Why We Believe in Stephanie Schmid

In 2020 it seems quaintly naïve to write about "believing" in a candidate. Who can believe anything anymore? Belief is a sucker's game. Belief is so 2012. But my wife Emilie and I believe passionately in Stephanie Schmid, the Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey's 4th Congressional District, where we have lived for the past 15 years.

If we didn't believe in Stephanie, there would be little point in my writing this blog post. The story of why we are voting for her is too boring for words. We are lifelong Democrats, we generally vote blue, and could have been counted on to do so this year. Voting for someone and believing in them are not the same thing, however.

I confess, neither Emilie or I paid much attention to the Democratic primaries here in NJ-04. Like many others who are terrified of what has been happening for the past four years, we were distracted by national politics. We were impressed by Stephanie's resume: career diplomat and foreign service officer, human rights attorney, legislative advocate for reproductive freedom. But we didn't exert any special effort to persuade our fellow Democrats to support her. Partisan cynicism: we preferred Stephanie, but we knew we would vote blue regardless.

To be fair to us, not all of our motivations in this congressional election are strictly partisan. Chris Smith has been in office for almost forty years, that is much too long for a representative of any party to effectively serve his constituents. Though he has had some achievements, he has grown completely entitled and out of touch. He hasn't held a town hall here in New Jersey for almost two decades.  Even more than that, his priorities are from another century. He has been crusading against a woman's right to choose and against the civil rights of LGBTQ citizens more generally since 1978. However much we admired Stephanie on paper, we didn't really need or seek reasons to support her candidacy beyond the fact that she was running against Chris Smith.

All of that changed when we first had the opportunity to meet Stephanie in September. Whether you are talking with her one-on-one or hearing her address a group, her intensity and intellectual firepower knock the wind out of you. She has the kind of command of the facts that only comes from a lifetime of study and experience, combined with a passionate commitment to public service. We have become so used to leaders who speak in half-baked grunts and childlike taunts that hearing someone speak in paragraphs freighted with facts and ideas is as much a shock as it is a pleasure.

But that alone wouldn't have been enough to sway us to belief. Stephanie has something much more rare than intelligence and knowledge. She has integrity. That came through in everything she said and did that first day that Emilie and I met her, but one moment stands out in my memory. She was addressing a group of voters and someone asked about the Green New Deal. Stephanie paused for a moment and took a breath. "There is going to be a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court," she said. "The Green New Deal is not going to pass judicial review. That is why we need people in Congress who understand the law, and who can achieve the goals of the Green New Deal with carefully crafted legislation."

I almost fainted. We have become so accustomed to snake-oil pitches, "miracle cures," and empty promises from on high that it was incredible to hear a candidate talk straight with voters: to tell us about what might be possible with hard work, instead of giving us a fairy tale about how all our dreams were a hand-clap away. That is perhaps the single greatest reason that we believe in Stephanie: she believes in things greater than her own ambitions (what a concept, right?). Even more than that, she believes in us. Unlike so many of our leaders, she isn't so jaded as to assume that we must be talked to like children. 

On our way home from meeting Stephanie, Emilie and I looked at one-another, and I could sense that we were both thinking the same thing. We knew we had just met someone special, someone who could confront the daunting challenges that threaten our future and that of our teenage daughter.  "How much should we donate to her campaign?" I asked, knowing that like most families our finances have been under strain recently. "A thousand dollars," Emilie said without blinking. It is more than we have ever given to a single political campaign.

Emilie and I have no illusions. Though Stephanie has performed magnificently in debate and on the campaign trail, we know that she faces a hard fight to get to Congress.  But we believe in her, just as we believe in our neighbors and friends here in Monmouth and Ocean. We know that if the word gets out about what is at stake, and of just what a special opportunity we have in Stephanie's candidacy, the best woman can and will win. If you have read this far, please give Stephanie your vote. And please spread the word. When Stephanie is in Washington and begins working for all of us, you'll be glad you did.

Chicken Little is Beginning to Look Like an Optimist

 

As we approach November 3, speculation about the regularity of the upcoming election has become a virtual cottage industry. External circumstances like the Covid-19 pandemic have obviously contributed to the atmosphere of anxiety. But the main cause for the climate of fear are the words and deeds of President Donald J. Trump. As the Executive he took an oath to defend the constitution, and nothing is more vital to constitutional good order than confidence in the electoral system. If "we the people" are not persuaded that our leaders were elected freely and fairly, none of the rules the Constitution contains to constrain them are worth a fig. 

Any president who took his oath of office seriously would work tirelessly to calm fears about the upcoming election and work impartially to implement practical solutions to the challenges of the pandemic. Instead, Trump has stridently and gratuitously broadcast indictments of the electoral process itself, warning of a "rigged election!" He has turned every effort to work around the threat of the pandemic into a partisan conflict, impugning "vote by mail" plans as a scheme to defraud. Our system requires opposing parties to come together in good faith to assess the will of the people, and Trump is making that impossible by turning every question about electoral process into a zero-sum "us versus them" dilemma.

Why is he doing this? One plausible explanation is that, like the scorpion in the parable who rides the frog, Trump simply cannot help injecting poison into the system because it is his nature. He is a congenitally insecure and belligerent character, he has spent his almost four years in office feuding with legions of foes real and imagined, and so he is just acting true to form. Even if this were the whole explanation, the situation would be bad enough.

But Trump's attacks on the election are more and more difficult to read as spontaneous expressions of his "quirky (read 'obscenely malignant')" character. The President likes to cultivate the appearance of buffoonery and poor intelligence, but he can read a poll as clearly as anyone. With less than sixty days left to Election Day, it is looking increasingly unlikely that Trump can win a fair election, even given the advantage he enjoys in the Electoral College. It takes no great feat of deduction to understand that someone who knew that he was not likely to win a regular election, and was yet determined to remain in office, would work steadily to undermine the integrity of the election itself.

 Is it silly to think that this is afoot? Let's look at the facts. In 2016 Trump made at least paltry attempts to speak to constituencies beyond his base supporters. He gave, for example, speeches in which he asked African-American voters "what do you have to lose?" by voting for him. There was a latent racism even in these remarks (as they painted a portrait of Black America that was condescendingly bleak), but they were at least pitched to giving some white Republicans the impression (or the rationalization) that Trump was not wholly hostile to the interests of African-Americans. 

Very little of even this form of fake conciliation is on display from Trump in 2020. The Republican National Convention featured set-pieces like a naturalization ceremony involving people of color (some of whom, amazingly, were unaware that the scene would be broadcast), but none of these displays of tokenism rose to the level of efforts made in 2016 to counter charges of racism. Meanwhile, despite the fact that support for the Black Lives Matter movement reached as high as 63% in polls this summer, Trump and his surrogates have persistently condemned BLM supporters as "traitors" and "terrorists." Why would you use such Manichean language about a movement that enjoys the support of a majority of the electorate, if your ambition was to win at the polls?

Race is the prime point upon which Trump is stoking conflict and anger, but it is far from the only one. On a series of hot button issues, ranging from the measures to remediate the pandemic, to questions of foreign policy, to the parameters of the election itself, Trump has launched inflammatory attacks and used radically polarizing rhetoric, without any regard for bringing together a coalition that might resolve questions democratically. To the contrary, Trump has given encouragement and voice to tendencies of the political fringe that can only ever be persuasive to a minority fragment of voters: expressing "appreciation" of the QAnon movement and hinting darkly to one interviewer that Joe Biden was in the grips of a cabal of black-clad agents flying around the country on commercial airliners, equipped with nefarious gear.

Why would you act this way, if your goal was to win an election that is less than sixty days away? Unless one credits Trump and his advisors with very little intelligence, one cannot believe that this is any kind of strategy for electoral victory. They are making very little effort to replicate the techniques ("what have you got to lose?") that secured them the surprising victory of 2016. Meanwhile, they are working assiduously to sow doubt that the election itself will be fair and authoritative.

Even more disturbing is the degree to which the president and his supporters are encouraging violence. Demonizing the Black Lives Matter movement as "treasonous" and "terrorist" has, predictably (deliberately), motivated some of Trump's supporters to take up arms against it. Trump's refusal to condemn the shooting of two BLM protesters in Kenosha by a seventeen-year-old Trumpist is a gross betrayal of his oath of office. Whatever the young man's blame or innocence in the case itself, the duty of a president in such an instance of political violence is to urge calm and make peace. Instead, Trump has pushed to keep the wheel of violence spinning, cheering on supporters in Portland who, in the wake of the Kenosha killing, rode through Portland firing paintball guns and gas canisters at BLM protesters. The death of one of Trump's supporters during that demonstration was execrable but again predictable, and one cannot help but suspect that the whole point of the exercise itself was to incite such a response.  

Creating a climate of fear and hatred naturally develops a situation in which peaceful protest becomes impossible.Trump is effectively engaged in a campaign of mass intimidation. His negligence is creating conditions in which anyone who comes out to march in defiance of his administration must fear for their lives. 

Is this deliberate? In a sense, the question of Trump's intent is irrelevant. He is already engaged in flagrant violations of the law and of constitutional and political norms. Refusing to disclose his tax returns. Refusing to answer Congressional subpoenas. Refusing to acknowledge interference in the election by Russia. Using the White House and other federal facilities for partisan purposes in violation of the Hatch Act. Virtually every day he demonstrates that he cannot be held accountable, and challenges his co-partisans and supporters to choose between their support for regular constitutional order and their support for Donald J. Trump. 

How can anyone assume that this game of brinksmanship will stop at the election? When I propose to friends or family, for example, that Trump might order the counting of mail-in ballots to cease at 11 PM on November 3 (on the claim that they are fraudulent), they typically answer, "He can't do that!" But he can't hold a campaign rally on the White House lawn either, and that is already in the rear-view mirror. The question of whether Trump can do something or not always ultimately boils down to the question of "who will stop him?" The same would apply to an order to cease counting mail-in ballots. Governor Cuomo of New York would probably stop him. Governor DeSantis of Florida would probably not.

That brings us back to the question of Trump's behavior in these last weeks of the campaign. By setting the American people against one-another, he is systemically disabling the last mechanism by which he might be held accountable. Trump does not really have it in his power to engineer an outcome for this election. But as President he can completely sabotage the operation of the electoral process itself, so that the machinery of the transition grinds to a halt. The only force that really has any hope of preventing such a maneuver is concerted civil protest by an overwhelming number of conscientious Americans. In the hypothetical case of his ordering a stop to the counting of mail-in ballots, for example, unless millions took to the streets to oppose that order, Trump would undoubtedly get away with it.

Can millions be counted on to protest abuses of power surrounding the election? Right now I would venture to say that the answer to that question is "yes." But in the next sixty days much could change. If we see more chaos, more violence, and more polarization, the will to engage in civil protest (or the discipline to ensure that it remains civil) could wane very rapidly. 

No one need believe that Donald Trump is directing a complex conspiracy to "steal" the election. However intelligent he may be, such a sophisticated enterprise would be beyond anything he had shown himself capable of before. But one does not have to posit that he is maneuvering in subtle ways to falsely "win" the election, only that he has no intention of ever conceding that he lost it. He has shown that he is willing to abuse his power to any degree in pursuit of his own interests.  Anyone who insists that Trump will not interfere with a final counting of the vote out of an unwillingness to destroy our democracy must explain on what basis they can argue that he has ever demonstrated such an unwillingness. For my part, I have no trouble believing that the man who told us he trusted Vladimir Putin over the FBI, who separated thousand of migrant children from their parents, who stole money from charity, who is on tape bragging about committing sexual assault, and who has committed a host of other obscenities in the light of day and on camera, would lose very little sleep over having left democracy in ashes.

We as citizens are faced with dire and frightening challenges in the weeks ahead. Voting is of course vitally important, but voting is very likely not going to be enough, no matter how overwhelmingly the electorate decides in favor of Joe Biden. All of the other methods of civil engagement are likewise urgent- volunteering, public displays of support, letters to elected officials, and monetary donations. But none of these might suffice. In the end, the only way that we might secure a clear accounting of the election is by taking to the streets in civil protest. And there is the rub. Donald Trump is maneuvering to make civil protest more dangerous than it has been in recent memory. By stoking anger and fear, he is trying to drown out the voices of civil debate with the clamor of malignant violence.

We cannot let this happen. We must be brave and we must be disciplined. We must repudiate violence, but we must not neglect the duty of citizenship. We cannot allow ourselves to be bullied into silence or despair. If like the heroes of the Civil Rights movement or the veterans who risked their lives defending America did before us, we accept risks and face down dangers by speaking out, we shall prevail.  If not for our own sake, we must do so for that of our children. Those of us who grew up enjoying the blessings of democracy have an obligation to preserve them for those who will come after us.

Coming this Fall: The Trump "China Crisis"

Since the first weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency it has been clear that his re-election campaign would be marked by an unprecedented amount of belligerence and polarizing vitriol, as he has appealed consistently to the same core of base supporters that gave him a surprise minority victory in 2016. But with the November election approaching, he has increasingly struggled to formulate a message. The exigencies of the pandemic have blunted some of his most dependable rhetorical weapons. His posture as a hero of the economy has been undermined by a steep recession, the usual distractions of racially charged pronouncements and celebrity feuds have been eclipsed by the daily grind of public health statistics. Anger and division are Trump’s stock-in-trade, but anger and division are difficult to sustain when everyone is in the same miserable boat.

            It is for this reason that China has become so fundamental to Trump’s re-election strategy. In some respects the choice of China as a scapegoat might seem compelled by circumstance. Because the pandemic first began in Wuhan, Trump was naturally drawn to deflect responsibility by repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as “the China Virus,” and to proclaim that the Americans experiencing economic duress are not to blame for their own misfortune, “China is.”

            But Trump’s use of China to drive an electoral narrative runs much more broadly and deeply than simple scapegoating. The intensity and variety of maneuvers undertaken by the White House in recent weeks indicate the pursuit of a much more ambitious agenda. By manipulating Sino-U.S. relations, the Trump team hopes to manufacture an issue on which they can run through November 3.

            This recent campaign is in some sense an extension of the trade war with China pursued by the White House for the past three years, but it is a new edifice being built on an old foundation. A resolution of the trade war (if there is ever to be one) has effectively been deferred until after the election. Meaningful diplomacy regarding Chinese abuses in Hong Kong (where a largely peaceful movement for democracy has been met by the imposition of a draconian and illiberal “security law”) and Xinjiang (where as many as a million members of the Uighur minority have been detained in labor camps and forced to undergo “re-education”) has likewise been abandoned, all in favor of a series of escalating and gratuitous provocations, none of which is tied to discrete long-term policy goals.

            The first clear signs of this campaign came in June. That month saw a staged controversy, played out in right-wing media, over whether the President’s insistence on using phrases like “Kung Flu” was racially inflammatory (it was). Since then, the White House has floated a series of confrontations with Beijing, each more aggressive than the last.

             In July the administration closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, on the pretext that it was engaged in espionage activities (no specific evidence or charges were announced). About nine days later Trump announced a pending ban on the Chinese social media platform TikTok and messaging service WeChat, a move that had been teased earlier in a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The administration’s rationale for this move was as vague as that for the closing of the Houston consulate. The information gathered from users by TikTok and WeChat was said to pose a security threat, despite the fact that this information is no different than that gathered by platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. The most recent move in this campaign was a trip by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to Taiwan. This visit from a Cabinet-level official to Taiwan was unprecedented in the interval since formal recognition of the PRC, and was deliberately calculated to provoke CCP leaders in Beijing.

            All of these provocations were aimed at eliciting a hostile and inflammatory response from Beijing. Why? What is the logic of inducing this form of artificial standoff? The perceived advantages of a “China crisis” in the current election campaign works on several levels for the Trump team.

As noted above, Trump himself is only really capable of running a form of politics derived from the reality television genre that propelled him onto the national stage. It is rooted in drama and conflict; he must show supporters that he is “vanquishing enemies” daily. From the outset his chosen antagonists were fellow Americans or residents of the US: people of color, Muslims, women, LGBTQ citizens, undocumented immigrants, Democrats.

Trump’s recent and great misfortune is that circumstance has shouldered him with an enemy that is difficult to caricature or manipulate: the Covid-19 pandemic. An effective campaign against the virus would require him to reconcile and unite groups that he had until now counted on pitting against one-another. This would require him to completely reconstruct his “brand” in a way that he lacks the will and talent to accomplish. He thus needs an enemy that will be intuitively recognizable to his base supporters, and that can produce fear and anger sufficiently intense to distract them from their fear of the Covid-19 virus.

China serves perfectly in this regard. Since his first speech about “Mexican rapists” Trump has appealed to racial animosity. He thus can rely on his most enthusiastic supporters to accept that the same information held by Facebook executives is much more dangerous when collected by Chinese corporations. If he can goad the Chinese into a sufficiently belligerent response, fear of a “yellow peril” might displace (or be conflated with) fear of the Covid-19 pandemic sufficiently to shore up support among Trump’s core followers.

            Beyond this, a manufactured “China crisis” serves Trump’s political needs in other, more particular respects. Since first taking office in 2017, he has labored under the strong impression that he may have been compromised by Russia. His hostility to any investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and his extraordinary deference to Vladimir Putin at occasions such as the Helsinki summit cast suspicion on his integrity as a guardian of US national interests.

           One of the most basic tactics underpinning Trump’s political success has been his playing of an “equivalency game.” In 2016 his personal corruption was a matter of public record, so by way of normalizing his candidacy and giving implicit permission to centrist voters to join his coalition, he campaigned (both on his own and through surrogates) to define Hillary Clinton as similarly corrupt. He is running the same equivalency game on Joe Biden, but in this instance (because of his own accrued liabilities) he specifically needs to undermine Biden’s timeworn reputation as a faithful steward of American interests in the realm of foreign policy.

To that end, the campaign to induce a “China crisis” is unspooling in tandem with a persistent message tying Joseph Biden and his son Hunter to corrupt dealings with the leaders in Beijing. The first hints that this was in the works appeared in October 2019, when (in the early stages of the impeachment inquiry launched by the House of Representatives) Trump told news cameras that not only should Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine be scrutinized, but that his activities in China, if investigated, would prove to be “even worse.”

The substance of these allegations remains hazy, but they have been churning through the right-wing media ecosystem for some time. Peter Schweizer, the author of the 2015 exposé Clinton Cash, has outlined charges against Hunter in his more recent publication: Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends (Harper 2019). What can be clearly ascertained is that Hunter Biden and his partners in a private equity firm set up an investment fund, Bohai Harvest RST (or BHR), that relied in part on capital provided by the Bank of China. The fund was set up after Hunter (and his daughter Finnegan, Joe Biden’s granddaughter) accompanied Joe Biden (then still Vice President) on a state visit to China in 2013.

The details of this business venture are not fully known. How much money Hunter acquired from the Bank of China, what his personal profit was from BHR’s investments, and what role Joe Biden played (if any) in brokering this deal on behalf of Hunter and his partners remain open questions. Certainly, there is at least an apparent conflict of interest. But no one has produced evidence that either Hunter or Joe Biden did anything illegal, or evenly blatantly unethical.

Lack of specifics has not deterred Trump from pressing ahead with maximalist allegations. In a recent press appearance Trump warned that, “If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States. You’re going to have to learn Chinese, you want to know the truth.” This was only one in a long series of dark hints at Joe Biden’s depth of cooptation by Beijing, a messaging strategy that is sure to intensify in frequency and stridency as November 3 approaches.

Where is all this going? Thus far the “China crisis” campaign has achieved little traction. Neither the CCP leadership in Beijing nor the Biden team have shown any inclination to take the bait. Biden has not been moved to offer more than standard arguments in defense of his foreign policy credentials.

Even more remarkably, Beijing has been extraordinarily restrained in its response to Trump’s provocations. The White House, for example, seems to have expected that its closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston would produce a response much more amenable to cable TV fireworks. If Beijing had been more obliging, it would have closed the US consular office in Hong Kong, a move that would have set off a media frenzy lasting days or even weeks. Instead Beijing closed the US consulate in Chengdu, a city that many American citizens could not find on a map, guaranteeing that the “consulate confrontation” would not provide fodder for more than a single news cycle. Similarly the proposed bans on TikTok and WeChat have elicited little by way of visible retaliation. Beijing understands what the Trump team is up to, and seems resolved not to play along.

If the Trump campaign understands the situation, there is yet no sign that their determination to follow through on the “China crisis” plan has wavered. An incumbent president who refuses to be constrained by any of the norms of foreign policy or constitutional good order has many means at his disposal, and Trump can be counted on to use them all. Beijing has vulnerabilities that can be exploited, and the White House has already shown that they are aware of these.

In particular, the trip by HHS Secretary Azar to Taiwan was an escalation into Beijing’s “red zone” of threat sensitivity. For four decades, successive US administrations have cleaved to a policy of “strategic ambiguity” calibrated to keep the peace in the Taiwan Strait. On the one hand, our posture seeks to persuade Beijing that any unprovoked military strike against Taiwan will be met with stiff resistance from the US, up to and including the use of military force. On the other hand, we have deliberately kept leaders in Taipei guessing as to how far our commitment to defend Taiwan extends, to preclude them rashly provoking the wrath of Beijing.

Such a delicate game is necessitated by the extreme volatility of the political situation in the Strait. Chinese nationalists (that is, the vast majority of the PRC’s citizens) view the inclusion of Taiwan within China’s sovereign territory as sacrosanct (even if that status is purely symbolic, as is currently the case). No Chinese government, even one that had been democratically elected, could survive the firestorm of civil unrest that would ensue in the wake of a formal Taiwanese declaration of independence. At the same time, most residents of Taiwan feel little emotional investment in the prospects of unification with the PRC. Indeed, sentiment in favor of formally declaring Taiwan an independent, democratic republic has steadily grown in recent years, a move that would certainly entail war.

The situation is explosive, and has only remained stable through the prudence and forbearance of all major international players. Enter Donald Trump, a figure for whom “prudence” and “forbearance” might as well be words exclusively spoken in some extraterrestrial tongue. He learned just how sensitive Beijing is on this issue when, before being sworn in in January 2017, he tweeted about his pleasure at receiving a phone call from “the president of Taiwan (Tsai Ing-wen),” drawing immediate and apoplectic condemnation from PRC leaders.

If Trump wants to elicit a belligerent response from Beijing (and he clearly does), he knows he only has to press against the open nerve of Taiwan. The trip by HHS Secretary Azar to Taipei is only the first foray into this tactical field. As November 3 draws nigh, the Trump White House will flirt ever more openly and perilously with recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty, until they induce a response from Beijing that rises to the level of crisis they desire.

          By the same token, amplifying “awareness” of the Bidens’ corrupt ties to China is a simple matter for any president who has the will and the means to manipulate the powers of the Executive. That Trump himself is game for any degree of abuse of power is beyond doubt, and in Attorney General William Barr he clearly has a pliable instrument for the purpose of exploiting the offices of the Justice Department. As the “China crisis” heats up in late September or October, so too will a new chapter unfold in federal law enforcement’s interests in the activities of Hunter Biden and BHR. There is some slight possibility that we will get as far as October 31 without seeing Hunter’s house searched under the auspices of a “no-knock warrant” and Hunter himself “perp-walked” in handcuffs and under FBI escort, but it would be shocking if that date comes without at least the announcement of a “formal inquiry” into BHR’s alleged crimes by the Office of the Attorney General. 

     Nothing about Trump’s “China crisis” charade should come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to his methods since the summer of 2015. He operates exclusively at a level of public perception that he feels confident he can control, without any regard for underlying realities or long-term consequences. Unfortunately for the US, the PRC, and the world at large, the Sino-American relationship on which he is day trading is profoundly important to the long term stability and prosperity of the global community. Hopefully, in the wake of the 2020 election, the conduct of Chinese-American relations can be put back on a basis that is not purely reducible to sound-bite politics of the moment.

An Open Letter to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy Regarding the Sabotaging of the USPS

 Dear Governor Murphy,

           I write you as a citizen and constituent out of concern for the rights of myself, my family, and my community. In recent days President Donald Trump and his appointed cabinet official, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, have openly and wantonly attacked the integrity of the upcoming election and have engaged in a conspiracy to deprive millions of Americans of their constitutional right to vote. This profanity must not be allowed to stand.

            The Covid-19 pandemic has produced unique conditions that must be accommodated in order to have a free and fair election. Since Election Day is not a work holiday, polls naturally rely on a cadre of retired volunteers for ordinary operation. That work force is highly susceptible to the virus and cannot be expected to incur the risk of their usual work. This will mean fewer polling stations, which will delay voting and create even greater public health risks as crowds gather to cast their ballots.

           It is thus imperative that the United States Postal Service be enlisted to aid in the fulfillment of balloting. Millions more votes will necessarily be cast by mail this year, placing a strain on the resources of the Postal Service. Additional funds and new personnel and equipment will be required to accommodate this urgent need.  

          Instead of doing what is vitally necessary, the President is working to obstruct the needs of the election, openly refusing essential funds to the Postal Service for the admitted reason of sabotaging the process of mail-in balloting. His ostensible reasons for this attack are completely fallacious. Even if it were true that universal mail-in balloting posed greater risks than "absentee balloting" (and empirical evidence shows this is not true), the resource needs for using the absentee ballot system to redress the problems of the crisis would be even greater than those posed by universal mail-in balloting. Even more new personnel and equipment would be needed to process millions of absentee ballot requests, so any move to starve the Postal Service of resources is an attack on the integrity of the election, full stop. There is no legitimate defense for the course of action that Donald Trump has openly admitted he has undertaken.

        At the same time that Donald Trump is attacking the funding of the USPS, Louis DeJoy is working from within to sabotage its existing capacity. Hundreds of sorting machines have been decommissioned and even dismantled, indefinitely crippling the Service's delivery capacity in many districts. This is utterly execrable, as it not only affects the election, but is causing delays to the delivery of food, medicine, and other essentials to those most vulnerable during the ongoing pandemic.

         This sabotaging of the USPS is a crime being committed in broad daylight. It is a violation of the President's oath of office and a betrayal of the foundational principles of our Republic. The Constitution gives the states the power to set voting requirements, the federal government has no authority to effectively mandate a set of voting parameters from its seat in Washington D.C.  

          I implore you to direct our Secretary of State, in coalition with as many other state governments across the Union as may be persuaded to join in a class action, to undertake a law suit against President Trump and the federal government on behalf of the people of our state. The goal of this lawsuit should be to halt the illegal and immoral sabotaging of the USPS.  Donald Trump has confessed to his malicious intent on camera and in social media, he can no longer be trusted to safeguard the integrity of the Postal Services. For the sake of the citizens of our state and the larger United States, the USPS must be put into the receivership of an independent authority convened by a bipartisan commission.

          Time is short. The election is less than three months away, and postal delays are costing many their health and lives in the meantime. Please take action swiftly. I thank you for your attention to this matter, and hope that this message finds you well.

 

                          Sincerely,

 

                          Andrew Meyer

UPDATE: #RespectTheVote

Troll’s amorality make him very dangerous, but his laziness, lack of imagination, and overweening sense of entitlement put constraints on that threat. His bark is almost always worse than his bite. He is using his office to broadcast conspiracy theories and undermine faith in the election, but his power to tamper with the vote is very limited.

Troll is telling lots of lies about the dangers of “vote by mail” (which is the same as absentee balloting, despite Troll’s ridiculous assertions to the contrary), but there is no reason that such a system should be more vulnerable to fraud than any other. The only way significant fraud can be accomplished would be to: 1)steal or counterfeit ballots on a large scale (bottom-up fraud) which would be easily detected and interdicted; 2)slow or interrupt the delivery or collection of ballots (top-down fraud) which would require the complicity of the Post Office.

Top-down fraud is a real (the only real) danger, because the man at the top is a proven liar, cheat, and criminal who is clearly capable of doing anything, no matter how vile, in pursuit of power. The good news is that his power to cheat comes under powerful constraints. The conscientious professionalism of postal workers. The vigilance of Democratic lawmakers and governors. The patriotic integrity of (some) Republicans. The informed activism of we, the citizenry.

So what is the takeaway? We should be active and vigilant, but we should remain positive and avoid panic. We should write to (see below) and urge our elected officials to monitor preparations for the election and to countermessage aggressively against Troll’s campaign to undermine faith in the election. The latter is especially important. We need officials of all parties to repudiate Troll’s slanders against the electoral process.

In this regard I am going to stop using the “protect the vote” hashtag. Wandering around the web, I see that it is being deployed by Trollkins as much as by his opponents. This is a measure of just how cunning Troll can be when he applies himself. By threatening top-down fraud he gets his opponents to do his messaging for him: “the election is suspect.”

The election is NOT suspect. We have the power to defend its integrity, and therefore we can be confident, if and as we exert our ordinary powers as citizens, that the election will be free and fair. That should be the message moving forward: vigilance is warranted, but confidence is amply achievable. #RespectTheVote

I have sent a copy of the following message to my Congressional delegation (Cory Booker-D-NJ, Bob Menendez-D-NJ, Chris Smith-R-NJ), governor (Phil Murphy-D-NJ), and State Secretary of State (Tahesha Way). I give permission to anyone who desires to copy part or all of it for communications with your own representatives and government officers.

Dear ______,

        The integrity of our electoral process has never been so much in doubt. The President of the United States has repeatedly impugned the credibility of the upcoming election and made veiled threats suggesting he will delay or impede the process of voting. At a time when our nation is deeply polarized and beset by simultaneous economic and public health crises, a discredited or illegitimate election would fatally undermine the foundations of our democracy. We must secure the integrity of the upcoming election or risk the end of the American experiment.
       I seek immediate, open, broadly publicized, and credible assurances from you that stringent measures are in place to safeguard the voting process. All citizens must have equal and unimpeded access to the franchise, all votes must be faithfully received and accurately recorded, and the election must transpire in a timely fashion according to constitutional mandate.
       The eyes of the nation are upon you and the entire government in which you serve. If you fail in this duty millions will take note and take action. In the short term, any violation of the integrity of the election will incite massive civil dissent. In the longer term, we citizens will exact a steep political price from any officials, regardless of partisan affiliation, who fail us so egregiously.
         Please give me your reply, informing me of your plan of action and of any steps I as a citizen may take to assist you to this end. Thank you for your attention to this matter, I hope otherwise that this message finds you well.

                Yours sincerely,

                 Andrew Meyer

We Need an S.O.S. (Save Our Society) Presidential Campaign, NOW!

It has long been obvious that the United States would not survive a second Trump term, but in recent weeks it has become less and less clear that the U.S. will survive to the end of the first Trump term. The Covid-19 pandemic has confronted us with a situation in which presidential leadership is indispensable, at a moment when the nihilistic cynicism, corruption, and utter fecklessness of the current President makes presidential leadership virtually impossible. Turning the tide on the pandemic will require leadership that fosters mutual trust and cooperation, but Donald Trump is only able to helm a politics of hatred, suspicion, and communal division.

As long as the status quo persists, the pandemic will continue to spin out of control, deepening the economic crisis that comes with it. Successive rounds of government stimulus will be necessary to keep the nation minimally afloat. Eventually that well will run dry, and the economy will collapse in 1929-fashion. Since the Trump administration's fiscal profligacy had already put us into a dangerously leveraged position before the pandemic began, the chances that the government will be able to continue to maintain its good faith and credit during an uncontrolled public health disaster through next January are slim.

We have to find some way of pressuring Donald Trump into using the powers at his disposal to ameliorate the health crisis, to resign, or to at least give the reins over to someone capable of leading us out of the current impasse (a new #PandemicTsar). Trump only responds to threats to his own personal fortunes. There is thus really only one individual in the country who has leverage that can move our catastrophically destructive president to action: Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Up until now the Biden camp has persisted in treating this campaign as a conventional electoral contest: one in which the ultimate object should be understood as winning office. But winning office will be of little practical impact if there is not genuinely a Republic left to lead. As a matter of political strategy and civic duty, Joe Biden should begin to conduct his campaign not only as a bid to win office, but as a concerted effort to preserve the nation from disaster.

What would this entail? At basis, it would involve an open recognition of the naked realities of our situation. Though Donald Trump legitimately holds the office of president, he does not in any way fulfill its responsibilities or respect any of its principles. Since he refuses to behave as a president, the Biden campaign should cease giving him any of the ordinary courtesies or considerations that would routinely apply to an incumbent president. Trump cannot flout decorum at every turn and then claim that fairness or the dignity of his office demand he be given his due.

For example: as Thomas Friedman noted, Biden is so far ahead in the polls now that he can comfortably afford to refuse to engage in a debate. Trump is desperate to debate, as these provide some of the few moments in which the trajectory of the campaign might be turned. Ordinarily tradition would demand at least one debate: it would be unseemly to hold an election without any. But tradition has been so thoroughly defecated upon by this president (words chosen judiciously) that it would be completely absurd for anyone to claim it should be respected on his behalf. Biden should demand that the price of having a debate will be the release of Trump's recent tax returns: one for each debate (up to a maximum of four or five, say). Whatever paltry demurrals Trump offers in the face of such extortion can be safely brushed aside. A "president" who cannot show the public his tax returns is not worth laughing at, much less arguing with.

Other tactics might include seeking the endorsement and active campaign participation of past presidents, especially George W. Bush. Ordinarily it would be unthinkable for an ex-president to electioneer against his successor, but since Trump is not genuinely successor to any mantle of leadership, his tenure does not need to be respected in that regard. At least, unless and until he begins to fulfill the most basic duties of his office.

All of these provocations should be keyed to a single unifying message: ACT NOW. Trump's failure to control the pandemic should be kept harshly spotlighted, all of the levers of electoral pressure should be brought to bear to push him into leading (not bloody likely), quitting (only slightly less improbable, but one may hope), or at least getting out of the way (probably our best and perhaps our only shot). If Biden were to re-tool his campaign this way, aside from bringing the Trump nightmare to an end at the ballot box, he might do something even more extraordinary: save the Republic before the first vote for him is even cast.

I Mourn for Hong Kong, But I Mourn Even More for China

The new Hong Kong security law passed by the PRC went into effect today, and arrests under its jurisdiction have already begun. Though we are in its very early stages, a sea change in the politics and culture of the island city is clearly underway. How much of the vibrant and open civic culture that thrived in Hong Kong will survive is unknowable, but what is certain is that the city will not be the same for the foreseeable future.

I cannot help meeting this news with a profound sense of personal loss. For me, as for so many others, Hong Kong is a beloved place. Its civic life and dynamic culture were the setting of some of my most exciting and eye-opening experiences as a young student and traveler. Those memories made my returns in middle age with family and child sweetly nostalgic.

Of course, all such bittersweet impressions are profoundly selfish. The loss to the people of Hong Kong who are forced to live through this transition vastly outweighs any impact it has on people like me. Loss of freedom is certainly not a rare event in human history, but the recent global trend has arguably moved in the opposite direction. That the people of Hong Kong should suffer through this regressive moment is horrific. No one who has enjoyed freedom can experience its loss without terrible pain.

But as sad as I am for the people of Hong Kong, I am even sadder for the people of China more generally. I have spent much more time in the rest of mainland China than I have in Hong Kong, and the most hopeful development that I witnessed over the many decades that I returned to the PRC was the extent to which the differential gap between the larger PRC and Hong Kong closed as years and decades passed.

When I first traveled by train from Hong Kong to Beijing in 1987 (transiting between a fall semester program at Tunghai University in Taiwan to a spring term in the CET program at the Beijing Foreign Language Normal College 北京外国语师范学院), Beijing and Hong Kong were not recognizably "compatriot" cities. There were many aspects to this difference, but the most salient was the degree to which cultural and commercial life were still highly politicized in Beijing. Large billboards on Changan Boulevard in Beijing exhorted passersby to follow Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Non-conformity in all dimensions- sartorial, architectural, literary, etc.- was still dangerously controversial. Commerce was so politically charged that a dual currency system was in effect, relegating foreigners to a separate consumer economy.

That differential has not gone away, but it has narrowed drastically, to the benefit of all. The clothes one sees people wearing on the streets of Beijing today are as various as those in Hong Kong. Likewise other dimensions of cultural and commercial life have become much more diverse, vibrant, and dynamic, largely because aspects of cultural life that were once highly politicized (it was once "counterrevolutionary" to wear American bluejeans, for example) have become anodyne.  This has not merely brought abstract benefits such as "freedom of choice," but has materially improved the lives of millions by spurring the Chinese economy to realize long-latent potential for rapid growth.

Since so much of China's recent prosperity has been driven by a process that has made the larger PRC more and more like Hong Kong, it is tragic to see China's leaders try to strong-arm Hong Kong into becoming more like the rest of China. The CCP is shouting at the tide of history. The forces of dissent that Beijing is trying to stifle in Hong Kong are not absent in the rest of China, they merely lack safe avenues of expression.

The economic miracle that the CCP has overseen for the last four decades was laid on a political foundation: the de-politicization of economic and cultural life were the necessary conditions of China's rise. For that process to continue, China's leaders must follow the political logic intrinsic to the trajectory of reform upon which they embarked in 1980. Power-sharing and decentralization are key. Without such developments, corruption, waste, and ecological degradation will intensify to the point of choking off economic growth. Beyond this, questions of sovereignty like those persisting in Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang will continue to worsen.

Hong Kong should not become more like Wuhan or Tianjin. Rather, for the welfare and prosperity of all China's people, and for the stability and security of China as a whole, the cities of the mainland PRC should become, both in their municipal politics and in their relationship to Beijing, more like Hong Kong. This principle is the downhill slope of history. The fact that CCP leaders do not seem to understand that reality is tragic, in that it portends strife and suffering. But there is also hope, that perhaps the repression we are witnessing today in Hong Kong is a passing phase, and that the city will return to its true self in the fullness of time.

Why Can't Trump Handle the Pandemic? Why Can't Pigs Fly?

A question that continues to echo through our politics is "why?" Why has Donald Trump proven so malignantly negligent, ineffectual to the point of impotence, in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic? Any other president in our history would have seized the moment and donned a mantle of national leadership. Virtually any other politician that has gotten anywhere near the White House (picture a President Santorum) would have lead more successfully. Why has Donald Trump refused to confront the realities of the pandemic, even as his stubborn inertia costs tens of thousands of lives?

The most confounding dimension of this dilemma is the political one. Even if Trump did not care about the moral cost of his negligence (which he clearly does not), the electoral price would seem to be ample motivation. As the devastation of the pandemic intensifies and his fortunes sink in the polls, it would seem natural for Trump to pivot. Why doesn't he?

Part of the reason is, of course, that he can't. Trump is not stupid and he is not crazy. But he has always been a low-talent grifter. He does not have the imagination, the discipline, or the energy that would be necessary to re-invent himself. The crisis has provided him with a golden opportunity to explore a new track, but that opportunity is wasted on him. He simply lacks the skills that would be necessary to project empathy, credibility, and sober judgment.

So Trump is stuck with his original brand, and that is racist vitriol. Trumpism is defined by the impulse to hate, it is intrinsically a politics of division. The Covid-19 pandemic, meanwhile, is an object lesson in the fact that we will all sink or swim together. Defeating the pandemic will require mutual trust and cooperation. In the light of mutual trust and cooperation, Trumpism dies. Thus unless Trump can reinvent himself, he must ignore, obfuscate, lie. His only means to deal with the pandemic is to pretend that it is not there.

We are stuck with the worst possible person in the White House at the worst possible moment. Our future rests on two hopes. First, that the electorate will undo this mistake in November. Second, that our system can survive the strain of Trump's negligence until we can acquire new leadership next January.

A Tale of Two Presidents

On July 16, 2009 Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University was arrested on the porch of his home in Cambridge after returning from a trip overseas. The arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, had been called to the scene by a neighbor who saw Gates and the cab driver that had driven him from the airport having trouble with the front door of Gates's home, which had been damaged. Accounts conflict, but both agree that the arrest happened after Gates had provided ID proving he was in his own residence. Crowley arrested Gates for "disorderly conduct," allegedly after an altercation in which Gates shouted at Crowley.

On July 22, in response to a question during a press briefing, President Barack Obama made these remarks:

"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

These remarks were met with broad outrage. Politicians and media figures on all parts of the political spectrum were critical of Obama's comments. In an attempt to calm the waters, Obama invited Gates and Crowley to a "Beer Summit" in which all three men talked and reconciled. The political damage of the incident was permanent, however. Obama's approval rating had already begun to slip in May amid deepening economic gloom, but the slide steepened in the wake of the "Beer Summit" incident, especially among white voters, and the President's numbers never recovered subsequently.

My point in reviewing this history is not to re-litigate the "Beer Summit" or re-assess its participants. It is to draw the contrast between the discourses surrounding two presidential administrations: that of Barack Obama and that of Donald Trump. In July of 2009 and May of 2020 Obama and Trump encountered comparable moments of social discord (similar in the kinds of cultural forces giving rise to them, different in the degree of brutality and tragic impact) surrounding issues of race and police-community interaction. Public perceptions of their respective responses to these incidents tells us much about the state of American society and culture surrounding issues of race.

Whatever else can be said about Barack Obama's performance during the "Beer Summit" incident, it cannot be credibly argued that he failed to make a good faith effort to play a constructive role. His actions acknowledged the legitimate concerns of all sides and the human situation of all participants. He cannot be charged with failing to at least attempt to serve both fairness in the abstract and the particular dignity of all involved. Most importantly, he acknowledged that his own comments might have offended some, and demonstrated a willingness to reconcile with those whom (for whatever reason) he had alienated.

Compare the comments for which Obama paid such a steep political price with those of President Donald Trump at a press briefing on June 5:

"Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement, regardless of race, color, gender, or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George [Floyd] is looking down right now and saying, “This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.” This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality. It’s really what our Constitution requires and it’s what our country is all about.”

On the surface, the substance of Trump's remarks matches closely with that of Barack Obama's.  Both men acknowledged an inequity in the experience of different communities during interactions with law enforcement. But where Obama's remarks might be criticized as incautious (the wisdom of a president ever declaring that police acted "stupidly" is debatable), Trump's are grotesque. Setting aside the sheer callous indignity of invoking the shade of a murder victim, "equal justice under law" was enshrined in the 14th Amendment more than 150 years ago, the fact that George Floyd had to die for lack of it is hardly reason to smile. Trump expresses a principle that might be thought of as the inverse of white privilege- "black indebtedness": Floyd should be happy because any acknowledgement that basic fairness should be given to African-Americans is a kind of gift.

No acknowledgement of the inappropriateness of these remarks has been forthcoming, and (given the President's track record over almost four years in office) it would be foolish to expect one. Hopefully Donald Trump will pay a political price for this kind of obtuseness. Thus far signs are ambivalent. Five Thirty-Eight's rolling average of polls continues to put Trump's approval rating at  41.3%, slightly less than it was before Floyd's murder and about six points lower than Barack Obama's average approval rating of 47.9%. Those numbers themselves paint a picture: though both men seem to have paid a price, it was arguably much exaggerated for Obama and much too lenient in the case of Trump.

What is the takeaway of this juxtaposition? Race is not going away as a problem in American society, and community policing will be at the heart of the issue as it continues to be negotiated from state to state, town to town. The reasons for this should be obvious: racial tensions undermine communal trust, and there is no social interaction in which trust is more necessary (or more fragile) than in interactions between citizens and police officers.

Police work is highly specialized. We expect police officers to have some part of the knowledge of a lawyer, some part of the skills of a soldier, and some part of the expertise of a social worker. Despite these demands (and the inherent dangers of the job), we pay police officers a salary that is virtually identical to the average salary of all professions across the board. We thus cannot be surprised when sensitivity to issues of race is distributed in the police force on a par with the average attitudes prevalent in American society at large. In a country where 41.3% of voters continue to approve of Donald Trump, it can be no wonder that the incidence of racially charged conflict in police-community interaction is problematic.

Reform is obviously necessary, and will require complicated interventions. One simple change suggests itself right away, however. We must remove Donald Trump from office, and we must never elect a president like him again. If the comparison between Obama and Trump teaches us anything, it is that there is no "getting it perfectly right." Racial relations remain a complex minefield in American society and culture, it is unreasonable to expect that any leader (indeed that any public figure) will be able to communicate meaningfully with the nation without ever giving offense or transgressing boundaries.

What we can expect and must insist, however, is that our president make a good-faith effort to engage the problem self-critically and in all of its intractable complexity. Given the tragic injustice in our past, restoring communal trust has been and will continue to be the work of generations and centuries. In the face of such challenges, even earnest work like that of Barack Obama will yield only fitful progress. We can ill afford the ways in which a negligent and malignant leader like Donald Trump will set us backwards.

Armageddon is Coming with a Whimper, Not a Bang

Hemingway famously characterized bankruptcy as a condition that comes on "gradually, then suddenly." With a pandemic sweeping the world, more than 100,000 American citizens dead, and protests against the murder of George Floyd turning violent across the nation, it may well feel that we are in the acute phase of breakdown. But when all is said and done, it is all too likely that the relatively "sudden" crises facing us now will prove to have been distractions from the dangers that continue to build gradually. I fear that, in the immortal words of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "we ain't seen nothing yet."

The problem lies in the emerging "whack-a-mole" pattern of the struggle to "flatten the curve" of charted transmission of Covid-19 here in the U.S. Lockdown measures have ameliorated the surge of infections that was overwhelming the health care system in places like New York and New Jersey. But because insufficient efforts were made to map the spread of the virus through testing and contact tracing, or to time the implementation of social distancing protocols correspondingly, new hot spots of infection have begun to form in states such as Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and Minnesota.

Though Congress has passed extraordinary legislation to deal with the acute economic impacts of the virus, thus far the federal government has not acknowledged that the very nature of a pandemic requires a national strategy, implemented simultaneously from coast to coast (and elsewhere), to hold out any hope of redress. Unless and until we implement such a comprehensive national strategy we will see rolling spikes in infection. The virus will move around the map, circling back to previous hot spots where the curve had been successfully "flattened," as social distancing protocols are indiscriminately tightened and eased from location to location.

Why the White House has refused to lead a national strategy is a question for the ages. The consequences, however, are immediate and clear. In a country of 330 million people who enjoy unlimited freedom and (relatively) ample means of travel and commerce, if only a small percentage of them are failing (or refusing) to take precautions while a virus with an estimated "R value" of 2.0-2.5 (meaning that, absent restrictions, an infected person will infect on average of between 2 and 3 other people) is active, the pandemic will continue to move through American society like a cycling prairie fire.

The solution is not simple or easy, but it is clear. A sustained national campaign is needed. On the one hand, vastly more resources and energy must be dedicated to measuring the scope and tracking the path of the pandemic. Measures to reduce the "R value" of the virus are leveraged by a knowledge of where infections are concentrated, when.

Beyond this, a persistent and forceful communication effort must be made to galvanize the public. Transmission rates for the virus in indoor spaces, for example, can be greatly reduced by the wearing of masks, but because wearing a mask protects others vastly more than it does the wearer, the measure will only be socially effective if it is embraced universally. In a country where people cherish independence and harbor mutual suspicion, convincing a critical mass of individuals to wear masks will require the ubiquitous and unrelenting broadcast of visible, authoritative, and trustworthy messaging. Behavior will only change to an effective degree through disciplined and sustained effort on the part of national leadership.

Unfortunately, no such leadership is forthcoming. The only institution in the nation with the profile and authority necessary to lead the kind of campaign that is needed is the White House, and the President has made it clear that he will not shoulder this responsibility. Indeed, it is evident that Donald Trump is utterly misguided about the current state of affairs. He believes that we face a choice between continued attention to the public health crisis or a return to economic productivity.

This is of course ridiculous. As long as we continue to experience rolling spikes in Covid-19 infection in different localities around the country, the economy will remain paralyzed. A modern industrial economy cannot function without a responsive health care system, and the health care system cannot meet the baseline needs of the economy if it is overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients. Beyond that reality, even in places that are momentarily seeing reductions in infection, economic productivity will be suppressed by fear. Unless and until we inspire people with the confidence that they may re-enter the workplace and the marketplace at very low (and discernible) risk, growth will stall and recede. Creating confidence will require that people be educated in the precautions that will mitigate risk, and be reassured that everyone else has assented to the same, which in turn will require sustained and energetic leadership from elected officials (especially the White House).

There is the rub. We need our President to take certain proactive steps to restore the economy, and he has flatly refused. Much ink has been spilled expressing understandable fear about what Donald Trump might do moving forward, but the distressing fact is that he can potentially do as much harm as any figure in our history simply by doing nothing.

The economic crisis set in motion by the pandemic is enormous in scale. Unemployment stands at 14.7%, GDP is shrinking at an accelerating rate. Congress has moved to use fiscal policy to counter the damage of these declines, but all such measures are grounded in the presumption that the crisis will be of acute duration. We are thus faced with the very stark question: how long can the system hold out? How long before curtailed revenue streams and mounting debts induce panic? How long before confidence in the bond and stock markets collapses?

Leadership could stave off such inflection points, but here in the United States, the earliest we can hope for the necessary leadership is January of 2021. Do we have until then? I would not bet my life on it, much less those of my community, friends, and family. What, then, is the answer? Gandhi's adage perhaps holds out the greatest hope: "[We] must be the change [we] want to see in the world." Fighting our way out of this crisis is going to take citizenship of unprecedented intensity and on an unprecedented scale. We must put pressure on state and local governments to coordinate with one-another in the national campaign that should have been coordinated from above. Beyond this, we must encourage and enlist one-another in the ongoing struggle against the pandemic. If we can support one-another as neighbors and compatriots and lead one another through example and compassionate concern, we can perhaps restore enough of our economy to slow the gradual slide into panic, and avoid a sudden Armageddon. 

An Open Letter to Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez (NJ)

Dear Senators Booker and Menendez,

       As your constituent I write to plead for urgent action on your part in response to the Covid-19 pandemic that is ravaging our public health and economy. This is the greatest crisis to impact the nation in my lifetime, and I fear that it will irredeemably damage the prospects for my daughter and future generations of Americans if correct steps are not taken. We need the federal government now like we have never needed it since World War II, and it has yet to rise sufficiently to meet that need.
       The problem is not a lack of policy expertise or competent planning on the part of federal officials. Doctors at the CDC and the NIAID have set effective guidelines and provided intelligent benchmarks for the containment and redress of the threat to public health. Our distress arises not from a deficiency in policy strategy, but from faulty political execution.
        As our medical experts have told us, there is as yet no magic bullet or miracle pill that can dispel the pandemic, to combat it we must enlist the cooperation of tens of millions of Americans. Everyone must be mobilized in the collective effort to push forward testing, contact tracing, the maintenance of social distancing, the universal adoption of preventative measures like the use of masks and gloves, and vigilance in the maintenance of hygiene and sanitary conditions.  Without such a mass campaign, the catastrophic danger to public health will persist, and therefore the deepening economic disaster will continue and intensify.
         The crucial task in mobilizing and coordinating such a campaign is communication. None of the plans of medical experts will succeed without stable, consistent, dispassionate, and credible leadership on the part of elected officials. Moreover, given the scale and complexity of the coordinated effort that will be needed to fight back the pandemic, the White House is indispensable to any such attempt. No other institution has the broad audience or unquestioned authority of the Oval Office. We need an informative, disciplined, persistent, and unified message to emanate from the Executive, otherwise the collaborative power to defeat the threat will not be achieved, and the pandemic will rage on indefinitely.
          Unfortunately, our President has proven incapable of providing the leadership we need. Where credibility, consistency, and discipline are needed, he has provided nothing but lies, evasions, reversals, disingenuous partisan rhetoric, and disinformation. He is manifestly erratic, untrustworthy, and focused on his own political interests over the common defense and the general welfare he swore to uphold. Though it is not realistic to contemplate his removal from office at this late juncture, for the good of the nation he must be replaced as "commander-in-chief" in the struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic. We are locked in a battle that Donald Trump does not have the character or capacity to fight, and if he persists as leader in this struggle the entire nation will suffer profoundly. and needlessly.
           What then, is the answer? Pressure must be exerted on Donald Trump to step aside and give leadership of campaign against Covid-19 to a robustly powerful "Pandemic Tsar." Such a person would have to be well known, widely respected, have bipartisan credibility, and bring to the task a proven track record of managerial success. The ideal candidate would be Senator Mitt Romney, as he is one of the most widely recognized figures in the country and has a well-deserved reputation for integrity and dedication to public service.
              Massive pressure must be brought to bear on Donald Trump to hand over management of the public health crisis to a new Pandemic Tsar. I plead with you to take up this cause in the Senate, and enlist your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join in the effort to secure the leadership that we need. The moment calls on all patriotic and conscientious Americans to do whatever they can to rescue the nation from distress. We look to you to be bold and forthright in your service of the public trust.
              I thank you for your attention on this matter, and hope that this message finds you well.

                                    Sincerely,


                                      Andrew Meyer
 

The Great Inversion

Historians are going to be kept very busy in years and decades to come, sorting through and trying to explain the strange circumstances unfolding now during the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the most confounding is the contrast between the impact of the virus in the People's Republic of China and here in the United States. The Chinese government obviously exerts profound control on the gathering and flow of information, thus it may never be possible to fully and accurately quantify the impact of the virus on the PRC with total confidence. But it seems highly likely that, when all is said and done, the per-capita rate of infection and mortality in China will be significantly lower than that in the United States, and that this differential may even extend to the total number of fatalities in absolute terms. In other words, China may actually see fewer people die from the virus despite having 4X the number of people than the US. How is that possible?

As I wrote initially, it will take significant time to sort through evidence and causes. But some factors are on full display to see as the event unfolds. What is most surprising (and inexplicable) is the contrast between the systemic response of the PRC government and that of the USA. The gap between the overperformance of the former and the underperformance of the latter is so yawningly wide as to defy belief, much less explanation.

In the abstract, a neutral observer would expect the fundamental principles of the two political systems to be manifest in the practical response to the virus as events transpired. The salient traits of the PRC system are its authoritarian nature and its radically high degree of centralization. By contrast, the USA is a liberal democracy with a much  more decentralized structure. These facts should have given each system different but predictable strengths and weaknesses, respectively.

The great weakness of an authoritarian state is its tendency to let politics override the needs of policy. Because leaders are not ultimately or directly accountable to the people, their first impulse is very often to cover up problems rather than solve them. We saw this in the initial response of the PRC government to the first appearance of Covid-19. Early whistle blowers like the physician Li Wenliang (who contracted the virus in the course of treating patients and died) were ignored or gagged.

But once the facts on the ground demonstrated that the dangers could not be papered over, the CCP leadership switched very quickly to a "policy first" orientation, and began issuing directives at the advice of its medical experts. I remember distinctly the point at which the PRC went into a very severe "lockdown mode" in January, and friends living in China began to post in social media about being confined to their apartments. I thought at the time that this was a typical "overcompensation" on the part of the CCP leadership. That impression, in retrospect, was of course wrong.

At that point, the hyper-centralized nature of the PRC state, which is usually a weakness, proved ironically to be a strength. There is no ultimate division of jurisdiction or authority between the different levels of the PRC government. The local traffic police in Xiamen are effectively an extension of the government thousands of kilometers away in Beijing, which under ordinary circumstances creates inefficiencies and corruption.

But the pressing need in a pandemic is for coordination. Formulating an effective response requires that everyone be given the same information and undertake the same set of priorities simultaneously. This is a state of affairs to which the PRC system is uniquely well-adapted, and once the CCP had shifted toward a policy based in the prescriptions of epidemiologists, the machinery of the PRC state worked smoothly in its implementation.

Where the hyper-centralized structure of the PRC is usually a weakness, the federalism of the US government is usually a great strength. Allowing for differences in power and jurisdiction between different levels of government makes it more responsive to the particular needs of people in each locality and region, and creates checks against waste and corruption. But in a pandemic, where coordination is at a premium, the balkanization of state functions becomes a liability.

This weakness has been mitigated in past by arrogating robust emergency powers to the federal government, enabling it to step in during such moments of crisis and provide needed coordination and coherence. During wartime and natural disasters, we expect the federal government to take up the reins of leadership. The Covid-19 pandemic is an emergency greater than virtually anything encountered in recent memory, vastly eclipsing a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 terror attacks in impact. Yet federal leadership to meet the scale of the crisis has not materialized. Where a unified national response to the pandemic is critically necessary, each state has been left to formulate its own policy, creating a fragmentary response that has extended and amplified the destructiveness of the disease.

Even more strange than that, what should be the greatest strength of American governance has been totally undetectable in the current crisis. One would expect a liberal democracy like the United States to adopt a "policy first" orientation toward the pandemic from the very outset, especially when so much empirical data about the scale of the threat was available and when clarion alarms had been sounded by seasoned government experts as early as January. But here we are in May, and the White House has been and is still locked into a "politics first" functional routine. Denials and random disinformation are disseminated in lieu of facts, non-essential distractions like "the war on drugs" are spotlighted in public briefings, and partisan attacks are given pride of place over a focus on public health. Almost 80,000 Americans have died, and the United States is seemingly locked into a kind of "Campaign to Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius," with no end in sight.

No matter how one slices it, the view on either side of the globe makes for a very strange comparison. The Chinese government has effectively overcome its greatest weakness, and converted what is ordinarily its greatest weakness into an extreme advantage. By contrast, the United States has completely nullified its greatest strength and allowed its greatest weakness to metastasize and intensify out of all proportion, essentially crippling the government's capacity to confront the catastrophic threat to public health. We here in the US have fallen into a trap of our own device. For all our sake, I hope that we find our way out of it before the systemic damage wrought by this crisis becomes permanent and irremediable.

An Open Letter to President Donald Trump on the Current Pandemic

Dear President Trump,

        I write to you out of concern for the medical emergency afflicting our nation. With more than a million citizens infected and almost seventy-thousand dead, this pandemic has quickly evolved into the greatest crisis of my lifetime, surpassing even the urgency and impact of the terror attacks that transpired on September 11, 2001. We are in desperate need of leadership that only the White House can provide, and we need it now.

      My purpose is not to cast blame or to make accusations, but to plead for obvious and indispensable solutions. We are faced with a dual threat: the medical peril of the virus itself and the economic devastation that the pandemic brings in its wake. These dangers can not be dealt with separately. There can be no restoration of the economy without redressing the threat to public health, and public health can only be safeguarded by due attention to the maintenance of our collective economic well-being.

       The problem is thus exquisitely complicated. Social distancing has helped "flatten the curve," but can not go on indefinitely without permanently bankrupting the economy. At the same time, though the harmful medical impacts of the disease are currently within bounds that our health care system can manage, until an effective vaccine or treatment is discovered (which may take years), a careless return to "normal" will send infections soaring again and overwhelm our courageous medical professionals, sending us back into an economic tailspin. We are caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Our only hope is a coordinated national mobilization, comparable to the civil campaign that underpinned our effort in World War II.

        On the one hand, everyone (man, women and child) must be enlisted in the effort to reorganize our social and economic life to minimize the risk of infection and slow (if not halt) the transmission of the disease. Everyone must acquire and wear masks (and, when appropriate, washable or disposable gloves). All transactions must be reconfigured to allow them to transpire with as little contact as possible. Activities must be shifted outdoors, into venues that allow for social distancing, or staggered in time to allow for lower density of participants. Businesses must be constrained to and supported in adopting flexible work hours or operating at reduced capacity.

        On the other hand, all of the powers of our government and economic infrastructure must be mobilized to support the public health effort. Production of testing kits, masks, gloves, protective equipment, and therapeutic supplies (ventilators, oxygen concentrators, etc.) must be ramped up to meet demand. Transport networks must be organized. Overflow capacity for hospitals must be prepared and ready to be deployed as and where needed.

      Confronting such a complex challenge requires the persistent broadcast of a coherent national message.  Everyone must be given the same reliable information about the dangers of the virus, the proven methods that can stave off infection, and the necessary measures for the protection of the general welfare. Such information must be delivered credibly and dispassionately, without any hint of evasion or partisan political motive. Under ideal circumstances, given how fragmented we are as a society and how distracted people are by fear and disinformation, it will take weeks of focused and relentless communication to insure that the message penetrates as broadly and sinks in as deeply as will be necessary to meet the task. If people have any suspicion that they are being lied to or manipulated in any way they will simply not listen, and the necessary effort to mobilize the nation for recovery will fail.

        This leaves us with a conundrum. Though the White House is the only institution with the profile and audience expansive enough to get the message out, you, Mr. President, are not a credible messenger. You have traded in too many lies, too much disinformation, and too much disingenuous partisan rhetoric to ever enjoy the confidence and trust of a critical mass of our citizenry. Even if you were to see the error of your ways now, we do not have the time to wait out whatever learning curve would be necessary to bring your style into line with our needs as a country. Again, I do not write this to be gratuitously insulting or hurtful, but because these are the plain facts of a critically urgent dilemma.

         What then is the solution? You could appoint a new, vastly powerful "Pandemic Tsar," someone widely known, broadly trusted, and with a proven record of managerial success. Such a person could become the nexus of the vitally necessary communication strategy that is our best and only hope as a nation. The person who would be the obvious choice for such a position is Senator Mitt Romney. He would have the immediate and total attention of the media and the public, and would be a spokesperson credible to almost all Americans, on all parts of the political spectrum. I know that you and he have had profound political differences in the recent past. But for precisely that reason his elevation to the position of Pandemic Tsar would reflect admirably on you both, and inspire unity and hope in the people who need your leadership so desperately.

      I know that the solution I propose is somewhat radical. I hope, however that you will give it some reflection, and that in any case this letter finds you well. Thank you for your attention on this matter.


                      Sincerely,


                       Andrew Meyer