Letter 150: Technocracy and American Foreign Policy; brain-gang OR brain-game OR brain-blame OR brain-bust?

"You know this vision. You have seen it so often at the movies. It is the vision in all those science fiction dystopias. You know, with the gilded masterminds ruling all from their swank towers and conference rooms.
....
"It’s a quite contemporary vision. For instance, it is not far at all from the way I think the rulers of China imagine themselves and their future." --Dr Philip D. Zelikow, 5th August 2017.

BLUF (bottom-line, up-front): Dr Philip Zelikow gave a long address -- the speech takes 45 minutes, or more, to read -- at some out-of-tune wonkstock festival. His thoughts superficially remind one of those of Kennan. 

INTRODUCTION

They are not alike, primarily because this scholar is opening up the discussion and not selling its conclusion as Kennan did for SecState Marshall and President Truman. There are certain elements missing in the Zelikow's presentation by order of importance that guarantee us languishing longer in violent decline:

1. a frank recognition of the financial constraints facing the United States to usher in a more traditional exceptionalism as the American Century fades;
2. justification by technocrats of their being entitled to positions of power and privilege by 'degrees' of arrogation;
3. a clear idea by the U.S. of the end-state of a just society (i.e., an intelligibly universal appeal through a 'proposition of values' rather than a Zelikovian value proposition marketing technocracy through, of course, the current brain-gang);
4. exclusion from the 'outside-in' evaluation seeking to clarify how other peoples and governments (or élites) view the U.S. (and not how we think they view us);
5. a serious questioning of the nature of our adversaries and our role in that rivalry;
6. confusing tactics with strategy though that erudition and foot-notes often shroud that mistaken thinking; as well as,
7. a deeper inability, shown from President Reagan's time in office, of reducing the size of an over-wrought and financially unsustainable Federal government as well as the corrupting influence of (in)vested interests like the XXX-industrial complexes.

Of course, my critique is hampered by the same intellectual constraint as Dr Zelikow's far deeper and more nuanced analysis; he is a brainiac, after all. I am using a handy framework -- the recent military model that I learned in Iraq -- which is, of course, rooted in the past; not transcendent into the future; and, quite likely stale by now.

CASE STUDY OF TECHNOCRATIC VACUITY

This juncture is where President George W. Bush gets short-shrift, first by the hawk squawks led by the gang-of-four (Messrs Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld); then by Generals specialized and socialized as engineers; current intellectuals; and, lastly, the Obama Admin. President Bush understood, perhaps on an intuitive level, that, for the current wave of terrorism to be eradicated, an Arab Spring would have to occur.

Iraq was the geopolitical keystone of an arch of dictatorship and repression, resembling a reversed crescent moon from the horn of Africa on up to the 'No-man-stans'. The geopolitical mindset was easy to grasp, perhaps too easy:

• knock Iraq out in favor of a more popular government;
• link that with a far more tenuous experiment in Afghanistan; and, 
• incent the cosmopolitan middle class in Iran to grasp for the same freedoms.

From that arc, at that point primarily a Shi´ite phenomenon, others across that arc would be catalyzed into throwing off their shackles imposed by tottering Sunni dictatorships. Nations and peoples like to play ‘keeping up with the Jones’, too. WHY THEM AND NOT US? This new domino idea almost worked as seen by the 'Arab' Spring in Lebanon (2005), Iran (2009), Tunisia and Egypt (2010), Libya (2010) and Syria (2012) and beyond. 

The vision was simple but the follow-through too difficult, under-cutting the justice of the policy. The two parts that President Bush did not contemplate, due to a sweeping vision short on detail, included:

• making an all-out case for the necessity of this transformation, despite its wave of turmoil and violence; as well as, 
• warning the rest of us just how messy it would be. 

Instead of a three-dimensional thinker like Kennan to sell President Truman’s policy of containment, President Bush relied upon the lesser, if equally self-assured, minds of SecDef Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. 

When the U.S. gained the tactical advantage in Iraq, the gang-of-four -- and their face-man desk-clerk, Ambassador Bromide -- reverted to type, seeing Iraq as ours and, now, something to lose. That compromised and eventually corrupted the end-state the President had envisioned. The rest is history: what some troops in Iraq referred to as the Texas Cheney Massacre; Texas for Halliburton-KBR, not President Bush.

The key lessons for people to learn and always to hear include, but are not limited to, the moral fortitude that change requires; the narrower than expected limits of any power, particularly fire-power; the challenge of follow through; as well as, the difficulty of keeping hands-off once a cycle of change is initiated (that is, letting history run its admittedly hazardous course). That is to say: be careful what you instigate, for its life will likely be different from yours.

The failure of the Bush policy of an aggressive promotion of democracy in response to 9-11 was not only an example of Dr Zelikow’s astute insight of wasted energy, money and people on areas of lesser importance.  Additionally, it was an ill-thought out strategy that led to a chimerical consensus. The brain-gang failed signally to consider the lowest cost options (i.e., those least deleterious to the lives and livelihoods of peoples in the 'beneficiary' countries). 

COWARDICE CROWNING CONFLICT? Yes AND no.

The failure of President Obama’s policy was an unwillingness to witness the upheaval the Bush vision had counted on during the run-up to invading and occupying Iraq. This changed to a reactive policy perceived as a lack of nerve rather than a widely shared perception of ‘strategic patience’. Many of my fellow conservatives view President Obama as a coward; that is patently untrue and unfair. President Obama was and is a man of peace. 

His appeasement – and, yes, that is what his policy unmistakably was -- may well have forestalled a conflict that could quickly have cascaded into the "systemic crisis" that the dystopian Zelikovian multiverse contemplates and for which the U.S. is anything but prepared. President Obama’s alternate view may have saved a great many lives; sadly, that systemic crisis was more likely deferred than defused. 

President Obama’s alleged but apparent cowardice may have required a quiet courage to fend of the brawny bluster of men who do not have to suffer the consequences of their own rhetoric. If cowardice be assigned at all, it would lie with V.P. Cheney, SecDef Rumsfeld and AMB Bremer -- and their staffs -- for failing to think big, like their President, and, worse, not permitting others (e.g., SecStates Powell and Rice and their competing brain-gangs) to have the floor for alternative views. 

CONCLUSION

Dr Zelikow fails properly to account for this narrative as a teachable moment. Why? Because he was, and has every intention of remaining, a part of it. Now, we labour under a President without vision and inclined toward force as the primary medicine. Fortunately, he is unpopular and being repudiated on several different levels. Otherwise, we might undertake an amputation when only an analgesic is called for.

In the end, however, technocratic élites will fail us; they almost always do. Why again? Because the very notion of technocracy is conservative, more like preservative, of a given status-quo. To expect more from the Dr Zelikows (or the far more numerous and insignificant Ned McDonnells) of the world to anticipate and structure an ex ante strategy for fundamental changes in world orders or global policy paradigms is futile.

THE MORAL OF THE QUARREL
Expecting technocracy to avoid dystopia is as fruitful as tasking mechanical engineers to invent from scratch the impressionism of palette or expressionism in poetry.

Letter #149 to Friends and Familiares: Charlottesville, what might have been

“That differences of opinion should arise among men on politics, on religion and on every other topic of human inquiry, and that these should be freely expressed in a country where all our faculties are free, is to be expected. But these valuable privileges are much perverted when permitted to disturb the harmony of social intercourse, and to lessen the tolerance of opinion.” –President Thomas Jefferson, 1809.

“I must respect the decision of the Supreme Court allowing this group (the Nazis) to express their views, even when those views are despicable and ugly as they are in this case. But if such views must be expressed, I am pleased they will not go unanswered. That is why I want to voice my complete solidarity with those citizens of Skokie and Chicago who will gather Sunday in a peaceful demonstration of their abhorrence of Nazism.” —President Jimmy Carter, 1978.

“I was raised in a household in which the only intolerance I was taught was intolerance of bigotry.” –President Ronald Reagan, 1982.

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BLUF (bottom-line, up-front): We could have made Charlottesville much ado about nothing. Instead we ushered in tragedy.

INTRODUCTION: Sit-Rep. The sight of white supremacists rallying on the grounds of the co-author of the Bill of Rights and the Founder of the University of Virginia, one of the nation’s great learning centers, will remain grimly ironic. Few people – liberal, conservative and moderates alike – really have the time of day for these unsavory human beings.

These ‘Unite-the-Right’ (sic) types openly challenged the sacrosanct ideal of the Freedom of Speech. Yet, sacrosanct that ideal remains. Earlier this week-end, we confronted the real-world, real-time dilemma of Free Speech.

What to do about odious speech, publicly expressed? The First Amendment intends to protect ‘protected speech’ only.

That statement is circular and anyone can see that. But its being circular does not make it specious. What it really says is that there has to be flexibility in setting limits to this precious right since unfettered Free Speech could lead, for example, to the murderous disorder we witnessed in Virginia, directly harming the more peaceable citizenry.

Dealing with Hard-Core and Political Porn. The Supreme Court grappled with this issue in the area of pornography in a case from 43 years ago, deftly deferring to community standards for the definition of obscenity (i.e., in that case, ‘hard-core’ porn). There has been controversy over the subsequent decades on how to apply that vague and federalist wisdom.

During the 1980s, a Republican U.S. Senator sought to withdraw financial support for a sacrilegious photograph and a big-city Democratic Mayor pressured vendors to pull off their newsstands an equally sacrilegious magazine. Generally, these issues revolved around how community standards were, and are, to be identified and enforced.

Something like this idea of local agency applies to what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday 12th August 2017. Can elected officials act as agents of community standards in responding to openly disseminated hate-speech? That is what the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Mayor of Charlottesville were trying to do.

While they were in the right, as any reasonable man or woman could see the right, these leaders mismanaged a situation through political bungling. The idea of local agency to suppress bigotry makes sense. What became very difficult was agreeing upon just how much latitude these local agents should properly have.

Like pornography, one is hard-pressed precisely to define hate-speech, beyond the well known slurs and epithets, but yet any dunce, even Dylan Roof, knows it when he hears it.

That 1970s Show, Again. This current situation reminded me of a similar event in the Summer after my freshman year at W.&L. In that year, neo-Nazis planned a march, in their full dress and wretched regalia, through a Jewish suburb of Chicago. Local elected officials sought to forestall the event. Yet the American Civil Liberties Union – an organization I perceived as ‘Jewish’ (shame on me) – came to the aid of the neo-Nazis so the latter could march.

Like most others whom I knew, I wondered at the time, ‘What in the Hell is the A.C.L.U. doing?’ As the Summer moved along and I listened to interviews of the Jewish attorney taking up the case on behalf of the A.C.L.U., I gained immense respect for him and his organization for standing by the Freedom of Speech, even in this obviously odious expression of it.

After working its way up through various benches to the Supreme Court, the march proceeded without incident a year later as a counter-rally shouted down the handful of hate-meisters.

Back then, however, the country was still held together, with increasing frailty, by what many of today’s self-labelled conservatives (sic) would deride as a ‘leftist consensus’. Truthfully, it was an expectation of public civility. This more liberal consensus of decorum was fraying; its ideology exhausted. The mainstream G.O.P. was dissolving and a Democratic President struggling.

Nevertheless, the Kulturkampf had yet to arrive as a regrettable by-product of President Reagan’s conservative ascendancy. There is little doubt in my mind that President Reagan would not have countenanced today’s rally in Virginia and would have said so, decisively. But we do not have a principled Republican like President Reagan in the White House to remove this blemish publicly and pro-actively.

The Loss of Principle and Purpose in Personalities. Instead our current President is a demagogue, though he deserves some credit for his delayed and piping tepid response, to the bedlam of bigotry in Virginia. Previously, President Trump had created today’s context with slurs uttered against whole segments of the population – call them the 3M post-its written with passwords to revile Mexicans, Muslims and Mixed-genders – in word, deed or tweet.

While General Kelly may finally be imposing adult supervision on this President, it is sadly too little, too late. The cage doors of civil containment have been flung open, like Pandora’s Box, releasing the evils of the ghoulish, bad and ugly. Like Pandora’s Box, however, there is Hope, the last to exit. And what is this Hope? Three elements, at least as I view them from my limited and conservative view: deflection, humor and refutation.

Remember Skokie. And that brings us back to Skokie, 1977. At the time, one caller, apparently a steel-worker, into a radio talk show on the local mainstream station proposed an interesting response. Why not have the Skokie mayor announce that the town would permit the swastika-laden mob to march, opting for a town picnic on other side of Skokie for the residents to celebrate Judaism?

Why not seal off the parade route, requesting the Press not to cover the event? An interesting idea but one that was easier said than done, obviously. Skokie had a population of 70,000 back then, versus an almost equally unmanageable 50,000 in Charlottesville. Picnics were feasible in neither case. Additionally, the Press arguably had a stronger sense of the higher, common good in 1977.

The Press may or may not have shunned the event in Skokie, thereby effectively castrating the Nazis during their hour of provocation, truncating their fame, or infamy, to fifteen minutes. Yet, in this day of an arid yet rabid journalism that often click-baits men’s darker impulses and grievances to chalk up ad revenue, such a higher restraint seems inconceivable.

Furthermore, this year’s hate parade was many, many times the size of the eventual Skokie dud-march in 1978. Nevertheless, minimization-by-deflection may well have proven more effective and less tragic today. Imagine if a state of emergency had NOT been declared, with government leaders instead opting to call on the Press not to cover the event and to ignore Charlottesville?

Hope is a Many Splendoured Thing. Then imagine if Charlottesville’s Mayor had requested that no one from the town attend the march or for outsiders not to participate in counter-demonstrations on site? Yes, there would still be Press coverage but, perhaps, less than complete, especially if the national outlets had decided not to show up (CNN, The NYT, The WSJ, et al.). 

Imagine the optics of vacant streets portraying marchers with police protection…and nobody else around! That would likely have deflated the importance of the event, at least to all onlookers outside the Bannon-bubble. Imagine if Governor McAuliffe or Mayor Signer had not to condemned the speech so stridently, resorting to meeting fire with fire, preferring instead to attend to their routine affairs with Charlottesville and the Lee statue a million miles away? 

Imagine if these leaders – these local agents of community standards against hate speech – had preferred humor that could have fed right into ‘Saturday Night Live’? One such remark might have been, “Boys will be boys. Growing up is oh so hard to do, from the Oval Office on down…”

If this initial quip were not effective, then creative people and comedians -- ¿Senator Franken, anyone? – could surely have come up with something to say to castrate these ‘tough-guys’ publicly and indirectly. Imagine the pre-emptive optics of transforming these bigots, and the President who had unleashed them, into a collective laughing stock.  That would have been Classic Churchill or F.D.R.!

                  

                                                                   

Letter #148 to friends and familiares: the Incompleat Angler

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.” 

-- Ernest Hemingway; The Old Man and the Sea; 1952.

"I shall make ye fishers of men..."
"Good because I am starving from the old way..."

-- Anonymous.

Recently I read a great story about the most unexpected success of a casual fisherman. I am something of an obtuse angler, too. As a kid in Sydney, I used to fish by hand and catch little yellow-tails and throw them back in. That was my down-time, often followed by pick-up cricket games. The next time I went fishing was twelve years later off of Palm Beach in 1980 when I was visiting a college bud.

We went out into the ocean in this big cabin cruiser of some apparently wealthy man, the father of my host’s roomie. This boat even had sonar to detect the schools of fish. We zipped around, this way and that, in an endless search for fish; B-O-R-I-N-G. Two highlights of that day, one inane and the other intuitive, were the one catch of the day as well as a ‘sonar’ duel between man and nature.

The rivalling sonars made for the better story. The tech finally came through and the skipper found his school. This older gentleman was anything but genteel, treating his trophy girl-friend like a toy in front of his adult son of the same age as the girl. The score with the sonar disappointed me mightily since we would be marooned for another few hours on that damn boat. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Until two dolphins with a “high sense of porpoise” cruised by, spiraling in the water and squealing. Well, now, school was out; nary a nibble. And I have always wondered whether those dolphins had somehow audibly warned those innocent fish of the peril picked up by their natural sonar. Nature 1, technology 0. We floundered for a couple more fruitless hours amid bickering among the hosts: B-O-R-I-N-G.

Then, in the waning moments, the least equipped nautically (i.e., me) got something. People were rightly floored (or decked) that it was I who snagged the only beast of the day. So, I struggled a bit, trying to keep the fish on the line. The older man was jealous – quickly emphasizing that I had captured small game judging by the negligible arc of my rod. Yes, I suspected as much and I did not care – I just wanted to get off that boat.

Finally, my catch was close enough that it surfaced intermittently, as fish do when they struggle desperately, and almost always without success, to escape back into the deep. One BIG catch about my little catch: it was a plastic bag.  Since I was the first to realize my catch was phony, I tried to ward off the expected flak by exclaiming with a dryly ironic voice, “Oh, wow! I caught a plastic bag, mahhhn!” 

Well, before the rhazzing could start, the trophy girl-friend, with whom I had been chatting as the only one paying any attention to her, laughed hysterically and said I was so cute, etc. Normally, such attention (even if patent non-sense) from a pretty lady would have been welcome. Not that day. That almost led to my being escorted over the gunwale with, “Good riddance, punk,” by you know who -- the gal's surly patron.

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My fishing days were finished, thankfully. Until duty called as a banker in the late 1990s. Calling on non-bank financial institutions – basically, finance and insurance companies – I had encountered my fair share of ethical and accounting sink-holes populated by "snow lizards"; thank you, David Rosenberg of Pittsburgh. Most executives, however, were lovely people and very honest. On the whole, insurers are a decent bunch.

There was one real sinkhole besides sub-prime lenders and that was the bond insurance niche. These guys basically substituted for banks who traditionally provided guaranteed performance (i.e., scheduled payments) under bond indentures. In a long-since saturated segment, these monoline bond insurers were on the hunt for any money they could pick up, no matter how questionable the insured security or transaction was.

In the late 1990s, one bond insurer acquired another. Think of it as in-breeding within the Ponzi family. Well, I had to help ring in the union with a fishing day with the Treasurer of the consolidated insurer. Angling off of a cabin cruiser in Long Island Sound would normally sound like a fun idea. Except that I had to get up at five-thirty in the morning to get to some ungodly suburb in Connecticut in order to launch.

Additionally, the treasurer of the merged bond insurer had come over from the acquired company – a company that I had never touched with a ten-foot pole, no matter how profitable its financial statements had appeared. Some companies just don’t pass the smell test. And then there was this dung heap. The acquiring insurer figured it could make the dung heap into fertilizer for future profits.

Fine, but count me out. Though a leader in bond insurance, that large acquiror had ceased passing my smell test sometime earlier, too. This was not the first time I met the new treasurer. Frankly, he was a well-coiffed grease-ball; anybody who goes out of his way to tell me that l am a “genius” or "really talented" wins no points with me. For one thing, though I would dearly love to be a genius, I simply and surely am not one.

Curious? Yes! Smart? Eh, perhaps. But, a “genius”? Forget about it. Mr Slick was a man whom I did not trust at all. So, I arrived with my fellow bankers with hair dishevelled, cow-licks prominent and overall expression pouty; clearly neither a morning person though, perhaps, a person in mourning. (And yes, that sink-hole cratered a few years later, just as I figured it would; no retirement plan for the world's oldest profession!) We finally set off into Long Island Sound after Mr Slick had finished kissing my ass since I was the guy with the bank’s checkbook….B-A-R-F.

Of the six people on that cruiser, I was absolutely the most out of place, not only in terms of zero enthusiasm and unkempt appearance but also my fishing experience and ability.  Long Island Sound apparently has many blue fish – allegedly difficult to catch – and ‘stripers’, or ocean bass. When I got ‘spoke to’ by the senior manager in our delegation, I reluctantly picked up a rod and gave fishing a go along-side the slick.

Et voilà! Before I knew or understood what I was doing, I was hauling in many fish, perhaps the most. My haul included an apparently elusive blue-fish; that claim about the blueys, however, may have simply been more ass-kissing. Truthfully, I have no idea. To cap the day off, I even caught the largest striper of the day. That fish was one heavy BASStard; I swear it was fifteen pounds, maybe more.

Soon enough I received a photo in the mail of me holding that big dude with a putrid smile on my face and the (by then drunk) slick with his arm around my shoulder. So much for all those Dale Carnegie sales courses I had laboured through as a young and incorrigible misanthrope. At least somebody hosted a big dinner that week-end with that striped creature, duly stripped, as the guest of honor.

Needless to say, I was never sent from Central ‘Casting’. Yet life runs in a full circle. These days, when I spend some time in the Adirondaks thanks to the generosity of my sister and her family, I will cast a little here and even less there in the quiet end of Long Lake. As it was for me fifty years ago in Sydney, my down-time is not goal oriented; it is simply restful and the fish are lucky that I am the one with the rod.

Letter 147 to friends and familiares: letter to Hillary Clinton.

"I would rather play against a sore loser than any kind of winner I know...." -- ¿who knows?

''If the election had been on October 27th, I'd be your president'' -- Hillary Clinton; May 2017

Dear Senator / Secretary Clinton,

In November, I voted for you after some thought and hesitation, but with relative ease since Mr Trump was, and remains, unacceptable as a Presidential candidate or incumbent; in essence, I had progressed from being a Never-Trump Republican to a Must-Stop-Trump Republican. Yes, I was dismayed though not altogether surprised by President Trump’s victory in the Electoral College; were that election held today, I would likely vote for you again.

Fortunately, my fears of President Trump’s authoritarian tendencies – while quite real today and going forward – implied an under-estimation of the strength of the institutional constraints in place. While allegations of the conduct of Mr Trump and his inner circle during the President’s campaign and afterward remain rife, if yet unproven, the accountability is now in motion.

Your behavior since November, however, has often been regrettable. Your recent appearance at a Book Expo shows that side of you that attracted us who voted for you. Too many times, in the months since the election, however, you have blamed several parties as being instrumental to your unexpected – and, implicitly by your reckoning, undeserved – defeat six months ago. Comments refuting each point follow the factor identified.

FIRST, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Director Comey acted to protect the independence of the FBI, without which the integrity of a central pillar of the rule-of-law would have been hopelessly compromised during its investigation of your e-mail practices. Director Comey did make a surprise announcement on October 28th, per a pledge he had previously made to a Congressional Committee, and affirmed the conclusions he had reached in July forty-eight hours before the election. 

Forty-eight hours was more than sufficient time to undo any damage to you or your electability. Throughout the July-to-October time-frame, it is clear that the Director was fully aware of the consequences of his actions, including a high probability of his dismissal; that is, he owned his choices. Additionally, by mid-October, people already knew enough to decide their votes. The Director's actions may have reinforced the preferences of certain voters; l have to doubt that they changed more than a tiny and inconsequential number of minds.

SECOND, the Russians, with or without Wikileaks. From what I can see, the majority of Russian meddling – outside of possible collaboration with the Trump campaign – seems to have been dissemination of Russia Today. While RT’s objectivity is not up to the standard of the Voice of America, this is a highly visible activity by a relatively low-rated television and news outlet. Wikileaks and fake news, however, pose more serious questions, one worth investigating for obvious, perhaps ominous, reasons.

Nevertheless, the contents of those e-mails disseminated by Wikileaks – not the alleged hack itself – influenced voters. Responses by Party surrogates of stating that the e-mails were "stolen" without addressing their contents fooled no one. The loudly proclaimed fake news argument was more likely to be a subset of biassed and parsed reporting against, and calculated to hurt, both campaigns.

THIRD, the Democratic National Committee. Your assertion of your receiving too few funds from the DNC and the Party leadership giving you nothing is difficult to understand, let alone to analyze or comment upon. To me, Mrs Clinton, your assertion is difficult to accept since there are allegations that the very same organization (the DNC) had fixed the nomination in your favor. As far as the argument that the DNC's data were poor, it is difficult to sympathize too terribly much with you. Mrs Clinton, you had three years to build your own reserve of data.

FOURTH, the "deplorables". White supremacists may have voted for President Trump but they did not elect him. Implicit in your ill-advised remark was a suspicion that you were the rightfully qualified candidate and that some dark anti-social underbelly was seeking to deny you of what was rightfully yours: the presidency. True, you won the popular vote. Nonetheless, a modest review of the results refute your sense of entitlement. True, you gained 2.9 million more votes than Mr Trump (i.e., 65,844,610 versus 62,979,636). 

Nevertheless, you were the establishment candidate – your résumé apparently made your claim to the Oval Office incontestable, at least in your mind – while Mr Trump was a candidate of (¿chump?) change. When one adds in the 7.8 million votes cast for third-party candidates – by definition candidates for change – to Mr Trump’s tally, your establishment credentials were repudiated by 4.9 million votes (i.e., 70,783,849 versus 65,844,610).

FOURTH, the main-stream press. You have argued that the fourth estate undermined your candidacy by dwelling on the private e-mail server you used as Secretary of State by magnifying it to the level of a "Pearl Harbor". This excuse is, perhaps, the most exasperating of all for three reasons.

• You argued during the campaign that the 22 million 'lost' emails on RNC servers by Karl Rove and other political functionaries in 2007 negated any appearance or instance of wrong-doing by you for use of a private server as the Secretary of State in President Obama's first Administration. By 2009, however, that practice of the Bush Administration was fully exposed and disseminated, being held to account and deemed improper, perhaps illegal. It was clear that diverting e-mails through private servers should not be permissible going forward -- especially seven years later. 

• It is a pity, ma'am, that you have forgotten a basic lesson from your Sunday-school class: two wrongs do not make a right. This argument is rather reminiscent of the 'enfant terrible' of my Party, President Nixon.

• On a pragmatic level, I question your ability to learn from past mistakes or experience. Your allegedly secretive approach to the 1993 national health-care initiative (i.e., managed competition) was never proven to have occurred; the practice was neither illegal nor unethical in any case. But it surely looked bad, contributing to the plan's eventual demise. What surprises me today remains your insensitivity toward the 'political optics' of such a seemingly covert information management practice during your tenure as the fifth most senior official of the Republic under the Constitution.

Mrs Clinton, here are seven reasons why you may have lost this election.

• A previously ignored constituency consolidated behind Mr Trump.
• Prior actions and the contents of ‘hacked’ e-mails sowed seeds of distrust. People simply refused to equate your character with President Obama's.
• Your remarks about "deplorables", etc. lent the impression that you felt entitled to the office. Americans do not warm up to attitudes that smack of landed nobility.
• Your vice presidential candidate lost his debate, badly, which had an important implication. Many voters may have disliked you and Mr Trump sufficiently to look toward their feelings about Senator Kaine or Governor Pence as a tie-breaker.
• A poorly run campaign that overlooked key battleground states.
• The Clinton dynasty, if ever extant, had ended in 1999. You were elected in one of two or three states that would support your Senatorial candidacy. While your tenure as Senator encouraged me to vote for you, it did not represent a national base.
• You were the weakest Democratic candidate of my life-time. With the possible exception of Senator McGovern (though I do not think so) or Vice President Gore (more likely), every candidate from President Johnson on (i.e., Messrs Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama) would have defeated Mr Trump. Senator Sanders certainly would have, had he been permitted to run.

Secretary / Senator Clinton, again, I believe you should have been elected because you are honest, at least on balance, and for other reasons. Your unwillingness to own up to your role in losing the 2016 election makes you come across as a poor sport, as believing you were denied of a privilege justly due to you. No one is entitled to the presidency. At least 70 million of your fellow citizens disagree with your sense of entitlement that has a whiff of arrogance.

Your role now?

Help lead your Party in passing the torch to a new generation of Americans since the Democrats have the opportunity for a political transformation as conclusive as that of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Your Party is frittering away this once-in-a-century opportunity through a level of whining and vitriol toward President Trump that will sate your appetite for vindication and feed your resentment. The key question for you, Mrs Clinton, remains whether such self-indulgence will assist your Party or the principles it stands for.

Letter 146: last on President Trump; let the facts lead us where they will lead us

“Emigrants (sic) will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.” –Thomas Jefferson, 1782 (source: Notes of the State of Virginia).

“What I said was that anyone who felt that firing James Comey was going to shut down the Russian investigation was mistaken, that [while] the president fired the director of the FBI, he did not fire the whole FBI. And indeed, I have talked to FBI officials. And we've heard testimony from the acting director assuring us that the investigation is continuing as it should.” –Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), 2017 (source: NPR, “Morning Edition”, May 17th).

Update; 5th August 2017: the appointment of a special counsel has essentially leap-frogged the argued necessity of a special bi-partisan commission. The arguments laid out below apply equally to the Special (prosecutorial) Counsel, Director Mueller. The Trump Administration's insinuations that Robert Mueller and his team are somehow biassed and dedicated to bringing down the President and that the current Attorney General ought to be switched out in favor of one open to dismissing Director Mueller are as specious as they are repugnant to me and many fellow conservatives (e.g., Senators Graham, R-SC, and Tillis, R-NC). Three cheers for A.G. Sessions  for maintaining his independence from President Trump and Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein for his integrity. Two key developments have occurred since the last update relevant to this essay.

First, the implausibility of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign -- a central assumption animating the view below -- has been diminished, if not altogether undermined, by the revelation of a meeting with a surrogate (as informal emissary) of the Putin régime and Messrs Kushner, Trump, Jr and Manafort in June 2016.

This meeting displays intent by senior Trump campaign people to collude, whether such collusion actually took place. Naïveté is no excuse here since Mr Manafort clearly had the experience to understand the implications of taking such a meeting and doubtlessly informed the newbies before the encounter. In fact, Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) established that fact in the same hearing.

Second, Attorney General Sessions has announced an increased scrutiny and possible crack-down on leakers. This announcement is good or bad news depending on how the A.G. pursues this policy. Leaking unclassified information or classified information that ought properly not be classified to expose wrong-doing should lie beyond the scope of the policy. Leaking information truly damaging to national security should be the scope. Hopefully, the mere announcement of the policy will deter the dangerous practice of leaking information aimed at removing President Trump.

Essentially, the three developments above have undermined the conclusion of avoiding a rush to judgement, as argued below. The burden of judgement has shifted to the President and does not include an automatic right of the presumption of innocence under due-process in criminal law to his worthiness for the office; that is, the door to a vote of no-confidence (on articles of impeachment submitted to the Senate) is now open. 

Update; 22nd May 2017: a question latent in the initial writing of this essay and now emergent is a growing concern over the frequency and nature of the leaks threatening to bring down this President. The use of malicious leaks to remove an elected official, no matter how welcome that expulsion will be, is far more harmful to the Republic in the long run than actual wrongdoing by that hated official himself.

With the appointment of Director Mueller as a Special Counsel, hopefully his team will also investigate these leaks as wrongdoing arising "directly" from the investigation of Russian interference. These leaks are calculated to accelerate, if not determine the outcome of, that enquiry. Otherwise, the country has empowered a shadowy layer of government, free to leak classified information at will with neither transparency nor its attendant accountability.
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BLUF (bottom-line, up-front). We live in interesting times, or so says that allegedly Chinese curse. President Jefferson’s thought of a tendency to go from one extreme to the other is timely. Fears over the soundness of our institutions recede daily as a new anxiety supersedes them: that of a group psychology assuming the worst about an unpopular public figure. The latter could be more damaging in the longer run.

Introduction. The chorus for an independent commission to act as grand jury investigators – perhaps as the grand jury itself – will rise to a collective voice of inevitability in the coming days as increasing numbers of Republicans buy into the concept of deeper investigations. While somewhat like the unsound proposal I laid out in my previous letter, this deeper investigative commission will most likely not grind governance to a halt.

To paraphrase another widely detested President, ‘let me make one thing personally clear’: I am and remain no fan of Donald Trump. His candidacy and nomination damaged my Party; his election has likely hurt my country. President Trump’s personal insecurities make him at least as vulnerable as President Nixon to fear, paranoia and authoritarianism. 

Yet being crude, rude and socially unacceptable is not an impeachable offense. The several investigations already started or the one soon to start must remain deliberative by focusing on a man’s deeds and not only his temperament. 

If President Trump truly is unfit for office, the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America will still be in force. That said, if Vice President Pence were to pardon a resigning President Trump pre-emptively for the latter to escape full accountability in the eyes of the citizenry, he might well become accountable for obstructing justice.

Why an independent commission. With unseemly behaviors hitting the airwaves and cyberspace every week, an independent commission remains the appropriate course to take. Beyond its own work as a preliminary review of possible evidence, this commission could integrate the findings of three intelligence investigations already taking place that are looking onto "all things Russian" about the 2016 election.

Those three investigations include one in each House of Congress, specifically their Select Committees on Intelligence, and one by the FBI. With the evidence and / or hearsay mounting, my previous idea of three-person panel would be inadequate to the task of reviewing a far more complicated situation and would add little value to, perhaps detract from, the rule-of-law.

An independent commission assures Republicans that it will not be a fishing expedition to justify many people’s hatred of this President and to satisfy their desire to remove him. With its limited scope, an independent commission should be timely enough not to bog the whole government down. Congressional G.O.P. leadership is likely preparing for the worst-case scenario in order to be prepared to keep the government functioning.

Consequently, a potential crisis of governance ought not be a deterrent to impanelling an independent commission. The government continued working just fine in 1973 and 1974; things did not go so well for President Nixon. Hopefully, the American people – at least a majority – will remain open to the possibility that this man has done nothing that rises to the level of impeachment and removal from Office. 

The President’s fitness for office is a separate issue, though being cleared from possible impeachment would go a long way toward muting that question since so many of the problems before us reflect the man’s temperament. A conspiratorial invocation of XXV Amendment, however, to remove President Trump without proper accountability of President Trump's actions would arguably also rise to the level of obstructing justice by Cabinet members and V.P. Pence.

Checking out the current scuttle-butt. There is a gathering consensus for a commission – or scheiße-storm (depending upon one’s feelings toward the President) – to “get to the bottom” of all that has hit the news media in recent weeks. In this closing section, I will play the Devil’s Advocate (more to caution me than you) against jumping to conclusions of treason or criminal intent.

Asking Director Comey to “Shut Down” the Flynn lnvestigation and Demanding a Loyalty Oath. Many people argue that President Trump committed an impeachable offense in asking Director Comey to “let go” of the investigation of General Flynn and to make a loyalty pledge to him, reminiscent of that made by the SS to Adolf Hitler, and superseding that to the Constitution. 

While I dislike General Flynn almost instinctively and shudder at placing personalities ahead of principles, it is far from clear, at least to me, that the President's apparent requests rise to an impeachable level. As we do with so many other contestable and contemptible actions of President Trump, we simply lack context. It is possible that the following occurred: 

President Trump: “Am I under investigation?”

Director Comey: “Mr President, while I am unable to disclose the contents of ongoing activities of the Bureau—“

President Trump: “Of course you can’t say. My apologies…”

Director Comey: “No problem, Mr President. I can say that you are not the subject of an investigation at this time…”

President Trump: “And my friend, Mike Flynn. Look, he’s a good man – you know: served his country in war -- and made some mistakes. Can’t you just let that one go? He's already disgraced and all that...”

Director Comey: “Mr President, you may not understand that you are asking me to do is to obstruct justice and, just by asking me, you are obstructing justice…”

President Trump: “My God! That’s the last thing I want to do! I was just – eh, Mike is a friend and I want to be loyal but...Got it…All these rules – I never imagined…”

Director Comey: “Understood, Mr President. Having been with a hedge fund, I know that Washington and Manhattan are two different games with two different rule-books. It all takes some getting used to….”

President Trump: “Just one other thing…”

Director Comey: “Mr President?”

President Trump: “Things are harder than I ever imagined in this job, you know. Can I count on you to be in my corner?”

Director Comey: “On everyday administrative matters, of course. Mr President, I must say that on serious matters involving possible wrongdoing, I have to remain loyal to my oath to the Constitution at all times…”

President Trump: “Of course you do. I didn’t mean anything wrong but things like, you know, publicly criticizing me.”

Director Comey: “On political matters, I really try to avoid saying anything. On the more serious questions, if I am going to issue a public statement that will be critical of you or your team, I will forewarn you that a criticism is coming so you are not caught by surprise in a Press Conference or something.”

President Trump: “Thank you.”

Director Comey: “But, Mr President, the only assurance that I can really make to you categorically is that I will be honest. I will go ahead and make that statement if I deem it necessary…”

President Trump: “No President could ask for more. Thank you….”

Many people bristle at the thought that President Trump would never act in so even-handed a manner. It certainly defies his public persona. Yet, many people walked away from one-on-one meetings in New York City with the then President-elect – including Senator Corker and Governor Romney – who found President Trump to be engaging, open-minded, even humble. 

So how do we know President Trump did not act this way with Director Comey?

Tipping the Russians with 'Insider Information'. President Trump unwisely excluded the American Press from the Oval Office meeting, permitting an openly biassed Russian reporter to sit in. The photos of international leaders as frat-brats soon careened across the inter-net. 

Now a leak is out alleging that President Trump disclosed classified information, even compromising an intelligence asset or source. Again we have no idea what was said, except that it was related to an impending I.S.I.S. attack. So, the incident may have occurred this way.

President Trump: “Sergei, we’ve got a problem…”

Foreign Minister Lavrov: “Oh, Mr President, we have a lot of problems…”

Both laughing as President Trump says: “I said call me Donald, Sergei. In any case, not the standard stuff this time but solid Intel from a reliable source that I.S.I.S. has something big planned for Saint Petersburg – could be really deadly…”

Minister Lavrov, turning serious: “Donald, did you get that from the Fredonians?” President Trump tightens up slightly, but perceptibly as Minister Lavrov continues, patting President Trump on the shoulder and smiling: “I thought so. Frottage [the Fredonian Intelligence Agency] has been communicating that same intelligence to us through their counterparts in our F.S.B. Thank you, all the same….”

Again there is no way to refute this version of the story any more than to assume that President Trump committed treason. Like the discussion with Director Comey, we will have to wait and see what the independent commission and three other investigations bring to light and what people say under oath. One thing for sure: I suspect the American Press will be allowed into future meetings!

Conclusion. There are many other objectionable actions of President Trump. Good and charitable people believe they indicate impeachable actions or mis-steps indicative of the President’s unfitness for office. The two big questions addressed above could support plausible, if unlikely, scenarios that indicate nothing more than an awkward newbie ascending a learning curve. 

So, we should resist a rush to judgement. There is no need to address other questions with alternative scenarios since, betting my bottom ruble, one could devise such innocent outcomes easily. The key point remains: let the investigations proceed as rapidly as safely possible and avoid a rush-to-judgement. Lastly, ongoing skepticism by the Press, whether welcome or not, is the life-blood of accountability for our Republic.

Letter 145: A Yellow Light on Investigating Trump

BLUF (bottom-line, up-front). The process of investigating President Trump is moving ahead too quickly. An independent or special prosecutor is premature since the dismissal spelled out the cause for termination clearly. An informal ‘grand jury’ to determine if such a criminal investigation is appropriate, however, would be opportune. We do know that the firing of Director Comey did not lead to the immediate destruction of evidence.

The case against an Independent Prosecutor. Though the appearances look very bad for President Trump, an independent prosecutor is pre-mature for these reasons.

1. Publicly available evidence thus far seems to indicate that the President did not collude with the Russians, though conflicts of interest remain a disturbing question.
2. It is not yet clear, at least to me, whether or not the President knew of alleged ties between top officials of his campaign since these officials resigned shortly after their ties went public.
3. We should wait until those Republicans coming forward, albeit tentatively, to join the chorus of muscular accountability. 
4. The President is allowed to dismiss the Director of the FBI.
5. Independent prosecutors take a lot of time, leaving the country largely ungoverned now and through, at least, the 2018 mid-term elections.
6. lf such an Independent Prosecutor (which implies probable cause from day-1) is launched now with a taint of partisanship, the country may well end up ungovernable with a loss of faith in the institutions of the Republic.

What to do now. The case above does not argue for never appointing an independent prosecutor but doing so with deliberation. The thesis here is that we need to see some ‘sparks’ in addition the admittedly cough-prone amount of smoke. That means, before an Independent Prosecutor is appointed, probable cause of wrong-doing should be established.

Often, for the allegations of the most egregious crimes, Grand Juries convene and pass a preliminary judgement on the likelihood of culpability. If that probable cause is established, the District Attorney then takes the case forward. Grand Juries would not work here. Impartial jurors would be difficult to find. Additionally, their lives would face disruptions, perhaps threats to their physical or economic security.

The concept of the Grand Jury can be applied to this situation, though I am not sure what it would take to put the (informal) function into place. The President is not above the law, nor should he be denied the presumption of innocence. The proxy Grand Jury I would propose would be a panel composed of the Inspectors General of the Departments of Justice, State and Commerce.

Per a Congressional mandate of a limited scope of time and a focus on specific allegations, these three Inspectors General would conduct a far more limited investigation over the next few months, not to exhaust the review of evidence, but to establish a probable cause for specific charges. That preliminary spade-work would yield one of three outcomes:

• insufficient evidence to establish probable cause by at least two of three of three Inspectors General;
• establishment of probable cause by at least two of three Inspectors General; and,
• an impasse, in which neither of the previous two alternatives gain two votes.

Next Steps of the Inspectors’ General conclusions. The next steps would be dictated by the particular of the three outcomes actually determined.

1. Insufficient evidence would lead to continued delay in, or preclusion of, appointing an Independent Counsel or Prosecutor, though Congressional committees would still enjoy the prerogative to continue their investigations.
2. Establishment of probable cause would lead to immediate establishment of an Independent Prosecutor. 
3. A stand-off would lead to the appointment of an Independent Investigative Counsel to continue investigating without powers of prosecution, should the Congress so mandate.

Should the Department of Justice yield to pressures from the President and refuse to appoint either an Independent Prosecutor or Investigative Counsel, then Congress would establish a joint House-Senate special committee, as called for elsewhere, to investigate the allegations. The results of these ongoing efforts would be public and referred to the House Judiciary Committee for possible articles of impeachment.

Closing thoughts. The purpose of this idea, if it is even possible to do, is to clarify whether or not there should be an intrusive investigation of an unpopular President. The three Inspectors General will be able to come to a (non-)conclusion rapidly. If the President is merely inept and neither dishonest nor traitorous, he deserves to proceed with his agenda. On the other hand, if there are those proverbial sparks to provoke a deep-dive investigation, the appointment of an Independent Prosecutor or Investigative Counsel will be delayed by a month or two. 

Until there is a sense of comfort that President Trump is not as corrupt as an increasing number of people think he is, his agenda will become increasingly mired in debate that appears to be a partisan maneuver to undercut the President. That latter consequence would be damaging to the Republic and her institutions, no matter what the short-term benefits realized by Democrats and Republicans.. 

Finally, as these activities proceed, Congressional leaders need to “make one thing publicly clear”: that Congress reserves the right to deem as a possible “high crime and misdemeanor” (i.e., cause for impeachment proceedings to ensue) any pardon of President Trump by Vice President Pence, viewed as pre-emptive, should the President leave office following removal by the Senate or resignation. 

The reason why this last condition of extraordinary accountability did not apply to President Ford in 1974 was that President Nixon was clearly guilty and disgraced. Additionally, President Nixon never came close to treason and ultimately submitted to the rule of law by not destroying the very evidence that ultimately incriminated him. 

President Ford healed the country in a profile of courage, even recognized by Caroline Kennedy. A pre-emptive pardon by a President Pence would injure our faith in our institutions, possible sounding the death-knell of our belovèd Republic.