I've written this here before but just to reiterate: I grew up in a Libertarian household. I am not a Libertarian but I highlight this for two reasons: 1) I have never been a Democrat or a Republican and feel no fealty to either party and 2) I believe the gov't's purpose is to protect and promote the citizenry's access to free markets, anything else discussed is just politics, not gov't. I am not a natural born political person, indeed I eschew all that partisan stuff with a fury. The parties are not the gov't and their manipulative bickering is utterly self-serving and only tangentially beneficial to the republic (if at all). The flaw of the Republican Party is that they want unlimited economic growth but they don't want anything to ever change socially (which clearly ignores the fact that economic growth is a result of innovation (re: new stuff) which by its very nature is either a cause or effect of some change in the society); the flaw of the Democratic Party is they want unlimited personal expression but they don't see that as a function of living in a thriving economy (I'm not going to make the argument that rich people are better than poor people, but its clear that wealthier people have more opportunities of expression and by extension more self to express and by locking people into poverty you are cutting off their ability to grow as human beings; thus the point is to grow as many people wealthy as possible)). Also, I'm a foreign policy watcher as opposed to being a domestic political animal, which makes the Libertarian Party pretty much useless to me, as they seem to think that beyond America's borders is nothing but ocean. So I have no political affiliation and I find our contemporary cultural fascination with making everything political to be self-defeating (and really annoying).
The current political obsession (at least what I get from NPR each morning when my alarm goes off) is Donald Trump's relation to Russian provocateurs during the 2016 election. My gut feeling is that in an investigation of this sort Trump and his crew are the easiest part to follow, such that anything there is to find has already been found. What smoking guns could possibly be out there at this point? In the political realm, this doesn't matter. The point is to extend the investigation merely to besmirch Trump's reputation (wow, that's like throwing rotten fruit at a pile of rotten vegetables!) and I expect the investigation to last at least through the mid-term elections in November with or without new revelations. Do I have a rooting interest? No, not really. This is just what politicians do to each other nowadays. Ever since Newt Gingrich went full throttle after Bill Clinton in the 1990s, this is just par for the course (I'm sure this behavior goes further back than that, but that's my personal recollection). And if Trump is guilty (or guilty-looking enough) to get impeached, what do I care? We'll just get a new president that I probably won't pay much attention to and who will inherit a large chunk of population dedicated to thwarting him on day one regardless of his interactions with Russian trolls (indeed, if we think of Trump as illegitimate, wouldn't we think that even more of Pence?).
Do I think Donald Trump is guilty of collusion with Russian agents? No, but that doesn't really matter. I have no doubt that foreign agents are cyber-attacking the USA every single day, which is why I paid no mind to the original accusations against Hillary Clinton before the election. Dude, I assure you the Pentagon and the State Department are getting hacked right now (and will be again if you read these words again), it's just the way of things these days. I doubt Hillary Clinton did less than her duty in protecting the contents of gov't servers and I doubt Donald Trump did either--which is not to say that either or both of them are innocent of malfeasance. Cybersecurity is a full time job and I doubt Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump (or Vladimir Putin) have ever held that job or pondered very deeply on the topic. And why stop at the gov't? Amazon, Wal-Mart, Facebook and Google have much more valuable stores of info waiting to be hacked--the difference is they're actually going to do something about it whereas the gov't is always last to figure out what's going on.
I'll go ahead and say something controversial: I believe that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because Americans went to the polls and voted for him. I don't know why they did and I'm convinced that Trump was as surprised by that as I was, but I believe the Americans chose the person they wanted to be president free from Russian interference. Were Russians interfering? Oh, undoubtedly, as Russians hackers attempt to interfere with everything all the time, whether or not there's an election on. But Americans aren't swayed by Facebook, it is a place to confirm what they already believe, not a place to encounter new ideas.
Investigations have already proven that Russian agents took out numerous Facebook ads in 2016...this is proof to me that there was no Russian interference. How many Japanese Facebook ads were there in 2016? How about Ethiopian? French? Lithuanian? Or do we assume that Russia is the only country that has access to Facebook and a rooting interest in American elections? And let me get this straight: is the Mueller investigation trying to prove that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in a hotel room in Atlantic City so that Trump could help Putin....buy some Facebook ads? Hmmm, I doubt that happened and even if it did, it doesn't have anything to do with the election. Were Russian hackers meddling in American affairs? Yes, of course they were. They still are and have been for as long as computers have been available in Russia. What does that have to do with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Nothing. Why would it?
I say all that to dismiss this political witchhunt stuff pronto. I doubt that anything nefarious happened, I doubt that it would matter even if nefarious things did happen, I doubt there'd be proof available to find if anything happened anyway, and I doubt that any of it had any effect on the election. And even if I'm completely wrong and Trump is guilty, I still don't care. I am convinced this is all just political noise (*). Putting the executive under permanent investigation isn't necessarily a bad thing, though in this environment, it's just prurient entertainment rather than serious inquiry, which is sad and wasteful but not atypical in our culture. I would note at the moment that the waste is mostly on the Left: every morning that NPR babbles about Trump it's a morning they're not babbling about the environment or labor relations or healthcare or race issues, etc. NPR is abrogating their responsibility to a myriad of other issues because they'd rather feed the schadenfreude of their Hillary-voting listeners. Oh well, their loss.
Do I like Donald Trump? No. The nicest thing I can say about him is I rather enjoy having a president that I can comfortably ignore. My problem with Barack Obama for example was that I kept trying to like the guy, but what was there to like? His empty rhetoric was more gentle and soothing than most politicians...but every bit as empty. At least with Trump I am confident I have no chance of liking him or in any way needing to hear anything he says. A friend of mine recently lamented the awful spectacle kids today are growing up with, but I think its good for children to learn early on that the President of the United States is not really someone worth paying attention to. POTUS is a fungible commodity and as I've suggested in previous posts, it is a purely political position with more responsibility than power and thus mostly just a suffering of slings and arrows. I don't need the President to reassure me or entertainment me or whatever it is people get out of listening to the President talk. And with Trump around, that feeling is only magnified.
As a foreign policy guy, have I seen any changes in American policy in Trump's first year? Not really. North Korea has dominated Trump's agenda so far but I would suggest that North Korea is a can that presidents have been kicking down the road for decades and the end of the road seems to be approaching. Trump has seized on it for the purpose of selling weapons systems in Asia the way Obama seized on Putin's adventures in Ukraine to sell weapon systems in Eastern Europe. Trump is a little louder than previous presidents but the policy itself is no different. (I think as soon as the Winter Olympics is over all the rhetoric from both sides will ramp back up and I think military action is a strong possibility; I'll expand on this in a future post)
Trade policy is clearly something Trump...well, talks a lot about. Yes, he kinda talks like a Neanderthal but rhetoric is part of the process. The reportage of rhetoric is part of it too: NAFTA re-negotiations were set to take place regardless of who won the election but if Hillary had been elected I'm sure we'd hear less about it. The American public would probably just get random vague updates of 'everything's fine' whether it was fine or not; whereas Trump's style is to bluster around in public when this is the kind of thing most politicians would soft pedal in the press. Oh well, that's the man's style. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. I dunno. I can understand why people wouldn't like his style but I wouldn't say that the style in and of itself is illegitimate or guaranteed to fail. I don't know that it is. Is the actual negotiation any different? Probably not. The negotiations themselves will be handled by a variety of under-secretaries steeped in farm subsidies and tobacco regulations and emissions measurements and blah blah blah details that no single person could possibly understand. I think the public relations is unique to Trump but the actual deal itself is not likely to be wildly different from what President Hillary would've ended up with.
Both disavowed the TPP (which actually perfectly dovetailed with Trump's wariness of China though he never seemed to notice that), with Trump suggesting that multi-lateral deals are inherently bad; I don't mind more bi-lateral deals but to suggest the multi-lateral deals are a priori bad is just a dumb thing for a president to say even if he actually believes it.
Trump removed USA from the Paris Climate Accord. Meh. The Accord itself is nothing but symbolism and removing USA from the Accord is also nothing but symbolism. And when the next president puts USA back in the Accord, it'll still be nothing but symbolism. I don't see that it has any effect whatsoever on the actual environment or even on the nature of int'l environmental negotiation. In short, the Accord never meant anything to me so USA not being in it doesn't mean anything to me (and USA inevitably triumphantly returning to it will still mean nothing to me). Removing USA from the Accord was just a piece of pure rhetoric designed to be a finger in the eye of Trump's political enemies (because...well, honestly, the Accord doesn't have any other purpose). Yeah, I think it's stupid but the way politicians talk to each other has been stupid for hundreds of years (**).
Trump pledged to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, causing much uproar around the globe. But why? Do you realize that Congress just passed that same resolution last summer? Do you realize that every American president since HW Bush (and most all of the losing candidates) have made the same pledge? Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is something that has been pledged numerous times in the last 20 years, why does everyone care now? Moving an embassy will take at least 10 years, no way this happens until after Trump's well out of office--which is the same as saying it won't happen. So this move that won't happen that has been promised many times before...why does everyone care now? Y'all pay much too attention to Trump. He's just a doofus with a Twitter account. But he's president, you say; yeah, the president is a doofus with a Twitter account. He's president so most everything he says is gonna be empty nonsense and he's Donald Trump, which only ups the percentage of empty nonsense to come from his mouth. So why does everyone pay attention to him? I don't get it, I find him very easy to ignore.
Trump constantly threatens to revoke (or rescind or not renew or whatever the proper language is) the Iran nuclear accord. Critics of Trump suggest this is simply a move to un-do the Obama legacy and while that is certainly part of Trump's calculus, I think these critics are underestimating the power this talk has on Iran's actions. The recent protests in Iran were largely about the Iranian population's dissatisfaction with gov't spending and foreign policy signaling a desire for a gov't more responsive to the citizenry. Now I don't think the Iranian leadership is feeling particularly threatened by this but they have been warned that the people will be pissed if the economy returns to its pre-nuclear deal state. And Trump can exert a great deal of leverage over that. Most presidents are more politic about how they use their leverage, most aren't as naked as Trump, but all presidents do what they need to do to get the best deal. All of them. So, again, while his style is kinda crass, in this case the end effect is not wildly out of line from what US presidents do all the time.
Trump's obsession with border walls, travel restrictions and trade embargoes strikes me as a serious step backward that I cannot endorse in any way. But realistically they are tools available to an executive and politically speaking they're not wildly out of left field. Bill Clinton built most of the wall we currently have with Mexico (which was initially built by Mexico, incidentally). Countries have borders, sometimes delineated by walls but virtually always accompanied by some kind of bureaucratic formality. I personally don't believe more walls are necessary, barriers work both ways and I'm never in favor of more of them. But discussing how best to protect our borders is not inherently racist or even xenophobic. It wouldn't be the top of my agenda if I were president--and I don't agree with Trump's position--but the fact that he has a position is not shocking or particularly threatening. This is all part of the debate that gov'ts have.
As for travel restrictions I'll resort to another contemporary political argument: gun advocates like to suggest that regulating guns will only leave guns in the hands of the criminals as the laws are only effective on the law-abiding. Likewise with travel restrictions: the 'bad dudes' you're trying to keep out will find some other method to get here because they're not coming here to follow the laws. The only people affected by travel restrictions are the people that will honor our customs--which is precisely the people we should welcome! This is is the one area of Trump's potential alienation of our allies that worries me: we're more likely to keep out allies than enemies with policies or even rhetoric like this.
Trade barriers are stupid 100% of the time. Trade should be unfettered forever. Even in the middle of war, I'd be inclined to trade with our enemies. Trade is a human right not a hostage of the State!
Trump wants to increase military spending, but that's certainly nothing new. I perceive this as a subtle reach toward bi-partisanship more than militaristic bluster.
Trump is critical of NATO and while I don't want to say I agree with him, I do think he has a point: Europe should be embracing their own defense as a means of establishing a common identity and to funnel their energies into their own protection rather than waiting for someone else to do it. I don't say that as an aggrieved American but as someone that wants to see a strong Europe. I think Europe is missing a big opportunity to coalesce and industrialize and become truly more independent. The EU merely takes baby steps in this direction and Trump hasn't actually instituted any kind of diminution of American influence in NATO, which I think even he would see as a mistake. I would suggest NATO is a clear example of the difference between his rhetoric (riling up voters for America first-ness) and reality (NATO gives USA ungodly amounts of control over Europe, foolish for any president to give that up).
Cyber-security, for better or worse, is something Trump is going to reshape considerably. I know nothing about that stuff but I can tell it's high priority in the bureaucracy these days. I can only hope the powers that be (and that surely does not include Trump) will make the right choices and allocate wisely. (Won't stop Russian trolls--or other foreign entities--from meddling in our elections, though. Just saying...)
And, yeah, Trump talks talks talks in a manner that the NPR crowd really can't stand. But what do I care? 30 seconds of NPR and I'm out of bed turning off the radio like a champ. Otherwise...I dunno....is there something truly noteworthy about Trump? He's an idiot (Touche. But hardly America's first idiot). He's sexist and racist (Oh, he's a pig but I'm not sure how deeply that touches his legislative or foreign policy agenda; his weakness is blind support for the people that support him). He's bad for our children (Too much TV or social media is bad for everyone and that's where you're most likely to see Trump, so to preserve your health, turn it off). He's bad for gov't (I'd say the worst part of Trump on that level is that he was so shocked to win that he was way behind on a proper transition team which has left him with numerous unfilled posts and surrounded by folks that can't survive the political tribulations; but I can't help thinking that that's his problem, not mine). I dunno....are there other complaints?
I don't like Trump, I just don't care about him or his pointless talk (I suspect I'd think the same of President Hillary). I wanted to like President Obama but he was such a weak executive and he wasn't a foreign policy guy. I wanted to dislike George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but rather liked them both. I didn't realize how much I liked HW Bush until he was long out of office. To echo the author David Halberstam: I didn't care for President Reagan but a lot of folks that I respect liked him a lot, so I feel conflicted. I only vaguely remember Jimmy Carter (but my studies have led me to believe he was one of the worst presidents we've ever had and that the mid-1970's in general were among America's most difficult periods to govern in a variety of ways). I don't remember Ford (and he doesn't really count anyway) and Nixon was gone by the time I was of TV-watching age. Those are the presidents of my lifetime. (***)
I was hoping to avoid ever talking about Trump on this blog but I felt I had to get a belch of it out of the way before I moved on to other things. So in future posts I will return to the opening paragraph and try to define myself as myself now that I've tried to place myself within the contemporary landscape. (Whew! I look forward to never thinking about most of this domestic junk ever again!)
(*) If the goal is to get Trump impeached, I'd suggest going after these porn star liaisons that are coming out of the woodwork. If he's paying them off out of campaign funds, then lawsuits start happening and Congress gets moving. This Russia stuff is not really meant to be discovered--do you think Congressional Republicans really wanted to know what was going on in Benghazi? No, they just wanted to look like they were trying to get to the bottom of something. And Mueller is hoping every day that he finds only enough to string this along and let other events dictate whether he condemns Trump or not.
(**) Go back and study the election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams--those guys are on your money!--saying the most embarrassing, mean-spirited lies about each other just to be president. Its sad and stupid and wasteful and the way we've been doing it since the very beginning. If you think it used to be better then you've never studied history.
(***) And just for good measure, here's a quick rundown of the thwarted candidates of my lifetime: Mondale (good god, I think he would've been awful), Dukakis (such a poor candidate, so uninspiring, had so little to offer), Dole (born to be in the Senate, don't see why he even wanted the White House), Gore (don't get me started: one of my least favorite humans of all time), Kerry (didn't even looked like he wanted to be president, though I thought a shockingly competent Secretary of State), McCain (meh, he was too old, didn't really think one way or the other about him), Romney (the ultimate stuffed shirt Republican), Hillary (I've written on this blog that I thought her presidency would have been like George W. Bush's presidency with a bit more success in pragmatic bi-partisanship).
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