Category Archives: All Politics Is Local

Wanted: Thick-Skinned Politicians

Barack Obama was named “Comedian in Chief” by news columnist Timothy Egan.

Obama joked a lot and never complained about cartoons emphasizing his big ears. Donald Trump will have to get used to the lampooning of his hair and physical characteristics.

Even more, Obama managed to respond with civility to outrageous insults. When Philippine President Rodrigo Duarte used a vulgar epithet for Obama, Obama responded that Duarte “was clearly a colorful guy.”

A politician’s family must cope with comments about him or her that go beyond mere humor. Trump’s ten-year-old son Barron will now face what Obama’s daughters have endured for eight years.

Michelle Obama taught her family: “When they go low, we go high.” Hopefully the Trump family will practice this as well.

Trump will need to take “Saturday Night Live” spoofs and political cartoons in his stride and laugh along with the public. Americans like politicians with a sense of humor.

I think it was the newscaster Harry Reasoner who said he wouldn’t trust any politician who lacked one.

Can the Democratic Lamb and the Republican Lion Lie Down Together?

 

“It is constantly assumed . . . that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem—can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?”
—G.K. Chesterton

Instead of wishing to annihilate those with whom we disagree (whether by eating them or suppressing them), can we acknowledge their right to exist? Not only their right to exist but their gifts?

Winners in a political contest can carry out their “mandate” in a wise and conciliatory manner or in a haughty one that humiliates the losers. Losers can react with hatred toward the winners or acknowledge their right to lead. Who knows? The lambs and the lions might discover a middle path they can walk together, one on the left, one on the right.

The Power Passes Peacefully

“Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.”
    –Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, November 9, 2016

“I had a chance to talk to President-elect Trump last night—about 3:30 in the morning, I think it was—to congratulate him on winning the election. And I had a chance to invite him to come to the White House tomorrow to talk about making sure that there is a successful transition between our presidencies.”
    –U.S. President Barack Obama, November 9, 2016

“U.S. President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump met on Thursday for the first time, setting aside the deep rancor that dominated the long campaign season to discuss the transition to the Republican’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Their 90-minute meeting in the White House Oval Office, with no aides present, took place just two days after Trump’s stunning election victory over Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of state”
    –Reuters, November 10, 2016

The United States has endured a bitter election campaign, with unfounded hints of a “rigged” election. We can offer thanksgiving for a bit of redemption in this peaceful change of power, our tradition since John Adams took over from George Washington in 1797.

No, I Did Not Vote for Donald Trump

I am a registered voter in Island County, State of Washington. In this state, voting is by mail. I received my ballot about three weeks ago.

I spent a couple of days studying the candidates, legislative issues, and other measures on the ballot.

I marked my choices and mailed my ballot to the Island County elections office.

My ballot will be placed with others in a controlled access room with 24-hour camera surveillance. When counting begins on November 8, the machine readable ballots will be run through a scanner. The scanner is not and has never been connected to the internet.

I did not vote for Donald Trump. I voted for Hilary Clinton.

Clinton may be a political elite, but Trump is an economic elite. He is an American version of Russia’s crony capitalist.

Judging from Trump’s business practices, I believe he favors policies for economic elites. He has used all available tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes on his wealth. He apparently is comfortable with middle and working class Americans bearing the cost of our government—including our military, which protects him from foreign enemies and allows him freedom to pursue his business interests.

I believe if Trump were president, he would support policies favoring the wealthy, further widening the gap between the economic elites and the working and middle classes.

So I did not vote for Donald Trump.

Are Taxpayers Chumps and Losers?

William Falk, editor-in-chief of THE WEEK, wrote a sarcastic opinion piece, pretending he was a loser for paying his taxes (14 Oct 2016).

“As a working stiff,” he wrote, “I couldn’t write off my lunches, my car, my clothes, and my hairdresser as business expenses.”

Further, he wrote, “When I hired contractors and repairmen, I actually paid them the full amount that they billed me, instead of declaring their work shoddy and stiffing them.”

Still continuing his sarcastic diatribe, Falk says he wasted his taxes “on national defense, schools, clean air and water, medical research, and programs to keep the old and the poor from starving. What a schmuck I am!”

This last paragraph by Falk reminds me of why I pay taxes. Like Warren Buffett, I’m proud to have paid them since my first summer job as a college intern on my hometown newspaper. I consider it money well spent.

Humor as Comfort in an Election Year

Inscribed on a tee shirt: “I don’t approve of political jokes. I’ve seen too many of them get elected.” (The Lighter Side Co.)

In a dysfunctional election year, Americans use humor as a survival weapon.

David Horsey, cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, said, that this year’s race between “the real estate mogul Republican nominee and the first female nominee has made for a presidential campaign year like no other.”

To celebrate the role of political cartoons in news coverage, Duke University and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists recently hosted a three-day festival which included live cartooning.

“Satire . . . punctures hypocrisy,” said Frederick Mayer, one of the event’s officials.“It may be our best hope of really seeing clearly what is at stake in this election.”

One of Horsey’s cartoons shows a family huddled in a bombed-out building in Aleppo, Syria. The mother asks: “Has anyone mentioned us in the U.S. presidential campaign?” The father answers, “No, they’re debating Trump’s tweets about a fat beauty queen.” (Sentinel & Enterprise)

Has the Current Presidential Campaign Discussed Military Policy in Depth? Or Discussed Any Policy in Depth?

According to a recent interview with General Martin Dempsey, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the answer is “no.” (“Notes from the Chairman,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2016.)

“I think that the discussions have been superficial and emotional,” Dempsey said. “What we need are conversations that have real depth to them. Talking about what’s going to happen in the first 60 or 90 days of a presidency just doesn’t get it done for me.”

Issues discussed in the interview included Dempsey’s assessment of risks from large state actors, like Russia and China, as well as from non-state actors like ISIS and lone wolf terrorists. Looking at such an unprecedented collection of risks, Dempsey derided our seeming inability “to take a longer view—say 20 years. . . . we tend to look at things one year at a time.”

Too often we treat complex issues, not just military ones, in simplistic, sound byte fashion. Text less, read more, think more. (How’s that for a sound byte slogan?)

Why Has Democracy Slowed in Africa?

An article in The Economist (August 20, 2016) discussed the perceived slowing of democracy in Africa. Some African nations, like Nigeria, are more democratic than they were a few years ago, but others have backtracked. The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, changed the country’s constitution so he could run for a third term. Other leaders appear to ignore constitutional safeguards.

Democracy is a young movement in most African nations. Representative institutions in Europe began centuries ago. The American colonists built on them, beginning in the 1600’s.

Terrorist incidents in Africa have created opportunities for more autocratic leaders. Armies have grown and become more influential in African politics.

China is exercising more influence in Africa and serves as an example of a country with economic success that is not a democracy.

However, three changes in the African landscape may eventually increase democracy’s attraction. One, the population is younger and becoming more educated, making it more likely to favor political reforms.

Two, the population is urbanizing. Urban centers are more likely to elect progressive leaders.

Three, the digital age has come to Africa. Corrupt practices can be better monitored. Rigging elections, for example can be offset by smartphones recording votes as they are tallied, making numbers harder to manipulate later. The internet encourages citizen involvement.

The Economist article ends on a high note. This time, the move for more democracy doesn’t come from well-meaning donor nations but from Africans themselves, giving it a firmer foundation for success.

Hope for a New National Story?

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, recently offered hope for a new national story.

Brooks chided himself for not listening to those outside of his own bourgeois circle. He promised to listen to those Americans who see the American dream as out of their reach and have cast their protest votes accordingly.

His message of hope emphasized the community. At this level, no matter the dysfunction on the national level, local citizens aid the homeless and the hungry, mentor high school dropouts, and work with those soon to be released from prison to integrate them into society.

Having recently attended a local meeting to update citizens on programs to help the homeless in our community, I agree with Brooks. Local groups here run a food bank (including a garden for fresh produce), hold a work day for providing minor repairs on houses of the less well-off, and contribute to a fund for medical needs, among other causes.

Brooks says: “I don’t know what the new national story will be but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive. Maybe it will be a story about communities that heal those who suffer from addiction, broken homes, trauma, prison and loss, a story of those who triumph over the isolation, social instability and dislocation so common today.” (As quoted in The Seattle Times, May 1, 2016.)

Dancing with the Candidates

We want to fall in love with our candidates, idolize them, and take selfies with them.

Unfortunately, star power has little to do with governing ability.

Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, spelled out a cynical view of political candidates: “the typical political leader . . . is a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to do when he gets into office.”(quoted by Niall Ferguson, Foreign Affairs, “The Meaning of Kissinger,” September/October 2015).

Can we judge, then, how our candidates will govern if elected? Try asking these questions:

Will they see themselves as public servants, elected to serve the people, not themselves?

Will they appoint men and women of both ability and character to serve under them?

Will they know how to persuade other nations to our policies, even nations who may not like us but whose alliances we need?

How is their character, their staying power, when the chips are down, when the unexpected happens?

Can they stand to be unpopular after the honeymoon ends and a fickle electorate falls out of love with them?

Representative Government: a Dangerous Experiment

Representative government is a balancing act between our sense of responsibility and our selfish natures. This is as true of the often silent majority as it is of the elites.

When times are good, the majority are content to let the minority—the elites—run things. They are more interested in their individual lives than in what elites are doing with the country.

When times are bad, the majority rebel.

When the elites have power, they must understand that they act for all, not for themselves alone. Else, the majority may decide to throw elites out of office, the wise and the unwise, the corrupted and the dedicated.

During those times when the majority choose to reign in the elites, they must temper their anger with a grain of calm reflection. It is easy to vote angrily on one or two issues. Better to explore more deeply. Elections aren’t about  our emotions. They are about our responsibility to elect wise leaders, a responsibility many in this world do not have.

Imperfection: Live With It.

Extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are unable to accept an imperfect society. By force, ISIS would bring in its conception of the perfect society, the Caliphate. The followers of ISIS believe their perfect knowledge justifies killing innocents to attain power.

Less extreme versions exist in democratic societies. My brand of politics isn’t just better than your brand—your brand is a threat to democracy. Only my brand works. I will accept money from any source whatever if only my candidate will win and enact our own Perfect Society. Those who disagree with me are communists or fascists or red necks or whatever epithet will show my absolute disdain for anyone who dares to disagree.

When we can no longer compromise in government, we’re fated to know paralyzing dysfunction. When we require our society to be perfect, we risk losing it.

Crisis Contest: How Would You Handle This Crisis if You Are President?

Thomas L. Friedman’s column in The New York Times (“Trump’s Miss Universe Foreign Policy”) suggests we’re not asking the right questions.

Friedman asked, “What are the real foreign policy challenges the next president will face?” He cited a few of them: What happens to the spillover from spewing crises in Syria and Iraq? Besides being human tragedies, they destabilize our allies in Europe and give Russia’s Putin all sorts of opportunity to make mischief.

What will happen if China’s economy runs into more trouble? Another global recession? What might that do to our own economic recovery?

What happens if wildfires in Canada and the western U.S. consume not only our valuable forests but also the funding set aside for fighting them?

What about hurricanes and rising oceans that threaten many costal areas?

The fact that crises will happen during the next presidency is a given. Candidates—all of them—owe us meaningful statements detailing how they would handle them, not just campaign pablum. They might give us better answers if we, the people, were aware of the problems and asked the right questions.

What if Politicians Practiced Solitude?

Frank Bruni wrote an op ed piece a few years ago for The New York Times on the need for solitude, even for politicians—what a stunning idea.

I recently attended a writers’ conference in a woodsy retreat center. Established writers flock to it because it gives them time to wander in the woods or find a quiet spot to think. One afternoon is defiantly unstructured, allowing time for the inner life. This unstructured time emphasizes solitude as essential for any meaningful outer life, whether we write, lead the country, or use other talents.

What if all of us, yes, including politicians, practiced it once in a while? What if elected officials and political candidates regularly withdrew to explore honest leadership? To dedicate themselves to less divisive, more meaningful campaign rhetoric? To explore what is meant by our term public servants?

People Who Have Jobs Buy Things

The journalist Hedrick Smith has written a book, Who Stole the American Dream? Smith recently spoke to a group in my hometown in a lecture series.

In the 1970’s, Smith said, corporate America began shifting from the stakeholder model to the shareholder model.

Shareholders invest financially in a company. Financial gain is their foremost goal.

Stakeholders may also be shareholders, but stakeholders are interested in the products of the company beyond financial gain. Examples are workers who depend on the company for jobs or customers who depend on the products. They want the company to succeed over the long term.

In contrast, shareholders who are not stakeholders are interested in how much income they can make, not in the product itself. They may move investments to other companies if they do not experience short term gain. They are not invested in the company itself, only in the income from the company.

Investors fund many of our businesses, but investment is only a part of our system. If workers make money, they can buy things. If workers lose jobs, they obviously buy less, encouraging the economy to go into a recession. That’s not only bad for workers, it’s bad for businesses as well.

In other words, the stakeholders—the workers and consumers—are as important to a healthy capitalist system as are the shareholders, the investors.

Vote Anyway

This popular video on YouTube mimics the agony of many Americans when faced with the choices their political parties have given them:

How do we change a flawed process for next time?

I support my U.S. representative, who has publicly endorsed campaign finance reform. I have talked personally with my state senator in a community meeting about my desire for financing reform at the state level.

In addition, I’m learning about the system as it now exists: political parties, caucuses, primaries, and the electoral college (as opposed to the popular vote). What changes will I support?

Meanwhile, I’ll examine the candidates, then vote, even if I don’t wholly agree with all of their positions. And I’m grateful for the privilege. If you don’t think voting is a privilege, note the many countries of the world where free elections are nonexistent. I have lived in some of them and have concluded that our imperfect system remains a winner in comparison.

The system we have is imperfect, but it beats the choices available to a good many people in the world. Use it. Then change it.

Who Do You Want With A Hand on the Nuclear Trigger?

Forget news headlines featuring the childish squabbles of our current presidential candidates. How do they differ on important issues? What do we know, for example, about how a candidate might handle the next world crisis? The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has listed on their website each U.S. presidential candidate’s views on the rest of the world.

Example: a few quotes on the Islamic State (ISIS):

Hilary Clinton: “Our strategy should have three main elements. One, defeat ISIS in Syria, Iraq, and across the Middle East. Two, disrupt and dismantle the growing terrorist infrastructure that facilitates the flow of fighters, financing, arms, and propaganda around the world. Three, harden our defenses and those of our allies against external and homegrown threats.”

Ted Cruz: Following the November 2015 attacks in Paris, Cruz said the United States should step up its fight against the Islamic State by supplying advanced weapons directly to Kurdish forces.

John Kasich, July 26, 2015: “We should have a coalition. We should be there, including boots on the ground. And we need to degrade and destroy ISIS.”

Bernie Sanders: At the Democratic presidential debate in October 2015, Sanders characterized the violence in Syria as “a quagmire in a quagmire,” and while he said he supports U.S. airstrikes in that country, he advised against an effort to establish a no-fly zone. “I will do everything that I can to make sure that the United States does not get involved in another quagmire like we did in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.”

Donald Trump: After the November 2015 Paris attacks, Trump said he would intensify military attacks on the Islamic State and restrict the group’s ability to use the Internet as a recruiting tool.

These are snippets from detailed presentations. Try the website yourself.

Leaders Who Don’t Listen

Leaders, or elites, as some call them, handle the day-to-day operations of most organizations. The average American actively participates in only one or two groups—including professional, religious, and recreational organizations.

Americans may vote and possibly donate to a political party before an important election, but few consistently participate in a party’s actual functioning. At the state and national level, a majority often do not even vote. Those who do vote normally limit their actions to a choice of candidates from the slates put forth by the major parties. The leaders have the responsibility to present suitable candidates for the electorate to consider.

Apparently, the leaders have failed to listen to their base voters. Outside contenders have roiled both major political parties in the runup to political conventions and the November elections.

If nothing else, the turmoil indicates that representative government is not exclusively for the big contributors or the lobbyists or the wealthy. Eventually, the average Janes and Joes will revolt if their leaders don’t listen to them.

Return of the Smoke-Filled Political Backrooms?

Political parties aren’t mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Political parties developed in the first years of the republic, however, and soon drove elections. Only recently have the party candidates been chosen largely by primary voting.

Traditionally, the choice of a party’s candidate wasn’t certain until the party convention itself. Deals were made in those smoke-filled back rooms. Not until after the 1960’s did the convention become a boring pep rally that merely rubber stamped primary elections.

The earlier method sounds undemocratic. However, some are calling for a return of true political conventions, where the delegates are not pledged to any candidate. Decisions are made at the convention.

A return to the earlier system means the political party leaders consider more than the wishes of their base voters. They take the longer view, considering how likely a candidate is to be chosen by the larger electorate. They search for a candidate who appeals to the independents and perhaps a few of the other party who might consider voting for an especially qualified candidate.

Listening to the anger-filled, even violent emotions of the current campaign, the return to those backrooms is appealing.

Choose Politics or Dictatorship

David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote an article capturing our current political dysfunction. A diverse society like ours, he said, operates through either dictatorship or politics. “Our founding fathers chose politics.”

In our current political process, however, we gravitate toward a dictatorial approach. We are unwilling to settle for merely a piece of the pie. We want the whole thing. Either our side wins or we will bring down the country. Our opponents are not merely people with whom we disagree. They are traitors.

“The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience,” Brooks writes. “That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.”

In a dictatorship, one group gets everything it wants. In politics, no group gets everything it wants. For whatever reason, too many of us today seem unable to live with this fact of democratic existence.