Tag: Congress

CLARENCE THOMAS AND ANITA HILL REDUX

Right smack in the middle of an optimistic #metoo reckoning comes a revolting development, casting serious doubt over whether our misogynistic culture has changed at all in the past 30 years. Welcome to the Anita Hill Story – The Sequel.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Christine Blasey Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist, said she was sexually assaulted at the age of 15 by then 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, who is a Senate vote away from becoming a Supreme Court justice. She told the newspaper that Kavanaugh was “stumbling drunk” when he threw her down on a bed during a party. While his equally intoxicated friend watched, Ford said, Kavanaugh pinned her down on her back and groped her while attempting to remove her clothes. She said she tried to scream but Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth. She said she was able to escape only when Kavanaugh’s friend jumped on top of them, momentarily freeing her assailant’s hold. She said she then ran into a bathroom and locked the door. Ford did not report the attempted rape at that time, but says she has been traumatized by it throughout her adult life and has undergone therapy to deal with it. She provided The Post with notes taken by her therapist detailing the assault.

So, does that change anything with respect to Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination? “No way, not even a hint of it,” says a lawyer close to the Trump Administration. “If anything, it’s the opposite,” said the attorney. “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried. We can all be accused of something.”

Roll the clock back 27 years. Anita Hill, a young law school professor, accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency charged with the policing of such workplace conduct. With Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination hanging in the balance, Hill told how her boss made repeated advances to her, talked about the size of his penis and described vivid scenes from pornographic movies. None of that kept Thomas off the court. Hill was excoriated by an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, with a seemingly bipartisan mission to get past the discomfort of Hill’s testimony in order to put Thomas on the bench. Said one of the senators back then, “If that’s sexual harassment, half the senators on Capitol Hill could be accused.”

As a measurement of just how far we haven’t come in nearly three decades, compare that unintended condemnation of the male gender to today’s utterance from the White House. At least the 1991 version exonerated half of the men in Congress. The Trump lawyer put the entire gender at risk of a sexual assault accusation.

Let’s get something straight here. This is not about the politics of a Supreme Court nomination. As noted earlier in this space, there is an overflowing pipeline of ultra-right-wing judicial candidates waiting to replace Kavanaugh. Surely they aren’t all attempted rapists. This is about coming to grips with a critically deep cultural divide over the way men use sex as a cudgel of power over women.

Even after a year of growing #metoo awareness and conversation, there is abundant evidence that we have not fully apprehended the depths of our divide. There remains a painfully enormous lack of symmetry between the accusers and the accused, or – in 99 percent of the cases – between the women harassed or assaulted and the men responsible.

Finally-fallen CBS CEO Leslie Moonves whines about “ancient” accusations from more than 12 women who he sees as destroying his career. One of those women, Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, is now in her 80s. According to Ronan Farrow’s reporting for the New Yorker, Golden-Gottlieb has been tormented for half her life by memories of Moonves forcing her to perform oral sex. To her perpetrator, it was just another day in the office. To her, it was jarring her soul and traumatizing her life.

Then there is Tom Brokaw, former NBC news anchor and a revered journalist. Multiple women came forward to recount, in the kind of detail that seemed etched in their minds forever, how he forced himself on them. Here’s how Brokaw described his reactions to those accusations: “I was ambushed and then perp walked across the pages of The Washington Post and Variety as an avatar of male misogyny, taken to the guillotine and stripped of any honor and achievement I had earned in more than a half century of journalism and citizenship.” What his accusers lacked in eloquence, they made up for in detail, a result of painful memories of being forcibly kissed and/or groped by a man far more powerful and respected than themselves, as long as 50 years ago.

The examples go on and on. Some of the men are simply slimeballs, incorrigible serial abusers. Others, however, have led decent, respectable, productive lives. Their transgressions – big or small, multiple or single – share a common thread. They all crossed the same line by abusing power to obtain some form of nonconsensual intimacy. In many cases, those moments of transgression may have long been erased from the perpetrator’s memory bank, by way of an alcoholic backout, or the redundancy of similar behavior. Meanwhile, their actions were deeply seared into the psyches of the women they hurt, leaving lifetimes of deep scar tissue.

The days ahead offer a poignant moment in dealing with this cultural divide. If Christine Ford ends up ridiculed and shamed like Anita Hill was, the damage will be far, far worse than simply seating Justice Kavanaugh next to Justice Thomas. It will mean we need a complete resetting of our moral compass. It will mean that even an enlightening #metoo movement is insufficient to make us grasp the difference between right and wrong. And to understand that when it comes to this type of wrong, there is no statute of limitations.

FORGET CIVILITY. FIGHT TRUMP WITH WHATEVER WORKS

It seemed so clear to me when I started writing this post: tossing the president’s press secretary out of a restaurant was wrong. So were the boisterous dining disruptions that protesters foisted upon other Trump surrogates. Aren’t we supposed to go high when they go low? All this does is let the Trumsters play the victim card, right? Then a funny thing happened: I changed my mind.

Believe me, that was a painful experience. We all have our own style and approach to dealing with conflict, born of our life experiences. I spent more than 30 years as a union rep, tangling with some pretty virulent management types. The only real control I had – on a good day – was over myself. I chose civility, decency and respect, not out of a higher moral calling, but because that approach worked for me and my goal of helping union members get the best contract possible. That meant avoiding personal attacks and name-calling, and sticking to the issue at hand, while building power to make a decent deal.

So I cruised right along on my high horse, crafting this ode to civility and respect. I reread my words, searching for a pithy and righteous close. That’s when it struck me. I was wrong. This is Donald Trump’s America now, an ugly, hateful abyss that keeps turning darker and bleaker by the hour. Civility and respectfulness are not going to get our country back anytime soon.

During this past week:

A California woman screamed at a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent that Mexicans are “rapists, animals and drug dealers”, echoing one of Trump’s favorite litanies.

A Tennessee congressional candidate put up a billboard vowing to “Make America White Again”.

A South Carolina woman was charged with beating a black child and screaming racial epithets at him because he was swimming in a pool with white kids.

A North Carolina man who insists that God is a white supremacist and the Jews descended from Satan won the Republican primary for a seat in the state legislature.

Thousands of children, many in diapers, remain separated from their migrant parents as a result of Trump’s unconscionable political power play at the border.

The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim travel ban and delivered a serious blow to organized labor. With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, credible court observers predict that abortion rights will be abolished within 18 months, and that the court will tilt severely rightward for decades to come.

In other words, Donald Trump is doing precisely what he promised. He is shaking up the foundations of our country at levels totally off the Richter Scale. This isn’t a collegial debate over tax policy or farm subsidies. This is a historic existential battle for the heart and soul of America. We are in a cold civil war that is getting warmer by the day. It will take more than civility to win this one.

Earlier this week, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters was wildly cheered by a crowd of energized millennials when she told them: “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!” By the end of the week, Waters had canceled all public appearances because of death threats. Trump called her “unhinged” with an “extraordinarily low IQ” and claimed – incorrectly – that she had threatened to harm his supporters. Then came top congressional Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, both blasting Waters for encouraging such incivility. Said Schumer: “If you disagree with a politician . . . vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Oh yes it is, Senator. The Civil Rights Act did not flow majestically from a reasoned debate by golden tongued orators. It took years of street protests and massive harassment of political opponents. As Jonathan Bernstein, a former university professor, wrote for Bloomberg this week, “From the American Revolution on, the spoils of freedom, fair treatment and equality have not gone to the patient and polite. The spoils have gone to those who are incensed and determined, unafraid and unashamed to raise more than a little hell.”

No, embarrassing cabinet members in restaurants and other direct actions are not going to end our Trumpian nightmare. But they are viable tactics in a broader strategy to do just that, by flipping at least one of the two congressional chambers in November and removing Trump from office in the 2020 election, if not before. It’s all about voter turnout, tapping into the passion of those millennials who cheered Maxine Waters’ call to action, reaching blacks, Latinos and others, disenchanted with both parties, but ready to act now against a president intent on marginalizing them. Those actions pull them in, strengthen the movement and evolve into votes.

As a personal matter of style, I will continue to choose civility. If I owned a restaurant, I’d let Sarah Huckabee Sanders eat there. On the other hand, if someone tosses her out because of the abhorrent policies she has to defend, it reminds us all that these are not ordinary times. It reminds us that the rules of political discourse have to change in order to accommodate the toxicity of an environment that threatens the values we hold dear.

We don’t have to become Trump to beat Trump, but neither should we cling blindly to an honor code of civility when dealing with a lying thug who takes children away from their parents and emboldens bigotry of every stripe. That, Senator Schumer, is what is really not American.

MENTAL ILLNESS IS DRIVING OUR GUN CULTURE

Donald Trump is right: Our country’s epidemic of gun violence is, first and foremost, a mental health problem. The president and his Republican sycophants are nuts. They are in an ideologically-induced fugue state, so far removed from reality that sacrificing the lives of children is but a mere normal and necessary function of gun idolatry.

The nation’s latest fuselage of assault rifle bullets had just terrorized a Parkland, Florida school, leaving 17 dead. As the bodies were being cleared from the locker-laced hallways of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the NRA’s hypnotized Republican automatons were right on script. The word “gun” stricken from their vocabulary, suddenly the party of just-say-no to health care couldn’t stop talking about the need to treat mental illness.

“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed,” said Trump.

“This individual appears to have significant issues with mental illness,” said Senator Ted Cruz.

Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott talked about the need to care for the “mentally ill”.

Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar II promised that the administration will be “laser-focused on getting Americans with mental illness the help they need.”

Gentlemen, heal yourselves!

The real insanity facing this country is the lethal delusion of elected leaders that we can go right on making guns more accessible than drinking water without, on a daily basis, having to bury school children, concert-goers and other innocents. The Florida massacre was the 30th mass shooting in a year not even two months old. There were 345 such shootings in 2017. While many countries have a mental illness rate far in excess of that for the United States, no other nation comes close to us in terms of the number of guns or mass shootings.

“Insanity,” goes the old quote of disputed origin, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In this case, It’s a cliché that speaks truth to power. Republicans mourn and grieve over the victims of the latest shooting spree, mumble their mantra about not blaming the guns, and keep doing nothing to restrict their availability. And then wait a day or so for the next mass killing, rinse and repeat. Think that’s insane? It’s just the tip of the GOP’s mental disturbance iceberg when it comes to this issue.

For example:

MISSOURI state Rep. Mike Leara introduced a bill last month that would make it a felony for any of his fellow lawmakers to propose legislation that would restrict an individual’s right to buy, carry and shoot guns.

FEDERAL law prohibits the sale of a handgun to people under 21, but it allows 18-year-olds – like the Parkland shooter – to buy semiautomatic assault rifles.

VIRGINIA Republican legislators recently killed a bill that would have required a minor to get parental permission before keeping guns in their home. They also buried a measure that would have required licensed child-care facilities to keep guns locked up while children were being cared for.

FLORIDA passed a law, later struck down in federal court, prohibiting physicians from talking to their patients about guns.

GEORGIA is home to numerous local ordinances requiring every home to be armed with at least one gun.

MONTANA voters approved a referendum giving local police authority to arrest any FBI agent who attempted to enforce one of the few meager federal gun regulations.

SOUTH DAKOTA allows all teachers, Kindergarten through grad school, to carry loaded guns in the classroom.

This is the real story of mental health and guns. Somewhere along the way, sanity was totally eliminated from what once was a healthy give-and-take on gun issues. Assault rifles have become more sacred than the lives of our children. It doesn’t get much crazier than that. The president’s sudden interest in reducing gun violence through mental health and school safety initiatives is a sad, cynical, transparent deflection from dealing with the only public policy issue that matters here: gun control. Just a year ago, Trump signed a bill that repealed an Obama era initiative that made it more difficult for people receiving Social Security disability for serious mental illness to buy guns. As he told the NRA last fall, “You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you.”

Two days before the Florida shooting, Trump submitted a budget request to Congress that called for a $25 million reduction in funds for national school safety programs, and for elimination of a $400 million grant program designed to help schools prevent bullying or provide mental health assistance.

The president routinely decries our “open borders” as a source of the “. . .loss of many innocent lives.” “This American carnage,” he said at his inauguration, “stops right here and stops right now.” Of course, it didn’t. Murders committed by illegal immigrants are a drop in the bucket compared to those carried out by American white men using semiautomatic assault weapons. The president doesn’t lift a finger to stop that kind of carnage. That’s not what coming through for the NRA is all about.

The noxious absolutism of Second Amendment gun worship is pathologically insane. Our Bill of Rights is a masterful document, but unlike Moses’ Commandments, the protections are not absolute. Speech is free, as they say, but you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. Why should the right to bear arms mean carte blanche access to rapid-fire military assault weapons? As every other industrialized country has recognized, there is a need to balance the rights of gun enthusiasts with legitimate concerns for public safety. A society that puts a gun collector’s right to stockpile AR-15 rifles above the lives of school children is, well, mentally ill.

LAST RUSH TO REPEAL OBAMACARE IS AN ENDGAME ONLY BECKETT COULD LOVE

Samuel Beckett, theatre of the absurd playwright extraordinaire, would have been absolutely enchanted with the U.S. Congress and its over-the-top obsession to repeal Obamacare. Mindlessly repeating actions, completely unattached to any rational or meaningful result, is the heart and soul of absurdist theatre. In one of his early writings, Beckett captured the utter despair and pointlessness of his character’s life with this line: “If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question of what am I doing.” Beginning to see the connection to this Congress?

Then, in his critically acclaimed play, “Endgame”, Beckett constructs a dialogue reeling with hopelessness between two characters as they shuffle through repetitive actions totally void of meaning. As they talk, a rat scurries across the floor. Clov says to Hamm, “If I don’t kill the rat, he’ll die.” And Hamm says, “That’s right.” Republicans insist that Obamacare is either dead or is dying, but they are rushing to kill it because, if they don’t, it just might live. Worse yet: it could grow into single payer healthcare. No, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to. Welcome to Government of the Absurd.

Senate Republicans are just a couple votes away from passing a health care bill most of them don’t like nor fully understand. It is, most analysts say, far more Draconian than the one voted down in July. It will leave tens of millions of Americans without insurance, drastically reduce Medicaid benefits, and remove protections for those with pre-existing conditions. And the list goes on. Republican senators who earlier voted against less egregious versions are either supporting or thinking of supporting this monstrosity. Why? It’s the “last train” available to Obamacare repeal. That’s what a high ranking GOP Senate staffer told Vox this week. Under Senate rules, between now and September 30, Republicans need 51 votes to move that train. Come October 1, it will need 60 votes. With 52 Republicans in the Senate, and a united Democratic opposition, the train isn’t going anywhere after next Saturday.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) used a different transportation metaphor to describe the party’s dilemma: “Look, we’re in the back seat of a convertible being driven by Thelma and Louise, and we’re headed toward the canyon. . . So we have to get out of the car, and you have to have a car to get into, and this is the only car there is.” Neither of the analogists said a word about what the bill would do for people who need healthcare. That’s because, to Republicans, unlike the motivational posters, it’s all about the destination, not the journey. The destination is Obamacare’s death.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said he could come up with at least 10 reasons why the bill is bad and should never be considered. Yet, he’s a yes vote. His ringing endorsement is right out of a Beckett script: “. . . Republicans campaigned on this (Obamacare repeal) so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.”

Look, Congress has taken its share of slings and arrows over the years. Legislating is a messy process and most outcomes leave something to be desired. But this is a whole new height of absurdity. Senators like Roberts and Grassley freely admit that this legislation, this massive thrashing of our healthcare system, sucks. But they are on board – whether by way of the last train or the only car – because the party has been mindlessly chanting “Obamacare Repeal” for seven years.

The Washington Post’s Paul Kane suggested this week that Senate Republicans made a calculated decision that it was better to fail once more in trying to repeal Obamacare than not to even give it a shot. According to Kane, the August recess was really tough for Senate Republicans, given their narrow healthcare bill defeat in July. They faced, he said, “an unrelenting barrage of confrontations with some of their closest supporters, donors and friends,” all pounding them for not making good on their Obamacare repeal promise. Those flames were fanned, of course, by regular tweets (here, here and here) from President Trump on how disgusted he was with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not delivering the votes on repeal. A Republican donor in Virginia even filed suit against the GOP on grounds that it repeatedly solicited funds for an Obamacare repeal it couldn’t produce. The suit alleges fraud and racketeering. So the party clings to an obsolete goal.

That kind of bizarre thinking is the result of intellectual inertia. From a Republican standpoint, Obamacare repeal made sense in 2010. For all its faults, it was the most progressive national insurance legislation passed in 50 years. Conservatives understandably wanted to attack it and try to undo it. But that window doesn’t remain open indefinitely. Republicans used it effectively for several years, even leveraged it to take control of Congress. Meanwhile, millions of people were added to the health insurance rolls. There was no discrimination for pre-existing conditions. Adult children were covered by their parents’ policies. For the past year, a growing majority of Americans say they like Obamacare and don’t want to lose it. The Republican establishment, however, has not changed gears. It just keeps forging down the same archaic path, mindlessly committed to repealing a program that people now want.

The best outcome for Republicans at this juncture is that their repeal efforts fail once again. A bruised ego ought to be preferred over the wrath of voters stinging from the loss of their healthcare. It’s a result, however, that can’t be taken for granted. Best to call those Republican senators now and urge a no vote. When they answer, ask them just what it is they think they are doing. See if they are honest enough to offer a Beckett answer: “I have no idea.”

TRUMP’S GUIDE TO LEADERSHIP: THE ART OF THE HEEL

Donald The Swamp Drainer is now fully enmeshed in the morass of governance, but none of the ensuing noise and chaos has led to a single dollop of drainage. If this guy has anything even remotely resembling a strategy, on any issue, it has to be the best kept secret in Washington. All we’ve seen in the first 200 days of this presidency is a bizarre jumble of impulsive, sophomoric tactics that have done absolutely nothing to advance his agenda.

A theory emerged during the 2016 campaign that, instead of being loony, Trump was a brilliant four-dimensional chess player, always strategizing multiple moves ahead of his opponents. The concept has the same level of evidentiary support as the flat earth and faked moon landing propositions. Take a quick look at the Donald’s recent chessboard navigation.

Trump:

• Publicly threatened a number of Republican senators with various forms of retaliation if they didn’t vote to repeal Obamacare. Not surprisingly, Trump didn’t win their votes and the bill went down in flames. Senators’ job security rests with voters in their home state. Caving in to a public threat is not an image that curries favor with the electorate.

• Said the Senate healthcare vote made Republican leaders “look like fools” and promised to stop funding the lawmakers’ own medical insurance if they didn’t cancel their August recess and try again to repeal Obamacare. The Senate recessed and left town within 48 hours of the president’s threat and name-calling.

• Announced suddenly via Twitter that transgender people will no longer be allowed to serve in the armed forces. This was supposedly a Trump “strategy” to end a squabble over whether the military should pay for trans-related medical costs. That disagreement, which reportedly was well on its way to resolution, is holding up a spending bill that includes funds for Trump’s Mexican wall. Paralysis quickly ensued from the president’s transgender ban tweet, and nothing has moved since – on either the ban or the wall.

• Attacked, loudly and repeatedly, the Russian sanctions imposed by the Obama administration for Moscow’s interference in last year’s election. Congress, controlled by Trump’s own party, responded by passing veto-proof legislation enhancing the sanctions and specifically prohibiting the president from altering them.

• Ridiculed and demeaned his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in an attempt to get him to resign so he could replace him with someone who would either control or fire Robert Mueller III, the special counsel investigating possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia’s election tampering. Sessions refused to resign. The Senate initiated a parliamentary maneuver that prevents Trump from making a recess appointment during the current congressional break. There is also a bipartisan push for legislation that would allow Mueller’s removal only on approval of a federal judge.

Every day – every tweet – brings more examples. There isn’t a single strategy to be found in Trump’s arsenal, only a limited repertoire of tired, angry, bullying tactics, the same kind of shtick he used to throw at Rosie O’Donnell and Cher. A very prophetic 5th century BC military strategist, Sun Tzu, wrote, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Trump likes to announce phony victories – initial passage of healthcare in the House, release of his own budget that has gone nowhere, etc. – with the phrase, “This is what winning looks like.” Well, Mr. President, right now, this is what losing looks like: all tactics and no strategy; the noise before defeat.

I came across Sun Tzu’s wisdom early in my career as a union negotiator. I had just verbally pulverized an opponent at the bargaining table. I had done my research and really had the goods on this guy. I let everything fly, humiliating and embarrassing him in front of his peers. Before I could take a bow, my mentor whispered into my ear, “Now what? You just destroyed him, but how is that going to help us reach a contract settlement?” That’s when I first read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. My insults were an empty tactic, totally lacking any strategic connection to the goal of negotiating a decent agreement. That painful memory came rushing back yesterday, after it was reported that the president warned his unhinged North Korean counterpart that “threats will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” So, now what? What’s the next move on the road to world peace?

And so it goes with Trump. He knows no art of the deal when it comes to leading our country. Other than the late Don Rickles, nobody has ever achieved success by lobbing insults at people. Yes, the president’s hard core base loves it. They adore Trump for his anger, and his total disregard for civility and respect in dealing with the swamp dwellers. They cheer him for it at his rallies, and then chant, “lock her up,” and other golden oldies. Some of them will stay with their angry guy all the way to the end, even if the swamp is never drained. To them, Trump is like a country-western crooner, singing the same old sad songs that somehow make them feel better, even though their lives are no less wretched when the concert ends.

Yet, polls show that Trump’s ineffectiveness in enacting his promised swamp drain is bringing his numbers down in every category, including his treasured demographic of white men without a college education. The New York Times reported Sunday that many key Republicans are already maneuvering for the 2020 presidential election with the belief that Trump will not be the party’s candidate. Regardless of what happens three years from now, it’s hard to see how this president can hope to successfully govern with no strategy beyond a string of angry tweets. A devoted and enraged base, in the low 20% range, screaming “fake news” at an occasional rally, is neither a strategy nor a mandate to govern.

JUNIOR’S RUSSIAN TALE: DOSTOYEVSKY IT’S NOT

As we soaked up this week’s news of Donald Junior’s induced transparency, and his eagerness for the Russian government’s promised Hillary dirt, we were treated to a music video link featuring beauty pageant contestants, a Russian pop singer and a cameo appearance by Donald Senior. This is what happens when we elect a president whose only experience in foreign affairs was running the Miss Universe competition.

Watergate never produced this kind of entertainment. Oh, it had its share of amusing characters; Bebe Reboso and Donald Segretti come to mind. But neither could have held a candle to Rob Goldstone, the rotund tabloid-journalist-turned-music-publicist, who has the face of a disgruntled carnival worker. The Daily Beast once described Goldstone as a frequent host of “vodka-soaked parties (for) younger acquaintances” at New York’s Russian Tea Room. His credentials were just upgraded from the Tea Room to the Russian election tampering investigation that has transfixed all of American politics.

(Since tracking the characters in this emerging melodrama can be as confusing as trying to follow a Chekhov play, here’s a quick cheat sheet: Goldstone represents Emin Agalarov, the Russian pop singer. Aras Agalarov, a Russian oligarch, is Emin’s father. He helped sponsor the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, held in Russia and then owned by Donald Trump. Aras also partnered with the Donald on plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, a project currently on hold, a rare Trumpian nod to optics.)

So in this week’s episode, Junior, after insisting that he never once, in his capacity of working on his father’s presidential campaign, had contact with the Russians, changed his tune a bit and told the New York Times that he had, in fact, met with a Russian lawyer in June of 2016,but insisted it was about adoptions. The next day, Junior altered his story again and acknowledged that Goldstone had offered him a meeting on Emin’s behalf, with a Russian lawyer who had dirt on Hillary Clinton. But, he insisted, the information was not from the Russian government and didn’t amount to anything. By the next day, the Times had obtained copies of an email string between Junior and Goldstone. In it, Goldstone laid out the narrative: Aras received word from the Russian prosecutor that he wanted to get incriminating information about Clinton to Trump. Junior said “love it” and set up the meeting. He tweeted copies of the emails as soon as the Times told him they were going with the story. That got Junior an attaboy from Senior, who congratulated his first born for being so transparent.

All of this, of course, has inevitably dusted off that old Watergate term, “smoking gun”. There were, after all, numerous false or premature sightings of that mythical weapon before Nixon threw in the towel and helicoptered out of the White House for the last time. Most historians say the real smoke didn’t leave the revolver until Nixon was caught on tape ordering the CIA to get the FBI to drop the investigation of the break in. In the current case, several media outlets (here, here and here) declared the imbroglio over Junior’s Russian email exchange a “smoking gun.” Others ran it with a question mark (here and here).

The only smoking gun I see right now is the one Junior used to shoot himself in the foot. As for Senior, don’t count him out just yet. It’s way too early. I respect the legal scholars who found inferences of a criminal conspiracy and violation of campaign finance laws in the emails. But we are talking about a guy who was elected president after admitting on tape that he sexually assaulted women. Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Yet, the landscape of this scandal changed dramatically with the email reveal. At a bare minimum, the reference to the Russian “government’s support for Mr. Trump” objectively decimates the President’s characterization of the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

I suspect there are more smoking guns to come, with or without a question mark. What’s needed to end this madness is not necessarily definitive proof that Trump and the Russians cooked the votes and stole the election. The endgame is far more likely to accrue on the basis of cumulative disgust with an out-of-control whack job of a president who represents a clear and present danger to the Republican Party. The out-of-control and whack job standards were met some time ago. The Republicans, unfortunately, need to feel a little more Trump pain before reaching the cut-your-losses stage.

Yet, the needle seems to be moving, slowly but surely, in that direction. Congressional Republicans have stopped trying to defend Trump. That’s a huge change from the early days of this administration. Their default position is to say nothing, except in those outlandish instances where the president, in words or deeds, goes more bonkers than normal.

The Donald’s strategy, if it can be called that, seems aimed exclusively at holding his hardcore fan base, the folks who believe the New York Times isn’t real and that Junior’s transparency is. In the end, that will not be enough to save him. As personally gratifying as cult worship is for a maniacal leader, it rarely ends well for them. (See Jim Jones and David Koresh.) Sooner or later, Congressional Republican leaders will see this president as a pariah, to their cause and to their political futures. That’s what will trigger the endgame, and build an exit strategy for the 45th president. That is the ultimate smoking gun. Disposing of it will be the closest this Congress ever gets to gun control.

TRUMP’S REAL ART OF THE DEAL: DON’T NEGOTIATE, BLOVIATE

One of the biggest boasts behind last fall’s election died suddenly last week. Now buried in the Republican Graveyard of Wishful Thinking is the congenitally defective assertion that Donald Trump is a master negotiator.

“There’s going to be health insurance for everybody,” the new president declared in January, insisting it will cost far less than it does now. Asked how Trump could be so confident of those claims, his resident sycophant, Sean Spicer, had a quick-but-ludicrous answer: “He knows how to negotiate great deals.”

Nothing is ever final in Washington, but hopefully the Republican healthcare debacle of 2017 has forever put an end to the utter foolishness that Donald Trump is a world class negotiator. The guy huffed and puffed his way through real estate sales, insulting, assaulting or suing anyone who got in his way. That’s not a skillset that translates into effective leadership on the world stage.

Yet, there is this lingering myth, a distorted caricature, of what an effective negotiator looks like, and the composite, unfortunately, bears a strong resemblance to guys like Trump: a loud, brash, boorish, bullying slug who pounds the table while lobbing loud threats and insults. The archetype represents an archaic bargaining style that was occasionally effective in limited circumstances involving one-shot transactions and no ongoing relationship. It has absolutely no application to resolving conflict with Congress or foreign leaders.

Here, thanks to Politico’s reporting, is all you have to know to conclude that President Donald J. Trump is a terrible negotiator: In a last ditch effort to change the minds of conservative House Republicans, Trump The Closer summoned the 30-some members of the Freedom Caucus to the Cabinet Room of the White House.

Although these folks had been a thorn in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s side, they liked Trump and were excited about the opportunity to get the president to make some changes in the healthcare bill in exchange for their support. They thought they could deal with him. After all, he knew how to negotiate. So they laid out their problems and sent some clear signals about what needed to be changed and why it mattered to them. And here is what the master negotiator told them: “Forget about the little shit. Let’s focus on the big picture here.” The “big picture”, Trump told them, was that the bill’s failure could imperil his reelection chances in 2020. Self-absorption might have served The Donald well in his mogul life, but it’s one of the worst traits a negotiator can bring to the table.

I don’t profess to be an expert on legislative negotiations but, over a career of more than 30 years, I helped bargain hundreds of contracts in the news industry. In order to get a deal, I had to know everything I could about the little shit. I wallowed in the little shit because somewhere in all that excrement was a key that would unlock the door to settlement. Obviously, I had to know what was important to our side, but I also needed to know management’s issues and what it needed in an agreement. That was the only route to a resolution that would have value for both sides.

Most negotiations are long and drawn out. Arguments are repeated ad nauseam, and it often appears that agreement will never be reached. There are, however, rare moments when the parties tire of the conflict and really want a deal. A good negotiator knows how to recognize those moments and seize them. Trump had that opportunity in the meeting with the Freedom Caucus and he totally blew it. Not only that, he blew it for the worst reason imaginable: he didn’t understand any of the issues. He acknowledged he was “not up on everything” in the bill. Hardly the mark of a master negotiator.

In his much touted book, “The Art of the Deal”, Trump offers this pearl of wisdom on his style of conflict resolution: “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.” If he doesn’t get what he wants, he says he walks away and gets it someplace else. That might work for building casinos and hotels, but it’s a recipe for disaster in government. Trump views a negotiation as a zero-sum transaction, one that produces a winner and a loser. Virtually all of the academic literature on effective dispute resolution rejects that approach (here, here and here). Effective negotiating in an ongoing relationship – which is to say 95% of all negotiations – means doing the very things Trump disdains. For example: show respect for the other side; never lie; forget about an “amazing” deal so you can focus on getting one that works for all sides; try to overcome mistrust; find a way to let everyone win a little; and help your adversary save face if they back down on an issue.

Obviously, those of us appalled at the prospect of 24 million Americans losing health insurance, can find easy solace in the president’s incompetence as a negotiator. Sadly, the feeling won’t last long. If this guy can’t find common ground with members of his own party, what happens when he takes on Iran, North Korea, China , or other hot spots? With a bag of tricks consisting of aiming high, pushing and walking out when you don’t get your way, don’t count on world peace anytime soon.

THE TRAGEDY OF TRUMP: WINNING AN ELECTION DOESN’T CREATE AN ABILITY TO SERVE

This country’s 45th presidency is unfolding like a Shakespearian tragedy. The protagonist, King Donald, is so consumed with proving the legitimacy of his throne that he unleashes one stunt after another, each more bizarre than the last, all designed to prove himself worthy of his title. The dramatic irony, of course, is that the more the king does to create the illusion of legitimacy, the less legitimate he appears.

This diabolical storyline developed its rich texture from the backstory of the prequel, last year’s general election. Remember the third and final presidential debate when The Donald, then behind in the polls, declared that he might not accept the election results? The rarely stunned New York Times called Trump’s position “a remarkable statement that seemed to cast doubt on American democracy.” In a classic plot twist, Trump won, but his self-sowed seeds of doubt over the vote tally invaded his own psyche, haunting him like a Dickensian ghost. Hilary Clinton conceded to Trump. The Electoral College certified his election. The chief justice of the Supreme Court administered his oath of office. Throughout all of those rituals, King Donald remained angry and on edge. He was holding an “illegitimate election” card that he never had to play. His unshakable dread was that it would now be played against himself.

Nearly two months into his presidency, Trump remains paralyzed over his fear of not being seen as legitimate, despite the absence of any serious and credible challenge to the election results. He spent the first 48 hours in the White House telling foolish lies about the size of his inaugural audience. Then, out of the blue and without a scintilla of evidence, he insisted that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for rampant election fraud. And then came the Russian stuff. Intelligence agencies said there was evidence that Russian spies interfered with the election in an effort to help Trump win. While the rest of the country saw that as a serious threat to our democracy, the new president imploded over the notion that he didn’t win the election on his own merit. Tragically, this president’s neurotic obsession about looking like a winner has made him the biggest loser in White House history.

The fact that Donald Trump’s presidency is lacking legitimacy has nothing to do with vote counts or Russian espionage. A legitimate president doesn’t:

• Accuse his predecessor of wiretapping him, without a shred of evidence.
• Preach “America First” and then allow the Keystone Pipeline to be built with foreign steel.
• Criticize Arnold Schwarzenegger’s television ratings at the National Prayer Breakfast.
• Place a hold on what he considers an urgent national security program (Travel Ban 2.0) in order to bask in the afterglow of the only speech he has given without looking completely unhinged.
• Call the news media the “enemy of the American people.”
• Boast about the magnitude of his Electoral College win in a phone conversation with the Australian prime minister.
• Call people names like “neurotic dope”, “clueless incompetent”, “dumb as a rock”, “sick loser”, “obnoxious”, “dumb mouthpiece”, and “total disaster”. (Recipients of presidential wrath, in order of appearance: the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, the National Review’s Rich Lowry, CNN’s Don Lemon, George W. Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove, Sen. John McCain’s daughter Meghan, Sen. Lindsey Graham and former defense secretary Robert Gates.)

Now, add to that abbreviated list of highly un-presidential behavior, two recent episodes:

The Washington Post ran a compelling and amusing piece earlier this week that cataloged Trump’s history of staging outrageous stunts in order to divert media attention from his various messes. The article’s point was that the president’s wiretap tweet bomb was a calculated move designed to deflect attention from the Russians’ election tampering investigation and the attorney general’s recusal. As it turned out, the ruse had the design and execution of a fifth grader forging a parent’s signature on a permission slip. It produced four days of media speculation over whether the FBI might have persuaded an international court to authorize wiretaps on Trump associates based on evidence of collusion with a foreign government. It was a Keystone Cops diversion that ended up with an even deeper plunge into the Russian scandal it was created to deflect.

And then there is Trumpcare, or the lack thereof. The president spent the campaign ranting about the evils of the Affordable Care Act and how he would replace it immediately with “something wonderful”. Four days before he was inaugurated, Trump said there would soon be “insurance for everybody,” at much lower costs. House Republicans, who repealed Obamacare 725,000 times when it didn’t count, were chomping at the bit to see the new president’s plan. Turns out he didn’t have one. A week ago, The Donald had this to say on the subject: “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” The Republican Congress , abandoning all hope of presidential leadership on this issue, put out its own miserly health care plan, one that would leave millions without coverage. Trump immediately tweeted his support. Yet, as soon as the bill took shots from all directions, he told people not to worry because everything is negotiable. The next day he backtracked after House GOP leaders told him they had very little room to move. The president is now prepared to go back on the rally circuit to churn up populist demand for a bill he clearly doesn’t understand.

In every way that counts, Donald J. Trump has failed to conduct himself with the honor, integrity, decency, empathy and intellectual vigor that form the soul of the presidency and give it legitimacy. It’s not about the popular vote or the Russian hacks. It’s about the human qualities this man lacks.

TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY: NOT NEARLY AS FUN AS THE CAMPAIGN RALLIES

The Trumpian savior narrative that, against all odds and common sense, propelled The Donald into the White House is quickly devolving into that “Wizard of Oz” scene when the purportedly all-powerful wizard turns out to be nothing more than an impotent old man barking orders in a gruff voice. Trump, who boasted throughout his campaign that “I alone” can fix the country’s problems, reached the end of his Yellow Brick Road this week when three federal appellate judges pulled back the Oz curtain to tell the president that the office does not come with absolute powers of wizardry.

Trump, boasting that he is a man of action, moved quickly to block travel into the U.S. from seven Muslim majority countries, causing colossal confusion and disarray at airports throughout the world. Earlier this week, James L. Robart, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush, lifted Trump’s ban by granting two states and a host of supporters a temporary restraining order. A dismayed Trump, shocked that anyone in a robe would second guess him, let it rip on Twitter, calling Robart a “so-called judge” and insisting that his “ridiculous” opinion would be overturned. Two days later, however, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth District Circuit Court of Appeals, upheld the injunction and rejected the Trump administration’s position that the president’s order was unreviewable.

That was quite a jolt for Trump and his fans. The entire premise of his candidacy and presidency has been that the guy, in his magnificent omnipotence, would singlehandedly drain the swamp and blow things up because . . .well, because nobody else can. “Believe me,” Trump repeatedly preached during his campaign, “it’s going to be great.” The lesson here is that in government, as in theology, belief alone is never sufficient. Process matters.

And therein lies the problem. Trump is not a process kind of guy. He made it all sound so simple during his rallies: “Build the Wall;” “Close the Borders”; “Ban the Muslims.” His crowds loved all of the hits and begged for more. “Lock Her Up” never failed to bring the faithful to their feet, waving lighters in the darkness, as if Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had finally launched into “Born to Run.”

I suspect Trump is longing for those glory days, the rallies, the slogans and, most importantly, the adulation from fans genuflecting every time he said “believe me.” Now he has to make those slogans come to life in a governance structure he shares with two co-equal partners, Congress and the judiciary. He hasn’t figured out yet that bullying both of them on Twitter is probably not the best way to advance his program.

Obviously, power sharing and collaboration are not in this president’s vocabulary or life experience. The open question is whether he will learn from his mistakes. There is a good chance, for example, that Trump could have succeeded with his executive order, had he thoroughly vetted it with agency, congressional and legal authorities well versed with immigration law. Instead, it was hastily thrown together by inexperienced staffers so Trump could fulfill his self-image of a “man of action,” quickly giving life to one of his campaign slogans. He may eventually prevail in this legal battle, but for now the ban is not in place and the people he wants to keep out of the country are free to come on in. That’s a far cry from those “believe me” campaign rallies.

And it’s not just immigration. A month ago, Trump said Obamacare would be repealed and replaced in January. “We’re all set to go, right down to the final strokes,” he said. Two days ago, the president acknowledged that a replacement plan might not be ready until 2018. He insisted that his “big, beautiful wall” would be built immediately and paid for by Mexico. Reuters reported this week that a Homeland Security study estimates the wall will cost $21.6 billion and take 3.5 years to build. There is no rush in Congress to appropriate the money that Mexico refuses to put up. The wall remains more an instrument of metaphor than architecture.

Remember back in the campaign when Trump characterized all of his opponents as having some sort of congenital weakness, leaving him as the only strong man who can stand up to all of the world leaders and not be pushed around? His rally crowds swooned over their candidate’s ability to tell anyone what he thinks of them. Venting, it turns out, is not an effective strategy. Trump so angered Mexico’s president over the pay-for-wall business that he canceled a scheduled White House visit. Then he ripped into the Australian prime minister in a courtesy introductory phone chat and proceeded to brag about his electoral vote margin. Contrary to his campaign rhetoric about how he was going to all by himself, take on China, President Trump ended up backing down in his first phone conversation with China President Xi Jinping yesterday. Analysts immediately declared that Trump lost his first fight with China. Weak.

In other words, there is a world of difference between campaign illusions and actual accomplishments. Leaders – of a student council or a country – ignore process at their peril. If Trump really thought he was going to ram his rally hits into national policy by the strength of his will alone, he was badly mistaken. With a Republican Congress, he ought to be able to accomplish much of his agenda if he reaches out to lawmakers, listens to advice from people who know how the swamp operates, and treats adversaries with respect. Of course, if he did all that he wouldn’t be Trump.

So far, this much is comforting: the roadblocks Trump has encountered on his “I alone” march show the wisdom of the checks and balances baked into our system. Right now, they alone stand between us and tyranny.

SUPER TRUMP: AN ACTION FIGURE WITHOUT A CLUE

Well, score one for Team Trump. They said their guy would blow everything up, and that’s just what he is doing. Take a look at the headlines:

• Refugee Ban Causes Worldwide Furor (Washington Post)
• Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide (New York Times)
• Donald Trump’s Immigration Order Sparks Confusion, Despair at Airports (Wall Street Journal)

I suspect there are 63 million arms pumping away over all this turmoil. After all, one person’s furor, chaos and despair is someone else’s sweet sound of a draining swamp. Yet, as it has been written – or should have been if it hasn’t – any fool can light a fuse (or drain a swamp); the hard part is replacing the ruins with something better. On that end, there has been only a bewildering mixture of wanton hyperbole and silence.

This administration is not high on details. If it had been, Trump might have a chosen a date other than Holocaust Remembrance Day (Friday) to sign an order suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days, indefinitely barring Syrian refuges and blocking citizens of Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Politico reported that a Twitter account methodically posting names of Jews refused asylum in the United States and subsequently murdered in the Holocaust was retweeted thousands of times on Friday.

According to nonstop news accounts, Trump’s order provoked pandemonium at airports where numerous legal residents were denied admission from foreign trips. An Iraqi interpreter who served in the U.S. military for over a decade, was put in handcuffs at New York’s JFK airport and detained until a judge ordered his release. According to a Politico report, an Iranian scientist on her way to Harvard Medical School to work on a cure for tuberculosis, was not allowed to board her plane.

Trump’s executive order drew intense criticism from world leaders, a number of Republicans, representatives of most major religions and the CEOs of nearly every Silicon Valley high tech corporation which employs foreign nationals. The White House was anything but contrite. The president’s senior advisor, Kellyanne Conway tweeted Saturday night: “Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact. Promises made, promises kept. Shock to the system. And he’s just getting started.”

Nobody from Trump’s office, of course, even attempted to connect the dots between the hastily and sloppily drafted executive order and the goal of protecting Americans from terrorism. None of the 9/11 terrorists were from the seven countries named in the order. Other countries that have produced numerous terrorists, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were untouched by the order. The result is a cruel illusion of security at the price of keeping law abiding foreign nationals from entering the country. The National Basketball Association is hardly a hotbed of political activists, but the Milwaukee Bucks made a point of starting Thon Maker, a Sudanese immigrant, Saturday night as a protest over Trump’s xenophobic order.

The problem with all of this, for the country and for Trump, was captured in Kellyanne Conway’s tweet: “. . .he’s just getting started.” These people are still in campaign mode. They are pushing the narrative of Trump the Superhero, the guy who can singlehandedly “Make Gotham Great Again.” What they are ignoring is the reality that a four-year term is a marathon, not a sprint and, despite the campaign lore of Trump’s invincibility, he can’t go it alone.

He’s been in office less than 10 days and Republican congressional leaders are struggling valiantly to keep a lid on their dismay over their party’s president. Several key lawmakers broke the vow of silence over the weekend and publicly criticized his immigration order. Consistent with superhero fashion, it was drafted and released without consulting Congressional Republicans.

As former president Barack Obama can attest, you can only go so far with executive orders. Trump was dealt a winning hand last November: Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. But the president’s solipsism is not conducive to making that legislative advantage work for him. According to a secret recording from last week’s Republican meeting in Philadelphia, there was considerable angst voiced over Trump’s lack of any details concerning a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) “That’s going to be called TrumpCare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.” The colossal disaster of Trump’s immigration rollout this weekend did nothing to lower the anxiety level of House Republicans.

Instead, the president managed to throw even more energy into a growing resistance movement with spontaneous protest rallies across the country. There is widespread anger over the harm inflicted on innocent immigrants and foreign nationals, with no persuasive evidence that the plan will do anything to reduce terrorism. Most speculation, as a matter of fact, leans in the opposite direction, that anger over the move will be used as a terrorist recruiting tool.

For the moment, however, the White House is content to cling to the campaign fiction that Trump’s superhero powers, alone, will win the day and eradicate evil. For those who no longer read comic books, the time will soon come when measurable, quantifiable results will determine the success of this presidency. Right now, all indications are that such a test will be Trump’s kryptonite.