The pro-life right's Trump problem building a 'culture of life'

The folks celebrating the Dobbs decision this week are, shall we say, an optimistic lot. Some of them genuinely believe that taking away the right to abortion is something that will someday be celebrated by the larger society -- that while it might be controversial now, it sets the stage for a broader societal reconsideration of what "life" means and who we protect.

"I believe we will defeat abortion in the long run, just as the abolitionists defeated slavery," Tim Carney writes for the Washington Examiner. "I believe that in our children's lifetimes, American society will agree that abortion is an intolerable evil and American society will welcome every child, expected or unexpected."

Maybe. I am pro-choice, but the possibility has occurred to me that sometime in the near future I'll be judged a monster for that position by, well, people like me who are just trying to do their moral best.

But Carney and his fellow travelers have a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goal: Donald Trump.

Milley's challenge: How do we stop presidents from committing nuclear genocide?

I agree with a lot in this piece by Tom Z. Collina of the Ploughshares Fund: 

Just after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Gen. Mark Milley faced an impossible choice: should he allow President Trump to retain sole authority to start nuclear war, or should he intervene to block such an order?  

Unfortunately, under existing policy the only way to safeguard the nuclear arsenal from an unstable president is not to elect one. Once in office, the president gains the absolute authority to start a nuclear war. Within minutes, the president can unleash hundreds of atomic bombs, or just one. He does not need a second opinion. The defense secretary has no say, and Congress has no role.

In retrospect, voters should never have entrusted Trump with the power to end the world. But do we really think any president should have this power? By now, it should be clear that no one person should have the unilateral power to end our civilization. Such unchecked authority is undemocratic, unnecessary and extremely dangerous.

But I'm skeptical of his proposed solution:

President Joe Biden needs to fix the system for himself and all future presidents.

First, Biden should announce he will share authority to use nuclear weapons first with a select group in Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, not the president. The first use of nuclear weapons is clearly an act of war.

Second, Biden should also declare that the United States will never start a nuclear war and would use the bomb only in retaliation.

Leaving aside whether the U.S. should declare a first-strike off-limits -- something that should happen, but I'm skeptical will -- Collina's fix basically involves the problem he identifies in the first place: It requires continuing to elect non-nutty presidents. That's far from guaranteed. 

Biden could announce that he'll share nuke authorities with Congress. Subsequent presidents could revoke that pledge, though -- and if they're anything like Trump, they probably will. The only real way to limit a president's power over nuclear war is for Congress to pass a law.  That hasn't happened yet, either, but perhaps Gen. Milley's experience will persuade enough members that it's time.

Are evangelicalism and Trumpism the same thing?

 Interesting news from Pew:

Contrary to what some may have expected, a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data finds that there has been no large-scale departure from evangelicalism among White Americans. In fact, there is solid evidence that White Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than White Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.

Additionally, the surveys do not clearly show that White evangelicals who opposed Trump were significantly more likely than Trump supporters to drop the evangelical label. The data also shows that Trump’s electoral performance among White evangelicals was even stronger in 2020 than in 2016, partially due to increased support among White voters who described themselves as evangelicals throughout this period.

I'm tempted to think this isn't sustainable, if only for reasons of tactics. Evangelicals tend to be a bit mission-oriented, believing that they're called to share "the good news" of Jesus Christ. Trumpism, on the other hand, is fairly insular -- more interested in cultivating the base than expanding its appeal. Trump and Christ aren't the same thing, of course, but there's a difference in mindsets -- and if evangelicalism and Trumpism become closer to being the same thing, I suspect it's evangelicalism that will lose its character.

Update:

One more thought about the Woodward book

John Adams said we have a government "of laws and not of men." But reporting on the late Trump era suggests that it's both, actually. When lawful governance was teetering under Trump's assaults, it was a few individuals -- a Mark Milley here, a Dan Quayle(!!!) there, a lone Michigan Republican  voting for the truth and not his party's inclinations  -- who provided the nudges needed to preserve the system, and perhaps even the country. Occasionally (as with Milley) they had to do it in ways that -- on the surface, at least -- seemed to contradict the rule of law, and of civilian control of the military. But what was the alternative?

The real villains of the Woodward book? Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell.

It was clear then -- and clearer now -- that Trump should have been removed from office after Jan. 6. Pence could've led the 25th Amendment option. He didn't. McConnell could have sped up the impeachment process. He slow-walked it. That forced a group of people worried for their nation into apparently extra-legal maneuverings to ensure that Trump didn't destroy everything. When the responsible people aren't responsible, bad choices are the only option. 

Writing after Trump

Donald Trump is leaving office tomorrow, and I'll admit to some personal nervousness. What's it going to be like to write opinion pieces in the post-Trump age? 

Over the last four years, there has been a certain clarity to writing left-of-center opinion. It's not that I wanted to reduce everything to "orange man bad" (as conservative commentators like to say) but the truth is that Trump wasn't just bad, but that he provided a prodigious supply of outrages. There was often fresh material, something new to illustrate his badness. 

But he is moving away from the very center of politics, and I fear that the muscles I use when NOT writing from a place of deserved moral outrage have grown atrophied over the last few years. I have criticized Trump for being a purveyor of "pure, refined grievance" but now I worry that I, too, am an addict. 

I'm sure that there will still be things to be mad about. Hunting for those things, seeking out the high of angry righteousness, would be a bad path to go down. 

Back in 2009, when Barack Obama took office, I feared I would run out of things to write about after George W. Bush's presidency so enraged me I made the jump from a straight-news newspaper career into opinion journalism. It turned out there was plenty to write about, even then. Probably, the same will be true now. 

We still have a pandemic to fight, an economy to write right, climate change to try to mitigate and other big issues. 

 And I will have to remind myself that some things are worth writing about even if they don't piss me off.

The sources of Donald Trump's shame

The Week: "In his first one-on-one interview since the general election, President Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo over the phone that he is "ashamed" he once endorsed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R)."

Let's see:

He's not ashamed of committing adultery on numerous occasions.

He's not ashamed of failing the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He's not ashamed that his Iran policy has failed so spectacularly.

He's not ashamed of running his businesses into the ground, or of acquiring massive debt.

He is ashamed of once endorsing a guy who failed to assist his cheating.

Whatever.

Call me Cassandra

Are people really arguing that because Donald Trump has failed to steal the election, the people who were worried he would try to steal the election are silly and overwrought?

Because ... he really tried to steal the election.

Prosecuting Trump

At the beginning of the week, I was prepared to argue that investigating and prosecuting Trump -- at the federal level, at least -- would be more trouble than it's worth. I don't want the Biden Administration to *also* be all about Donald Trump. Four years is enough, right?

Now I think he's a tumor that must be excised. It will probably cause a lot of pain, but there has to be a price for his wholesale assault on the integrity of the election, on top of his thoroughgoing corruption.

My post-Trump future

I would really like to settle down for a few minutes to think about how to be an effective and quality opinion writer when Trump leaves office. The benefit of Trump's presidency was a certain, righteous clarity -- he is such a bad president, that often writing was a matter of waiting for him to do something bad, then criticize it. That's overly reductive, but not as much as I would like it to be. And I'm ok with that. Trump really is a bad president. Serving truth, in my mind, means constantly pointing how how he steers America wrong.

The problem with my whole "pivot to a post-Trump future" plan, though, is that Trump won't pivot. There's still too much happening. We should be looking forward to Joe Biden's presidency. Right now, though, the current president is still keeping all of us on our tippy toes.

'That's politics'

This part of Paul Waldman's column alarms me:

And unlike the zillions of investigations of Democrats that Republicans have mounted whenever they had the opportunity, these wouldn’t be undertaken solely to gain political advantage. But so what if they were? That’s politics. If there’s actual wrongdoing to be exposed, then the investigation is justified.

Investigations shouldn't be undertaken solely for political advantage. Period. There's plenty to investigate about the Trump years. But it's wrong to use the powers of government just to usurp your rivals. It was wrong when Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden. It was wrong when Republicans investigated Benghazi forever. Democrats might help themselves by playing the same game, but it would still be wrong and corrosive to what's left of our idea of "the rule of law."

Does this count against Donald Trump breaking America's "39-year streak" of new wars?

We refuse to spend enough money to make sure that unemployed people can eat and pay rent, but we can talk about spending tens of billions of dollars to create a fleet of deadly robot submarines. President Trump doesn't get to claim to be the peace president when he's spending so much money trying to make the United States a more lethal nation. We're already pretty lethal!

Anyway, POTUS and his cronies have been speaking lately that he stopped America's 39-year streak of starting new wars. To my way of thinking, this counts against that:

The U.S. military’s Africa Command is pressing for new authorities to carry out armed drone strikes targeting Qaeda-linked Shabab fighters in portions of eastern Kenya, potentially expanding the war zone across the border from their sanctuaries in Somalia, according to four American officials.

The new authorities, which must still be approved by Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and then President Trump, do not necessarily mean the United States will start carrying out drone attacks in Kenya. Nevertheless, they would give Africa Command permission under certain circumstances to expand the counterterrorism drone war into another country.

Arguably, this is an old war expanding to a new arena. If Trump gets to keep his streak-breaking claim, though, it won't be because he's not expanding the United States' wars.

Yes, Trump is a warmonger

American Conservative: "President Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, thanks to his role in brokering a historic peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and for breaking a 39-year streak of U.S. presidents leading the U.S. into a new war."

This "broken streak" idea is specious. Trump's early presidency included dropping "the Mother of All Bombs" on Afghanistan. He vetoed a measure to end U.S. involvement in Yemen's war. He had a top Iranian general assassinated. The list goes on, but you get the idea: No American president gets out of office without some blood on his hands. and Trump is not an exception.

Maybe the first step to peace is not starting new wars. Great! But the United States armed forces are still involved in conflicts around the world. And Trump bears a great deal of responsibility for that. Don't let the lack of *new* wars fool you.

With his SCOTUS list, President Trump says the quiet part a little louder

When President Trump announced his shortlist for the Supreme Court during the 2016 campaign, it was a clear signal to conservatives to get on his bandwagon, filled as it was with Federalist Society-approved names. Now that his re-election prospects are sketchy, Trump has released a new shortlist. It worked the first time, after all.

The interesting thing about the 2016 list is that it still had the quality of being -- for Trump -- subtle. Unless you pay enough attention to the endless ideological maneuverings to control the courts, the names on the list (and its FedSoc provenance) might not've meant much to you. But if you were aware of those things, invested in those fights, and conservative, the list was a good reason to think Trump might not be a squish on issues important to you.

This time around, though, Trump is taking no chances with subtlety when it comes to motivating the base. It's one reason he's even more plainly appealing to white racism during this campaign. But the boldface names on his new SCOTUS list -- Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley -- are meant to get the attention of the most casual conservative. They're known culture warriors who appear regularly on cable news, not the coy legal eggheads known to insiders. Trump is fairly screaming that he'll appoint anti-abortion judges this time around. The man is known for saying the quiet parts out loud. The closer the election gets, it seems, it's saying the out loud parts even louder than he once did.

@TheWeek: "The most destructive single decision ever made by an American president"

My colleague David Faris:

It struck me anew how unfathomable it is, or should be, that the person entrusted with the presidency, whose actions and inactions can have terrible and unforeseen consequences for millions of people, purposefully concealed his own knowledge about the coming of one of the worst crises to afflict humanity in close to a century. The selfishness and the bad faith are staggering. While Trump couldn't have stopped COVID-19 from getting here, his lies and inexcusable inaction sent a lot of people to their graves and caused millions of others to this day not to take this virus seriously.

Starting to sense a pattern among Republican presidents

 Remember this?

History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

The dirty secret of the Bob Woodward book is...

 ...roughly 40 percent of the country does not care how terrible a president Donald Trump is. They buy what he is selling, for whatever reason, and even taped conversations in which he admits he was lying to the country aren't going to make a difference.

That, as much as anything, is why I feel despair about the country. 

Does Donald Trump discredit the doves?

 Jeet Heer with an excellent observation:

My worry is that: Because of his attempts to portray himself as something of a dove -- even though that's arguable at best -- Trump will make it more difficult in mainstream politics to challenge Washington's hawkish consensus. The president's foreign policy incompetence and general terribleness will mean that if there is another leader who legitimately shrinks from using the hammer of the U.S. military to treat all challenges as a nail, they'll be tarred by association with Trump's rhetoric.

Maybe that's too hopeful, actually. It's difficult to position yourself for president in this country without buying into that hawkish consensus. The peaceniks are forever at a disadvantage.

Parenting in 2020: Using Donald Trump as a moral object lesson

Before bedtime, discussion with my son turned to talk of morals and ethics. I want him to aspire to both justice and compassion -- and sometimes (according to my Mennonite understanding of how the world should work) that means having compassion for people who act unjustly.*

*I don't expect other people, especially victims of injustice, to do this. It's how I roll.

Talk turned to Donald Trump, of course.

How do you have compassion for Donald Trump?

My usual approach -- when I am the person I want to be -- is to look for redeeming qualities in the person I find frustrating. Most people are a mix! Even many genuinely terrible people have some redeeming quality.

I cannot discern a redeeming quality in Donald Trump. Not as a public man. Not as a private person, at least from what I know of him that way. (Which is too much.)

Which means I don't know how to have compassion for Donald Trump. 

It's not a matter of him deserving it. It's a matter of me practicing an ethic that I aspire to. And he defies my understanding of how to implement my ethic.

So my answer to my son is: This is where I fall short of my values. I don't know how to have compassion for Donald Trump. All I can tell you is to aspire to justice, and try not to let your anger at injustice -- however justified that anger may be -- warp your soul.

Mostly, I would like not to have to have Donald Trump be an object lesson in my parenting.

If in Trump's America, "l'état, c'est moi," l'état might allegedly be a rapist

 AP:

The U.S. Justice Department is seeking to take over President Donald Trump’s defense in a defamation lawsuit from a writer who accused him of rape, and federal lawyers asked a court Tuesday to allow a move that could put the American people on the hook for any money she might be awarded.

After New York state courts turned down Trump’s request to delay E. Jean Carroll’s suit, Justice Department lawyers filed court papers Tuesday aiming to shift the case into federal court and to substitute the U.S. for Trump as the defendant. That means the federal government, rather than Trump himself, might have to pay damages if any are awarded.

Again: Trump is putting the US government on the hook to defend him from allegations about activities that allegedly occurred long before his presidency. Perhaps there's some bizarre legal theory that can justify this. But most people will justifiably understand this as further confirmation that Trump sees no distinction between is personal interest and that of the country.