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Statists Protect Their Own
I finally got around to opening up my latest issue of “Claremont Review of Books” today. What a fantastic publication. If you don’t subscribe, you really should. Anyway, this issue features a long essay from Michael Anton titled “The Empire Strikes Back.” He provides an outstanding summary of the various impeachment attempts against Donald Trump, starting immediately after his election. He also shares several fascinating insights into the people and events involved, but it was this paragraph that really caught my eye (emphasis mine):
It is no accident or coincidence that the only three presidents who have fundamentally challenged the administrative state … have been dogged by “scandal” and threatened with impeachment: Richard Nixon by Watergate, Ronald Reagan by Iran Contra, and now Trump. (Whatever you think of Bill Clinton’s impeachment it was emphatically not driven or supported by the administrative state, which protected him at every turn.) Trump would likely take this as small consolation, but it’s a measure of how much he’s feared that his enemies are running this play against him now, rather than simply trying to defeat him next year. Which more than suggests they doubt they can.
President Obama repeatedly said how proud he was that his administration was free of scandal. After Fast and Furious, weaponizing the IRS against political opponents, Benghazi, illegal State Dept email servers, various VA cover-ups, weaponizing the FBI against political opponents, and so on and so forth, you might find that to be an extraordinary claim. But those issues never hurt him, since the press buried them as soon as they came out. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times said that the Obama administration was “without any ethical shadiness.”
I often refer to what I call the Jane Fonda Rule of the American legal system. If you’re a leftist, there is no political crime that you could possibly commit that will ever be prosecuted, up to and including (in the case of Ms. Fonda) outright treason with photographic evidence. Hillary Clinton will never be prosecuted for anything and just think of all the things she has done. But she’s a Democrat. So, there you go. I’m not saying this is right or wrong. It’s just the way it is.
One thing we have learned through these various Trump impeachment investigations is that foreign governments did not meddle in our elections, but our government did. But when I hear people ask why no one at the FBI is serving prison time for their role in the greatest political scandal in American history, I refer them to the Jane Fonda Rule. If FBI agents had been trying to destroy President Obama, they’d be in prison for the rest of their lives. But they didn’t. They tried to destroy a Republican president. Legally, that’s an entirely different matter. We are a nation of men, not of laws. It’s just the way it is.
Modern American leftists are essentially statists. They believe in using the power of the state to accomplish their goals, which tend to start out as giving people free stuff, and tend to end up as taking away people’s stuff. That transition doesn’t take as long as you might think.
Our media is made up nearly exclusively of leftists. They go to journalism school to make the world a better place, which to them, means promoting leftism. To them, their motives are pure. So they defend other statists. When the Obama administration does something that might be sort of a little illegal if it were misconstrued by some uneducated deplorable redneck, it’d probably be best to just make it go away. Let the president do his job, right?
So the Obama administration had no scandals. The media even cut the compliant President Bushes a little slack – they were just politely holding down the fort until the next Democrat was elected president. They understand the established norms of Washington and were too nice to rock the boat. They also understood who was really in charge, and they knew it wasn’t them.
But if anyone considers significantly modifying the administrative state, it’s remarkable how that presidential administration seems to instantly develop leaks, “scandals,” and investigations. As surely as night follows day.
This serves to hamstring the current Republican president, and warn the next one. I think the warning is more damaging to our country than the immediate impact of such attacks.
If they really do manage to get rid of Trump, I presume that President Pence will decline to consider real changes to the administrative state. Partly because he’s a career politician, and partly because he’s a nice, polite person who’d prefer not to upset people. But mostly because he understands who’s really in charge. It wasn’t President Bush, and it wasn’t President Trump, and it most certainly will not be President Pence. That has been made clear to him. If it hasn’t, former President Trump can explain it. Probably in a crudely written but extremely clear Tweet.
If that happens, the leftists, statists, and administrative state denizens will have won. For the foreseeable future. Elections don’t matter that much anymore, because the next president will either politely ignore the administrative state, or give it whatever it wants. There is no third choice, and every politician knows it. So vote for whichever politician you want, but nothing will change. Not really. It can’t.
So you know those leaks, “scandals” and investigations are coming when someone has the temerity to rock the boat. It could be an amiable Ronald Reagan. It could be an uncouth Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter who it is. All that matters is whether they understand who’s really in charge of the American government. As long as they play nice, like Obama or Bush, they’ll have a scandal-free administration.
But those “scandals” spontaneously crop up every time someone directly challenges the administrative state. As surely as night follows day.
What a remarkable coincidence.
Unless you ask Michael Anton, who sounds skeptical.
Please read Mr. Anton’s article. It’s outstanding.
And again, if you don’t subscribe to “The Claremont Review of Books,” you really should.
Published in General
A bit more on this, if you don’t mind.
No. He was a candidate for the presidency of the United States. That smoke had better be more significant than that outline for a bad spy novel known as the Steele Dossier.
Not proven. Not the Sharpton part — the “deserved scrutiny” part. For that one needs probable cause.
Immaterial to the “investigation.”
His predecessor did that. Closing outdoor monuments so that the World War II veterans flown in by Honor Flights couldn’t visit them.* Strong-arming the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for birth control. The Little Sisters of the Poor!
The kind of thing that could cost a politician an election. Not impeachable though. And no reason for “confidential informants” (spies) and “electronic surveillance” (spying).
* Didn’t work. It turns out that guys who punched through the Atlantic Wall and the Siegfried Line when those obstacles were manned by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS didn’t have much trouble getting through bike racks chained together by the Forest Service.
I do have a deep seated distrust of democracy. I am a small r republican, I don’t trust the mob and don’t want my well considered vote cancelled out by someone voting the way Kim Kardashian told them to.
As for his embezzlements, start here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html
or here:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/wayne-barrett-obituary-reporter-village-voice-trump-first-214669
or here:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/
Trump family employs dozens of tax experts to minimize taxes owed. Film at 11!
This is some Ida Tarbell level stuff.
@drbastiat, thanks for the nudge that got me to finally sit down and read this brilliant essay. Many of the points he makes are, to put it mildly, disquieting and chilling, even more so because they are so true, but two of the final three possible outcomes he sets forth in the event this group of frauds are successful in this impeachment frenzy are really frightening.
The deplorable-Americans (a new hyphenated name even I can like!) will accept his removal and the new President, Mike Pence, and in the process the country as a self-governing republic will be finished as the elites’ grip on power will be cemented.
Or, if I understand his third possible outcome correctly, deplorable-Americans will not “go so softly into that good night” and the country will be torn apart in a violent end.
It’s easy enough to sit back and assure ourselves that there is no way the Senate will convict but there is no way to predict what these clowns are going to come up with. For that reason, I also found Anton’s comment toward the end of the essay most interesting, to the effect that Republican Senators tend to be wobbly and many want Trump gone for reasons that have nothing to do with this specific allegation, which merely offers a convenient excuse. After all, this is a party which looks the other way in the face of clear and convincing evidence that the family of their so-called front runner was on the take (big time!) and is trying to remove the President 63 million of us elected because he asked about their sleazy corrupt dealings in Ukraine.
I cannot possibly more fully concur in your recommending that everyone read this essay; it is a jewel and full of reminders of just how loony some of these denizens of The Swamp really are, the prime example being Don’t Dare Call Him Mister Vindman — as the inimitable Roger Kimball wrote recently– “it’s Lt. Col. to you, Buster!”– and actually are convinced that the President of the United States is, in his own words, an “outside influencer promoting a false narrative inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.” Good grief! What planet do these people live on? What a disgrace to the uniform so proudly worn by so many throughout our history.
@marcin, congratulations on having a letter to the Editor of the Journal published! I can’t even get a letter published in the Baton Rouge Advocate. Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere!
Sincerely, Jim.
The last one was supposed to be first, sorry. The USAToday article is most on point.
Credit where due for honesty. Your antipathy to the “mob” likely puts you in good company with others who intensely dislike Trump. Perhaps we should go back to royalty?
Regarding “embezzlement,” that term has criminal connotations that are not born out by the links. I would suggest that one of the gravest sins of the NeverTrump universe is the penchant for hyperbole– which is inaccuracy in disguise.
While three is a pretty small N on which to base a theory, and I don’t really know if other Presidents made significant reformist efforts (history not being my long suit), I certainly agree that, in the current instance, the President is being savaged by an established bureaucracy and institutional elite (in and out of government) that is fearful of, resentful of, contemptuous of, and resistant to efforts to reform it.
But this is really what I wanted to comment on. I think you’re right, and I think the underlying reason is that leftists — actually, radicals of all stripes — are obsessed with achieving specific outcomes, and so use whatever processes are available to achieve them. In contrast, conservatives have a broad and diffuse desire to protect pretty much everything, which means not rocking the boat, and so are more focused on the societal infrastructure that maintains order — the rules, traditions, mores, etc., that knit us together — than on any specific goal.
It’s the classic challenge of the special interest versus the common interest, and it’s why the battle is relentless and the outcome always in doubt.
Or it could be something as simple as
Compulsive embezzlement?
Why isn’t he in jail, if this is true?
If someone signed a contract with you to pay you $100 and skipped out after paying $60 you would consider yourself embezzled. Your copy of my comment did not have the third entry from USA Today. Read that and tell me you would not consider yourself embezzled under those circumstances. Just because the top .01 percent control the legal system and bankruptcy courts to the detriment of those so embezzled does not mean it doesn’t occur, I do not consider that hyperbole.
I hit the post button while cutting and pasting the third entry so only two were posted for about 5 or 6 minutes. You were too quick for me with your response. My bad.
Sorry if I advertently chopped your post.
Embezzlement is a crime. It’s not a matter of the subjective whims of those who dislike Trump.
Change the word or show me the indictment and prosecution.
If you own the politicians you don’t get prosecuted. If your lawyers, and your bankers’ lawyers, own the bankruptcy courts you can file a prepackaged bankruptcy filing that makes you immune from petitioners with valid claims. If Obama had played fast and loose with election laws getting elected State Senator, blocking the clear favorite of his community from getting on the ballot, would you say good for him just because he wasn’t prosecuted?
Oh please. You overshot your mark.
I wish we lived in a world where every bad guy was prosecuted and every honest man got what was coming to him. I don’t think I’m overshooting my mark by saying that’s not the world we live in.
Fine. But words have meaning. Accusing Trump of being an embezzler absent a criminal prosecution is a distortion of the plain meaning of the word, regardless of your personal preferences. To repeat–it’s these provable distortions that severely injure the credibility of those opposed to Trump.
OK, but the point of my initial comment stands. Trump was cut off from legitimate lenders due to his well known, outside-the-norm unsavory business practices and ethics. Does that pass muster?
If you don’t get your money, you were cheated not embezzled. Things like are to be sorted out in court. Perhaps both versions of the story are somewhat true. A building and contractor (unions and the mafia in New York City?) who did not do something for the correct amount of money and on time? Are you saying that that sort of thing never happens?
If you don’t trust Trump, don’t do business with him or at least get pay beforehand.
We all knew about these sorts of things years ago.
I’m sure Trump probably went over the line sometimes for no really good reason — before 1987 and between 2001 and 2009, he was a Democrat. However, most of his political opponents have never done anything in the private sector except perhaps try to extort money for political favors.
Of the around 30 Democrats who were running for president this time, Michael Bloomberg is probably the only one to do anything in the private sector. Andrew “Medicare for All” Yang is known as a founder a nonprofit organization. Does that really count? Crazy Marianne Williamson might be #3 on that list. However, most appear never to have gotten their hands dirty.
Joe Biden has been sucking on the government &@@& for over 50 years. What kind of perspective is he going to have?
That laws are for the little people.