President-elect Trump’s first appointments

The New Neo Posted on by

Jeff Sessions has been announced by the transition team as Trump’s pick for Attorney General.

It’s been obvious for a long time that Sessions was going to be part of the Trump administration; the only question was in what capacity. I had thought it might have something more directly to do with immigration—“immigration tsar” or something of the sort. But the post of AG certainly is connected with immigration, although its responsibilities are much broader than that

Sessions was an early and very important supporter of Trump, giving him the stamp of approval back in the days when not many respected Senate figures such as Sessions had come on board (actually, he was the first). He’s a very smart guy and not afraid to take unpopular positions (voted against the bank bailout, for example). Of course, the CNN article I linked at the start of this post manages to dredge up thirty-year old accusations of racism (CNN is not the only news outlet emphasizing the racism angle, either, which is also no surprise). You can find a further discussion of the substance or lack thereof of these allegations here. As you might imagine, in addition to their antiquity at this point, there really appears to be very little there there.

Most of us know Sessions as a senator. After all, he’s been a member of that body for almost twenty years. But prior to that (1995-1997) he was the AG for Alabama, and before that (1981-1993) he was the US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. So Attorney General is certainly a role for which he has relevant experience.

We’re probably going to get almost daily Trump appointment news from now on until the inauguration and for a few months after. I imagine some of these picks will be a lot more surprising than that of Jeff Sessions. The reported selection of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor is not one of those surprises, however. Another Trump supporter with strong credentials including a background in intelligence matters (although of course the press emphasizes his controversies), he was an obvious choice.

Mike Pompeo is a good pick, too. I was less familiar with his credentials than those of the others, and hadn’t really seen much speculation about the CIA job for which he’s been named, but here’s a report on him:

Rep. Mike Pompeo, the Kansas congressman Donald Trump picked to lead the CIA, is a former Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate who is widely respected within the intelligence community for his intellect and his low key, analytical manner behind closed doors.

He also happens to be a conservative firebrand who sought to blame Hillary Clinton for the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and vehemently opposed the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, which intelligence officials say has kept Iran’s nuclear weapons capability in check.

Still, many CIA insiders were breathing a sigh of relief over Pompeo’s ascension Friday, calling him the most favorable option among the many names the Trump team recently had floated.

All in all, I’d say those are three good choices. Trump’s picks are especially important for two reasons. The first is that each one gives us at least some small bit of information about what policy direction Trump will be likely to take as president. The second is that, with a president as inexperienced in government as Trump, it can be imagined (although we don’t know for sure) that Trump will be relying rather heavily on his appointees for information and advice.

[NOTE: Expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing from the MSM on the left, about Trump building a “team of racists.”]

So, who do you think will be the next Secretary of State?

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t a clue. One of the reasons I haven’t a clue is the same reason that a Democratic friend of mine had for saying that a Trump presidency would be “exciting,” and that’s Trump’s unpredictability. Particularly now, when the idea of his administration is still very new, and very few appointments have been made, we don’t know the direction he will take other than some broad outlines of promises and some specific proposals that may or may not pan out.

But a pick for Secretary of State sets a definite tone. Many names are being bandied about, but here’s one that probably took everyone by surprise:

Donald Trump is scheduled to meet this weekend with 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to discuss the secretary of state position, NBC reported Thursday.

Romney the loser, the non-fighter, the pushover, the greedy rich guy, the Trump-hating turncoat, the uptight privileged son of—well, you get the idea. There is hardly a figure on the Republican side more hated by a great many of the more vocal Trump supporters (which is not all Trump supporters, to be sure) than Mitt Romney.

I don’t feel that way about Romney, but the idea that he might be picked still surprises me, although it kind of pleases me. I think Romney would be tough when he needed to be. I also happen to think he won’t be Trump’s pick, but I don’t pretend to be able to predict at this point and that’s only a guess.

When I think of Romney and foreign policy, what immediately comes to mind was his prescience and correctness in 2012, and how Obama mocked him for it during the third debate. It Romney became SOS, it would be sweet vindication:

But if Trump is truly considering Romney, it heartens me because it would indicate that vindictiveness will not be as strong a motive for Trump as president as it seemed to be for Trump as candidate. And this is in line with a change I began to notice in Trump the night he walked into the roomful of supporters to give his victory speech. It would also indicate less friendliness towards Putin than many have previously observed in Trump.

Other possible SOS candidates were mentioned in the article. We already have heard about John Bolton, but here are some more:

Former CIA Director David Petraeus’ name has also emerged as a possible contender, according to The Guardian.

And on Thursday, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley met with Trump in Manhattan to discuss the coming job opening.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who began the week as a top contender for secretary of state, left Trump Tower on Thursday after just more than an hour.

Hmm, Petraeus. Didn’t he already plead guilty to “unauthorized removal and retention of classified information” and pay a fine? And isn’t he on probation till April, 2017? Ah well, maybe there’s somewhat of a new tradition among secretaries of state for those sorts of violations. And yes, Petraus’ crime was of a relatively minor sort, but still troubling.

I don’t know much about Haley’s international experience, but it seems to me that as a governor she hasn’t had much. And Giuliani has some potential conflicts of interest, although I’ve always liked him.

Or maybe it will be someone entirely different from all of the above.

Trump and the racists

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not familiar with Scott Alexander or his blog, but here’s a post of his that’s well worth reading. It’s an in-depth attempt to evaluate some of the worst racism charges against Trump, and to estimate how numerous the supporters of white supremacist groups really are in this country (those are two separate issues, by the way).

Alexander is apparently not a Trump guy; he’s a psychiatrist who writes anonymously and is concerned about some of his patients who have become suicidally fearful since the Trump victory.

Alexander’s post is very long. I’m not in agreement with all of it, but it’s well worth reading. I think that white supremacist support for Trump is important and needs to be watched carefully. I don’t think the numbers are as small as Alexander seems to think, but both of us are merely estimating and I’ve consistently said I do not know, although these people are at least potentially dangerous. That said, I agree with Alexander that at the moment there’s no reason for alarm.

I also have said that one of the things that was a red flag for me with the Trump campaign in general was the failure of Breitbart et al to ban overtly racist or anti-Semitic comments from their sites. It’s easy enough to do it (believe me, I know) and it wasn’t done, which was a choice. You might say it was a libertarian choice, and I say “perhaps.” But it’s one of the things that has fueled the fires of the “Racism!” charges against Trump and his supporters—although that charge would be leveled anyway at Trump. It’s been leveled at almost every Republican on earth for quite some time.

Executive power for me and not for thee

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been thinking along these same lines:

Washington’s massive about-face on executive power is underway.

Donald Trump’s election has triggered a whiplash-inducing role reversal in D.C. legal circles, as liberals who spent the past eight years defending President Barack Obama’s use of his executive authority prepare to challenge Trump’s plans on issues like immigration, the environment and transgender rights, while conservatives who railed against Obama for acting unilaterally on those fronts seem ready to back the new president’s moves.

And then there are decisions to be made by Republicans about the filibuster, whose charms will suddenly become very very attractive to the Democrats.

Look, I understand the temptation to want more power when you’re in charge. Of course. That’s the siren song that the right is hearing now. But devotion to rules and checks and balances has been one of the major strengths of this country that has kept it (so far) from becoming a banana republic.

But hey, you say, it’s payback time.

I get it. Believe me, I get it. But I think the right has to stand for something, and refraining from the exercise of raw power by jettisoning some of the bulwarks of our republic needs to be part of what that. I respect anyone on either side who is able to do so.

It’s not wartime yet; no need to throw everything overboard that we supposedly hold dear. Maybe I’m also feeling so uncharacteristically optimistic right now that I actually think that some moderate Democrats (a few exist, you know) might come along for the ride, if they think their seats might be threatened if they’re too resistant to passing laws that the majority of people want, such as a replacement for Obamacare that actually might be an improvement.

My counsel continues to be “wait and see.” Patience.

Oh, and this:

[NOTE: Nothing in this post should be construed as implying that Trump can’t reverse by executive order what Obama proclaimed by executive order. He can do that, and should do that. In addition, changes to Obamacare can be passed through reconciliation. Also, the Republicans could probably keep in place the nuclear option for federal judgeships, which the Democrats instituted in 2013.]

David Axelrod tweets defense of Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, okay, it’s not exactly a defense of Trump. But it seems to be an implicit criticism of the way the MSM is treating him right now.

You can see for yourself:

We hadn’t made any major appointments at this point in 2008. I don’t remember being criticized for it.

Axelrod’s getting a lot of flak for that tweet, too, as he must have known he would.

[ADDENDUM: And some soothing words about Trump and America’s future from Tom Hanks.]

[BUMPED UP] Last day of my asking for money this cycle

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP: Scroll down for new posts.]

This is the last day I’ll be asking you for money this time—although of course, you’re free to donate even when I’m not asking.

Please click on my Paypal “donate” button (hint hint: it’s on the right sidebar, above the Amazon widget, which is also a handy and helpful gadget to use). I’ve noticed that a few readers have set up a system for themselves whereby they automatically contribute a certain amount through Paypal each month. Don’t feel at all pressured to do that, but it’s a mighty fine system.

I give a very special thanks in advance to all of you who so kindly donate money to help keep this blog going, and who have already donated money. Even small amounts add up, if enough people contribute. But whether you choose to donate money or not (and I certainly hope you do!), I thank all the readers here, be they lurkers or commenters, sporadic or regular. We have some good times, don’t we, despite the often-troubling state of the world?

Is bird poop canceling out cow flatulence?

The New Neo Posted on by

No, that’s not a joke title. See this:

Between the months of May and September, tens of millions of migratory seabirds converge on the Arctic where they eat, breed and poop.

Over time, the nitrogen in seabird droppings breaks down into ammonia, and it’s estimated that colonies emit some 40,000 tons of it into the atmosphere every year.

Now, researchers believe that has a knockon effect in cloud formation…

‘Our chemical-transport model simulations indicate that the pan-Arctic seabird-influenced particles can grow by sulfuric acid and organic vapour condensation to diameters sufficiently large to promote pan-Arctic cloud-droplet formation in the clean Arctic summertime.

‘We calculate that the resultant cooling tendencies could be large’…

As for cows, the jury is out, but it seems the evidence is mixed for farts (see this) but fairly clear for burps.

The rise of the New Yawkas

The New Neo Posted on by

It was sometimes remarked that the Trump vs. Hillary campaign pitted New Yorker against New Yorker. And unlike Hillary, Trump is a real New Yorker, born and bred the city.

But the bipartisn New Yorker presence continues. Rudy Giuliani is being considered as Secretary of State, and he’s a native New Yorker too, one who spent his entire political life there.

And now Chuck Schumer has been selected by Democrats as their new minority leader in the Senate. He’s a New Yorker through and through.

And let’s not forget Bernie Sanders, who although a 60s transplant to Vermont was a Brooklynite till then.

It strikes me as odd, since until recently the political “wisdom” was that politicians from New York City didn’t appeal to the country at large. But a lot of that sort of “wisdom” turns out to be not so very wise.

The MSM has a transition mission, too: keep the panic going

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been a mere week since the shocking and momentous election of 2016, and the Trump camp is dealing with the first stages of its transition from campaign mode to governing mode.

But they’re not the only ones making a transition. The public is making a transition from an especially brutal, bitter, and just plain strange campaign year to the idea of the presidency of a man without experience in government, and who also has unusually high unfavorables for an incoming chief executive. A goodly number of people are already in a highly fearful state at the prospect. That contrasts with the jubilation of the pro-Trump camp, and the guarded optimism of people like me who very much want him to do well but have reservations about him and have adopted a hopeful “wait and see” attitude.

And then there’s President Obama and his team. Hillary is dealing with defeat, but the defeat is also for Obama. This isn’t the transition he’d hoped; that’s for sure. He is not only leaving the job he’s held for eight years and the power he’s reveled in, but he’s leaving it not to the heir apparent who would have continued his legacy, but to someone committed to dismantling it.

And yet Obama has been gracious to Trump and counsels acceptance to Americans and the world, at least so far. He’s been a bit less gracious to Hillary, whom he blames for her (and his own) loss. It can’t be the least bit easy for him, but it’s never been easy for him to look in a mirror and find anything the least bit wanting.

But then there’s the MSM, who have a transition to make, too. They emerged from this election year almost totally discredited, and that’s quite a feat for a group that was already plenty discredited enough. Some people think their biggest error was to fail to predict the election results, but I don’t happen to share that notion because the vast majority of people made the same error, including many people who supported Trump but were not optimistic about his winning. No, the MSM’s biggest error was its generally biased pro-liberal political reporting, just as it always is, and this time the bias (once Trump was safely nominated, that is) was especially clear.

Not only has the press now had to change from campaign mode to “President-elect Trump” mode, but it has had to do so while licking its prodigious wounds. It is no secret that most of the MSM consists of highly partisan Democrats, and the Trump victory—which includes a Senate and therefore Congress in Republican hands, about which predictions were wrong, as well—has to be especially difficult for them.

But I’m happy to report that they seem to be recovering. Unfortunately, their recovery includes reporting that is almost ludicrously critical of Trump for things that in a Democrat would probably not be spun that way, and this occurs at a time when they have squandered whatever lingering credibility they may have had.

This doesn’t mean that no one believes the NY Times when it reports on all the Trumpian transition “turmoil.” Of course many people do believe, and that’s the point. The Times’ target audience is not you and me, it’s the people who are already primed to be very frightened at the prospect of Trump, and I would imagine that they full well believe the Times’ reporting on this. And their numbers are hardly inconsequential; the Times is still the authority to a lot of voters.

Now, everyone who reads this blog knows my opinion of Donald Trump. I certainly have some anxiety about how his administration will play out. I plan to criticize him when he stumbles. The Trump presidency may end up as a fiasco, or it might end up being really really (to coin a phrase)”great.” I’m keeping an open mind, and I’m very much hoping that the ultimate results of this election fall much closer to “great” than “fiasco.”

But I’m planning to wait and see what happens, and I would counsel everyone to do the same.

No doubt an Obama-to-Clinton transition would have gone much more smoothly. But so what? Is there some correlation between transition smoothness and successful governing? What’s more, how do we know there’s any significant turmoil in the Trump transition at all? Whose word are we supposed to take these days? The MSM will criticize (and base its criticism on the reports of Obama officials, by the way, as noted at RedState).

And MSM stories like this one seem almost ludicrous (headline: “As Trump Leaves Press Behind for Steak Dinner, Incoming Admin Already Showing Lack of Transparency”):

In a highly unusual move, President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday night left his Manhattan residence without notifying the reporters covering him or giving any indication of where he was going.

The maneuver seemed to deliberately limit access to the media.

The only way the press eventually ascertained his whereabouts was after a Bloomberg reporter, who happened to be dining at the 21 Club, tweeted a photo of Trump and some of his transition team in the Midtown steakhouse.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks later told NBC News. “He is having dinner with his family.”

A week after the election, Trump hasn’t yet held a press conference, the longest any recent president has waited to speak to the press. That continues a weeks-long drought that’s been going on since mid-summer, when Trump last answered questions from the press.

Can anyone blame him?

Imagine if it had been Hillary Clinton. My guess is that the stories about the dinner would be puff pieces about how president-elect Hillary is warmly bonding with her happy family over her well-deserved victory. And I would also guess that those “transition turmoil” pieces would instead be descriptions of how Hillary is thoughtfully trying to get it all just right, and is not afraid to shake up the team when necessary.

However, one thing I’ve noticed the MSM is bipartisan about is its anger at those who would deny it unlimited access. For example, the press actually criticized Hillary’s failure to give press conferences during the campaign.

Biased reporting leaves us all in the dark. But facts are stubborn things. Trump and his administration will either make a lot of errors with dire consequences, or they won’t. And we’ll have to look past the anti-Trump anti-GOP MSM, as well as the biased pro-Trump sources, to try to figure out what’s really happening. It will take quite a while for this to become at all clear, so I caution patience plus alertness.

Trump, hypocrisy, and Schrodinger’s Cat: opening the box

The New Neo Posted on by

The day after the election I was talking to a friend, a political moderate who was a NeverTrumper and who voted for Hillary, but who was feeling surprisingly relieved after the election. However, this person was also vehemently saying that one of the worst things about Trump is that he’s such a hypocrite. I replied (partly as a joke but partly in all seriousness) that one of the advantages of hypocrisy is that it keeps a person flexible.

And that in Trump’s case, the freedom to back off from some of his most extreme positions could be a good thing.

Now that Trump has been elected president and there’s no turning back, what I called his “mutability” during the campaign could be an advantage. When choosing a nominee or a president, I want someone who tells the truth about his/her beliefs and plans, and is consistent. How else can a voter evaluate what we might be getting into if this person is elected? It’s especially important if the candidate has never held office and therefore has no political track record at all, as was the case with Trump. So during the primaries and in the lead-up to the election, Trump’s volatility, impulsiveness, and the mutability of his promises and beliefs were huge red flags.

Now Trump is the president-elect. Short of some enormous, unlikely, and unforeseen event, he will become the president in less than three months. Now things are starting to happen in the prospective Trump administration, and they’re not just talk. People are being appointed to positions, and each appointment says something about him. He is making statements in a non-combative atmosphere (if any atmosphere around a naturally combative person such as Trump can properly be called non-combative).

Let’s take as an example the subject of immigration. Way back in the summer and fall of 2015, I spent a lot of time explaining how many different points of view Trump had expressed on the subject, including deporting virtually all illegal immigrants, letting people back in, and a history of support for amnesty. I explained that he wasn’t the only one of the candidates with hardline immigration positions, either (see this). I wrote that there are inherent logistical and legal stumbling blocks involved in building a wall that are part of the reason it hasn’t been finished, and that lack of will isn’t the only factor and that Trump or anyone else would have to deal with these impediments, too.

Trump supporters would sometimes say that what Trump said mattered and he would stick to it, and they’d ignore the points I was making. But sometimes they’d say it didn’t matter, because they were supporting him for other reasons: his outspokenness, his feistiness, or even because he would destroy the Republican Party. And at times it seemed as though he would destroy the Republican Party, whether that was his goal or not; that turned out to not be true.

Well, that was then, and this is now. Now we have nothing to decide about Trump anymore except what we think of him as president. There are no more votes for us to cast. Now my task (and I think everyone’s task, too) is to take a look at what he’s saying he will do, the appointments he will make—and then, most important of all, what he really does and what Congress does in cooperation or opposition to him, and what the consequences are in the real world.

Trump was the Shrodinger’s Cat candidate, whose “policies existed in a state of being both pragmatic and radical, all at the same time.” If you recall Schrodinger’s Cat, however, at a certain point the quantum superposition “interacts with or was observed by the external world, at which time the superposition collapses into one or another of the possible definite states.”

In other words, at some point (and that point began in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, November 9), Trump stopped being a candidate who could profess contradictory policies at once, or extreme policies to please his supporters, and started to be a president-elect taking action as such. At first, those actions would be appointments. But soon they will be more, and the cat will be alive or dead, or if alive it will be sickly or well or something in-between.