Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.
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This Week in Political History
At this stage in the presidential campaign, a little presidential history lesson is called for--this lesson focusing on the long-term damage that President Ronald Reagan (R) did to the country.
Reagan was a far-right screen actor who'd served as the far-right governor of California. He ran for president at a troubled time in American history. President Richard Nixon's (R) second term had ended in widespread scandal that first forced the resignation of Vice-President Spiro Agnew, then the resignation of the president himself. In the wake of that, the hurriedly chosen new VP, Gerald Ford (R), took over the presidency, whereupon his most significant act was to pardon Nixon in advance so he could never be tried for his crimes.
After that, Ford was never going to win a presidential election of his own, so Jimmy Carter (D) became president. Carter was a far better president than his undeserved popular reputation suggests, but he was unfortunate enough to be in office when Islamic fundamentalist turmoil started to rock the Middle East, overthrowing the dictatorial Shah of Iran, who'd been placed in office with the help of the American CIA. That Islamic revolution--and the anti-American sentiment that helped spawn it--also resulted in the capture of of 52 Americans, mostly diplomats and staffers working at the US Embassy there.
Those hostages were held for 444 days (Nov. 4, 1979 - Jan. 20, 1981). A military rescue effort failed, resulting in the deaths of 8 American servicemen. In September 1980, just weeks before the US presidential election, the Iran-Iraq War began when Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. Ultimately, the hostages were released shortly after Reagan's inauguration--whether because Reagan's people had secretly negotiated with the hostage-takers, or because of various delays in Carter's negotiations, combined with a desire by the hostage-takers to punish Carter for his support of the Shah's regime may never be fully known.
At any rate, Reagan did conspire with Iran, secretly providing the new Islamic government there (which was officially under an arms embargo) with arms to fight Iraq, in exchange for money to aid the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua (where Congress, through the Boland Amendment, had specifically forbidden American funding)--a scandal of greater proportions than Watergate, which should have brought down the Reagan presidency. Some of the arms sent to Iran were part of a specific arms-for-hostages deal.
US-supplied arms gave Iran an edge in its war with Iraq, though, and since Saddam Hussein was officially the Americans' guy, the Reagan administration began providing Iraq with highly classified intelligence and weaponry, including chemical weapons--despite knowing that Hussein was using chemical weapons against Iran, and against Kurds in his own country.
Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, was involved in these efforts in the Middle East, and continued in the same vein when he became president. In addition, he pardoned those indicted and convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal--as with Ford's Nixon pardon, preventing all the details of illegal administration acts from ever coming to light. When the war ended in August 1988, Hussein continued using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, killing 50,000 civilians before ending that effort in late September.
So internationally, the Reagan administration helped set up future disasters in the Middle East. Hussein, with the help of American arms and intelligence, was militarily strong enough to invade Kuwait in 1990. In response to that act (by the guy he had supported until months earlier), President George H. W. Bush launched the first Gulf War, staging troops in Saudi Arabia to help clear Iraqi forces from Kuwaiti soil. That--and the long-term stationing of US troops on Middle Eastern territory--eventually led to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda's focus on attacking America.
Domestically, Reagan's influence was just as destructive. His far-right beliefs included the idea that our own government was our enemy, that public service was an actual danger to American lives, that American politicians should never be trusted. His main economic idea was the nonsensical theory that cutting the taxes of the richest Americans would somehow "trickle down" money through the economy, helping to grow the incomes of the poor and the middle classes. (His own vice-president called that "voodoo economics" during the primaries, but supported the idea once he was picked for the ticket). As a corollary to both the idea that government was necessarily evil and that helping the rich get richer was government's highest ideal, he argued that government regulations were bad and should be done away with whenever possible. (Reagan's electoral success, incidentally, relied heavily on Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy"--employing dog-whistle rhetoric to win over racist whites, many of whom were still registered as Democrats out of long family tradition, even though President Johnson's (D) embrace of Civil Rights legislation had pushed them into the Republican ideological column.)
President Bush's single term was essentially a third term for Reagan's bizarre ideas, and by the time it ended, the nation was sunk in the inevitable recession. President Clinton (D) came in as a "New Democrat," a centrist instead of a leftist who "triangulated" the left and right to arrive at a middle ground. He supported a tax increase on the wealthy, and oversaw the greatest period of economic growth and prosperity of the last half-century. He also presided during a time of increased aggression against the US by al Qaeda and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. His administration took the threat of terrorism seriously, and quickly captured and imprisoned those involved in the first attack on NYC's World Trade Center. Vice-President Al Gore led a study of aircraft security, coming up with numerous recommendations that could have prevented 9/11. Unfortunately, before those recommendations were implemented, a new administration took over, and the fight against Islamic terrorism took a back seat.
President George W. Bush (R) was a composite of his father (George H.W. Bush) and Ronald Reagan. He adhered to the Reagan philosophy--government was an evil, always less effective than the private sector. He pushed through tax giveaways for the rich, while at the same time growing government spending in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (which, contrarily, grew government massively, instead of shrinking it). He also oversaw the slashing of regulations that protected Americans from the predatory acts of big business. After launching war in Afghanistan--justified by the fact that al Qaeda was centered there--he also chose a war against Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and was, in fact, at the time a solid secular government in a region quickly being overrun by Islamic fundamentalism. That war not only strained US military resources almost to the breaking point, but made the terrorism situation around the world worse by framing Americans as aggressors, diminishing America's status as a moral leader not only by embracing the torture of prisoners, but by making an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, weakening the only natural block on Iran's strength and giving al Qaeda in Iraq the space to grow into ISIS.
As with the Reagan/Bush economy, George W's disastrous policies helped lead the country into a recession--this one far worse, the deepest economic decline since the Great Depression.
Enter President Barack Obama (D). Unlike his predecessor, he saw government as a force for good. Under his leadership, the country recovered from the Great Recession, and enjoyed a record-breaking stretch of job growth that continues today. He wound down--or tried to--the wars Bush started. Progress has been hampered by an obstructionist Republican Congress that has fought against every effort the president has made, but we have had undeniable progress in many arenas.
But now we face a new choice. Hillary Clinton--Bill's wife--is running for a kind of third Obama term, promising to continue the economic progress we've made since the recession, while pushing even further the notion that government can and does help regular people enjoy better, more productive lives. In opposition, Donald Trump is running as the culmination of the Reagan philosophy--government is the enemy and the rich are the most important among us; therefore, a rich man who despises government and all it stands for is the natural choice to lead the country. He promises massive tax cuts for himself and the rest of the country's multimillionaires and billionaires (Clinton's plan, by contrast, offers tax cuts to 80% of Americans but increases taxes on the wealthy).
A return to the policies of Reagan and the Bushes--especially as carried out by a man with no record of public service and no demonstrated interest in anyone but himself--would be a disaster. If Trump's numerous other flaws weren't bad enough to disqualify him (though they are), the fact that he is the embodiment of the Reaganesque ideal would be, right down to his full-throated embrace of the racist "Southern strategy." He has none of Reagan's personal charm or grace, but he takes Reagan's anti-science attitudes, his willing embrace of ignorance, his casual dishonesty, to their natural conclusion, and blends them with 30 years of right-wing media polarization. He is the Ur-Reagan, a walking-talking, orange-hued expression of Reaganism in its purest form.
We have the opportunity now--if we seize it and aren't complacent about a Clinton victory--to elect a Democrat to the presidency and at the same time provide her with Democratic majorities in Congress. With a thoughtful, practical Clinton at the helm and Democrats devoted to public service backing her up, we finally have the opportunity to put an end to Reaganism. We can show that government can be a force for good, when it's well-managed and efficient. We can advance the economic progress we've made, creating jobs and wealth that grows from the bottom up.
There are only two alternatives--keeping in place the Republican Congress that has done so much to impede American progress for the last eight years, depressing job growth and harming American lives, and making Clinton fight for every minor victory, or handing the country over to the Ghost of Reaganism, Donald Trump, who will be backed up in his efforts by a Republican Congress that's been unwilling to oppose him even when he didn't have the power of the presidency behind him.
This Week in the Lasting Danger
Trump is now blaming the Republican establishment for not supporting him (after having proved himself, over and over again, as unworthy of the support of any legitimate political party). He's not doing that because he's upset about losing their support--he's said from the beginning that he didn't need it--but because he knows now that he's going to lose, and he wants plenty of people to blame. He can't admit to ever not being a winner; therefore, if he loses, it can't be his fault. It won't just be the Republican establishment that brought him down--it'll be minority voters. It'll be the media. It'll be voter fraud. It'll be the system, which is rigged against him. It'll be anything he can point his finger at.
We know none of these things are the true cause of his defeat. He's clearly unfit to be presidency and incapable of doing the job, and he's the only one responsible for losing. But by blaming everyone else, by declaring ahead of time that there will be voter fraud and that the polls in certain neighborhoods (by which he means minority neighborhoods) must be watched, that the vote will be rigged, he's setting up his supporters--who somehow believe every incredible lie he tells--to resist the results of the election.
His conspiracy-theorizing is reaching bizarre heights--or are they lows?--and his increasingly unhinged declarations are sounding ever more like Nazi propaganda, in which "international bankers" is code for "Jews": "We've seen this first hand in the WikiLeaks documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors."
This is perhaps not surprising, since Trump has aligned himself so closely with Breitbart.com, which has in recent months embraced full-on anti-Semitism. It's just one more way in which the Trump campaign mirrors pre-WWII European fascism. Other anti-Semitic forces are joining in, with one rampant conspiracy theory--currently lighting up the message boards on neo-Nazi/alt-right websites like Stormfront and Breitbart--accusing Jewish GOP operative Dan Senor of leaking the Access Hollywood tape. Senor denies the charge.
Historian Douglas Brinkley tells us how rare and hazard-filled this moment is:
The country has not had a presidential candidate from one of the two major parties try to cast doubt on the entire democratic process and system of government since the brink of the Civil War, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.
“I haven’t seen it since 1860, this threat of delegitimizing the federal government, and Trump is trying to say our entire government is corrupt and the whole system is rigged,” Mr. Brinkley said. “And that’s a secessionist, revolutionary motif. That’s someone trying to topple the apple cart entirely.”
Trump is telling his followers before the votes are even cast that they can't be trusted to deliver an accurate result, and telling them who to blame. Given that he has also encouraged violence against people who don't support Trump (including Hillary Clinton), that's setting up a dangerous situation.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Rick Hasen of the Election Law Blog warn about Trump's weaponization of the long-time Republican myth of voter fraud.
At the New Republic, Jeet Heer describes what may be the only way to avoid post-election violence:
There is no clear antidote to the toxins Trump has introduced into the American body politic. But the first step toward a cure is obvious: Make sure that he not only loses in November, but that he loses big. Clinton’s core supporters may be enough to win her the White House, but they’re probably too few to give Trump the electoral drubbing he so richly deserves. That means that the anti-Trump factions who are hostile to Clinton—all those disaffected Sanders supporters and moderate Republicans—have to put aside their differences and do what’s best for the country. They may detest Clinton, and they may be tempted to express their displeasure by staying home, or by opting for some third-tier candidate like Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or—for the true protest-vote connoisseur—Evan McMullin. In a normal election, Americans of all political persuasions should feel free to waste their vote in whatever way they choose. But the menace represented by Trump—a menace that could subject millions of American citizens to detention, deportation, and even physical violence—is too dangerous for symbolic gestures. Our collective safety resides in an electoral landslide that buries Trump once and for all.
We agree--only a landslide of sufficient proportion to convince Trump supporters that the election couldn't have been rigged will do. Some supporters will still suspect fraud, but a massive popular vote total for Clinton will help to allay that furor.
A Trump win would be dangerous for the country in many ways. A narrow Trump loss could be almost as bad, as the racist, anti-American ideas he has helped mainstream could have significant staying power.
This Week in Loose Talk
It's hard to decide which of the things Trump said in Sunday's debate was the most dangerous. He announced that if he wins, he'll appoint a special prosecutor (we call those "independent counsels" these days, but that's beside the point) to investigate Clinton, and he announced what said prosecutor's only allowable verdict would be--Clinton would be "in jail." That's not democratic talk, that's dictator talk. It was also his most popular moment of the night among his fans (including his running mate, Mike Pence), which makes it even scarier.
But that wasn't all he said. He also said "I love WikiLeaks." WikiLeaks, remember, has often released classified US government documents; in some cases, the release of those documents has put US military and intelligence personnel in danger. The public interest function of WikiLeaks is debatable, but the inappropriateness of a US presidential candidate endorsing those practices isn't. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is also living in a foreign embassy to avoid prosecution in Sweden on charges of sexual molestation and rape, and in the US for violations of the Espionage Act; hardly a role model for anyone (except possibly Trump, who shares those interests).
In addition to those lapses, Trump said that he didn't know if there had been any hacking of DNC or Clinton campaign emails, and dismissed the idea that if there had been, it had been done by Russians, or that he had any connection with the hackers. But we know that in his intelligence briefings, he'd been told in no uncertain terms that the Russians were behind the hacks. So we have a would-be president (who's not supposed to talk about exactly what he learns in those classified briefings) denying what he learned there. We also know that his close advisor Roger Stone knew in advance that the next target of those hacks would be Clinton advisor John Podesta, and that Stone has had back-channel communications with WikiLeaks, which is apparently being fed the emails by the Russian hackers. Finally, we know that Trump seems to have a direct link with whoever's releasing the hacked documents, and that the documents are, in at least some cases, being misleadingly edited. (Thanks to TWiA special espionage correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)
None of this is comforting. All of it makes a President Trump a national security nightmare.
This Week in Endorsements
Newspapers traditionally on both sides of the aisle keep endorsing Secretary Clinton. This week, the Washington Post joined in, with this preamble:
IN THE gloom and ugliness of this political season, one encouraging truth is often overlooked: There is a well-qualified, well-prepared candidate on the ballot. Hillary Clinton has the potential to be an excellent president of the United States, and we endorse her without hesitation.
In a moment, we will explain our confidence. But first, allow us to anticipate a likely question: No, we are not making this endorsement simply because Ms. Clinton’s chief opponent is dreadful.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is dreadful, that is true — uniquely unqualified as a presidential candidate. If we believed that Ms. Clinton were the lesser of two evils, we might well urge you to vote for her anyway — that is how strongly we feel about Mr. Trump. But we would also tell you that was our judgment.
Fortunately, it is not.
To accompany their endorsement, the Post put together a page that recaps "a sampling of [Trump's] many erroneous, malicious and ignorant comments since he launched his campaign in June 2015, along with commentary from Post Opinions writers and The Post editorial board." If you need a reminder of why he's unfit for the presidency, drop by and take a look.
This Week in Gun Safety
Yet another massive analysis of gun statistics shows that states with the weakest gun laws have the most gun deaths, the most domestic violence-related homicides, and the most gun suicides.
This Week in Arizona
The Department of Justice will pursue criminal contempt charges against America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM. Maybe this thug with a badge will finally spend some time behind bars, like he's deserved for years now. It would be nice if he would pay Maricopa County taxpayers back for the millions and millions of dollars spent defending him so far, too, but that's probably too much to hope for.
This Week in Bears
Sad news--it appears likely that New Jersey bear celebrity Pedals the Walking Bear might have been killed by a bow hunter during bear hunting season in that state. We hope this isn't true, and will bring you any updates when we know for sure.
In fictional bears, this week saw the birthdays of Winnie the Pooh (first published on October 14, 1926) and Paddington Bear (first published on October 13, 1958). Coincidentally, Michael Bond, who created Paddington, was born--like Pooh--in 1926, so they both turned 90 this year.
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