“State Of The Union Vs. State Of The Trump”: Our Political Spite And Meanness Have Gotten Out Of Control
Barack Obama really does not have it so bad. He gets $400,000 a year in salary, $50,000 in expenses, a fleet of planes, a car and driver, and almost all the golf he can stand.
In other words, the president’s life is almost as good as Donald Trump’s.
With one major exception: President Obama feels actual remorse. And considerable responsibility. And Trump may never have felt either.
In his last State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Obama spoke of something presidents rarely speak of at such moments: regret.
Pointing out how “our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention,” Obama said, “Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter, that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.”
He went on, “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency: that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better.”
And who is to blame, according to Obama?
Obama is to blame. At least a little.
“There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide,” Obama said, “and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.”
But he won’t hold the office for very much longer — only a little more than a year. And Obama said that if things are going to improve, somebody else needs to bear some blame around here: you and I.
Which made it an unusual political speech. If there is one rule of politics, one unbreakable commandment, it is this: Thou shalt never blame the voters.
The voters are holy. They can do no wrong. Or, rather, they can be blamed for no wrong. Because if you blame them, they may not vote for your party. And we couldn’t have that, could we?
Yes, we could, said Obama. Because our political spite and meanness have gotten out of control. And that must stop.
“My fellow Americans, this cannot be my task? — or any president’s — alone,” Obama said. “There are a whole lot of folks in this chamber who would like to see more cooperation, a more elevated debate in Washington, but feel trapped by the demands of getting elected. … It’s not enough to just change a congressman or a senator or even a president; we have to change the system to reflect our better selves.”
We must “end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters and not the other way around,” Obama said. “We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics so that a handful of families and hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections.”
In other words: Don’t hold your breath.
No, wait. That’s the kind of cheap cynicism that Obama wants to eradicate or at least reduce.
“What I’m asking for is hard,” he admitted. “It’s easier to be cynical, to accept that change isn’t possible and politics is hopeless and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter.”
You bet it is! And if you get cynical and hopeless enough, they make you a columnist!
Obama blamed an array of people, most of whom turned out to be Republicans running for president.
Chris Christie was the target when Obama said, “As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.”
Ted Cruz was the target when Obama said, “The world will look to us to help solve these problems, and our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet-bomb civilians.”
And Trump was the target when Obama said: “When politicians insult Muslims … that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country.”
Making these statements — as true as they may be — will not do much to decrease the rancor in Washington, however.
Which Obama admits. He is not perfect. Often criticized for being aloof and academic, he is, in fact, proud of his toughness. If you are not tough in the world of today’s politics, nobody will respect you. Which means you have to be tough without being so tough that nobody will work with you, either.
“Our brand of democracy is hard,” Obama said Tuesday night. But there are good people in it who redeem it.
And Obama listed some of them, including “the American who served his time … but now is dreaming of starting over.”
“The protester determined to prove that justice matters.”
“The young cop walking the beat, treating everybody with respect, doing the brave, quiet work of keeping us safe.”
“The son who finds the courage to come out as who he is and the father whose love for that son overrides everything he’s been taught.”
And Obama ended with a Carl Sandburg-like list, saying Americans are “cleareyed, bighearted, undaunted by challenge, optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
By: Roger Simon, Politico’s Chief Political Columnist; The National Memo, January 13, 2015
“Maybe Ted Cruz Isn’t Eligible To Be President”: Cheney Posing As A Wyoming Citizen Was A Fraud
I’m not qualified to second guess the considered judgment of constitutional scholars about the original meaning of the term “natural born citizen.” I think it may well be the case that anyone who was not born in the United States of America cannot be considered eligible to serve as president of the United States. I also think it’s possible that they can be.
Either way, there’s a distinction to be made between people like John McCain and my brother, Phil, who were born abroad in military installations while their fathers were serving in the military, and Ted Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Canada because that’s where his parents were voluntarily living at the time.
It’s my strong suspicion that the Founding Fathers would not have wanted to punish the children of citizens who they had sent to serve abroad. But they would not have been willing to make an exception for citizens who were living in another country for their own reasons.
I can imagine some tricky cases, like a mother who was spending a summer in Europe rather than actually relocating there. But the basic intent of the constitutional provision seems clear to me. If you are born a Canadian, you can’t become president.
A separate question is whether anyone is really interested in enforcing this provision in a case like Ted Cruz’s.
For me, I have no such interest. His mother was a citizen. As far as I am concerned, that’s good enough. I don’t like Ted Cruz but I don’t think he’ll sell us out to Ottawa.
If some people want to be sticklers, I think they have that right. I don’t feel like being a stickler.
You know, there’s another provision of the Constitution that (sort of) says that the president and vice-president cannot come from the same state. I think it’s an outdated provision and we shouldn’t care about it. But it should have been discussed more when George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate. They were both residents of Texas at the time, and I don’t think Dick Cheney maintaining a second residence in Wyoming should have allowed him to pretend that he didn’t live in Texas. As it turned out, Cheney registered to vote at his second residence which was actually critical because the Electors from Texas were prohibited from casting their votes for more than one Texan. Because the Electoral College vote was so close (271-266), if Cheney hadn’t been considered a citizen of Wyoming, Bush could been elected but Cheney could not have been.
I thought Cheney posing as a Wyoming citizen was a fraud. But, I actually didn’t care too much about it. I didn’t see any real reason why we should still care if the president and vice-president come from the same state.
Likewise, I don’t care that Cruz was born in Calgary. But some people will care. And I will laugh my ass off if the Republicans discover that after falsely accusing the current president of being born in another country they wind up having a problem electing a president because he actually was born in another country.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 12,2016
“Capital Punishment On Hold, For Now”: Supreme Court Strikes Down Florida’s Death Penalty System
The future of the death penalty in the United States is murky, and we know there are some justices who believe the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment necessitates the policy’s end.
The resolution of that debate, however, remains on the horizon. Today’s decision on Florida’s death penalty isn’t entirely what it appears to be at first blush.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declared Florida’s death penalty law unconstitutional because it requires the trial judge and not the jury to make the critical findings necessary to impose capital punishment.
That’s at odds with a string of Supreme Court cases which held that facts that add to a defendant’s punishment – known as aggravating circumstances – must be found by a jury.
It was an 8-1 ruling, the entirety of which is online, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death,” she wrote for the majority. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough.”
The sole dissent in Hurst v. Florida was written by Justice Samuel Alito.
So now what happens? The defendant, Timothy Lee Hurst, will see his case go back to the lower courts, while lawyers scramble to review the convictions of other inmates on Florida’s death row.
For opponents of capital punishment, it’s certainly a victory, but it’s worth emphasizing that it may be short-lived.
In this case, Florida’s current law was struck down, but the ruling focused on criminal procedure in the courtroom. The question of whether the law is cruel or unusual is left for another day.
The Miami Herald reports that state lawmakers are already preparing to “fix” what the Supreme Court said is broken.
Florida lawmakers are prioritizing a fix to Florida’s death penalty sentencing procedures after the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a state law giving judges the final say on capital sentencing.
House Criminal Justice chairman Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, said his committee will take on a bill to address the Supreme Court’s problems.
The article added that another member of the Republican-run legislature intends to use this opportunity to consider broader reforms to the system, including a proposal to “require jurors to unanimously find that there are aggravating circumstances in a case, which would warrant a death sentence. Right now, it only takes a simple majority – 7 of 12 jurors.”
Capital punishment in Florida is, for now, on hold. That may not last long.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 12, 2015
“You Want War? We’ll Give It To You”: Rand Paul Ready For ‘War’ Over 2016 Debates
When it comes to foreign policy, Rand Paul isn’t eager to launch any new wars. When it comes to 2016 debates, it’s a different story.
The next gathering for the Republican presidential field will be Thursday night, when candidates participate in their sixth debate. The Fox Business Network announced last night that seven of the remaining candidates have been invited to the prime-time event: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. That leaves Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum, who have been relegated to the kids-table undercard debate.
The Kentucky senator, who has been on the main stage for each of the first five debates, had already vowed to skip this week’s event if he were blocked from the prime-time gathering, and as of late yesterday, Paul and his campaign team intend to follow through on that threat.
But Paul also talked to the Washington Post in more detail about his frustrations.
…Paul reiterated that the “arbitrary, capricious polling standard” had been a source of disgust for the grassroots, dubbing it a story of media political bias.
“It won’t take much for our supporters to understand why we’re doing this,” Paul said. “You want war? We’ll give it to you.”
What’s unclear is what in the world that means.
To be sure, the senator’s complaints have some merit. As Rachel noted on the show last night, when the Fox networks host these gatherings, “they’re notoriously woolly about their qualifying criteria for their debate…. They don’t get that specific about how they’re going to do it.”
It’s a little tough for Paul – or anyone else, for that matter – to lash out at Fox for being biased against Republican presidential campaigns, but the senator’s concerns about statistical methodology are harder to dismiss.
But when Paul says he and his supporters are prepared for “war,” it’s an open question as to what they have in mind. Protests? Angry tweets? Will Paul pull a page from Alan Keyes’ 1996 playbook and try to join a debate to which he hasn’t been invited?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 11, 2016
“Ted Cruz: Flip-Flopper”: Supports Trade Agreements As Long As They Don’t Contain Anything Related To Immigration
It might surprise you to hear someone say that Ted Cruz is a flip-flopper. He’s built an entire reputation on being nothing if not consistently conservative. But when it comes to an issue that reporters like Scott Bland suggest are animating Trump supporters – trade – he did a huge flip-flop.
Back in April of last year, as Congress was preparing to vote on Trade Promotion Authority (so-called “Fast Track”), Senator Cruz wrote an op-ed in support of it with none other than Rep. Paul Ryan. As we all know, Ryan is now the Republican House Speaker – a position that places him at the center of what Cruz calls “the Washington cabal.” So he not only supported giving President Obama “fast track” authority on trade deals, he joined forces with the cabal to speak out it favor of it passing in Congress.
A short two months later, Sen. Cruz voted against TPA, citing “concerns over unrelated legislation and a separate trade deal, the Trade in Services Agreement, which he asserted could impact U.S. immigration law.”
As it stands right now, it would seem that Ted Cruz supports trade agreements as long as they don’t contain anything related to immigration. That might be an interesting question for a reporter to pose to the candidate on the campaign trail or at an upcoming debate.
On the one hand, Cruz might face criticism from the “job creators” if he changes his tune and comes out against trade deals. On the other, he could hurt his chances with Trump supporters if he embraced them.
Attempting to obscure and pander on the issue of trade agreements is not the first time Cruz has changed his tune on an issue. He did the same thing with his position about H-1B visas – he was for them before he was against them. What a flip-flopper!
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 11, 2016
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