Transfer of Power, 2017

Today, Donald Trump will be sworn in as America’s 45^th president. He enters office under a cloud, a huge cloud, a cloud like no one has ever seen before. Believe me.

His approval rating has dropped to around 37% (according to Fox News), unprecedentedly low for an incoming president. For Obama in 2009, it was 80%, more than twice that of Trump.

Trump lost the popular vote by three million, and still became president, which might be a bit difficult to understand for folks in Finland, where one vote equals one vote.

He won the Electoral College by 77 votes (34 over the 270 required to win). He likes to claim this as an historic landslide, despite the fact that Obama won the College by a margin almost three times higher (95 votes). Bill Clinton’s was even higher.

Trump also won after a divisive campaign that included allegations of interference by Russian-sponsored actors. There are reports this week that three of his associates are under investigation by the FBI for inappropriate dealings with the Russian government during the campaign. There may still several shoes to drop before this over.

Winning by the thinnest of margins, Trump is now pushing the most ideological agenda we have seen in since Reagan, who truly did win by a landslide. No matter how you look at it, Trump won with support of only half the country who bothered to vote, yet he’s happy to pretend he has a mandate to ignore the other half (plus some 3,000,000) who voted differently.

The GOP Congress, encouraged by having a nominal Republican in the White House, is preparing to tick off some items on a long-held conservative wish list. Two such items, selling off public lands and dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts, are just two of the most recently reported actions Congress is gearing up for, with the assurance that Trump will sign whatever congressional Republicans want.

I have my doubts that Trump really cares about much of what the Republican Congress has in mind for America, other than repealing Obamacare, building a wall, and perhaps sparking a trade war in the name of “bringing back jobs”. The rest he could care less about.

I suspect he’s made a bargain, if you will a “deal”, with Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell that they can “run things”, pass the laws they want and he’ll sign them. In return, he gets to bask in the glory of being THE PRESIDENT. The alpha male. The Boss.

I’m not happy about any of this. Trump will be president. Sadly, a perfectly legitimate president. I don’t see any reason to doubt he was duly elected, though I do think the FBI and the Russians contributed to his success.

While he may be legitimately elected, you have to wonder how long this erratic, ignorant, entitled, bully will remain in office. There may be grounds already to impeach him, if the Republican Congress so wished to do so, if at some point he becomes a liability or outlives his usefulness. Or, maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

In the meantime, I have no choice but to recognize that he’s becoming president today. A legitimate one, which is a courtesy Trump refused to extend to the 44th president for nearly a decade. Trump will be president, but don’t ask me to celebrate it. 

Radical Islam

I keep hearing conservative critics lambasting President Obama again and again over his refusal to say the words “radical Islam” when talking about terrorism. 

The phrase has become a talisman of the right, a magic charm that if uttered, so it seems, would alone deal a huge blow to Daesh and its brainwashed followers. For me, it's hard to imagine how that particular combination of words coming from Obama’s mouth would strike a lot of fear into the heart of bloodthirsty miscreants in Raqqa. Seriously. It seems drone strikes would be more effective.

Anyway, I saw in a comment thread somewhere on the Internet recently what I thought was a very insightful comment (not “incite-ful”, which is rare for the Internet).

The commentator pointed out that the word “radical” in “radical Islam” can be seen as either a descriptor or an intensifier. As a descriptor, it clarifies what kind of Islam we’re talking about, as in the same way “fundamentalist Christianity” denotes a more conservative form of that diverse religious belief. "Radical Islam" is thus differentiated from, let’s say, mainstream Islam.

On the other hand, “radical” used as an intensifier is a whole other kettle of fish. In this sense, it highlights some essential nature of the word that follows.

The Internet commentator offered an example from the Cold War, a time when many conservatives in the US railed against “Godless Communism”. By using this choice phrase, the John Birch Society and its ilk certainly didn't intend to single out the unbelieving Communists for abuse, compared to those saintly Christian Communists. “Godlessness” was understood to be an inherent part of Communism, baked in to the Marxist cake, so to speak. Tacking on the word “Godless” just ensured that no right-thinking American overlooked this little detail.

The astute Internet commentator went on to say he or she suspected that folks who are most obsessed with the term “radical Islam” are using it like the McCarthite reactionaries of old did. That is, they see all Islam as radical by definition, and they want to make sure everyone knows it. 

Judging by how much anti-Islamic blather I see on the Internet scoffing at the very existence of “moderate Islam”, I have to think the commentator is onto something.

No wonder President Obama wisely declines to play along with that game.

The Home Stretch

Finally, the day has arrived. This time tomorrow, we’ll know who the next American president will be – unless a recount is needed and they have to call in the Supreme Court to cast the deciding vote. It’s happened before.

Something I think non-Americans must marvel at is the sheer length of the US presidential election. Today marks the end of a grueling two years (almost) of campaigning, debating, speechifying, demonizing, and obfuscating (if not sometimes outright lying) by a whole host of political characters. And some were real characters. (Herman Cain, where are you today?) 

No doubt like many others, I feel exhausted just watching the election unfold over the past twenty months or so. I can’t imagine how exhausted Barack Obama and Mitt Romney must feel, here on the home stretch. I also honestly can’t imagine why they would want to put themselves through it all.

In the latest polls, Obama and Romney are running neck-and-neck (you can never overplay horse-race analogies when it comes to elections). They are both showing 49% support nationwide, though Obama seems to be ahead in the only state that really matters, Ohio.

This morning I watched as the first actual votes were counted on live TV in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire – five votes each for Obama and Romney. For the overall results, I’ll have to wait until after the polls start closing at two A.M. Finnish time. I don’t expect to sleep a lot tonight.

To some it might seem that this election has been badly overhyped, portrayed as an epic battle to decide the very future of America. At least the campaigns are happy to put it into such stark terms. As a casual observer, I would have to say:  yes and no. Or maybe.

It’s certainly the bitterest election of my lifetime. That’s a judgment call, of course. The 60s were a particularly politically divisive time, to be sure. But I was a kid then, and there was no talk radio and Internet to give a national forum to every “low information” citizen with a grievance, perceived or real, to pick at endlessly like a festering scab.

Since I don’t live in the States, and especially not in a swing state like Ohio or Colorado, I’m spared the onslaught of TV ads and robocalls flung at the voting public from both sides. Still, I’m feeling election fatigue just from all the political postings that fill my Facebook and Twitter feeds. To be fair, I’ve brought this on myself by choosing to follow certain tireless and prolific political sites. And I’ve posted my own share of unwanted and provocative status updates from time to time.

I’ve noticed that the political postings of many of my Georgia Facebook friends, who seem unanimously to support Romney, have slacked off in recent weeks. Maybe like me, they’re getting tired of it all. Or maybe they’ve become discouraged, as Romney has struggled to pull ahead of Obama. That’s my own spin, of course.

Or maybe they realize that since Romney will win Georgia anyway, and there’s no chance their postings will ever sway those elusive undecided voters in Ohio (the only voters who really count anyway), it’s pointless to publicly declare their strong disdain for Democrat Barack Obama. In Republican Georgia, that’s preaching to a choir that has long packed up and gone home.

It’s hard to ignore how poisonous the atmosphere has become. For example, a phone call a while back with someone in the States ended abruptly when our chat drifted to the rather staid topic of, wait for it, the Federal Reserve. Add “monetary policy” to the two topics that are traditionally too sensitive to be brought up in polite conversation – religion and politics.

Still, the atmosphere is surely nothing like that during the election of 1860, which resulted in half the United States deserting the other half, with the ensuing deaths of some 750,000 Americans. The US is not anywhere near that level of polarization, though some addled-minded blowhard somewhere is surely expecting another round of secession if Obama is reelected. I sure hope he doesn’t have access to guns (of course he has), or his own radio talk show (some have that, too).

Even many apparently sane conservatives are predicting dire consequents for the country if Obama wins. Obviously, I don’t agree. Likewise, some liberals see dark days ahead if Romney pulls out a victory. That’s based, of course, on Romney actually keeping half the promises he’s been forced to make trying to convince the Tea Party Republicans that he’s not, gasp, a moderate. There is still a chance that if he wins, he’ll ditch all that nonsense and govern like a reasonable person after all.

That’s the argument being made by David Frum in his recent endorsement of Mitt Romney. Frum, the George W. Bush speechwriter who so famously coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” in the propaganda campaign leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, is now considered a rare moderate voice in an increasingly extremist Republican Party. My, how times have changed. 

One telling reason for Frum thinking Romney is the better choice is the fanaticism of his own party.

“The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP — and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013.” (Emphasis added.)

Wow. You could call this the “Mel Gibson ‘Lethal Weapon’” rationale, something like:  “I’m way, way crazier than you are, dude, so you’d better do whatever the hell I say, or we’re both going down together.”

Call me old fashion, but given a choice, I always go with the least crazy bunch of folks. I only hope today that the good people of Ohio do the same. 

The Humor of Mitt Romney

Among the many brouhahas, big and small, that have popped up in this election cycle in the US, the most recent is a comment that Mitt Romney made before an adoring crowd in a suburb of Detroit, his hometown.

After taking to the stage, Romney flaunted his homeboy bona fides by reminding the crowd of supporters that he and his wife were both born in hospitals nearby. Then, riffing off the cheers, he went on to say, “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know this is the place where we were born and raised.”

Well, isn’t that nice. Democrats pounced on Romney’s obvious attempt to distinguish himself from Barack Obama. They saw it as a sly nod to the Birthers, those conspiracy cultists who refuse to believe that Barack Obama was born in the USA, and hence isn't eligible to be president.

The Republican spin to Romney’s gaffe was that he was simply making a joke, a bit of humor that Democrats are too tight-assed to appreciate. 

If Romney was making a joke, it was a very inept joke. Then again, he’s not altogether known for his humor. And I think he suffers from poor impulse control when he’s making unscripted remarks. He should bear down whenever he feels a joke coming on. He should fight the urge really, really hard.

On the face of it, the remark was stupid anyway. Why bring up birth certificates to tout the fact that you grew up in the place where you grew up? I suspect that no one in Obama’s old neighborhood in Honolulu ever asked to see his birth certificate, either. Except maybe Donald Trump’s private investigators, if they ever existed at all.  

Even if Romney meant his birth certificate comment to be a joke, he should have realized it’s not a joke he can get away with.

Obama can do it (and I think he has done so), because he’s the one who’s been dogged by the ceaseless requests to produce proof of birth. In that case, the humor’s directed at himself. Romney making a birth certificate joke is like non-Mormon Obama saying, “Somehow, I’ve never been asked how many wives I actually have”.

By stressing that no one has ever doubted his citizenship, Romney does set himself apart from Obama, but not in a positive way. It draws attention to the kind of scrutiny and suspicion that Obama has been forced to endure over his legitimacy, but for which Romney – a white guy from a wealthy family – gets a free pass. It underlines his sense of entitlement.

To send the same message, he could have just as easily boasted to the crowd in Michigan: “I’ve never had trouble flagging down a taxi in the middle of the night.” or “I’ve never been stalked by a neighborhood watchman.”

Oh dear, I think I just played the race card there. No worries. It was only a joke. 

Buyer's Remorse?

I think it’s great how some figures of speech in English perfectly sum up a concept in just a couple of words.  Though I’m sure Finnish and practically any other language have expressions that are just as pithy and colorful, I’d like to think that English is especially inventive this way, being as it is a hugely cosmopolitan and vibrant language.  Examples of such vivid word-parings that come to mind are “bar fly”, “mission creep”, and one of my all-time favorites, “pillow talk”. 

Lately, I’ve been seeing another such phrase sprinkled all over some of the political blogs I read:  “buyer’s remorse”.  This is the regret that someone feels after – sometimes immediately after – purchasing something that at first they were probably pretty excited about.  Usually it’s used in the realm of car buying, which has also given us “sticker shock” (the unpleasant jolt you feel when you first see the selling price of a car). 

Everyone has experienced the let down (another succinct phrase) you feel after realizing the wonderful piece of merchandize you finally got your hands on doesn’t quite live up to your expectations.  This has been my standard reaction to any laptop I’ve ever owned. 

However, the “buyer’s remorse” I’ve been hearing about over the last couple of weeks has nothing to do with commerce.  It has all to do with Barack Obama.  Various progressive commentators in the media and blogosphere have started expressing more than mere disappointment with the President’s performance.  They have moved on to outright regret over voting for him. 

The notion recently gaining some currency among these bloggers is that they backed the wrong horse in 2008 and that Hillary Clinton may have been the better choice.  Regrettably, I’m starting to feel the same way. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I think President Obama is a good and decent man.  And honest.  I have no reason to think otherwise.  I think he’s a smart guy and is much better suited for the job than John McCain would have been.  I also think he’s getting a raw deal (another good phrase) from many of the critics who blame him for not being an economic miracle worker. 

Or, on second thought, maybe I agree with them.  I confess that, with the economic collapse that the US was facing in 2008, I was hoping Obama would be the second coming of FDR.  I can’t claim to be a student of the New Deal, but I’ve always had a lot of admiration for Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, admiration passed on to me from my father who lived through those times and seemed to think a lot of FDR, despite not exactly being Democrat himself. 

When Obama was sworn into office, I was hoping he was going to rise to the occasion and guide the US through these troubling times the way FDR did in the 30s.  Instead, in the face of the conservative backlash following his election, Obama has proven to be far too accommodating to his opponents and, let’s be honest, far too weak a leader to get his agenda across to the American people.  With the exception of health care reform, that is.  That was a huge achievement, but even then it was only a halfway measure, a compromise – maybe a necessary one, but still a compromise nonetheless and one that didn’t gain him any friends among conservatives. 

In almost every confrontation with Republicans, Obama has been far too willing to give ground.  Perhaps he does this in the name of being practical or in the spirit of bipartisanship, which was a centerpiece of his campaign.  I, for one, wasn’t inspired by his promise to reach across the aisle to the other party, and it’s clear his conciliatory instincts haven’t exactly served him well. 

In the 2008 race, I was torn between voting for a history-making first black president or a history-making first female president.  I wanted to vote for both and, in a sense, I did.  I voted for Clinton in the primary, and was then happy to be able to vote for Obama in the general election.  And I was naturally thrilled that he won. 

At the time, I would have imagined that a Clinton presidency would have triggered an even fiercer backlash, given the history of the 90s and the strong hatred that Republicans still seem to feel for the Clintons.  Now, it’s hard to imagine how the backlash could have any worse, and I can’t help think that Hillary – as tough as they come and no stranger to political tangling – would have at least fought back. 

Still, I haven’t completely given up on Obama.  I wouldn’t want to see Clinton challenge him for the nomination next year, and I’ll certainly vote for him no matter what.  I just hope that, in the meantime, Mr. Obama begins to show more conviction and toughness and a willingness to finally give the Republicans a good dose of what can be summed up by another apt phrase:  “whoop ass”.