Thinking about the State of the Union

One of the subplots of the recent faceoff between the Speaker of the House and the President of the United States (who represent two Constitutionally defined, equal branches of the government) was the suggestion (later confirmed) that Donald Trump not present his 2019 State of the Union address on January 29th, as originally planned. Much ink has been spilled and many digital bits rearranged over this dispute, some of which actually made useful and valid points. Here's my take on the issue ...

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the President

"shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient"

It does not specify how the President will provide this information - in writing, as a formal speech to Congress, as a PowerPoint briefing, carved on stone tablets, or whatever. The first two Presidents delivered their reports in person in the form of short (by today's standards) speeches. Thomas Jefferson sent his report in the form of a letter to Congress, because he believed that an in-person speech focused too much attention and granted too much personal power to the President. This began a tradition that lasted until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who chose to deliver his report in person. Every President since Wilson has done the same.

Because the State of the Union address (or "SOTU" in government shorthand) has become less of a useful report on the state of affairs and more of a political media spectacle with each passing year, some observers have argued that the time may have come for a return to the Jeffersonian tradition of delivering the report in writing. I can see arguments both for and against such a change.

On the one hand, a formal, written report can contain much more detail, including appendices with background information and evidence, draft legislation, and so on. It can be read and digested with the benefit of sufficient time to consider the information, rather than being analyzed on the fly by on-air shouting heads. The focus would be on the content, rather than on the theatrics of the presentation. I believe this form of presentation would provide a much more useful and robust product to Congress.

But on the other hand, I believe it's important for Americans to see their President standing in front of Congress to make the case for his (or, eventually, her) policies. I love public speaking and enjoy listening to a good, well-constructed speech. Unfortunately, our current Chief Executive is incapable of delivering a coherent formal address without veering wildly off the rails, even if he had coherent policies and plans for which to make a case.

So I'm torn.

On balance, though, I think the better option would be to return to the practice of delivering the Constitutionally-mandated provision of information to Congress in writing. It would allow for a better and more comprehensive report while avoiding the useless public relations spectacle into which the modern State of the Union address has devolved. Particularly in the case of Donald Trump, who believes anecdotes and innuendo make a better case than facts and evidence, it could force a more realistic look at the actual state of the union and propose more appropriate legislative initiatives to improve it.

I think it's time to move away from the State of the Union Address and toward a more useful State of the Union Report. What's your opinion? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Reading Recommendation

I'm now reading a very interesting book which ought to appeal to American history buffs and to those who look for historical parallels to current events - Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants, by H.W. Brands.

I was particularly anxious to read this book because of its focus on two of my favorite historical figures: Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

I've always admired Henry Clay for his skill at negotiation and compromise - indeed, he was known as "The Great Compromiser" for his ability to bring parties together in agreements that neither side loved, but both sides could live with. Compromise, of course, is a lost art in today's "my way or the highway" style of scorched-earth negotiation in which yielding the least inch in debate is considered a craven act of selling out one's principles.

And as a person who loves a good speech and enjoys public speaking, I have also always admired Daniel Webster*, one of the greatest orators our country has ever produced. At a time when we have a president who can barely utter a coherent sentence, we could use a Daniel Webster.

Heirs of the Founders is well-researched and briskly written, and looks at the early formative years of the United States through the lives of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. We see the roles each of the three men played in beating the drum for and - especially in Calhoun's case - evading responsibility for the needless War of 1812, how they reflected the tensions between those who supported the rights of the individual states and those who continued to advocate for a powerful central government, and how the nation slid gradually toward the cataclysm of the Civil War. If it has a fault, it is that a single book can scarcely do justice to the lives of three such towering figures.

I strongly recommend Heirs of the Founders, engaging and important history and a sad reminder of the kind of giants America once produced, but could never be elected today.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Daniel Webster was the hero of the classic short story by Steven Vincent Benet, "The Devil and Daniel Webster," one of my favorites.

Thinking about Mission: Impossible

No, this isn't about saving the republic from Donald Trump.

The latest film in the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible series - number six, titled Fallout - has opened to rave reviews. It's been called "the most exciting mission yet" and "the summer's best movie" ... one review breathlessly proclaims, "Fallout is the summer’s greatest diversion, a non-stop pummeling of the senses that will activate the dumbest parts of your brain and temporarily convince you that what you are screaming, gasping, and laughing at is, in fact, possible."

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've seen the first five in the series, and while they were exciting in their way, I was very disappointed. I don't think any of them lived up to what I loved about the classic Mission: Impossible TV series.

The Mission: Impossible movies are simply star vehicles for Tom Cruise and a host of pyrotechnics experts, armorers, and stunt drivers. The old TV show was different, in a critical way.

In the TV series, the IM Force, led first by Dan Briggs and later by Jim Phelps, developed insanely complicated plans to bring down really bad bad guys. But they didn't rely on pyrotechnics, gunfights, and fierce martial arts combat ... they relied on psychology and on intricate schemes that would not only result in the defeat and ruin of the villains, but would leave them utterly horror-struck and unable to comprehend what had just happened to them.

The TV series was exciting because it was quietly suspenseful. Unbelievable, yes, but suspenseful. Consider the episode titled "Old Man Out," when the IM Force rescued an elderly religious leader imprisoned in an escape-proof fortress: the plan involved getting a member of the team into the prison to sail the old man out on a zip line ... right above the heads of the unsuspecting guards, who were distracted by the circus* the rest of the team was staging outside the walls. Or the episode in which they hijacked a passenger train and hid it in a warehouse where they staged an entire journey culminating in a huge crash ... all in order to unmask the perfidy of a foreign leader's key advisor. Want more? Here's an article that summarizes some of the best episodes.

I'll watch the movies, but the TV show was a lot better.

And I don't like Tom Cruise, anyhow.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* We're still being distracted by circuses, aren't we?

The Tower of Babel, 2017

One of the major stories of the past year has been the rise of "fake news" - authentic-sounding media reports that are not just "spun" to reflect a particular political point of view, but are created from nothing in order to smear an individual or further an otherwise unpopular agenda. Fake news is not the same as satire, and it plays very well to uneducated or credulous audiences too lazy to think beyond their preconceived ideas.

There's an interesting biblical quote that applies to the fake news problem. The book of Genesis tells, in chapter 11*, the story of how man tried to build a tower that would enable him to reach God.

The effort was facilitated by the fact that everyone spoke the same language, and so God decided on an elegant way to punish man's hubris ... He (She) scrambled their languages to make them mutually unintelligible, making it impossible for people to communicate and cooperate with each other.

So, here's the part that applies to the fake news plague -

"And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar." (Genesis 11:3)**

"And slime had they for mortar." I think that about sums it up.

Have a good day. Think critically when you're faced with fake news. Avoid the slime; rely on facts and reason. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* No, not the one dealing with bankruptcy.

** King James Version online - http://www.kingjamesbible.com/B01C011.htm

What We Can Learn from the Rest of the World

My 23 years of service in the Air Force gave me something that most Americans don't have: the opportunity to travel widely and experience life in countries other than my own. I think we'd be a lot better off in many ways if more Americans would travel and experience life in other countries, rather than trusting in the silly cliches and false comparisons that are the bread and butter of modern commentary.

I found this interesting article by Alex Henderson on Alternet a while ago, which pretty much summarizes a lot of my observations about my fellow countrymen: Nine Things Many Americans Just Don’t Grasp (Compared to the Rest of the World). I don't agree with all the points Mr Henderson makes, but for the most part I think he's right on point. Here are three of his nine things (with my comments, of course):

American Exceptionalism Is Absolute Nonsense in 2015. This is the one that will make heads explode on the far right, but it's truer than we probably want to admit. I don't think that "absolute nonsense" is a fair characterization, but the simple fact is that we're not living up to what we say are our ideals, and we're not nearly as exceptional as we like to think. By many social and economic measures (life expectancy, rates of incarceration as a percentage of the population, and availability of affordable health care to name a few), we're falling behind much of the rest of the world. We may still lead the world in some things, but in many of the ones that matter, we're backsliding.

Adequate Mass Transit Is a Huge Convenience. I learned to love buses and trains while living in Germany, and am lucky to live in a metro area that has relatively adequate mass transit (by which I mean, it's fairly convenient and gets me most places I need/want to go). As the article points out, mass transit has a lot of advantages, such as reducing air pollution, traffic congestion, and DUIs, and providing the aerobic exercise that goes with living in a pedestrian-friendly environment. Here in America, we've replaced trees and flowers with millions of acres of concrete to accommodate our car-obsessed culture ... and I never cease to be amazed by the people who will sit idling for minutes in their car to get just the right parking space, instead of parking a bit further away and walking.

Learning a Second or Third Language Is a Plus, Not a Character Flaw. Most Americans figure that everyone who matters speaks English, and so there's no reason to go to the trouble of learning another language. And consider this quote from the article:

"... xenophobia runs so deep among many neocons, Republicans and Tea Party wingnuts that any use of a language other than English terrifies them. Barack Obama, during his 2008 campaign, was bombarded with hateful responses from Republicans when he recommended that Americans study foreign languages from an early age. And in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, Newt Gingrich’s campaign ran an ad in South Carolina attacking Mitt Romney for being proficient in French."

In most countries (well, perhaps not in France), fluency in multiple languages is considered a social asset and a big advantage in business. I can tell you that speaking German been a big advantage in traveling and enjoying my time in Europe ... how did we as a major country go so far off the linguistic rails?

Yes, there are lessons we can learn from other countries, if we're willing to do it. Perhaps we should start now.

Ich wuensche Euch einen schoenen Tag. Andere Bemerkungen folgen nachher.

Bilbo

Names

I apologize to those of you who came here expecting to find the report on our trip to Germany that I promised you. I'll run that post tomorrow. Today, I want to talk about a more important topic that arose over the weekend.

You have probably seen the news reports from New York City about two NYPD police officers who were murdered last Saturday afternoon as they sat in their patrol car. The killer ... who apparently committed suicide rather than face arrest ... had posted numerous online messages threatening to kill police officers in retaliation for the deaths earlier in the year of two black men who had been killed by police in Ferguson, MO and New York City. I find this justification a bit shaky, as he had apparently also shot his girlfriend in Baltimore (who likely didn't have anything to do with the other incidents) before traveling to New York to murder random police officers, but I'm sure he'll have his apologists.

One aspect of this terrible crime that no one has commented on is one that struck me right away: the names of the murdered police officers - Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

Think about that for a minute.

I think it says something about America that police officers of Chinese and Hispanic descent were on patrol together. America has traditionally been a country that welcomed people from everywhere, and although we've gone through cycles of discrimination based on racial, national, religious and other factors, we are still the refuge of choice for those fleeing bad conditions in their home countries. The phone book of any town in America is a compilation of names reflecting virtually every race, color, religion, and ethnic origin in the world.

I remember a cartoon from Mad Magazine many years ago that lampooned movie stereotypes with an imagined scene from a World War II film in which the unit sergeant was selecting men for a patrol ... "Okay, listen up! Jones, Perez, Chan, Goldberg, Pulaski, Schmidt, Yokuda, Giordano, and Wegryzynowicz, come with me! Oh, yeah, I almost forgot ... Olafsson, you, too!" The point, of course, was that America's army was supposed to be made up of people from everywhere, brought together by the common ideal that allegiance was owed to an idea - the principles of the Constitution - not to a king or an emperor or a dictator. No matter where you or your parents were from, if you embraced those ideas, you were an American.

Nowadays, of course, the idea is wearing a little thin. Conservatives worry that all immigrants (not just the illegal ones) are ruining the country and need to be kept out at all cost. And some immigrants, to be fair, don't come here because they believe in American ideals ... they arrive here and want to retain (and impose upon others) the very hatreds, customs, and beliefs that created the conditions from which they fled. "Honor killings" and the desire to implement Sharia law come to mind.

I don't have the answer to the problem. I wish I did. But one thing I do know is that we need to stop viewing each other with hatred and suspicion and start working together to build the better future the Founders imagined.

Much like officers Ramos and Liu were trying, in their own small way, to secure.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo