It has been an interesting five days since the 2016 election. Taking another swing at this blog after another extended absence. Thoughts and views haven’t changed much so a lot of the older content is still accurate, the only difference being the current roster of miscreants and demagogues have changed to match a world two years on. Here’s to seeing what happens next.
Category: Presidential Campaign
The Congress shall have power to…
I have been gone for awhile. I have several unpublished posts from the last year that are all too dated to publish. It’s been a weird road, watching the nation go on, watching the ups and downs, and not talking about it. I was comfortable writing thousands of words, critiques on the matters of State, and deleting them because, honestly, I was vain and empty. The world, I believed, wanted flash. Shining lights bright colors in streamers at the bottom of the television set. Well dressed hosts in $5,000 suits quantifying matters of international concern one moment and then tittering about puppies the next.
It is grotesque, and will continue to be so because they have the money, the advertisers, and the professionals that pour through reams of data that tell them this is exactly what their viewers want. I was fine with this. It is their money, it is their channel, and their viewers. I can go without that. I have disagreed with their tactics, but that is theirs, and there are bigger fish to fry.
The link above goes to an article from CTV News regarding the President’s bid to expand the American military presence in Iraq. The president and his “legal team” have attempted to craft a legal maneuver around the restrictions of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution and War Powers Act of 1973 and a host of international standards regarding national sovereignty and international war.
I am not fond of snippets. However, the scope of the section I will post the relevant text of the enumerated powers from Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:
The Congress shall have power…to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.
It is a fundamental thing. A simple idea that the people of a nation, not a single man or woman, should decide when and why the nation goes to war. It was the desire to remove the absolute authority of the king that prompted the declaration of war to be put in the hands of the people and their representatives in the Legislative, rather than Executive, branch.
We have seen challenges to this power time, and time again. From The Gulf of Tomkin to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As a matter of fact, scholars have spoken on this very matter:
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne…
That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
Granted the speech is from the buildup to the second Iraq War, and if the word choice and tone sounds familiar, it should. President, then Senator, Barack Obama delivered this address on October 2nd, 2002. The most poignant words of his speech apply just as much to his actions as Commander in Chief as they did to President George Bush when he was decrying the impetus by the Executive Branch to to follow the unwise course of action that would, eventually, embroil the American military in one of it’s longest running military actions:
Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.
Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair. The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.
Since that time we have followed through on practically none of these issues. ISIS/ISIL is loaded with young men from Saudi Arabia. Their government wonders how we, not they, will stop ISIS/ISIL from arriving at their door because they have, for decades, done exactly what was warned against decades before, and elucidated by President Obama when he put pen to paper in 2002.
Here we stand twelve years later. Still beholden to the rampant policies of the Middle East. Policies and movements rooted in religious bigotry rather than rational discourse. National well-being discarded in lieu of perceived religious bias. Our nation, weary from two, decade-long wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of countrymen, and countless civilians. What fruit have we seen from these wars? None.
A broken nation stands, still fighting with itself. A region that is progressing further into chaos because of selfish policies set decades ago, and being overseen by petty dictators. Armies without parent countries formed from the most zealous, uneducated, and blood-thirsty. We, as a nation, failed to step up onto the world stage and engaged in statesmanship rather than showmanship. We negotiated with the sword rather than with an olive branch, or bread basket. We remain the most powerful solely because of “investment” in a military that’s purpose is to project the promise of violence. We have deferred diplomacy in lieu of the capacity to annihilate those who stand against us.
Have we used these powers judiciously, to an extent. We have destroyed with one hand, but in the other there should have been honest cooperation with those who remain. To allow nations to decide how they would rule themselves instead of listening to the Young Turk who believes they know all. Here we stand, here our President stands. Seeing, hopefully, all the follies we have committed, and, hopefully, learning from them.
Limited action against ISIS/ISIL has been successful, but the time of Presidential operation without the purview of the electorate is at an end. The notion that lawyers are working around the clock to further stretch the President’s capacity to operate without the consent of Congress, and by proxy the people, is a distasteful indication of a desire to operate outside of the realm of the Constitution. A need to push the letter of the law as far as it can go, knowing that those who would punish in the case it breaks are firmly in your pocket. It dishonors the spirit of the law, and the notion that the representatives of the people should decide when we are to go to war. It was the firm notion 227 years ago that no President would ever have this nations army at his beck and call for extended use. If this is to be another war, let it be a war America chooses, rather than the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Sanity reigns in the Old Dominion but it isn’t stopping the show
On Friday a highly anticipated decision regarding the appearance of Primary candidates who couldn’t muster enough support to be placed on the Virginia ballot came down, and it was an absolute delight. The Hon. John A Gibney Jr. echoed what many had said over the weeks leading up to this (copy of the decision provided care of Politico): “In essence, they played the game, lost and then complained that the rules were unfair.”
I saw former Speaker of the House New Gingrich as being the sole individual who might even have a modicum of a chance in the challenge, with the disparate rules regarding those who get over 10,000 signatures and those who get over 15,000 signatures. So, when he didn’t file the suit, and it was Rick “I barely pulled off half of what was required” Perry, it was doomed to fail. When Santorum and Huntsman jumped on board, it was an obvious grab, like those who aren’t directly affected by a particular event, but jump onto a civil lawsuit pocket some ill-gotten reward, the theatre of the situation only worsened. The most galling of notes, aside from the Huntsman/Santorm scam attempt, was that Gingrich did not file notice of intent to run for office in Virginia until 22 December 2011. For those unaware, signature collection began on 1 July 2011.
The argument that if the candidates had access to the horde of out-of-state petition gatherers (of the paid variety I imagine) that they would have easily trumped the 10,000 signature requirement is dubious at best. Judge Gibney pointed out in his decision that there are over five million registered voters in Virginia, and close to two million participated in the last statewide election. Cut down the middle that means that there were one million active voters that should have been available to had their doors knocked and said yes or no. If all candidates had hit those doors, and assuming a one in ten chance of success, that still leaves roughly 100,000 voter signatures, more than enough for all of the candidates combined, and room for a few more. Another point of disclosure, a registered voter can sign for more than one candidate.
I will give a local example to ply exactly how poorly these men failed: Ben Loyola, a local businessman, ran for State Senate last year. During his campaign he is said to have knocked on over 50,000 doors personally. After the campaign events were done for the night, barring it wasn’t too late, he along with his campaign manager and body man would head out to a section of the district he was running for and started on a block, and away he would go. Sometimes only 20 houses in a night, sometimes north of 100. Either way, he was on the ground personally. Come election day Mr. Loyola, sadly, did not win, but pulled in over 10,000 votes. Those in the game have said the door to actual vote ration is somewhere in the 10:1 range. If a local businessman can walk from the Hampton Roads area to the border of Maryland looking for support on what would be even less than a shoe-string budget compared to a national campaign, then all of these individuals running for President could have gotten the word out, or, at the least, made a damn appearance in the state. A Gingrich event at a park, cordinated with one of the Tea Party organizations would have brought hundred, mayhaps a few thousand.
What happened in earnest, is that the candidate didn’t put their foot forward, and in the case of Santorum and Huntsman, they flatly didn’t give a damn (Santorum did gather signatures, but since he never filed a notice to run in the state of Virginia, the signatures were turned away). Those in Virginia now roaring to the Heavens about the intolerable nature of it all, and the vile laws that govern the way it goes have forgotten that their signature and their options on the ballot are driven not only by their keen interest in a candidate, but in the candidate’s campaign to do the bare minimum. Santorum is a perfect example with the thousands spent in Virginia to gather the roughly 8,000 signatures, then to have them turned away because he didn’t fill out the needed paperwork. He, himself, and his campaign managers, national and Virginia, are bearers of blame there.
Virginia is not some evil society of string-pulling puppeteers winnowing the field of choices down to the guy they kinda-don’t-like and the one that is getting run over because he sounds crazy saying in public what we’ve been chatting about over kitchen tables for the last twenty years. The law is in place, followed for decades, and performed as intended. Should someone fail to follow the letter of the law, there is a punishment that goes along with that. Those who cannot even follow that simple dictum have no place running for the highest office in the land. If they can’t figure out one state’s requirements for a simple primary petition, how can we have any faith that they will be able to grasp the issue then provide educated insight and leadership on topics far, far more complex?
Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…
We’ve now seen the full Circus. The major players have performed their acts. The clowns are in their car puttering off the floor, the rings are thoroughly beaten down with the prints of every elephant contending for the spotlight, and the audience is just as confused and disoriented than they were upon entering the tent. Tragic, is it not, how easily the pageantry and absurdity of the circus reflects the ebb and tide of the pre-primary seasons for the Republican party.
What we saw was a rise of individual stars who would burn out as quickly as they blazed into the spotlight leaving behind only hollow bodies in the vast expanse of the political space. Like those burned out stars, they leave husks that either disappear with time, or continue to flicker on, acting more as an irritant or pouring out continuous drivel and noxious commentary that provides nothing more to the current political discourse than a nauseating reminder that at one point a significant number of people believed them capable of winning an election for President.
No, this thirteen ring circus has done nothing for our party, and it surely has done no good for the political process. A fellow follower of politics stated that he believed this was a maturing of the party’s political savvy. A method by which the body politic separated the wheat from the chaff and would winnow our candidates down to those most deserving. I wanted to agree with him, but I had the feeling that this was too “celebrity” with the likes of Palin and Trump toting about the ever ambiguous hash of a campaign not yet announced.
I, along with a goodly number of people, look back and realize that it wasn’t about winnowing the wheat from the chaff. The process was not about locating the best candidate, nor was it about finding the best Republican to run. There was an ebb and flow to the entire affair. Someone came in, shined brighter because the harsh spotlight was on someone else, and they, by lack of close scrutiny, became the best candidate for the job by proxy. The light would shift, the audience would become enthralled with the new champion of the right, and so the cycle began anew. It was faddish in the most derogatory form of the word. The herd ran where the press led with signs highlighting word choice and bold, but ultimately mindless, plans. Catchphrases replaced worldly experience, education on policy trumped by showmanship, and knee-jerk responses became the headlines rather than the cultured response of, not those who happened to read the paper from the day before, but from those who had done this sort of thing before.
The most sickening part of the show comes from two sad players in the run of any show. There is a director, an individual who through instruction and cultivation of his actors has created the spectacle before you. In this sad and sallow case we happen to have two on hand. The litany of Tea Parties and the surprisingly quiet Republican National Committee.
The Tea Party has rushed to the center of the ring as a barker possessed of a need to upstage the existing ringmaster. It has become a monumentally disastrous initiative that has done little more than chisel away at a what little firmament there was in the base of the party. All the while the RNC, the chosen ringmaster of this show for nigh on decades now sits somberly by, not wishing to interfere or to interject itself into state level politics, having been burned or spurned by those groups in the last round of elections. The rally cry and subsequent victories of the tea party in the public eye shocked the RNC into a sort of fugue state that now threatens to undermine the organization as a whole.
We have one ringmaster who has a faint idea of what they are doing and another who appears to be asleep at the wheel, and one wonders why the field has yet to be winnowed down. I understand that are arguments to the effect that the voters must decide who is the most viable candidate, and to those arguments I will concur wholeheartedly, but that only applies if the voters are willing to decide. The day of the primaries is not the time to hop into a booth and play enie-menie-minie-mo with the candidate pictures on the touch screen. If they have been weighed and measured then the truest test comes when asking if they are found wanting. Only when the audience decides to boo one of the shows off the stage will the ringmasters even begin to pay attention. Then, and maybe then we will see some serious discussions. The time for debate is, sadly, over, and now we are to march out of the tent and to the polls to decide which elephant danced the best in the center ring. To wait for one of the performers to be shamed off stage out of their own self-interest rather than because the audience finds them unfit is a horrifying indications of how desperate the voter base is to hang on to an idol no matter how temporary.
Should we ever reach the conclusion that none of the candidates could put on a noteworthy performance and were being held up by gross expectations of the biggest player in this entire farce we are well and truly lost because “a good try” will guarantee a failure in 2012.
Old Jeffersonian 