out his opposition, it may well be too late.

I’ve always hated bullies, and that’s exactly what Scalia was:  an angry general in the culture wars who coarsened the judicial system with his over-the-top rhetoric.  He was the 1984 Georgetown Hoyas of Supreme Court justices–merely winning wasn’t enough; he had to crush your spirit and rip your heart out in the process.

That would have been unremarkable if he had been a conservative newspaper columnist or a Fox News commentator, but as a jurist, we had a right to expect better.   And he was a political hack, too; don’t be misled by descriptions of a few of his decisions that make him look like a modern day version of Felix Frankfurter.  He believed in judicial restraint, except when it wouldn’t serve the interests of cultural conservatives, in which case he didn’t.

It was only fitting that Donald Trump put on a show on national TV the same night he died.   In judicial terms, Scalia’s style was a slightly less boorish and far more sophisticated version of Trump’s.

He had better approach his final judgment with vastly more humility and understanding than he ever showed on the bench.  Meanwhile, back on Earth, he won’t be missed, except by his ideological fellow travelers.

Cromwell and Hamilton have been two of my favorite historical characters for decades.  I named my beautiful Australian Shepherd, and ultimately this blog, for Cromwell;  I also made a point of seeking out Hamilton’s grave when I went to New York for the first time in 2003.

Neither of them was what you could remotely describe as a flawless character. Hamilton could be an arrogant windbag; his philandering does him no credit; and his political judgment after he left office was almost uniformly abysmal.  The stain on Cromwell’s reputation was his participation in judicial murders, although politics at the court of Henry VIII wasn’t exactly beanbag, and his opponents were at least as ruthless as he was; the relative lack of bloodshed in the Reformation is at least in part due to his political skills.  That said, both of them combined vision and pragmatism in such a way as to leave us all a legacy for which we should be grateful.

It occurred to me several months ago that there is a very long list of similarities in their careers, including the following:

                                      Cromwell        v.               Hamilton

Status at Birth         Low-born                 Illegitimate

Commercial Experience      Yes               Yes

Revolutionary Times     Reformation       American Revolution

Patron                             Henry VIII             Washington

Woman Trouble          Queen(s) Anne       Mrs. Reynolds

Literary Legacy     English Bible Patron   Federalist Papers

Administrative Innovations     Numerous       Numerous

Opposed by St. Thomas              More                 Jefferson

Violent Death                         Beheaded        Duel with Burr

Broadway Show                      “Wolf Hall”         “Hamilton”

And the winner is. . . All of us, and not just for the high quality of the Broadway shows.

1. Good God, what a circus!  If I were a GOP voter, I would be embarrassed.
2. Trump dominated this one, for better or worse, from start to finish.  He obviously has concluded that his supporters reward him for being outrageous.  If he missed insulting someone with strong ties to the South Carolina GOP establishment, it was obviously an oversight.  It doesn’t appear that there are any lines that he won’t cross.
3. I have no idea how this played to the South Carolina electorate.  If he wins the primary, it is very difficult to see how he doesn’t sweep to the nomination.
4. Most of what he said about Iraq was true.
5. Jeb’s donors must have been putting pressure on him to be extremely aggressive.  I’m not sure how that played with the public, either.  Since Marco didn’t say anything memorable, Jeb might have regained his footing as the establishment frontrunner.  We’ll know at this time next week.
6. Carson and Kasich should be leaving us shortly.

Justice Scalia was the most visible proponent (and he loved being visible–he should have had a show on Fox News) of originalism:  an approach to constitutional jurisprudence which emphasizes the importance of ascertaining the intent of the authors of the constitutional provision that is to be interpreted. It is the legal equivalent of conducting a seance, and it makes little sense in most cases, for the following reasons:

1.  Many of the Founding Fathers did not leave detailed records of their beliefs, which means that undue significance is attached to the opinions of those who did;
2.  Just because, say, Madison said something in 1800 doesn’t necessarily mean he believed it in 1787;
3.  The most important Founding Fathers had profound disagreements on virtually every important legal and political issue;
4.  The Constitution and the Bill of Rights had to be ratified by the states, which means it is at least arguable that the intent of the hundreds of members of the ratifying bodies was just as important as that of the Framers; and, most importantly,
5.  The current condition of our country would have been completely unrecognizable to anyone living in the 18th Century.  What would Hamilton have thought about regulating the internet?  Who can possibly know?

In addition, I always thought it was an amusing paradox that originalism sounds a lot like Protestantism, while Scalia was a conservative Catholic to the core.  Was he aware of the contradiction?  I doubt it.

Whatever.  The bottom line tonight is that he no longer has to scour 18th Century texts to determine the Framers’ intent;  he can just ask them himself.  Good luck with that.

As a self-proclaimed “socialist” (he really isn’t one), Bernie Sanders naturally believes that the Democratic Party is (or should be) a predominantly working class party; he views issues like racism and sexism as at best, a symptom of the class struggle, and at worst, an unwelcome distraction from it.  Hillary Clinton sees the party as a coalition of victims, and gives their separate causes equal billing with the fight against the unequal distribution of wealth.

Who’s right?  Historically, that would be Hillary.  We’ll see if that remains true over the next few weeks.