I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Trump’s prime-time border diatribe last night, but I did read the transcript.  Wow.  Numerous media outlets have done a decent job fact-checking the cornucopia of outright lies, so there’s little reason to do that.  However, I will add a few thoughts to my previous take on the subject.

First, could a southern wall stop a random terrorist from entering the country?  Yeah, sure.  But at an initial cost of $5.7B, Trump would need to prove that it’s a cost-effective solution to a pervasive problem.  He didn’t.  He can’t.  The facts are:

• Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security recently estimated that successful illegal entries into the U.S. fell 91% between 2000 and 2016.  Seems we’re already on the right track without a wall.
• Over 2/3 of the immigrants that are currently in the U.S. illegally entered the country legally and then overstayed their visas.  If we want to fix an illegal immigration problem, perhaps visa enforcement might be the place to start.
• While Trump keeps telling us that 4,000 terrorists were caught trying to enter the U.S. in 2017, he conveniently ignores the fact that only 12 non-U.S. citizens on the terror watchlist were stopped at the Mexican border last year.  The vast majority of the rest were stopped at airports.  Even assuming for the moment that a wall would work, is $5.7B a good price to pay to address .03% of the problem?
• The border patrol did stop another 41 non-U.S. citizens on the watchlist at the Canadian border.  Are we going to build a northern wall as well?

While $5.7B is real money, does anyone really think that would be the end of it?  I’m pretty sure that’s not the way extortion works.  If Trump gets his down payment, we’ll have a new shutdown well before the end of the year to pay for the next installment.

So how about this?  We give Trump the $5.7B so he can say he “won” – BUT he can only use the money for one of several non-wall options.  Here’s just a few possibilities:

• If we really want to make America safer, we could buy the military some very impressive hardware.  $5.7B will buy 2 Zumwalt-class Guided Missile Destroyers, 47 F-35A Stealth Fighters, or 161 M1A2 Abrams Tanks.
• If we want something that might actually be useful on the border, $5.7B will buy 1414 RQ-4 Global Hawk Surveillance Drones.  Or we could just pay to double the number of border patrol agents for the next five years.
• $5.7B would go a very long way towards a cure for Alzheimer’s.  Find me anyone that thinks that’d be a waste of money.
• Thinking outside the box a bit, we could buy both an iPhone X and an iPad Pro for every man, woman, and child living in the Greater Austin area … ’cause, well, that’s where I live.
• We could buy a 2019 F-150 for every military service member currently deployed outside of the United States.
• We could write a $1700 check to every public school teacher in America.
• The Dallas Cowboys are currently worth a bit over $5B.  We could literally make them America’s Team and we’d even have some money left over to buy a decent offensive line.

Of course, we could also just not spend money we don’t have.  Why doesn’t that ever occur to anyone in Washington?

Trump recently announced that American troops will immediately withdraw from Syria and will decrease their presence by 50% in Afghanistan.

As a proud Army Brat (the self-descriptive term used by those of us who grew up in career Army families), I am perhaps a bit more attentive than most when American troops are deployed into harm’s way.  My default reaction is always positive when overseas military personnel are brought home to their loved ones.  I’ve lived the family hardships when a parent and spouse is deployed into an active war zone.  I’ve seen the pain when they don’t come home.

However, our military personnel and their families understand the need to protect American interests abroad.  They understand that deployments into hostile environments are a part of the job.  They only ask for sane, thoughtful leadership with defined goals and solid plans to achieve those goals that neither wastes nor trivializes their sacrifices.

I wouldn’t pretend to claim more than a basic understanding of the infinite nuances of politics and religion in the Greater Middle East.  I suspect I know a whole lot more than our Commander in Chief, but let’s put that aside for the moment.

Announcing major military directives by random tweet is more than irresponsible.  It is simply insane.

We currently have 2000 U.S. troops in Syria. Those troops, along with our Kurdish allies who have done most of the heavy lifting, now control most of the “useful” parts of Syria (oil & gas fields, water, fertile land).  Without an American presence, the Kurds will face Russian, Iranian, Turkish, and ISIS militaries for control – none of which would be in American interests.  Where’s the plan for phasing out our involvement without screwing ourselves and our allies?

We currently have about 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.  They mostly serve in training and support roles with minimal combat exposure but are still an integral part of the regional conflict.  Again, where’s the plan for the drawdown?

The bottom line is that there are no plans.  None.  The President blindsided his own people.

General James Mattis, the current Secretary of Defense, is most definitely a hawk.  However, he is unquestionably a patriot and a soldier’s soldier who has earned the respect of the men and women under his command.  Brett McGurk, the State Department’s envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, is a career diplomat who actually is an expert in these conflicts.  Both men deserved to be heard and their arguments deserved to be addressed.  However, not only did Trump ignore their advice, both men were so shocked by the presidential tweets that they felt the need to resign.  Our allies were similarly blindsided as was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the political leadership of both parties.

The only people voicing full-throated support for Trump’s ill-conceived actions are the Presidents of Russia, Syria, Iran, and Turkey – along with Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Rand Paul.

Seriously?

Bringing troops home is by no means intrinsically wrong.  Ignoring the advice of military leaders and civilian experts is likewise not intrinsically wrong.  The Commander in Chief has those prerogatives.

However, if Trump wants support from anyone beyond our enemies, far-right Fox pundits, and a few random isolationists, he needs to present his case with facts, defend it to the American public, and define sane plans for executing the withdrawals.

I’m not holding my breath.

On this Christmas Eve, our allies are learning that they can’t count on America, our military is confused, the stock market is tanking, some 800,000 federal employees aren’t getting paid over the holiday season, and the few sane remaining members of the Trump administration are running for the hills.  Meanwhile, we’re stuck with Little Dumber Boy that governs by TV-inspired tweets focused on a damn wall.

I’m hoping this is just a bad Hallmark Christmas movie and that the happy ending is coming real soon now.

Last week, federal prosecutors called Donald Trump a felon.

In their sentencing memo for Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time lawyer, the prosecutors noted that Cohen paid off two women who claim to have had extramarital affairs with Trump.  Since the payments were intended to influence the Presidential campaign, they violated campaign finance law when they were not reported.  Prosecutors added that “Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”  Since “Individual-1” is Trump, that in essence makes Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal felony.

That, of course, is just the current status.  The Mueller report is still outstanding and could result in charges related to conspiracy and obstruction of justice.  I’ll contend that there is already sufficient proof in the public domain to meet a civil court’s “preponderance of evidence” standard for these additional charges.  I suspect a criminal court’s “reasonable doubt” standard will also be met in the near future and related impeachment proceedings are still a possibility.

And yet, Republicans are already lining up to defend the President.

I was particularly struck by the on-camera dismissal of the charges by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), saying:

You can make anything a crime under the current laws if you want to. …

I don’t care.  All I can say is he’s doing a good job as President.

My interest in this particular rant was piqued when I remembered that Hatch was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during President Clinton’s impeachment trial.  I suspected that Hatch might have weighed in somewhere with respect to that President’s legal battles during a time when a large portion of the country thought Clinton was doing a “good job” as well.

Of course, Hatch did indeed have something to say.

On Feb. 23, 1999, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) entered a 14,000 word treatise into the Congressional Record.  Since it serves as an uncannily direct rebuttal to the position that he and his colleagues have taken two decades later, below are excerpts presented in order, in-context, and without commentary:

Our duty calls on us to answer a serious question — whether the President’s actions warrant his removal from office. …

The President’s Counsel has argued that the President can only be removed for constituting, what Oliver Wendell Holmes termed in free speech cases, a ‘‘clear and present danger.’’ It was contended that a President can only be removed if he is a danger to the Constitution. … But such a standard establishes an impossibly high bar as to render impotent the impeachment clauses of the Constitution. … Committing crimes of moral turpitude, such as perjury and obstruction of justice, go to the very heart of qualification for public office. … The fact that the underlying behavior was private in its genesis is irrelevant. Such private acts demean the Office of the President, and betray public trust. Those acts therefore are impeachable. …

A President of the United States is not simply a political leader. A President is a head of state and a role model for Americans, particularly our children. What kind of message will we send to our posterity if [his] conduct is not considered worthy of removal? What amount of cynicism and disrespect for our governmental institutions will we engender if we impose one set of rules for the common man … and another for the President of the United States — who receives a pass from removal because he is powerful or has done a ‘‘good job’’ in some eyes? … Whether [he] has done a ‘‘good job’’ is a matter of partisan debate. In fact, adopting a ‘‘good job’’ exception — a term that is so flexible and vague as to be meaningless as a constitutional standard — merely exasperates the partisan tensions ever present in impeachment trials. …

Americans should be able to rely on him to honor those values that have built and sustained our country, the values we try to teach our children — honesty, integrity, being forthright. … Upholding our Constitution — a sacred document that Americans have fought and died for — is more important than any one person, including the President of the United States.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Hatch.

In partial preparation for an initial analysis of the 2020 Presidential election, some of the first state-level data I gathered related to the Electoral College.  That data subset quickly took me down a rabbit hole chasing after a rodent that’s been on my nerves for a very long time.

This is why I have a blog.  I need to vent.

First, a short civics lesson is required.  [Yes, Dr. Philpott, I was apparently paying attention in your American Experience class during my Freshman year at UT.  Who knew?  Sure, I did my own research years later but I can trace at least some of my political interests and my tendency to question everything back to your class.  Thank you.]

First, let’s recognize that the Founding Fathers did a phenomenal job defining a very complex governmental structure that has survived for over two centuries.  However, they were human and had to make compromises to complete a Constitution that could actually be ratified by the states.  In many cases, those compromises were brilliant.  However, with respect to the election of the President, not so much.

The process to elect the President is codified in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution as modified by the 12^th and 23^rd Amendments.  In essence, the Constitution mandates that each state select a number of Electors equal to the total number of U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives from that state.  These Electors then each cast separate votes for the President and Vice President.

If one or both elections fail to get a majority of Electors, then all hell breaks loose.  With processes that would confuse Rube Goldberg, the House and Senate then decide the outcome(s).  This topic might deserve its own post at some point, particularly since an Electoral College tie is a distinct possibility these days.  For now, however, we’ll just consider the basic Constitutional mandates above.  They are quite literally as simple as the preceding paragraph.

Note that:

• The Constitution does not mandate how a state’s Electors should be selected.
• The Constitution does not mandate how a state’s Electors should be apportioned between candidates.
• The Constitution does not mandate how a state’s Electors should vote.

These important decisions are left entirely to each state.  Thus, a whole lot of what we accept as givens with respect to the Electoral College are just state laws and practices, not Constitutional mandates.  Indeed, even the term “Electoral College” isn’t in the Constitution.

So, before we get to the states’ implementation issues, we need to understand why we have Electors in the first place.  There were two primary reasons:

1. The Founding Fathers simply didn’t trust the masses.
   • Alexander Hamilton summarized his rationale in The Federalist Papers: No. 68.  Therein, Hamilton claimed that Electors would be “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station” and that they would be “most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”  In his view, Electors would prevent a candidate with “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” from conning his way into the Presidency and prevent “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”  Hamilton not only thought that it was acceptable for each state Elector to vote independently of any apparent state preference.  He considered it their purpose to vote in possible defiance of uneducated popular opinion that favored an unqualified candidate with foreign influences.
   • That’s almost funny.  Almost.
2. The Electoral College was an accommodation to slave-owning states.
   • The number of Electors is tied to representation in Congress, representation in Congress is based on population, and the Three-Fifths Compromise originally counted five slaves as equal to three free people for population purposes.  While James Madison originally favored the direct election of the President, he wrote in his Notes of the Constitutional Convention that it would put southern states like his at a disadvantage.   Under a direct vote approach to Presidential elections, states would get no political benefit from their citizens’ ownership of non-voting slaves.  Hence, Madison lobbied for the Electoral College.
   • That’s not funny at all.

The states, in their collective wisdom over time, subsequently took this framework of a bad idea and managed to make it worse.

All states currently hold popular elections for President and most states (48 states and DC) then assign all of their Electoral votes to supporters of the candidate receiving a plurality of the popular vote.  Only two states (Maine and Nebraska) apportion their Electors.  For what it’s worth, Hamilton favored choosing Electors by district but eventually decided to leave that decision to the states. Unfortunately, once one state tried to increase its influence with a winner-take-all scheme, most of the other states quickly followed suit so as to not be disadvantaged.

Since all states have decided that their Electors should be party-assigned, hard-line loyalists, Electors are very unlikely to vote otherwise.  So-called “faithless Electors” have appeared but last impacted an end result in 1796.  Thus, large numbers of voters in each state – from both parties – are completely without representation in the Electoral College.

We are all well aware of the recent history of Electoral College results being at odds with the popular vote.  Al Gore beat George W. Bush by 543,895 popular votes but lost the Electoral College 266 to 271; Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 2,868,686 popular votes but lost the Electoral College 227 to 304.

What most people fail to realize is that it is largely an accident that Electoral College results and popular votes have ever been close at all.

In the current political environment, both Democrats and Republicans generally enjoy a mix of both large and small states.  Imagine, however, a scenario where the smaller states all favored Party A and the larger states all favored Party B.  Using Elector counts by state, the 40 smallest states plus DC account for 282 Electors – more than enough to decide the Presidency.  Using total vote counts by state from 2016, those same 40 states plus DC accounted for 66,253K votes.  Since only a popular majority is required to capture all of a state’s associated Electors, we can cut that vote total in half, making the required vote count 33,168K.  Since a total of 137,536K votes were cast nationwide in 2016, that means that 24% of all voters could have easily won the election.

Think about that.  The President of the United States could have been legally elected in 2016 with less than a quarter of the popular vote and with no votes in the 10 largest states having any consequence at all.

It would be tough to consider this scenario fair by any standard.  If you’re thinking it could never happen, remember that California cast its Electoral votes for George H.W. Bush and that Texas cast its Electoral votes for Jimmy Carter.  Things change.  Things change quickly.  Things change in unpredictable ways.

The Connecticut Compromise created our bicameral legislature with states having proportional representation in the lower chamber and equal representation in the upper chamber.  This was the key to avoiding what Alexis de Tocqueville would later refer to as “the tyranny of the majority” in the Legislative branch of our government.  What the Electoral College essentially enables in the Executive branch is the tyranny of the minority, whereby a minority collection of voters can enjoy an unchecked ability to override the will of the majority in selecting the President.

A revamping of the way we select our President could also correct an unfortunate side-effect where Presidential candidates campaign almost exclusively in a handful of “swing states” largely ignoring the vast majority of “safe states” that heavily favor either party.  A national election in 1787 might well have been impractical.  The Founding Fathers can hardly be faulted for not predicting radio, television, and the Internet.  However, there is simply no modern excuse for not correcting this affront to the basic tenets of democracy.  It’s safe to say that most of the framers of the Constitution would be appalled by what the Electoral College has become.

There are three possible solutions:

1. Adopt a Constitutional amendment that substitutes a nationwide popular vote for the Electoral college.  While this is the cleanest approach, it’s a tough hurdle since it requires approval by two-thirds of the Senate, two-thirds of the House, and two-thirds of the States.
2. Adopt a proportional allocation of Electors in every state as Hamilton intended.  This isn’t a perfect solution and the winner of the nationwide popular vote might still not get a majority of Electors.  However, it would definitely be better.  Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that all states could ever act in tandem to implement this change.
3. Adopt a multi-state agreement where the winner of the national popular vote gets awarded all of the Electors in each state participating in the agreement.  The advantage of this solution is that it only requires the buy-in of enough states to form an Electoral majority.  There is, in fact, an effort underway to implement this plan.  The National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 12 states with a total of 172 Electoral votes.  It could be put into practice if it gets support from additional states with a total of 98 Electoral votes.

Do I think any of the above are actually going to happen?  Unfortunately, no.  Something needs to change, but it probably won’t in my lifetime.  We’re likely stuck with what we have and the best we can do is figure out how to game the existing system to our advantage while the other side tries to do the same.

You can almost smell the democracy in action.  The Founding Fathers would be so proud.