“Dark” Donald Trump

Democrats have been criticizing Donald Trump for the “dark” tone of his speeches and those of his supporters at the Republican National Convention at Cleveland last week. Well, if (as most Democrats seem to believe) the last 7½ years were good for the U. S. A., then those speeches would seem unjustifiably dark. But if (as I do) you see these years as a period of decline in U. S. prestige abroad and order domestically, you (as do I) will see this “darkness” as entirely justify. The “darkness” is reason to support Trump, not oppose it.

Endorsement for November

This blog endorses the Republican ticket for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States in November. This isn't quite the same thing as an endorsement of Donald Trump and Michael Pence—I would have preferred any of a number of Republicans who sought the post. But as it stands, it is necessary to vote for Trump and Pence to set this country in a proper direction, at least a better direction than the alternative would provide.

There is, in fact, a ticket I might prefer: the Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and William Weld, both experienced Governors with excellent records. But our election system guarantees they have no chance, and a vote for them helps Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine get elected. And it is preventing her election that is more important than Johnson's superiority over Trump. She would continue and expand the policies of the worst president in recent history: Barack Obama.

Donald Trump is starting to make the right moves

Now that Donald Trump is essentially guaranteed to get the Republican nomination for the Presidency, he has begun to make the preparations that a candidate needs to do. He has picked someone to head the transition team that will prepare, if he wins in November, the list of appointments Trump will have to make to replace the team chosen by President Barack Obama. And he picked well. The man he has chosen is one of the two people I would have chosen for the Presidency itself: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. And I think with Christie in charge of the transition team, if we have a President Trump following the November election, we will have a good team working for him.

And now it's over

With yesterday's decision by John Kasich to end his campaign, Donald Trump has no opposition, and will be the nominee of the Republican Party for this year's Presidential election. He's not the one I would have wanted to see, but when it comes to November, I'll have to vote for him, given the opposition.

Kasich's leaving was fore-ordained. After Ted Cruz left, Trump was sure to make the 1,237 delegates he would need, so Kasich had no chance to get a later ballot where he might get the nod. It was futile to continue.

My wife has a visceral feeling against Trump. She will be supporting Clinton — even, just yesterday, gave the Clinton campaign a small sum of money — though she has some misgivings about her. For me, I'm more negative about Clinton than she is, and more willing to give Trump a chance, so my vote is going to go the other way. And in this very blue state, it won't make much of a difference. Clinton will win it. But I'm hoping Trump turns the polls around. We certainly don't need four years of Hillary Clinton after eight years of Barack Obama.

Right now, this blog is not endorsing Trump. That will happen if and when he is nominated. But on the chance that some unpredictable event happens that changes the picture of an inevitable Trump nomination, I'm holding up on a formal endorsement.

Ted Cruz has left the race…

…and while John Kasich continues to run — I got an e-mail from his organization today asking for funds — it doesn't really look to be at all likely that Donald Trump can be prevented from getting the nomination. The only way a contested convention can be brought about is if enough votes go to Trump's opponents to keep him from getting a majority of the delegates. And that would require Cruz to win a fair number. And he's not going to gain any more. So it looks as though Trump will be nominated.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump, as you know if you have been reading this blog. But in a race against Hillary Clinton, I have to support Trump. Clinton will continue President Barack Obama's unfortunate policies, and if anything, expand them. She was for Obamacare before Obama was. And she's exercised bad judgment in things like the e-mails.

Now I will not deny that Hillary Clinton is competent. But that makes the prospect of her in the White House even more of a scary proposition. While Trump's more outrageous proposals will never come to pass — Congress or the Supreme Court will knock them out — Clinton might actually get hers through, and I shudder to think of what she'll do, and this worries me more.

Mark Salter's vew of Donald Trump… is it John McCain's?

There is a posting by Mark Salter dated yesterday, entitled “Donald Trump, the Anti-Patriot,” which I've been reading. Now Salter's name is not widely known, but he has co-authored a number of Senator John McCain's books, and I suspect that he and Sen. McCain have very similar views on many political topics. In Salter's post, there are a number of points, and one of the counts he has against Trump is the remarks he has made about Sen. McCain:

By his own admission, the closest he came to combat was his sexual adventurism in the 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was claiming the lives of better men than him. It was his “personal Vietnam,” he told shock jock Howard Stern in 1997. “I felt like a great and very brave soldier.”

While Americans with little wealth and few family connections were dodging bullets, mortars and booby traps in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, our Sergeant York of well-appointed bedrooms was bravely jumping in harm’s way, armed only with the aphrodisiac of his daddy’s money.

From his brush with mortality in service to his libido he acquired the self-regard to find John McCain’s heroism wanting, and by implication the heroism of all POWs. What’s to admire about being shot down, imprisoned in solitary confinement and tortured? Losers.

But there is a real concern there as to Trump's own proposals on how he might treat our enemies:

His cluelessness about what a genuine love of country entails seems to have liberated Trump from other conventional scruples including a respect for the inherent dignity of human beings that is central to Judeo-Christian values.

Trump is also ignorant, it seems, about just what constitutes a war crime; what is and is not permissible in lawful warfare. Or worse, he vaguely knows and doesn’t care.

Trump’s ignorance is a distinctive kind, familiar to schoolyard bullies everywhere. It’s indifferently stupid and reflexively brutal, a dumbass cruelty exercised by people too emotionally incontinent to let reason govern passions, too selfish to develop a conscience, and too insecure to relate to others by means other than base instinct.

In the war against terrorists, he’s recommended deliberately killing their wives and children. He promises to waterboard captured prisoners and torture them even more severely though the practice of waterboarding was ended by executive action and outlawed by congressional legislation. He can’t reinstitute it without new legislation and without changes to war crime conventions.

Were he to order military and intelligence officers to employ torture, as he insists he would, they would resign rather than comply, as they would if he ordered them to take innocent lives on purpose. He would deserve to be impeached. He would belong in an international court of justice, on trial for his life, the fate met by enemies in World War II who authorized the torture of our prisoners.

Trump recently cited as an example of how to deal with captured Muslim insurgents an anecdote from America’s occupation of the Philippines in the beginning of the 20th century. Gen. John J. Pershing ordered 49 of 50 Muslim prisoners shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, defiling them under Islamic law, and ordered the survivor to report to his confederates what he had witnessed. After which, Trump assured his audience, “for 25 years there wasn’t a problem.”

In fact, Salter points out,

The story is fiction. Pershing did nothing of the kind. He was a disciplined general officer, whose sense of honor remained intact through the trials of war, as did his loyalty to our country and values. See what I mean about dumbass cruelty? Trump’s never more ignorant then when he’s playing at being a tough guy.

And I did some checking. Salter is right about this story being fiction; perhaps Trump actually believed it, however, as such a story has been circulating on the Internet:

On Friday in South Carolina, Donald Trump told a story of how General John J. Pershing executed 49 Muslim prisoners in the Philippines.

In the early 1900′s, Trump said, Pershing “caught 50 terrorists that did tremendous damage and killed many people.” So Pershing “dipped 50 bullets in pig’s blood” and executed 49 of the men. Then he released the 50th prison to tell others what had happened. Trump’s point was that America needs to get tough on terrorism.

But the story is not true. There was no mass execution led by Pershing. That is a rumor created on the Internet.

A Chicago Daily Tribune article from 1927 reports the true story that Pershing was holding prisoners from the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines. The Moros were Muslims who resisted American or any other occupying force. The Moros included swordsmen, called Juramentados, who were killing Christians in the uprising. It had to be stopped.

The Tribune story reports that Pershing sprinkled some prisoners with pig’s blood, which the Juramentados believed would condemn them for eternity. But then Pershing let the prisoners go. He issued a warning to others about being sprinkled with the pig’s blood. And, according to the Tribune story, “those drops of porcine gore proved more powerful than bullets.”

There were no executions as described by Trump.

In fact, Pershing was more inclined toward peace talks with the Moros rather than violence. The general met with the Moros and read from the Koran with them. Pershing wanted to build bridges. An illustration accompanying the story shows the general in peace talks in the jungles of the Philippines.

Salter continues:

Wars have brought out the worst as well as the best in Americans. We have struggled at great cost to uphold the values that distinguish us from our enemies. In every war, soldiers under enormous strain have committed atrocities. In some cases they had been ordered to. But those instances were aberrations, considered a national disgrace and are remembered that way. Except, I guess, by Donald Trump, the man who fought his war in the discos of New York and would have American soldiers commit atrocities as a matter of national policy.

Much of what Salter says has validity. However, his final conclusion gives me pause:

Trump is not trying to make great America great. He’s trying to make us the worst we can be to satisfy his own vainglory. There’s no dealing with him, no trying to encourage him to behave like a grown-up, much less a statesman. If you can see him plainly and you love our country, you must vote against him. Even if that means electing Hillary Clinton.

That last sentence goes, in my mind, too far. “Even if that means electing Hillary Clinton”? I hope that Sen. McCain does not agree with this part of what Salter says here. For she has her own problems. She may not plan to torture our enemies. However, she has a direction for this nation that goes counter to our greatest needs. She has said,

I'm a progressive, but I'm a progressive that likes to get things done

and “progressive” is a term that here means “extreme leftist, possibly socialist.”

I do not know whether Sen. McCain agrees with Mark Salter on this position. I strongly respect Sen. McCain, and wish he had been elected eight years ago and was now coming to the end of two terms as President, rather than the man who is actually in that office today. But if he agrees with Salter's remark that Hillary Clinton is preferable to onald Trump, I must there respectfully disagree.

Sen. Grassley is right!

On the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, there was a response by Sen. Mitch McConnell:

The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.

President Barack Obama, of course, does not agree:

The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed to happen now. I am amused when I hear people who claim to be strict interpreters of the Constitution suddenly reading into it a whole series of provisions that are not there. I am going to present somebody who indisputably is qualified for the seat and any fair minded person, even somebody who disagreed with my politics[,] would say would serve with honor and integrity on the court.

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that President Obama, given his far-left ideology and his record on nominations to all those posisions where he has the power to nominate, could come up with “somebody who indisputably is qualified for the seat and any fair minded person, even somebody who disagreed with [his] politics[,] would say would serve with honor and integrity on the court.” But I think he should be given a chance. This is why I agree with Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions [on holding hearings]. In other words, take it a step at a time.

It is interesting that when Bruce Braley was running to become a Senator, he addressed a gathering of lawyers in Texas with the following words:

If you help me win this race, you may have someone with your background, your experience, your voice — someone who’s been literally fighting tort reform for 30 years in a visible and public way on the Senate Judiciary [Committee]. Or you might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary. Because if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the next chair of the Senate Judiciary.

It looks to me that this “farmer from Iowa who never went to law school” is doing a pretty good job as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I have to note that former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has taken the position that Pres. Obama should pick the next nominee and have him approved. Much as I respect Justice O'Connor, who was probably closer to my own views than any other Supreme Court Justice during her tenure on the Court, I think she is partly wrong here. Yes, President Obama should be accorded the right to nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia. But the Senate should heed Obama's own words, uttered when he was a Senator:

I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge's philosophy, ideology, and record.

The Senate's role in evaluating a President's Supreme Court nominees

There is an interesting article, dated today, by David Harsanyi entitled “GOP Has A Duty To Reject Obama’s SCOTUS Pick.” It furnishes a good rejoinder to Harry Reid's quote, posted here yesterday:

The President can and should send the Senate a nominee right away. With so many important issues pending before the Supreme Court, the Senate has a responsibility to fill vacancies as soon as possible. It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat. Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate's most essential Constitutional responsibilities.

Harsanyi points out that when President Barack Obama was a Senator, and Samuel Alito's name came up before the Senate in 2006, then-Senator Obama made a floor speech (of which I quote even more than Harsanyi does) including these words:

As we all know, there's been a lot of discussion in the country about how the Senate should approach this confirmation process. There are some who believe that the President, having won the election, should have the complete authority to appoint his nominee, and the Senate should only examine whether or not the Justice is intellectually capable and an all-around nice guy. That once you get beyond intellect and personal character, there should be no further question whether the judge should be confirmed.

I disagree with this view. I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge's philosophy, ideology, and record. And when I examine the philosophy, ideology, and record of Samuel Alito, I'm deeply troubled.

I have no doubt that Judge Alito has the training and qualifications necessary to serve. He's an intelligent man and an accomplished jurist. And there's no indication he's not a man of great character.

But when you look at his record — when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I have found that in almost every case, he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless; on behalf of a strong government or corporation against upholding American's individual rights.

If then-Sen. Obama could use such language, the Republicans in the Senate have every reason to follow his words that “I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge's philosophy, ideology, and record.” And assuming that President Obama's nominee has an unacceptable “philosophy, ideology, and record” in the opinion of the Senate majority, they have every reason to reject that nominee. I agree with Harsanyi.

It isn't an "either-or" choice!

This past Saturday, there was a debate in New Hampshire among the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. And the most talked-about exchange was between Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.

Now as I've said before, Christie is among my favorite candidates for the nomination, while Rubio is the one that looks like the actual winner. So I'm a bit uncomfortable with such a degree of hostilities between them; should Rubio actually get the nomination, I should hope that Christie could support him against the far worse candidate (probably Hillary Clinton) that the Democrats will nominate. But the gist of the exchange was that (according to Christie) Rubio's short experience in the Senate — comparable to Barack Obama's when he first ran eight years ago — is insufficient preparation for the Presidency. And Rubio's retort was that Obama's failure is not from inexperience, but that there is a “fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.”

Well, in my estimation, it is not an either-or choice. Obama's inexperience has led to many problems in the past seven years or so, thus Christie is right in pointing to Obama's election and saying, “What we need to have in this country is not to make the same mistake we made eight years ago.” But Obama has chosen a direction for this country that is contrary to its best interests, as Rubio has implied.

So both Christie and Rubio have valid points to make. And we should recognize this.

Incomprehensible!

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled on King v. Burwell, and all I can say is that, since they are the final arbiter, their decision has to be accepted as law. Apparently, Chief Justice John Roberts has decided that the Court will not decide on the basis of what is actually written in the law, but rather on what the apparent intent of the majority of the members of Congress who voted to pass it was.

Since ruling the other way would have made “Obamacare” unworkable, the Court has kept it alive for now by its ruling. And this means that it certainly will be alive for the remaining year and a half of Barack Obama's term as President, since he will veto any attempt to revise it. Which makes the election of a Republican in next year's election even more important than it would have otherwise been.

This is not the worst decision ever made by the Court — that would probably be Plessy v. Ferguson or Dred Scott v. Sandford — but certainly, I think it is one of the bad ones. But this is a nation of laws, and the Supreme Court is the supreme interpreter of what the laws mean, so for now we have to live with it. And since it is not a Constitutional decision, but only a ruling on the meaning of an Act of Congress, it can eventually be changed by a new act; it doesn't require amending the Constitution, as the Fourteenth Amendment was the only way to counteract the Dred Scott decision.

South Carolina's gun culture and our unfortunate Second Amendment

Seldom do I agree with President Obama, but I think he was exactly on point with his comment:

We do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun. At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it.

But unfortunately, South Carolina is a state where gun culture rides rampant. The news has come out that Dylann Roof's father actually gave him a gun as a 21^st birthday present. And this seems to be the norm in South Carolina. I remember many years ago we had a neighbor, a woman who had grown up in South Carolina. And she gave a BB gun as a present to her then-nine-year-old son! (This was nearly 20 years ago; that son is now an Army military policeman, but at nine he hardly could be trusted with a gun, even a BB gun!) At one point, my wife was babysitting at that neighbor's apartment, and she was afraid he might put a BB in his younger brother's eye. She took the gun from him and put it up on a shelf too high for the boy to reach.

But in South Carolina, it seems that giving BB guns to 9-year-olds and real honest-to-God guns to 21-year-olds for birthday presents is a normal thing. And in states like that, there will be enough votes that we can never repeal the unfortunate Second Amendment, the worst blemish in our generally-admirable Constitution. So we need to find ways of getting around that amendment. I just wish I knew how.

Donald Trump, Presidential candidate

Donald Trump has declared his candidacy for the nomination for the Presidency in next year’s election. Nobody was sure he would, but I doubt that anyone is surprised that he has done so either.

I saw a part of his declaration speech on a television set where I was having lunch this morning. And my conclusion is that many of his ideas are good — and in agreement with my own — but I cannot see him as President because — exactly like our current President! — he seems not to understand the limitations of the Presidency in a system with a Constitution like our own.

He said that he would immediately kill President Obama's executive order on immigration, and, since it is an executive order, as President he would have that power. But he also said he would call the President of Ford — whom he says he knows, and I do not doubt that — and tell him that if he built a new plant in Mexico instead of Tennessee, he (Trump) would impose a 35% tariff on all cars and trucks built there. However, if he becomes President, he cannot unilaterally change our tariff laws. He needs to work with Congress on those. His ignorance of this simple Constitutional point is troublesome; this alone disqualifies him for the Presidency.

But another problem arises. Just suppose that Trump makes it to the nomination. Remember the 2012 election? A lot of people would not vote for Mitt Romney, even if they agreed that Barack Obama’s Presidency had, to that point, not been a positive factor, because they thought he was so rich that “he could not understand the concerns of the average American.” If they thought this of Romney, how much more would they think so of Trump?

An on-point evaluation of President Obama

There used to be a newspaper published in Washington, D. C., The Washington Examiner, which I enjoyed reading. Some time ago, the paper ceased publication, except for an online presence that still continues. Recently I saw a column by Noemie Emery on the Examiner's site, which I found quite interesting. Her columns in the Examiner when it was in print often reflected my own thought, and I think this column also shows a great insight, so I would like to reprint it.

President Obama, wrote the Washington Post's Greg Jaffe in a recent story about the president's view of his country, articulates “his vision of a nation that can acknowledge and, learn from, its mistakes.” Would that this vision applied to himself.

Now comes the main point, one that I think characterizes this President above all things that have been written about him:

Not only does Obama never learn from mistakes, he doesn't think that he makes them, and he denies that they even exist. Any regrets for the way he passed healthcare? Not that you'd notice. Any regrets about leaving Iraq? Nope — he still thinks he “ended two wars,” which the other side keeps on fighting.

The conventional view of what has gone wrong — that Obama lacked experience, and that first-term senators should be viewed with suspicion — is undercut by the fact that he has had six years of experience, and failed to learn from it. At home and abroad, Obama makes mistakes over and over, with the same result, and takes nothing from them. He disses his friends, placates aggressors and seems surprised that aggressors advance and whole regions catch fire.

He refuses to bargain with Congress, insults opponents, imposes unpopular policies by fiat and seems surprised when his measures result in court challenges, when polarization increases, opposition solidifies, divisions harden and gridlock prevails. Deal-making is the essence of politics, but Obama finds it demeaning, so he resorts to brute force when he has the means to (as in the still-festering matter of healthcare). Alternatively, as with immigration, Obama resorts to executive actions that stir angry resistance and are frequently halted by courts.

This has gone on since 2009, but Dana Milbank noticed only when Obama began slighting Democrats, whereupon he began taking offense. “Rather than accept that they have a legitimate beef, he shows public contempt for them,” the Washington Post columnist complains, writing that Obama dissed fellow Democrats to friendly reporters as being short-sighted and dense. (Of course, he's done that for years to Republicans, but they seem not to matter.) If Franklin Roosevelt was described as having a commonplace intellect but a brilliantly tempered political character, Obama seems to be his ultimate opposite: A man with an intellect that delights the elite but a temperament that is counterproductive in matters of government. This combination seems to work much less well.

A comparison with his predecessors is instructive.

Presidents can sometimes repair their mistakes, but only after they realize they've made them, which is something Obama can't do. George W. Bush stayed with his failed Iraq strategy until a bloody year followed by a political bloodbath in the 2006 midterms forced him to change course dramatically. John Kennedy failed in the Bay of Pigs and then in his first face-to-face meeting with Nikita S. Khrushchev, when he compounded his first bad impression by seeming irresolute.

Sensing at once that he had made a grave error — “He savaged me,” Kennedy said later of the Russian leader — he doubled the draft, increased defense spending and took Dwight Eisenhower's advice to have his councilors argue their cases before him and each other (instead of one at a time and in isolation), which led to the peaceful solution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

But admitting mistakes — and taking advice — are not the skill set of the current incumbent, who finds them demeaning. The learning curve of the 35^th president between l961-63 had been exponential, while, as Josef Joffe recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “the 44^th president's learning curve has been flat for six years.”

It's not lack of experience that hampers Obama; it's his refusal to learn a thing from it. That's the trait we can't have in the 45^th president — and the one we must strive to avoid.

A valuable observation, and one with which I heartily concur.

President Obama has no right to control what cases the Supreme Court considers!

According to a report by The Associated Press,

President Barack Obama says the U.S. Supreme Court probably shouldn't have taken up the latest challenges to his signature health care law.

Obama says there was no reason for the health program to end up in court, maintaining that “it's working.”

The high court is expected to decide soon whether Congress authorized federal subsidy payments regardless of where people live, or only for residents of states that created their own insurance marketplaces.

The decision could have far-reaching implications because millions would lose their insurance if the court said people who enrolled through the federal site couldn't get the subsidies.

Obama says it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who went through the federal exchange.

Obama commented Monday in Elmau, Germany, at the conclusion of a summit.

The President seems to feel that any challenge to the way he does business to accomplish his goals is unjustified. Well the news for President Obama is that thuis is a government of laws. The President does not have the power to rewrite a law, just because it is worded in such a way that the President's goals atre not met, in order to make it work the way he wants it to.

Why so many?

There certainly seem to be a lot of Republicans contending for next year's nomination for the Presidency. Some people are expecting as many as twenty to declare, and already there are so many it's hard to keep track. While the polls seem to give the edge to either Scott Walker or Jeb Bush, a lot can happen between now and next year's convention. But why so many? I can't recall there ever being such a large field of contenders.

It's not that hard to figure out. Barack Obama has become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. While a popular President can anoint a successor (witness the fact that Ronald Reagan was able to pull in enough voters to the Republican side to elect George H. W. Bush, even though Bush was not a very charismatic campaigner), an unpopular President serves to recruit votes to the opposite side. Many people will be voting Republican just to say we need a change from Obama. So a prospective Republican nominee has a good chance to win the Presidency in 2016.

And that's a good thing. It is really necessary to undo the damage that the years of Obama's Presidency have caused — to our economy, to our foreign standing, and in other ways. And certainly Hillary Clinton would not undo that damage; her proposals in the health care area, for example, out-Obama'd Obamacare. (As a candidate, Obama opposed — and Clinton proposed — some features that are the most objectionable in Obamacare, like the mandates.)

Returning to the blogging scene: The 2016 candidates

Recently I got a question as to whether I was sill blogging. And that reminded me that it has been a long time since my last post, and that I ought to get back. A lot has happened since my last post, and it will take a bit to get current.

One development that I do not like is that Chris Christie, my preferred candidate for the nomination, seems to have lost a lot of his support, and instead of being at the top (or near the top) in the polls, is somewhere in the middle of the pack. While I still consider him the best candidate, unless he recovers that top position, I suppose I will have to consider other options. There are other candidates, such as Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker, who could be good Presidents, and my only reason for not supporting them for the nomination is that I feel they have less chance of actually being elected, so if they begin to look electable to me, I could certainly support them.

A couple of candidates have been discussed recently who have a number of attractive attributes, but who lack, to my mind, some important qualifications for the Presidency. If Carly Fiorina had won the election for Senator from California when she ran, I would consider her a high-quality candidate for the Presidency. However, as it is, she is totally inexperienced in the ins and outs of partisan politics, and I can't consider her ready for the Presidency. Her executive experience, to be sure, is excellent, and this is an area where the current incumbent's total lack has shown. So perhaps she would not be a terrible choice, and if she should secure the nomination, I would certainly vote for her against Hillary Clinton in November of next year.

The other person I consider attractive in some ways but insufficiently experienced in some areas for the Presidency is Ben Carson. He is certainly an intelligent and thoughtful man, who could be very useful in a Republican administration as Surgeon General, or at the head of a task force on finding a replacement for Obamacare, or as HHS Secretary, but he has none of the political experience I think necessary.

There are also a number of people who are more experienced in politics and who have, specifically, the executive experience needed for the Presidency: such Governors and former Governors as John Kasich and Mitch Daniels. I could easily support either of these two or others like them, but I fear they need to become better known to the public. They suffer the same flaws that Jon Huntsman did in 2012.

There are a couple of people that I could never support, however. If a religious-right extremist like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum (Is Rick Perry going to run? If so, he falls into this class.) should get the GOP nomination, the GOP loses my vote. I still would never vote for Hillary Clinton, but my vote would go to any obscure third-party candidate I could find rather than one of these men.

A bit of a surprise

The decision by the grand jury in Missouri not to indict Darren Wilson somewhat surprised me. My prediction was that Wilson would be indicted but acquitted on trial, because of the difference between the standards for evidence in the two kinds of proceedings. In a grand jury decision, one expects an indictment if there is even a case for the prosecution. In the actual trial, of course, the defendant is “innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” And I was certain, from the evidence I have so far seen, that Wilson would be found not guilty because he clearly acted in self-defense.

Apparently, however, the grand jury did not even think there was probable cause that would justify a trial. The case was even more clearly a case of self-defense than the evidence that had been made public demonstrated.

Of course, there are going to be riots. Some people are still convinced that Wilson shot Michael Brown out of racism. It is a shame that some people see racism everywhere. My wife has heard people (including her) described as racist simply because they would not vote for Barack Obama; it could not occur to those people that she might not be willing to vote for even a white person with Obama's history and qualifications. But here it is quite clear: Michael Brown, a big man, over 6′ tall and nearly 300 pounds, hit Wilson in the face badly enough to injure him and was grabbing for his gun when the shooting occurred. This is about as clearly a case of self-defense as can be imagined. And apparently that convinced the grand jury.

My worst fears confirmed

Barack Obama is the man who, shortly after taking over the Presidency, told a group of Republican members of Congress that “elections have consequences.” And he is also the man who, a few days before this year's election, told another group of people, this time prospective voters, that “these policies are on the ballot.” A third Obama quote that needs to be brought up was his remark after this election that “To those of you who voted, I hear you.” It certainly does not appear that the third is true; for in the light of the first two quotes, he should be prepared too make some moves toward Republican ideas. But as I said earlier, this is a President who refuses to compromise.

Everything that President Obama seems to be saying is that he knows what is best for the American people, and if Congress sends him a bill that agrees with what he wants, he will sign it, and if not he will veto it.

So much for hearing the American people.

The two parties and identity politics

One thing that might be noted in the election results in this and recent years is the Democrats' reliance on identity politics. It is not just that Barack Obama got elected by drawing a record turnout among African-Americans and getting a record proportion of the vote among that same group. Rather, if you look at Democratic African-American office-holders, they are nearly all elected from constituencies with majority African-American electorates. (An exception might be Cory Booker, recently re-elected to a Senate seat in New Jersey. But he got his start as mayor of Newark, a largely African-American city.)

By contrast, African-Americans elected as Republicans are elected in constituencies that are not majority African-American — look at Tim Scott, Will Hurd and Mia Love — just to mention three African-Americans who will sit in the next Congress.

Scott was first elected to a seat in the House of Representatives from a majority-white district in South Carolina. When Senator Jim DeMint resigned, Governor Nikki Haley (herself an Indian-American) appointed Scott to the Senate. Tuesday he won a full term — and you can bet that this first African-American to be elected from the South since Reconstruction did not get the office because of African-American votes.

Will Hurd won a race in a basically Hispanic disctrict, running against a Hispanic incumbent. Again, his victory cannot be laid to identity politics.

Mia Love got elected from a district in Utah — and the number of African-Americans in the whole state of Utah is not enough that, even if they were all packed into one Congressional district, they could form a majority! Like Scott, she had to win based on white voters' feeling she was the best person for the job, and she did.

These are examples of the Republican Party's treatment of African-Americans as simply Americans, and it would be great if the Democrats could do the same.

Two years of inaction?

While President Obama's press conference on Wednesday seemed to be positive — and I said so in my post the next day — I fear that we will not see action to help the American people in the next two years. In the press conference, the President was asked some specific questions, and among them was one about whether he could sign legislation that eliminated the individual mandate. He explicitly answered:

“The individual mandate is a line I can’t cross because the concept, borrowed from Massachusetts, from a law instituted by a former opponent of mine, Mitt Romney, [he] understood that if you’re providing health insurance to people through the private marketplace, then you’ve got to make sure that people can’t game the system and just wait until they get sick before they go try to buy health insurance”

Of course, mentioning Mitt Romney was a gratuitous attempt at phony bipartisanship. Romney signed the Massachusetts law as a compromise with a legislature that was 85% Democratic. And it does appear that at the time he was convinced that it was necessary to prevent gaming the system. He has stated that this is an issue that should be addressed state-by-state, and if he had been elected President he would have signed an authorization for any state to opt out.

By making such statements, Pres. Obama has made it likely that there are important areas that he will not compromise on. And some of these will be necessary to compromise if any business can be done.