Where we are with Iran.

Posted on June 30, 2021 by jsh54

The radioactive isotope U-235 can be “enriched” to higher levels of purity by the use of special centrifuges.[1] Enriched to low levels (3.67 percent), U-235 can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants. Enriched to very high levels (90 percent), U-235 can become the basis for a nuclear weapon. Enrichment is a slow business in the early stages, but each successive step becomes much faster from higher levels of purity. According to one expert, it might take a month to enrich U-235 from 20 percent to 60 percent, then a week to go from 60 percent to 90 percent. However, more centrifuges are required to achieve each higher level of purity.[2]

The development of nuclear material is one step. The development of the technology of making an actual weapon, and the development of ballistic missiles are additional steps. There is nothing to say that these steps have to be done sequentially, rather than in parallel.

Iran had developed a large infrastructure of uranium-enriching centrifuges, along with other elements of nuclear weapons development. Alarmed, the international community imposed increasingly severe economic sanctions on Iran. Eventually, the Iranian government agreed to negotiate.

The 2015 international agreement limited Iran to possessing 660 pounds of U-235 enriched to 3.67 percent and required the shut-down of many of its centrifuges. In return, Iran won removal of some—but not all—of the international economic sanctions. Many other issues regarding Iran’s foreign and military policy were set aside for further negotiations. Many economic sanctions were retained as leverage for these proposed future talks.

President Donald Trump soon abandoned the 2015 agreement and plastered Iran with sanctions. Iran then began moving away from compliance with the 2015 agreement.[3] Iran increased its supply of U-235 that had been enriched to 3.67 percent; enriched some of its U-235 to 20 percent; restarted some its centrifuges; and blocked international inspectors from some of their agreed work. According to a February 2021 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran now possesses ten times the amount of enriched U-235 allowed under the agreement. If processed into weapons-grade material, that would be enough for three nuclear weapons. In addition, Iran has “largely ignored” an agreement on missiles and has allowed an agreement to expire that permits the security cameras to view Iran’s nuclear fuel.[4]

There are several ways of interpreting the series of measures taken by Iran. One way is to see it as slicing the salami, seeing exactly what it can get away with without provoking an attack. Another way is to see it as a slow ratcheting up of pressure to both force a revival of the 2015 agreement and to improve Iran’s position in negotiations.

In the nature of the production process, holding down both the amount of enriched U-235 and the number of centrifuges are key. In mid-April 2021, Israel caused a major “mishap” at the centrifuge facility at Natanz. Perhaps several thousand centrifuges were destroyed.

[1] Rick Gladstone, William J. Broad, and Michael Crowley, “Iran Says It Won’t Make Bombs, But It May Be Inching Closer,” NYT, 18 April 2021.

[2] Thus it would take 500 centrifuges to move from 20 percent enrichment to 60 percent enrichment, and 600 centrifuges to move from 60 percent to 90 percent enrichment.

[3] As American bombing in Vietnam showed, this latter strategy doesn’t always work.

[4] David E. Sanger, “On Iran, Biden Walks a Tightrope Between Force and Diplomacy,” NYT, 29 June 2021.

The Iran Problem.

Posted on June 29, 2021 by jsh54

For decades, Shi’ite Iran pursued nuclear weapons, developed ballistic missiles, and supported terrorists around the Middle East as proxies in its war with Sunni Muslims. With the American people clearly wary of any new war in the Middle East, President Barack Obama’s administration negotiated a multi-national agreement with Iran on part of these issues. In return for relief from some of the painful international economic sanctions, Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear weapons development program for a limited time.[1] President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the agreement.[2] Both Iran and the Democrats bitterly criticized Trump’s action. The election of President Joe Biden, then, seemed to promise a ready return to the agreement by both parties. Nevertheless, difficulties arose in completing this restoration.[3]

For one thing, Iran’s government now wants more than it got from the Obama administration. It wants more sanctions relief to allow it access to international financial services. It wants to keep the nuclear-fuel production capacity it built up after President Trump abandoned the agreement. To increase pressure on the Americans, it announced that it would raise the cap on enriching uranium from 3.67 percent to 60 percent, cutting the time needed to produce nuclear weapons if talks broke down.

For another thing, the United States government now wants more than it got from the Obama administration. It wants immediate agreement to limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support for proxy terrorism. Furthermore, the United States wants to push out the duration of the agreement to prevent Iran from building a weapon for much longer than the original agreement.[4]

For yet another thing, Israel sees Iran’s government as a deadly enemy. It sees the nuclear weapons program, the ballistic missiles, and the regime’s constant denunciations of Israel as warnings of a new Holocaust. Israel has done everything it can—short of a bombing campaign conducted in co-operation with a nearly-as-skittish Saudi Arabia—to slow down Iran’s weapons programs. Israeli intelligence purports to believe that Iran is much closer to making a weapon than do Americans. The Israelis disliked the original deal, will really dislike any softer deal, and may see a no-deal as lighting a fuse.

The Iranian regime that negotiated the agreement with the Obama administration[5] has passed its sell-by date. The Biden administration’s negotiations took place under the shadow of a looming Iranian election likely to be won by “hard-liners”[6] who had criticized the original agreement. In fact, this is what happened. In contrast, the recent Israeli elections changed nothing except the prime minister.

[1] I supported the agreement then and support it now. That doesn’t mean that the critics of the agreement didn’t have valid points. It’s just a case of “half a loaf is better than none” when the alternative is to start bombing.

[2] His administration either re-imposed or created new sanctions for a total of 1,500.

[3] Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger, “Two Nations Divided By a Common Goal,” NYT, 10 May 2021.

[4] Since these seem to have been the major Republican complaints about the original agreement, it would appear that we are actually experiencing Donald Trump’s second term, just without the egregious personal behavior. See also: China policy, North Korea policy, Afghanistan policy, illegal immigration policy.

[5] President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

[6] “Hard liners” is a term from the Soviet-American Cold War. American observers often conjectured that a struggle took place within the Kremlin between “hard-liners” and “soft-liners” or “moderates.” For a time, British diplomats applied the same sort of analysis to understanding the pre-war Nazi regime. At least in the latter case, the distinction between “hard-liners” and “moderates” was purely wishful thinking. Probably an example of projection.

The Asian Century 19.

Posted on May 27, 2021 by jsh54

The Trump Administration decided to deal with the puzzle of how to manage the ascent of the Peoples Republic of China by hammering the living daylights out of China.[1] China runs a big trade surplus with the United States, so Trump slammed on heavy tariffs. The payment asymmetry meant that the Chinese could never hurt the United States as much by reciprocating.

China has long-standing claims on Taiwan, now a more or less democratic and economically successful country of its own. The Trump Administration diverged from long-standing American policy on Taiwan by warming up to it.

China has been extending claims over the South China Sea, notably by turning reefs into fortified islands, then claiming the airspace overhead. The Trump Administration challenged these claims, but also pressed Congress to build up the Navy.

China has engaged in a long-running struggle for American hearts and minds. The Trump Administration turned the FBI and Department of Justice loose on Chinese theft of intellectual property; then did the same on China’s efforts to cultivate agents of influence in academia and media.

However, the most effective Chinese agents of influence, during the Trump Administration and long before, were American businessmen who profited from the China trade. They have always argued for “moderation” and “dialogue” in China policy. Sometimes, President Trump listened to them, as did many of his predecessors. At times, he seemed to be seeking a “Grand Bargain” with China in which China would mend its ways in return for the United States easing up its pressure. Any such hopes crashed on the rocks of the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump’s re-election campaign. The “Kung Flu” line allowed him to blame China for the pandemic without acknowledging his own lackluster response.[2] American policy on China got tougher during 2016.

Tougher didn’t mean more effective. The Peoples Republic of China continues on the same path as before. That leaves the Biden Administration with an array of important decisions. Is “Get Tough With China” the wrong policy? In that case, one could expect an abandonment of coercion in favor of a return to older policies. Is “Get Tough With China” the right policy, but it hasn’t had enough time to work yet to change the behavior of such a formidable rival? In that case, one could expect a continuation of the path we’re on, dressed up with rhetorical distancing from the Trump Administration. Is “Get Tough With China” the right policy, but the Trump Administration didn’t go far enough? In that case, one could expect the addition of tight controls on further American investment in China, ugly quarrels in various international organizations, and port-calls by the U.S. Navy all over the region.

Other questions naturally follow. How much stress can either country take? Does Zi Jinping represent a consensus of Chinese leaders? If not, how solid is his grip on power?

[1] Josh Rogin, Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century (2021), reviewed by Dan Blumenthal, WSJ, 12 May 2021.

[2] Yet uncertainty remains whether Trump was entirely wrong about the origins of the pandemic. See: Michael Gordon, Warren P. Strobel, and Drew Hinshaw, “Report on Wuhan Lab Fuels Covid-19 Debate,” WSJ, 24 May 2021; Jeremy Page, Betsy McKay, and Drew Hinshaw, “The Wuhan Lab Leak Debate: Disused Mine at Center Stage,” WSJ, 25 May 2021.

The Age of Revolt 1.

Posted on February 12, 2021 by jsh54

Where did “Trumpism”–the political movement–come from?[1] It arose out of the profits and losses from globalization. The costs were born by one segment of American society while the profits flowed to another segment. The beneficiaries were, first and foremost, the “political, cultural, and financial elite.” Their right to lead rested upon the pursuit of the common good.

In theory, the free-trade policies pursued by a whole series of American administrations after the Second World War would benefit Americans. They would allow the American economy to shift jobs producing low-value goods offshore and to redeploy assets toward higher-value jobs and goods. For a long time, these policies had no costs for Americans. The American economy emerged from the war with a long-term competitive advantage over anyone else. It could have not only butter and guns, but low-end butter and high-end butter. By the Sixties, that advantage had eroded badly. As foreign competition began to bite, it turned out that a lot of people depended on those low-value jobs for their living and found it difficult to shift into high-value jobs.

Globalization began to take a more serious toll on the American working class in the wake of the “Oil Shocks” of 1973 and 1979.[2] That seems incomprehensibly long ago to most journalists and politicians, so they just ignore the larger story. Then the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994) reduced tariffs on trade with Mexico and Canada. It accelerated the early wave of job-losses. Already in the 1990s, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot could run for president, if not win, on the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs. At the same time, China’s abandonment of suicidal Maoist economic policies and its entry into the World Trade Organization (1990) greatly accelerated the loss of jobs. Those job losses not only tossed many workers into unemployment, they also left whole communities hollowed out and unable to address human problems. They not only tossed workers into unemployment, they undermined the value of the homes that formed an important asset of many workers. They not only tossed workers into unemployment, they also foreclosed the possibility of the children of the workers finding steady work at a living wage anywhere near their parents.

Globalization may have eroded manufacturing jobs, but it created enormous opportunities for the American financial services industry. Industrializing countries needed capital and expertise. Wall Street could provide both, not least because of the inflow of Chinese profits to New York banks and to the swelling 401(k) savings of the Baby Boomers. Increasingly “cosmopolitan” in its outlook, Wall Street also became increasingly influential over national economic policy.[3]

The year 2008 marked a turning point. A great deal of elite foolishness and some guile created the 2008 financial crisis. That, in turn gave rise to revolts on the right (Tea Party) and left (Occupy Wall Street); and to the invasion of the political system by “outsiders” like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Donald Trump, the ultimate outsider, was just a heart-beat away.

[1] Gerald F. Seib, “Where Trump Came From—And Where Trumpism Is Going,” WSJ, 16-17 January 2021.

[2] “In the wake of” does not mean “solely caused by.” For more of my peculiar view of this process, see https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/03/02/american-union-stay-away-from-me-uh/ and https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/12/17/the-new-economy/

[3] For one highly critical view of this process, see Simon Johnson, “The Quiet Coup,” The Atlantic, 5 May 2009.

Attainder?

Posted on January 19, 2021 by jsh54

John Wycliffe (1320s-1384) was an English theologian and religious dissenter. He is often seen as a distant fore-runner of the Protestant Reformation that began in 1517. He was a distant forerunner because the Latin Christian Church rejected his criticism of the institution and his doctrinal arguments. Well after his death, the Council of Constance (1415) declared him to have been a heretic. Subsequently,in 1428, a pope ordered both his books and his earthly remains to be burned. Yet his ideas continued to be passed along in the secrecy required of censorship and universal official denigration. They helped prepare the coming of the English Reformation.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Wycliffe_bones_Foxe.jpg

It is vastly unfair to the good John Wycliffe to compare him to Donald Trump. But is it unfair to the clergymen eager to dig up Wycliffe’s grave and make a cage of his bones to compare them to the Democrats? (My apologies also to Warren Zevon.) Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the editorial board of the New York Times all seem eager to put Trump on trial before the Senate so that he can be convicted on pretty much a party-line vote where–this time–the Democrats have the votes. To what end? Apparently, Pelosi et al hope to have him barred from ever holding elected federal office again.

Why? They seem to believe that he might run for president again in 2024. If Joe Biden turns out to be a one-term president, then there will be a Democratic free-for-all in the primaries. There is no guarantee that a really strong candidate will emerge from that fray or that the party will not rupture into Progressive and Mainstream wings. Trump pulled almost 74 million votes in November 2020. Many Republican voters appear to oppose impeachment, so even the Trump-inspired riot on 6 January 2021 can’t shake their dislike of Democrats. Seen in this light, impeachment appears to be an insurance policy against possible Democratic defeat.

They might bar him from taking office, but can they bar him from seeking office by running in Republican primaries? If he won in the primaries, could he be barred from running for office? If he won in the Electoral College (as in 2016) or even in the popular vote as well, could he really be barred from taking office?

I have the idea that bills of attainder are barred by the Constitution.

American Divisions.

Posted on January 4, 2021 by jsh54

In 2008, before the financial crisis and the subsequent “Great Recession,” the average real GDP of Democratic ($35.7 billion) and Republican ($33.3 billion) Congressional districts stood pretty close together. Now, almost two thirds (63.6 percent) of the country’s GDP is produced in Congressional districts that vote Democratic; a little over one-third (36.4 percent) of the country’s GDP is produced in Congressional districts that vote Republican. The average real GDP of Democratic Congressional districts has risen to $49.0 billion, while Republican districts have actually fallen slightly to $32.6 billion.[1] That is, Democratic districts enjoy an average GDP that is fifty percent higher than Republican districts. This is reflected in median household income. In 2008, the median household income in Republican and Democratic Congressional districts was $53,000. By 2017, the median household income in Republican districts had declined to $51,500, while in Democratic districts it had risen to $62,000.

Whether one looks at finance and insurance[2] or at the professions[3] or at the digital industries, Democratic districts represent about two-thirds (64.3-71.1 percent) of jobs. Whether one looks at basic manufacturing or primary products, Republican districts represent more than half (56.4-60.5 percent) of the jobs.

Other measures mirror this economic divide. In 2008, the median percent of adults with a BA or higher stood at 25 percent in Republican districts and 27 percent in Democratic districts. By 2017, the medians had moved farther apart to 27 percent in Republican districts compared to 35 percent in Democratic districts. In terms of location, in 2008 the median population density in Republican districts was 350 people per square mile, while the median population density in Democratic districts was 850 people per square mile. By 2018, the rates stood at 200 people per square mile in Republican districts and 2,500 people per square mile in Democratic districts.

In the presidential election campaign of 2020, Joe Biden pulled in $486 million in campaign donations from ZIP codes where the median income was at least $100,000, while Donald Trump raised $167 million.[4] Indeed, from households earning $75,000 a year to $150,000 a year, Biden out-raised Trump by $600 million to $300 million. In contrast, Trump outraised Biden in ZIP codes below the 2019 national median income by $53.4 million.[5] Among those earning up to $75,000 a year, Trump out-raised Biden by about $400 million to about $340 million.

In ZIP codes where at least 65 percent of people had a BA or higher, Biden out-raised Trump $478 million to $104 million. From among the ZIP codes were 40 percent or fewer of people had BA degrees, Trump out-raised Biden by about $400 million to about $350 million.

It looks like the Democrats are becoming the party of rich, educated people telling poor people what they need, while the Republicans are becoming the party of faux common men giving poor people what they want. “Good and hard,” to quote Menken.

[1] Aaron Zitner and Dante Chini, “America’s Political Polarization Is Almost Complete,” WSJ, 20 September 2020.

[2] Basically moving around big pools of other people’s money.

[3] Medicine, law, higher education, and scientific research.

[4] Shane Goldmacher, Ella Koeze, and Rachel Shorey, “Map of Donors Reveals a Split On Class Lines,” NYT, 26 October 2020.

[5] In 2019, median household income was $68,703.

Advice from a Guy Who Knows a Lot.

Posted on January 1, 2021 by jsh54

Seen in a somewhat historical longer perspective than one gets in the daily media, Donald Trump’s four years as president aren’t quite the anomaly that they seem. In terms of foreign policy, the Trump administration identified the key problems, but came up with some wrong solutions.[1] The duty of the Biden administration will be to recognize where their predecessors saw the target, then figure out better ways of hitting it. Robert M. Gates stands above the partisan fray, possesses deep knowledge of American foreign relations and of the instruments of those relation, and has exhibited a sense of patriotic duty that should command respect.[2] While he has discreetly avoided making a direct statement on the Trump administration, he has some good advice for the Biden administration.[3]

First, Trump was right: the “friends and allies” don’t pull their weight. The Trump solution was to deride them and walk away. The Biden administration should apply serious pressure on burden-sharing. It also needs to pressure Germany over its own deal with Russia over energy supplies. It also needs to pressure Turkey over its purchase of a Russian air-defense system and its meddling in Libya. The United States needs to nudge NATO countries like Turkey, Hungary, and Poland back toward democratic norms.

Second, Trump was right: many international organizations are messed up. The Nineteenth Century British radical John Bright described the Empire as “a gigantic system of out-relief for the aristocracy.” The same judgement applies to international organizations and the European and Europeanized elites of the former colonial countries who staff those organizations. The Trump solution was to denounce them and walk away. The Biden administration should apply serious pressure on reform. The Biden administration also needs to make a serious effort to keep China from gaining a leadership role in all these organizations, because they will just manipulate these organizations to advance China’s national interests.

Third, Trump was right: the existing instruments of American diplomacy and “soft power” don’t work well in the new international environment. The Trump solution was to ignore those instruments, leaving hundreds of patronage positions empty and relying on personal loyalists to deal with foreign leaders or by seeking direct personal contact. The State Department has been in decline as the leader of American foreign policy since the Kennedy Administration. The Defense Department, the intelligence community, and—off and on—the National Security Council have all shouldered it aside. The US lacks the economic resources to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. America’s “strategic communications” are pathetic. Just adding one more spending category to the wish-list of money to be raised by making the One Percent pay their “fair share” won’t be enough. In every case, government partnerships with the private sector offers a better approach.

What if we have entered a post-Cold War era in which American leadership isn’t wanted?

[1] Even that isn’t all that anomalous. The George W. Bush Administration identified the correct problem in Muslim countries. They are victims of long-term developments, rather than of brief experiences of Western imperialism. The Bush Administration then came up with a disastrously wrong solution: knock over Saddam Hussein, declare democracy, put up some big box stores, and leave.

[2] On Gates, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates

[3] Robert M. Gates, “How to Meet Our Global Commitments,” NYT, 21 December 2000.

The Asian Century 14.

Posted on December 21, 2020 by jsh54

The way it looks at the moment, the foreseeable future will be dominated by tiny things: deadly viruses and ultra-thin semi-conductors. Controlling both holds the key to leadership (and possibly survival) in the Twenty-First Century. Both come from Asia. Of the two, computer chips may be the more pressing long-term concern.[1]

Inevitably, this begins as History. The West pioneered industrialization, then moved up the ladder from making simple things to making more complicated and higher-value things. From this they drew immense wealth. Wealth converts into military power. From the late Eighteenth Century onward, the West both shot ahead of the rest of the world and began to impose its rule on the rest of the world.[2]

Since the Second World War, many countries have wanted to follow the Western path. For most of the imitators it meant beginning where the West had begun, with simple mass-produced goods that the West no longer cared to produce. Textiles, then simple electronics, then motorbikes and automobiles. They were filling global needs without competing head to head with the established economies.

Two countries—South Korea and Taiwan—went farther than making textiles, steel, and ships. Taiwan’s strategy: invest heavily in research and development; build human capital through education and hold that capital in Taiwan; push rapid adaptation to changing markets in the West; encourage new businesses, rather than guard the established giants; and don’t put the hackles up on key Western manufacturers.

One of those start-ups was the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The Taiwanese government chose Morris Chang, an American-educated Taiwanese, to begin creating a semi-conductor industry. They didn’t set him to jumping too far by building an industry to use those chips in things like smartphones. They set him to building the essential component of such devices. He succeeded, but–true to the Taiwanese form—he didn’t rest on his laurels. TSMC kept pushing up the ladder to chips until it became the leading producer of high-end semi-conductors. What it did not do was to branch out into making the devices produced by powerful companies like Apple. Both American and Chinese device manufacturers came to rely on abundant supplies of TSMC chips.

Now TSMC and Taiwan are becoming important “chips” in a different game. The Trump Administration broke with previous American policy by taking seriously the profound Chinese-American rivalry. Tariffs formed one part of its campaign, but so did a campaign to block the expansion outside China of the Huawei Company. The American campaign against Huawei aimed, in part, to block the Chinese company’s access to TSMC chips. The Trump Administration also encouraged TSMC to build a chip plant in the United States.

IF artificial intelligence and high-speed computing are going to be two corner stones of economic power and national prosperity, then high-end chips are an essential interest of both China and the United States. Will the complicated Sino-American relationship on this issue and on so many others be resolved by diplomacy?

[1] Ruchir Sharma, “It All Comes Down to Taiwan,” NYT, 15 December 2020.

[2] David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Innovation and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (1969).

Climate of Fear XXII.

Posted on December 12, 2020 by jsh54

The Paris Climate Accords, which the Obama administration helped negotiate in 2016, contained flaws as well as virtues.[1] The virtues have been sufficiently broadcast, so it is worth looking at two flaws.

First, the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions promised by other countries were purely voluntary. No one except Morocco and Gambia has met their commitments. This lack of enthusiasm about compliance with even voluntary targets provides ammunition to critics of the Accords. If the threat is real, it could be argued, then counties would drive ahead regardless of American participation. If the threat isn’t real, then is the climate crisis being over-hyped? Is the United States being beset by a warming planet or by a combination of ivory tower zealots with rival foreign economies seeking a competitive advantage?[2]

Second, it is not a treaty. It is an executive agreement. Never ratified by the Senate, it never became legally binding on the United States. Furthermore, it could be—and was—abandoned by the United States as soon as a president hostile to the agreement waved good-bye to the moving van that deposited his stuff in the White House. In this sense, the Paris Accords resemble the Versailles Treaty ending the First World War with Germany. Even if the Accords could be converted to a real treaty, it is unlikely that it could get the two-thirds vote needed for ratification. In short, the Democrats need to win more than a simple majority in the Senate to get a legally-binding treaty in place. Even passing the legislation to implement a revived executive agreement could be tricky. This will leave the Biden administration with the same slog through executive orders and rule-writing in which the Obama administration engaged so much energy.

One possible lever on the economy for the Biden administration would be to define climate change as not just an “environmental threat” or as a “national security threat,” but also as a “financial stability threat.” Both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank offer means to impose government policies without new legislation. Both possess robust regulatory powers that can lever corporate policies and investor behavior in new directions.

The Obama-Trump-Biden pattern of rule writing followed by re-writing followed by re-re-writing is dangerous. It turns what should be a predictable framework for decision-making into a quadrennial football. On the one hand, the financial services industry is a vital part of America’s domestic economy and of its international trade. Is it a good idea to build-in systemic uncertainty?

On the other hand, the whole enterprise of governing through rule-writing and executive orders is deeply undemocratic. It further exalts the executive branch; it further diminishes the legislative branch; and it further politicizes the judicial branch.

No matter how much they are loved by their beneficiaries, rapid globalization and the growth of the “administrative state” have not received a unanimous warm welcome. “Brexit” is best understood as a revolt against the European Union. Donald Trump’s election is best understood as a revolt against the dominant policy strand of recent decades. There is no guarantee that the revolt will end if Biden goes back to the same old policies.

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Climate Finance May Foul the Economy,” WSJ, 8 December 2020.

[2] That’s not what I believe (although both things could be true). It may well make sense in coal country or the oil patch or the “Rust Belt.”

The First Draft of History.

Posted on December 6, 2020 by jsh54

Journalism is said to be the “first draft of history. It’s only the first draft because journalists commonly do what most historians would not. Historians try to give a full picture of what happened and why. Their approach is let the evidence talk to them, then build an argument based on as much evidence as possible. They’re not supposed to leave out important facts that get in the way of an argument they want to make. Even the best journalists can do this.[1]

In 2006, House Minority-Leader Nancy Pelosi saw the opportunity to win control of the House of Representatives by steering toward the center. She lined up a bunch of centrist candidates and defined an agenda focused on material concerns weighing on ordinary Americans. The result? The Democrats added 31 seats in the election and Pelosi became Speaker of the House.[2]

When Barak Obama won election as President in 2008 he carried additional Democrats on his coat-tails. Pelosi joined the Senate Democrats and President Obama in passing the Affordable Care Act, legislation on climate-change, and other costly measures desired by the Democratic left.[3]

In the 2010 mid-term elections Democrat suffered heavy losses to Republicans. Pelosi was relegated to House Minority Leader once again.[4]

After grinding her teeth in frustration at not banging the gavel for eight years, Pelosi steered her caucus back toward the center. She recruited moderate candidates like Colin Lamb and Abigail Spanberger, and she talked down the demands for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Result? Democrats regained a clear majority in the House of Representatives and Pelosi got her old job back.[5]

From 2018 through 2020, the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives indulged in a frenzy of Trump-hunting and leftist legislation that could never pass the Senate or be signed by the White House.[6] It only passed President Trump’s renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[7] This was one big thing done in cooperation with the Republican-dominated Senate. Other than that, it’s difficult to think of any significant legislation passed by the Congress in two years.

Strassel concludes that “America remains a center-right country, and there is great political upside for politicians who govern in a center-right fashion.” Was this her starting point?

[1] See Kimberley Strassel, “2020’s Biggest Election Loser’s,” WSJ, 6 November 2020. NB: I have enormous respect for Strassel based on reading her tenacious “I smell a rat” commentary on the Russia investigation.

[2] This was an off-year election, when the party in power normally loses seats in the House.

[3] What this ignores is that Obama had run and won on the issue of universal health-care. This wasn’t Pelosi’s issue. Among the costly bills passed were the not-big-enough stimulus bill to pull the country out of the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, and the bail-out of the auto industry.

[4] What this ignores is the flight from Keynesian economics on the part of both the Republicans and the Democrats after the financial crisis. While this spawned the “Tea Party” faction within the Republican Party, it also caused President Obama to do much less on economic recovery that he might have tried to do. The recovery from the recession dragged on, antagonizing all sorts of people.

[5] What this ignores is that the Great Recession spawned a Democratic “Tea Party” in the form of Bernie Sanders and “The Squad.” Pelosi found herself under the same harassment as had John Boehner, her Republican predecessor.

[6] Endorsing the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, while making a foredoomed effort to impeach the president.

[7] What this leaves out is that the House and Senate also passed the CARES Act on Covid-related economic stimulus.

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