At a Loss for Words
Okay, that title is a bit misleading. I am dumbfounded and disappointed. I really do not know what to say about the findings of the Mueller investigation. However, that is why I am sitting here typing away, and in the end, I will probably write a couple of thousand words in some stream of consciousness that won't be read by too many people but myself. But heck, that is what "blogging" is all about, right? The discovery of what one is really thinking. Coming to grips with my own feelings.
First, what I said about the findings of the Mueller investigation is really not true. In fact, we do not really know what the Mueller report has to say in its entirety. All we have right now is a short letter from Attorney General Barr to the appropriate committees in Congress. This letter is important and should be read. Here is the link. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/24/us/politics/barr-letter-mueller-report.html
Here is what the Mueller report does not say. It does not say that President Donald Trump is "fully exonerated," as Mr Trump himself and his aides have said. Congressman Devin Nunes, always good for a sycophantic comment, said the report should be burned. Presumably before anyone reads it, I suppose. Kellyanne Conway, senior White House adviser, says Congressman Adam Schiff should now resign, apparently for having differing views.
In case it's not clear, I am no fan of Donald Trump. In fact, I have been opposed to his candidacy since he announced it in June 2015. I assumed, like many people, that this announcement was a typical Trump publicity stunt. I continue to hold that view. However, after being a registered independent for most of my adult life, I registered as a Democrat in 2016 because I wanted to do something, anything, to stop this man from becoming president. I was selected as a Hillary Clinton delegate for the Nebraska Democratic Convention in that year. Along with the majority of voting Americans, I was in shock when the vagaries of the Electoral College put Donald Trump into office. The Electoral College was only partly designed to give small states a voice; that was not the entire philosophy behind it. The Founders also feared that a demagogue could come to occupy the presidency based on his cult-like appeal to the masses. The operations of this interesting institution never really panned out. The election of 1800 forever changed it. The Electoral College has almost never been used in the way it was intended, as laid out in Federalist Paper #68, but things have generally worked out fine, however; Mr Trump is a person with "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity," that is, the very kind of person the Electoral College was designed to prevent from ever becoming President.
I think my opposition to Mr Trump was that he had demonstrated during his "business career" that his primary talents were in world of self-promotion. Not that many people who pursue careers in politics are thoroughly altruistic or strangers to self-promotion. I would find it hard to believe that most politicians do not have at least some self-centered motivations. But for the most part, those running for nearly any office in the United States at any level of government also have other talents. Most of them have a general notion of the ideas they want to champion. Not so for Mr Trump. His one and only cause is himself. That is, self-promotion is not an ends to a means for him, it is an end unto itself. And so his candidacy, which started as yet another attempt to get people to notice him, became something of a pursuit of catch phrases passing for policy ideas. In this he was successful.
As an inveterate self-promoter, Mr Trump does have a talent for understanding what people respond to. Trump University, just another Infomercial on Steroids, is an example of this. People want to buy real estate for next to nothing, and then somehow make a 100 percent return on investment. "Mr. Trump" of "The Apprentice" fame was going to give these people the inside secrets on how to do this. Predictably, Trump University turned out to be a sham, and the "students" turned out to be suckers. But what is important about students at Trump University is that they share a resentment toward others. In the case of real estate, that resentment is that "someone" is making lots of money on real estate. That "someone" might be banks, or real estate agents, or title companies, or construction contractors, but it is not me. And Mr Trump was going to tell me how to get over on all those people.
The same mentality applies, I believe, to the Trump candidacy for President. "Someone" had taken over America and had made it go downhill. Trump was going to put "America First" and "Make America Great Again." Never mind that the America First movement of pre-World War II wanted to turn a blind eye to the destruction of Europe. Never mind that making America Great Again pointed to some ill-defined period in America's past when we were somehow great because everyone had a good-paying job (even though lots of people were not included in the American Dream). But essentially, making America great meant taking back the country from those scary people who took it from you. Whoever those scary people are.
One group of scary people that Trump has gone out of his way to demonize are professional law enforcement people. Don't misunderstand me. Trump likes cops. He likes cops especially when they rough up prisoners, when they don't worry about pesky things like Miranda rights, when they dress up prisoners in county lock-up in pink coveralls. But Trump doesn't like cops like those in the FBI. He does not like cops with law degrees and long pedigrees of investigating criminal conspiracies. He likes cops who bash heads. Because head-basing does not have to involve a lot of real investigation.
Mr Trump has tried for two years to discredit the FBI. He has tried for two years to discredit the Mueller investigation. He tried hard to get Jeff Sessions to fire Rod Rosenstein to appoint someone else to fire Robert Mueller. Whatever else one thinks about Jeff Sessions, it was to his credit that he refused to bow to this pressure. However, Mr Trump's pressure on Attorney General Sessions never had much to do with the law, it had to do with feeding his base. His base also likes cops who bash heads but do not worry so much about accuracy in investigation. So while Trump has derided the Mueller investigation as an "illegal witch hunt," it's funny that so many witches have been uncovered simply through difficult and detailed investigation.
I would note that Mr Trump's attempts to discredit the FBI are part and parcel of his attempt to discredit professionals in government overall. He thought he liked military generals until he hired a few of them. Chief of Staff John Kelly had to leave because he could not stand the lack of discipline in the Trump White House. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis had to leave because, shocking to the President, Mattis actually had a brain of his own. Trump's impression was that all military leaders were the George C. Scott version of General George Patton. They were head-bashers, ass-kickers who shot first and asked questions later. He never considered that someone schooled in the art of war actually had philosophical thoughts.
Back to the Mueller report. Now Mr Trump and his surrogates want us to believe that a short letter from the Attorney General is all we need to satisfy us that there is "no collusion." Sorry, I am not buying it. I would rather read the report myself. After two years of trying to discredit the Mueller investigation, the White House is saying the investigation was credible all along. However, the White House is saying that based on partial information. Without full information, how can Congress and the public make a determination? If Robert Mueller had definitively said that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, there would be a lot of tweets about it by now, perhaps hundreds of tweets. Instead, Mueller apparently said there was evidence on both sides of the argument, and left the determination up to the Attorney General. Again, I would rather see that evidence myself.
My opposition to a Trump presidency is that it would turn out to be just what it is. Even before he was elected, I expected Trump to fail to unify the American People. He has divided us more than we have been divided since the Vietnam War. I expected Trump to continue to enhance his wealth through the presidency. He has done so. His property in Washington, D.C. is a must-stay location for those who seek access to the administration; Mar-a-Lago trips occur about twice a month, with the Air Force and the Secret Service spending millions of dollars for each trip, even paying rent for his properties. I expected nepotism. He did not disappoint there. I expected inconsistent policy. He has gone way above and beyond here. Our foreign policy is apparently made by early-morning tweets. His tariff policy is destroying American agriculture. Walking away from the Iran accords has only served to empower the mullahs in Iran. Our Allies are learning to live without us. North Korea still has not even come close to dismantling its nuclear program, even though Mr Trump tweets that he "likes Chairman Kim" (and psychotic killers always really like being liked). His tax bill is digging us into a much larger deficit and debt hole.
Even though I knew a Trump presidency would be a train wreck, I also had faith in our institutions. The Founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, were somewhat skeptical about human nature. The entire basis of a separation-of-powers system of government is to insure that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" (Federalist #51). In other words, they knew that a Trump presidency could happen, but they also knew Congress would work to check it. Now, it is incumbent on Congress to actually make that a reality and quickly get this report into the hands of the public. We deserve to know what Robert Mueller actually found.
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