Any week since Trump became president, spend a day or two and you'll come up with a fairly long list of pieces worth citing, and the sense that you're still missing much of what is going on. For instance, my usual sources on Israel/Palestine have yet to catch up with this: Josef Federman: Israeli Police Recommend Indicting Netanyahu on Bribery Charges. Seems like that should be at least as big a story as Putin and Saudi crown prince high-five at G20 summit. But this is all I came up with for the week.
I probably should have written standalone pieces on GWH Bush and on Jill Lepore's These Truths, but wound up squeezing some notes here for future reference. Under Bush, I wondered how many articles I'd have to read -- critical as well as polite or even adulatory -- before someone would bring up what I regard as the critical juncture in his period as president: his invasion of Panama. I lost track, but in 20-30 pieces I looked at, none broached the topic. I had to search specifically before I came up with this one: Greg Grandin: How the Iraq War Began in Panama. When Bush became president, people still talked about a "Vietnam syndrome" which inhibited American politicians and their generals from starting foreign wars. Bush is generally credited as having "kicked the Vietnam syndrome," with two aggressive wars, first in Panama, then in Iraq. Bush and the media conspired to paint those wars as glorious successes, the glow from which enabled Clinton, Bush II, and Obama to launch many more wars: Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Syria, as well as dozens of more marginal operations. Woodrow Wilson once claimed to be fighting "a war to end all wars." Bush's legacy was more modest: a war to kindle many more wars.
Oddly enough, the story below that links up most directly to Bush's legacy of war is the one about the increasing rate of premature deaths (suicides and overdoses). That's what you get from decades of nearly continuous war since Bush invaded Panama in 1989. The other contributing factor has been increasing income inequality, which has followed a straight line ever since 1981, when the Reagan/Bush administration slashed taxes on the rich.
Recently, we've seen many naive people praise Bush for, basically, not being as flat-out awful as his Republican successors. They've done this without giving the least thought to how we got to where we are now. The least they could do is check out Kevin Phillips' 2004 book: American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.
Some scattered links this week:
Matthew Yglesias: President George H.W. Bush dies at 94: First line here took me aback: "George H.W. Bush was a genuinely excellent president responsible for historic achievements that are often overlooked because of the arbitrary way we value presidential legacies." Indeed, my first reaction was to look up how old Yglesias was when Bush was president: 7 when Bush was elected in 1988 and took office in 1989, 11 when Bush lost in 1992 and left office in 1993. For comparison, I was 10-13 while John Kennedy was president, and while I remember the 1960 election and a fair amount from that period, most of what I know about those years I learned later. The times were different, but I suspect a similar dynamic, as we tend to view past presidents through the prism of their successors. Bush had the good fortune to be followed by two much worse Republicans -- his eldest son, and now Donald Trump. Yglesias would have us believe that Bush was "the last of the Republican pragmatists," because his successors have been very different: basically, ideological culture warriors -- the son sometimes tried to hide it, which in turn has helped to rehabilitate him relative to Trump. On the other hand, what I found most striking in Bush's career was his role in normalizing, at every step along the way, the right-wing descent of the Republican Party. Not that he was ever my idea of a decent, principled Republican -- and note that there actually were some in 1966, when he was first elected to Congress -- but two changes he made c. 1980 are indicative: when he joined the anti-abortion forces, and when he shelved his critique of "voodoo economics" to embrace Reagan. Those shifts were opportunistic more than pragmatic. They were moves he could make because he was empty inside, little more than a hack serving the class interests of his benefactors -- much like his Senator father had done, and as his sons would do. Jack Germond liked to call him "an empty suit." Yglesias is pretty selective about what he mentions and what he leaves out. (Perhaps we should have an office pool on how many Bush articles I read before anyone mentions Panama?) He does mention the Iraq War as some kind of internationalist success, not mentioning any connection to the thirty years of recurring chaos and conflict that ensued. On the other hand, he doesn't mention two generally positive foreign policy things that happened under Bush: a fairly broad shift to democracy (including wins by left-ish political movements) in Latin America, and pressure on Israel to negotiate peace (leading to the Oslo Accords, which Clinton allowed Netanyahu and Barak to undermine). Other Bush links:
Peter Beinart: What the Tributes to George HW Bush Are Missing: "The 41st president was the last person to occupy the Oval Office whose opponents saw him as fully legitimate." Beinart attributes that to his WASP heritage, and to the fact that he was elected with a majority of the votes -- something only Barack Obama has since achieved -- but it really has more to do with the security and sensibility of the opposition. Democrats controlled Congress when Bush was president, and saw him as someone who would work with them. On the other hand, Republicans saw Clinton as an usurper and a threat, and dispensed with all pretenses of bipartisanship. When Obama came in, they simply doubled down, opting for pure obstructionism. Democrats didn't react to Republican presidents with such venom, but both Bush and Trump entered office after having lost the popular vote, and both pursued hard-right, strictly partisan agendas.
Ariel Dorfman: George HW Bush thought the world belonged to his family. How wrong he was.
Franklin Foer: The Last WASP President: Not literally true, not figuratively either, inadvertently showing the lengths some people have to take to come up with a hook to hang Bush on. For example:
Take his record on race. Bush comes from a Yankee tradition that prides itself on its liberal attitudes. His father, a senator from Connecticut, sponsored legislation desegregating schools, protecting voting rights, and establishing an equal-employment commission. George H. W. Bush seemed to accept this as his patrimony. At Yale, he lead a fund-raising drive for the United Negro College Fund. When he moved to Midland, Texas, he made a point of inviting the head of the local NAACP to his house for dinner. As the chairman of the Harris County GOP, he put the party's money in a black-owned bank.
Of course, the next paragraph had to bring up "the notorious Willie Horton ad," and the following one notes:
After so accurately decrying Voodoo Economics, he joined the administration that enshrined them. He stood by Reagan as he opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime, and as the administration mounted a crusade against "reverse discrimination," an effort to undo affirmative action.
The problem is that if the only reason you exhibit "liberal attitudes" is for show, there's nothing to keep you from ditching them as soon as the fashion changes. Personal aside here: I never heard of "WASP" until I went to a college where more than half of the students were Jewish, although I've also heard non-Jewish northeasterners use the term. It was one of several identities I was grouped in but never thought of myself as belonging to (including its constituent parts: white, Anglo-Saxon, and protestant). But I picked up the term, even if it rarely meant much to me. About the only time I've thought of it lately was in regards to the Supreme Court. For much of American history, the Supreme Court was exclusively a WASP club. That changed a bit with Louis Brandeis, but remained pretty much the norm into the 1980s. Since then Republicans have almost exclusively nominated Catholics (including Clarence Thomas), and Democrats mostly Jews, until at present we have six Catholics, three Jews, and no WASPS on the Supreme Court. I suppose you could credit Bush with nominating the last of the liberal WASP justices (David Souter) -- one of those things that right-wing Republicans never forgave him for, even though he clearly didn't mean to offend them. His other Supreme Court pick was Thomas.
Mehdi Hasan: The Ignored Legacy of George HW Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice: Much about Iraq, but still no mention of Panama.
Rachel Withers: George HW Bush's "Willie Horton" ad will always be the reference point for dog whistle racism. Withers also wrote: Trump praises George HW Bush, the president whose vision he recently mocked (hoary picture here: note how close the Clintons and Bushes are); and George HW Bush's state funeral arrangements: what we know.
Other Yglesias pieces this week:
The next generation of Democratic congressional leadership is coming into view.
Paul Ryan is leaving Congress in the most fitting way possible: "He's doing what he does best: saying stuff about policy that's not true."
Elizabeth Warren wants to outflank Trump on trade. Also on Warren: Alex Emmons: In Foreign Policy Speech, Elizabeth Warren Takes Aim at Global Corruption.
Trump's talk of pardoning Manafort is a clear abuse of power.
Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again. What Democrats need now is a TV talking head.
Trump's Washington Post interview shows a presidency that's beyond satire.
A Wall Street Journal interview on trade shows Trump has no idea what he's doing.
The best thing you can do to stop climate change is to vote against Republicans.
Jason Ditz: UN Confirms US Airstrike in Helmand Killed 23 Civilians: News reports focused last week on unapologetic murderers giving each other high-fives at the G20 summit in Argentina, but week-by-week the US proves to be the real killing machine. Also by Ditz: US Says SW Libya Airstrike Kills 11 al-Qaeda 'Suspects'; Observatory: US Airstrikes Kill Dozens in Eastern Syria. If you're surprised that the US is (still) bombing in Libya, learn about AFRICOM: Nick Turse: US Military Says It Has a "Light Footprint" in Africa. These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases. Back to Afghanistan, consider: Danny Sjursen: America Is Headed for Military Defeat in Afghanistan.
Marc Fisher: Trump borrows his rhetoric -- and his view of power -- from the mob.
Bernard E Harcourt: How Trump Fuels the Fascist Right: I think this gives him credit for deliberation that he probably doesn't deserve, but here's the argument:
Everything about Trump's discourse -- the words he uses, the things he is willing to say, when he says them, where, how, how many times -- is deliberate and intended for consumption by the new right. When Trump repeatedly accuses a reporter of "racism" for questioning him about his embrace of the term "nationalist," he is deliberately drawing from the toxic well of white supremacist discourse and directly addressing that base. Trump's increasing use of the term "globalist" in interviews and press conferences -- including to describe Jewish advisers such as Gary Cohn or Republican opponents like the Koch brothers -- is a knowing use of an anti-Semitic slur, in the words of the Anti-Defamation League, "a code word for Jews." Trump's self-identification as a "nationalist," especially in contrast to "globalists" like George Soros, extends a hand to white nationalists across the country. His pointed use of the term "politically correct," especially in the context of the Muslim ban, speaks directly to followers of far-right figures such as William Lind, author of "What is 'Political Correctness'?"
Trump is methodically engaging in verbal assaults that throw fuel on his political program of closed borders, nativism, social exclusion, and punitive excess. Even his cultivated silences and failures to condemn right-wing violence, in the fatal aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, for instance, or regarding the pipe-bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc, communicate directly to extremists. We are watching, in real time, a new right discourse come to define the American presidency. The term "alt-right" is too innocuous when the new political formation we face is, in truth, neo-fascist, white-supremacist, ultranationalist, and counterrevolutionary. Too few Americans appear to recognize how extreme President Trump has become -- in part because it is so disturbing to encounter the arguments of the American and European new right.
Jen Kirby: USMCA, the new trade deal between the US, Canada, and Mexico, explained: Not all that different from NAFTA. One thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to trade deals, the conflicts are less between countries than between companies and people (workers, customers, and the governments should they be tempted to challenge the companies). Also:
Alexia Fernández Campbell: Trump's new trade deal is better for workers than NAFTA was: Well, some workers, maybe. She also wrote: The G20 summit is a reminder of how little the US is doing for American workers; also: US farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Trump's trade war is partially to blame.
Paul Krugman: When MAGA Fantasy Meets Rust Belt Reality: Posits two possible meanings of Make America Great Again: "a promise to restore the kind of economy we had 40 or 50 years ago -- an economy that still offered lots of manly jobs in manufacturing and mining"; and "a promise to return to the good old days of raw racism and sexism." Krugman argues that the former would be an impossible task even if Trump had a clue, which he clearly does not -- most of this piece explains why. As for the racism/sexism, Krugman does concede that "Trump is delivering on that promise." I think he's overly generous there: sure, Trump knows how to be racist and sexist, but are people following his lead or resisting it, and are they making a real difference in the world? Maybe, a little bit, but not so much as to actually satisfy Trump's supporters.
Krugman also wrote: The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial. I agree with most of what he says here, but take exception to: "climate change isn't just killing people; it may well kill civilization." That's really excessive hyperbole, the sort of thing that lets deniers present themselves as skeptics vs. alarmists -- I read a letter in the Wichita Eagle last week that used that ploy. Even fairly large climate shifts (say on the order of +6°C/10°F), while causing large economic dislocations (as a first guess, North Dakota becomes Kansas, and Kansas becomes Coahuila), are things people can readily adapt to easy enough. Maybe overall habitability is diminished a bit (you lose land to rising sea levels, but you gain utility from arctic lands; perhaps more ominously, tropical diseases will spread). But unless climate change triggers cataclysmic war, that's nothing civilization cannot handle. I've long thought that people who think about climate change tend to exaggerate its effects and importance, so I'm not surprised to find the level of hysteria grow as evidence mounts and parties vested in carbon fuel continue to thwart even modest attempts to reduce the risk. Still, I doubt the solution is to ramp the rhetoric up to apocalyptic levels.
German Lopez: After a mall shooting, police killed the wrong person -- and the real shooter remains at large: The mall was in Alabama. The dead bystander was black. A follow-up article explains: PR Lockhart: The Alabama mall shooting highlights the dangers of owning a gun while black.
Ella Nilsen: House Democrats unveil their first bill in the majority: a sweeping anti-corruption proposal: To be introduced as House Resolution 1, no chance of passing the Republican Senate let alone of overriding a Trump veto, but this stakes out high ground from which to investigate and judge the most thoroughly corrupt administration in US history. Also: Akela Lacy: In Democrats' First Bill, There's a Quiet Push to Make Public Campaign Finance a Reality.
David Roberts: I'm an environmental journalist, but I never write about overpopulation. Here's why.
Aaron Rupar: Michael Cohen's plea deal shows that Russia did have something on Trump. Other links on Cohen:
Adam Davidson: Michael Cohen's Disclosures Raise Serious Questions About Donald Trump and His Business Interests. Also by Davidson: Is Fraud Part of the Trump Organization's Business Model?; How Trump's Impulsiveness, Vanity, and Cronyism Could Tank the Economy; and The Investigations Trump Will Face Now That Democrats Control the House.
Sharon LaFraniere: Mueller Exposes the Culture of Lying That Surrounds Trump.
James Risen: As the Mueller Probe Heats Up, Donald Trump's Lies Are Giving Way to the Truth.
Jeffrey Toobin: The Legal Perils That Michael Cohen's Guilty Plea Poses for Donald Trump.
Alex Ward: Michael Cohen's guilty plea proves the House GOP's Russia investigation was a sham. Also by Ward: Why Michael Cohen's Trump Tower Moscow revelation matters, in under 500 words.
Ken White: Three Remarkable Things About Michael Cohen's Plea.
Dylan Scott: Under Trump, the number of uninsured kids is suddenly rising. Note that the chart shows a steady decrease in number of uninsured children from 2008 through 2016, before the rise in 2017.
Dylan Scott: Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith wins Mississippi Senate election: Duly noted, by a 54-46% margin. You know why. Still, that's a lot closer than Mississippi split since, uh, the 1870s. For more, see: Bob Moser: Don't Hate Mississippi:
It's never a shock to see white Mississippians cover themselves in shame. They've been doing it reliably throughout the entire history of a place that became known as the "lynching state" long before the inceptions of the Confederacy, the Klan, or Jim Crow. . . . In politics, too, white Mississippians have always put passion -- for white supremacy and black subjugation -- above all pragmatic considerations. With clockwork regularity, every election, they've chosen to keep their state an economic and educational backwater, an international symbol of America's racial lunacy.
Julissa Treviño: Suicides are at the highest rate in decades, CDC report shows: Up 33 percent since 1999, up 2000 from 2016 to 2017, something which gets less press than the number of drug overdoses, which has surged to even higher levels. On the latter, see: German Lopez: Drug overdose deaths were so bad in 2017, they reduced overall life expectancy. Also see: Lenny Bernstein: US life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I.
Alex Ward: Russia just openly attacked Ukraine. That could mean their war will get worse. Like virtually all western reports, this is rather slanted, but the crisis is significant. Basic background: after anti-Russian, pro-West political factions in Ukraine affected a coup in 2014, removing a more/less democratically elected Russia-friendly president, several regions of Ukraine with large Russian demographics revolted, especially Crimea and Donbass. Russia encouraged (and perhaps orchestrated) these revolts, including a declaration by local officials in Crimea of their intent to be annexed by Russia. There was a vote in Crimea to join Russia, which was boycotted by opponents, so carried by a large margin. Crimea has been under Russian control since then, and the ties were made literal by the construction of a 12-mile bridge over the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea. Since 2014, there has been sporadic and indecisive fighting in Donbass and along the border, and Ukraine (and its Western allies) has refused to recognize any changes. The Kerch Strait separates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, so it remains an important shipping lane for Ukraine, as well as for Russia. With the opening of the bridge, Ukraine attempted to reassert its rights to send naval ships through the Kerch Strait, and Russia responded by blockading the channel, seizing the ships, and imprisoning the sailors: that's what "openly attacked" means in the headline above. Russia charged Ukraine with a "well-thought-out provocation." For a counter view, see: Ted Galen Carpenter: Ukraine Doesn't Deserve America's Blind Support.
Julian E Zelizer: Why the US Can't Solve Big Problems.
The federal government released a devastating report last week documenting the immense economic and human cost that the U.S. will incur as a result of climate change. It warns that the damage to roads alone will add up to $21 billion by the end of the century. In certain parts of the Midwest, farms will produce 75 percent less corn than today, while ocean acidification could result in $230 billion in financial losses. More people will die from extreme temperatures and mosquito-borne diseases. Wildfire seasons will become more frequent and more destructive. Tens of millions of people living near rising oceans will be forced to resettle. The findings put the country on notice, once again, that doing nothing is a recipe for disaster.
Yet odds are that the federal government will, in fact, do nothing. It's tempting to blame inaction on current political conditions, like having a climate change denier in the White House or intense partisan polarization in Washington. But the unfortunate reality is that American politicians have never been good at dealing with big, long-term problems. Lawmakers have tended to act only when they had no other choice.
Finally, here are some links reviewing Jill Lepore's big book These Truths: A History of the United States (recently read by me):
HW Brands: How did America get here? Jill Lepore's new book offers clues in our history.
Jack E Davis: 'These Truths by Jill Lepore is a gutsy and lyrical look at our nation's history.
Jennifer Schuessler: Jill Lepore on Writing the Story of America (in 1,000 Pages or Less).
Andrew Sullivan: The American Past: A History of Contradictions.
Sean Wilentz: The American Revolutions [behind their paywall].
The Wilentz piece is probably the best of the bunch -- at least I found myself agreeing with most of the substantive criticisms. It occurs to me that there are two basic models for writing a 700+ page history of the US from colonial times to Donald Trump: either briefly sum up most of the stuff most people already know, or assume that readers already know that stuff and add little side-glances they don't know that help round out the picture. Lepore did the latter, and included a lot of material I didn't especially know before. She also limited her focus to the ebb and flow of ideals, corruptions, and manipulations in politics. I was surprised, for instance, that from the 1930s on she focused mostly on the development of polling and campaign management, which sort of logically led to Trump -- she actually gets to Trump before 2000, Bush-Gore, and Obama. But even earlier, she spent a good deal of time on the rise of the partisan press c. 1800, and the shift toward non-partisan journalism from the 1880s on (papers like the New York Times, and later the big three TV networks). Worth reading, but not for many clear lessons. A much more pointed book on founders and ideals is Ganesh Sitaraman's The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic. But then I suppose she'd reply that history is always messy, never cut and dried.
One more point to make: These Truths differs from most US history books in that Lepore makes a conscious effort to recognize and treat fairly everyone -- not just the dominant white males that traditionally get all the pages. She balances off natives against colonizers, slaves against slaveholders, women against men, and (to a lesser extent) laborers against captains of industry. She writes as much about Jane Franklin as her brother Ben, and as much about Harry Washington as his one-time owner George. She writes way too much about Phyllis Schlafly (but also Donald Trump, who probably wouldn't have garnered a mention had she finished the book three years earlier).