The View from Right Field

Biden Has Defined Success in His Afghan Exit: Nobody Pulled Off an Embassy Roof By Helicopter

When Joe Biden was asked last week if there was any similarity between Kabul today and Saigon in 1975, he said no:

“None whatsoever.  Zero.  What you had is you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our Embassy.  Six if I’m not mistaken.  The Taliban is not the South, the North Vietnamese army.  They’re not – they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.  There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy [in Afghanistan].”

He also defended the withdrawal by asking:

The Saving Grace of Donald Trump’s Presidency: Incompetence

With Donald Trump back on the campaign trail, now seems like a good time for this post.  For all the complaints about Donald Trump’s lack of competence as president, it was actually his incompetence that was the saving grace of his presidency.  Former President Trump was good at some things.  He knew how to energize those who supported him.  He identified people who had been ignored for years, if not decades, and spoke for them.  His skill at public relations and his ability to play the media in the 2016 campaign was impressive.  He didn’t need to spend as much as his opponents because he knew how to get free publicity from the media.

But, while he knew how to get elected, he didn’t know how to govern.  He was competent at getting elected president.  He was incompetent at being president.

Liz Cheney, Donald Trump, 2020, and the Republican Party

Liz Cheney was ousted as head of the House Republican Conference last week, mostly (entirely-?) because she wouldn’t sign up for former President Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.  The decision to remove her was taken by a voice vote.  Which was either because almost everybody agreed or because, if one wants to be cynical (which I often find is the best way to look at things, especially politics), people didn’t want to go on the record. 

In any case, here are a few comments on Donald Trump, the 2020 election, and the future of the Republican Party:

Retaking Congress – Or Not

Karl Rove wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal about how the left may be damaging the Democrats’ chances of keeping control of Congress in November, 2022.  While Mr. Rove made some good points about how the “left-wing loonies” could hurt the Democrats, he doesn’t mention what the “right-wing crazies” could do to the Republicans. 

After all, Democrats control the Senate because of Donald Trump.  Instead of going to Georgia and urging Republicans and independents to vote for Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, so the Democrats wouldn’t control the Senate, former President Trump spent his time in Georgia doing his normal “it’s all about me” thing, complaining about how the election was stolen from him and the Republican governor and secretary of state in Georgia didn’t care.  Not surprisingly, turnout in Republican areas in the special senate run-off election went down; why vote, if the election will get stolen and your vote won’t count.  And so, Mitch McConnell is Senate Minority Leader, instead of Senate Majority Leader.  If President Trump had cared more about the cause than himself, that might not have happened.

On Convicting Donald Trump

Even though I think the better constitutional argument is that it is constitutional to impeach and try former President Trump (he was, after all, impeached while he was still in office), I probably wouldn’t have impeached him (for the reasons stated here).  However, once he was impeached, given what he did, I couldn’t not convict him. 

As I said here, I don’t know if he “incited” an “insurrection” in the legal meaning of those words, but what he did was wrong.  A president doesn’t have to be guilty of a crime to be impeached and convicted (and a president doesn’t always get impeached and convicted just because he committed a crime – see, for example, Bill Clinton).  What former President Trump did was sufficiently wrong that, as I said above, I couldn’t not convict him.  Unfortunately, it appears that not enough Republicans agree with me.

Impeachment Jeopardy: The Only Senator to Vote to Convict a President of His Own Party

Who is Mitt Romney?
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UPDATE (2/13/21 5:30 pm): The answer should be changed to: “The Only Senators to Vote to Convict a President of Their Own Party.”
The question should be changed to: “Who are Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, Paul Toomey, Richard Burr, and Bill Cassidy?”

On President Biden’s First Week

I have not posted since Joe Biden was inaugurated last Wednesday, so maybe I will now.  I thought President Biden’s inaugural address was pretty decent.  It did not get into details, but it hit a lot of things I believe in.¹  Whether he is going to be able to do those things, who knows.  It depends on him, his team, and the other team(s)².

I don’t agree with some (a lot-?) of the executive orders, etc., that President Biden has issued/signed, but I have not commented because, well, it is early.  Also, the way Donald Trump left the presidency, especially since the Electoral College met in December, has bothered me so much that it is hard to criticize what President Biden is doing.  I don’t know if President Trump “incited an insurrection” on January 6 in the legal meaning of those words, but what he said was not, in my opinion, acceptable.³

Just Because I’m Glad Trump Is Leaving, Doesn’t Mean I Agree With Biden

A comment on the upcoming change in administrations that many in our polarized America may not appreciate: Just because someone is incredibly glad Donald Trump is leaving the White House, doesn’t mean they think Joe Biden will wind up being a good president or that the Democratic Party has the right policies for the United States.

President Trump has been a terrible president; possibly the worst in our history.¹  His administration did some good things (I’ve talked about them before), but the farther we got into his term and the more the decisions were made by him, rather than some of the people he appointed, the worse things got.²  While the last two months would not have happened if he had won re-election, a second Trump term could have been even scarier, perhaps especially in foreign policy and other areas where he could have acted on his own.

Making Sure This Week Is Our Last Memory of Donald Trump

Kimberley Strassel said, in Friday’s Wall Street Journal: “A politician has to work hard to destroy a legacy and a future in a single day.  President Donald J. Trump managed it.”  Early Thursday morning, after a mob, urged on and incited by Donald Trump, assaulted and occupied the Capitol, the Senate voted 93 to 6 against his objection to Arizona’s electoral votes.

And that is the way I want Donald Trump to leave Washington.  I want these things to be the final memories his supporters have of him as he leaves office: A President who incited a mob to assault his own Capitol and a man who lost in the Senate 93 to 6.  Because that is how he deserves to be remembered.

Being a Republican in the Age of Trump

People ask me how I can be a Republican with Donald Trump as President – or at least they would ask me that if I wasn’t socially distancing from just about the entire world.  I understand the question.  And I would add people like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, more representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives than I care to mention, and others, too.

But then I read about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, his counsel.  Those guys are very impressive.  Plus there’s Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois – and more, even if, at times, it seems like not enough.