Unfinished work

November 19, 1863: Gettysburg address

Things fall apart. 

I memorized and recited the Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in the fifth grade at Roosevelt Elementary School. Mrs. Mekvold sat at a desk at the front of the room and listened to be sure my classmates and I got the words right. 

Abraham Lincoln said that the country gained a new national purpose, one added to those at our founding in 1776.  Lincoln said: "We are dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." It is part of the American deal now, he said, because so many people died here for that purpose. The battlefield deaths were the ratifying convention. They must not have died in vain.

Lincoln also said that the fighting and dying was to preserve self-government, "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Self-government was in peril then. Lincoln said the battlefield deaths demonstrated that people would die for that cause, too.

Hubris

In the two decades after the disintegration of the Soviet Union Americans enjoyed the prospect that we were at the "end of history." Political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote that our system won. Liberal democracy and market capitalism had risen to the top. Americans felt triumphant--a heady and dangerous emotion. Now America could spread the American system to the world. Surely Ukraine wanted to be more like  America, and the Baltic states, and all of Europe, plus China and the countries surrounding it, and Africa and Latin America. Our government works! Our economy works!

We learned in the past decade that it wasn't so simple, neither abroad nor at home.  Liberal democracy and market capitalism put political equality and self-government at risk. A market economy works well for the people with market power but less well for others, and those others might be half the country, or maybe 90%, or possibly 99%. Those left-out people became frustrated and angry. There is cultural frustration, too. In America, Western Europe, India, Turkey, Brazil, and China, right populist ethno-nationalist attitudes and movements are gaining strength. It turns out the multi-cultural, citizen-of-the-world, post-racial, pro-immigrant "end of history" consensus was not a consensus at all. That fact may have been misunderstood two decades ago, but it unmistakeable now.

Popular government is not an inevitability. In early-1861, after his election, a big segment of Americans--the southern states--took arms against the government in opposition to the election. In 2021, Americans in good standing as tax-paying American citizens--people with careers, wealth, and community status--tried to reverse a presidential election. A majority of GOP voters continue to wish for it and some insist on it. Donald Trump still refers to himself in the present tense as president and GOP officeholders go along.

This blog looks at messaging and leadership. The people who have emerged with the passion and oratorical power to focus and energize Americans are people speaking to their tribes, not the nation. I would welcome another Lincoln, someone who could articulate a unifying national purpose. Joe Biden does not have the skillset for this task. I don't blame him. He never had it and never pretended to have it. 

It isn't impossible for that new Lincoln to be a Republican, but he or she would face the uphill task of winning over the people currently feeling most threatened by cultural marginalizing. Liz Cheney is giving it a try. Chris Christie is pretending to but hedging his bets.

The more likely person is a Democrat who speaks of there being no red states nor blue states and whose words and tone project unity. There is a problem with that. We tried it with Obama, and it led to Trump. Maybe we need a long ugly fight before we exhaust ourselves and are ready to return to the unfinished work Lincoln laid out. This is a gloomy look ahead, but I am attempting to be realistic.

Election Reform Overdue in Oregon

Oregon has an election problem. It isn't that we vote by mail.  That seems to work.

It is campaign finance money. Unlimited amounts of it, from anyone and anywhere.

Oregon has a reputation as a "good government" state with well-run elections and clean politics. I think it is a well-deserved reputation, with one, big glaring problem: Campaign finance.

Tam Moore is a lifelong journalist, who worked in television in his early days and then in print, writing for the Capital Press, a regional newspaper focusing on the agricultural industry. In the mid-1970’s, Moore served as an elected Jackson County Commissioner in southern Oregon.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Tam Moore

Another election season is dawning in Oregon. This time around much attention will focus on sorting out the candidates for governor. Early on well-known Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, is muddling the scene.

Johnson is running “unaffiliated.” That means when the May primary election rolls around most of Oregon’s 2.9 million registered voters won’t be able to cast a ballot for her. It’s the result of the state allowing political parties to have “closed” primary elections – restricted to voters registered to their party.

What will emerge from a closed primary are two candidates favored by Democrats (with 1,026,313 registered voters) and Republicans (with 729,676 registered voters).

Johnson will earn a place on the November ballot with a petition containing signatures of at least 1 percent of those voting in the 2020 general election. That’s just under 24,000 valid signatures.

Johnson said she grew up a Republican and became a Democrat as the GOP “moved too far to the right.”

In an email sent to supporters last month she said, “Having to choose between another left-wing liberal promising more of the same or a right-wing Trump apologist — is no choice at all.”

Johnson’s declaration prompted The Oregonian/Oregon Live to editorialize, urging both major political parties to voluntarily open their May primary elections to nonaffiliated voters. They could make that choice internally, without a change in Oregon law.

Don’t bet on that happening with either party. In fact don’t bet on much electoral reform at all in Oregon until the people or the Legislature tackle the Elephant in Oregon’s Political Front Room: Campaign Finance reform.

Our problem has its roots in one of this nation’s most specific constitutional free-speech clauses:

“No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.” (Article 1, section 8 Oregon Constitution).

The courts have repeatedly found unconstitutional legislative and initiative efforts to reign in political spending. After voter-approved campaign spending limits passed in November 1994, the Oregon Supreme Court two years later found that seven sections of Measure 9 violate the Oregon Constitution’s free-speech clause.

“[W]e conclude that both campaign contributions and expenditures are forms of expression for the purposes of Article I, section 8,” said the court’s 1996 opinion.

You can read part of what resulted in a four-part series published by The Oregonian in 2019 Click. Reporter Rob Davis built his series around links between Oregon campaign finance law and how government dealt with environmental issues.

“Oregon’s failure to regulate campaign cash has made it one of the biggest money states in American politics,” Davis wrote. “The flood of money created an easy regulatory climate where industry gets what it wants, again and again.”

Among his findings:

· Oregon is one of 11 states allowing people to give as much as they want to political candidates.

· Oregon is one of five states with no limits on campaign contributions.

· On a per capita basis, Oregon ranks first among the 50 states in corporate giving to political campaigns.

The Oregonian looked at 114,000 transactions between 2008 and 2018 involving state legislator’s use of a total of $83 million in campaign contributions. It found that $2.2 million of that spending would have violated the law in at least one other state. The two largest categories were out-of-state travel and family members on campaign payrolls. Oregon allows use of campaign money for expenses “connected with” a legislator’s official duties.

Voters passed Measure 107, a constitutional amendment, in November 2020. It authorizes both the Legislature and local governments to limit campaign contributions and expenditures. The measure earned approval of 78 percent of voters.

So what happened in the 2021 session? Bills that would limit campaign contributions were on the sidelines when the Legislature adjourned.

Honest Elections Oregon, a political action committee which promoted passage of Measure 107, is working on a couple of initiatives which would implement the new constitutional amendment. Dan Meek, part of leadership at Honest Elections, says draft language would include disclaimer requirements, contribution limits and additional disclosure requirements. One version of the initiative would include some form of public funding of campaigns for statewide office. Meek says the draft initiatives use statutory language rather than proposing constitutional amendments.

While Honest Elections works on its initiatives, the cash flows into Oregon’s pending gubernatorial races. Nick Kristoff, the Yamhill native and former New York Times columnist made recent headlines with an initial campaign finance report showing $1 million in donations.

On November 18, Senator Johnson's initial campaign finance report came out--over $2.3 million in the bank! Wow, what a start to an election that's one year away. 

 

Survey Results: Mostly Democrats and Frustrated Conservatives

This blog tells Democrats they are right--but should stop being stupid and self-destructive.

This blog tells Republicans they are smart, cynical, and effective--but should stop letting Trump undermine democratic government.

Apparently it is mostly Democrats who want to read that.

Wednesday morning I got an email from an American ex-pat living in the Caribbean and voting in Alaska. He said he was "Populist Right." He was only the second Populist Right person to respond to my survey, and he moved the number of responses from 199 to 200, and on that even number, I stopped accepting new responses. 

Establishment Liberal:      35%

Progressive Left:              22.5%

Democratic Mainstay:      16%

Outsider Left:                     5%

Stressed Sideliner:            6%

Ambivalent Right:              8%

Committed Conservative:  6%

Faith & Flag Right           0.5%

Populist Right                    1%

General public profile

My readers don't match the profile of the general public.

I am not surprised and should not be. I have written repeatedly that Trump actively and intentionally worked to undermine a bedrock element of democratic government, that leaders are elected by the people and that the loser respects that vote. I write that Republican thought leaders and officeholders share Trump's guilt when they sit quietly and let Trump assert that he won the election and bully election officials into changing or overturning the vote count. Their verbal gymnastics, saying they "acknowledge that Biden was inaugurated," but refusing to say that he was inaugurated because he won the election, makes them party to the erosion of our democracy.

People in the Populist Right, the Faith & Flag Right, and Committed Conservatives groups generally support Trump wholeheartedly and believe him--or desperately want to believe him--and so have good reason to dislike what I write. Only 7.5% of my readers are in that group.

Most of my attention is toward Democrats. I write what many of them dislike reading. I say that the puritan know-it-all shaming they do on cultural issues is a giant turn-off and creates backlash, not "personal growth." I live in a purple county, and I rode the bucking bronco of our politics here as an elected official, so I know that people view things very differently, and they experience politics with their guts, not their logic. My farm is in an area that voted three to one for Trump. I try to explain to my educated, urban, politically liberal friends that the price of gasoline is likely a bigger and more motivating issue to working people than is the notion of "climate change." 

I would undoubtedly have more readers if I were a cheerleader for the left--if I said that Bernie was wildly popular, that Biden is sharp as a tack, that AOC speaks for the majority of people. People might send me "attaboys" and my posts might get circulated more. I don't say those things, because whatever my own political instincts and desires in a perfect world, I don't think those things are true. The progressive left hasn't made the sale to enough people to win elections. My friends on the left can be as deluded by wishful thinking as are the voters on the right who are certain--absolutely certain--that Trump won by a landslide because, after all, almost everyone they know shares their view that Trump is great.

I realize the survey was far from "scientific." The 200 responses are likely-unrepresentative. The survey questions were awkward. Maybe it was garbage-in-garbage-out, but the results seem generally plausible to me. I intend to write for everyone but had guessed that my readers skew toward people sort of like myself: Left-friendly Boomers. That is what the survey showed.

Meanwhile, I will keep writing, urging Democrats to be better at politics and urging Republicans to realize that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian.

A Doctor's advice on holiday gatherings

"We gather together to ask the Lord's blessings. . .."

How should the COVID-conscientious handle the holidays?

There are people who have had COVID and now feel immune, and people who feel the whole thing is overblown, and people who just aren't worried much about COVID. This post is not for them. This post is, in part, because of them.

This post is for the "COVID-conscientious," people who worry about getting a breakthrough case, which may make themselves sick and a contagion risk. That would include me. I am 72 now. Many people my age have compromised immune systems. 

But maybe it is time to declare victory over COVID. The vaccines are very effective. That is the sentiment of New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, who noted that COVID risk for the fully vaccinated is now at the baseline for hospitalization and death from the annual flu, and we don't mask and social distance for the flu. The people who aren't vaccinated are willingly taking their risks, so quit trying to protect them. Let's move on, he said. 

Is that sound thinking? Most of us will have opportunities this holiday season to gather with family and friends. Should we join in?

I asked the question of college classmate Eliot Nierman, M.D. He responded, telling me he shared a draft of this post with infectious disease specialists and that he considers it consistent with generally accepted medical opinion. He is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. 

Guest Post by Eliot Nierman, M.D.

Do you drive fast, do you ski, do you rock climb, do you sky dive? What is your risk tolerance?

Eliot Nierman, hiking

Nothing is 100% safe whether it be driving in your car or walking down the street. Even staying home confers the risks to health of inactivity and isolation. If you are a young child, if you are under 50 and vaccinated, covid is a small risk. If you are elderly, especially over 80, if you are immune suppressed, if you have underlying diseases, COVID is a large risk even if you are vaccinated. Your behaviors and exposures impact your risk, as does that of those you are in contact with. 

There is also the issue of local amounts of disease. Are you lucky enough to be in a place with under 10 cases per 100,000, which is considered low risk? Is there a local surge in cases? You can check out your community on the NY Times or elsewhere. 

Very important is the other side of the equation. What is the benefit/importance to you of seeing family, friends, grandchildren, of partying?

How do we put this together? Everyone has their own personal calculus. Here is mine. It corresponds to that of other main-stream medical professionals I have talked with. I am vaccinated and boosted and not immunosuppressed. My vulnerability is being 71. For the purposes of this discussion, I am assuming no one is wearing masks and we are indoors. Family Thanksgiving with everyone vaccinated except young kids is a reasonable risk with a big benefit. I’m going. What if some are not vaccinated? If the numbers of unvaccinated are small, and they are willing to do rapid covid tests, perhaps the risk is reasonable if it means a lot to you. The rapid tests aren’t great, especially in those without symptoms, but are better than nothing. 

Holiday parties with unknown vaccination status, drinks, close contact--no way I’m going. I would, however, go to a party with a close small group of friends (under 10) who are all vaccinated. Maybe if you are young, healthy, vaccinated and don’t have vulnerable close contacts, especially people you live with, who are elderly or immunosuppressed, the benefits may outweigh the holiday party risks for you especially if you are not in a COVID hot spot.  Not for me.

 
How about travel? In general, that is a reasonable risk. Planes are well ventilated, and the vast majority of passengers do wear their masks. The risks are limited to infection from those in your immediate vicinity, especially if they spent a lot of time with masks off eating and drinking. Short flights without meals are safest. Airports are probably a bigger risk than the planes, but you can largely avoid the crowded areas and people not good about their masks.  I will fly to Boston for Thanksgiving.

What if you are immunocompromised or are in close contact/live with someone who is and can’t realistically isolate from them for a while? The answer is no. 
 

Old men cling to power. Then someone takes it.

Primate politics:

Gorilla males hang onto their harem as long as they can. They get old. They get vulnerable.

Then a younger, stronger bachelor gorilla gets up the nerve to fight him and take over the harem.

American politics:

Same thing.

Male gorilla with his harem

An astute observer of both juries and primates told me not to expect Joe Biden to "take one for the team." and resign from office after two years.

He said the lingering Silent Generation and Boomer politicians won't turn things over willingly to people their 40s and 50s. They will hang onto power as long as they can, even though it plugs up the flow of new leadership required by their own policy goals. He said:

They know it is selfish. They know it is counter-productive. They do it anyway because they feel entitled. Human nature is to hang onto power until it gets wrest out of their failing aged hands. And the next generation doesn't deserve that power until they can do that to the old guys.

Biden may imagine himself another FDR, but I think the better metaphor is that he is a specialty relief pitcher able to pitch one or two innings, then he is done. He was the indispensable man for striking out a heavy-hitting opposing batter, but now he should leave the mound and give Kamala Harris a chance to show her stuff. If she can't do it, some other reliever will emerge. It would be good for the team.

It isn't the way either gorillas or humans do it. Dianne Feinstein is 88, and was elected to a six-year term in 2018. She has filed paperwork to run for another six-year term for the 2024 election. Senator Chuck Grassley is 88 and he has filed for re-election in 2022. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg hung on to her seat until her death at 87.

Biden is keeping open the potential of running for re-election. Any Democrat who announced a run now must run as an opponent of Biden. Biden is plugging the pipeline.

Donald Trump, too. He says he might run in 2024. He is alert to anyone--Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie--making signals of a run themselves. He demands other potential aspirants announce, clearly and publicly, that if Trump runs they will not. The harem is his.

A bachelor posturing. 

There is a bachelor gorilla, impatient and frustrated, scouting the cranky old silverback from a distance: Christ Christie. He's one of many, so he is hoping to shame and diminish the other, more timid bachelor gorillas. Some of them have agreed to Trump's demand of deferral, but Christie speaks out. He said it takes courage to flirt with running because "Donald Trump's own conduct is meant to instill fear" among potential rivals.

Christie positions himself as Mr. Courage:

If you’re going to run for president, you better have enough confidence in yourself that it doesn’t matter who else runs. If you believe you’re the right person, belly up to the bar and run against whoever winds up showing up.

He is also Mr. Integrity. He ratified most of Trump's behavior as president, perhaps making him acceptable to Trump supporters, but only up through November 3rd. Trump's behavior after that was the breaking point, he says.

I think that there are lots of Republicans who believe exactly what I believe, but no one's saying it to them. The only voice they're hearing right now are voices that say that the election was stolen and that's just not true. So you need other voices to speak out. So I'm doing it.

Christie is signaling interest. He is posturing. Christie said he will make a decision after the mid-terms. It was easy to see Christie in 2015 and 2016 in New Hampshire.

I have seen Christie up close about a dozen times. He is an extraordinarily skilled story teller. He can move a crowd. He dominates. He projects the powerful authoritarian confidence, the my-way-or-else manner GOP voters discovered they liked in a party leader. I predict he will overwhelm soft-spoken, earnest Mike Pence. GOP voters don't want pious. They want a warrior. He projects like a warrior.

Here is 42 seconds of him, in late 2015:

If power gets taken from Trump it will be from someone a lot like Trump.

We will be seeing more of Chris Christie.  

Second banana.

Vice Presidents become president--when the president dies in office.

Kamala Harris is in a bad position, and it has just gotten worse.

A proxy war is underway.

Joe Biden was not VP when he campaigned for the presidency.  He had four years out of office to re-brand himself as a powerful thinker, a leader, a man with a plan to make America better. In fact, Biden didn't do any of those things. He wasted the period, but he got elected president anyway, by backing into the office. He won the nomination because he wasn't Bernie Sanders. He won the presidency because he wasn't Donald Trump. 

Look at the standard, acceptable stance of the VP when the president is making an important speech: Two steps behind and two steps to the side. The body language tells a story of support for the boss. You are Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson. He makes the jokes. You laugh. You never upstage the Top Banana.

That is the burden Kamala Harris carries, and it is showing up now in articles like this by CNN, now dominating their web and broadcast spaces. The knives are out. 

CNN article

The article leads off with an ugly conclusion:

Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff -- deciding there simply isn't time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political considerations.

The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers -- who spoke extensively to CNN -- reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined.

The sourcing is the big takeaway: "Nearly three dozen" people are talking. It is a proxy war. The long article goes on and on about the West Wing's frustration, Harris's frustration, staff mismanagement, botched administration policy, bad messaging, and more. People are saying she is failing. Others are saying she was set up to fail, a leader "not being put into positions to lead." Biden and Harris will smile and deny there is any problem. Meanwhile, the aides snipe and leak.

Kamala Harris was dealt a very bad hand in a Vice Presidential game already stacked against her. Biden brought presidential dignity and norms back to the White House, but he did not bring the ability to articulate a unifying policy direction. He is frail and inarticulate. The stacked game consists of the requirement that the VP be in a supportive role to the president, whatever his flaws. The bad hand in that game is that she will instantly look sharp-elbowed and disloyal if she does something Biden sorely needs someone to do: Project a Democratic vision that pulls together a governing coalition. Biden needs the help that Richard Cheney gave George W. Bush, and that help made Bush look competent and Cheney look fearsome. Biden cannot do that. If he gets what he needs, a powerful articulate voice, Biden will be defined as weak, not smart, and Harris will be defined as stabbing her benefactor in the back. 

There is no needle for her to thread, no Goldilocks "just right" middle ground of being both leader and supporter. People will be looking to see if she is trying to trade places at the podium, and will be judged harshly if it appears to be the case. It would be "House of Cards" in real life.  

She is stuck, but so is Biden. Therefore, the proxy war.

[Tomorrow: Kamala Harris's path to the White House is for Biden to leave office promptly. The old don't give up power voluntarily, not the Supreme Court, not congressional leadership, not the presidency. It must be wrested from their grasp.]

Heroic Bureaucrats

Matthew 25:23: 

     "His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'”

The USA faced the potential for a Constitutional crisis in the 2020 election and aftermath.  

We avoided the worst of it. People did their jobs.

A president who was persuasive, persistent, and extraordinarily popular with approximately 45% of the American public attempted to push the levers of power to overthrow an election and retain office. He contacted governors, secretaries of state, county election officials, and appointed and career officials in his own Justice Department urging they "find" votes or fraud--something that would provide a colorable argument for voiding the election. People in key places resisted their own partisan desires, and enormous partisan pressure. They reviewed ballots, they counted the votes, and they were faithful to their jobs.

They weren't acting like politicians. They were acting like bureaucrats. 

Sandford Borins

College classmate Sandford Borins is an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto. He studied political science and public administration, with a focus on the narrative stories that people tell themselves and others to understand the world. He has a blog of his own, https://sandfordborins.com and multiple books and articles.

This Guest Post is an excerpt from his commentary on Tony Downs, an economist who influenced his thinking and career, particularly in Downs' book, Inside Bureaucracy. That book came to Borins' mind when he read Downs' recent obituary. His full post is at Borins' website.

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Tony Downs postulated nine possible motives of public servants. Five are pure manifestations of self-interest: power, money income, prestige, convenience, and security. But the other four are altruistic: loyalty beyond the self to a group of people or institution, pride in performance, desire to serve the public interest, and commitment to a specific program or policy.

Downs’s five types of officials combine these motives in different ways. Two types of purely self-interested officials are:

• Climbers, who are ambitious and strive for more power, income, and prestige.
• Conservers, who consider convenience and security all-important, and attempt to retain the power, income, and prestige that they already have.

Three types of officials combine self-interest and altruism:

• Zealots, who are committed to a narrow range of policies or concepts.
• Advocates, who are loyal to a broader set of policies than zealots and who seek power to advance the interests of their organization.
• Statesmen [sic], who are loyal to society as a whole and seek power to influence national policies. Downs condescendingly refers to statesmen as most closely resembling “the theoretical bureaucrats of public administration textbooks.”

Why This Matters

I’m not particularly interested in this as intellectual history, namely that a scholar who postulated that voters and politicians were primarily self-interested a decade later had second thoughts when he studied bureaucrats. It is of interest to me that a considerable body of public opinion, particularly in the U.S. and on the political right, sees career public servants as ambitious climbers attempting to enlarge their organizations’ power and budget or risk-averse conservers attempting protect their turf and cover their asses. This is comparable to disdain and scorn for career politicians.

The Trump Presidency

The Trump presidency put public servants to a severe test, as I predicted it would, before he took office. Over the course of his presidency, it became clear that Trump was a kleptocrat who surrounded himself with kleptocrats; a demagogue who lied repeatedly, starting with minor matters like the size of the crowd at his inauguration and eventually on critical matters such as the pandemic; and an aspiring dictator, who attempted to steal an election.

What was crucial was how American public servants responded to this assault on the truth, on their organizations, and on democracy. Some climbers enthusiastically supported the Trump Administration’s political appointees to advance their careers. Conservers undoubtedly kept their heads down, hoping “this, too, will pass.” But there were public servants who spoke truth to power, like Anthony Fauci and his colleagues in the FDA. There were public servants who became whistle-blowers – for example, Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill, and Marie Yovanovitch in the Trump-Ukraine scandal – an act of patriotism for which they were fired. And there were many state-level public servants who, despite political and public pressure including death threats, counted the vote honestly and accurately.

In the last years of his life, I wonder if Downs was thinking about his theoretical bureaucrats as the conflict between Trump and real public servants played out. I searched online but could find no recent publications by Downs on that issue. Certainly, this would be a fruitful topic for public administration researchers.

My conclusion – the armchair empiricism of an emeritus professor of public administration – is that, when facing an existential threat to democratic governance, many American public servants acted altruistically in the public interest, sometimes at considerable personal risk. There is a library of profiles in courage waiting to be written.