Showing posts with label Pres. Bill Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pres. Bill Clinton. Show all posts

Saturday, May 13, 2017

The President's Crash Dive Towards Removal from Office

Occupy Portland Launch Rally
October 6, 2011
http://www.aflitt.com/occupyportlandoctober2011
© A. F. Litt 2011, All Rights Reserved
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's video outlining four or five grounds to impeach the president is interesting, and even more now, more than a month after it was first released. And what a month it has been... But even at this point, most of these points are pretty weak tea.  

 However, Reich's list keeps getting longer since he first suggested the possibility of impeachment based on the emoluments clause at the time of the inauguration, and his arguments supporting each point tend to be getting stronger as more and more evidence accumulates...

It really is starting to feel like it is just a matter of time before something happens to really put President Trump's job in jeopardy, especially as the president continues to flail, wilder and wilder, with each passing week.

If the administration is brought down, it is likely that it will not be for something that's already happened, for acts already committed, but for something that may happen very soon if the the president, his staff, and his cabinet continue on their current trajectory.

It is not the time right now, yet, to be discussing impeachment, but the current investigations need to be thorough.  The nation needs these concerns to be addressed and this is a very different situation than the calls for the impeachment of the last two presidents and the actual impeachment of President Clinton before that.

Since the impeachment of President Clinton, too much time has been spent dwelling on removing the opposing party's chief executive from office.  

The proceedings against President Clinton were far more motivated by politics than by any true harm he did to the office or the country.  This is not to say that he did no wrong, lying to Congress is a serious infraction, one that should still be taken very seriously, and a reprimand was clearly in order, but to move towards actual removal from office over lying about an extramarital affair is a bit like firing a RPG at a housefly.  It does more damage than good.

Under President Bush, when the Democrats took control of Congress, there was a lot of speculation that they would follow in the GOP's footsteps and that the House would vote on Articles of Impeachment.  Again, though, this would have been motivated by politics, and any charges against the president would have been pretty well trumped up to justify such an action.

Not liking the policies and practices of the president is not grounds for impeachment or removal.

In a way, that was a very scary moment for our democracy.  If the cooler heads did not prevail with the Democrats under President Bush, after what happened with President Clinton, a precedent and tradition could have been established where impeaching the president became a basic political move when power shifted in Congress.

Such a development would have been devastating for our nation.

It is almost certain that, if the House Democrats even held a vote on impeaching President Bush, the House Republicans would have voted on impeaching President Obama.  Large sections of the base of both parties cried out for such actions towards the other party's presidents through both administrations, and such moves would have been easy red meat to throw at these constituents, but the costs to our nation would have been terrible.

It would be simple to dismiss the current calls for the impeachment of President Trump as being little more than the latest incarnation of these misguided political urges, but this is a very different situation.  True, there has been politically motivated noise about impeachment since the election, but over the last few weeks, evidence is mounting that requires investigation.

This time, there may be true "high crimes and misdemeanors" in play.  

As I mentioned earlier, I really do feel that the focus of our nation, for the moment, needs to not be on the scandalous possibilities of a potential impeachment trial, but rather on ensuring that a very thorough investigation takes place into the concerns about the Trump campaign, transition, and current administration, and yes, this includes the president himself, if the evidence demands it. 

The White House needs to support these investigations.  To do otherwise would tarnish their administration, undermine foreign policy, and, in the worst case scenario, if a cover up or obstruction of justice occurs, their fight against the investigations might the very thing that brings down the president, not whatever may or may not have happened during the campaign and transition.

Unfortunately for our country, we have a president who, in the shaky leg days of his first time ever holding public office, seems too focused on ego and paranoia, and if he continues on the course he is on, it seems very likely that he will overreach at some point in a way that will transcend partisan party politics and lead to a bi-partisan vote on Articles of Impeachment.

The White House needs to bring in some experienced grown-ups to help them through this, someone needs to get the president off of Twitter, and the administration's political opponents need to calm down and focus on pushing for impartial investigations, including a Special Prosecutor, rather than getting lost in partisan hot flashes about throwing their nemesis out of office.

Politically, removing the president would accomplish very little for the Democrats and the Left. The next two men in succession are actually further to the right than President Trump is, and will be devastatingly more effective at pursuing their agendas than the current White House has been through the first 100-plus days of his term.

For the Democrats and the Left, the best result here they could ever dream of would be the president remaining in office after potentially burning almost all of the support from the rest of his party, support which was, at best, tenuous from the start.  It's the Lame Duck result. Even if the president was able to re-build his support over time, it would disable and disarm him for a significant chunk of his first term, and it would invite strong primary challenges against his nomination for a second term.

With the current polarity in our nation, the lack of trust towards the press, and the rise of "alternative facts," asking either side to set aside politics right now is probably an exercise in futility, but it is what is truly needed over the coming weeks. The Left needs to quit screaming for the president's head, the Right needs to quit screaming that it is all "fake news," and all sides, including the White House, need to work together to put these concerns behind us.

At this point, the need for a Special Prosecutor seems evident.  Before the firing of FBI Director Comey, maybe not, but after, it is probably the only way to start restoring trust.

When the results of these investigations are in, then it will be up to everyone to determine whether or not President Trump should remain in office.  Both the House and the Trump Cabinet will need to look at those results, because, depending on the president's behavior between now and then, it may fall upon his own administration to seek his removal from office through Section IV of the 25th Amendment. 
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Monday, March 05, 2012

Putin, Clinton, & Bush… Oh my! The current, dynastic period of American history

No Trespass. Gresham, Oregon. February 5, 2012. Photo of the Day, February 24, 2012.

Observers Detail Flaws in Russian Election - NYTimes.com:

Mr. Putin, who has already served eight years as president and four years as prime minister, won a new six-year term on Sunday with an official tally of 63.75 percent of the vote. He has already suggested that he might run again in 2018, potentially extending his tenure as Russia’s pre-eminent leader to 24 years, on a par with Brezhnev and Stalin.

Before we get all shocked about Putin and say, "It could never happen here!" think about this:

A likely list of US Presidents in a future text book...

1989 - 2021 or 2025 (32-34 years):
-Bush
-Clinton
-Bush
-Obama (almost Clinton & prominently featuring Clinton family members and former Clinton officials in the cabinet/administration)
-(Clinton or Bush likely)

Hillary and Jeb have to be considered the initial front runners in 2016.

I am starting to think of our current period as the Dynastic Period in American history.

Of course, there have been a few more shenanigans in the Russian elections than the American elections.  2000 not withstanding, though, Americans are clearly choosing their leaders from these prominent families.

Recently, I read an article saying that Jeb may even jump in this year to save the GOP from their circular firing squad.  And I think there is little doubt that Hillary will take a shot at 2016.  It wouldn’t even be the most shocking event ever if she ends up being on the 2012 ticket as VP.

In 2008, one of the main reasons why I supported Obama in the primaries was that I felt having a 20 year stretch with only the last names Bush or Clinton residing in the White House was bad for America and bad for our democracy, even if we liked the people in office (or some of them).

Continuing this trend for another four to eight years?  Having the potential for the Presidency to be passed back and forth between two families, if Hillary was elected twice, for nearly thirty years?

That is dangerous, I believe, for any democracy. 

I suspect, though, that we may not be done with Presidents named Bush and Clinton. 

I would be very surprised not to see either Hillary or Jeb picking up a nomination in the future, and 2016 may even end up being Bush v. Clinton in the general.

And they are young enough that both may eventually end up in the White House.

Picture this:

Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush, Clinton

If everyone gets two terms, that would be 44 years of dynastic presidencies with one, minor exception.  Almost half a century.

Age may limit these far reaching possibilities. 

Hillary will be 81 in 2028 and 86 in 2033 (end of the latest possible second term in this scenario).

Jeb will be 76 in 2028 and 80 in 2033.

In comparison, Ronald Reagan, our oldest president so far, was almost 70 when he was first inaugurated in 1981 and served until two weeks before his 78th birthday.  He lived to age 93, but was crippled by Alzheimer's for, at least, the last 10 years of his life.

This article drifts a little towards the unsteady conspiracy theories from time to time, but it also makes plenty of solid points.

The Jeb Scenario: Can You Say “President Bush” Again? | Snip.it:

The Bushes are nothing if not resilient. George W. Bush, he of so few qualifications but with his own distinctive Bush personality and formidable charisma, came out of the dust of his father’s re-election defeat in 1992, stronger than his father ever was politically. And though W. is now persona non grata to many, his brother would come back as a significantly different brand. He’s widely regarded as more capable, much more focused, much better at delivering points. He’s able to pull off a kind of sober, reasonable persona, more stable than a Santorum or a Gingrich or most of the other contenders. Rich but not entitled. A kind of Romney—without the Romney.

And yet….And yet he is still a Bush. That means a great deal, because, putting aside all the stylistic differences, this is a clan with a mission. It’s a mission they’ll never talk about, beyond vague statements about a sense within the family of Duty to Nation. No, the Bush clan is the ultimate representative of the game plan of the one percent of the one percent. What they stand for in private is much, much more troubling than most Americans know. What I learned in the five years I spent investigating them—as they were going out of power the last time—shook me to my core.

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Monday, January 30, 2012

What do I believe in? The political world according to A. F. Litt



Prelude

On my personal website I have been building a library of my academic papers from my school days.  Tonight, I found one that I thought I would share here.

It was a quick response paper for a cultural anthropology class at Seattle Central Community College some sixteen years ago.  Not my best writing ever, for a class or otherwise, but, clunky writing aside, in many ways I think this little piece sums up my political views better than anything I’ve written before or since.

It does not detail where I am on the left or right spectrum, conservative or liberal.  On that scale, I am far from static and can usually manage to upset people on both sides of that particular divide.  It does, however, explain my opinion on how the American political system operates.

After the massive political failures in Washington D.C. over the last decade, I suspect that more and more people have come around to seeing things from my perspective.  Back in 1996, though, my ideas on government and the media were dismissed as naive by many from both the right and the left.

The popular view was that great, unseen political machinations were pulling the strings of power.  Everything was a borderline conspiracy, or an actual conspiracy. 

After watching both parties shattering like glass against the rocks of their own incompetency the last few years, however, I feel that my views on the system are a bit more mainstream now.  Reading this essay for the first time in about 12 years today, it actually felt fresher than it did in the days of the Clinton Impeachment Trial and the WTO controversies, before the 2000 Election, eight years of George W. Bush, endless wars in the Mid-East, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, and whatever sort of tragicomic train wreck the last six plus years of Congress will be labeled as by future historians.

Enough from me today, onwards to me from years past…  This is warts and all, copied and pasted from the original Word document.

ANT 202, Fall 1996, Seattle Central Community College

Until recently, I had never read anything by Noam Chomsky, or heard him speak before, but I have run into many people who have and are rather worked up by his ideas. Many of these people, however, tended to have a very paranoid streak in them, and have used Chomksy’s words to confirm their own fears and suspicions about conspiracies and such. They use his ideas as proof that their fears about direct manipulations between corporations, government officials and agencies, the media, and the financial institutions are true. Instead of understanding the subtle and indirect influences these institutions, by nature, have upon one another; they just take these concepts in their bluntest, broadest forms, picturing some sort of wild X-Files type of conspiracy. They believe, in a very literal way, that all politics are nothing but a sham, that the corporations directly control everything, making phone calls and e-mails, ruling directly a puppet government, themselves taking their orders from the global financial institutions. I always ask them where the aliens fit into these schemes, and not all of them realize that I am joking. Because of these people, I have always been a bit weary of Chomsky, but knowing these people’s mind sets, I figured they were just laying their own fears over his ideas, and I’ve always wanted to find out if I was right.

My own view of government and its relationship with the private power structures has always been more of a chaos theory, rather than a conspiracy theory, seeing each individual and group being too caught up in their own special interests, and too busy covering their own asses, to ever work together at a level that such a complex conspiracy would require. There are just too many egos involved. My own view, it turns out, seems very similar to Chomsky’s. So, when listening to the conspiracy theorists talking about the power structures, about the relationships between industry, government, and the media, I’ve never been able to totally disagree. I’ve always ended up with sort of a “Yes, but…” and a “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far” response. I can’t follow them all the way into the conspiracies. For these to actually be occurring, the politicians, CEOs, and journalists would all have to be a lot less self serving, and a hell of a lot smarter, than they ever seemed to be, to me, at least. In 1991, while attending a National Press Club conference in D.C., for example, I had an opportunity to meet briefly with former Rep. Rod Chandler and former Sen. Brock Adams. To be honest, these two were so preoccupied with themselves and with their own personal career goals (Adams, understandable, more so at this point – still vowing to run again, still certain that he could win), that I don’t see them plotting anything with anyone, unless they got to be in charge. When talking about legislation, bills they sponsored, bills where they offered up key support, they never talked with enthusiasm about the laws they were making, or about how they were good for their constituencies, but they were very jazzed up about how powerful they were personally, being able to make that big of a splash on the national issues. Chandler, being groggy from getting back from a fact finding mission to Kuwait, came across as a complete fool and managing to drop in a couple of racist comments, thinking that he’d made a funny, certainly didn’t help his case any. If this guy was ever involved in anything serious, I’d be willing to bet that he’d accidentally expose it. Of course, my paranoid friends all reassure me that these cases were all just acts, that they were ploys to lower our expectations of elected officials, and to lower our defenses.

Still, I feel that these politicians do try to do their best to stand up for and to fight for what they feel needs to be done, but it is no mystery to me how things like aid to the Guatemalan military gets passed by these people, as well. They see the word communist in the early 1980s, and communists are bad. If they don’t vote against the communists, they will endanger their re-election. In these circumstances, why should they even worry if the guerillas are even really communist insurgents or not, why should they waste any effort trying to dig deeper into this issue? It would just be a bother because they already know how they must vote, and so they probably never realize that they were aiding in the suppression of the Guatemalan public, and not in the suppression of the “Evil Empire’s” backing of Soviet-style communism in the Americas.

Likewise, the media. Journalists, like politicians, feel that they and not their possible replacements are the best for their jobs, that they will fight the good fight in a way that they are uniquely qualified for, in a way that their potential successors are not. On top of this, or in place of this, let’s face it: unemployment sucks. In the media, votes count as much towards job security as they do in politics. Here, however, the votes are cast through ratings and circulation figures instead of elections. Using the Guatemalan example again, in the early 80’s the American public was largely uninterested in Central American political struggles, just writing it all off as those damn Cubans working with the Soviets to expand communism closer to the States, and being bored with anything deeper than that. A minute or two here, a few column inches there. The sort of publicity needed to truly educate the public about these freedom fighters, the time and attention needed to explain that these repressed Indians were not really communists, and definitely not backed by any communist nations, would have sent, let’s say, the evening news ratings into the trash. Maybe some journalists knew about the situation down there, and they felt strongly about the need to bring the details to the public’s attention, but often they will sacrifice that story for another one they also feel strongly about, one that the public is more interested in, one with a higher ratings potential. The instinct for self-survival wins again.

This is how I see these two institutions working. It’s not that they are working together, it’s that the very nature of our society forces them both to work in ways that, in this case, serve each other well. Real issues become fuzzy sound bites that end up largely dictating American policies. And it is definitely not Sen. Doe calling up Jack Blowdry, having the network nix the story so Congress can get away with something. Most journalists I’ve met would run screaming to the showers seeking purification at just hearing such a suggestion.

So, getting back to the Chomsky interview, it was very refreshing to hear him say pretty much these same things, confirming my suspicions that he wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, and in fact, hearing him bluntly deny it. My paranoid friends, it seems, weren’t only misunderstanding his message, but completely missing the most important part of it all, that we do live in a free society, and that these institutions don’t have the strength that they would have if such a conspiracy was taking place. (Totalitarianism, anyone?) It’s the capitalistic democracy we live in that creates the appearances of a conspiracy, but it’s also this system that gives the public’s opinions so much strength. It’s the public’s voice, expressed through votes, and sales, and ratings, and such that fuels this system. It’s the fear of a negative opinion that brings out the negative aspects of this system. The idea, as Chomsky put it, that while in a totalitarian system, backed by violence and fear tactics, it doesn’t matter what the public thinks, only what it does, and that the powerful don’t need the support of the public when they decide policy, but in a capitalistic democracy the thoughts of the public are very powerful and potentially dangerous to those in charge while being the hardest part of the system to control, and the support, or ignorance, of the public mandates the policies of the powerful. Therefore, the fear of a negative opinion, of being perceived as another Mondale instead of another Reagan, of selling Pintos instead of Cadillacs, creates a situation where the truth is something to be feared in case it is taken wrong by the consumers. Image become more important than reality, and the truth, or at least the details of the truth, are avoided when possible by anyone selling themselves to the public.  The truth is only investigated and reported by the media if it is exciting, importance or relevance becoming only a secondary consideration.

For example, when the Watergate scandal was being uncovered by the Washington Post, the idea of corruption on that level in the executive branch was big news, but after Nixon and 12 years of Regan/Bush, it’s going to take Clinton being caught at something a lot more clear-cut and scandalous than Whitewater to capture the public’s attention in the way it was by his predecessor’s misdeeds, 23 years ago. [I will interject here in order to point out that this essay was written before Monica Lewinski and the Impeachment] These days, however, O. J. Simpson managed to catch the public’s attention quite nicely in a way that Whitewater hasn’t been able to in post Watergate times.

So Chomsky’s most important message is that if we educate ourselves about how the system works, and why, if we can rekindle our interest in politics and government, we can make our voices even louder, and we will be able to more adroitly wield the power over the system that too many people believe we currently lack. Then we can make the interest of the public more important than just its opinion. It’s hard to inspire interest in the system, though, when 99% of what happens in D.C. does not effect our day-to-day lives, when the practices and attitudes of corporations do not affect us, as long as their products fulfill the use promised, and as long as the news media acts primarily as a form of entertainment, not education. How do the O. J. Simpson trials affect us at all? Even in times of war, the choices are made, or at least ratified, by our pre-elected representatives, and the only news that usually affects the public directly is delivered via mail in the form of selective service notices, notes from friends and loved ones at the front, and letters of consolation. So interest in these institutions is understandably low, but still, it is very necessary. Just because we are not directly affected by them most of the time doesn’t mean that we can’t be.

We need to be vigilant for the times when our lives could be very much changed by these institutions. It is important for the public to remain vigilant, and the power we have over the system needs to be maintained, or it could be lost, whittled away slowly with the public not even realizing that it has been lost, or that they ever even had it at all.

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Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Chart: Barack Obama & Ronald Reagan... Separated at birth?

Starting to think a trend is emerging.  First there was this: Ronald Reagan and Obama both said the same thing about taxes for the wealthy

And today I noticed this...


Yes, at this point in their presidencies, Obama and Reagan are running very similar poll numbers. And if I remember right, there was a lot of talk about Reagan's failed presidency and about him being a one term-er at this point in his first term.  (George H. W., on the other hand, looked unbeatable at this point.)






Of course, the democrats helped Reagan out quite a bit by nominating Mondale, but the Republicans will surely not pull the Democrats' favorite trick and run a weak candidate against a beatable incumbent in 2012, will they?  Oh...

One interestng thing about these numbers is that almost every president starts strong and crashes out, approval-wise, by the end of their final term in office.  There are many reasons for this, of course, and that is not what I find interesting.

What is interesting is that there is one president here who clearly shattered this trend.  Bill Clinton.


I think we all miss Bill at this point.  At least, I really miss the state of the economy under his watch.

Yeah, I know the arguments about the presidency and the economy...  But there is still a lot to be said for the influence of  the guy in the White House contributing to the positive or negative mood of the country, which does effect the economy in a fairly substantial way.

This is a very cool interactive chart USA Today has put together.  It is worth a look
Presidential approval tracker - USATODAY.com: 
The Gallup organization first started asking Americans how they approved of the job the president was doing in the 1940s. See how each president since then has fared in the approval poll, look at some news events that influenced public opinion and compare how approval ratings evolved for each president.
'via Blog this'
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

GOP: The true tax and spend party?

Posted by Anne on Facebook, thanks!

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Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Lowering the Bar: A Mandate for GWB?

Even as I am writing this there is a talking head (Joe Walkins, Republican Strategist) on CNN demanding that the Bush Administration has a mandate because “they won by three and a half million votes!”

I don’t have the time this morning to do the research but I am pretty sure it would take only a few minutes on-line to track down some quotes from 1996 and even 1992 talking about how Bill Clinton’s victories in those years did not constitute a mandate, though both margins in the popular vote far outweigh the margin of victory this year.

In fact, not counting the ugly stepchild of the 2000 election, the popular vote this year was the closest race since Jimmy Carter defeated Ford 28 years ago in the 1976 election by 1,682,790 votes.

So, I believe, according to Republican spin, just winning the popular vote is now a mandate for your platform.

Of course, the case could be made that the mandate comes from not only the Presidential election, but also from the Republican gains made in the House and Senate and in many state and local races too. It was the loss of Democrat seats in Congress that pretty much nixed the idea of Clinton having a mandate in 1996 when he won the popular vote by 8,203,602 votes.

But they are not. They are holding on to their mandate because 3,510,358 more people apparently voted for Bush.

Here are the margins of victory in the Popular Vote going back to 1976:

2004 – 3,510,358 – Bush over Kerry
2000 – 539,947 – Gore over Bush
1996 – 8,203,602 – Clinton over Dole
1992 – 5,805,344 – Clinton over Bush
1988 – 7,077,023 – Bush over Dukakis
1984 – 16,877,890 – Reagan over Mondale
1980 – 7,417,813 – Reagan over Carter
1976 – 1,682,790 – Carter over Ford

How come, every time a pundit starts going off about the Bush Administration’s 3.5 million vote mandate they are not immediately challenged with these numbers? Or have they been and I just haven’t noticed? This morning, the Democrat talking head, responding to Walkins’ near chant of a 3.5 million vote mandate for his team was pretty much left sitting there going, “there is no mandate. No there isn’t... There is not.”

I believe that most Democrats, when challenged with the fuzzy logic of these Republican spin artists, believe that the American public is intelligent enough to see the absurdity of the argument. And they are. But the Republicans base their strategy on Advertising and Marketing principals, which play on people’s psychology and make the facts mostly irrelevant.

Stay on message, repeat the message, and eventually, it will become the truth. And the media follows. A week after the election, a week of having every Republican spin artist in the country drilling the mandate message to the people and to the media, the conversation it turning into what the Bush Administration will do with their mandate, not if there is even one in the first place.

Imagine if the Democrats could get this focused, and if they, on top of this, were basing their arguments on fact and logic. Could the Republicans counter this?
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