President Obama may be coming under withering criticism from his own former secretaries of defense for his hesitant and uncertain conduct vis-à-vis Syria. But he has at least a few defenders left who argue—as David Ignatius does today in the Washington Post—that he is simply giving the public what it wants. Writes Ignatius:

Obama has accomplished goals that most Americans endorse, given the unpalatable menu of choices. Polls suggest that the public overwhelmingly backs the course Obama has chosen. A Post-ABC News survey asked Americans if they endorsed the U.S.-Russian plan to dismantle Syrian chemical weapons as an alternative to missile strikes; 79 percent were supportive.

Have we now become a plebiscitary democracy where great questions of the day are to be decided based on public-opinion polls? What’s next? Are we going to give every American a Xbox-like device that he can use to instantly vote on every bill before Congress and every major decision on the president’s desk?

That’s not how the Founders envisioned this country operating. They created a representative democracy in which the people vote for their leaders and the leaders then are responsible for exercising their own judgment as to what course of action is best for the country. The voters still get a say, but they have to wait two to four years before they can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to their elected representatives.

The genius of our system is plainly evident in how easily presidents who follow public opinion can be led astray. Americans approved of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by rough similar margins as they approve of the Syria chemical-weapons deal today. That did not get President Bush off the hook when the war went south; public opinion quickly turned. And there was scant sympathy among the president’s critics—including David Ignatius—for the argument that the invasion was right because it was popular.

By 2007 there was virtually no support among the public for the surge. Yet President Bush ordered it anyway, and it worked. As evidence came in of declining rates of violence in Iraq, support for the surge increased. In retrospect Bush had made the gutsiest and best call of his presidency by taking a tough stance in defiance of public opinion. And as events on the ground shifted, so did public opinion.

That’s what we expect commanders-in-chief to do. And it’s not just Bush or Republican presidents who make these tough calls. So do Democrats, ranging from Harry Truman with his support of NATO and the Marshall Plan (neither of which was initially popular) to Bill Clinton, with his support of unpopular interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Even Obama has defied public opinion to intervene in Libya. There was no more enthusiasm among voters for that conflict than there is now for the one in Syria.

So Obama will find scant refuge today in the argument that public-opinion polls support his stance. Sure, the public is supportive—but then the public hopes that the chemical-weapons deal will be carried out. Perhaps they imagine, as Ignatius does, that the deal forces Russia to collect Syria’s chemical weapons and could foster a political solution to the mess in Syria. If so, Obama may well be vindicated. But the greater likelihood is that the deal will be an excuse for Assad to stall for time, that most of his chemical weapons will never be destroyed, and that the United States will be complicit along with Russia in keeping his criminal regime in power. In that case, the verdict of the public—and history—is likely to turn against Obama.

The president should keep in mind the pearl of wisdom often voiced by embattled sports coaches who are under criticism from the fans and media for not starting player X or not calling play Y: If you let the fans in the stands make your coaching decisions for you, before long you’re likely to join them as a spectator.

filed under:David Ignatius Russia Syria Washington Post

Commanders-in-Chief Should Command

Must-Reads from Magazine

Politics & Ideas

Notes on Trump’s Usurper

The 2020 race has begun.

Noah Rothman / Aug. 24, 2017

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump is no fan of Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. He’s gone so far as to encourage Flake’s prospective primary challengers and to attack Flake at a rally in the senator’s home state. Turnabout is fair play. Asked whether the president’s habit of engaging in internecine feuds with his fellow Republicans made a primary challenge to Trump more likely, Flake did not give a political answer. “I think he’s inviting one,” he said. Flake is right, but don’t take his word for it. Donald Trump’s own pollster confirms it.

On Tuesday, the Republican consultant and Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio revealed the results of a survey was ostensibly designed to dispel the notion that the president’s base was beginning to lose heart. It achieved the precise opposite effect.

According to Fabrizio, the number of Republican voters who approve of the job Trump is doing in office declined from 81 percent in June to 75 percent in August. Total disapproval increased from 19 to 25 percent. That kind of attrition is remarkable and outpaces even the rate at which public pollsters have shown Republican voters abandoning Trump.

But Fabrizio wasn’t done face-planting. To prove that Trump still commands the enduring affections of his voters, the pollster tested a handful of prominent Republicans who are or were critical of the president against him in a theoretical primary battle.

“[Trump is] crushing a hypothetical GOP primary field,” Fabrizio boomed triumphantly. “So much for the ‘buyer’s remorse’ the DC insiders are convinced the GOP has.” In fact, by even testing this proposition just seven months into a presidency, Fabrizio demonstrated that the president’s people think the ground is softening beneath Trump’s feet. The results of this survey proved conclusively that it is.

In a five-way primary race between Trump, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and Senators Ted Cruz, Ben Sasse, and Tom Cotton, Trump wins the contest handily. But he only pulls the support of 50 percent of the potential GOP electorate and 54 percent of the likely Republican vote. Among all Republicans, only 42 percent would “definitely” vote for Trump, rising to just 49 percent among likely GOP voters.

These are atrocious numbers for an incumbent. By way of comparison, in the immediate wake of the 2010 midterm elections and at the nadir of Barack Obama’s political potency to that point, he was still drawing 65 percent among Democrats in a hypothetical primary contest between him and Hillary Clinton. Fabrizio’s numbers prove without a doubt that Trump’s base is crumbling, and Republicans who are contemplating a primary challenge are justified in doing so.

Trump’s Praetorian Guard may pretend as though the president is unconcerned about a primary challenge, but his behavior suggests otherwise. His 2020 campaign machine is staffing up, raising funds, and tracking potential Democratic challengers. The president is touring swing states holding campaign-style rallies among devoted fans. Donald Trump is not exactly a wounded animal, but he clearly senses that predators are starting to gather, eying him hungrily.

It’s worth considering that this kind of thinking is precisely what Team Trump wants to incept in prospective challengers. Maybe Fabrizio’s inexplicable victory lap is explained by the White House’s desire to bait prospective GOP challengers into probing donors, gauging receptivity on the Hill, or otherwise outing themselves early enough to nail them before they become threats. If that’s the strategy, it’s so obvious and ham-fisted it may only embolden potential candidates.

Inevitably, when political observers think about the prospect of a primary challenge against a sitting president, they think about personalities. Who will the candidates be? This is the wrong way to think about it at this early stage. Few anticipated Eugene McCarthy would emerge a credible candidate in 1965, or that the Vietnam War would be such a rallying cry. In 1977, who expected Ted Kennedy to test his popularity among Democrats at the polls? The issue set that Pat Buchanan used to mobilize a GOP coalition to challenge George H. W. Bush barely existed in 1989. The figures that emerge to challenge Trump could take us entirely by surprise. That’s why it may be more predictive to examine the ideological camps from which primary challengers might emerge.

We can consolidate those camps into three factions. The first we’ll call the Kasich Camp. Ohio’s governor has been unguardedly positioning himself as a challenger to Trump in 2020, but from the president’s left. He does not support Obamacare’s repeal or the prolonging of America’s mission in Afghanistan, and he’s been reliably critical of Trump’s rhetorical excesses.

The second camp is the camp into which Flake and Sasse fall: these Republicans are happy Trump has been convinced to abandon much of his isolationist and protectionist policy preferences, but are convinced his uncivil rhetoric is dividing the nation against itself.

The third camp is the Bannon camp: the wing of the GOP that believes in Trumpism even more than Trump.

Let’s dismiss the last group offhand. The Bannon camp may be the most disappointed with the reality of Trump, but he’s the only game in town. There just isn’t much room to Trump’s right on issues close the hearts of populist nationalists. As for the Kasich Camp, John Kasich pretty has that one locked. This leaves us to speculate on the Flake/Sasse wing. This group has the broadest Republican constituency from which to draw support. It is very likely to produce a real contender.

That contender should, however, realize what he or she migth be getting into. There is no triumph on this path; at least, not in the near-term. Trump’s challenger or challengers should know that they are most likely martyring themselves. No one has ever defeated a sitting president in a primary. They will be blamed for rending the party asunder and undermining Trump’s chances for victory in November. If Trump loses, his supporters will be able to dismiss that loss as reflective not of Trump’s record in office but the conceit of the spoiler.

All of these burdens may be worth bearing if prospective candidates truly believe the GOP is being transformed permanently into an irascible, bitter, racially anxious party that is hostile toward conservatism. Trump’s challengers may arrest that transformative process, but they won’t get credit for it initially. Vindication would come later.

filed under:2020 Donald Trump jeff flake

Podcasts

Not What You Expect In a President

Podcast: Does Trump have to start worrying about the primary?

John Podhoretz / Aug. 24, 2017

The second COMMENTARY podcast of the week features me, Noah Rothman, and Abe Greenwald digging deep into new polls—including one issued by President Trump’s own pollster showing Trump with shockingly low support among Republicans as they look ahead to the 2020 primaries—and exploring the question of whether the president actually wants a border wall or just wants to keep talking about one to keep his base riled up. Give a listen.

filed under:2020 commentary podcast Donald Trump

Politics & Ideas

Fear of What Other People Think

The savior complex.

Noah Rothman / Aug. 23, 2017

When James Clapper, Obama’s former director of national security, said last night that he questions President Donald Trump’s “fitness to be in this office,” he was referring to the president’s mental faculties. The longtime national security analyst was being coy; in blunter terms, he appears increasingly convinced that the president is mad and “could be” a threat to his country’s national security.

This is an unforgiving assessment of a typically abrasive performance by the president on one of his mock campaign rallies—a confection whipped up by the president’s image-makers to indulge his egomaniacal belief that his volatility won him the White House. Clapper’s assessment is a little excessive considering what an obvious contrivance these exhibitions of presidential pique have become. The scene-chewing displays of grave offense taken on the president’s behalf by his supporters betray the validity of Clapper’s concerns.

“Nice try,” wrote radio host Laura Ingraham. “Crazy thing would be if @realDonaldTrump mimicked failed policies of the bipartisan Establ[ishment].” “Trump’s Crazy?” she continued. “No. THIS is crazy.” She provided a link to a story about the state of Connecticut struggling to pass a budget that reduces the state’s debt burden by cutting education and municipal aid grants. Truly bonkers stuff. Try to stay awake until you get to the part about median net tax-supported state debt per capita.

Partisan bickering over the president’s mental capacity is not new. It’s as American as apple pie, in fact, and a subject of more urgency only as a function of the phenomenal powers invested in that office. It’s one thing to concern ourselves with the unknowable mind of this president, but it’s something else entirely to obsess over the minds of the masses. Those are the thoughts with which so many seem preoccupied. Those thoughts might be wicked thoughts. And since wicked thoughts cannot be proscribed, their very inception must be interdicted. Down that road lies its own sort of madness.

The iconoclasm that seems to have consumed the Western world is a testament to this impulse. The terroristic attack on churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015 prompted Americans to engage in a wild, directionless lashing out at the symbols of the antebellum South. The Confederate battle flag that had flown over so many public spaces for decades came down. Statues that commemorated Confederate figures were vandalized. Many were removed (a purge that has been ongoing for two years and at a remarkable pace). Bubba Watson, the owner of the old Dodge Charger from the sitcom “Dukes of Hazzard,” had the Confederate flag that graced its roof removed as an act of penance. Oddly enough, these efforts did not eradicate violent racism.

Today, in the wake of another racist atrocity, we are taking our vengeance out on symbols. The scope of this backlash is, however, broader now. In New York City, the statue of J. Marion Sims, a 19th Century doctor who has been dubbed the “father of modern gynecology,” will come down. Sims conducted extraordinarily unethical experiments on African-Americans in his time, and his likeness is genuine effrontery. A 1931 sidewalk engraving honoring Philippe Pétain in the Canyon of Heroes will also be removed. Marshal Pétain was the hero of the Battle of Verdun, a hero of France in the interregnum period, and the head of the Vichy French government amid Nazi occupation. That last accommodation with evil is the man’s most enduring legacy.

Conservatives argue, though, that this retroactive application of modern ethical standards has no limiting principle. The iconoclasts are making their arguments for them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 90-day review of “all symbols of hate on city property” allegedly now includes the famous monument to Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle. Officially, the reason for such a drastic move is that these statues offend indigenous people or those whose family roots are embedded in Caribbean soil. Unofficially, and more likely, is the activist’s claim that these statues “glorify racism.” Which is to say, they rehabilitate prejudice in the minds of… well, others.

Many an icon seems destined for the chopping block. “The propagation of racist monuments of settlers, like that of T.R., that glorify white supremacy is a message that we will not tolerate,” declared activist Claudia Palacios at a 2016 protest outside the American Museum of Natural History, where a statue of Teddy Roosevelt stands. In London, Admiral Horatio Nelson, a man his critics allege was a white supremacist, might have to go; Battle of Trafalgar be damned. The New York Post observed that the number of monuments to figures with racially questionable views is virtually innumerable. Benjamin Franklin, Fiorello La Guardia, Peter Stuyvesant, Philip Sheridan, Daniel Webster, and many others may have to come down. Identity-based movements that organize around the victimization of forebearers might find these monuments discomfiting, but they also could be putting the wrong ideas in the heads of… others.

The absurdity of this impulse was helpfully exemplified most recently by ESPN executives’ decision to sideline an Asian-American reporter by the name of Robert Lee. You see, his name is just too similar to that of Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia, and people may get the wrong idea. That idea is, I suppose, that the reporters’ parents had posthumously honored this hero of the Old South by naming their son after him. Even General Lee’s old horse isn’t safe. The late general’s horse was named Traveller, which is much too close to Traveler, the white Arabian horse that is the University of Southern California’s mascot. ESPN’s executives aren’t confused about their reporter’s lineage. USC’s administrators know their school’s mascot isn’t a sop to racists. But other people might not.

The fear of what the presumably unenlightened multitudes might think is as much a preventative measure as it is a display of vanity. Rescuing others from the prospect of encountering deviant thoughts and, perhaps, agreeing with them is the act of the savior. Combating the stereotype of the Western redeemer who valiantly liberates the natives from their uncivilized conditions is a specter that haunts identity-based studies. You’d think the left would recognize that, but it seems they can only see this unlovely trait when it’s evinced in… others.

filed under:confederacy Donald Trump racism robert e lee

Politics & Ideas

Down Syndrome Speaks

Modern day eugenicists.

Sohrab Ahmari / Aug. 23, 2017

Last week’s CBS News report on the virtual eradication of Down Syndrome in Iceland shed rare and necessary light on the growing threats to the dignity of life across the West and in Northern Europe in particular. With new tests that can detect chromosomal abnormalities earlier in the pregnancy and with greater precision, an entire category of human beings faces extermination in societies that claim to prize tolerance and diversity above all.

Well, not if Charlotte “Charlie” Fien has something to say about it.

The 21-year-old from Surrey, England, is fast emerging as one of Europe’s most important anti-eradication advocates. Her activism is especially compelling because Fien is living proof against the argument, frequently proffered by those who support systematic prenatal detection and abortion, that people with the disability are miserable.

Fien has Down Syndrome (and autism), and she is happy to tell you that her life is enjoyable, interesting, and worth living. “I’m happy,” she says in a Skype interview. “I’ve got an amazing life. I’ve got a boyfriend, a lovely sweet boy. I got a job as a golf coach, to teach kids how to play golf.”

She has an active social life. “My friend William, he has Down Syndrome. He has an amazing life. He has a girlfriend. He has an amazing job. Aimee loves her life. She likes to work. She likes to go out dancing. She lives with her housemate Laura, who also has Down Syndrome.” Fien loves cooking, especially paella. She and her friends go to the pub on Thursdays and to a dance club on Fridays. Life is good.

Too often, the nondisabled make false assumptions regarding the subjective experiences of people with disabilities and chronic illness to justify their own policy preferences. Icelandic pregnancy counselor Helga Sol Olafsdottir told CBS, for example, that “we look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication … preventing suffering for the child and for the family.” (Note, by the way, Olafsdottir’s use of dehumanizing language: “a thing,” “it,” “a possible life.”)

For Fien, such assumptions were one of her life’s few sources of unhappiness. It wasn’t nice to hear health-care providers suggest that people like her are better off not being born. Watching “A World Without Down Syndrome?”–a 2016 BBC documentary written and presented by the British actress Sally Phillips, who has a son with the disability–made her aware, for the first time, that people like her are being targeted for elimination.

“I didn’t know mums aborted us,” she tells me. “I didn’t know what abortion is.”

She became active online and began taking public-speaking courses. In March, she addressed the United Nations in Geneva. “We just have an extra chromosome,” she told delegates. “We are still human begins. Human beings. We are not monsters. Don’t be afraid of us. We are people with different abilities and strengths. Don’t feel sorry for me. My life is great … Please do not try to kill us all off.” Her address received a long standing ovation.

People with Down Syndrome are “people of the heart,” as the Canadian humanitarian Jean Vanier says. If Down Syndrome is “eliminated,” if the new eugenicists succeed, the rest of us will lose the joy that they bring into our lives and with it the chance to encounter human difference in all its richness and vulnerability. To avert that bleak prospect, start by listening to people like Charlie Fien.

filed under:autism disability activism down syndrome

Europe

England’s Online Speech Crackdown

Hate speech is free speech.

Sohrab Ahmari / Aug. 22, 2017

Censors are always looking for fresh opportunities to censor. So they relish moments of ideological ferment, antagonism, and intemperateness. At such times, people are more susceptible to moral panic and likelier to silence opposing views. We are living through such a moment now, with neo-Nazis, Communists, and various other haters and cranks on the march, both in the streets and online. That’s why open societies should be doubly vigilant against efforts to restrict free expression.

One such effort got underway this week in England, where the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) revised its guidelines to prosecutors regarding “hate crimes.” Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders on Monday announced the new guidelines in an op-ed in the Guardian newspaper, and British civil libertarians have good reason to be alarmed.

Writing with that unmistakable tone of hauteur common to crusading bureaucrats, Saunders didn’t disguise the fact that prosecutors in England and Wales–Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own prosecution services–will now be in the business of going after people for airing unacceptable viewpoints. “People all over the world are questioning how those in positions of power can counter the kinds of extreme views that are increasingly being aired,” she wrote, “and how societies might do more to prevent such opinions from gestating in the first place.”

There is no easy answer to the problem, Saunders suggested. Then she went on to provide one: treating “online hate crimes as seriously as those committed face to face.” Put another way, the fellow who drunkenly throws racist barbs on Twitter may now face prosecution as vigorous as the neo-Nazi who vandalizes a synagogue or mosque with pig’s blood. The most senior prosecutor in England and Wales has expanded the definition of hate crime so far as to proscribe almost any disagreeable or uncivil statement.

The country already has malicious-communication laws and other provisions against online harassment and abuse, and these are strictly enforced. Last month, for example, a British aristocrat was convicted of malicious communication and sentenced to 12 weeks in jail for offering £5,000 ($6,417) to any of his online followers who would run over anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller. In December an English blogger was convicted of racially aggravated harassment for helping direct a campaign of anti-Semitic abuse at a Jewish MP.

The hate-crime laws are already broad. Authorities define as a hate crime “any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.” (Emphasis added. Note that the definition turns entirely on the subjective perceptions of alleged victims.)

Under rules promulgated in 2014, moreover, police are required to investigate hate-crime allegations “regardless of whether or not those making the complaint are the victim and irrespective of whether or not there is any evidence to identify the hate crime incident.”

That resulted in Home Secretary Amber Rudd being investigated for hate over a speech she delivered at last year’s Tory party conference, in which she railed against foreigners “taking jobs British workers could do.” An Oxford physics professor was so offended that he lodged a criminal complaint. The police declined to investigate, but they recorded the matter as a “non-crime hate incident.” (Ironically, Rudd, who represents the nannyish wing of the Tories, endorsed the 2014 rule change.)

Now the CPS intends to take things further by applying the subjective definition embedded in the hate-crime laws to online communications. In her op-ed, Saunders pooh-poohed free-speech concerns. “There are crucial provisions in law to ensure we do not stifle free speech, an important right in our society,” she wrote. Which ones? Saunders didn’t elaborate. She went on: “Hate is hate, however.”

Well, yes, but sometimes hate speech is also protected speech. And in an age of aggressive, and often aggressively stupid, political correctness, merely controversial or disagreeable speech can end up being framed as “hate.” The law and CPS’s guidelines turn heavily on the concept of hostility, which is defined as “ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, and dislike.” It is hard to see how people in England can debate, say, the hot-button issue of transgender bathrooms without running afoul of Saunders’s law against “dislike.”

filed under:england free speech free speech hate crimes transgender uk free speech

Commanders-in-Chief Should Command

Commentary's picks:

The System Works

On Russia: Trump vs. Trump

Otto Warmbier, Moral Perversion, and the Social Justice Left

Commanders-in-Chief Should Command

Must-Reads from Magazine

Notes on Trump’s Usurper

Commentary's picks:

The System Works

On Russia: Trump vs. Trump

Otto Warmbier, Moral Perversion, and the Social Justice Left

Not What You Expect In a President

Commentary's picks:

The System Works

On Russia: Trump vs. Trump

Otto Warmbier, Moral Perversion, and the Social Justice Left

Fear of What Other People Think

Commentary's picks:

The System Works

On Russia: Trump vs. Trump

Otto Warmbier, Moral Perversion, and the Social Justice Left

Down Syndrome Speaks

Commentary's picks:

The System Works

On Russia: Trump vs. Trump

Otto Warmbier, Moral Perversion, and the Social Justice Left

England’s Online Speech Crackdown

Commentary's picks:

The System Works

On Russia: Trump vs. Trump

Otto Warmbier, Moral Perversion, and the Social Justice Left