Amy Coney Barrett as a Catholic

Democrats are making much of the fact that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is Catholic, apparently fearing that her Catholic faith will lead her to overturn Roe vs Wade. I guess they don’t know that five of the current Supreme Court justices are Catholic too, as are 30% of the members of Congress. For that matter, their own nominee for president, Joe Biden, is a Catholic. So how come they are worried about Barrett but not about Joe Biden or Justice Roberts or Justice Sotomayor or Justice Alito or Justice Thomas or Justice Kavanaugh? Clearly this is just an attempt, and a feeble one at that, to scare up support among their base.

In fact Barrett is a textualist, as was her mentor Justice Scalia, ruling on what the text of a law says instead of on some “creative expansion” of the text to achieve some ideological end. Textualists believe (and I agree with them) that it is not the job of the unelected judiciary to create legislation; that power is absolutely reserved to elected representatives. It is true that many laws are defective as written, or ambiguous, or no longer applicable in a changing world. The remedy for that is for elected members of the legislature to rewrite the laws, or kill them, or correct them. That is emphatically NOT the job of the judiciary.

Similarly, “originalist” judges refer to the Constitution as their guide. Again, it is not the job of judges to “re-interpret” the Constitution. Yes, the Constitution is a living document, and parts of it get out of date. We have a process that addresses that fact – it is called “Constitutional amendments”, and we have since the writing of the original Constitution passed 27 of them.  They are not easy to pass, and they shouldn’t be. It takes the agreement of three-quarters of the states to pass a Constitutional amendment so there has to be broad agreement among the voting public to make such a change. That is healthy. It prevents some temporary majority from forcing their ideological views down the throats of the country.

Congress is currently dysfunctional and incapable of doing their job. Which means that lots of things that ought to be happening are not happening. The remedy for that is to fix Congress, not to try to bypass it through the judiciary. And even when Congress is working well, some things just can’t get enough support to get passed. Again, the solution is not to bypass Congress through the judiciary, but instead to do the hard work of educating people and trying to build support among the voting public for whatever principle one is selling.

I have no idea how Barrett will vote on the cases she will see, nor does anyone else. But she is bright, eminently qualified, and highly-thought-of by her peers.  I thought it was telling that every one of the Supreme Court clerks with whom she worked when she was Justice Scalia’s clerk signed a letter supporting her – every one, even though they must span the political spectrum from liberal to conservative.

With the speed of a snail…..

I see that the Navy is about to release its Future Navy Force Study, which will recommend a sharp change in direction away from large, expensive surface ships toward a larger fleet of smaller, missile-armed, potentially unmanned, ships. It was obvious at least a decade ago, if not longer, that with the advent of precision guided weapons, large surface ships like aircraft carriers were just becoming easy targets, at least for near-peer opponents. It used to take massive ships to carry the massive 16-inch guns they used and to withstand the recoil of those guns, or to carry and launch aircraft. With the advent of guided missiles and vertical launch cells it was clear long ago that even much smaller ships could now carry impressive firepower.

Clearly the response to the threat of swarms of relatively inexpensive guided missiles overwhelming the defenses of large, expensive ships like carriers is to distribute the fleet’s offensive power into swarms of smaller, less expensive, missile-carrying ships instead of keeping all our eggs in a few vulnerable baskets. The navy seems finally to have realized this, a decade or so late. Of course it will take another decade or so of Congressional futzing and bureaucratic infighting before this will be accomplished. But at least we have started…..perhaps. 

If Biden wins

We might get a repeat of the 2016 election, but the odds currently favor a Biden win, though not by as much as the media would like us to think. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site give Biden a 70% chance of winning, and today's composite betting odds are 52.7 to 46.7 in favor of Biden. So it is worth beginning to consider what a Biden presidency might look like.

Of course the official party platform is pretty far left, but that is to be expected since Biden had to accommodate the Bernie Sanders wing of the party and keep them in the fold. But in fact party platforms generally have little real effect on administration policy. They are just window dressing for the campaign.   

The Joe Biden of the past decades was a moderate Democrat, but the Democratic party has moved sharply leftward even since Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run for the presidency. How much has Biden moved with them? His vice-presidential pick, Kamala Harris, is in fact pretty far left, even though the Biden campaign is trying to paint her as a moderate. Her voting record in the Senate has been one of the most liberal of any Senator, though as Attorney General in California before she was elected to the Senate she was a fairly strong law-and-order supporter.

Considering all the worries that Biden has lost a step or two to age, the question of who is advising him becomes more important.  Jared Bernstein and Ben Harris, both of whom were Biden's chief economic advisers under Obama, are left-of-center economists who consistently pressed for more government stimulus and banking rules in the Obama White House. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have had a lot of input to the Biden team (and there are even rumors that Warrant might get appointed Treasury Secretary in a Biden administration), so that suggests a fairly far-left economic policy.

Foreign policy looks to be controlled by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Avril Haines, Brian McKeon, and Julie Smith. The Biden team has formed lots of working groups, who all forward their work to these five people, who seem to be a national security brain trust for Biden, and who from their past positions on foreign policy appear to be of the more “hawkish” interventionist wing of the party that kept us in the Middle East wars. Jake Sullivan has, however, claimed that a Biden priority would be to get us out of the Middle Eastern “forever wars”, as well as to re-negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.

Much depends, of course, on whether the Democrats capture the Senate along with a Biden presidency. If Republicans keep control of the Senate, that will put a damper on the more extreme far-left proposals. If the Democrats capture the Senate (and of course they will almost certainly keep control of the House) that would free a Biden administration to enact just about anything they want to, at least for the first two years.  

So what would I expect of a Biden administration? Domestically, probably a larger COVID stimulus and recovery package, perhaps on the order of $3-4 trillion, and a rollback of the Trump tax reductions, and perhaps an attempt to tax corporations and the rich more, though that will probably be more for show than practical effect since the rich and big corporations are good at evading taxes. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, though that will make little or no practical difference to the climate problem, but it will appease the green crowd. I would not expect his administration to try, or to be successful, at implementing some of the more extreme far-left proposals (universal income, free college, reparations to African-Americans, etc), but clearly the party believes that more aggressive federal spending is the way to solve lots of problems.

In foreign policy I assume he would keep up the pressure on China, and probably follow through with Trump’s rapprochement between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. And he will no doubt continue the nation’s withdrawal from the world order which started back with several previous administrations, though probably with more finesse that Trump has shown. He will be under pressure from the left to freeze or even reduce defense spending, which would be unwise, in my opinion, given the current budget problems the military faces as it tries to retool for the changing technology advances and geopolitics of the world.

An assessment of the Trump administration

It’s pretty hard to get a clear picture of our politics these days in the midst of per-election hype, charges and counter-charges, but here is my recent attempt. Ignore Trump’s daily off-the-wall tweets. Ignore the media’s attempt to cast anything Trump does or says in the worst possible light. Ignore all the per-election hype and promises calculated to appeal to this or that segment of the Republican or Democratic base. What has actually happened of significance during Trump’s administration up until now?

The Economy

Well, first of all, until the COVID pandemic hit, the economy was showing more consistent growth than under the Obama administration that preceded it. Here is a chart that shows GDP change under the two administrations:

The Trump administration clearly did a bit better than the Obama administration, with more consistent growth, though not spectacularly better. There are those who will argue it was really inherited from Obama and Trump ought not to get the credit, but of course if it was worse they would have gleefully argued it was all Trump’s fault, so that is a weak argument. Averaged across both terms, Obama’s annual GDP growth rate was 2.15%, while Trump’s, over his first term, has been 2.5%, slightly better but not world-shakingly better.

Then, until the COVID pandemic hit, unemployment had fallen to a historic low, but in fact this was simply the continuation of a trend already started under the Obama administration, as the chart below shows:

So for the unemployment figures, there is a valid argument that Trump simply continued a trend already underway under Obama.

One of Trump’s campaign promises was to reduce the number of federal regulations issued by federal agencies. At the end of Obama’s administration, the Federal Register, which details all federal regulation, totaled 97,110 pages containing 3,410 federal regulations, and there were 2,391 new regulations in the pipeline but not yet approved. No wonder businesses need ranks of lawyers. The chart below shows the result. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, which is a Trump supporter, but it is nevertheless accurate as near as I can tell.

Fundamentally, Trump has tried to fulfill his campaign promise. Of course various groups are outraged by the cancellation of this or that favorite regulation dear to this or that special interest group – that is to be expected. 

I will ignore the stock market. Paul Krugman, the New York Time's Nobel Prize winning ultra-liberal economist confidently predicted that if Trump won the markets would crash and never recover. He was wrong on that as he has been on many subsequent anti-Trump predictions. The market has done very well indeed. But I don't think that has much to do with Trump, except that investors apparently don't expect him to do anything disastrous to their investments.

COVID response

The Biden campaign, abetted by the mainstream press, has made much of Trump’s early dismissal of the COVID threat, conveniently forgetting that they themselves did the same thing. In February, the New York Times published ‘Who says it’s not safe to travel to China?’. In January, BuzzFeed wrote, ‘Don’t worry about the coronavirus. Worry about the flu.’ The Washington Post published, in their health section of all places, ‘Get a grippe, America. The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now.’ The Associated Press wrote in February, ‘Is the new virus more deadly than the flu? Not exactly.’ The Daily Beast ran ‘The virus killing US kids isn’t the one dominating the headlines.’  Vox even deleted tweets and amended a story which downplayed the virus. The press, and Biden, were especially critical of Trump’s early decision to ban travelers from China, a move that in hindsight was prudent, as even Biden now admits.

Yes, Trump has been inconsistent in his response to COVID, and from time to time has peddled some weird non-science remedies. And he failed to organize a coordinated federal response to the shortage of medical equipment and protective equipment in the early days, though one might wonder how effective such an effort might have been, given the chaos exhibited in the early days by the federal CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the NIH (National Institute for Health).  COVID has certainly not shown Trump in a very good light, but in truth many state leaders and many national leaders around the world have done at least as poorly, or even worse.

And one ought to think about the argument Trump has made for opening up businesses earlier. Those well-off elite (mostly liberal) knowledge workers and politicians who argue for keeping the economy closed down are, for the most part, still getting their paychecks, even if they have to work from home. Would they feel differently if they were now out of work and unable to pay their mortgages, or if they were small business owners whose businesses are now bankrupt and closed for good. That is the plight of millions of Americans who wonder, quite reasonably, if the pandemic threat, as bad as it is, is as bad as the long-term economic threat.

Foreign Affairs

Every president since George H.W. Bush has talked about getting NATO members to live up to their pledge of putting at least 2% of their GDP toward their own defense – talked about it, but in in the end done nothing significant to make it happen. Trump has changed that – he has pressed NATO hard to live up to its commitment, and as a result a number of NATO members have finally begun to increase their defense spending. There are still some major holdouts, especially Germany, but there is at least progress on this issue for the first time in decades. Trump deserves credit for this.

The recent breakthrough in the Middle East, with the United Arab Emirates (and now Bahrain as well) establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel is something the Trump administration ought to get credit for. It is more progress than we have seen in the Middle East in a decade. Of course the opportunity arose because of the Iran threat, but the Trump administration took advantage of the window of opportunity, and may well convince other Middle East governments to join the effort. Trump doesn’t deserve a Nobel Prize for it, as some have suggested, any more than Obama deserved the Nobel prize he got for doing nothing but make speeches. But Trump does deserve some credit for this move.

Not much is made of this in the mainstream press, but the Trump administration has renegotiated our trade agreements with almost all of our major trading partners (England is the only exception, and that will come as soon as they untangle themselves from their Brexit mess). The improvements are for the most part relatively minor, but they are real and they improve the competitive position of American workers and American companies.

With respect to China, Trump has moved pretty strongly to deal with both the economic threat (from China’s abuse of trade agreements) and the military threat. There are those who question whether the tariffs Trump imposed will cause more pain to American companies than to China, but that is fairly naïve. The US depends on China trade for about 1% of its GDP, while China depends on US trade for about 7% of its GDP. Companies that have investments in China are of course upset and making the best case possible for removing the tariffs, but that is short-sighted. In general, I think Trump has been fairly effective in containing China, though of course there is a long way still to go in this story.

Summary

There are lots of other areas one could examine in detail, but this is enough to give a broad summary of progress and failures in the Trump administration. There is lots to dislike and distrust in Trump’s personal behavior, but in terms of what his administration has actually accomplished over his first term, it seems to me he has done a passable, though not great job. He has failed in many things, as every president does (the presidency is not nearly as powerful as the general public thinks it is – Congress, after all, holds the purse strings). Considering that he has been under relentless daily attack since before he won the election by the media, by the Washington establishment in both parties (including, apparently, by some in the CIA and the FBI), and by some very wealthy political donors, I am amazed he got as much done as he did.

Of course in this hyper-partisan era, suggesting that Trump has done ANYTHING right outrages half the country, but in fact I think his record is a mixed bag, just like all his predecessors.

The reparations issue

I see that the California state senate has set up a task force to consider reparations for African-Americans.  I’m not sure where they expect to find the money for this in a state already running a deficit this year of just under $55 billion, and with unfunded long-term obligations exceeding $1.5 trillion, but I guess it fits with the California “woke” ethic, the same “woke” ethic that has produced statewide power blackouts and masses of homeless people living on the streets in Los Angeles and San Francisco and drove the state to undertake a doomed and now-discontinued $100 billion “supposedly green” high-speed rail project that was economically unsustainable.

But aside from that, I have never understood the logic of this reparation idea. Reparations to the people actually exploited makes sense. If we were paying reparations to the former slaves themselves I would understand it, and even agree with it. They were the ones who were actually exploited. But paying reparations to their descendants several generations removed? That doesn’t make sense to me, though I certainly understand why the idea appeals to them. Everyone likes to have the government give them money.

But then why just the African-American descendants of slaves? Why not also the descendants of American Indians whose land we appropriated? Why not the descendants of West Coast Japanese who were interned during world war II?  Why not the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants who were discriminated against in the last century? Why not the descendants of all American women, who were locked out of the labor market for so long? Why not the descendants of all the Jews who were systematically discriminated against?  Where does this end?

Like the idea of “giving back the land” to the local native American tribes (who would, by the same logic, have to then give it back to the tribes they took it from, etc, etc, etc), there is no way to repair the past. It is what it is.

We should instead attend to the current injustices. Money spent to more closely achieve the goal of “equality of opportunity” (NOT equality of outcome) would be better spent. Things like early childhood programs to give poor kids a better start make sense. Money spent improving our K-12 education for everyone (not just the elite) makes sense. Effective job training programs for the unemployed (or at least those willing to participate) make sense. Clearly better training, and perhaps more rigorous selection, of police would be worth investing in.

But reparations? That simply doesn’t make sense to me. That is just the liberal elite assuaging their guilt and virtue signaling. And if the wealthy want to spend their own money that way, they have plenty of it and that’s their privilege, but of course that isn’t what would happen. Most of the burden would fall on the rest of us taxpayers.

No wonder the wealthy are leaving California in droves these days.

What you see is what you get….?

One thing we can say about President Donald Trump is that he is authentic. With him, what you see is what you get, like it or not. He was brash, impulsive, erratic and egocentric as a candidate, and he turned out to be exactly the same once elected. We got exactly what the pre-election packaged promised. That delighted some people and horrified others, but it should have surprised nobody.

There is no reason to believe, if Trump is re-elected, that he will be any different in the next four years (if he lives that long) than he has been in the last four years. He will continue to pour out endless eccentric Twitter comments (actually, a clever way to bypass the media filter and talk directly to his base). He will continue what is basically a fairly standard Republican program - smaller government, less regulation, pro business, strong on national defense, strong on law-and-order. He will continue to dominate the media (with their connivence, since it drives readership) and take the oxygen out of the room for his opponents. He will continue his pressure on China and Iran, and continue the disengagement of the US from the world order started by Clinton and Bush. There are unlikely to be any policy surprises.

What about Joe Biden? It’s pretty hard to tell what we are getting. We certainly know the old political pro Joe Biden of the past four decades, but is the current candidate Joe Biden the same guy? Hard to tell, since his handlers won’t let him face reporters, or answer unscripted questions. Except for a couple of pre-scripted interviews with softball questions for which he already had prepared notes, we haven’t seen much of the current Joe Biden, and what we did see of him in the early primaries in unscripted situations wasn’t particularly comforting – he looked like an old man who is losing it. Nancy Pelosi has suggested that he need not debate Trump. Is that because she fears what would be revealed in such an unscripted situation in which he had to think fast on his feet?

This is an important issue. If we are really electing Kamila Harris to be effectively the next president, we need to know that and make our voting decision on that basis. If an elected President Biden is just going to be a figurehead whose policies are going to be shaped by his “handlers” we need to know that now (and which part of the Democratic party will control him – the moderates or the far left? Am I getting Nancy Pelosi or AOC?), and make our voting decision based on that information.