The View from Right Field

What Donald Trump Is Doing Doesn’t Have to Damage Our Democracy

Democrats and much of the mainstream media¹ are saying Donald Trump is damaging American democracy by his continuing refusal to accept defeat in the presidential election and to start the transition process for President-elect Biden.  I agree that what President Trump is doing is appalling and that it makes the United States look stupid around the world, but it’s not the first time President Trump has done that, and given that January 20 is still two months away, it may not be the last (unfortunately).  It is, after all, what President Trump does.  We all know that by now.  Why should we be surprised he continues to do it?

But, as for whether President Trump is causing lasting damage to American democracy, that’s up to us.  What he is doing doesn’t have to cause lasting damage to democracy – unless we let it.  We can agree that what President Trump is doing is wrong and that we will never do it ourselves.  We can make what President Trump is doing a one-time thing by agreeing that we will concede when our opponent gets more votes and that we won’t go around saying our opponent wasn’t really elected once the votes are counted. 

Probably Not the Best Lincoln Quote for Right Now

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum¹ in Springfield had a quote from Abraham Lincoln at the top of an E-News email I received from them today, along with references to two websites, “CoronaVirus.Illinois.gov” and “PresidentLincoln.Illinois.gov”.  It’s this quote, which I am sure is intended to refer to the pandemic:

“Let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.”

It is a great quote, but given that the date and context of the quote, i.e., it was from Lincoln’s Farewell Address to Springfield on February 11, 1861, I am not sure it is the best quote for right now.
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¹ A great place to visit, though you might want to wait until the virus settles down a little

Brent Scowcroft, RIP.

A truly great American, Brent Scowcroft, died on Thursday at the age of 95.  Mr. Scowcroft was National Security Adviser to two Presidents, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.  Mr. Scowcroft initially did not want to be National Security Adviser to President Bush, saying he had already done that job.  But President Bush persisted and Mr. Scowcroft took the job, helping President Bush achieve one of greatest foreign policy records in the post-World War II era, including peaceful reunification of Germany while remaining in NATO, creation of a large coalition of nations to oust Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait – and stopping when the job was done, and working to ensure the dissolution of the Soviet Union was peaceful, the only time in history such an empire ended without war.

While some of the articles on Mr. Scowcroft like to focus on the op-ed he wrote in 2002 urging that the United States not invade Iraq, they fail to mention that he wrote another op-ed in August of 2003 saying that, once we were in Iraq, we now had to succeed and that he testified before Congress in early 2007 in favor of President George W. Bush’s “surge” of troops .

The 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Today is the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Instead of writing something new, let me re-post what I wrote ten years ago on the 65th anniversary of V-J Day (which was August 15, 2010):

“Today is the 65th anniversary of VJ Day, the day that World War II really ended. I remember my mother talking about how she felt when the Germans surrendered. She was happy, but her happiness was subdued. Her war wasn’t over. My dad was in the Philippines, and the Japanese didn’t look like they were going to surrender any time soon.

Abraham Lincoln on Our Founders

The new view of the United States, as seen in The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” is that United States history rests on slavery and white supremacy and that “[o]ur democracy’s founding ideas were false when they were written.”  I disagree.  I do not think our Founders were liars and hypocrites when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  I think they were in a position where they had to compromise with a terrible evil or give up their hopes for a new country built on a new set of principles.  What they did, therefore, was to compromise, but to do it in a way that kept those ideals alive for the future.

It is easy, looking back at people in history, to judge them on today’s principles.  What at the time were principled positions now look, to some, like racism, sexism, prejudice – and worse.  I’m not going to argue that point here, though I wonder how our views will look to people a hundred or more years from now.

Where Did All This Partisanship Come From?

I will assume most people will not say that it started with Donald Trump.  He certainly is bad, partisanship-wise,¹ but it didn’t start with him.  Some people might go back to Joe McCarthy or Richard Nixon,² but I’m thinking of something more recent.  Republicans might point to Ted Kennedy’s attacks on Robert Bork in 1986, when President Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court.³  Democrats might point to attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s (the “vast right-wing conspiracy”).  And so on.  But I am going to suggest something else.

Sometimes it is hard to remember how you felt about a particular event at the time because things that happened afterwards color your recollection of how you felt then.  Even reading contemporaneous news articles about something in the past will sometimes surprise you because you know what has happened since and the article doesn’t. 

52 Years Ago I Met a Future President

Actually, it was 52 years ago yesterday, July 10, 1968.  Here is a picture of me, a lot of other people, and Richard Nixon. 

I was one of a group of Young Republicans helping at a Nixon fundraiser.  After the picture, I shook President Nixon’s hand and said, “Thank you.”  He said, “No, thank you (for helping).”  A great man.  I am so happy I got to meet him.

Flying the Flag on the Fourth

The first thing I did when I got up on the Fourth was to get out the ladder and put up the flag.  We aren’t home on the Fourth of July very often, but this year we were.  (Surprise!)  And I figured it would be an important year to make sure the flag was up.  I was right.

There didn’t seem to be as many flags as I remembered in years when we have been home (or on Memorial Days, etc.), which I sort of expected.  A couple of people on my wife’s high school class Facebook group said they weren’t flying the flag this year because, well, you know.  Which was a viewpoint I expected and which was the reason I put ours up first thing Saturday morning.

Kent State at 50 – Three Days Late

With Covid-19 being all the news all the time, other things get missed.  The 50th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University on May 4 was one of them, at least for me.

I was a senior at Eastern Illinois University in 1970.  When President Nixon gave his speech on the Cambodian incursion on April 30, 1970, it seemed reasonable to me.  Protestors said he was expanding the war.  I figured that, since the North Vietnamese were already in Cambodia, attacking South Vietnam from bases there, you couldn’t say we were expanding the war into Cambodia.  The war came to Cambodia when the North Vietnamese moved in.

#Coronavirus Travel Bans and Keeping the United States a Single Noun

I agree with Steve Chapman in today’s Chicago Tribune (“The right to travel within the US should not be a casualty of the coronavirus”) that the travel bans some governors are trying to impose on residents of other states are wrong – and almost certainly illegal [see Update below].  Before the Civil War, United States was a plural noun, as in “the United States are.”  The Civil War and Abraham Lincoln made the United States into a single noun, as in “the United States is.” 

In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln called on all of us “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”  That is what we need to do today.  We must not let Covid-19, and our reaction to it, turn back the clock.  We are in this as a country, and by helping each other, we can get through it as a country.
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UPDATE (4/5/20 10:10 am): My comment about these travel bans being "almost certainly illegal" was wrong.  Per Eugene Volokh, who knows what he is talking about, they "are likely to be upheld."  Sorry for getting it wrong.