Bob Sparks: Donald Trump campaign shakeup — will it be enough?
Donald Trump and his campaign are sending a signal with the announcement of Steve Bannon as campaign CEO and Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager. Aside from the clear message that his is a campaign in trouble, it also provides a clear picture of a major focus of his campaign going forward. That focus is to make the election about Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump. So far, Trump’s world-class lack of discipline has kept the spotlight on himself. There can be little doubt that Bannon has been brought on board to change that dynamic. If the candidate will cooperate and refrain from responding to criticism from Gold Star families, it will be interesting to see if this move works. “It’s an expansion at a busy time in the final stretch of the campaign,” Conway told The New York Times. Bannon is fairly well-known in conservative circles as the Executive Chairman of Breitbart News, the media outlet liberals love to hate. Even some conservatives were unhappy with Breitbart’s softness for Trump during the primaries. No one is talking about Bannon’s accomplishments as a conservative filmmaker, but they should. His skill in that area will make him invaluable to Trump. That is if the candidate will cooperate. Bannon’s most recent work is the film version of Peter Schweizer’s New York Times best-selling book, Clinton Cash. The findings of Schweizer and his team at the Florida-based Government Accountability Institute (co-founded with Bannon) have given Trump and Republicans fodder for op-eds and TV ads for months. (Full disclosure: I represent a group from Japan that translated and published Clinton Cash in that country.) The book and the film chronicle the questionable donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments doing business with the U.S. while Clinton was Secretary of State. Clinton is clearly vulnerable to political attacks on the activities of the Foundation. Millions of dollars have come into Foundation from some governments which operate on the notion that being gay is punishable by death. Or women are not even second class citizens. Those are in addition to the almost daily revelations provided by the release of still more emails. For those who like to fall back on the notion that only Fox News is talking about this, think again. The Boston Globe, no conservative organ, published an editorial Wednesday calling for the Foundation to stop accepting donations. Now. These should be the gifts that keep on giving for Trump. Instead, his instinct has been to talk about Clinton and President Barack Obama being the “founders of ISIS” during his most recent Florida swing. This is the state of the playing field as Bannon enters the game. If Bannon can keep Trump on message, a huge undertaking, we should expect television and online ads taking the most devastating snippets from the film. His imprint will be on other ads as well. Conway brings campaign experience, including decades as a pollster. She is also a frequent guest pundit on political shows. We will soon see if Trump puts his faith in his “core four” of Bannon, Conway, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates. If Conway becomes the most frequent spokesperson, then despite denials, Manafort’s role has likely changed. Manafort is under scrutiny for his role in helping the pro-Russian government in Ukraine (at the time) direct undisclosed payments to U.S. lobbying firms. This dynamic will make him unable to effectively represent the campaign in media interviews, especially the Sunday shows. How does the Trump campaign talk about the Clinton Foundation while its campaign chairman is being peppered with questions by those seeking to create a moral equivalence between the two? The answer: by keeping the chairman under wraps. This is clearly Trump’s last chance to be relevant. It may already be too late, but with an opponent as flawed as Hillary Clinton, anything is possible if the focus stays on her. Only in America.
Martin Dyckman: Donald Trump’s remarks about nuclear weapons are scary
Is it time to recycle the daisy ad? The most effective political spot ever filmed begins with a precious little girl pulling petals from a flower, counting them imperfectly. It segues to a man’s harsh voice counting down from 10. The child’s face dissolves into the hideous sight and sound of an H-bomb test. “These are the stakes,” says another voice — the familiar one of the president of the United States. “To make a world in which all of God’s children can live or to go into the darkness. We must either love each other or we must die.” “Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3,” says an announcer. “The stakes are too high for you to stay home.” The ad did not mention Barry Goldwater, Johnson’s arch-conservative, hawkish Republican opponent, and it was pulled after running only once. But nearly everyone saw it in news replays, and it contributed enormously to LBJ’s landslide victory in November 1964. The message was that Goldwater shouldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. He had, in fact, suggested the use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Anyone old enough to have seen the ad will never forget it. For everyone else, it’s on YouTube. Search for “daisy ad.” There is now a candidate for president, presently leading the race for his party’s nomination, whose reckless talk about nuclear weapons makes Goldwater look rather like a peacenik. That candidate has suggested that South Korea and Japan should be encouraged to develop their own nuclear arsenals so as to shoulder a greater load of their own defense, which is now guaranteed by the United States. “At some point, we cannot be the policeman of the world,” Donald Trump said. “And unfortunately, we have a nuclear world now … Now, wouldn’t you rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?” No, we wouldn’t. And neither would Japan, which promptly cited its prudent policy of never possessing them. As for the two Koreas, what does Trump suppose that the North’s manic dictator Kim Jong Un would do with his nukes should he see or suspect South Korea actually undertaking to develop one? Trump is practically goading the tyrant to use one now. The problem, of course, is that Trump shoots from the lip, whether the subject is war, women, abortion, or anything else. As The Washington Post columnist Katherine Parker put it, “The man either can’t or won’t think before speaking.” Newt Gingrich, a supporter, acknowledged that Trump doesn’t see that “being president of the United States is a team sport that requires a stable personality that allows other people to help him.” That too many nations already have nuclear weapons hardly makes a case that others should. It means just the opposite. Nuclear nonproliferation is a long-standing, bipartisan policy that we share with all our allies as well as such less-friendly nations as Russia and China. It’s why we assembled a coalition to enforce the sanctions that pressured Iran into forsaking its own pursuit of a nuclear arsenal. “We don’t want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is,” President Barack Obama said Friday at the close of a summit meeting on nuclear security. “Even those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand that the president of the United States needs to know what’s going on around the world,” the president said. The next president, heaven forbid, could be someone who not only doesn’t know but doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know. The only one thing worse than ignorance in politics is the willful stupidity of a candidate who assumes that his gut instincts are all the knowledge he needs. Trump’s interview with The Washington Post’s editorial board was so jaw-dropping that the newspaper posted the full transcript online. Click here to read it. Typical of his dissembling and evasion was his answer to a timely question about whether “it’s a problem that the percentage of blacks in prison is higher than whites, and what do you think is the root of that situation?” Trump wouldn’t say. Asked a second time, he still wouldn’t say. Asked directly whether he believes there are “disparities in law enforcement,” this is what he finally did say: “I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t. I mean, I’ve read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that.” On climate change: “Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change … to me, the biggest risk is nuclear weapons.” And then he went out and dialed that risk up yet another notch. Ten, nine, eight, seven … *** Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
Marc Yacht: The voters are angry and unhappy
The late singer Ted Lewis in top hat, cane and tuxedo would look straight at the audience and ask, “Is everybody happy?” He would go on to sing, “Me and My Shadow” or any number of songs in his repertoire. The audience laughed then, but there would be little amusement today. Very few are happy. Democrats and Republicans disagree on most issues, but they are kindred spirits in their distaste for political leadership. According to numerous Pew Research Center polls, Americans have lost confidence in traditional politics. Voters feel betrayed. Republican distaste for Democrats and President Barack Obama runs much deeper than suggested racial bias. The Democratic disdain for Republicans has to do with congressional gridlocks and the GOP’s attitudes about the poor and women’s rights. The popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders shows the parties’ failure to deliver what voters expected. Republicans and Democrats feel abandoned and are convinced that big money drives the political agenda. They have been lied to and deceived for decades and are right. Now, the birds are coming home to roost. At stake is the future of the two-party system. Trump may hold the key to Republican survival. Sanders’ popularity may not destroy the Democrats but should change their direction and focus. Despite arguments by the Obama administration that the economy is better, the middle and working classes are not seeing this in their wages and lifestyle. What they are seeing is an abuse by corporate executives to fatten their wallets while using lobbying influence to undermine wages. The middle class now feels this pinch. Frontline plant workers have suffered stagnant wages for decades. Many of those workers have been staunch Republicans but cannot ignore inadequate incomes. Furthermore, the future appears bleak. The millionaires, billionaires, corporations and Wall Street are the villains. People believe that generous bonuses were paid to executives with money that was supposed to assist people who were losing their homes. Few were helped. Called “corporate welfare,” the abuses continue. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have digested that betrayal, though each side blames the other. Both sides are to blame. There has been no accountability for the flagrant fiscal abuse. All voters are frightened of terrorism. Recent events in Europe and California perpetrated by extremist Muslims have Americans scared. Irresponsible media pundits are whipping up hate but clearly more is needed in the way of policy than Muslim appeasement. A lack of a sound immigration policy angers voters. Political correctness is thwarting needed action. The public needs to know what is being done to identify Muslim extremist groups to avert further tragedies. Congressional gridlock has angered both sides. People expect Congress to function and many voters are abandoning their party leaders because of the dysfunction. A Gallup poll says that Americans believe that government is to blame for the sluggish economy, lack of jobs and immigration chaos. Politicians are seen as abrogating their responsibility to the people who elected them. The U.S. is losing respect internationally. Americans note that other rich nations see a divided America becoming more estranged from its citizens. Trump and Sanders have tapped into the angry American voter. Both parties may have lost the confidence of their constituents. Once trust is lost, it is very difficult to regain. The parties have neglected their voters for too long. If the Republican leaders are successful and derail Trump, how will Republican voters react? If the Democrat leadership marginalizes Sanders, how will Democratic voters respond? Voters on both sides agree that we need politicians who will serve the public. Most voters feel elected officials have failed them. *** Dr. Marc Yacht, MD, MPH is a retired physician living in Hudson Florida.
Martin Dyckman: Refusing to approve Obama nominee could hurt the Party of No in November
Mitch McConnell couldn’t even wait until Justice Antonin Scalia‘s corpse was cold before exploiting his death for partisan politics. The oleaginous majority leader means to keep the seat empty, no matter the likelihood of that paralyzing the sharply divided Supreme Court for a year, on the chance that voters might elect a Republican president to appoint Scalia’s replacement. The people, he said, “should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice.” As Elizabeth Warren promptly reminded him, voters had that choice when they elected President Barack Obama and re-elected him four years ago with a winning margin of nearly 5 million votes. Most Americans understand that short of making or preventing war, the appointment of a Supreme Court justice has the longest-lasting consequences of anything a president does. They have trusted Obama with that responsibility. Twice. But the Party of No has never forgiven him for winning and has treated him with degrees of obstructionism and contempt that were never practiced by Democratic Congresses against Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. The scheme of keeping Scalia’s seat empty for a year is consistent with the Party of No having shut down the executive branch to try win with extortion what it couldn’t win at the ballot box — the repeal of Obamacare. Belying the current Republican reinvention of history, there has never been a policy of deliberately perpetuating Supreme Court vacancies on the rare occasions when they occur during the last year of a president’s term. Quite the contrary. Some examples: There were only 10 months left in Reagan’s when the Senate unanimously confirmed Justice Anthony Kennedy, as Reagan urged it to do. John Adams had only four months left in his term when he appointed John Marshall to be chief justice in December 1800. That was easily the most consequential appointment ever. Thomas Jefferson, who had defeated Adams, could do nothing but gnash his teeth over the Federalists’ parting shot. Herbert Hoover was in the last year of his term, and facing all-but-certain defeat in the 1932 election, when he successfully nominated Benjamin Cardozo. When President Lyndon Johnson failed to promote Justice Abe Fortas to chief justice, it wasn’t because of timing but because Fortas had woeful ethical problems. There is nothing in the Constitution to require — or authorize — Congress to wait for an intervening election before carrying out any duty other than counting electoral votes. The 27th amendment merely postpones the effective date of any congressional salary increase until after the ensuing election for the House. That was James Madison‘s idea, 202 years before it was finally ratified, on the premise that lawmakers should think twice about giving themselves a pay raise of which the voters might disapprove. Today, there are Republican senators up for re-election who might want to rethink the McConnell scheme to hold the Supreme Court hostage for the next election. Five of the 17 seats the party is defending are in states, including Florida, which Obama carried four years ago. Obama will fulfill his constitutional duty to nominate a justice even if the Republican senators insist on defaulting on their duty to advise and consent. The voters will then have an opportunity to judge the senators. Two of the people said to be on Obama’s shortlist are circuit court of appeals judges whom the Senate confirmed unanimously two and three years ago. One would be the first Indian-American justice. The other is from Iowa and was enthusiastically supported by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the judiciary committee, who is up for re-election this year. Is Grassley really prepared to stonewall her? Maybe not. He’s now saying he might hold hearings on a nominee although he still thinks the next president should make the appointment. At least the Party of No is making it vividly clear to voters what’s at stake for the Supreme Court — and for the entire concept of equal justice under law — this year. For the first time since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, a majority of the court might be Democratic appointees. More to the important point, will the new justice be an ideologue like Scalia, or disposed to compromise like Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, both of whom were Republicans? They were the last justices who had ever held political office — O’Connor as a legislator and Souter as an attorney general — and the court was richer for that experience. The Supreme Court did its greatest work — Brown v. Board of Education comes to mind — when it valued consensus. It has been at its worst — think Citizens United — when an ideological majority insisted on scoring points that weren’t necessary to resolving the case. The American people want a new justice who will be judicious in every sense of the word. If Obama nominates such a person and the Republicans refuse to confirm him or her, it will be as good a reason as any for voters to reject the Party of No on Nov. 8. *** Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
Jac VerSteeg: Keep gun owners from killing themselves
In America guns now kill as many people as cars. The facts behind this trend offer an opportunity for cooperation between gun rights factions and gun safety factions. The headline – guns kill as many as cars – at first looks like a slam dunk condemnation of rising gun violence. That’s not the case. The underlying cause is not a spike in gun homicides. Rather, it is a steady reduction in the number of motor vehicle deaths. (By the way, in Florida vehicular fatalities still outnumber gun deaths.) There’s another wrinkle in the national stats. Of the 30,000 people who die from gun violence every year, about 20,000 are suicides. Therein lies the opportunity for agreement between pro-gun and anti-gun factions. Both should want to reduce suicide rates by providing resources for mental health. Gun rights advocates have conceded – at least, some have – that guns should be kept out of the hands of the mentally ill. When there is an attack such as the murders committed at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, gun rights forces are eager to blame the shooter’s mental illness rather than the firearms used to kill, in this case, three people including a police officer. But for every high-profile case like that, there are thousands of gun deaths that barely are noticed except by the family and friends of the victims. I’m talking, of course, about those 20,000 suicides by gun every year. Suicide is an extreme symptom of mental illness. One reason suicide is so little noted is that it is clouded in stigma and shame. News media traditionally have not reported on lone suicides out of consideration for the surviving friends and family members. Suicide has been seen as a private matter. But not always. As the Sun Sentinel reported, 56-year-old Clive A. Muir shot himself to death on New Year’s Day. But not before he also shot two assistant managers, one fatally, who worked at the Boston Market in Tamarac where Muir had worked before being fired last fall. It is impossible to know whether mental health intervention could have prevented Muir’s attacks and suicide. The same is true of every specific suicide. But it is a reasonable assumption that intervention by mental health professionals can and does prevent some suicides. Further, the same intervention that helps individuals cope with the loss of their jobs or other life crises reasonably can be assumed to prevent, in some cases, the kind of murder-suicide tragedies that Muir inflicted on himself and his victims. I know from personal experience – having lost close family members to murder-suicide involving gun violence – that mental health intervention will not work in every case. Finding out what kind of intervention does work to prevent suicide should be a major subject of research. But it isn’t. Why? In part because Congress since 1996 has blocked funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that specifically would have paid for research into the effects of gun violence on Americans’ health – including the role that guns play in suicide. The Washington Post has reported that the CDC has balked at getting involved in such research even after President Barack Obama issued an executive order authorizing some gun-violence research after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. The CDC – and other sources of research funding – simply are afraid of retaliation from Congress and gun rights groups if they pay for any studies that could be interpreted as favoring gun control. That fear is preventing robust research that could pinpoint the best way for clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals to, in layman’s terms, talk people out of committing suicide. The most obvious irony is that preventing research into suicide prevention results in lethal harm to gun owners themselves. When about 20,000 people kill themselves with guns every year, roughly 20,000 gun owners are proving that guns often are more dangerous to their owners than they are to any outside threats. Gun rights advocates, as well as gun control advocates, should be able to agree that improving access to mental health services is a goal that would prevent gun deaths. Further, they should be able to agree that research to improve the mental health services actually delivered would prevent gun deaths. Not agreeing is, well, suicide. • • • Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida. For more state and national commentary visit Context Florida.
Jac VerSteeg: Picture Donald Trump at the head of an army
The 2016 presidential race hasn’t had any official votes yet. But as things are shaping up for two candidates with Florida ties – Jeb Bush and Donald Trump – the contest already has bearing on at least two constitutional issues. They are whether contributing money to candidates is a form of protected free speech; and whether the president, as commander-in-chief, can usurp Congress’ constitutional power to declare war. The specific situations that raise these issues are, first, the fact that Bush’s immense campaign fund – he and his allies reportedly already have spent $100 million on advertising – has not vaulted Jeb to a preeminent position in the polls. Second, Trump’s provocative macho military and immigration proposals have led an increasing number of critics to label him a fascist with no regard for constitutional constraints on executive power. How would commander-in-chief Trump wield military power? Most other candidates also take an aggressive military stance. Will Congress, which has been meek or inactive on this front for more than a decade, reassert its proper authority? Jeb’s embarrassing poll numbers routinely show him at 5 percent or less, or about 20 points behind Trump. If Bush’s actual election results fulfill those dismal predictions, he unquestioningly will have done his party one very big favor. He will have provided evidence to counter the mostly Democratic critics of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which basically held that money is speech and super PACS can spend as much as they like. Jeb’s debacle is shaping up to provide overwhelming proof that money does not always corrupt the democratic process. True, there are all kinds of counter arguments. Trump, with his flair for attracting free media coverage, is a unique candidate. And it is likely that any post mortem of spending in 2016 elections across the board – including the House and Senate and state and local elections – would show a clear connection between spending and electoral success. But Bush and his supporters have spent so much money in such a high-profile race that it will be Exhibit No. 1 in any debate about overturning Citizens United. An interesting related question is, of course, why hasn’t spending gobs of money translated into success for Bush? The “product,” the pitch or both are faulty. However, a major factor has to be Trump’s rhetoric and its appeal to a large and motivated segment of the GOP base. Trump’s speaking style, the outrageous content of his proposals – ban all Muslims, Mexicans are rapists, etc. – his encouragement of supporters in his audiences to physically intimidate protesters, all have encouraged commentators and cartoonists to compare him to Hitler and Mussolini. Members of Congress should be looking at Trump and asking themselves what would he do as commander-in-chief? In fact, they should already have been acting to regain control over what President Barack Obama has done as commander-in-chief. Obama got America involved in Libya, which led to Benghazi. He is incrementally increasing the U.S. military’s involvement in and around Syria and has ordered thousands of air strikes against Islamic extremists. Congress, which according the constitution has sole authority to declare war, has refused through all of this to debate and approve updated authority for the president to prosecute a “war” against ISIS. That’s a shocking dereliction of duty, and it significantly affects Florida, which has a leading military presence. The cowardly motive for inaction is clear. Congress does not want to stop the president from making war, but it also does not want to approve or guide his actions. Because Congress wants to avoid blame, Congress avoids action. That could be disastrous no matter who is elected president in 2016. Pundits say Trump has no chance of being elected. They also said he would fade by now. He hasn’t. Congress should imagine him at the head of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. That should scare Congress into action. Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida.
Bob Sparks: Mainstream media not the only Trump enablers
Our country has some serious issues to deal with. The next president must finally confront terrorism both overseas and within our borders. The latest tragic example came on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California. We cannot get this choice wrong. For those of us who believe the best candidates are on the Republican side, GOP voters are far from settled on who they want to face Hillary Clinton. Those tuning in to television political news hear things like “Donald Trump is flying high” or “Trump’s message resonates with frustrated Republicans.” As if they are casual bystanders, commentators proclaim “Trump is dominating nearly every news cycle.” At least until Wednesday. That pretty well describes what poses for analysis on the GOP side. Every day is like the movie “Groundhog Day.” This is how it works: A new day dawns and Trump has a rally or he gives a reporter or personality an audience at Trump Tower. He skillfully exercises his free speech rights to say something brash about someone or something. To end the day, talking heads or a panel then discuss what Trump did and said earlier. A new day dawns and Trump has a rally … You get the picture. Jeb Bush summed it up perfectly when he said Trump is playing the media “like a fiddle.” The differences come on the few occasions when he fudges the truth. The best example came when Trump said Bush was uttering a falsehood by pointing out Trump had personally lobbied for casinos in Florida. The Bush version was proven to be undeniably true. Honesty does not matter to far too many of those truly committed to Trump. An example from talk radio is useful. Preston Scott hosts a local Tallahassee program called “The Morning Show.” Scott, a bona fide conservative, informed his audience after Trump’s false statement that he could not support someone who lies. Trump and Clinton were disqualified for that reason. Scott then took listeners’ calls and one in particular stood out. When Scott prompted the caller to reveal whom he supports, the caller proudly said “Donald Trump.” He was asked why. “Because he tells it like it is,” the caller said proudly. When Scott reminded him of Trump’s false statement, the caller said it did not matter to him, then repeated his affinity for Trump because he “tells it like it is.” How do you discuss facts and policy with someone whose favorite philosopher is probably Yogi Berra? For those of us who thought Trump would have faded by now, we must admit we were wrong. This leaves us to ponder how he has managed to maintain a plurality. Most of us do not equate bombast with leadership. It is always easy to blame the “mainstream” media, but this time they deserve their fair share of it. Trump, the quote factory/fiddler, makes it too easy for them. Perhaps a bigger reason he continues to be relevant is his treatment from the conservative media, even Fox News commentators. Listen to Eric Bolling of “The Five” defend Trump some time. Rush Limbaugh, perhaps the most trusted voice among conservatives, has basically been an enabler for the charade. He has not officially endorsed Trump, but has not called him out for his shortcomings, either. Trump routinely disparages those who disagree with him in a manner similar to that of President Obama. Trump is telegraphing how he would govern. Conservative media, and in some cases the mainstream, has rightfully criticized the divisive rhetoric coming from our president during the past seven years. Why the silence now? Limbaugh is far from alone among enablers, but he carries the most clout with GOP primary voters. With conservative media demanding precious little accountability, who is there to speak to the huge majority of those who do not support Trump? Perhaps the Trump act will finally wear thin and those chronicling the election of the next leader of the free world will take things more seriously. We get it that left-leaning media celebrates every day Trump is on top, but the events of Wednesday reaffirm that we must focus on real issues. How many sensational headlines or “did you hear what Trump said” blogs or stand-ups from Trump Tower will finally be enough? Hopefully, those deciding what news is will not wait until March before becoming bored with the circus. Did you hear that Trump, registered 27 percent in the Quinnipiac poll this week? It’s true. He is ahead, but three out of four voters either don’t care or want someone else, but one would be hard pressed to hear that reality described in the analysis. “Trump soars … in latest Quinnipiac poll” reads one headline from a Florida paper. “Trump builds his lead” declares a mainstream national publication. Enablers to the right of us; enablers to the left of us. Bob Sparks is a business and political consultant based in Tallahassee.
Martin Dyckman: As rhetoric descends, up pops evil
John Kasich has taken heat for a web ad that subtly compares Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Narrated by a former Vietnam POW, retired Air Force Col. Tom Moe, it paraphrases German pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous statement of regret that he did not speak up for the tyrant’s victims until he became one “and there was no one left to speak for me.” Hitler analogies should be rare and expressed carefully lest comparisons to lesser evils trivialize his monstrosities. Too many events have already been compared to the Holocaust, for example. But let’s see what the ad says: You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims should register with their government, because you’re not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one. But think about this: If he keeps going, and he actually becomes president, he might just get around to you. And you better hope there’s someone left to help you. Although Kasich tried Sunday to disclaim the implication as Moe’s words, not his, the candidate’s super PAC produced it and he deserves the responsibility and the credit. That’s right, credit. It would be just as wrong to ignore Hitler’s examples as to trivialize them. History often repeats itself. Bad history should be taken as warning. It does not necessarily trivialize Hitler to observe that Trump’s strategy and tactics recall some of those favored by the one-time Austrian army corporal. Like Hitler, Trump is a demagogue. He demonizes minority targets. He relishes personal insults. He revels in baseless insinuations, as in persistently questioning President Obama’s citizenship. He invents his own “facts,” such as having personally witnessed crowds of Muslims cheering 9/11. He lies with glee – the bigger the lie the better – and then lies again when he denies saying or implying what millions of people heard and saw him say. His fundamental theme is to inflame the suspicions of people who think their country is failing itself, failing them, and riddled with conspiracies. So was Hitler’s. He sold himself as the avenger for all that was wrong and everyone who felt wronged. So does Trump. As Hitler exploited Germany’s economic crisis and inflamed the belief that Germany’s defeat in World War I owed to the country being sold out from within – by communists and Jews – rather than to exhaustion and failure at arms, Trump wants Americans to believe our country is failing. He promises to “make America great again,” as if it no longer is. It’s a witch’s brew of bigotry, paranoia and scapegoating – and it’s working. The more outrageously he behaves, the more devoted his mob seems to become. None of this is necessarily means that a president Trump would emulate how Hitler misused power. But he has said – and should be taken at his word – that he would try to round up and expel an estimated 11 million people without any care for the staggering consequences to them or to the industries – agriculture, construction, and hospitality in particular – that would collapse in their absence. How this could be done without concentration camps taxes the imagination. When he talks loosely about surveillance of mosques and identity cards for Muslims, the image that comes to mind is of yellow stars on clothing and passports stamped “Jude.” We have already shown a vulnerability to forfeiting our freedoms in the name of “security.” As the columnist Leonard Pitts wrote recently, Sept. 11 not only destroyed lives and buildings: … It also shredded the Constitution and made America unrecognizable to itself. The government tortured. It disappeared people. It snooped through innocent lives. It created a secret ‘no-fly list’ of supposed terrorists that included many people with zero connection to terrorism … it also gave the president unilateral power to execute American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial or even judicial oversight. And here comes Trump, who calls for waterboarding, which is torture. Where would that stop? Establishment, politicians, journalists, and campaign contributors still have some trouble believing that Trump could secure the Republican nomination, let alone win the White House. But it bears remembering that Hitler never won an election either. He used his strong showing in German’s 1932 election, and the unrequited passion of his followers, to blackmail an aging President Paul von Hindenburg into appointing him chancellor. Hindenburg’s death a year later sealed Germany’s doom. When Trump demands “respect,” is it the vice presidency he has in mind? Or some other lever of power? The truly tragic side to this is that Americans have many rightful complaints. The middle class is marginalized and floundering. Young people can’t afford homes and can’t envision a bright future. The government is unable or unwilling to admit and rectify its responsibility for widening income disparity. Wall Street remains much too unaccountable. Health care reform is incomplete and out-of-pocket costs continue to spiral. But there’s an anti-establishment presidential candidate who speaks to all these concerns without the bigotry, bombast, boorishness and bullying that characterize Trump. He is Bernie Sanders, whose additional virtues include the experience and judgment that Trump so boastfully lacks. He’s a reformer but he’s not a demagogue. He’s not a racist. He’s a humane, decent man. He’s everything that Trump is not. And if Trump doesn’t like being compared to Hitler, let him stop sounding like him. Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives near Asheville, North Carolina.
Steven Kurlander: Faux unité avec Paris — ditching internationalism to protect the American Dream
Over the weekend, images of wanton bloodshed in Paris were conveyed to Americans. Unlike ISIS’ other barbaric attacks, including the horrific bombing of a Russian airliner about a week previous, this attack seemed to hit closer to home. The Paris attacks raised the level of concern and awareness of the ISIS threat to this country. An attack on a major U.S. city was feared next, and expected by many anxious Americans. Immediately, the coordinated attacks in Paris that killed scores of innocent civilians were described by the media and our political leaders strictly in terms of another act of barbaric terrorism against Western civilization. “The killing of innocent people based on a twisted ideology is an attack not just on France, not just on Turkey, it is an attack on the civilized world,” President Barack Obama said at the start of a G20 summit in Ankara, Turkey. In turn, millions of Americans showed solidarity with the people of France, many of us adopting the French tricolor flag as our profile picture on social media sites such as Facebook. We are supposedly all the same citizens of the same Western world. Unlike ISIS, we are, of course, civil people in the truest sense of the word. That mantra was confirmed in the Democratic debate Saturday night by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an architect and continued advocate of such international policies: “But it cannot be an American fight. And I think what the president has consistently said – which I agree with – is that we will support those who take the fight to ISIS.” It’s a mistake that Americans continue to be misled by Obama, Clinton, and their supporting cast in the mainstream press into thinking the fight against ISIS and Islamic radicalism is not strictly our fight to fight alone. Our continuous “internationalist” war against Islamic terrorism, wrapped in the guise of an united effort of “allies” in the Middle East to combat the spread of feudal radical Islamic governance and brutality, is not working. Paris shows that. Americans for too long have had troublingly false expectations of immediate gratification in terms of foreign policing. Internationalism fits that bill because it misplaces responsibility of security and strength onto allies who can’t bring the fight to a level that the United States can to defeat Islamic fascism. It’s easy to say invading Iraq was a mistake. But it wasn’t. It’s time to re-examine whether invading Iraq was truly a mistake in the long view of world events and history, and whether the premature withdrawal from Iraq was the real mistake indeed. The United States is losing a battle now not in terms of saving Western civilization, but in real terms of strictly preserving American borders, way of life, and economy. We have too long fought a half-assed war on terrorism where we’ve substituted expensive electronic gimmickry for boots on the ground, where we’ve made killing a single civilian in a fight against a merciless enemy a war crime, and where we’ve lost perspective of the necessary and proper goal of defeating totalitarianism in order to implant democratic virtues and economic opportunity around the world. It shouldn’t be politically incorrect any more to unleash the massive firepower we hold in our arsenal to actually win a war for a change. We need to begin fighting a real war for the American way of life, not for Western civilization. And it likely won’t be won overnight: It might take decades. Japan and Korea are prime examples of how we did it right. Our long-term occupation of those countries, still secured by American troops, are the model to use. Ideological radicalism died in those countries because we successfully helped build economies that allowed large middle classes to prosper. That relieved the unemployment and restlessness that characterizes the Middle East masses. Paris in the true sense exemplifies the massive failure of President Obama’s ananchronic internationalist foreign policies that have both diminished our power overseas and endangered our security at home. It’s time to fight a brutal war against ISIS and the citizenry who support them, occupy territories in the Middle East, and recreate and stabilize the boundaries to better reflect the tribal nature of the region, and to foster economic opportunity through capitalism in those regions. Instead of including the French flag in our online profiles to show our solidarity in the fight against ISIS, Americans instead should start flying Old Glory on their social media pages. Steven Kurlander blogs at Kurly’s Kommentary (stevenkurlander.com) and writes for Context Florida and The Huffington Post and can be found on Twitter @Kurlykomments. He lives in Monticello, New York.
Diane Roberts: Stop the French-bashing; we owe them
For reasons that do us no credit, Americans find it easy to insult the French. Perhaps we hate their freedoms – their freedom to live for something other than money, their freedom to enjoy food and sex minus 400 years of Protestant guilt. We call the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys;” we sneer at John Kerry and Mitt Romney because they speak French. At the Oct. 28th debate, Jeb Bush tried to get clever about Congress’ laziness, accusing them of adhering to a “French work week.” When the French refused to participate in our perfectly stupid invasion of Iraq, we boycotted their wine and some particularly silly congressmen demanded that the House cafeterias serve “Freedom Fries,” and “Freedom Toast.” Now that Paris has suffered terrorist attacks that killed at least 132, some Americans are expressing sympathy and solidarity with France. President Obama called it an “attack on the civilized world.” Buildings from 1 World Trade Center in New York to a bridge in Nashville lit themselves up with the blue, white and red of the French tricoleur. Nous sommes tous Parisiens. Then there’s the Republican Party. Donald Trump castigated the French for their “tough gun control laws.” If only everyone in the concert hall and the restaurant and the stadium had been toting AK-47s like the terrorists, things would have been very different. Newt Gingrich and Anne Coulter piled on, blaming France for not being armed. The politicizing got so bad that Red State’s Erick Erickson, a big gun-hugger himself, tweeted: “I gotta say, it does feel a little icky to turn this attack in Paris into a debate on how France should adopt our 2nd amendment.” Naturally, it’s all Barack Obama’s fault. He didn’t keep U.S. troops in Iraq; he didn’t deal with Syria; he hurt Israel’s feelings; he refuses to utter the words “radical Islam.” We all know that those are magic words, words that would solve the problem. Criticizing Obama’s Syria policy is fair enough: It’s been disastrous. But blaming him for ISIL absolves the neocons of the Bush-Cheney administration whose trigger-happy invasion of Iraq and cavalier treatment of the country, especially the Rummy-Wolfie-Cheney de-Baathification program, poured gasoline on the flame of extremism. Trump would probably describe France as a “loser” country, with its paid maternity leave, fast trains, humane employment laws, and excellent healthcare system. The French, in turn, reject “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” as rapacious and destructive. Nevertheless, the United States could learn from France – as we have always learned from France. French philosophers inspired our Founding Fathers with the idea that government should serve its citizens and that freedom was a human right. Rousseau argued for the state’s “social contract” with the individual; Voltaire championed civil rights and religious freedom; Montesquieu advocated for the separation of powers in government. What, you thought we came up with that all by ourselves? The French tradition of reason, of rational thought, of respect for knowledge, might help Republican presidential candidates get past their hysterical responses. Ted Cruz says ISIL is “coming to America.” Jeb Bush says the U.S. should focus on “Christian refugees”: They’re welcome in the U.S. as long as we make sure they’re the real deal, you know, give them a catechism exam, ask them to eat a bacon sandwich, and see whether they say “Merry Christmas!” instead of “Happy Holidays.” Ben Carson wants to ban any and all refugees from the Middle East. That’ll learn ’em. Because Obama’s going to let in 200,000 Syrians who are almost certainly psychopathic jihadis. Carson would bomb an oil field to make ISIL “look like losers.” Trump wants to bomb, too: all the oil fields. Then Exxon can come in and make everything, as he said, “beautiful.” And, according to him, it’s 250,000 Syrian refugees. The real number proposed by Obama is 10,000. But why let the facts get in the way of a good piece of political insanity? And under no circumstances should we remember that terrorists are often homegrown: Timothy McVeigh, the London suicide bombers in 2005, Anders Behring Breivik, and Dylan Roof were native to the nation they tried to attack. If nothing else, perhaps the Republicans will stop with the French-bashing and remember that if it were not for France, the United States would not exist. The French government sent guns, soldiers and money during the American Revolution, and the Marquis de Lafayette spent millions of his own fortune on American independence. The French deserve better than to be told they should be just like us. Diane Roberts teaches at Florida State University. Her latest book is “TRIBAL: College football and the Secret Heart of America.”
Martin Dyckman: The road to Middle East stability isn’t through war
Remember “freedom fries?” That was how some Americans expressed their spite toward France when that nation, with vastly more experience than ours in the Middle East, wisely declined the opportunity to participate in George W. Bush‘s ego-driven war on Iraq. There was a congresswoman from Florida who called for exhuming our military graves and bringing the remains home. She was ignorant of the fact that a grateful France had ceded those sites to the United States forever. The heartbreakingly beautiful cemetery atop the Normandy beachhead is as much American soil as Arlington itself. But in Paris on Friday, France paid a terrible price for the chaos we created when we invaded Iraq and destroyed its government with no thought of history or of the consequences beyond the premature boast, “Mission accomplished.” The evil we didn’t know proved to be worse than the evil we did. Saddam Hussein, for all his crimes, was a stabilizing influence on Iraq and an effective counterweight to Iran – which, unlike Iraq, had declared its enmity of the U.S. and remains an essential ally of the Syrian dictatorship that provides the so-called Islamic State with a plausible raison d’etre. When Bush’s civilian viceroy sacked the entire Iraqi army, he created legions of recruits for al-Qaida and its successor, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – aka ISIS. Our failure in nation-building created a corrupt prime minister, Nouri Kamal al- Maliki, whose refusal to renew the status of forces agreement gave President Obama no choice, whatever other he might have chosen, but to bring all our troops home. No president of either party could have left them there exposed to Iraqi laws, arrests and prosecutions. To understand this history is to be warned against repeating it. But America doesn’t learn that lesson very well. Vietnam should have taught us the difficulty of imposing our values on a different culture and to be leery of war where our national interest is not at stake. But the only lesson the politicians took to heart from that unpopular lost war was to abandon the draft and fight the next one with a volunteer force, a force that has been cruelly abused with too many successive combat deployments. In the aftermath of the Paris massacres, we will be hearing again, from the usual suspects, that it’s time to unleash American military might to whatever extent it takes to exterminate ISIS. But even if we could do that – and we can’t – something else would take its place, just as the burgeoning ISIS supplanted a decapitated al-Qaida. The Democratic presidential candidates were right as they agreed, in their separate ways Friday night, that the fight against ISIS must be led by the Muslim states that are the radical movement’s primary intended victims. The United States can help, and should. We are helping already, as are the French, and there is surely more that we can do, short of sending sophisticated weapons to dubious allies who might surrender them to ISIS. But it cannot be seen as an American war, or as French or British. The more important point is that the ultimate solution can not be military. That can only prolong the strife and suffering. By coincidence, the Imam of Asheville’s Muslim community, Egyptian-born Mohamed Taha, was the scheduled speaker Sunday at a brunch sponsored by the Brotherhood of my Reform Jewish congregation. It was well-attended. He talked mainly about the beliefs of Islam and its many similarities to Judaism, and its devotion to peace. But the slaughter at Paris hovered over the morning. “These people,” he said, speaking of ISIS and its ilk, “they are extremists. The majority of Muslims don’t consider these people as Muslims. Mohamed warned against such people … they take some verse of the Koran and they twist its meaning. “They don’t,” he added, “consider us as Muslims.” To defeat the jihadists, he said, requires overcoming the conditions they exploit. “They live in poverty,” he said of the populations where the jihadists enlist most of their support. “They have nothing. We have to help them to establish good countries, good communities. They have nothing in this life, so the extremists promise them everything in the next life.” The solution is not military. The wiser of our American experts on the Middle East, notably including The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, have been saying that for years. After World War II, the United States deployed a non-military solution, the Marshall Plan, to help a ravaged Europe rise to its feet in democracy rather than communism. We surely could use a Marshall plan for the Middle East. But how to help the people there to their feet without having the assistance stolen by the corruption that is endemic among the rulers there? I asked that question. Taha acknowledged the difficulty. It begins, he said, with affording an American education, steeped in American traditions and values, to Middle Eastern students who want to study here. Inevitably, perhaps, some few of those students will have other values in mind, like those who prepared here for 9/11. And in the aftermath of Paris, there are politicians who would slam the door, to students as well as refugees, for fear of the few who would exploit our hospitality. But that would be a mistake. It would betray that our values are not, in truth, what we would wish them to be. It would postpone the redemption of the Middle East and perpetuate a war that cannot be won by arms alone. Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Steven Kurlander: Donald Trump “phenomenon” defines new age of American ShockReality politics
Whether you love him or hate him (I don’t think there’s an in-between), you have to admit Donald Trump has established his personal brand and fortune throughout the years by being extremely brash, creative, and smart: all with a very flippant attitude. Whether you like him or not, you have to admit that first in real estate, then reality TV, and now in politics, Trump has led the way in redefining the conventional and in turn achieving power, success, notoriety, power, and wealth. Now with Trump’s run for the White House, he is redefining American politics in terms of translating his brash, contentious style into what may be an unbeatable methodology of capturing the hearts and minds of disgruntled American voters. Trump has never been afraid to say what’s on the tip of his tongue. In the past, this propensity to attack, detract, and offend has lessened his intellectual credibility by defining his vision as Kardashian reality star style banter. But now his push-the-limit style converted into political rhetoric in a serious run for the White House, is playing well to many voters. He can berate Mexicans and Chinese, call John McCain a fake hero, be accused of raping his ex-wife and consorting with the mob, and even be described as uncharitable in his giving. Right now, he’s more than Ronald Reagan teflon, he’s kryptonite. Whether they are Republican, Democrat or a growing number of independent voters, American voters are tired most living paycheck to paycheck with no hope of digging out of debt. They are frustrated with a lackluster economy, ineffective governance in both Washington and state capitals, and continuous undeclared war. Most importantly, no matter where they stand in the political spectrum, the electorate is fed up with traditional mainstream politics, and even fringe Tea Party and leftist politics, too. In his ShockReality manner, Trump is spouting off truisms that Americans are feeling, but won’t enunciate on their own. If you believe the polls, Trump’s ShockReality messaging is playing well with the Republican base,. with him leaping ahead in a crowded pack of GOP hopefuls. No matter what he says, Americans now used to years of watching reality TV, want more from him, even demand more, with really no severe consequences to his popularity in a fast 24-7 news cycle that keeps moving on to the next sound bite. Some, though, say it’s one thing to practice ShockReality politics, it’s another to get down to the basics of backing up acerbic banter with hard policy. A major criticism, which shows signs of being out of touch with the true state of American politics, says he needs to come up with solutions and not just lash out about systemic problems in 2015 America. In recognizing his success so far in his messaging, David A. Fahrenthold in The Washington Post wrote: “But, so far, he’s missing something basic: a policy platform. A formal list of Trump’s ideas for America.” Here’s the game changer that Trump recognizes and no one else wants to admit: Americans don’t need or demand a policy platform for a presidential candidate to earn their vote. They just want some serious change, no matter how it comes. They want instead, a president, or any politician, who is sympathetic to their many frustrations and fearless enough to say what they feel, what they want, and want they need. It’s simple: They want a great America again. And Trump’s ShockReality political style works better than the Tea Party rhetoric precisely because it is not chained down in inflexible ideology. Instead, it stimulates a hope that President Obama correctly identified and ran on in 2008, but failed, like George W. Bush before him to deliver during his term in office. Donald Trump, and even now Joe Biden too with his own style of shooting off his mouth, is about to change American presidential politics for good. Calling Trump’s ShockReality messaging a phenomenon, and discounting his 2016 run, in our age of disdain is not only a mistake, but a lack of vision of the future of American politics. Steven Kurlander blogs at Kurly’s Kommentary (stevenkurlander.com) and writes for Context Florida and The Huffington Post and can be found on Twitter @Kurlykomments. He lives in Monticello, N.Y.
