Still searching for meaning

Edith Wharton didn’t start writing until her forties. She had been in an abusive marriage and when it finally ended she wound up in a psychiatric hospital, it was there where it was recommended to her that she start in order to process her depression. Within three decades she had become one of the most celebrated authors of her time and been awarded the Legion d’honneur for her work nursing wounded soldiers in WWI.

Working through depression is excruciating and in reality often very little work can be done. The Morning Pages get passed around as a trade secret to reconnect to our creativity while Will Self swears by a daily ‘Conrad’, that is mimicking the 800 daily words Joseph Conrad would turn out which were enough to support his lifestyle of a house in central London with a butler and a valet.

Writing about writing is a strange and fascinating art just as finding the links between writing and mental illness can be. Just yesterday I was talking about the Death of The Author essay in relation to JK Rowling and how my mates relay Harry Potter tours now. Strangely, I can’t remember a year where I have had a greater desire to discover an absolute truth and yet perhaps everything can be interpreted once it is presented to the world.

There seems to be more celebrity activism than ever before these days, I was chatting about it with two guys I met in the park today. I wonder how we can develop a world where everybody wants to have their voice heard and everybody wants to matter somehow. With our essential worker classifications it makes me wonder how many of our jobs really matter despite all of us wanting to. David Graeber died a couple weeks ago and if there really are so many bullshit jobs can it ever be possible for all of us to make a tangible difference?

The best part about the Adam Curtis docuseries ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace’ is the hippie who wrote the afor-titled manifesto would almost certainly have been forgotten were it not for the film 50 years later. I think a lot about remembrance and being remembered and I don’t know how to escape the conclusion that the best life is one of discrete acts of kindness.

With statues being toppelled and history reevaluated it is more clear than ever that a lot of our heroes were not very heroic. Furthermore, the lives that we remember often bear little resemblance to the people they actually were. Of course, everyone has blemishes but if we remember the impactful rather than the decent, is it worth being remembered at all? Lastly, having worked extensively in mental health and seen so few Edith Wharton’s is it even worth trying to pull ourselves free of our pain.

In 2018 Richard Russell worked as a baggage handler in Seattle airport. One day he commandeered an empty plane and took off. With no training and frantic calls on the radio he flipped and barrel rolled for five minutes before crashing into some empty woods. For 5 minutes the Sky King found a way to be and to matter as he touched the face of God before he crashed into wooded hills that overlooked the Pacific. In his immortal last words he was asked on the radio if he knew how fast he was going, his response, ‘err the minimum wage.’

The Disappearing Catholic Vote

The Catholic vote in America is in turmoil. Even as Catholics make up a third of Congress and a majority of the Supreme Court, individually Catholics are more divided than ever over their politics.

How can this be? While Evangelicals are more aligned than ever with the Republican party and Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists tend to vote Democratic, American Catholics consistently vote for candidates from both political parties, and are distinguished only by having mirrored the popular vote in every Presidential election since 1972.

It wasn’t always like this. American Catholics have a long affiliation with the Democratic party dating from the early 19th century. Scores of Irish and German Catholics settled in North-eastern states and helped power reliably Democratic machines like Tammany Hall in New York.

Their perceived influence was so great it caused a backlash; anti-Catholic riots occurred in Philadelphia and Louisville as the American party came to prominence on the pledge of combating Catholics. They won 52 seats in Congress in 1854 and 20% of the popular vote in the 1856 Presidential election.

The Civil War split the American Party into disarray but anti-Catholic sentiment continued in postbellum American society. Republicans repeatedly targeted Catholic parochial schools for closure through the Blaine amendment but it never achieved the required votes.

For many anti-Catholicism was rational. America had been founded by Protestants looking to free themselves from European kings and wars. Catholicism with its reliance on Rome seemed the embodiment of everything they had escaped.

Yet as the 19th century came to a close there were signs that things were changing, especially in the North-east as New York elected its first two Catholic Governors, the second Al Smith became the first Catholic to run for President a decade later.

Yet immigrants were still the target of ire. The population of New York doubled from 1890-1900 and with it nativism, that is the policy of protecting the native-born over immigrants, flourished. This was one reason for the advent of prohibition as many blamed immigrant alcoholic mores for the perceived lawlessness of urban centres.

The Volstead Act came into force in 1919 banning the sale and production of liquor. Implicit in its ban was the immigrant Catholic worker whose drinking practises were blighting big cities. Nor was it lost that Catholics take wine during communion, needless to say, most were opposed.

‘Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,’ became the charge against Democrats as only two managed to become President between 1865-1932. This did not include Al Smith who became the first Catholic major party Presidential nominee in 1928. He lost roundly after a campaign flooded with prejudice and innuendo that he would sell out the United States to Rome.

It took two patrician sons and a World War to forever change the relationship between America and its Catholics. In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Smith’s successor in New York and ideological adherent brought the Democrats to power and slowly began to normalise the status of Catholics who had overwhelmingly supported him.

The Second World War further helped ameliorate different religions; soldiers of all faiths fought side-by-side and returned back to a changed America. There were still whispers of prejudice but the nation began to unite behind all Judaeo-Christian values in the face of the post-war Soviet threat.

This was driven home by JFK, the first and only Catholic President, and the last major party nominee to fully unite the Catholic vote. His ascension to the highest office in the land, and his ability to convince all faiths – but particularly Protestants – to vote for him marked the culmination of Catholics’ journey on the outer rungs of American politics.

When Kennedy said –  ‘I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me,’ – he was not saying anything Al Smith had not thirty years prior, this time though the American public were willing to believe him.

And then something changed. No longer on the outside of American politics, Catholic voters became more fickle, backing Lyndon Johnson in 1964 but Richard Nixon in 1968, possibly the first time a majority had ever voted in favour of the Republican candidate.

Now incorporated into the American body politic, Catholics no longer relied on the Democratic party to protect them. They espoused both social justice and socially conservative positions which belied just one political party.

As such Catholics tended to oscillate between the two, conspicuously backing the winner of the popular vote in every succeeding Presidential election, leading some to start questioning as the century drew to a close whether the Catholic vote even existed anymore.

Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s campaign manager, believed it did. He thought we were just looking in the wrong place. When he looked at active Catholics – those that attended mass regularly – he saw a socially conservative, patriotic group that were ‘searching’ and he resolved to win them for Bush.

Partnering with Deal Hudson who became Catholic liaison to the Bush White House he worked to appeal to this group. Peppering Bush’s speeches with Catholic lexicon and giving Catholic leaders unprecedented access via Hudson, Bush was painted as a compassionate culture warrior. Rove was adamant that if Bush could win the Catholic vote he would win re-election.

He was right. in 2004 Bush won the Catholic vote by 5 points, increased Catholic turnout by 6 points and won the active Catholic vote by 13 points. This was even more impressive given his opponent in 2004 was John Kerry, a Catholic.

And yet four years later in 2008, Barack Obama reversed these gains. Winning the Catholic vote by nine points he ran on a platform completely opposite to the policies Bush, Hudson and Rove had been advocating.

There are two explanations for this. The first is that the Catholic vote is no longer tribal but ideological. Within the Catholic church, there are two competing ideological wings: socially conservative and social justice. Which wing wins out depends on the quality of the candidate, which explains how Catholics can give majorities to both parties in succeeding years.

The second is that many Catholic voters – active and lapsed – do not vote based on their Catholic faith. The evidence for this is manifest; from Catholic voters embracing pro-choice candidates to family values Catholics supporting thrice married billionaire playboys.

Thus politically in America the Catholic church is in a difficult state. With no party meeting all of their needs, there are social conservatives who ignore Encyclicals on the poor. There are pro-choice liberals who ignore Encyclicals on abortion. There are Catholics who vote without reference to their faith at all.

And beyond that, the church itself in America is in decline. Having lost 3 million members since 2007 it is the fastest shrinking denomination in America with 13 million Americans living as former Catholics.

And so despite Catholics pervading all walks of American life from the courts to Congress, Catholicism as a political identity is stultifying, just as Catholics individually are at their most powerful as a political bloc they have never been less united.

Mr. Hanna

If this blog encourages you to do anything it is to take a break from daily news. Switch off your instant updates and read a book about education reform in the 1970’s or another on how the rules of the Senate have evolved. Its is my firm belief that such actions will stand you in better stead than knowledge of the latest undisclosed Russia meeting or growing tension between Trump and the unlucky Cabinet member of the day.

One such book worth reading is titled ‘Ohio’s Kingmaker: Mark Hanna, Man and Myth’ a dusty tome with a limited readership. Yet featured on the dust cover of this volume is a quote from none other than Karl Rove, Bush 43’s campaign manager and for years the bete noire of American politics. ‘A must-read for anyone interested in Gilded Age politics’ Rove proclaims, what he does not go on to say is that few have taken more of an interest in the work of Hanna than himself, even telling reporters he hoped to be the Mark Hanna of the 21st century.

Who was this obscure figure then? Well just that until his 40th birthday, a native Ohioan he had a stint in the Union Army in the American Civil War and a role in his family’s mercantile business but it was not until he joined his father in law’s coal and steel company that he truly began to make millions and with it the freedom to involve himself in politics.

A reticent man he never aspired to be the king, merely the kingmaker. Having first set his sights on helping Ohio Senator John Sherman win the Republican Presidential nomination in 1884 and 1888, after two losses he turned his attention to the other star of Ohio Republican politics, Governor William McKinley.

William McKinley leaves a strange legacy perhaps best exemplified by the lone mountain that bears his name in Alaska, the tallest peak in North America, bestowed by a gold prospector to honour a President who had never visited. Up until his assassination in 1901 the Presidency of William McKinley was marked more by events that happened to him rather than which he had any control. The Spanish-American War of 1898 is an example or his parties choosing Teddy Roosevelt in 1900 as his Vice-President. But it was the election of 1896 that won him the highest office in the land that any with an interest in electoral politics, including Rove who has written a book on it, will best remember him by.

The election pitted a former Congressman from Nebraska and Democratic populist by the name of William Jennings Bryan against the Republican machine headed by then Governor McKinley and managed by fellow Ohioan Mark Hanna. This election was Hollywood in its scope; farmers against workers, towns against cities, east against west, the little man against the machine it was truly one of America’s epic elections represented in that it is still by a factor of five the most expensive Presidential election ever as a percentage of GDP.

But what interests Rove and myself is how the candidates ran their campaigns. Each added a new professionalism to what had been an immature art but it was Hanna from nomination to election that left a playbook which Karl Rove and many others would try to mirror years later.

First was achieving the nomination, unlike nowadays this was done at the party convention where state bosses would look to extract as many gains as possible from candidates vying for their delegations votes. In what has since become the norm Hanna sought to overwhelm the field with money, merging the positions of donor and manager the first truly professional politico had speeches, posters, badges and buttons sent to every district in the country.

In a process still governed by etiquette Hanna smashed it, undercutting Speaker Reed in the Northeast and creating local opposition in Pennsylvania to trouble Senator Matthew Quay. Working the Chicago political machine he won pledges from most Illinois delegates, a crucial state, creating the feeling of inevitability before the convention had started.

Easing into the convention along with McKinley he asserted a key pledge affirming the gold standard in the draft plank despite leading to the exit of Western delegations. This became the key campaign message, along with protectionism, that despite the roar of bimetallism from the other side fomented trust and stability that became the implicit attraction of the campaign compared with the volatility of the Democrats.

And as the campaign proceeded McKinley did not try to ape Bryan’s speaking skills who had gone on a 19,000 mile road trip around America speaking from the back of a train cart. Instead he ran a front porch campaign, inviting people to hear him speak from his home, quiet and dignified as his campaign had become, Hanna even got corporations to offer discounted rail fares there.

The result was overwhelming, McKinley won by 271-176 electoral college votes and the first Presidential majority since Ulysses Grant in 1872. But it is not the result that we will remember more so how it was achieved. For in winning Hanna built the template of a modern campaign that has been mirrored thousands of times since: build an overwhelming money advantage early, use this to increase name recognition, in the process undercut rivals to put them on defence, identify your campaign message and stick to it relentlessly.

Hanna created a framework in American politics, professionalising campaigns that so often before had been ramshackle and immature. And this is his legacy that has since become the norm, it is because of him that we have glitzy professional campaigns that run more like intrepid start ups than the hurried operations of yore and it is because of this impact that maybe the most notorious campaign manager of our time always sought to emulate this reticent businessman of a bygone era.

 

 

 

 

Building Castles in your mind

I spent a formative year in Catalonia in my twenties. It was hot, sticky and the independence movement was in full bloom. It’s certainly an infectious idea, just like any kind of nationalism it confers a sense of belonging like few other political identities. One can be caught up in it, one can even give tours on it, but what one can rarely do is see it bloom.

Catalonia are still pushing for an independence referendum just as Scotland is hoping for another one. But in America these sub-state nationalisms are better represented in calls for statehood. Puerto Rico and Washington DC have been pushing for a surer status almost since their ascension or creation within America. And yet their cases represent all that is confusing about the nationalist cause.

Puerto Rico held a referendum almost two weeks ago where 97% chose statehood over independence or the status quo. Unfortunately only 23% of the electorate voted with all major opposition parties boycotting the vote due to the slanted wording. If this wasn’t confusing enough they held a prior vote in 2012 in which 54% voted they were not happy with the status quo and of that 54% 61% voted for statehood on an overall turnout of 78%. So a majority of the majority voted for statehood, but everyone else voted for something else.

DC is slightly different; in a 2016 vote 86% voted for statehood, however unlike Puerto Rico with clear boundaries DC’s status is not clear. Some say it technically belongs to Maryland as it was given by the state to the federal government. There is also confusion as to its path to statehood, with some saying only an act of Congress is required while others suggest a constitutional amendment is needed. While finally whereas Puerto Rico’s status is a colonial relic, DC’s was born from a specific incident that led Madison among others to write that the protection of Congress should never be outsourced to a particular state, less they be unscrupulous, or unwilling to lend assistance. To mitigate against this control of the District of Columbia was placed in the hands of the Federal Government.

Their status then is nuanced and there are further iterations in Guam, American Samoa and the American Virgin Islands who all maintain varied degrees of association with America. Yet this nuance has evolved over decades and while nationalisms seek to cure with broad strokes they might ignore the accommodations that have led to the status quo.

If Puerto Rico acceded to the union it would cost the federal government $5.2 billion a year in the form of higher entitlement spending with little being offset by revenue. Indeed most tax paying corporations would leave once taxes were brought in line with federal standards. Similarly it would have to lower income tax rates for the same reason leading to an overall loss of almost 150,000 jobs.

Turning to the mainland, Governor John Kasich of Ohio was asked about DC statehood last year, he opposed it not wanting to give the Democrats two more seats in the Senate, a common refrain amongst Republicans. Indeed the district’s largest problem is political, having voted 90% for Hillary Clinton in 2016 it would be the most reliably Democratic state in the Union, the equivalent of Utah splitting in half and getting two more Senators.

In fact in 2009  Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) sponsored a bill that would have given both Utah and the District of Columbia one seat apiece in the House of Representatives. However, it failed due to constitutional concerns of granting something other than a state voting rights. while highlighting that the hurdles required for federal confirmation through Congress and state governments are mighty.

This is the irony then, that both political parties since Gerald Ford have been open to Puerto Rico deciding their own fate and yet the economic consequences have prevented the island from making a clear decision. While DC which would be one of the richest of the 50 states has its progress blocked by political squabbles.

And this is the fundamental problem with nationalism, state and sub-state that the considerations which necessitate its success are so rare that while it is an attractive idea its success is so often negated by the pragmatic considerations of those it would impact.

I hope I am wrong, I hope that Puerto Rico and Washington DC are allowed to determine their own clear wishes. But we should all recognise that the road to a successful nationalism is long and muddled and that political and economic considerations are but some of the factors that can obstruct it. Indeed I still keep tabs on Catalonia and once again this year they will be holding an unofficial referendum in defiance of the Spanish state and yet until a more sympathetic government is voted in or Puerto Rico resolve their economic woes or Republicans stop seeing DC as a threat, all three will be left to merely build castles in their minds.

 

 

 

 

The Man in the Mirror

When I first encountered William Jennings Bryan I was 17 years old, I was very ill and spending most of my time researching American politics while bedbound at times barely able to move. I came across this perennial Presidential nominee from a hundred years ago and was intrigued. The story of the youngest ever major party nominee who ran for President unsuccessfully three times in 1896, 1900 and 1908 was enough to pique the interest of this political nerd. Yet what hooked me was how his life was less defined by electoral success and more by the impact he had on those who met him, even leading to a rash of babies named after him during his lifetime.

I ordered a biography – William Jennings Bryan a Godly Hero by Michael Kazin – this became my Bible over the next few years and even my passport to Cambridge University where i overwhelmed my interviewer with a knowledge of American politics first gleaned from this book. The elusive aim has always been to write a play on the man, known as one of the best orators of the 20th century, a man who as a one term former Congressman captured the Democratic Party nomination and changed its course forever off the back of a speech so good it had neutral journalists screaming from chairs in support of the man.

The play has eluded me so far, but the question that still haunts me is why does Bryan continue to? When asked I trot out the facts I have given coupled with more trivia such as the 1896 election as a percentage of GDP is still the most expensive in American history (five times more than in 2012), how his left wing populism created an alliance of workers and farmers which FDR used to create the modern Democratic coalition, his good friendship with Tolstoy or how he tied left wing progressivism with an anti-evolutionary religious temperance an almost extinct model nowadays.

This is certainly interesting and the more time one spends with Bryan the more seductive his story becomes, perhaps because of how alien his peculiar composition seems to us nowadays. A liberal fire mixed with a religious devotion, a women’s rights campaigner who didn’t believe in evolution, Bryan seduces because he doesn’t fit in with modern political strata that compartmentalises so acutely.

Yet he is still relevant, indeed to paraphrase a review of Kazin’s book, ‘it is difficult to imagine a biography more fitting to present day politics.’ If you will cast your minds back to 1896; it is the greatest depression America has ever seen, the Republicans led by William McKinley believe nothing can be done, that we must ride the depression out. Democrats call for increasing the money supply. They advocate bimettalism, that is moving from the gold to the silver standard, Bryan becomes a national hero when he proclaims, arms outstretched, ‘you shall not press down upon mankind this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify him upon a cross of gold!’

Almost every newspaper in the country comes out against him and the Republicans raise money 9:1 against him yet Bryan goes on the stump (for the first time in history) travelling around America from the back of a train cart railing against elites he sees as responsible for hitting workers and farmers. ‘Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic: but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country,’ he famously raged.

Bryan lost the 1896 election and the two after but for us nowadays it is not hard to see parallels to modern figures or events, one need only look at the 2016 Presidential election to see in Bryan the progressivism of Bernie Sanders, the populism of Donald Trump, the religious fervour of Ted Cruz, or the name recognition of a Clinton. But above all Bryan was a radical an anti-establishment orator who when given the chance at office (he was Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State) turned out to be far less effective than he ever was as a politician preacher.

And this is what we need to learn when we look at Bryan and the competing responses to the Great Recession. That economic downtown can have a transformative effect on a country’s politics, that it will create previously impossible electoral coalitions and that it will elevate unlikely heroes to the tips of power. Bryan never made it to the Presidency, yet when analaysing the current crop of celeberity politicians perhaps it is best to look at Bryan’s life, at the man in the mirror, and acknowledge firstly that electoral success is not a prerequisite for effecting deep lasting change nor indeed that poor governance necesserily invalidates your legacy. Bryan could testify to both these truisms and I am left thinking now as i conclude this piece of President Harry Truman’s famous aphorism, ‘that there is no new history, only that which I haven’t read yet.’

 

 

 

The bleak outlook for Republican women

For the last ten Presidential elections a majority of women have consistently voted Democratic, indeed you have to go all the way back to Jimmy Carter’s 1976 victory to see an equal gender split in votes. The difficulty Republicans have in getting women to vote for them seems to be reflected in the number of female Republican elected representatives; Of the 235 Republicans in The House of Representatives only 22 are women, of the 52 in the Senate a mere 5 and of 33 Governors just 3.

Yet it is the fate of these women and others outside of government rather than the lopsided gender split that concerns us. While the career trajectories of many Republican men during the Trump Presidency seem to have opened up, many high profile Republican women’s seem to have gone the other way.

Current UN Ambassador and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and new RNC head Ronda Romney McDaniel (Mitt Romney’s niece) seem the only exceptions to this rule, while the likes of Carly Fiorina, Susana Martinez and Kelly Ayotte seem to have wilted in the wind.

Fiorina is an interesting case, the one time Presidential and Senate hopeful, has seen her prospects dim on Trump’s election. During the campaign she travelled around the country sparking rumours she would run for the Chair of the Republican National Committee or even try her luck in Tim Kaine’s open seat (if Hillary had won) gambling that the off year election in formerly purple Virginia might give her an unlikely victory. Yet with Trump’s win her chances of capturing the seat have cratered and the RNC chair went to Trump ally McDaniel.

Or maybe we can look at Susanna Martinez Governor of New Mexico, during the election her criticism of Trump and Latino heritage were viewed as the perfect springboard to help her reach two groups it was assumed would turn away from the Republican nominee. Yet he won and she is term limited giving her few options post Governorship besides the possibility of an ill-advised challenge to Sen. Martin Heinrich.

The list goes on; in The House of Representatives several women are facing the fight of their lives to keep their seats in 2018 on the back of the Trump administrations attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and the various womens marches that have taken place across the country. Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia 10th Congressional will need to use all her political skill to survive, likewise Martha McSally of Arizona and Mia Love of Utah, while the unexpectadly tight race between Karen Handel and Democrat upstart Jon Osoff in the Georgia 6th has drawn national attention.

Indeed one might say it is difficult for a woman to craft a trajectory in the Republican party, on the one hand there are a few pro-choice moderates like Sen. Susan Collins who has consistently won large victories in Maine despite its more Democratic tilt. Or Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida known for her support of LGBT rights who has repeatedly won in a district that goes Democratic in Presidential years.

And yet these figures are increasingly an endangered species, viewed as a necessary evil the same way that pro-life Democrats in red states are. Indeed of the few prominent women in Trump’s administration both his daughter Ivanka and Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell are seen with suspicion in the right wing press, as New York Democrats often blamed when Trump reneges on a campaign promise.

Herein lies the problem for women in the Trump era, embrace a man known to disparage and allegedly assault women or be cast out into the political wilderness for at least another 4 years. Of the few remaining women most are keeping a low profile or pivoting to issues where they are on surer ground. Haley taking up the UN post for example or Elaine Chao one of only three other female Cabinet level officials who runs the Transportation Department.

But beyond this problem with positioning it seems more and more that they are left to whistle in the wind. There is no Republican version of EMILY’s List for example, the group that seeks to elect female pro-choice candidates and is one of the reasons female Democrat representation vastly outweighs Republican. Likewise there seems to be little care to implement gender equity in representation as Hillary promised to observe in her Cabinet.

With all this in mind it is no wonder that women are struggling in the Republican party, but more disturbingly it seems there are few options available to remedy this. Perhaps the night is darkest before the dawn and RNC head McDaniel will recruit more women to run for seats in 2018, but until then it seems Trump’s Presidency will continue to be a man’s world, where female members of his party have to tap dance to survive.

 

 

 

 

Why Trump will struggle to pass Healthcare

To anyone acquainted with British politics the news that President Trump pulled his first major piece of legislation – The American Healthcare Act – before it even reached the floor for a vote seemed demonstration enough that the man was out of his depth, clueless when it comes to the nuanced art of enacting major laws. And yet the reality is more complicated, passing a bill is innumerably more difficult in America than it is in Britain or indeed most other Western democracies to the point that to compare the two efforts is misguided.

In Britain it is more straightforward; while ostensibly having a bicameral legislature the House of Commons reigns supreme and the Prime Minister will always be drawn from the majority party in the Commons, this coupled with the Salisbury Convention which states that The House of Lords will not block legislation proposed in the election manifesto of the winning party means that the party in power has relatively free reign. Of course from time to time the government will suffer defeats especially if their Commons majority is small but by and large they are empowered to enact their election manifestos promises.

Not so in America where the President, House of Representatives, Senate and Judiciary all play a legislative role and are always composed of a mix of Democrat and Republican appointees. Charting how President Trump’s failed bill came together will be illustrative.

Unlike President Obama whose administration largely wrote the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) in House, the Trump administration outsourced it to the Republican Speaker of The House of Representatives former conservative darling Paul Ryan. His proposal which scrapped large sections of Obamacare was unlikely to receive much Democrat support which means to begin with he needed at least 218 of the 237 Republicans in the House to support it.

Obviously America is far larger than the UK and its politics less homogeneous, the Republican party which is currently in the ascendancy throughout the country is generally split along three lines in the House; the Centrist Tuesday Group with about 50 members, the Republican Study Committee of mainstream conservatives with around 150 members and the far-right Freedom Caucus of 32 members. This was where the bill came apart, with every concession the Freedom Caucus demanded alienating the Tuesday group and vice versa, meaning the bill collapsed before it could get to 218.

However, let’s imagine the House succeeded in building a coalition and passed a bill presumably on partisan lines, it would then be thrown to the Senate. Here it gets more complicated; the Senate was created as a calming body meant to ease the hot passions of the House. With this in mind the Founders created the filibuster a rule of the Senate stating that unless 60 of the 100 Senators vote for cloture the minority can delay or hold up a bill for as long as they like. The idea was to force the opposing parties to compromise and create bipartisan legislation. However, recently it has left the chamber mired in gridlock unable to reach consensus on even the mildest of issues.

There is a backdoor, it is called Reconciliation, any bill affecting the budget only can supersede the filibuster and only requires a strict majority vote. This was Trump’s plan but to qualify for it the Senate Parliamentarian is empowered to go through the bill line by line and strike anything which doesn’t satisfy this clause. The Freedom Caucus’ desire to strike Essential Health Benefits from Ryan’s plan for example would certainly test these waters.

But presuming a modified version of the House plan passes the Senate with a majority vote, the House and the Senate would then go into Conference Committee to unify the two versions of the bill which would have been tacked with different amendments in each Chamber. They would then both vote on the new bill again and only then would it go to President Trump’s desk to sign.

But that’s not the end. If any state or really anyone with enough money to fund a legal challenge found the bill objectionable they could sue and the nature of the American judicial system means you can pick a state with more liberal or conservative judges who have the power to issue blanket wide injunctions (which is why Obama was sued a lot in Texas and Trump so far has suffered high profile courtroom defeats in Hawaii and Washington). The case would likely end before the Supreme Court who would be tasked to adjudicate whether the bill violated the Constitution and if they found it did, they are empowered to strike it down.

All this demonstrates how tough major legislation is to pass in America and why prior to Obama healthcare reform stalled for decades. That is not to say it is impossible merely that as President Trump attempts to resurrect healthcare talks we should withhold our scorn if not our satisfaction.

The fight for the soul of the Democratic Party

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

So begins Sylvia Plath’s famous poem Mushrooms and so hope the Democrats begin their reemergence. The Democratic Party has rarely been so hollowed out, for all President Obama’s skills winning elections for down ballot Democrats was not one of them. The party are in the minority in the House and Senate, control only 16 Governorships and 12 state legislatures.

There is certainly room for improvement then: the crowded DNC chair race and the Obama-Holder Democratic Redistricting Committee tandem hint at plans for 2018 and 2020. And yet before then there are several chances for the Dems to demonstrate their bullishness.

Yet for the Democrats to succeed they will first have to resolve their pressing identity crisis which Hillary Clinton’s loss has only exacerbated. Not only is there a Hillary/Bernie nexus, there is also a young/old and a coast/interior split within the party. These tensions can be seen in various races which instead of resolving under one banner seem set to unfurl in discreet scenarios.

We have already mentioned the DNC chair race which most are viewing as a Perez-Ellison (see Obama–Hillary/Bernie) race. But beyond that in 2017 we have the New Jersey Governor Democratic Primary where former Goldman Sachs banker and US Ambassador to Germany under Obama, Phil Murphy faces upstart Sanders backer Assemblyman Jon Wisniewski. While in Virginia establishment Lt. Governor Ralph Northam faces former Congressman and Obama era tragedy Tom Perriello.

The importance of these races is that they represent the first iteration of the party post-Obama and so the first clues as to its new direction. All candidates for DNC chair have pledged a similar 50 state strategy etc. but Ellison would surely be the break from the norm, especially on foreign policy. Wisniewski can be seen as a test case of whether Sanders backers can and will flex their financial muscles out of Presidential season to counter a very well funded establishment candidate. Finally Perriello arguably represents the Left’s answer to Trump, dubbed by E. J. Dionne an intelligent Populist he unapologetically took votes for left wing causes during his tenure in Congress despite his more Conservative district, while at the same time recieving an A Rating from the NRA.

Indeed this form of identity crisis is not unique or even novel. In 2008 the Republican Party having just been wiped out electorally took stock and retreated, famously taking comfort in Eric Cantor’s election night poll that found that while people liked Obama without his name they were lukewarm as to his policies. Indeed many Democrat groups are hoping to recreate the Tea Party response that emerged from those Republican years in solitude catapulting into power a more ideological strict set of Representatives.

A similar guttural reaction happened in 1994 as Republicans on the back of Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America exhaled from a 40 year stint in the minority to elect a more Conservative group than their party had seen before. Likewise the Democrats in 2006 shed their Third Way centrism to propel liberal icon Nancy Pelosi into the Speakership.

One wonders whether this is the inevitable process nowadays. Party finds itself in minority and blames this on perceived ideological obliqueness so elects more ideologically pure candidates until eventual victory, only to be repeated by opposing party ad infinitum. Certainly to take a reductionist view the Republicans have got progressively more conservative since Bush 41, while the Dems have got more progressive since Clinton (Bill). This then is why 2017 is so important for the Democratic Party as it struggles to find its soul it teeters on the brink of past centrism or a sharp tack left. And this is why every primary this year is so important it is a tell, an indicator of whether we head to a more ideolically distinct Democratic Party and a more polarised Washington, or not.

Oh and the last race in 2017, hard charging progressive New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is up for re-election his rumoured opponent in the Democratic primary – Hillary Clinton.

 

Elaine Chao: The most important person in President Trump´s Cabinet?

There have only been two Cabinet Secretaries from Kentucky since the Second World War Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell noted, former Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and newly appointed Trump Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao. She also happens to be his wife.

In naming his new Cabinet, Trump picked a plethora of Generals and Billionaires each receiving heady coverage, yet sandwiched within the pack he made a more conventional choice, former Cabinet Secretary, number two at The Department of Transportation (DOT) and Director of The Peace Corps – Elaine Chao.

Her story demonstrates the very best of America. in 1949 her family fled China to Taiwan to escape the Communist Party, she arrived in America with her mother and two of her sisters on a freight ship after her father had received a scholarship to study there. Fast forward 15 years and she had a Harvard MBA. Fast forward twenty more years and she was the first Asian American woman to be named to a President´s cabinet. She proceeded to be the only member of Bush´s cabinet to serve a full 8 year term, and since departing she has joined the Boards of The Kennedy School of Government and New York-Presbyterian Hospital as well as collecting 36 honorary degrees.

But it is not her impressive pedigree that concerns us, rather her task at The Department of Transportation. There are few areas of governement that receive bipartisan cooperation these days, whether it be foreign policy, healthcare, or judicial appointments, partisanship certainly does not stop at the waters edge anymore. And yet transportation is the odd area where there is a degree of consensus. Hedged in the middle of Trump´s immigration order her Senate confirmation still received an unusual display of unity – 93-6 was the vote (only her husband voted ´Present´).

And yet like everything in Washington there used to be far more common ground, before the 2009 stimulus there was enough cooperation for a Republican Congressman – Ray LaHood of Illinois – to become Transportation Secretary in the Obama administration. However, the stimulus (which former President Obama allowed Nancy Pelosi to pass with just Democratic votes) was widely viewed as a pork barrel buffet which only added to the deficit. Since then there is some acceptance that stimulus is needed but a reluctance on high to pay for it.

Enter Donald Trump. While he sharply diverged with the Democrats on most issues, transportation policy was an area Nancy Pelosi said they could find some common ground. Indeed Trump went much further than Hillary (and equalled Bernie) in calling for a $1 Trillion Infrastructure Project ¨to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals… We´re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.¨

Indeed the question seems to be how the debate will be framed. While Republicans tend to call for private investment, tax credits and repatriation of taxes to fund the building, Democrats would prefer corporate tax rises. Still there seems to be at least some belief that something must be done. In 2015 Congress passed a $305 Billion Highway Bill which President Obama called a ´commonsense compromise´ but still called for greater investment. While the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) have said that if there are not major improvements in transportation systems ¨The United States will lose more than 2.5 million jobs by 2025.¨

Thus the task facing Elaine Chao, to engineer a compromise on a proposal with some support from both parties but little agreement on how to get there. And yet this task may be one of the most crucial facing the Trump administration in its first 100 days. Government by it´s nature is slow, incremental, the sort of sweeping change that people so often want rarely happens. Likewise when administrations change it takes time for new policies to have effect and trickle down to your ordinary men and women. Certainly there are exceptions, the immigration order immediately galvanised people for and against and yet as we have seen today controversial executive orders and legislation are always subject to judicial checks.

An Infrastructure Bill quickly would be unlikely to face such legislation. Furthermore it would represent a real win for President Trump as he begins his tenure, especially given how President Obama tried and failed to get an ambitious Infrastructure Bill through several times. Beyond that the effect would be quick. While nobody will be getting a train whose building was authorised yesterday tomorrow, work can begin, construction can be started and palpable movement can be seen on the ground. Unlike a tax break that would take at least a year to have any effect, or new school standards to be implemented at the next academic year.

Thus this bill would demonstrate compromise, address a much needed problem and quickly impact voters on the ground. And finally there is some basis to believe that it could pass through Congress, in short then a political holy grail and if it passes Elaine Chao will likely be heavily involved in its drafting and implementation, which perhaps warrants my previous statement that she is perhaps the most important person in Trump´s Cabinet.

 

 

 

The perils and pitfalls of Presidential appointments

There is a strange and mostly alien (to Brits) phenomenon that occurs in American politics. That is rewarding key campaign contributors with ‘plum’ ambassadorships, mostly in Western countries. It shakes out to around 30% of ambassadors are patronage appointments in each of the last four Presidencies. This is often viewed as an unremarkable part of the President’s job and yet perhaps a neglected one as each appointment is fraught with ramifications for the would be office holder and the wider political scene.

That is not to say it is not fun to watch; President Obama famously nominated George Tsunis a prominent campaign donor to be Ambassador to Norway in 2013 yet his nomination was torpedoed after it emerged he had never been to Norway, thought it was a Republic and claimed the government had denounced the Progress Party, a far right party that was actually part of the government coalition.

While President Trump has released few nominations so far, David Friedman his former bankruptcy attorney has been chosen to be Ambassador to Israel, Governor Terry Branstad of Iowa if confirmed by the Senate will be Ambassador to China and yesterday Woody Johnson owner of the New York Jets and prominent campaign contributor was informally announced to be the UK Ambassador.

The difficulty with the sheer number of appointments a President has to make (around 4,000) is that it may diminish a party’s likelihood of retaining political office in future elections. That is their bench strength becomes depleted as the President looks to staff their new administration. Indeed in America one cannot belong to two branches of government at the same time, meaning if you hold political office you must resign your current post to begin your new one. Thus burgeoning politicians are taken out of the spotlight, often permanently, in order to serve the administration. This means after 8 years in office and plenty of turnover finding people to lead your party who have not been plucked by the administration can be difficult. Indeed on a purely cosmetic level one might look at the two Presidential primary fields this past cycle with the Republicans fielding 17 candidates and the Democrats in some debates only managing 3.

Indeed it is perhaps underappreciated the tactical nous needed to make Presidential appointments. Not only does the President need the best people for the job, he also needs the best people for his party hopefully preserving a strong enough coterie of talent to be able to keep all organs of government in 2, 4, 6, 8 years. One might wonder what Michigan Republicans will do without Betsy DeVos’ money now that she will be Education Secretary? Or whether the Republicans will be able to retake Jon Tester’s Montana Senate seat now that their top prospect Congressman Ryan Zinke has been nominated as Interior Secretary.

And conversely an appointee has to weigh their future prospects compared to the power available to them if they decline to join. For as previously mentioned accepting an appointment means resigning from any current government job you have. Cory Booker rejected Barack Obama’s offer to head the White House Office of Urban Affairs in 2009 when he was Mayor of Newark and went on to become a Senator but there are many who did heed the administrations call only to be lost to frontline politics thereafter. Names like Ken Salazar, Kathleen Sebelius, Ray LaHood and many others were once powerful people in their positions as Senator, Governor and Congressman now merely names of yesterday.

This then is the difficulty of appointments, finding people good enough to fill positions who are willing to alter their political careers for even greater public scrutiny, little credit, quiet work and no prospect of a cushy Congressional seat to return to. So far Trump has chosen strategically, Sonny Perdue and Rick Perry are both former Governors while Nikki Haley and Terry Branstad were likely coming to the end of their Gubernatorial terms. And yet with many appointments still to go one may look for the inappropriate ambassador (of which there will doubtless be one) or one may try and trace the lineage of each appointment, ascertaining how it affects the local, state and national political scene as well as the career prospects of the chosen individual, we certainly intend to take the latter approach.