Bolton and Trump

 Reading "The Room Where It Happened" by John Bolton.

It's Trump porn, appealing to my liberal distrust of Trump and his administration. But that aside, I'm amazed Bolton stayed as long as he did.  Either Trump is more charismatic, in the sense of being able to make people lose their common sense when in his presence, or Bolton was very power hungry.

I'm Not Surprised: Trump Disorganized with Transcripts

 There was a memoir written by a stenographer who worked recording and transcribing events in the Obama White House. It was pretty good.  One thing I remember from it was the work needed so that everything was recorded. It was impressive.

When I read that Trump made a practice of tearing up the papers documenting his meetings I knew he wasn't good news for historians, even though he was worth a lot to journalists.  That's now confirmed by this report of the missing transcripts of 8 percent or more of Trump's speeches.  It's not a loss to the history of oratory and given his incessant repetition of his best hits probably not a big loss to history of his presidency, but it's a loss.

Damnit--presidents are supposed to follow the law.  And Republican presidents are supposed to be organized. 

The Role of Government Regulation

 Over the last year or so the role of government regulation has been in the headlines:

• Boeing's 737-Max suffered two fatal crashes. The conventional wisdom now is that FAA failed to exert enough oversight of the process of redoing the 737 into the Max.
• The development of vaccines for Covid-19 has been controversial.  Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen  at Marginal Revolution in particular have pushed for faster approval and looser regulation of the various vaccines. The FDA's process has been contrasted against the process in other countries.  Alex, I think, has come out for reciprocal approval--approval by the regulatory authority in any (big, developed) country should be enough for FDA.
• The Trump administration pulled back on various regulations.  Today's Post  says the changes in inspection of pork processing plants have lead to more contamination in the ultimate products.

I always remember the thalidomide problem when the Republicans start pushing looser regulations.

Having said that, I wonder whether in the process of redoing the regulations which were undone in the last 4 years the Biden administration will find some things which should be changed.  I think anything a group does is going to have some flaws. In the usual course of events it's often easier to work around the flaws than to change them. But since the Biden people will have to go through the regulation process anyway, there's no added cost to fix problems.

IMO there's often a fine line between not enough regulation and too much, so a feasible solution can be an alternation between the two.

The Party of Reagan or Trump?

I saw a poll the other day showing that lots of Republicans now believe that Trump was a better president than Reagan.  

I didn't like either president, but Reagan had an emollient quality which was the opposite of Trump's abrasive mode.  It's the difference between the man whose Eleventh Commandment was: speak no ill of any Republican and the man who accused his vice president of lacking courage on Jan. 6.

End of Trump?

 I may have said I would have preferred no impeachment trial.  Instead I would have preferred a censure plus passage of a bill(s) to tighten the laws which Trump violated or found very elastic.  Hopefully we'll still going to get some tightening, if nothing else.

Maybe we can now allow Trump to fade into the dustbin of history?

Setting a Precedent

 Perhaps the strongest argument in Trump's impeachment trial is the fear of setting a bad precedent.  It should be taken seriously. When I studied American government, the idea that a president could ever be impeached was not a serious issue.  When Watergate occurred there was a quick surge of research, trying to figure out the pros and cons, the procedure for impeachment.

We went ahead with the process to impeach the president. I haven't researched, but I'd guess that some serious people then said it was unlikely there would be another impeachment in the 20th century.  But there was.

We went through the Clinton impeachment--that experience plus some changes in social mores may have set another precedent--we don't want another impeachment over private behavior, and hopefully future presidents have learned to handle scandals better.

So now we've impeached Trump twice. I hope the precedent we've set is never to elect a person like him again.  

MFP Revisited and CCC

 Three academics at U of Illinois examine some issues of the Market Facilitation Program.  As they say at one point, the questionable legality of the program is academic, because Congress didn't challenge it when they gave the Commodity Credit Corporation more money.

A history of CCC would be interesting. It was created under the New Deal, following examples from WWI and the Hoover administration of using government corporations to gain administrative flexibility, particularly IMO to evade the requirement for yearly appropriation bills passed by Congress.

USDA bureaucrats during my time used it creatively.  The administrative people used CCC authorities to go around the Government Printing Office rules to get fast printing of forms and directives when we were implementing new legislation and disaster programs.

In 1983 IIRC the Reagan administration used it for a disaster program for Texas counties which was part of a deal to get conservative Texas Democrats (which used to exist) in the House to vote for legislation.

Also in 1983 there was the Payment-in-Kind program, which used creative lawyering to transform CCC loan collateral into payments for farmers to divert acreage from production.

As computers came along, the procurement and IT people used CCC financing for computer equipment, setting off a 10-15 year battle with the Congress which ended with Congress tightening the restrictions on ASCS/FSA buying of computers.

After I retired there were further special programs authorized--I think by both the Bush and Obama administrations, but I don't remember the specifics.

Drezner Has a Long Sentence

Dan Drezner writes a column in the online Washington Post.  Here's his penultimate paragraph is yesterday's piece: 

This is mostly nonsense. How a thrice-married, twice-impeached, single-term ex-president accused of serial adultery, casual bigotry, rank misogyny, sexual assault, tax fraud, campaign finance violations, acceptance of foreign emoluments, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, incessant lying, attempted electoral fraud and the incitement of violence advances a coherent and conservative set of values is beyond my meager comprehension, unless “American Restoration” means restoring the values of the Colonial era, when slavery was totally legal and a corrupt monarchy controlled America.

Will Trump Be Our Worst President?

 It's popular now to say he's one of the worst, but I've lived too long.

I think part of the answer is going to depend on how things work in the future. If the Trumpites continue their dominance of the Republican party, and if they're able to win in future elections, and/or if some of Trump's actions/policies turn out well, it's possible his reputation will be higher than we think now.

I point to the instances of Grant, Truman, and Nixon, all of whom were disdained when they left office but whose reputations have revived since.  Elizabeth Drew had a Post Opinion piece on Nixon's path back. I'd forgotten but she says he'd regained respect by 1980. 

Grant used to be thought a terrible president, mostly because of corruption.  But these days his handling of the South during Reconstruction has gained him a lot of respect, particularly from historians and the recent biography by Chernow has cemented it.

Truman when he left office was very unpopular, regarded as someone who had diminished the presidency by his demeanor, his fight with MacArthur, his Korean war "police action".  IIRC Nixon called it an administration of crime, corruption, and communism. But as the Korean war faded and his civil rights policies came to the fore his reputation has gained.

Trump could experience similar gains, but I hope not during my lifetime. 

[Updated--Post has a piece on changes in reputation here.

Changing Perspectives Yield Changing Judgments

West Virginia seems to be doing well with vaccinations.  Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker has a long article on the Plague Year, in which he relays Birx's favorable judgment on Jim Justice, the wealthy governor of the state.

The 4 years of Trump's term have changed my perspective on many people.  Some who have gained:

George Will

Bill Kristol

Mitt Romney

Kevin Williamson

You'll note the common thread running through the names. 

Impeachment?

 I believe Trump deserves to be impeached, again, but I don't believe there's enough time to do so.  I fear setting a bad precedent for future impeachments if we don't devote more time to developing the case, and we don't have the time.  

Nor is there enough support in the Senate to convict.

So my bottom line is for Congress to pass a resolution of censure.

Congressional Review Act Lives!

 Slate notes  that Warnock and Ossoff's victories mean the reviving of the Congressional Review Act.  

I've posted about it before--it briefly allows Congress to revoke regulations passed within the last 60 business days, and makes it more difficult to reinstate them later. That last bit hasn't been tested yet, while the Republicans made extensive use of it in 2017 to revoke Obama's last regulations.

I suspect lawyers will be interested to see how things play out. I know the papers have cited a number of different issues on which the Trump administration has been moving recently. One of the most recent was limiting the basis for regulatory action to research for which the data is publicly available, an issue of big concern on climate change. 

Why Was I Wrong on Trump's Power Over Agencies?

After Trump had been elected president, I remember pontificating to a cousin and his family about the way the deep state would limit Trump's impact, except I was talking in terms of the "iron triangle".   That was conventional wisdom back in the 1960's--the idea being that a combination of the bureaucrats in an agency, the members of Congress on the committees overseeing the agency, and the interest groups lobbying the members and the agency formed a powerful "iron triangle".

With that understanding I've been surprised by the Trump administration's ability to overturn a lot of regulations in a number of different agencies.  So what happened?

A number of things have changed over the last 60 years:

• There's a lot more regulation and regulatory agencies, for one thing, and agencies which existed in the 1960's have been given more regulatory responsibilities.  EPA and OSHA are just two of the new agencies, and FSA/NRCS are an example of the added regulatory authority. I think there's a lot more generalized hostility to regulation now than there used to be, partly because of this expansion.  
• In the 1960's the discussion was more about the ICC or CAB, two agencies which were eliminated in the Carter/Reagan deregulation effort.  In those cases there had been "regulatory capture"; the agencies served the interests of the regulated, less the general public.
• In the 1960's there was a general faith in government, which carried over to endorse the validity of agency regulation. That was one aspect of LBJ's Great Society.  But while the faith was sufficient to create the agencies, it didn't result in forming interest groups which could effectively power the agencies as envisaged in the "iron triangle" theory.
• In the 1960's committee chairmen were powerful, Congressional leadership not so much.  That meant the chairmen could get their way reasonably often, despite the opposition of the President.  With the Gingrich revolution the chairs have diminished power.

Why Was Trump's Support Up in Rural Areas?

 I can think of two possible explanations I've not seen mentioned in discussions on this issue:

1. The billions of dollars Trump authorized paying farmers as compensation for losses from the trade war with China, along with the billions in food boxes under MFP.
2. More generally, I'm foolish enough to believe Trump got support because he was perceived as fighting for farmers and rural areas generally.  The facts may be that China won't fulfill their commitments under the agreement, at least not fully, but the drama of the tariff battles and the ensuing agreement would have been memorable.

Voter Turnout--Hate Versus Love

 Donald Trump boosted his total votes from 63 million in 2016 to 73 million in 2020. His opponent went from 65.8 to 78.9. (2020 totals are preliminary, still a bunch out esp in NY.)

By my calculations Trump's increase was about 16 percent, his opponent's almost 20 percent.  For fun let us attribute all of the Biden increase to people hating Trump (using "hate" as a blanket term) and all of Trump's increase as people loving him (using "love" as a blanket term).

Verdict: Hate is more motivating than love.

Thoughts on Trump's Appeal

 My first thoughts on Trump: 

I don't think commentators are giving Trump enough credit for attracting about 72 million votes. I'd like to see a spreadsheet comparing percentages of eligible voters won over recent history of presidential elections but I'd guess his support is higher than past losers.  (Trump is a loser--I love the sentence.)

It's also true his qualities are likely mostly responsible for Biden's record vote total.  I think I know most down ballot Republican candidates ran slightly ahead of Trump.  If I'd thought about that before Nov. 3 I think I'd have predicted a greater difference. 

Why does Trump have this appeal?  There's the policy issues, most of which I disagree with, but I think most of the appeal is personal.  First, he's a performer.  Ann Althouse persists in seeing him as a comic, as joking in many of his statements, statements which I regard as repulsive and evil.  I have to admit that many of his supporters enjoy his performance.  Second, he connects with the audience. Is that just another way of saying he's a performer?  Perhaps. But what I'm getting at is his ability to merge his persona and the audience together in a shared "we/us".  He's a demagogue, because much of the merging is based on attacking the "others".

{Added later: Just got an appeal from the Virginia Democratic Party noting that Trump increased the turnout in rural areas, which are critical for maintaining Democratic control of the Virginia legislature.]

And the Transition Starts

 I start and don't finish a good number of posts.  One I started before the election predicted how the transition would go.  Unfortunately it assumed Biden/Harris would win FL and NC so it doesn't really work.

I join the people who point to the relatively peaceful days since Nov. 3. There's been no significant violence.  I think part of it was how long it took for the election to be called--if it had been called on Tuesday night it would have been more likely for jubilant Biden supporters and/or upset Trump supporters to explode, or get into confrontations. Another part is just the machinery operating; we're used to the pageantry and operation of elections, and the familiarity of the usual routine dampens emotion. 

So far Trump is resisting the outcome, which is inevitable. The margins in the different states are small, but not small enough for recounts or court challenges to overturn the outcome in any state, much less in the multiple states which would be needed.

I think the Trump administration will gradually sputter out, with little grace and some noise.

What We Will Owe to Arnon Mishkin

I'm confident that the Biden/Harris ticket will win, likely tonight.  In that confidence I want to link to this NYTimes article on perhaps the most important bureaucrat/nerd involved in the election: the man running the Fox decision desk.  

He's important because the media decision desks provide the data for analysts to call a state as having firm results. He's doubly important in my scenario because the Fox news people are the ones who have the credibility to persuade Trump supporters that their man has lost.  And he's triply important because of the big unknowns of this election: the impact of early voting, of the massive turnout, and of the pandemic. And he's quadruply important because of the uncertainty of Trump's reaction to a defeat.

A Bad Tuesday Evening- Unexpected Violence?

Some are worried by the possibility of  violence resulting from the 2020 election.  Their fears seem mostly to be that Trump supporters will be upset by a Biden victory and commit some violence.  The fear is of "sore losers" I suppose it's possible that some on the right have a similar "sore loser" fear of violence coming from Biden supporters if Trump pulls off another upset. 

As a general proposition I'm not that afraid of the scenario. But there is one which I just thought of which scares me.

I remember occasions, I think mostly when a college wins either the NCAA football or basketball championship where the students take to the streets and riot, destroying property, etc.  We normally dismiss such episodes, at least I dismiss them, as "boys will be boys".

But, there's a lot of emotion invested in the outcome of this election. Isn't it more likely that election violence will come from "exultant winners"?  I remember the election of 2008, when the winners exulted.  That was a victory of love, of belief in Obama, of the redemption of America, and I don't remember any particular violence, or animosity directed towards McCain supporters.

But a Biden victory on Tuesday would be a victory based on a lot of animosity towards Trump, and some of his supporters. 

I always like a metaphor, so think of the exultant winners and despondent losers as two masses of plutonium, back in the days of the Manhatten Project.  Keep them separate and everything is copasetic.  Bring them together and you get a nuclear explosion.

Nepotism

 Matt Yglesias at Vox writes on nepotism.  It's a thorough and to my mind bipartisan treatment.

I do wish Biden had been asked during the debate what role, if any, his family would play in his administration. Would he have replied: the same sort of roles as my predecessor has assigned to Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, Jared Kushner or would he have excluded them? Would he promise to put his assets into a blind trust?