Tag: Trump

Antitrust & Trade Regulation, Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Coronavirus – Leaders Don’t Dither. They Decide.

Bob Claude |

Military leaders are familiar with the “fog of war”, which refers to the need to make difficult decisions risking lives in the absence of full and clear data. They accept that some of those decisions will prove to be mistakes in hindsight. As the quote from TR makes clear, the courage necessary to make such decisions is not confined to war.

President Trump was correct to liken the coronavirus fight to a form of war. I maintained that we needed a military- style response from the beginning. There will be plenty of time in the future to debate whether the early response to the crisis was sufficient. However, the bickering and indecision in Washington over the past week is inexcusable.

We begin with Trump’s delay in utilizing the Defense Production Act’s powers to force production of vital medical supplies. The President invoked the Act over a week ago, but dithered in actually using it until now, apparently over the misguided idea that industry could be coaxed to respond and that competition was better than government mandates. The US Chamber of Commerce also reputedly opposed forcing production under the DPA because of concerns about “red tape”. In short, the inconvenience of complying with government restrictions was worse that the potential loss of lives.

As TR knew, indecision and uncertainty in a time of crisis will only produce chaos. The federal government needs to provide not just the financing in the economic stimulus package. Industry also needs the certainty in demand and direction in supply to quickly and efficiently gear up to produce the needed medical supplies. Indeed, compliance with a DPA order would effectively shield business from liability lawsuits that could arise out of the inevitable disputes over allocation decisions. Otherwise, the bidding war between the states for supplies will drive up the cost to the government and allow business to unconscionably exploit temporary monopoly power. At a time like this, the federal government should insure that industry directs its attention to the needs of the country as was done during World War II, not the maximization of their own profits.

Speaking of misuse of power, the partisan maneuverings on Capitol Hill are almost as sickening as COVID-19. The stimulus and aid bill should include more targeted protections for workers and a limitation on stock buybacks for at least a year after loans are paid back. In addition, a higher antitrust standard limiting mergers and acquisitions by aid recipients during the same period should be considered. The suspicions built up over the last few years between the White House and Congress also call for the maximum amount of transparency in the aid package. However, the attempt by Democrats to hijack the bill to add pet climate change and social welfare projects betrays their professed concern about aiding workers and the health care system. Republicans need to concede to the worker protections directly related to the virus response and Democrats need to drop the irrelevant riders. Otherwise, this indecision on Capital Hill will cost them the respect of the American people as well as lives.

The fog of this war against COVID-19 requires our leaders to exercise courage in the war itself and restraint in dealing with each other. TR was capable of delivering swift and cutting insults to his enemies in private, but remembered the need to cooperate in public to address a crisis. Our current leaders need to do the same.

Foreign Policy, Realist Theory

Opening the Pandora’s Box

Bob Claude |

The killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and President Trump’s statement after Iran’s retaliatory missile strike unlocked a Pandora’s box of issues for both the the United States and the world.  All of them had to be dealt with at some point, but it would have been better to have done so through a measured and deliberate diplomatic process where the consequences could be managed over a longer period of time. The choices America must now quickly confront are many, but break down into four categories:

The extent to which American presidents should have the power to commit American military resources against terrorist groups and other nation-states. 

The wisdom and future of America’s involvement in the Middle East.

The future of European relations with America and the rest of the world.

The implications for the balance of power in Asia and the structure of international relations throughout the world.

The American nationalist and realist solution would be to end our involvement in the Middle East quagmire, reject the uni-polar dream of imposing a worldwide liberal hegemony and start to transition to a foreign policy that accepts the multi-polar world of diverse world powers and the dynamic shifting alliances that will be necessary to protect American interests in such a world.  This is truly the new world order.

If American democracy is to succeed in this international system, we must begin building the domestic and international framework necessary to achieve the support of the American public for the policies required to win in this new order.  Americans deserve to hear the 2020 presidential candidates take positions on each of the above issues to insure that the ultimate decisions are primarily driven by the American people and not a distant elite or, worse, by the decisions of hostile nations. This summary will begin a series of posts that will identify some of the hydra-headed choices facing us in each of these four categories.

General, Politics

A Public and Self-Centered Betrayal

Bob Claude |

Why American Nationalists Should Support the Impeachment of President Trump

The impeachment spectacle in Washington is heartbreaking for American nationalists on so many levels.  As mentioned previously, Trump was always a flawed standard-bearer for nationalism, if simply because of his shameless public encouragement of the Russian and Wikileaks hacking of the Democrats.   The Mueller report has since shown that his consultant Roger Stone knew at the very least when the leaks would occur. Further, Trump knew Stone was using this knowledge to coordinate campaign activities.  Any hope that Trump would mend his ways and find nationalist ideals has been cruelly dashed by the results of the House impeachment investigation, which exposes his attempt to hijack American foreign policy and defy the law for his own electoral benefit.       

Trump’s own betrayal, however, does not mean we should overlook the hypocrisy of his Democratic critics, who have either engaged in or condoned similar sleazy conduct.  Whether it is Hunter Biden using his and his father’s name to whitewash a corrupt Ukrainian company or Bill Clinton hitting foreign leaders up for money for the Clinton Foundation while his wife was Secretary of State, it has apparently become acceptable for American politicians and their kin to trade on their connections much like Russian oligarchs and Chinese princelings.  The recent Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s misconduct in the investigation of Russian ties to the 2016 Trump campaign also showed how our own foreign intelligence community can be manipulated and abused by foreign and domestic governmental elites for personal political interests.  Trump’s conduct can arguably be seen as simply the logical extension of this sickening phenomenon.   It proves that, while globalization and the globalist ideology may have spread some freedom elsewhere, we have blithely ignored how it is importing here to America the same kind of elitist corruption seen in the worst authoritarian regimes.  If this continues, the American Century of Shame I warned about in another post will occur faster than we think.       

The key to preventing this decline is to follow Theodore Roosevelt’s advice above and stand by our country first, not the President, whatever the transgressions of his detractors.  Indeed, true American nationalists must lead in holding the President to a high standard of loyalty to our Constitution and values if we are to build the consensus we need to attack the sleazy elitist betrayals. Thus, we should sadly, but resolutely, support his impeachment and removal from office.   

The Law

We begin with the Constitution itself, which authorizes impeachment for “Treason, Bribery and other High Crimes and Misdemeanors”.  The language, derived from English constitutional law, is designed to prevent impeachment for simple policy differences.  At the same time, even the President’s own Attorney General Bill Barr has said that this standard is much broader than the statutory criminal law:

By including that English phrase, our Founding Fathers intended to expand the scope of impeachable offenses beyond the scope of criminally indictable offenses. This language incorporates political offenses against the state that injure the structure of government and tarnish the integrity of the political office. As Alexander Hamilton observed, these political offenses include breaches of the public trust that a president assumes once he has taken office.

Barr, William, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”, 2 Texas Review of Law and Policy, pgs. 9-10 

However, the case against the President can still start by referring to the statutory law.  The federal bribery statute prohibits a public official from corruptly demanding or seeking anything of value personally in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act.  As bad as bribery is, of even more concern to American nationalists should be the potential solicitation of a political contribution by a foreign government in violation of federal campaign finance law. See 52 U.S.C. Section 30121.  Like the bribery statute, it prohibits the solicitation of anything of value from a foreign government by a political campaign.  In this case, the “thing of value” would have been the expenditure of money by the Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter Biden and the Burisma company for the purpose of injuring the candidacy of former Vice President Biden.   

The Facts  

The evidence against the President is quite direct.  Rudy Guiliani began pushing publicly and with Ukrainian prosecutors in January of 2019 for an investigation into not only Hunter Biden, but also former Vice President Biden.  In mid-July, Trump instructed acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to withhold $400 million in aid to Ukraine.  Immediately afterwards, the President spoke with Ukrainian President Zelensky to ask for a “favor”.  He then proceeded to talk about Biden’s son and that “[former Vice President] Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that …. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution”.  He urged President Zelenksy to pursue this not only with the Attorney General, but also with Guiliani, his personal lawyer.  Indeed, he seemed to be encouraging Zelensky to act mainly through Guiliani, not Barr.

Trump’s supporters advance two main defenses to the clear implication of this narrative.  First, they correctly state that corruption in Ukraine has been a concern of the United States for years and that this was simply an outgrowth of that policy.   However, the transcript does not refer to the prosecution of corruption in the Ukrainian energy industry in general, which was the subject of past conversations between Secretary of Energy Perry as well as his predecessors.  It focused on only two specific subjects – the issue of whether Ukraine was the source of the 2016 hacking incidents and the activities of the Bidens, one of which was potentially a strong candidate against Trump in the 2020 election. If the purpose was simply to pursue an element of American foreign policy, then why was Trump’s personal lawyer Guiliani involved?  It was because the President wanted Ukraine to focus not on corruption in general, but on the Bidens and especially the former Vice President in particular.

The other defense boils down to the claim that “Obama did it, too”, pointing to the Inspector General’s report.  The Horowitz report is definitely disturbing and calls for more controls over foreign intelligence investigations. However, there is no evidence that any of this was directed from the White House.  It appears to have been almost a rogue operation by elements of the FBI.   The only relevance to the accusations against Trump may be to essentially justify his dismissal of James Comey as FBI chief, and thus refute any charge of obstruction of justice arising out of it.  It does not justify engaging in a modern-day version of the Watergate burglary by using the American foreign policy apparatus to dig up dirt on a political foe.

Conclusion

If American nationalism stands for anything, it is that our leaders must be loyal to the country first and the welfare of our citizens, not their own ambitions or the interests of other nations.   The Ukrainian incident, when combined with his public support and inside knowledge of the Russian hacking of 2016, show that Donald Trump does not have that kind of loyalty to our country.  Moreover, this is the kind of conduct that injures the structure of our government and breaches the public trust within the meaning of the Hamiltonian definition.  The draft impeachment resolution is correct when it says that Trump will be a threat to national security and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-government and the rule of law.  The House of Representatives should impeach the President on the charge relating to Ukraine and the Senate should convict and remove Trump from office.  The Constitution and the facts demand nothing less.