By Peter Oliver
On one more foul-weather spring morning, I’ll entertain myself by mulling over some of the oddities that are characterizing this year’s electoral campaign. Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about:
Trump and Muslims. Donald Trump has vowed to bar Muslims from entering the country as protection against potential terrorism. Leaving aside the fact that such a plan would almost certainly be unconstitutional, my question for Trump: How do you identify Muslims? It says nothing on your passport and there is no special Muslim tattoo, haircut or secret handshake. Country of origin isn’t particularly helpful; there are plenty of Christians and Jews coming to the U.S. from the Middle East. And while Middle Eastern Muslims are likely to be darker-haired and darker-skinned, there are blond, blue-eyed, unbearded Muslims, too. Finally, if I were an Islamist extremist trying to enter the U.S. to cause havoc, I certainly wouldn’t admit to being a Muslim. I’d probably tell immigration officials that I was Christian.
Some further rumination on Trump and constitutionality: The Donald has endorsed torture (and he has used the word, not the euphemistic “enhanced interrogation”) as an anti-terrorism measure despite the fact that it is unambiguously illegal, according to U.S. and international law. Of course, the next president will be sworn in to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (U.S. Constitution Article II, Section 3, Clause 5). Is it possible to pre-impeach a presidential candidate for promoting illegality?
The Senate and the Supremes. I just finished a biography of the great chief justice, Earl Warren. In 1968, an election year even more chaotic and contentious than this one, Warren decided to retire before the election, while Lyndon Johnson was still president, to prevent Johnson’s presumed successor and longtime Warren nemesis Richard Nixon from naming the new chief. Johnson’s replacement choice was Abe Fortas, whose personal missteps proved disastrous. He was stymied in Senate hearings and soon withdrew as the nominee. (Nixon eventually named Warren Burger as next chief justice.)
Nevertheless, just a few months before the election, the Senate still held hearings on a candidate far more controversial than Obama’s choice of Merrick Garland. The current Republican proposition that a Supreme Court nominee should not be considered in an election year just doesn’t hold water against historical precedent. With the great majority of Americans perturbed by a steady pattern of congressional inertia, I’ve got to believe that the Republicans’ position on the Supreme Court nomination is going to cost them big time in Senate elections.
Sanders and his Constituents. It is curious to me that Bernie Sanders is faring poorly with voters who stand to benefit most from his economic proposals. His anti-poverty pledge and support of a higher minimum wage doesn’t seem to be catching on with low-income voters, especially those of color. Instead, the bulk of Sanders’ support is coming from people who stand to gain little, at least economically, from his policies: middle- and upper-middle-class whites, voting more as a matter of conscience than personal economics. Conservative critics say that people are feeling the Bern because they want all the free handouts that his socialist agenda supposedly promises. But current Bernie backers aren’t likely to see many freebies, except perhaps free college tuition.
All Candidates and Free Trade. In a campaign often mired in trivialities such as the size of a candidate’s genitalia and candidates badmouthing one another’s wives, free trade stands out as a legitimate issue that has gained some traction. Candidates on both sides have excoriated the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership as massive job killers, and maybe that is true. I’ve seen one trade-deficit formula that goes like this: For every $1 billion in the deficit, 2,000 U.S. jobs are lost. The deficit now stands at about $45 billion a month, costing a theoretical 90,000 jobs a month. Even so, recent monthly overall job growth has been robust. Unemployment has been declining.
Whatever. I’ll let economists haggle over the stats. But does anyone, even the candidates, really know how those trade deals work? How many people can elaborate on any provision within either of the complex agreements and what impact it might have on the U.S. labor market? I can’t. It strikes me that opposition to the trade pacts is knee-jerk; voters think they are bad because candidates, who might or might not know what they are talking about, say they are bad. But smart people of both parties with good intentions negotiated the treaties. Are they really as awful as advertised?
Oliver lives in Warren.
