The story of US: divided we stand

 “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discrimination. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. 

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy."

Looking at the partisan gridlock that shuts down the Federal Government every other year should reminds us George Washington's warning in his 1796 Farewell Address. In this last speech, Washington -who had decided to be a two-term president and retire from public life at the height of his popularity instead of becoming (as some proposed) a King- lay down critical advice for those he knew will follow in a peaceful succession of governments. 

What Washington described more than 200 years ago is on today's news -and every four or some years-:

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. "

Partisanship, Washington warned:

"serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."

Government shutdowns and filibusters are some of the forms divided government protects us from our extremists and our partisan excesses. Far from being "dysfunctional" (as frustrated partisans claim every time they play the play) is extremely effective as a enforcer of reason and negotiation. Everybody is served its share of humble pie and reminded government in the US is divided on purpose. And the purpose is bargaining and compromising.

Washington understood the value of partisan cross-checks over administrations as a way to keep them from excesses such as those the Framers saw in France with the Terror days. Partisanship was a natural manifestation of liberty to be protected:

"There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. 

But with restraint:

"in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”"

Looking at gridlock with the lenses of a long view, one of those restraints to extremism is the division of powers and the ability of each branch to put a stop on the others.

Madison (Federalist 10) and the Framers designed what we could call "the Madison trap" in the Constitution, creating a Republic of law ruled through layers of powers and representatives instead of a popular (and populist) Democracy ruled by referendums and "mandates" from circumstantial majorities. United States were not designed to elect monarchs but temporary custodians of the public interest. 

A divided government, paradoxically, helped a "house divided" such as the United States are stand together better than a monolithic one. 

After 250 + years, no other democratic government on Earth has succeeded without a single year of dictatorship. No Cesar, no Napoleon, no Party. Not even during or after a Civil War. Lincoln took war powers with restraint, looking at the long view of the war's aftermath and reconciliation.

For all the irrationality, waste and foolishness of the rules that allow government shutdowns, filibusters, federal and state rights and courts or other ways to block circumstantial majorities from ramming their priorities through our COTUS -or one-sided SCOTUS from legislating from the bench- , these "dysfunctional" rules of governance have been and will continue to be essential in keeping the United States as a Republic, just as Benjamin Franklin wanted.

Trump and Pelosi, as those who preceded them and those who will follow, will have to accept a negotiate with each other. The cost and difficulty of gridlock will always be lesser than the alternative. Look at Venezuela.

That's worth the regular scandal and food-fight spectacle we have every other time a controversial decision is to be made.

A house divided is, paradoxically, the way for US to stand.

The Rise of the Freak: Slander Populism

"What goes around comes around", goes the saying. President Trump is justifiably outraged by the vicious, unproved accusations of being a Russian agent or even a Benedict Arnold spread during the last weeks by anti-Trump media.  He is right on that, for sure. Now he can appreciate how  it feels being at the receiving end of what he usually launches at his rivals.

Donald J. Trump made outrageous accusations a key component of his campaigning tactics. Now Democrats and their "friendly media" (CNN, MSNBC) returned him the favor, spreading accusations of being a Russian agent or some kind of Benedict Arnold.

For normal people -still a sizable portion of the US electorate- the kind of slander politics that populist candidates use for lack of ideas and policies becomes tiring and off-putting.

There is an extra benefit in slander politics: voter suppression. 

For Far Left and Far Right fringe extremists, slander contests help keep the moderate majority away. And favor extremist and fringe candidates that live from the politics of hatred and confrontation.

• On the Right:  Birthers, (still looking for Obama's closet-Muslim, resented Kenian nationalist past) , Tea Partiers, White Nationalists (formerly Supremacists)  and those listening to the likes of Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh. Add Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich for better articulated English.
• On the Left: Black Lives Matter (still looking for white policemen to blame for abuse while deflecting or rejecting attention to black-on-black crime) , Antifa (looking for White Supremacists) , La Raza (waving Mexican flags to demand US citizenship) and a myriad of identity politics causes.

Since the election of the first black president, the politics of slander became more belligerent on both extremes of the spectrum. 

Unfortunately, fringe politics are spectacular and eye-catching, like reality shows or Jerry Springer's catfigthing spectacles. They have been that way since P.T. Barnum and Ripley discovered and popularized freak shows.

Democrats -the party of no ideas- have decided to compete for the party of bad ideas championship with a series of their own:

1. Matching  Trump's slander and personal aggression with theirs.
2. Voting and shouting down those that are not extreme enough.
3. Embracing fringe politics such as "Green Taxes" to the "rich", open-ended liability for speech, identity politics, "cultural appropriation" bans and barriers and taking campus politics mainstream. 

Will these policies help Democrats get elected? Maybe. It's a matter of time to see how they do at the polls. 

But even it they work to help them win: what kind of policies will "win"? 

Who are "they", the winners?

"Engagement" in slander politics is perhaps worse than indifference.

What Trump got Wrong

Given all the things Trump got right and might make him re-elected and a consequential POTUS, we should think that Americans and the rest of the world should be happy and hopeful as they were when Ronald Reagan showed he was more than a Hollywood actor and a Cold War warrior. 

Unfortunately, this is not as a clean-cut case. Reagan was a transparent man with strong personal, political and ethical principles. Even those who hated his policies came to love or at least respect the man.

Trump is the polar opposite. While many Republican, Independent and even some Blue Dog Democrats understand and share his policies -especially in the economic, foreign policy and derregulation/deburocratization fronts-, most have strong reservations towards the man in charge as a person, as a politician and as a leader.

Here are some of the things Trump got wrong and could cost dearly not just to his Presidency but to the country:

• Short-term focus, simplistic, past-mirrored vision. MAGA is a hat, not a policy. It is also mired in a symbolic, idyllic past (Again) rather than on a real future. It assumes that everything will go back to the 1950s postwar dominance and the 1960s economy. MAGA is more about undoing the Obama-Clinton-Bush legacy than creating new policy. "Policy is me", could say Trump paraphrasing King Louis XIV. "After me, the flood", could add as well, in this case paraphrasing De Gaulle. Well, the flood is at best coming by 2024. Something that the older, silver-haired Trump base might not care as much as the millenials or early Baby boomers.
• Trade wars and protectionism. Even if Trump is telling the truth (something even his closest aides have come to doubt) about this being a "rough bargaining" tactic and not a preference, its side effect has been stimulating protectionism (a popular trend everywhere among those economically illiterate) in both Trump's supporters, his antagonists (the Sanders-Antifa-La Raza- BLM-Dems and the anti-globalization Far Left) and foreign governments, forcing unpredictable consequences in the near term. If China and Europe -who are reluctantly pretending to resist a trade war- continue to decline economically, the world will suffer a major economic slowdown. Peter Navarro and other fringe protectionists -as in many other cases- are running the show with bad advice and half-baked theories. As in many other cases (Steve Bannon's white nationalism comes to mind) Trump might end having to backtrack after some significant self-damage is done and felt (watch US farmers).
• Financial irresponsibility After (correctly) blaming Obama administration for balooning the debt (something that would not have been necessary without Bush 43 reckless spending in "nation building" abroad) , Trump shows no interest in changing the destructive course of US finances and debt. Worse than that, POTUS 45 brags about his record in bankrupting his way out of financial trouble in business and talks about a possible US default as an option (no matter that it's explicitly banned by our Constitution). The potential result of the accumulated thrust of the collective POTUS heritage and the direction of the debt might cost dearly to US and the world, not to mention POTUS 46 and 47.
• Hate-mongering, exploitation of cultural wars, hatred-fanning. What is good for a reality show rating seems to be good for ushering the "base" vote and win (narrowly) elections. Trump has proven an artist in using insult and personal attacks as a way to taunt opponents, making them move far to fringe, unelectable Left-wing candidates and positions. The net result is a toxic climate that turns traditional culture wars into a low-grade civil war and compromises constitutional institutions, checks and balances. There is a method in  Trump's theatrical madness, but his performing talent reminds of the worst of vernacular populism -from William Jennings Bryant's People's Party to "Every Man a King" Huey Long and Joe McCarthy's witch-hunts (which Trump characteristically -it was his shared mentor  Roy Cohn's favorite tactic- turns around presenting himself as a victim of). The most negative consequence of Trump's tactics is tarnishing good policies with negative, self-destructive politics.
• One-man-show government. Trump has brought to POTUS 45 his (bad) management habits in spades: one-man-show, lack of organization, repelling or burning out competent people, crowding with sycophants and family, not delegate, half-delegate, then undercut the delegate, zig zagging positions, run-by-whim decision-making, and so on. A full playbook of bad small business management with pages taken from The Apprentice. Only that the real apprentice is POTUS 45. 
• Opportunistic, amoral approach to government. Trump inherited bad advice from his own father, real estate business experience and some mentors borrowed and inherited from Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon such as Roy Cohn and Roger Stone.. 
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• Like Nixon, Trump has a penchant for using crooks and checkered characters to do "special operations" in his favor. Like in Nixon's case, these seem to be causing him headaches and political risks beyond his own calculations.

• There is no principle to come before economic or tactical convenience, as shown by Trump's casual 360s on the wall, one of his hobby horses. This lack of principle combines with a Nixonian tendency to intrigue and secrecy that has already driven the Mueller investigation, a constant flurry of disaffected whistle-blowers and a climate in the White House that has been recurrently described as dysfunctional. 
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• The good that inspiring fear on enemies can cause can be outweighed by the lack of trust on the words and commitments from the current POTUS office. 

Will the things Trump got right outweigh the things he got wrong? Will it be the other way around? 

There is no way to answer that better than it would be in a small business ran by a egotistic owner. Think of Henry Ford I. Or Juan Peron. Those of us who grew in populist-driven Latin America have seen this over almost 80 years. And the consequences are in plain display in Argentina, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.

Let's hope for the best. And be prepared for the worst.

What Trump got right

Donald J. Trump is likelier to be a two-term POTUS, in spite of the brutal polarization, the controversial and incoherent policies (deregulation + tariffs?) and the constant zig zagging, managerial chaos that characterize this unusual presidency.

How can it be possible that DJT then can be considered "likelier" to be a two-term POTUS?

How can it be possible that Trump has been a one-term POTUS at all? asks the "Trump-hating" opposition.

Here are some blunt reasons why Trump will likely be reelected, perhaps in a landslide:

• Prioritize middle Americans concerns: jobs now, small businesses, policing, border security, healthcare costs. Trump -an experienced salesman and media mogul- sensed earlier than others (around 2011) that both Democrats and Republicans forgot those fundamentals and where woefully out of touch with the growing demand from voters across the spectrum and the country.
• PC-speech and elite-fatigue:  Americans are sick and tired of Liberal platitudes and language-policing censorship. Many voters in critical Mid-America states felt patronized and looked down by Obama's professorial condescension and Hillary's aggressive put-downs (her ill-fated "deplorables" probably sealed her fate). Most Americans think that "freedom of speech" includes their own speech and resent being force-fed with "newspeak" by fringe progressivism. They (some secretly) appreciated Trump's dismissal of political correctness and even his aggressive ti-for-tat.
• Right economic moves and measures: tax cuts, derregulation, pro-business message have created and sustained a bull market and ratcheted up growth from 2 to 4 percent GDP-wise, from 120.000 to 330,000 monthly jobs, raising salaries for the first time in a decade, while lowering unemployment and keeping inflation below 2 percent.
• Stop apologizing - go on the offensive Americans saw the contempt and disrespect shown to the politeness and sensibility of Obama's Cairo speech and with Chavez at OAS. They didn't like to see their President lectured by a bigoted demagogue like Chavez or catering to PLO and Hamas Far Left, anti-American supporters in UN and EU. Trump offered no apologies, even laughed at UN's reaction to his absurd self-vindicating claims. The message was clear: I don't need your Nobel Peace Prize. US doesn't accept EU or UN tutelage on moral or ideological grounds, much less foreign policy.
• Use bargaining power Trump's disrespect for what he considered bad deals for US opened a new round of bargaining, forcing those who took US for granted to took it seriously and make concessions. Whether this ends in successes or failures, it will be seen on a case-by-case basis. Americans love renegotiating mortgages, salaries, prices, loans, and loved the attitude.
• Stick and carrot TR used this policy effectively in the 1910s. "Speak softly and carry a big stick" worked and works with thugs and dictators such as those currently in power in Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. They respect power and brute force, neither care nor understand principle (what means principle for China, Russia, Iran or Venezuela leaders? What for PLO, Hamas, and the larger Middle East? They certainly respect Tomahawks, 300-ship US Navy and the promise of bombing them to the ashes. More than everything, they respond to fear and unpredictable, credible menaces from what is by far the most powerful economy and military on Earth. They depend on US economic and military might far more than the other way around. Trump carried his stick with gusto and credibility, without "red lines". So far it has worked.

Having said all this, Trump still is all the other things: a dangerous opportunist, a Nixonian-minded politician, a one-man, "Wizzard of Oz" real estate speculator and also someone with a probably criminal track record of money laundering as the basis for his business record.

The "king of default" motto is also a worrying sign. His bankruptcies another. The "wrecking ball" POTUS is likely to bring the roof over his head (and ours) down. Those who lived through Latin American demagogues like Peron or Menem or Italy's Berlusconi know very well what kind of disaster can someone like them bring given free reign of the POTUS position.

That's why Madison's checks and balances are so fundamental.

But without understanding what Trump got right, there is no better alternative for American voters to support.

You cannot beat somebody with nobody. You cannot beat bad ideas with no ideas.  

Hating Trump is not a policy. It's exactly the way to campaign for him -showing there is no alternative-. "Democratic socialism" , "sanctuary cities", war on police, free immigration are perfect formulas to re-elect Trump. Or to get elected in Puerto Rico.

And perhaps the next president after his two terms as well.

The Trump 2020 reelection committee

Save for a 2019 sudden economic collapse , Donald J. Trump will be re-elected in 2020 for a larger margin than in 2016.

This will be more likely if the roster of 34+ candidates (perhaps even more?) continues to look as of today. It's McGovern 1972 all over again. The likelihood of an Elizabeth  Warren , Bernie Sanders , Ocasio Cortes or Kamala Harris Presidency are remote in a general election taking place outside college campuses. They don't even belong in the Biden-Bradley league of primary contenders. They belong in the Green Party's, Ralph Nader's asteroids galaxy of fringe candidates. (footnote: Ocasio Cortez wants to run on a Green New Deal Tax already)

Yet, the Democratic party -the only viable opposition in a bipartisan system- seems as Hell-bent on self-immolation as it was when it elected McGovern in 1972. "Democratic socialist" Democrats should heed Karl Marx's advice that history repeats itself only as a farce.

A more viable challenge would be a more Main street-, Middle America-oriented ticket such as Biden-Oprah or vice versa -attending to the popularity of identity politics among Democrats and Good Old Joe's experience as Obama's VP and perennial presidential hopeful since 1980 (that's 39 years of experience serenading voters)-. They seem to be exploring those waters as well, and they make good pictures together.

The most likely outcome is that either formula of the party of no ideas will be trounced by Trump in a fair economy. More even if the GDP grows north of 3 percent and unemployment continues sinking.

The choice between bigotry and chavism, Russia's crony capitalism or Puerto Rico's "democratic socialism" is quite unappealing. 

Lots of independents and Never Trumpers will wait out for 2024. 

The problem with competent , moderate candidates

Mitt Romney's misfortunes as a moderate Republican candidate epitomize some of the difficulties of democratic rule: competence is not enough to win elections. 

Mike Bloomberg -probably the most qualified candidate around with a stellar record in business and governing New York city as an independent- came to the same conclusion recently:

The unfortunate consequence of the most competent candidates self-selecting out of the race is that (a) the choice between the lesser of two evils -the party of no ideas vs the party of bad ideas- and (b) the prevalence of "off-the-wall" extremists that in normal times would be the ones opting out of a presidential race.

As a consequence -as in 2015 with Republicans- the 2019 Democratic rosters are overpopulated with under-qualified candidates that are likely to lose against the incumbent in a landslide like the one McGovern obtained in 1972 serving the White House to Richard M. Nixon's infaust second term. 

Democracy is not the best system to select competent candidates. For all its obvious miseries, the parties' old  "smoking rooms" that were the norm before 1968 Chicago DNC Convention offered better chances to non-charismatic, yet highly competent candidates. Governors, congress members and mayors were much better at selecting candidates than the "beauty contests" -or reality shows- that came after. Primaries are not even truly democratic, because informed, reasoning voters are outnumbered by those bamboozled by smear campaigns, social media or tweets.

And -as in the case of Governor and Senator Romney and Mayors Bloomberg- they allowed competency to get in office and turn around the disasters left behind by charismatic incompetence such as Salt Lakes Olimpic Games, Massachusetts' healthcare or Lindsay's crime-ridden, broke New York-.

The alternative for competency, otherwise, is to line up behind populist characters -like McCain picking Sarah Palin as VP candidate or Romney pitching for Secretary of State for Donald Trump-. Such Faustian pacts end usually poorly.

The art of the (bad) deal

Contrary to Barry Goldwater's assertion, moderation can be virtue when applied to public policy and government as much as it is applied to private life and personal behavior. Thinking otherwise is what brought us -and US- where we are now.

It's not all well what ends well. If the economy favors Trump, he will likely be a two-terms POTUS. The collateral damage brought by his uncivil rule will last longer than those economic results: a low-grade civil war, the rise of incompetent extremists and charlatans in both parties, a general decadence of the Union.