Tag Archives: Gerald Ford

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‘Sic federal regulators on his critics’

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A single line jumped out at me as I looked at the New York Times article on Donald J. Trump’s view of the U.S. Constitution.

Adam Liptak’s story goes through a litany of concerns that constitutional scholars — across the political spectrum — have expressed about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s views.

Then he writes of Trump: “He has threatened to sic federal regulators on his critics.”

That sentence stopped me cold. I froze.

Do you remember what happened to the last president who decided to “sic federal regulators on his critics”?

If you don’t, I’ll remind you.

President Richard Nixon did that very thing, we learned during the congressional investigation of the Watergate constitutional crisis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/us/politics/donald-trump-constitution-power.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

That revelation — along with many others — led the House Judiciary Committee to approve articles of impeachment against the president, who then resigned his office on Aug. 9, 1974, thus ending, in the words of his successor, President Gerald Ford, “our long national nightmare.”

Trump wants to make it easier to sue the media for libel; he wants to ban Muslims from entering the United States; he attacked a federal judge solely on the basis of his ethnicity, calling the American-born jurist “a Mexican” who, according to Trump, “hates me.”

Any one of those occurrences would be a recipe for a top-of-the-line constitutional crisis. I’m trying to imagine what could happen if more than one of those things ever were to occur if a President Trump were to settle in behind that big desk in the Oval Office.

Here’s a comment from a conservative thinker, taken from Liptak’s article: “David Post, a retired law professor who now writes for the Volokh Conspiracy, a conservative-leaning law blog, said those comments had crossed a line.

“’This is how authoritarianism starts, with a president who does not respect the judiciary,’ Mr. Post said. ‘You can criticize the judicial system, you can criticize individual cases, you can criticize individual judges. But the president has to be clear that the law is the law and that he enforces the law. That is his constitutional obligation.’”

I believe this is a major part of what Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday when she described Trump as being “temperamentally unfit” to become president of the United States.

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TEA Party redefines GOP

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One of the more fascinating dynamics of the current political climate has been the realigning — in the minds of some folks — of the Republican Party.

I actually have laughed out loud at the TEA Party faction of the GOP that has taken to referring to “mainstream Republicans” as RINOs: Republicans in Name Only.

TEA Party, of course, actually is an acronym that stands for Taxed Enough Already. They comprise the harsher wing of the once-great party. They also have dominated the debate within the Republican Party and are seeking to dominate the debate across the nation.

The impending nomination of Donald J. Trump as the GOP’s next presidential candidate quite possibly is going to trigger a major realignment. The party we’ve come to know and (some of us) loathe might not exist after the November election if Trump gets swept by Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton; by “swept” I mean that Clinton quite possibly could score a historic landslide victory.

My hope for the party is that it reconfigures itself in the mold of, say, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Everett Dirksen, George H.W. Bush and — just for good measure — Ronald W. Reagan.

Today’s TEA Party faithful like to compare themselves to Reagan. It’s a false comparison. Why? Reagan knew how to work with Democrats. He was unafraid to reach across to those on the other side when the need arose.

Today’s TEA Party cabal has none of that skill, or willingness.

I keep hearing from my network of friends, acquaintances and former professional colleagues who keep tossing the RINO epithet at today’s Republicans who, in my view, are far more traditionally Republican in their political world view than the zealots who’ve hijacked the party’s once-good name for their own purpose.

Let the realignment continue.

 

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Quandary awaits on Primary Election Day

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I am confused about how I should vote on Texas Primary Election Day.

You know, of course, that I hate early voting. I prefer to wait until Election Day to cast my ballot. This year has proved that practice to be more essential than ever. The wackiness of the Republican primary contest has taken us to places never before seen.

But here’s my quandary.

Texas has an open primary system, meaning that voters aren’t “registered” with a political party. We go to the polling place and choose which primary we want to cast our vote. The polling judge will stamp our voting cards with “Republican” or “Democrat,” some of the time; occasionally they forget to do it.

Our polling place is at a local church. We’ll walk through the door and have to decide: Do I vote Democratic or do I vote Republican? (I won’t speak for my wife. She makes up her own mind on these things.)

My own presidential voting history is straightforward. I’ve voted in every election since 1972 and have voted Democratic every time. I flinched one year: 1976, in the race between President Ford and former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter; I ended up voting for Carter.

Primary elections in this part of Texas, though, limit one’s options. All the local activity is on the Republican side. We have some token Democrats running for statewide office, but in Randall County — the unofficial birthplace of modern Texas Republicanism — all the local offices are decided on the GOP side.

My problem is this: Do I want to vote in the Republican primary to cast a ballot for someone other than Donald J. Trump or Rafael Edward Cruz or do I lean toward my traditional roots and vote for either Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

I’ve declared already that my favorite presidential candidate — of the seven people running in either party — appears to be Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He’s a grownup, a mature public official with an actual record of accomplishment. He’s also got a beating heart that he reveals with great eloquence.

Hillary Clinton also is eminently qualified — on paper — to be the next commander in chief. She’s got a solid public service record. My problem with her? I just don’t trust her completely.

I’m torn. I’m literally undecided on which way to turn when my wife and I walk into the polling place on Tuesday.

My wife wishes we could vote in both primaries; just pick the best candidate either party has to offer — and then decide between whoever wins their parties’ nominations in the fall.

She’s just as torn as I am on what to do next week.

It’s decision time. I might just have to pray about it.

I’m unlikely, though, to say openly who gets my vote. It will become apparent as we move closer toward the general election. Of course, you are free to believe whatever you wish.

national news, political news

The 2016 GOP presidential nominee will be . . .

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. . .  Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

OK, I didn’t just make that up. I read about such a scenario in Roll Call, which has put together an analysis that makes a Ryan nomination a distinct possibility.

Ryan had to be dragged kicking and screaming — or so he would have us believe — into the race for House speaker after John Boehner quit abruptly this past autumn. Boehner had grown weary of fighting with the TEA Party insurgents within his House GOP caucus. So, he quit the top job and quit his congressional seat, too.

Ryan emerged as the speaker after laying down some rules for how he wanted to become the Man of the House. He stipulated that he wanted every Republican to want him to take the job.

So, how does this guy become the 2016 nominee?

Roll Call thinks the Republicans might get a brokered convention in Cleveland next summer. None of the candidates still running will have enough delegates to secure the nomination outright. A floor fight will ensue. Someone will come up with the idea that they need a unifying candidate.

Enter . . . Paul Ryan.

There’s one way to look at this: Ryan at one time wanted to be president. He was, after all, the 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee on the ticket led by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. I’m going to presume that Ryan agreed that he could serve as president if by chance Romney got elected and something were to happen that would require Ryan to step into the top job.

It’s not beyond reason, thus, to believe Ryan still harbors latent presidential aspirations. Right? Right.

But apart from how Republican convention delegates settle this madhouse contest this summer, the very idea of a political convention actually being tossed into pandemonium intrigues the daylights out of me.

The closest a major-party nominating convention came to that level that I can remember was in 1976, when former California Gov. Ronald Reagan mounted a challenge to President Ford’s expected GOP nomination. The president prevailed, but only after some serious dickering on the convention floor.

Will this year’s Republican convention become the circus that the parties used to experience?

I hope so. It’s great political theater.

national news

Nightmare ends in N.Y. … good job

A million bucks a day.

That’s one estimate of the cost of hunting down two escaped murderers. Yes, there were some eyebrows raised over the cost of the manhunt.

However, I am reckoning today that no one is going to gripe out loud about the cost. One of the bad guys, Richard Matt, is dead; the other, David Sweat, is in custody.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/troopers-hunting-escapees-scrambled-to-save-1-they-captured/ar-AAcgwNV

They had crawled out of a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, the first such escape in the history of the century-old lockup. At least two prison employees are accused of aiding in the men’s escape.

But this story, which has all the earmarks of a potential movie or TV dramatization, was hair-raising in the extreme for residents living anywhere near the prison.

The men didn’t get very far before the police caught up with them.

Matt resisted arrest and was gunned down. The police didn’t waste any time with Sweat; a lone officer spotted him walking along a rural road a little more than a mile from the Canadian border. Sweat started running and the officer shot him twice, injuring him critically.

These two are bad men. Both were serving life sentences for committing brutal crimes. To say they were considered “dangerous” is to commit a serious understatement.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — perhaps channeling the late President Ford — declared at a news conference, “The nightmare is finally over.”

Good job all around.

 

national news, political news

Let's define 'ideal GOP candidate'

The Daily Signal has put out an online survey asking folks who would be their “ideal” Republican presidential candidate in 2016.

It wasn’t until I looked carefully at the bottom of the survey form that I realized it is a sincere question.

Who Is Your Ideal GOP 2016 Presidential Nominee?

It gives poll takers a chance to subscribe to Heritage Foundation material. So, there you have it. The poll comes from one of the nation’s premier conservative think tanks. So, the poll is meant to be taken seriously by those who answer the question.

But regular readers of this blog know my own political leanings place me far from the Heritage Foundation. I lean left. So, when I saw the question, I thought it could be laced with trickery.

I’ll declare here (maybe I’ve done so already; I don’t remember) that I’ve voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972. I wavered once, teetering between voting for President Ford or Gov. Jimmy Carter in 1976; I ended up voting for Carter and I’ve come close to regretting it in the years since.

I’ve gotten a bit more hardened in my presidential choices over time. I do split my ticket generously, however, and I’ve been proud of the many votes I’ve cast for Republican candidates.

Who would be my favorite GOP candidate in 2016 be? Oh, man. How do I answer that one?

Maybe it would be the most extreme candidate running. Who would that? Ted “The Cruz Missile” Cruz? Marco Rubio? Rand Paul? Mike Huckabee (who’s not really running — yet)?

The more extreme the right-wing candidate the better it appears that a centrist Democrat — such as, oh, Hillary Clinton — would win the election.

I’m acutely aware that the Heritage Foundation is now being run by former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, one of the TEA party godfathers. I’m guessing DeMint personally might favor one of the extremists running for president.

So, think about this one: I agree — potentially — with the guy who runs the Heritage Foundation.

We might want the same candidate to run as the Republican nominee for president next year.

I suspect, though, that our reasons differ wildly.

 

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Yep, VPOTUS is an important office

Jeffrey Frank’s essay in The New Yorker lays it out clearly.

The office of vice president of the United States is the second-most important office in the country, if not the world. It took the death of a president to make that fact abundantly clear.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-f-d-r-s-death-changed-the-vice-presidency

Frank writes about Franklin Roosevelt’s death 70 years ago, on April 12, 1945. Vice President Harry Truman was told of FDR’s death in Georgia. He was rushed to the White House and sworn in as president.

It’s what President Truman didn’t know at the time that has been the subject of discussion ever since.

He didn’t know about the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb, which then ended World War II in August 1945.

Truman only that there was something afoot in New Mexico. Secretary of War Henry Stimson told the president he had something to tell him involving a top-secret project. He informed him of the bomb and said, in effect, that if we use this device it could end the war in a hurry.

The gist of Frank’s essay is that the vice presidency was fundamentally changed after FDR’s death. Presidents have had to rely on their No. 2 men, required to keep them briefed on everything of importance that goes in the government. Why? Well, as we’ve learned, presidents can leave office quickly and without warning.

President Kennedy was murdered in November 1963. President Nixon resigned in August 1974. Both men had selected steady and seasoned men as their vice presidents who could take over at a moment’s notice. Lyndon Johnson did so while the nation grieved JFK’s death and Gerald Ford took the oath after Nixon’s resignation and reassured us that “Our long, national nightmare is over. The Constitution works.”

Presidential nominees have picked well since FDR’s time. Some have chosen not so well, as Frank notes.

But the notion that vice presidency — in the (sanitized) words of Texan John Nance Garner — “isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit” was laid to rest forever when Harry Truman was handed the keys to the Oval Office.

We’ll be sure to keep this in mind when the next nominees for president pick their VPs.

 

national news, political news

So long, D.C. bipartisanship

Perhaps you’ve noticed during the time I’ve been writing this blog that I’ve called for more bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., and in Austin.

Well, my desire to see both parties working together for a change hasn’t changed, other than it might have been intensified. I was hopeful for a more bipartisan atmosphere in Washington after the mid-term election. The president said he wanted it. The new Republican majority leader said the same thing.

We can kiss it goodbye.

President Obama is going to issue an executive order today that will enrage his Republican “friends.” It will tinker a bit with immigration policy, deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants, as well as strengthen border security.

I think it’s a good plan, but the incorrect strategy. I wish he would wait. And no, the president is not plowing new ground with this action. He’s doing the same kind of thing on immigration that Republican presidents dating back to Gerald Ford have done.

Still, Obama is going to stick it right back in the eyes of Republican leaders in Congress. He said he’s “waited long enough” for Congress to act. Some in D.C. are talking about impeachment, which is a ridiculous notion on its face.

But the era of even pretending to want bipartisanship in Washington appears to be over.

It’s unclear what the outcome will be for the remainder of Barack Obama’s term as president. A friend of mine, an Australian journalist with a keen interest in American politics, mentioned to me in a recent email that he predicts a miserable and torturous slog toward the end of the Obama presidency. He believes — as I do — that Republicans are feeling emboldened now that they’ve taken control of the Senate and strengthened their grip on the House.

And the president’s response to that bold new opposition? Why, he’s digging in his heels and daring them to fight.

It need not end this way — but it surely will.

 

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GOP readies for internal fight

One of the many forms of conventional wisdom in the wake of the 2014 mid-term election goes something like this: Republicans, flush with victory at taking over the Senate and expanding their hold in the House, now face a fight between the tea party extremists and the mainstream wing of their party.

Let’s go with that one for a moment, maybe two.

I relish the thought, to be brutally candid.

The likely Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, may be looking over his shoulder at one of the tea party upstarts within his Republican caucus, a fellow named Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cruz wants to lead the party to the extreme right. McConnell is more of a dealmaker, someone who’s been known to actually seek advice and counsel from his old friend and former colleague, Vice President Joe Biden. Cruz, who’s still green to the ways of Washington, wants to shake the place up, seeking to govern in a scorched-Earth kind of way. He wouldn’t mind shutting down the government again if the right issue arises. McConnell won’t have any of that.

So, will the battle commence soon after the next Congress takes over in 2015.

Lessons unlearned doom those who ignore them.

Republicans have been through this kind of intraparty strife before. In 1964, conservatives took control of the GOP after fighting with the establishment. The party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate and then Goldwater got thumped like a drum by President Lyndon Johnson.

They did it again in 1976, with conservative former California Gov. Ronald Reagan challenging President Ford for his party’s nomination. Ford beat back the challenge, but then lost his bid for election to Jimmy Carter.

To be fair, Democrats have fallen victim to the same kind of political cannibalism.

In 1968 and again in 1972, Democrats fought with each over how, or whether, to end the Vietnam War. Sens. Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy challenged LBJ for the nomination in 1968. Johnson dropped out of the race, RFK was assassinated, McCarthy soldiered on to the convention, which erupted in violence and Democrats then nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who then went on to lose to GOP nominee Richard Nixon.

Four years later, the Democratic insurgents nominated Sen. George McGovern after fighting with the party “hawks.” McGovern then lost to President Nixon in a landslide.

So, what’s the lesson?

History has shown — and it goes back a lot farther than just 1964 — that intraparty squabbles quite often don’t make for a stronger party, but a weaker one.

Bring it on, Republicans!

 

 

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Chief justice going soft? Hardly

Conservatives reportedly are getting itchy over some recent decisions by U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts.

Why, he’s siding with some of the Supreme Court’s liberals and that dreaded swing vote on the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

He’s just not the dependable conservative they thought they were getting when President Bush appointed him to the court.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/john-roberts-conservative-quake-112000.html?hp=f2

These nervous nellies on the right ought to relax.

I don’t consider the chief justice to be a toady to the right. He’s now holding a lifetime job and is free from the political strings to which he was attached when the president appointed him chief justice. It might be — and it’s way too early to tell — heading down a trail blazed by other formerly “conservative” justices who turned out to be anything but.

Chief Justice Earl Warren took his seat after President Eisenhower appointed him in 1953. The very next year, the Warren Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that effectively ended segregation in the nation’s public schools systems. Ike called the Warren appointment his biggest mistake as president.

President Nixon appointed Harry Blackmun to the court in 1971 and all Blackmun did was write the Roe v. Wade decision that ruled abortion to be a protected right under the Constitution.

President Ford named John Paul Stevens to the court in 1975, thinking he was getting a conservative jurist to serve on the court. Stevens turned out to be one of the leading court liberals.

And what about Roberts? All he’s done is side with the liberal minority on the court in a 2012 vote that upheld the Affordable Care Act. It was a narrow decision that didn’t bring about the end of the world.

The Supreme Court remains a conservative body. It has three hard-core righties — Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Roberts might be tilting more toward the center, hardly to the left. Kennedy remains the pivotal swing vote. The four liberals remain dependably so: Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have formed a Fearsome Foursome of liberal jurisprudence.

The hard right just needs to chill out. I doubt that the chief justice is going to turn on them. Hey, if he does, then he’s joining some pretty heady company among justices who rediscovered their consciences and their principles.