Abridging the Free Press.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Vladimir Putin does it, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is does it, so too does Kim Jung Un.  With just one week in, Donald Trump seems headed in the same direction.  Here in the United States of America?  What’s to stop him?  Ah that pesky First Amendment protecting freedom of speech and of a free press.  Even so, apparently White House Senior Counsellor Steve Bannon missed that class in his civics course leading him to assert that the press “should keep its mouth shut”.  Perhaps he also forgot that he is no longer lord of Breitbart but a government official.  That’s the same government to which his boss pledged allegiance on January 20 and to which he himself swore specifically to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” two days later. 

It seems clear now that the Trump administration is bent on subverting or restricting any voices that might disagree with or question it.  First came the then President-Elect’s attack on the intelligence community and now, in office, their assault on the press.  Press secretary Sean Spicer used his very first appearance before them in the White House Brady Press Room to berate the press for denying that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the largest ever.  When challenged on this, Kellyanne Conway defended his contention as presenting “alternative facts”.  Considering that “alternative facts” are in fact untruths – in this case record crowd size claims debunked by aerial photographs – we must all be deeply alarmed when they are being spouted not only by his aides but by the president himself.  To put it bluntly, Obama may have been falsely called a liar by Rep. Joe Wilson in 2009, but sadly the title does fit for this president and his inner circle.

Attacks on the press and the fostering of “alternative facts” are two ominous signs since both have characterized authoritarian dictatorships.  What’s frightening is that Donald Trump’s campaign already evoked such associations, which is one of the reasons many of us believed he could never be elected in this democracy.  It was frightening then and is part of what set us on edge on November 8.  Now we have good reason to feel that our worst fears are coming to pass.  In many ways, these fears have been further reinforced by his executive order imposing a ban on some Muslims entering the country, probably illegal under U.S. law.  Making the discriminatory nature of his ban even more egregious, the NY Times reported, “Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims”.  Reflect again on the text and spirit of the First Amendment.

In one disastrous week, Trump has sown the seeds of trade wars, further alienated one of our closest neighbors, raised the specter of heightened Muslim-Christian tensions and sought to thwart the Founding Fathers by ignoring the Constitution to which he swore allegiance.  This is not a matter of disagreeing with policy, something good people can, and often should, do.  This is a potential threat to everything we hold dear.  It is a commander-in-chief raising his middle finger to the women and men who have spilled their blood across the globe defending the flag upon which he now treads.

Republicans met this week to plan ahead for the government that they now control.  If I’m right that our democracy is under threat, then these Americans in particular are facing perhaps their greatest test.  So, too, is our Supreme Court facing what could be its greatest test, certainly in the post-Civil War era.  Will both legislatures and the judiciary treat checks and balances seriously or will they become a rubber stamp?  From what we’ve seen thus far, the press is not rolling over, not keeping silent.  Will our elected and appointed officials step up as well?  We the people will be watching.  We will remain in verify mode for at this juncture we have absolutely no reason to trust.

In Transition: 1

Whether as Donald Trump says, Democrats received one of the “greatest defeats in the history of politics” or not – the vote was close and contradictory – that it was an upset of historic proportions is not in doubt.  Many of us are still in shock.  As to the future, we haven’t even entered the tunnel and for now it’s hard to envision much light beyond.  Trump’s projected appointments thus far reflect my worst fears not my greatest hopes.  Reflective of today’s rightist Republican Party, it’s a hyper conservative and ideological group mixed in with billionaires and ex-generals.  It’s a cabinet that Ted Cruz will just love and that will cause Elizabeth Warren nightmares.  An opponent of healthcare at Health, a climate denier at EPA, an anti-minimum wage boss at Labor, a public housing skeptic at HUD and an activist bent on undermining public schools at Education.

The largest number of identified wannabes coveted State.  Perhaps the most revealing of these is the latest, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.  His name came to the fore just as the President-Elect was denouncing the CIA’s conclusion that Russia had been playing fast and loose with our presidential election, perhaps favoring him.  As it happens, Tillerson and Putin are pals, the oil man having been awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship in 2013.  He isn’t the first Trump acolyte to be on kissing terms with Russia – remember Paul Manafort?  On the stump, Trump himself lavished praise on Putin’s leadership in comparison to Obama.  What’s gives?  It’s a question many people (including some Republicans) are asking.  Considering Trump’s own predilection for conspiracy theories, it’s tempting to suggest that we’re seeing some modern day Manchurian Candidate, manipulated not by a corporation but by one of our global adversaries.  Of course, I don’t believe that for a minute nor should you, but this Trump-Putin bromance certainly is curious.  Going forward it may cause some real problems since we and Russia have so many conflicting interests.

Some people continue to say they don’t know what Trump will really do.  I think it couldn’t be more transparent.  The people he has put forward have demonstrable records.  They are all on the right, seemingly committed to erasing much of the progress we’ve made under Obama and before, even under Republican presidents and the Courts.  I think we’re also beginning to get a clearer picture of the “greatness” that Trump wants to restore, one that apparently includes a return to back alley abortions where clothing hangers are the instrument of necessity.  What isn’t clear to me is whether the people who voted for Trump – the many who were frustrated and looking for a change in their own situation (not the bigots or white supremacists among them) – had any notion of how the Trump team would look.  Specifically, did the underpaid among them think there would be a Labor Secretary who opposes the minimum wage (not merely its increase) or an Education Secretary who seeks to syphon off federal dollars for “choice” leaving their children and already cash-starved public schools with even less?  Perhaps that is what they want – some in the GOP playbook – but I’m not so sure.  In fact, I doubt it.

Trump is not only transitioning in; Democrats are transitioning out including of course Barak Obama, but I’ll leave that for another post.  Some changing of the guard played out on the floor of the United States Senate late last week where Leader Harry Reid was preparing to step down after more than three decades of service.  Tributes to him included the presentation of a portrait to be hung in the Capital.  Hillary Clinton spoke, a rare appearance since losing the election.  What struck me however, indeed absorbed me, was the day before where tribute was appropriately paid on the floor to the presiding officer, Vice President Joe Biden.  For most of his public career, he has been a man of the Senate and in many ways still is.  The tributes, which I watched on C-Span, lasted two hours.  It was both respect-fest and love-fest – and it was bi-partisan.  More than one speaker (including the majority leader) commented on their addressing him as “Mr. President” (the title accrues to the senate presiding officer of the moment).  In watching and listening, I couldn’t but help remembering my reaction to Biden’s appearance for Clinton in the late days of the presidential campaign – I felt it again when Biden spoke alongside Clinton at the Reid fest.  Biden is a unique figure in American politics.  Mitch McConnell took note of that in his tribute, saying “I don’t always agree with him, but I do trust him, implicitly. He doesn't break his word.”  If the fictional Godfather was won’t to say, “it isn’t personal, it’s just business”, Biden’s life relationships have always been purposefully personal, vastly transcending the business at hand.  Biden evokes good feelings and, above all, an authentic human decency.

What moved me so and, yes, troubled me so?  It was that nagging feeling, one that just won’t go away.  What if?  Of course there are no “what ifs” in history, no redoes of what has happened.  So we don’t really know and never will.  I have absolutely no regrets about my vote for Hillary Clinton, one taken without reservation.  Listening to her at Reid’s tribute only reinforced that.  Experiencing what lies ahead will be a constant reminder of what we would have had, should have had.  I have often expressed how important it would be to finally break through that glass ceiling, having a woman in the Oval Office.  To have had such a capable woman in play and to have missed the opportunity is sure to haunt us.  A majority of Americans thought the same and voted for her.  For different reasons, I would have been equally enthusiastic about voting for Joe Biden.  In retrospect, what haunts me is the question as to which of these two excellent people was right for this particular time?  More specifically, since the election was decided state by state through the Electoral College, would Joe Biden have lost Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, his people, in November?  Again, we will never know, but I think he might have prevailed.

Might have prevailed, that is if I’m right about what really drove voters this time around.  I won’t, nor should any of us, discount the ugly side of the Trump vote, the Alt-Right and misogyny, the generalized fear of the Other including people of color and immigrants of all stripe.  But I don’t think those voters won the election for him, at least I hope not.  Rather what put him over the top had more to do with deep economic distress and frustration.  Not merely that as individuals people were not getting along, much less ahead, but that no one was paying then attention or doing anything about it.  At least that’s how they see it and not without reason.  They may have been looking for change, but equally just to be heard.  Donald Trump was and is their most unlikely “savior”, but he’s so outlandish and improbable that, at the very least, the powers that be and those satisfied who are getting along quite well thank you, would finally take notice.  Joe Biden, the plain talking guy with genuine working roots and still very much “of the people” might have represented an alternative, a more viable alternative at this moment than a political establishment icon.  The election this year would still have been very close – closer than many of us thought possible which why we were so wrong – but perhaps it might have tipped the other way.  What if?  The question will remain academic and pragmatically irrelevant just like Gore’s loss in 2000.  What have we wrought instead?  We can guess and fear – which I do – but we won’t really know definitively for some time to come.  Fasten your seatbelt.

Here we go again.

He considered any publicity good.  He “spun one narrative after another that was palpably untrue, [finding it] …next to impossible to say anything that is not in some crucial way untrue.”  “He [didn’t] let anybody get too close.  …Those who worked with him found him curiously elusive.”  He had no interest in briefing books.  “No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed.”  Sound familiar?  This is how the distinguished historian and UNC Professor Emeritus William Leuchtenburg described Ronald Reagan in his 2015 book, The American President.  So what Gerald Ford might have aptly called our current “Nightmare” isn’t entirely new.  Here we go again.

I couldn’t help being struck by the similarities between the Gipper and the Donald.  Reagan was sworn in at age seventy, so too will Trump.  Being six months older he will be the oldest ever.  Both disregarded facts on the stump and beyond.  Periodic fabrication and outright lying is something Reagan took all the way through his tenure.  It reached its peak late in his second term when he denied both selling arms to Iran and funding the Contras.  Leuchtenburg contends that his actions – trading with an enemy and unauthorized arming – constituted impeachable offences.  Only because Democrats (who controlled Congress) feared having to face George HW Bush as an incumbent in the upcoming election did he escape prosecution.  Reagan represented the then radical right of his party much as Trump represents an extreme today.  We Americans have a short memory and may have forgotten how ominous we thought the Reagan presidency would be.  We survived.

Survived, but Reagan, the GOP mythical icon, had a profound and lasting impact on the country’s direction.  So much so that twelve years on, Bill Clinton, despite liberal inclinations, determined his only path to the presidency lay in pulling his party to the right of center, to govern as a New Democrat.  That produced, among others, “an end of welfare as we know it”, (after pushback from the military) “don’t ask don’t tell” and “three strikes”.  It wasn’t enough for the opposition.  Tokened by Newt Gingrich’s “Contract” the right never lost its focus on regaining power and extending Reagan’s conservative “revolution”.  Barack Obama moved further left but met bitter resistance from the start.  His progressive legislative initiatives had no Republican support and others had to be accomplished by Executive Orders, many of which can – probably will – be reversed by Trump.  Democrats are said to be the majority party – Hilary Clinton outpolled him in November’s election – but that “majority” has proved ephemeral.  Republicans, dominated by the hard right, hold the executive mansion in a majority of states and beginning in January will control all three branches of the federal government.   We will survive Donald Trump, but not without paying a significant price.  The Supreme Court, especially, is likely to skew conservative for decades to come.

I reach back to Reagan’s election and our survival as a reassurance, but that doesn’t mean we should be sanguine about the immediate future.  Quite the contrary.  The fact that there are similarities between Trump and Reagan doesn’t mean they are the same.  I ran into Bill Leuchtenburg here in Chapel Hill a few days before the election and we shared our dismay in watching the 2016 campaign.  I said that to my knowledge, there had never been anything like it, never a candidate like Trump.  He concurred, and of course from the perspective of a scholar who, unlike an opinion blogger like myself, actually can back up his assessment with a lifetime study of the presidency.  I’m privileged to live in the same community and to have him as an acquaintance.

In significant ways, Donald Trump is very different than Ronald Reagan.  Professor Leuchtenburg describes Reagan’s politics as “divisive”; Trump’s are polarizing.  While being “grossly ill informed” relative to earlier presidents, Reagan had served as governor of our largest state.  Trump has zero government experience, which makes him not merely ill informed but inexperienced and totally unprepared.  Like Reagan, Trump is a performer who knows how to move and indeed manipulate a crowed, but unlike him he has shown himself to be an obsessive misogynistic and xenophobic narcissist.  Also, while Reagan worked within a clear ideological framework and surrounded himself with experienced people, Trump seems to function with no such compass, relying on loyalists, some with no credentials for carrying out their assigned job.  Perhaps most important, Reagan may have been a rightist ideologue, but was never mean spirited.  His persona didn’t give license to the kind of audience hate speech that often was heard at Trump rallies nor did he give an essential White House role to the likes of the alt-right Steve Bannon.  We know what Reagan did as president, we don’t yet know what Trump will do once he is sworn in on January 20.  His actions since November 8 are hardly reassuring, in fact they point to our worst fears not our best hopes.  His continued use of tweets, the latest to claim that absent millions of fraudulent ballots he would have won the popular are frightening.  But we’ll have to wait and see.

Our first and still relatively primitive car “GPS” systems offered us less than perfect turn by turn directions from here to there. To say that the resulting trips were often circuitous, even torturous, would be an understatement.  Following such directions once took me on an hour long drive to a destination I discovered upon arrival was just fifteen minutes away.  The American story is very much like those circuitous road trips; the opposite of a straight line.  More often than not, that means two steps forward and one back or even one step forward, two back.  President Obama likes to refer to our democracy as “messy”.  It can be very frustrating, even unnerving.  Mirroring the human condition, it is complex not simple.  We should keep that in mind when characterizing this past (or any) election and those who drove its perplexing outcome.

Trump voters, and indeed voters in general, are not a monolith.  One vote can reflect current views and emotions, but long term it can’t change fundamental facts.  For some, this election represented a white person’s rebellion against a change in our racial and ethnic balance – of who is in control – but it can’t alter demographics.  Some voters may have expressed discomfort with growing secularization or marriage equality.  That won’t alter the views or practices of the upcoming generation.  Some – more than would admit – simply didn’t want a woman in the Oval Office.  But that will come to pass, must come to pass.  Some, as evidenced by a rise of hateful speech and actions, are simply bigots.  They represent not only something reprehensible but also a real danger that dare not be underestimated or overlooked.  It will present a test for the new president’s own identity and intent.  Much, perhaps most, of the vote expressed frustration about the economic and social stalemate that has come to characterize their lives and, worse, spell a dismal outlook for their children’s future.

One thing is for certain.  None of us, regardless of how we affiliate or how we voted, should either over read or under read the results.  Warning signs were and are present for both Republicans and Democrats, for the right and the left.  Whoever is up at bat, should understand that at present “all is not well in Mudville”.  Victory parties and loss wakes should not be read as more than they are, another fleeting moment in time.  Work will be required to repair our still imperfect union, step by often painful step.  We’ve seen much in the past, ups and downs.  Here we go again on another roller-coaster ride, but let’s not allow ourselves to be either complacent or cynical.  What comes after this is not inevitable, but rather lies in our hands.  If many like myself were deeply disappointed, indeed shocked, by the election results, I believe many of those who voted for Trump, who believed his unrealistic promises, are destined to be deeply disappointed by what is to come, what is not to come.  We’ll have to find a way of coming together if we want to move forward.