Our parochial news media seem only interested in reporting on the state of things here in the U.S. and in their favorite European vacation spots like France and Italy, but of course the COVID-19 pandemic extends into Eastern Europe as well, where most countries are also on some degree of quarantine or lockdown. I decided to check in with Clifford Angell Bates, a friend based in Warsaw who teaches political philosophy at the University of Warsaw. He is the author of Aristotle’s Best Regime: Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law (LSU Press, 2003), as well as numerous articles and book reviews. Prof. Bates is currently working on a book on the crisis of modern sovereignty and how the crisis emerges from the Hobbesian foundation of modern theory of sovereignty.

Beyond describing the street scene and atmosphere in Warsaw, we also range widely across several other topics, including intellectual life in Polish universities, the character of Polish “populism,” Polish attitudes toward the European Union, and how Trump is regarded. Plus some good anti-Russian jokes, which Poles have in adundance. And as you can see from the nearby photo, Cliff is a man who enjoys a good cigar.

This bonus episode features the insights and observations of Brian Sullivan, a serial entrepreneur in the domain of health care and medical device innovation. He is the founder and CEO of Celcuity, a biomedical research firm currently working on highly specialized cancer research. Brian, a long time friend of Power Line in Minnesota, has been sending along his unique thoughts on the coronavirus epidemic, especially some caveats about the reported data and what we should be looking for in terms of data quality, completeness, and what really matters most—the number of fatalities and the overall morbidity rate. We thought it would be worth hearing directly from Brian about all of this, and in this conversation he offers some facts and figures about Japan and South Korea that have been been widely reported or appreciated.

I’m posting this week’s episode a couple days ahead of our usual weekend schedule to keep up with the fast-moving news cycle of the most important story of the week—no, not necessarily the coronavirus, but rather the oil price war that broke out last weekend between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The timing may not be purely coincidental, as I discuss with my guest this week, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark Mills. Mark is my go-to person for all things pertaining to energy and our ongoing digital revolution.

Bottom line: Oil isn’t going away any time soon, and the independent oil sector in the U.S. holds the high cards in this battle over the long run—but the next year or so could be very rough. Toward the end of our conversation also offers his typically unique thoughts about what we’re going to learn from the COVID 19 experience.

This special edition of the Power Line Show offers a panel discussion on impeachment held this week at Berkeley Law School, which Steve moderated. Its purpose was not to rehash or thrash out the specific issues of the Trump impeachment as much as to illuminate what the founders had in mind when they wrote impeachment into the Constitution, and what we have learned from the two rare instances of presidential impeachment in our history. There are a lot of gray areas in the issue. The three panelists are:

Gary J. Schmitt, resident scholar in strategic studies and American institutions at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies national security and longer-term strategic issues affecting America’s security at home and abroad. In addition, Dr. Schmitt writes on issues pertaining to American political institutions, the Constitution, and civic life. He is co-author, with Joseph Bessette, of an excellent paper on what the founders regarded as a “high crime and misdemeanor,” which you can find here.

This week’s guest is Stephen F. Knott of the Naval War College, discussing his terrific new book, The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal, just out from University Press of Kansas. Knott, one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of Alexander Hamilton, thinks the American presidency has slipped from the modest republican design of the Founders almost from the very beginning, starting with Thomas Jefferson. (“I have a full-blown case of Jefferson Derangement Syndrome,” Knott admits early in our conversation.)

The point is, presidents and presidential candidates have been promising the moon, the stars, and the planets for a very long time—it didn’t start with Obama and Trump!—and has contributed significantly to our polarized politics and dysfunctional government. The prospects for restoring the republican simplicity of the office are not very good, but Steve and Steve do their best to try out a couple of thoughts—including the thought experiment of why it would have been better for the country if the Clinton impeachment 20 years ago had succeeded in removing Clinton from office. But it was not to be!