WHY MOST OF THE REPUBLICANS, AND OF THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT, REFLEXIVELY OPPOSE THE RUSSIANS…AND A PREDICTION FOR 2017

12/31/16

As we all know, the Obama Administration has sanctioned Russian entities and expelled Russian diplomats over the suspected hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the resultant claimed interference with our election process.   Most the political establishment, and, most saliently, most of the Republican Party, always eager to go toe to toe with them Russkis, has jumped on the bandwagon.   And, as predictably as yet another miserable Bears season, John McCain and his South Carolina mini-me, Lindsey Graham, are the most prominent figures on that overloaded bandwagon.  

Yours truly, like the President-elect, has long questioned the wisdom of this reflexive anti-Russian foreign policy that is seemingly engrained in the DNA of the likes of Messrs. Graham and McCain and of most of the political establishment, especially those of its elements with an “R” after their names.   Yes, the Russians and we have a lot of bad blood in our history and we have points of conflict in the current geopolitical scheme of things.   However, we have managed to get over much worse blood with the Japanese and Germans.  Further, we and the Russians have several very important common interests in today’s world landscape, the most salient of which is the fight against terrorism, which is as big a problem for the Russians as it is for us.  

Despite the presence of so many common interests, or at least of so many common enemies, most of the Republican establishment, and nearly all the Republican Party, excepting its leader, nearly automatically reject whatever the Russians try to do in a seemingly mindless “Russians bad, we good” view of the world.   Why?

As I have had time to think over things these last few days, I have come to the conclusion that nearly all GOPers and “conservatives” are reflexively anti-Russian for the same reason that most Democrats reflexively see everything in terms of race.   Most of the Republican leadership cut its political teeth when the conservative movement, and much of the Republican Party, was defined by its staunch anti-Communism.   Similarly, most of the Democratic leadership cut its political teeth when the Democratic Party was defined by its staunch support for civil rights.   It’s hard to extricate one’s self from the type of thinking that becomes engrained in one’s formative years, and this becomes more difficult as we age.   So if one grew up, literally or figuratively, defining one’s self as anti-Communist and anti-Soviet, it becomes natural to engage in thinking and behaviors that one construes, rightly or wrongly, as anti-Communist and anti-Soviet, even long after the disappearance of the Soviet Union.    Similarly, if one grew up defining one’s self as pro-civil rights, it becomes natural to engage in in thinking and behaviors that one construes, rightly or wrongly, as pro-civil rights.   When one combines this natural tendency to revert to the ideas of one’s youth with the relative ease of feeling vs. thinking, it becomes obvious why Republicans, who incessantly declare their interest in doing what’s good for America, tend to see everything the Russians do as inherently evil and why Democrats, who piously proclaim their opposition to racism, tend to see the world in terms of race.

While some (okay, many) of my readers tend to not believe it, I don’t like to make predictions, especially those that can’t be made through simple analysis of numbers, like my presidential election prediction.   (And, no, I’m not about to stop talking about that yet.)   However, I will make an exception and make one prediction for 2017, to wit…

As a result of the presidential election, things will not change as much as many of us would like or as much as many of fear.    The system is built to stop elected officials of any branch of the government from making wholesale changes to the way our nation, or even our government, works.   Given the largely miserable parade of presidents we have had to endure for most yours truly’s lifetime, this deliberate inherent inefficiency of government is a priceless gift left us by our founding fathers…even when we would wish otherwise.    Funny how things work that way, but this post is not designed to get into the spiritual realm.

God bless you all as the new year dawns; much peace, prosperity, and blessing to you and your entire family.

UNFETTERED FREE TRADE: DO WE REALLY WANT TO GO WHERE IT WILL LEAD US?

12/23/16

I sent the below letter to the Wall Street Journal early this month.  The Journal published it, in condensed form, about a week later.   I thought my readers might like to read the original, longer version of my musings on the consequences of the slavish devotion to the dogma of free trade that permeates the economics profession and much of the thinking of federal trade officials.

In my opinion, this is one of my best pieces; I hope you enjoy it.

Blessed Christmas and Hanukkah, and a happy and prosperous new year, to all of you.

12/2/16

The Journal makes some very cogent arguments against the Trump administration’s interference with the decisions that a private sector company must make in the interests of its shareholders.  (“Trump’s Carrier Shakedown,” Review & Outlook, 12/2/16)   The Journal’s arguments, however, ignore the most fundamental of economic laws, that of supply and demand, in this case, for labor.

The $30/hour jobs Messrs. Trump and Pence saved were to be replaced with $11/day jobs in Mexico.  Why?   Because labor is cheap and abundant in Mexico.   Indeed, labor is cheap and abundant throughout the world due to a number of titanic developments that have taken place on the international stage over the last 30 or so years:  the emergence of China and much of the “Third World,” the fall of the Soviet Union, the population explosion in developing countries, etc.    Given the relatively newfound abundance of cheap and abundant labor internationally, Americans will be forced to work for a world wage dictated by that abundance of labor if the United States does nothing to protect the wages of its workers. While that world wage would be a boon for workers in the developing world, it would be a tragedy for American workers, forcing them to accept a standard of living far lower than the one they have experienced for generations.

That world wage, by the way, is not limited to unskilled workers, whom free trade dogmatists seem to write off as mere casualties of globalization.   Without some form of protection, that same abundance of labor will drive down earnings throughout the entire pay scale, unless one assumes that Americans are somehow endowed with superhuman powers that make them far more productive and capable than workers elsewhere.   The evidence for such superpowers is scarce.  The productivity edge that free trade zealots assume will save us is largely the result of the application of capital and technology to the manufacturing process, but that capital and that technology, even if developed in the United States, is easily exportable.  Improving the skills of our labor force is also a laudable idea, but one at which, so far, we have not been very successful; look at the typical American student’s math and science scores against those of his overseas counterparts.   And even if we did manage to reinvigorate and reorient our educational system, the Chinese, Indians, Germans, etc. can do the same thing and either catch up to, or remain a step ahead of, us.   Again, the supply of labor has suddenly become more abundant throughout the pay continuum; not only is there a surfeit of unskilled labor throughout the world, there is also an abundance of skilled, and potentially skilled, labor throughout the world.

Free trade is a wonderful principle that has brought much prosperity to the world and to our country; hence, it is a laudable idea and a tenet of practical and effective economics and economic policy.   But when free trade goes from being a principle to being unchallengeable dogma, as it seems to have become throughout much of the economics profession, we become faced with consequences, such as much lower wages and permanently lower returns to labor, that most practical minded people are unwilling to accept.

I TOLD YOU TRUMP WOULD WIN; NOW I’LL TELL YOU WHY HE WON

12/23/16

A few days before the election, yours truly told you that Donald Trump would win the presidency.  (See TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WINBIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16)   Now I’m going to tell you why he won the presidency.

Mr. Trump has asked Boeing to price out an F/A-18 Super Hornet competitor to the Lockheed Martin F-35, a new generation fighter plane whose costs have ballooned into a grotesque caricature of all that is wrong with modern defense procurement.   Leaving aside the merits of the F/A-18 vs. F-35 in terms of capability, one would think it would make sense to introduce some genuine competition into the process before we spend $250 billion or so on a weapons system or, of course, on any government program.   And one would think that Mr. Trump, who has made a few dollars negotiating deals, might be the right man to put some competitive pressure on Lockheed or, if Lockheed can’t bring its bid back into the realm of reality, on Boeing.   However, in the brave new world that his hopefully being shown the door, one would be wrong.

Daniel Gordon, who, as President Obama’s administrator for federal procurement policy, has the type of experience in defense procurement that the Dems, and many Republicans, are tittering that Mr. Trump and his team lack, “argues”

“The government would be violating the law to award a contract to Boeing without a competition unless they go through exceptions to the normal legal requirements for competition.”

Hmm…

So the government cannot introduce competition into one of its largest procurement deals because doing so would violate the “normal legal requirements for competition.”

To decry such an argument as an exercise in pretzel logic gives the argument too much credit; it is not pretzel logic, it is anti-logic.   This is just the latest example of the type of thinking that has permeated government policy for at least the last generation.   The people are being told that everything that was once logical and rational is now dated, even archaic, thinking because a new generation, a governing class, has declared it so.   The sound thinking that built this country is scoffed at and laughed at in favor of procedures and “normal legal requirements” that reflect the twisted, faculty lounge thinking of a generation of lifelong feasters at the public trough who have suddenly figured it all out.  

People are tired of being told that they are idiots, that they ought to just sit back and let their betters, who come up with “normal legal requirements” that, among other things, forbid competition in the interest of fostering competition, govern them.   And who is the poster child for the condescending attitude that so rightly irks, irritates, even infuriates, the average citizen?   The 2016 Democratic candidate for president.   The public’s revulsion at the anti-logic that reflects the elitist thinking that permeates government was so strong that they chose Donald Trump, a manifestly imperfect man, as the vehicle to deliver a solid, and hopefully permanent, kick in the hindquarters to the governing class that has gotten it all so very, very wrong for at least the last twenty years.    

WHO IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S NEW LEADER? THE ANSWER IS OBVIOUS.

12/2/16

A few days after the election (See TRUMP WILL WIN, ANDWIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16), a lifelong friend asked me who the new leader of the Democratic Party was in the wake of the electoral disaster the Dems had just suffered.   I thought about it for a very short while and answered that, as far as I could tell, Senator Chuck Schumer (D., NY) was the new Democratic leader.    After all, Hillary Clinton is toast.   Nancy Pelosi, who has presided over the loss of something like 43 House seats during her tenure and who has become a caricature of the out-of-touch elitism that is the hallmark of the new Democratic Party, is definitely not the party’s standard-bearer, unless the Dems are even more clueless than yours truly thinks.  (See CLUELESSNESS, THY NAME ISDEMOCRAT!, 11/29/16).    Notable governors are few, and governors rarely become national party leaders anyway.    So my guess was that Chuck Schumer, as the last man standing, is now the senior man in his party.

My ideas on this issue, however, quickly changed.  It’s not because of Nancy Pelosi’s re-election as House leader; that was pretty much in the cards and it looks like the Dems were only willing to put up with a continuation of her failed leadership because they need the money and there isn’t much at stake; the House Democrats’ role will be limited over the next few years to standing in front of the Trump steamroller and flailing away with their usual incessant babbling of “principles” about which no one but their true believers care.   Mr. Schumer’s utter cluelessness (See, again CLUELESSNESS, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT!, 11/29/16) is not the reason I no longer think he is the head of his party; indeed, his manifest inability to interpret the 2016 election, if anything, makes him even more qualified to represent a party whose most salient characteristic is being utterly out of touch with the population it aspires to manage, er, sorry, govern.

The answer to who will lead the Democratic Party is rather obvious and I am somewhat embarrassed that I wasn’t thinking broadly enough to see it when my friend asked:  it will be Barack Obama who will lead the Democratic Party forward.   Mr. Obama is only 55 years old.  He is articulate, intelligent, and charming and, by and large, well-liked by the American people.  His young and attractive family, which has captured the hearts of the public, has helped immensely in his building of this goodwill.   The media absolutely adore this guy.   (Remember back in 2008, when the media preferred him even to Hillary Clinton, the object of their unrelenting and shameless tank diving in 2016 and, indeed, in every year since 1992, with the exception of 2008?)   Mr. Obama has beaten the Republicans twice, thus displaying an ability that is increasingly rare among Democratic politicians.  Despite surface arguments to the contrary, he is utterly conventional in his thinking.   He is a true believer in Democratic dogma regarding the efficacy, indeed, the superiority, of decision making by those whose life experience has been confined to the public sector.   This combination of traits makes him popular among all wings of the Democratic Party.

No, I don’t anticipate that President Obama will pull a John Quincy Adams and return to elective office, though I wouldn’t completely discount the possibility.   And for at least the next four years, going the William Howard Taft route and taking a seat on the Supreme Court is not an option open to the President.    But that is not to say that this young, vigorous, intelligent, thoughtful, popular true believer cannot lead his party for a long, long time.

After all, who else do the Democrats have?

CLUELESSNESS, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT!

11/29/16

Bloomberg Radio reported this morning that Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y), who is the closest thing the Democrats have to a national leader at the moment (perhaps more on this in a later post), is objecting to the apparent selection of Georgia Congressman, and vehement Obamacare opponent, Tom Price as Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Secretary.   Mr. Schumer’s reason?   Mr. Price is “out of the mainstream.”

Leave aside the relative merits of Mr. Price’s selection for HHS; simply concentrate on Senator Schumer’s reasoning.    Mr. Price is “out of the mainstream”?   Was Mr. Schumer awake during that election we just held?   Was he sentient during the campaign?    Mr. Trump’s election was, above all, a scathing rejection and repudiation of “the mainstream.”  What else but utter disgust at “the mainstream” and what it has done to this country could explain the election of Mr. Trump over the poster person for the mainstream, Hillary Clinton?   Yet Mr. Schumer is surprised, or at least appalled, by Mr. Trump’s selection of somebody “out of the mainstream” for HHS Secretary.

This is only the latest example of Democratic cluelessness.   A perhaps even richer example was provided by the Democrats in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Trump’s election.   The Dems finally decided that, yeah, maybe they were out of touch with working people, and especially with white working people, who not that long ago formed the Democratic base.   So the bi-coastal leadership of the former party of the people decided that perhaps they ought to move further left, to give a warmer embrace to the Sanders/Warren wing of the party, in order to win the hearts of the white working class voters who turned, in legions, to Mr. Trump.   So the sauvignon blanc crowd that controls the Democratic Party from the tonier burgs of Washington, New York, and San Francisco actually believes that they lost the white working class because the party moved too far to the right by nominating Hillary Clinton.

Yours truly has a number of cop friends who have often told me that it is indeed fortunate that your typical criminal is not very bright; otherwise, a lot fewer crimes would be solved.    My Republican friends, as they ponder their good fortune of having the Democrats for opponents, have to share many of the feelings of those officers of the law.

OF SEXISM, COATTAILS, AND SAFE STOCKS

11/18/16

While I haven’t been writing much of late, I did take time to make the BIG prediction of a few weeks ago and to write a few letters to the Wall Street Journal.  The big prediction is a few posts down (TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16) and I have reproduced below my latest three letters to the Journal.   Two (the first and the last) were published; indeed, the first was published today (Friday, 11/18/16).   The second letter, a piece relating the election of 1960 to the “reverse coattails” the “experts” were telling us in September that Donald Trump would be needing in November, never made it to the Journal’s pages.   I thought you might enjoy all three.

ON SEXISM AND THE RECENT DEFEAT OF SECRETARY CLINTON

11/12/16

Yet another of the “experts,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, weighs in on Hillary Clinton’s inability to run up the predicted overwhelming margins among women voters: (page A5, Weekend Journal, 11/12-11/13/16)

“There are women, especially blue collar women, who are skeptical about women’s political leadership.  We still live in a sexist country.”

Once again, the experts have dropped the ball.   Women, even the “blue collar women,” who, for the experts, are little more than sociological curiosities, are not “skeptical about women’s political leadership.” They are instead skeptical about Hillary Clinton’s political leadership.

Do the experts regard it as remotely possible for someone, regardless of gender, to vote against a woman without being “sexist”?   Who indeed is being sexist here?

Mark M. Quinn

ON REVERSE COATTAILS, JOHN KENNEDY, AND DONALD TRUMP:

9/30/16

Reid Epstein speaks of Ohio in 2016 being a “rare case study in reverse coattails,” (“A Surprise Ohio Trump Card,” page A1, 9/30/16).   Reverse coattails may be rare in other parts of the country, but in my hometown of Chicago they are a component of the normal course of politics.  

The most famous and consequential case of reverse coattails in Chicago took place in 1960.  Mayor Richard J. Daley feared the reelection of then States Attorney Ben Adamowski, a political nemesis and 1955 mayoral primary opponent.  So the Mayor pulled out all the stops to inflate Democratic turnout in an effort to defeat Mr. Adamowski.   At the top of the Democratic ticket that year was a young man named John F. Kennedy.  Mr. Kennedy rode the coattails of Dan Ward, Mr. Adamowski’s opponent, to a landslide victory in Cook County, which resulted in his carrying Illinois and winning the presidency.   The rest is history.

Contrary to popular opinion, it was not Mayor Daley’s consanguineous affection for a young Irishman that motivated him to carry Cook County for the Senator from Massachusetts; it was the Mayor’s fear of a determined political opponent with prosecutorial powers.

Mark M. Quinn

 ON SAFE COMPANIES, SAFE STOCKS, AND THE DIFFERENCES

9/13/16

James McIntosh (“ ‘Safest’ Shares Prove They Are Anything But,” Streetwise, 9/13/16) makes a great point when he argues that Friday’s increase in long rates, prompted by more Fed talk of a rate increase, rocked investors in bond equivalents out of their state of complacency, causing them to abandon their high yielding stocks as quickly, and perhaps as thoughtlessly, as they jumped on the dividend bandwagon.

There is something more fundamental at work here, however.   The “safety” of a stock is as much a function of its price as it is of the underlying fundamentals of the issuer’s business.   The stock of even the safest company can be fraught with risk if that stock is too expensive.   That is precisely what has happened to the big dividend payers that have seen something of a comeuppance of late.   The last seats on the bandwagon are far more expensive, and dangerous, than the first seats.

Mark M. Quinn

THAT WHICH DONALD TRUMP MUST DO HE MUST DO LATER

11/13/16

Of all the things Donald Trump said he would do when he became president, far and away the most important was the institution of term limits for Congress.   Term limits would forever alter the thinking of those who get elected to Congress and never find their way back home.  If a House member knew that he would eventually have to live with the laws that he passes, perhaps he would look at those laws and their consequences more carefully.   If a Senator knew that a career in politics were just about impossible, perhaps that career would not be the foremost thing in her mind and she would not be so desperate for the cash needed to sustain such a career…and not so willing to make the compromises with one’s principles that come attached to that money.  

Term limits would break, even destroy, the political careerist mindset, and it was the rejection of, and the revulsion at, the professional politicians and their condescending and usually misguided way of thinking that made Mr. Trump President-elect Donald Trump.   Therefore, the most important thing that Mr. Trump must do to deliver on his promises is not tax cuts, a border wall, a war on ISIS, renegotiation of trade deals or a sweeping reform of the regulatory structure in Washington.   Mr. Trump must work ardently and incessantly for term limits to be true to his candidacy, to those who made it successful, and to his political reason for being.

However…

Mr. Trump must wait, perhaps longer than any of us would like, to make the big push for term limits.   There are two reasons that Mr. Trump must move gingerly on what should be his most important policy initiative.   First, the chances of his actually achieving term limits are close to nil because such limits would have to be passed by people who would be voting themselves out of a job, certainly the best job they could ever have; it’s hard to beat making a highly remunerative living getting one’s hindquarters smooched.   Even if one were to grandfather all existing officeholders in a term limits proposal, the pols still would not go along with such a proposal; note the opposition among senior citizens to proposed changes to Social Security despite their being grandfathered in every serious Social Security reform proposal that has come down the pike.

Second, pushing for a term limits amendment, either through the Congress or through a Constitutional convention, would certainly antagonize the Congress.   While most of us have little problem antagonizing Congress, doing so makes no sense from a practical perspective if one wants to get things done.   If the Congress knows, rather than merely suspects, that Mr. Trump would like to throw them all out of office, their enthusiasm for working with him would doubtless wane.   Why antagonize people you will need, especially if antagonizing them is, from a practical perspective, pointless?

So as much as those of us who voted for Mr. Trump would consider his presidency a failure, and our votes as misguided, if he were to abandon term limits altogether, he ought to put such limits on the proverbial backburner.   He ought to first push for the easy things, the things on which he can gather bi-partisan support, like corporate tax reform and infrastructure spending.    Go for the relatively easy stuff, accumulate power and chits, develop a sense of inevitability and the pointlessness of resistance, then go for the big things.   The biggest of all the big things is term limits.   Achieving this goal may ultimately prove impossible, but making an honest, forthright, and vigorous pursuit of this perhaps quixotic goal would point out to many of us that Mr. Trump is indeed not a closet member of “the club” and has heard the calls and cries of those who are simply fed up with the political professional’s mindset and all the damage it has one to our once great nation.

TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY

11/4/16

Loyal readers will notice that I’ve written nothing for this blog for a long time.  Not only has time been tight, but one begins to wonder what the point of all my blogging was.   So I have pursued other more fruitful pursuits.  However, with the election coming, I feel compelled to break my silence and predict that Donald Trump will win Tuesday…and it won’t even be close, at least in the electoral college.

Loyal readers will remember that I have been all over the Trump situation since the beginning.   In the interest of brevity and efficiency, I will cite only two posts.   One

NOBODY SAW THIS TRUMP THING COMING, RIGHT?   WELL…SOMEBODY DID… (5/4/16)

 Summarizes the others and refers the reader to them.   The other

TRUMP, THE “REVERSE BRADLEY EFFECT,” AND THE MAN’S UPCOMINGLOSS IN IOWA (12/23/15)

is key to my prediction of a Trump victory.   Notice the date on that piece; yours truly may have been the originator of the “reverse Bradley effect,” which is now common wisdom.  But I digress.

Admittedly, I think I must be doing something wrong here because the insightful experts who populate cable television and the networks are either predicting a Hillary victory, though not so much in the last week or so, or saying that the race will be incredibly tight.

So how do I get to a Trump victory?   First, I use the RealClear Politics polling data.   Second, and here is where those who think I have lost it will argue with me, I give Mr. Trump every state in which he is within five percentage points of Mrs. Clinton.   This is not an outlandish assumption because of the aforementioned, and often wrongly dismissed, reverse Bradley effect.   Simply put, a lot of people who are voting for Mr. Trump are not admitting it.   I heard an “expert” a few weeks ago on the local CBS radio affiliate saying that people who are telling their friends that they will vote for Mr. Trump will not tell a pollster they are voting for him.   She was right but did not go far enough; there are plenty of people who are voting for Mr. Trump who will not even tell their friends they are voting that way.   How do I know this?  I, of course, don’t know this, which is what distinguishes me from your typical talking head on television who knows everything.   However, I strongly suspect I am right in this regard for at least two reasons.   First, I am reluctant to admit to people that I am voting for Mr. Trump and I’m not reluctant to admit much of anything.  Second, I know plenty of people in the same situation and my experience and circle of friends is far less limited than those of most election observers.

If you combine the margin of error in most polling being 2-3% and the reverse Bradley effect outlined above, it is perfectly reasonable to give Mr. Trump every state in which he is either ahead or less than five points behind.   Thus, Mr. Trump carries, besides the more obvious GOP states, the following:

Florida

Georgia

Michigan

New Hampshire

North Carolina

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Of the other close states, Mrs. Clinton carries Virginia and Wisconsin.   My gut, by the way, tells me Mr. Trump carries Wisconsin, but I’ll stick with the methodology above and give it to Mrs. Clinton.  I also think there is a possibility of at least one big state that has been Democratic forever going Mr. Trump’s way, or at least coming far closer than anybody thinks, but, like a pre-redemption Rick Blaine, I won’t stick my neck out on that one.

I certainly could be wrong here.    I heard another “expert” on Bloomberg radio the other morning saying essentially the opposite of what I am saying; she argued that Mr. Trump must be ahead in a given state by more than 5% in order to really be ahead because Mrs. Clinton’s “ground game” is so much better.  As one who grew up in Chicago and knows the former, but long waning, importance of the “ground game,” I think that contention is ludicrous.   But, again, I’m no expert; I’m just a guy who pays attention and has a good sense of people, two of the advantages of getting older.

Further, yours truly made a couple of predictions during this campaign that have turned out to look silly.  Remember my prediction that Carly Fiorina would definitely be on the GOP ticket?   I can’t even find the post in which I made that prediction, but I know I made it because I bet a beef sandwich on it and had to buy.  I also predicted that Mrs. Clinton would pick Elizabeth Warren as her running mate:

HILLARY WON’T PUT BERNIE SANDERS ON THE TICKET; INSTEAD,SHE’LL SELECT… (5/21/16)

So I’ve been far, far from infallible in my predictions during this immensely entertaining campaign.   And I could be wrong in my prediction of a big Trump electoral victory.   But I don’t think so.

HERE’S THE GUY DONALD TRUMP SHOULD ASK TO BE HIS RUNNING MATE…

7/11/16

Those of us who are interested in politics waste far too much energy at this time of the year speculating about the prospective presidential nominees’ vice-presidential picks.    Despite the punditry’s elevation of this decision to heights that it clearly doesn’t merit, the choice of a candidate’s running mate is relatively inconsequential because the vice-presidency is an inconsequential office.   Consider this list of post-War vice presidents:

·         Joe Biden

·         Dick Cheney

·         Al Gore

·         Dan Quayle

·         George H.W. Bush

·         Walter Mondale

·         Nelson Rockefeller

·         Jerry Ford

·         Spiro Agnew

·         Hubert Humphrey

·         Lyndon Johnson

·         Richard Nixon

·         Alben Barkley

Four of the thirteen became president, not a bad percentage.   But only two of those became president through the constitutional succession process rather than through election.   And one of those elected, Mr. Nixon, was elected president eight years after serving as vice-president.   Only one, Mr. Bush, was elected president after running as vice-president.

Few of these gentlemen had substantial impact on policy while serving as veep.   One could be led to believe that Mr. Cheney really was the president while the hapless George W. Bush nominally held the title, but to concede that would involve doing some intellectual backflips even yours truly would prefer to avoid.   Al Gore was supposedly given a big role in the Clinton White House, especially in environmental matters, but one has to think much more magnanimously of the Clintons than most of us would be willing in order to ascribe to them the willingness to delegate any genuine power to someone so far outside their very tight inner circle.  

No, mostly the vice-presidency is an empty office, not worth a “warm bucket of p----,” as one of its more colorful holders, John Nance Gardner, who, incidentally didn’t say “spit” in this instance, claimed.   It gives its holder a lot of frequent flier miles, and a leg up on the presidency, but using that leg up to one’s ultimate advantage is a dicey proposition, as the experiences of Joe Biden, Al Gore, Walter Mondale, and Hubert Humphrey would attest.   And just as an historical aside, does one think that the formidable Mr. Johnson would have remained second fiddle had President Kennedy remained alive to run for re-election in 1964?   Most reading of the fascinating Mr. Johnson indicate that he would have returned to the Senate and used his sheer force of will and personality to become Majority Leader again.   But that is another issue.

Despite the office’s inconsequential nature, the political junkies among us talk about the vice-presidency because there is little else to talk about in the realm of pure politics as the conventions draw near.    Yours truly has already opined on the Democratic selection; see 5/21/16’s HILLARY WON’T PUT BERNIE SANDERSON THE TICKET; INSTEAD, SHE’LL SELECT… and the posts to which it will refer you.    So why not join the fun and advance a suggestion for Mr. Trump and the Republicans?

Mr. Trump ought to select former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as his running mate.

Yes, I know Mr. Trump won’t select Governor Huckabee.   He seems to be fixated on Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and General Michael Flynn.    All would be okay, and Messrs. Pence and Christies would be more than okay.   Mr. Pence has done a great job in Indiana, though one wishes that the Hoosier being considered was not Mr. Pence but, rather, former governor and current president of Purdue University Mitch Daniels.   Mr. Daniels, despite his being budget director in the abominable administration of George W. Bush, a position akin to being director of virtue enforcement in a house of ill repute, has done much to make Indiana a growing, vibrant, and prosperous state and to inject a measure of business sense into academia through his work at one of the world’s great universities.   

Mr. Christie has long been a favorite of yours truly; see 1/14/16’s THE STATE OF THE GOP:   MORE MUSH FROM THE WIMPS…AND LET CHRISTIE BE CHRISTIE and 1/5/16’s CHRIS CHRISTIE GETS “IT”; CAN HE GET THE NOMINATION?   He would be especially attractive if Mr. Trump wants to double down on the style that has gotten him this far; as I said in my aforementioned 1/5/16 post:

What makes Mr. Christie especially appealing to the other wing of the party is that he was Donald Trump the candidate before there was Donald Trump the candidate.   It was Mr. Christie who was considered outspoken to a fault, who rarely if ever genuflected to the gods of political correctness, who called it as he saw it even if doing so would cause the paragons of propriety in the press to castigate him as rude or (Horrors!) insensitive.    In short, Mr. Christie was the guy who was perceived to do what he thought was right and didn’t give a damn if the “better people” didn’t like it.  If Mr. Trump had never entered this contest, it would be Mr. Christie who would be taking flak for being a boor in the minds of the keepers of the flame of political correctness.   If these traits of Donald Trump appeal to people, why wouldn’t these traits, long present in Mr. Christie, appeal to them as well?   And if voters who are supporting Mr. Trump finally tire of his more malodorous qualities, wouldn’t Mr. Christie be the logical guy to whom to gravitate?   One could argue that Ted Cruz is closer to Mr. Trump in policy, but do you honestly think that people support Mr. Trump because of his policies?   What policies?

As for Messrs. Gingrich and Flynn, Mr. Gingrich is interesting and has the experience in government that most conventional thinkers say Mr. Trump needs, but we all know Mr. Gingrich has plenty of baggage.   Mr. Flynn talks tough on foreign policy, as does Mr. Trump, and might be able to translate that toughness into concrete actions.  General Flynn also has experience that Mr. Trump lacks.   But those of us who have severe misgivings about conventional Bushite GOP foreign policy would have a hard time putting what sounds like the ultra-hawkish General Flynn so close to the Oval Office.   Fortunately for Mr. Trump, should he select General Flynn, there aren’t many Republicans who share yours truly’s approach to foreign policy.

Mr. Huckabee, however, would be a better candidate than any of the aforementioned.    Mr. Huckabee would go a long way toward patching up Mr. Trump’s difficulties with the religious right.   He is an affable, articulate guy who is genuinely likeable, even by those who have nothing but disdain for his politics; he is an affable gentleman and is perceived as such by anyone who can remotely be considered as fair-minded.   The contrast to Mr. Trump in this area could not be more stark.   And Mr. Huckabee manages to remain pleasant and generally agreeable while not tossing his ideas over the side, as is the wont of most politicians.     

Furthermore, Mr. Huckabee has spent most of his political career battling the Clintons and their minions and remains alive politically; the Clintons have not broken him, which is indeed rare.   And it seems that, at least on the surface, Mr. Huckabee remains friendly, or at least on speaking terms, with the Clintons despite years of battling it out with them, testimony to the man’s good nature and sense of perspective.   At 60, Mr. Huckabee is not a young man, but he is ten years younger than Mr. Trump.  Further, as a former governor, Mr. Huckabee has governing and political experience, which, again, conventional thinkers seem to think Mr. Trump needs.

Yours truly is not predicting that Mr. Trump will choose Mr. Huckabee to join him on the GOP ticket.   Predictions are especially difficult, not only about the future, as Mark Twain once opined, but especially about this political year.   That having been written, I am fairly confident that Mr. Huckabee will not even be considered for the GOP ticket.   But he should be.

BREXIT… “WHAT THE HELL DO THE EXPERTS KNOW?”

6/27/16

The “experts” have been consistently wrong on Brexit.    We are being told repeatedly that “no one” foresaw the vote of the British people to attempt to untangle themselves from the Gordian Knot of stifling Euro-style bureaucracy.   Well…almost no one.   Somebody saw the vote coming and was appropriately positioned.   But since that somebody is a relative nobody and, at this juncture, has no proof, as he normally has when he predicts things that “nobody” saw coming (See, inter multa alia, 5/21/16’s HILLARYWON’T PUT BERNIE SANDERS ON THE TICKET; INSTEAD, SHE’LL SELECT… and 5/30/16’s JOEBIDEN AS MIGHTY MOUSE, OR MAYBE BR’ER RABBIT:  SOMEBODY’S READERS ARE NOT SURPRISED), yours truly will settle today for pointing out three areas in which the “experts” are once again dropping the ball.    Come to think of it, this tendency for the “experts” to drop the ball is one of the major reasons the far wiser majority of the British people voted to end this social experiment in which they were considered so many white mice, but that is grist for another mill.

First, there is a popular misconception that this vote was not about economics but, rather, about politics.   This notion is predicated on the belief that the current market turmoil will continue and that Great Britain’s at least two years away exit from the EU will shave anywhere from 1% to 5% from British GDP.   Both of these prognostications are at least as likely to be wrong as they are to be right.   First, the market turmoil is not as horrifying as one would suppose from cowering in the corner listening to the dystopian emanations from CNBC, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal.   While the British and European markets, and sterling, are getting pounded, the global markets in totality, as measured by the Vanguard Total World ETF, are nowhere near their 2016 lows.   The S&P and the Dow, likewise, are closer to their 2016 highs than they are to their lows.   Second, those who are predicting such harrowing consequences for British GDP are the same carnival barkers who were telling us a “stay” vote was a “lead pipe cinch” and “a sure thing” and, need we add, that the world economy was in fine shape with no recession or housing collapse in sight back in 2007.

Let’s assume, however, that the “experts” have somehow defied the longest of odds and this time have managed to correctly predict the directions of both the markets and the real economies of Britain, Europe, and the world.  Let us further assume that the working class bumpkins who voted to leave the EU will soon face the unspeakable costs of their utter inability to appreciate the profound and immeasurable wisdom of their betters.    Let us further assume that the rubes will soon regret turning away from the Valhalla of globalism and will soon plunge into the Hades of narrow-minded parochialism, as the “experts” tell us while they rub their hands together with glee at the possibility that they may have somehow stumbled into the truth. 

Even assuming these long shots somehow come up aces, think about it for a minute; to paraphrase one of our country’s more obtuse politicos, how was this globalism thing working out for the working classes anyway?   Sure, those who make their obscene livings “doing deals” in London, New York, and Abu Dhabi were doing fine, but how about the guy in Birmingham, or Ohio, for that matter, who was making a decent living and sending his kids to college but who now works two jobs to afford such luxuries as an evening out at McDonald’s where he can use his employee discount to buy his kids a hamburger?   Does anyone really think this wasn’t an economic vote for the victims of the globalization that has been so good to the money changers, the bumbling CEOs, and the lapdog financial media whose especially grating combination of incompetence and arrogance has spawned the backlash against their globalist fantasies of which the Brexit vote is only the first round?

Second, there is also the far too pat assumption that the Brexit vote was a vote against “immigration.”   No.   This wasn’t a vote against “immigration” or “immigrants.”   The West, and especially Europe, with its declining native population, needs immigrants to sustain both its economies and its generous welfare states.   The average citizen, despite the assumption that anyone without a degree from Harvard or Oxford and/or who lives outside New York, Washington, Paris, or London is a knuckle dragging Neanderthal, understands this.   The average citizen is therefore not against “immigration” and is not a fear riven and driven racist who hates all “immigrants.”   What bothers the average citizen, in England, the U.S., and on the continent, is not immigration but uncontrolled immigration.   A country, in order to be a nation, must have some control over who can enter it.   Put another way, a nation without borders is not really a nation.  While this might not bother the deep thinking citizens of the world who have been taken down a notch by the Brexit vote, it does bother the average citizen who still has (horrors!) pride in his country and a sense of (egads, man!) nationalism.

Third, the failed David Cameron warned in today’s speech that Britain must not “turn its back on Europe.”   Again, Mr. Cameron assumes that anyone without a pedigree resembling his is an utter dolt who can’t make subtle, or even glaring, distinctions.   Those who wisely voted to leave the EU were not “turning their backs on Europe.”   They were, instead, turning their backs on a monstrous European bureaucracy that took it upon itself to tell farmers what they could grow and how they could grow it, shopkeepers what they could sell and how they could sell it, employers who they had to hire and who they couldn’t hire, shoppers what they could buy and how much they could pay for it, etc.    No, the “leave” voters aren’t turning their backs on Europe; they know their destiny is tied to that of the continent and, one should vigorously add, to that of the United States.    The “leave” voters are, instead,  saying “Take a hike” to the people who are now berating them as oafish and utter morons.  

 Very British of them, wouldn’t you say?

PUBLIC PENSION FUNDS’ INVESTMENT DECISIONS: A TRIUMPH OF POLITICS OVER FINANCE….SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

6/27/16

I sent this note to the Wall Street Journal over a month ago in response to a naïve letter written by another so-called “expert” in his field.   The missive wasn’t published but is a paragon of insight, so I’m now sharing it with my readers:

5/14/16

Surely Marc Levine cannot have been named chairman of the Illinois State Board of Investments (“Fees That Sickly Public-Pension Funds Can’t Afford,” Opinion, 5/14-5/15/16) while being as naïve as his protestations about asset management fees make him seem to be.

Mr. Levine is absolutely right on his investment advice; public pensions, in Illinois and elsewhere, would be better off investing in balanced index funds than following their present course of investing in underperforming, high fee alternative strategies.   But Mr. Levine is absolutely wrong on his politics.   The managers who land this lucrative public pension business are veritable cornucopias of those things that politicians most fervently seek: “campaign” contributions, jobs for no account relatives and other lackeys, post-public life employment, and other expressions of the type of “public spiritedness” that make Illinois the paradise for taxpayers that it is.   One suspects that established index houses like Vanguard, Black Rock, and State Street would not be nearly as generous to those who award the business.   And that is why Illinois, and many other states, are not following Mr. Levine’s sage financial advice.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

JOE BIDEN AS MIGHTY MOUSE, OR MAYBE BR'ER RABBIT: SOMEBODY’S READERS ARE NOT SURPRISED

5/30/16

Now that the major party nominees have been more or less decided, or as decided as anything can be in this year’s madcap presidential selection process, the talk has turned to running mates (See HILLARY WON’T PUTBERNIE SANDERS ON THE TICKET; INSTEAD, SHE’LL SELECT…, 5/21/16) and “what if?”s.  The most intriguing “what if” surrounds the albeit distant possibility that Hillary Rodham Clinton gets into legal trouble either before or after the convention.    Most of the talk of late has centered around Vice-President Joe Biden’s being drafted, doubtless kicking and screaming in the tradition of Br’er Rabbit, to save the day by carrying his party’s standard.

When my readers hear this “suddenly emerging” talk of Mr. Biden’s being called into service, they merely yawn and move onto the next story.   This is old news to them.   See

IS JOE BIDEN A POLITICAL GENIUS OR WHAT?

that yours truly wrote back on October 28, 2015.    The most telling, and prescient, paragraphs in that now seminal piece are as follows:

Mr. Biden’s only hope of winning the Democratic nomination was for Hillary Clinton to somehow stumble, either over a scandal or over her own words, which she seems to have some difficulty selecting of late, but I digress.   At this point, the chances of such a stumble seem remote (See my 10/16/15 piece  WILL HILLARY BE WILD AND CRAZY…LIKE BILL?), but not completely out of the realm of possibilities.   And if she does, who has just set himself up perfectly for a draft?   Of course…Joe Biden.   While the appearance on 60 Minutes may not have had as its primary objective making Mr. Biden the obvious choice if Mrs. Clinton somehow blows it, setting such a table had to be a secondary objective.  In any case, surely the masterful interview had the result of making Joe Biden the obvious relief pitcher should Hillary start throwing the game away.

Yes, it’s a long shot that Hillary stumbles and Joe emerges.   But Mr. Biden’s candidacy was always a long shot, thoroughly dependent on Hillary dropping the ball.  That hasn’t changed.   What has changed is that now Mr. Biden will not have to go through the time, expense, and risk of running a campaign to merely place himself in the wings.   Especially after his and Mrs. Biden’s appearance on 60 Minutes, Joe Biden is firmly in the wings without having to spend brobdingnagian amounts of money and without running the risk of saying something, er, subject to misinterpretation, always a big risk in Mr. Biden’s case.

Bold emphasis added by yours truly.   But do read the entire piece; it is rich with nuggets of wisdom.

It’s still a very long shot that Mr. Biden somehow gets the big prize, but, so far, the effort has cost him nothing so the payoff would approach infinity.   Say what you will about the man, but Mr. Biden knows his craft. 

HILLARY WON’T PUT BERNIE SANDERS ON THE TICKET; INSTEAD, SHE’LL SELECT…

5/21/16

Yours truly was tempted to start this post with “Now that the nominees of the two major parties have been decided….”   However, given the near other-worldliness of this election season, perhaps it is unsafe to assume that GOP and the Democrats have decided on their standard-bearers.   Given what has transgressed so far in this campaign, anything can happen.    While it is a reasonable, and only a reasonable, certainty that Donald Trump will bear the Republican standard, one suspects that there might be more, but still not much, suspense of the Democratic side.   That is grist for another mill.

Whether or not the tops of the tickets have been decided, the political punditocracy and other assorted political junkies have taken to speculating regarding the second spots on the tickets.   While I find this largely a pointless exercise because the guesses are usually wrong and really don’t matter anyway, we may, and only may, be running out of other things to talk about until the conventions have been put to a merciful end.   So why not join in the fun?

Peggy Noonan, who is among my favorite and most respected columnists, put forth the case in this morning’s Wall Street Journal (“Clinton-Sander:  Maybe That’s the Ticket, 5/21-5/22/16, page A11) for Bernie Sanders to be the man whose most important task over the next four years will be inquiring after the president’s health.    Ms. Noonan cited party unity and nipping any efforts of the Trump camp to poach Sanders supporters (an effort, by the way, which has great potential despite the punditocracy’s out-of-hand dismissal.   The punditocracy has gotten everything else wrong this election season (See NOBODY SAW THIS TRUMP THING COMING, RIGHT?   WELL…SOMEBODY DID…, 5/4/16); why should anyone be surprised that it is dropping the ball on this one as well?) as reasons that it might make sense for Mrs. Clinton to choose Mr. Sanders as her running mate.    Ms. Noonan also cited desperation on the part of Mrs. Clinton, which is perhaps the best of all reasons she might ask Mr. Sanders to join her on what would be the oldest ticket in American history.

Yours truly, however, has a better idea, and a more likely outcome, for Mrs. Clinton’s veep deliberations.   My advice, and prediction, or about as close as I come to prediction, has its roots in a post from October of last year, WILL HILLARY BE WILD AND CRAZY…LIKE BILL?   In that post, I argued that Bill Clinton did something bold by breaking all the rules regarding veep selection and choosing virtual carbon copy Al Gore to join him on the 1992 Democratic ticket…and it worked.   Might Hillary, I asked, so something equally unconventional and select a woman running mate, producing the first all-woman major party ticket in American history?   I’m more convinced that she will do just that by selecting Senator Elizabeth Warren as her running mate.

Why Elizabeth Warren?

·         Mr. Trump was clearly wrong when he stated that the only thing that Mrs. Clinton has going for her is the “woman card” and that she wouldn’t even be considered for the Democratic nomination if she were a man.   Few people have more impressive public sector resumes than Mrs. Clinton.   But one would be a fool to deny that the “woman card” is among the strongest cards in her hand.   Why not strengthen that hand a bit by doubling down?

·         Ms. Warren’s selection for the ticket will accomplish the same things a Sander selection would accomplish:  she’d keep the loon-toon (er, sorry, “progressive”) wing of the party in the Democratic camp and would reinforce the fiction that Mrs. Clinton is not one who plays footsy with Wall Street and other bogeymen of the left.   A Warren selection, and especially an early Warren selection, would thus much of the remaining air out of Mr. Sanders’ sails.

·         Ms. Warren, at 66, is two years younger than Mrs. Clinton and eight years younger than Mr. Sanders.   These aren’t big differences, and this reason pales in comparison to the above two, but on what would increasingly look like a geriatric ticket, a few years might help.

You were probably expecting me to cite as a fourth reason for choosing Ms. Warren instead of Mr. Sanders the Clintons’ distaste for making nice with people who have made their lives difficult by standing in the way of their ambitions.   While it is tempting to make this argument, it is far too glib.  The Clintons may indeed be as ruthless as people make them out to be and, beneath the smiles and the feigned graciousness, probably seethe at Mr. Sanders for spoiling Mrs. Clinton’s coronation.   However, the same could have been said regarding the Clintons’ feelings toward then Senator Barack Obama in 2008, but they managed to forgive, but probably not forget, because there was something in it for them.    With the Clintons, ambition and self-interest trump all, even personal pique at people who have interfered with their sense of manifest entitlement.    This, by the way, describes all politicians, but the Clintons practice their art with more aplomb than most politicians.   More properly, one of the Clintons practices his art with more aplomb than most politicians.

So while I don’t like to make predictions, I will at least say that it would make a lot more sense for Mrs. Clinton to select Ms. Warren, rather than Mr. Sanders, as her running mate.    Mrs. Clinton gets at least a two-fer, and maybe a three- or a four-fer, by doing so. 

THE NEOCONS JOIN THE LIBERALS IN THEIR CONTEMPT FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS

5/14/16

The April 22 edition of the Wall Street Journal approvingly quoted Emmett Rensin castigating liberals for being smug and condescending toward the working and middle classes.   In response, I sent the following letter suggesting that the glass house residents on the Journal editorial staff should perhaps refrain from throwing stones.   The letter was never published, but I thought you’d like to read its now often replicated message:

4/22/16

Oh, the irony of the Wall Street Journal, reliable champion of the Republican establishment and perhaps Donald Trump’s staunchest opponent, so approvingly quoting Emmett Rensin’s observations on the smug and condescending attitudes of the modern American liberal!   (“Notable and Quotable:  Liberals and the Working Class,” 4/22/16)

Mr. Rensin is entirely correct in his observation that the liberals of today have lost the working class because the bi-coastals who run the Democratic Party look on those who toil in the hinterlands as hopeless rubes who don’t know what’s good for them.  But doesn’t the Journal see that the Republican establishment feels the same way about the working class that is supporting Mr. Trump in droves?   The Journal and the Republican establishment for which it serves as a mouthpiece were utterly baffled that the GOP rank and file did not brim with enthusiasm for the neocon likes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio…until the establishment and its mouthpiece concluded that Trumpism “was not a political ideology at all” and that “the stupid hacks didn’t know what’s good for them”…like near religious fealty to “free trade” and perpetual, counter-productive wars in places in which we have few interests and fewer friends.

Perhaps the Journal is in need of a good, imported, “free trade” mirror.

NOBODY SAW THIS TRUMP THING COMING, RIGHT? WELL…SOMEBODY DID…

5/4/16

That Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee of the Grand Old Party comes as a surprise to the punditry class, the group that makes so much money opining on things about which it knows so little.   But that Mr. Trump is now, barring something really bizarre even by standards of this bizarre election season, the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, did not surprise yours truly, and his faithful readers, one whit.   Unlike those who amass fortunes doing so ham-handedly what I do so skillfully for free, and who will doubtless try to tell you that they saw this coming all along, I present proof that I was on to “this Trump thing” a long time ago.

My most telling pieces on the Trump phenomenon were

WHY TRUMP IS SO POPULAR WITH THE MIDDLE CLASS, 12/26/15

and

DON’T KID, OR REASSURE, YOURSELF; DONALD TRUMP CAN BECOMEOUR NEXT PRESIDENT, 3/4/16

Also notable were

DONALD TRUMP:  “HE’SA SCARY MAN, KAY…A VERY SCARY MAN.”, 4/6/16

ONE REASON PEOPLE LIKE TRUMP:  “IT’S NOT THE MONEY…IT’S THE MONEY”, 3/24/16

IF TRUMP WINS TONIGHT IN IOWA…, 2/1/16

CHRIS CHRISTIE GETS “IT”; CAN HE GET THE NOMINATION?, 1/5/16

TRUMP, THE “REVERSE BRADLEY EFFECT,” AND THEMAN’S UPCOMING LOSS IN IOWA, 12/23/15

Hmm…yours truly even called the Iowa loss.   Amazing.

Why am I not at all surprised that Mr. Trump is the GOP nominee?   It’s quite simple.   The country is falling apart.   The economy is lethargic at best.  Real wages are stuck in neutral, but those with high incomes (Note that I didn’t say “the rich;” quite different concepts.) earn still higher incomes and insist on rubbing it in the noses of those who are just barely making it by engaging in excesses that would make the suzerains of old blush. We have spent ourselves into oblivion and now are facing debts that will be nearly, if not actually, impossible to service if interest rates ever get back to anything approximating a “normal” level.  Our schools are in disarray.  Our students aren’t learning the things that need to be learned if we are to become a great nation again.   Families are falling apart, much to the approval of the ruling classes.  Crime, while not at ‘70s levels, is still endemic and more real due to the immediacy of modern media.   The old mores that made this country great are laughed at and ridiculed.   We are spilling the blood of our young people, and spending billions we don’t have, fighting wars in places in which we have no business. The middle class is constantly being told to pony up for solutions that don’t work, that indeed exacerbate the problems they are supposedly designed to address, but that most assuredly increase the incomes of the feckless, self-assured, and self-centered political class.   

Yet the political establishment tells us that if we just continue on the same “mainstream” path, things will get better.    Then these professional clingers to the public mammary gland add insult to injury by righteously opining that “America’s best years are ahead of us.”  The typical middle class voter sees this condescending drivel as the utter nonsense that it is and is so fed up with the obtuseness of the mainstream that s/he is willing to embrace a champion as imperfect as Trump, a man who embodies more than a few of the aforementioned problems that are eating away at American society, as a backlash against the downright silliness and self-obsession that permeates the political class.   After all, the voters figure, how could Mr. Trump possibly be worse than the pack of poltroons and popinjays that has run this country into the ditch? 

That the voters should react in such a manner is surprising only to the media and political classes, which stand agape that the sociological curiosities they consider the voters to be have not acted as the punditry’s Ivy League educations and inbred circle of friends and associates say they should.   Why does anybody listen to these people whose most salient attribute is an amazing ability to so misunderstand the areas in which they purport to be experts?

DONALD TRUMP: “HE’S A SCARY MAN, KAY…A VERY SCARY MAN.”

4/6/16

A lot of voters are terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency.   Perhaps these voters are less afraid after Mr. Trump’s big defeat in Wisconsin last night, but they still remain at least unsettled by the idea that Mr. Trump still has a decent chance of becoming our president.

This is a justifiable fear.   I, too, though more amenable to Mr. Trump than most, am not entirely at ease with the idea that our next president may very well be a man who has displayed limited ability to restrain his impulses, some of which are quite base, who apparently has no time for introspection, and who considers mastering the details of governance more of an avoidable annoyance than as an inherent component of the description of the job to which he aspires.    I can certainly empathize with Mr. Trump; an old friend of mine told me when I was a young man that I could have been really big on Wall Street if only I didn’t feel the need to express every opinion I had the second I had it.   But I am not running for president and am quite confident that I never will aspire to an an office as lofty as, say, Naperville alderman, let alone the Oval Office.   I don’t completely dismiss the possibility (of the latter, not the former); however, my sense of realism should be a great source of comfort to citizens of the Republic.  But I digress.

So many of people’s fears about Mr. Trump, which apparently finally were expressed at the ballot box in Wisconsin last night, are justifiable.   But I am far more unsettled by at least two other developments in the 2016 campaign.

First, what really terrifies me is to hear the other Republican candidates, remaining and, for the most part, withdrawn, discuss foreign policy.   John Kasich wants to put ground troops in Libya…temporarily, of course.   Ted Cruz is obsessed with Vladimir Putin and what he considers Russian aggression, to the point at which he gleefully discusses aggressive actions he would take to counter Mr. Putin and the nation he leads.   One can easily see such actions leading to such unpleasantries as not entirely convivial confrontations between actual Russian and American troops, and we all know where that could lead.  One also suspects that Mr. Cruz’s problems with Mr. Putin have their origins in more than the typical GOP simple minded, knee-jerk “Russians bad, everyone else good” approach to foreign policy, but I digress.  Mr. Cruz also talks about making the sand, presumably in the Middle East, not in the Nevada desert, glow at night.   Both Messrs. Cruz and Kasich speak with regret about our “premature” withdrawal from Iraq and urge continuation of our Bushian nation building exercises (without, of course, using that terminology) both there and at other places in the Middle East.   Neither man seems to even faintly acknowledge that many of the problems they think they are addressing had their origins in outsiders poking at the geopolitical hornets’ nest that is the Middle East.   No, Messrs. Kasich and Cruz go merrily on, urging further pokes at that very hive and, indeed, finding other hornets’ nests to swat like Middle Eastern variations on piñatas.   Such talk is far scarier than some guy babbling like a hyper-pubescent teenager about reporters, opponents, and wives of opponents.

 Second, I listened to Bernie Sanders’ post-Wisconsin speech, delivered in Idaho, last night.   Yes, we all know that Bernie is a socialist, but people, even those who vehemently oppose just about everything for which he stands, look upon Mr. Sanders as some kind of crazy uncle who is, in the words of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, “as mad as a bloody March hare,” but whose heart is in the right place.   But if one listened to that speech, one got a feel for the enormity of the plans this economic illiterate has for the transformation of this country.   Free college, free health care, mandatory paid family leave, $15 (or higher) minimum wages, forgiveness of student loans…it goes on and on and on.   Actually hearing this litany of what the government would do to (er, sorry, for) us if Bernie had his way tends to concentrate one’s mind, and trepidations.  But what really scared me was Mr. Sanders’ rationale for forgiveness of student loans.   He stated that we shouldn’t “punish” people for doing the right thing and getting an education.    Making people repay money they borrowed is punishing them?    In what world is making debtors repay their loans punishment?   Apparently, in Bernie Sanders’ bizarro world where the laws of economics, and human nature, need not apply.  And that is a very scary place.

$475 “FRINGED SNEAKERS”: WHAT A BARGAIN!!!

3/24/16

Loyal readers will recall one of my best-received pieces, 6/28/15’s WSJ:  THE MAGAZINE FOR PORTENTOUS POPINJAYS AND POLTROONS, in which I, er, reviewed the spending habits of those in charge of our nation’s money.   That now seminal post came to mind this morning as I noticed an ad on page A3 of today’s (i.e., Thursday, 3/24/16’s) Wall Street Journal for a $475 pair of “fringe sneakers” from an outfit called Tod’s. Presumably, these are for what can loosely be called males, but it’s hard to tell and the gender of the target customer doesn’t matter.   Further, perhaps that these monstrosities are, as Tod’s proudly proclaims, made in Italy can overcome their manifest ugliness, but I’m not here to argue aesthetics.   There is, as we who study, apply, and teach economics profess, no accounting for taste.

My point, as always, is to encourage my readers to stop and think for a minute.   The Wall Street Journal is read, or is pretended to be read, by those who are in charge of our nation’s financial fortunes, people to whom other people entrust their life savings to be managed in a prudent and circumspect manner.   Thus, advertisements in the Journal are directed toward those who are in charge of the nation’s money.    Presumably, such people are interested in such things as $475 fringed sneakers or advertisers would not spend money making them aware of the existence and availability of such, er, things.   So people to whom you have entrusted your money are paying $475 for footwear that is worn in casual situations and, judging from admittedly subjective aesthetics, in the dark.

Be afraid; be very afraid.

ONE REASON PEOPLE LIKE TRUMP: “IT’S NOT THE MONEY…IT’S THE MONEY”

3/24/16

People, especially the “better” people on Wall Street, in Washington, and the media wonder why the average, middle class person is so angry that s/he is willing to vote for a guy as flawed as Donald Trump.   To most of us, this matter doesn’t merit much consideration due to the answer’s being so obvious, but then most of us are not muckety-mucks on Wall Street, in Washington, or in the media.   However, some of us are given, perhaps too given, to contemplation of things of great import to the Republic.  

One, and only one, of the reasons that people are so angry that they embrace even Trump has its genesis in the financial bailouts that supposedly “solved” the problems that led to the market and economic debacle of 2008-’09.   The banks and other major financial institutions got into trouble due to the poor loans they had made, packaged, and purchased.   Rather than see them fail, the Fed, with the full backing and cooperation of the Bush/Obama Administration, engaged in a financial bailout that involved pouring a Niagara of liquidity into the economy, reducing short term interest rates to zero, and inflating the prices of debt instruments throughout the system, bringing longer term interest rates to historic lows.

If one cuts through all the clutter and the noise, borrowers got in over their heads, with the full complicity of the wizards of Wall Street, and couldn’t repay their loans.   Rather than let them suffer the consequences of their irresponsible behavior, the government effectively forced conservative savers to lend their lifetime savings to these financial miscreants at zero and near zero interest rates.   The financially responsible got, to use a technical financial term, screwed in order to bail out the financially irresponsible…or worse.

And the deep thinkers wonder why people are so angry with the establishment that dominates Wall Street, the media, and Washington.

Note:  I have to thank a long ago boss of mine, an unforgettable character named Doran Pessler (unless I’ve butchered the spelling) at the then National Bank of Detroit, for the expression used in the title of this missive.   Doran taught me long ago that, in business, it’s never not the money, as in “It’s not the money…it’s the money.”   So thanks, Doran, wherever you are!