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. 

Covid-19 Leadership: Is Anybody Leading?

When it comes to Covid-19 leadership, Donald Trump has been a disaster.  Too often he said the virus wasn’t that bad.  Other times he suggested almost quack solutions.  And masks were seemingly verboten around the White House.¹  Clear, confident, national leadership could have made things less bad.  He didn’t provide it.

But too many of our governors and mayors haven’t been effective leaders, either.  I understand it is hard to lead when the national message isn’t clear.  But that doesn’t mean state and local leaders couldn’t have done a better job. 

The Greatest High School Football Player Who Never Was

This is the story of the greatest high school football player who never was.

One late summer morning, the high school football team was having try-outs.  Just as the tryouts were ending and everybody was leaving, the coach noticed a new kid walking up, sort of hesitantly.  The kid apologized for being late, but said he had just moved into town and didn’t know what time the tryouts were.  He asked if he could still try out.  The coach asked him if he had ever played before.  The kid said he had, a little. 

Even though the coach really wanted to leave, he decided to give the kid a chance.  With everybody else gone, the coach said he would give the kid a tryout himself.  When the coach timed the kid on the 40-yard dash, the kid was so fast, the coach thought his watch was broken.  The kid kicked field goals from 50 yards out and threw passes that hit the target 40 yards away.  He was the best player the coach had ever seen.  The coach knew, with this kid on the team, they could beat anybody.

I’m Hoping for a Landslide Come November

I hope the election in November is a landslide.  In saying that, I’m not saying who I want to win (you can find that elsewhere).  I’m just saying I just hope it’s not close because I’m not sure we, as a nation, can handle another close election.

I am especially worried because the pandemic means voting is going to be very different this year.  There’s going to be a lot more vote-by-mail.  In person voting will probably be different, too (who knows how many polling places we’ll have open).  I’m afraid there will be a lot of confusion, among voters and among election workers.  Plus who knows if the election authorities are ready for an election as different as this one will be.

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.

Now Is the Time to Get Ready for the Election in November

Last weekend The Wall Street Journal had an article by Nicholas Persily, “It’s Not Too Late to Save the 2020 Election,” on things we need to do to avoid (minimize-?) problems next November.  Professor Persily listed nine things:

1. Provide more federal funding and support.
2. Ensure that schools remain open as polling places.
3. Keep voters from having to wait in line.
4. Bolster confidence in voting by mail.
5. Encourage election and postal officials to coordinate their efforts as soon as possible.
6. Insist that the big tech companies do their part.
7. Deploy tools to help predict voter turnout.
8. Anticipate problems with disinformation and cybersecurity.
9. Refrain from declaring a winner on election night.

Here are the key things I got from the article, with an Illinois perspective.

Here’s an Idea: Let’s Get Rid of Police Unions

This is an idea I’ve had for a long time, one that popped up again with the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.  Other people have written about this in more detail recently (among others, see here), but it’s not just those who could be written off as anti-union right wingers anymore.  The Financial Times had a front-page story on the problem of police unions yesterday.¹

Among the purposes of unions are to protect the jobs of their members and to get them as much money as possible.  Part of the former is to make it hard to fire union members.  Which in the case of police unions means making it hard to fire police officers.  I’m all for police officers not being fired unfairly, but the way it seems to be working in too many cases these days, is that it is just too hard to fire police officers at all.  There are police officers that need to be fired, and police unions are making it too hard to do so. 

Figure Out How We Will Vote in November – Now!

How are we going to vote in November?  No, not who are we going to vote for.  Rather, what is the actual process of voting going to be?  Wisconsin had a disaster of an election in April.  The Democratic governor said he didn’t have authority to change the election date, but he waited until the week before the election to call the Republican-led legislature into special session – twice.   But the legislature and governor couldn’t agree on anything, and the legislature adjourned.  At that point, on the day before the election, the governor tried to delay in-person voting until June.  Republicans appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which said the governor didn’t have the power to delay the election,¹ so voting went ahead on Tuesday.  At that point, things were so messed up there were only five polling places in the entire city of Milwaukee.  Stupid, just stupid.  (See here and here.)

While we can’t know for sure, there is a fair chance that in-person voting could be a problem for at least a significant portion of the population in November.  But even if it turns out that it isn’t, we need plan ahead.  Something we haven’t been doing, so far.