The Middle Kingdom Commission on Higher Education.

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            It can be difficult to conduct normal academic research in contemporary China.  The country is a Communist dictatorship, even more so under Xi Jinping than under his immediate predecessors.  Information is tightly controlled.  The rising tensions with the West, and especially with the United States, make people both suspicious of and suspect from close contact with Westerners. 

            As a result, much of the most insightful work relies upon personal experience or interviews with a few people willing to talk in some depth about their own experiences.[1]  Such personal experience and observation can cast light upon larger institutions.  Thus, two recent books agree that China’s educational system remains as it was in the 1990s: “competitive, repetitive, [and] test-focused,” requiring “intense powers of focus…to succeed.”  The exams begin early in elementary school and continue through high school.  Then there are the exams for college admission.  All the exams open—or close—the paths to success in many areas.  Parents worry that their children will fall by the wayside.  Often, they pay for supplemental instruction, either in-person or on-line to buff up their children’s chances of success.  That makes for long hours of hard work for both parents (to earn the money for the courses) and the children (who grind through the lessons).[2]  Failure traditionally means a life of blue-collar industrial work.  Sewing pants and shirts in a sweat-shop for the American market, for example. 

            Is such a system “good” for Chinese society in general and for the students themselves in particular?  Well, it gives China a lot of highly qualified human capital in whatever areas the government values.  If it is engineers, scientists, and economists, then it serves the needs of a society in the course of economic development.  China’s economic performance over the last half century has been remarkable.  People who perform poorly on the exams provide some of the less-skilled labor to man the factories. 

            It is more of an open question about how well the system fills the needs of the students.  Part of the difficulty in assessment is that most American students don’t work as do elite Chinese students.  So it is natural to respond “Yikes!”  Then, American education isn’t very well attuned to the “needs of society” being more important than the desires of students.  That isn’t the same thing as students not being well attuned.  They generally want good jobs and are alert to signals from the market.  Hence, there are a lot of business majors and nurses in training.  The colleges and universities fall into line in the desperate struggle to stay afloat and avoid being yelled at by parents, donors, and Senators grabbing a sound-bite.  Yet the United States seems to fall behind at producing engineers and scientists, while over-producing lawyers. 

            Education is one area in which Communist Party control remains clear.  There is always the possibility that rigid institutions will generate resentment and resistance.  Keeping the lid on works.  Until the temperature inside rises enough to cause a boiling over. 

[1] See Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, “China’s Education Grind,” WSJ, 13-14 July 2024.  Cunningham reviews Peter Hessler, Other Rivers, and Yuan Yang, Private Revolutions. 

[2] Many recent immigrants from the Far East to the United States, mostly Chinese and Vietnamese, pursue the same strategy in their new country.  The success rate of such Asian-American students in gaining admission to the selective, exam-based elite high schools in New York City has spawned an ugly backlash.  Parent-of-Other-Color complain about the small numbers of Black and Hispanic students who win admission. 

The Rap on Kamala Harris.

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            Critics of Kamala Harris (and they’re not all Republicans) cite the following perceived weaknesses.[1] 

            Regardless of what the Democratic “pezzonovante” think about Harris, voters don’t like her.  When she ran for Attorney General of California, she beat her Republican opponent by less than a percentage point.  All other Democrats in state-wide races won by at least 10 points.  In the 2020 presidential primaries, she flashed briefly, then had to drop out before the first primary.  As Vice President, she hasn’t had an approval rating in the polls above 50 percent since September 2021.  That’s only nine months after she took office.  On 22 July 2024, her approval rating was reported to be 38.3 percent with a positive view of Harris and 51.4 percent with a negative view.  Although she quickly has closed the polling gap between herself and Donald Trump, it’s early days yet.  Moreover, she’s closed the gap between herself and a really obnoxious person.  We’re into “world’s tallest midget” territory. 

            She is believed to be intellectually lazy.  She flunked the California bar exam the first time she took it; 72 percent of first-time test-takers passed.  That smacks of a failure to prepare.  According to the Washington Post, “Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said….that Harris would refuse to wade into her briefing materials…, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared.”  It seems that this pattern continued in the early years (at least) of her vice presidency, because her chief of staff quit over the same issue. 

            She is often inarticulate.  Fox has a field day with her “word salads.”  “We will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica …”  With regard to Covid strategy in the US: “It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.”  Statements like these give credence to the charge of intellectual laziness and unwillingness to prepare.  It’s like she just says the first thing that comes into her mouth. 

            She will not be able to escape association with the Biden presidency.  She can hardly repudiate the former president.  First of all, there is a deep conviction among Democrats that he has been a good and “consequential” president.  The celebration of his presidency runs hand-in-hand with moving him off the stage.  Second, she has never voiced the slightest reservation or dissent regarding the actions of the Biden administration. 

The trouble is that in July 2024, one poll reported that 42 percent of Americans saw themselves as financially worse-off since January 2021 and 17 percent saw themselves as better-off.  Similarly, the movement of so many illegal immigrants from the border states to Democratic cities in the Northeast and Midwest turned the issue into a loser for Democrats.  Biden’s order of June 2024 restricting illegal immigration responded to that change.  However, she was placed in charge of figuring out a policy three years ago; now someone else in the administration finally produces one and it looks a lot like Donald Trump’s policy. 

            The Harris campaign is going to need to address these issues.  Just “prosecuting the case against Donald Trump” may not be enough if the Democratic candidate seems not up to the job.  Biden tried that. 

[1] For a good summary of the criticism, see Bret Stephens, “Democrats Deserved a Contest, Not a Coronation,” NYT, 24 July 2024. 

Learning About Kamala Harris.

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            What is Kamala Harris’s approach to the economy?  She holds a BA in Economics from Howard and her father taught Economics at Stanford.  The basic issues must not be strange to her.  Still, figuring out her own positions requires reading the tea leaves. 

For four years, Harris has followed the Biden administration’s economic policy in “lockstep.”[1]  Any Vice President would do the same.  Former President Biden presided over a period of economic growth, rising employment, and rising real wages.  Harris has supported his calls for higher taxes on corporations and on individuals earning at least $400,000, while cutting them for lower income groups.  In particular, they have called for maintaining many of the 2017 Trump tax cuts as they effect lower incomes while raising taxes on upper incomes. 

Harris is lumbered with the inflation and high interest-rates of recent years.  Consumer prices have risen 19.5 percent since December 2020.  House prices and rents are currently very high.  Harris has blamed the price rises, in part, on corporate profiteering.[2]  

Harris likes tax “credits.”  Senator Harris proposed a sort of universal basic income for lower-income earners.  It would have paid $3,000 a month to individuals and $6,000 for married couples.[3]  It would have operated through a tax credit.  In 2021, the Democrats pushed through a temporary increase in the child tax credit and an earned income tax credit for childless workers.  Those measures soon expired, but Democrats (including Harris) have supported their revival.  Harris also proposed a Rent Relief Act.  It would have provided a tax credit to renters who earn $100,000 or less and who spend a minimum of 30 percent of their income on rent.  Harris opposed the 2017 tax cuts pushed through by the Trump administration; in 2020, while running for president, Harris called for the full repeal of those tax cuts.  In 2019, she said that she would not have voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement.  She did vote against the renegotiated version during the Trump administration. 

            Harris may have little interest in or grasp of national economic policy.  She reportedly made little contribution to either the economic legislation of the early administration nor to the urgent debates over a response to the painful inflation that the legislation helped to ignite.  To the extent that she did engage, it was with the “human interest” perspective on the issues.  “[H]ow certain policies affect workers and families at a personal level…”  Harris vigorously supported child tax credits, as well as other pro-family and child policies.  The latter could not garner enough support among Senate Democrats to be included in legislation.  Harris also pushed hard to expand access to capital provided by banks to small businesses and communities of color. 

            She has argued against medical debt impinging on credit ratings, setting this in parallel to the Biden administrations attempts to cancel student loan debts. 

Harris is much more of a micro-economy person than a macro-economy person.  If Harris becomes president, She’ll need a good Treasury Secretary.  They all do. 

[1] Jon Kamp, Richard Rubin, and Justin Lahart, “Harris’s Past Hints At Economic Policy,” WSJ, 25 July 2024, and Jim Tankersley, Jeanna Smialek, and Ana Swanson, “Harris’s Views on Economics Are Seen as Being Mostly in Line With Current Policy,” NYT, 25 July 2024.. 

[2] Economist NOT on the far-left blame high demand intersecting limited supply. 

[3] So like Social Security for people of working age?  It seems likely that the payments would increase with the passage of time. 

The Woes of China 2.

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            China scares people elsewhere, but not only for the reasons that Zi Jinping desires.[1]  In recent decades, infrastructure projects powered much of China’s economic growth.  Now there is a fear that China’s economy will not escape an avalanche of debt incurred to finance those projects.  As part of its effort to build infrastructure, the government centralized the financing of local development and infrastructure schemes.  Yet the central government wanted cities to take the lead in this effort.  Perhaps the theory was that local people know better than a remote bank what opportunities exist in their communities.  At the same time, the central government had traditionally kept a tight leash on borrowing by cities in the form of borrowing limits.  So, where would the money come from if the cities could not issue many more bonds? 

            The solution came through cities borrowing from state-owned Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs).  The LGFVs may be state-owned, but they keep their own set of books.  These are separate from the central government’s books.  The LGFVs borrowed money from state-owned Chinese banks, then re-lent it to local governments all over the country.  The banks lending the money seem to have believed that the government would never let the cities or the LGVFs default because it would wreak havoc on the country’s financial system. 

The trouble is that those local governments did not always know what kinds of real opportunities existed, or they derived income from selling public lands to developers, or they didn’t care so long as they could keep their locals employed.[2]  In any case, the result appeared in massive over-building relative to real demand.  Since 2022, China’s real estate market has been slipping downward. 

            How much money is involved?  It’s hard to tell for sure.  Economists estimate that it is between $7 trillion and $11 trillion.  (For comparison’s sake, the debt of the Chinese national government is estimated to be $4-5 trillion.)  A big chunk of that debt—around $800 billion–is in the shadow of default.  

            There seems to be a fair amount of mutual back-scratching: many LGFVs guarantee the debts of other LGFVs even when both are heavily indebted; and some park their own assets with other LGFVs when their financial stability is being assessed.[3]  Now central government officials are showing up in localities carrying a lot of debt.  They are demanding to know “What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is going on here?”[4]  There mere presence seems to be paralyzing projects already under way. 

            “Well, let them go bankrupt: serve them right and teach everybody a good lesson,” would say theorists of capitalism.  The thing is that another capitalist slogan holds that “Small debts are a problem for the borrower; big debts are a problem for the lender.”  If the local governments default, then either the government has to step in with a bail-out or the banks have to write-down the loans.  In the latter case, in particular, the result would be a tightening of credit throughout the economy.  That might be hard to contain. 

[1] Brian Spegele and Rebecca Feng, “Trillions in Hidden Debt Threaten China,” WSJ, 15 July 2024. 

[2] One local government official has been arrested and charged with spending the borrowed money on “political vanity projects.” 

[3] See: The Sting (1973) – Paul Newman card trick – YouTube 

[4] Blazing Saddles ( Kansas City Faggots ) (youtube.com) 

Jackson and Jacksonians.

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            Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) served as the seventh President of the United States (1829-1837).  He was, quite possibly, the worst president we’ve ever had.  His hatred of “elites” and desire to please the “common man” in all things led him to destroy the Second Bank of the United States.  This resulted in unregulated and irresponsible lending, massive bank failures leading to the “crisis of ’37,” and a prolonged depression.  He believed the president (well, himself), rather than the Supreme Court, to be the final arbiter of what laws were “constitutional.”  This belief, along with his own deep hostility to non-whites, led him to refuse to enforce the Supreme Court decision overturning the seizure of lands from Indian tribes by Southern states.  This, in turn, led to the “Trail of Tears.”  He appointed his lieutenant in legal matters, Roger B. Taney, to the Supreme Court when John Marshall croaked.  Taney later wrote the Dred Scott Decision.  With Thomas Jefferson, Jackson is regarded as the founder of the Democratic Party and the party annually held a “Jefferson-Jackson Day” fund raising gala.  In recent years, the title of the event has been molting because of the whole unfortunate slave-owners thing.  Not everyone sees Jackson in this light.[1] 

            Going on sixty years ago, the historian Marvin “Bud” Meyers analyzed what he called the “Jacksonian Persuasion.”[2]  Jacksonianism wasn’t an elaborate or formal ideology.  Rather, it was a set of often conflicting beliefs among ordinary people.  The Jacksonians idealized a vision of a society that was slipping away as laissez-faire capitalism advanced.  Change disrupted their lives, often for the worse over the short-run.  It bore a host of costs: not only economic, but also political, social and cultural.  It was full of ethical challenges or divergences from the way things had always been done.  At the same time, many of the Jacksonians embraced the new opportunities.  This created a psychological tension.  They blamed the urban elites—especially bankers and industrialists—for the changes.  The elites were characterized by the “[d]efective morals, habits, and character [that] are nurtured in the trades which seek wealth without labor, employing the stratagems of speculative maneuver, privilege grabbing, and monetary manipulation.”[3]  Eventually, other approaches overtook the Jacksonian Persuasion.  It died. 

            Not dead, just sleeping.  Decades of elite mismanagement have revived Jacksonianism.  Today’s “Jacksonian Persuasion” is anti-elitist, in both politics and the military.  It deeply distrusts big business, especially Big Tech.  They think international organizations are a joke, as is spreading democracy into places where it has not already developed naturally.  But they think that China is a real and great danger and they believe in a strong defense.  More than just having a strong military, the United States should use its power without hesitation when the country is actually threatened.  They like and admire strong leaders pursuing the national interest, even when they don’t fully agree with the policy.  (JMO, but they also like sticking their thumb in the eye of the “elites” just to watch the reaction.)   

            Today, Donald Trump is the leader of the “Jacksonian Persuasion.”[4] 

[1] See Robert V. Remini’s three-volume biography of Jackson (1977-1984), if you’ve got the time.  It is highly esteemed and not just a white-wash. 

[2] Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (1957). 

[3] Meyers, Jacksonian Persuasion, p. 22.

[4] Walter Russell Mead, “America’s Jacksonian Turn,” WSJ, 15 July 2024. 

China and Demography.

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            Beginning in the 1960s, China’s population began to rise sharply.  By the 1970s, China found itself caught in a demographic “scissors”: population was rising faster than the economy was growing.  A growing population collided with a relatively stagnant economy.  Eventually, living standards would be forced down.  Moreover, an extended period of child-care for multiple children restricted China’s ability to mobilize women into the paid-labor force.  In 1980 Deng Xiaoping announced the “One-Child Policy” as part of the solution to this problem.[1]     

            The policy shifted many women into the paid-labor force at a time when China sought to prioritize economic growth.  The share of the population of working age people grew substantially in comparison to the share of the population of non-working age people.  Basically, that means children and retirees.  More labor became available for more years.  Huge numbers of Chinese between the ages of 20 and 64 flooded into the work that became available thanks to China’s opening to the West.  Double-digit economic growth rates followed.  That is, it worked! 

            There seems not to be available a source that tells us what the government decision-makers anticipated would happen over the long-term.  Worrying about what might happen many years down-range from some action taken today can paralyze action. 

            Today is the down-range of the many-days-ago.  What did happen?  The One-Child Policy shifted the age composition of the population.  Now, China’s population has a shrinking number of working-age people.  Women make up half of the working age population.  As a result, China also has a shrinking number of child-bearing age women.  China’s total population will fall.  A United Nations report projects that China’s population will shrink from 1.42 billion in 2024 to 639 million in 2100.[2]  Logically, there will be far fewer workers, anywhere from half as many to 60 percent fewer.  Thus, demographers anticipate that the most serious effects of this shift will not be felt for another 20 to 30 years. 

            Nor will they be felt in equal measure by other important countries.  For example, in terms of total population, in 2024 it is estimated that there are 1.42 billion Chinese and 344 million Americans; by 2100 there will be 639 million Chinese and 321 million Americans.  That is, China will go from having four times as many people as the United States to having twice as many.  The U.N. estimates that 31 percent of Chinese will be aged 65 or older by 2050; and 46 percent by 2100.  In contrast, the share of over-65s in the American population will by only 23 percent in 2050 and 28 percent in 2100.  That means that in 2100 China could have 345 million people under the age of 65, while the United States could have 248 million. 

            Zi Jinping appears to harbor grand ambitions for China.  China looks like it will have fewer workers, fewer consumers, fewer scientists, fewer engineers, and fewer soldiers.  The human basis of those great ambitions will slowly erode. 

            Will this foster a sense of desperation among Chinese leaders, either Zi in the immediate future or his successors in the later 21st Century?  There are ways to adapt to changing conditions.  You just have to be willing to do it. 

[1] Liyan Qi and Ming Li, “China Pays Price for Its One-Child Policy,” WSJ, 12 July 2024. 

[2] However, in 2022, the same U.N. office predicted China’s population would fall to 766.7 million people by 2100.  That’s a 128 million-person difference.  Another projection says that China will have 525 million people by 2100.  It’s not that the demographers are incompetent.  It’s just that getting reliable information out of China can be tricky. 

Great Power Conflict in the Far East.

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            Ah, the 1990s!  The Soviet Union collapsed; its Eastern European subject states escaped from Communism; the Peoples’ Republic of China got religion in the form of a transition to capitalism (if not democracy); and all sorts of places junked much of the state-centered economic system that they had established during the Cold War.  Thereafter, China became increasingly tightly bound to the West.  It imported capital, technology, and “know-how” in exchange for cheap manufactured goods.  Meanwhile, the old Soviet Union came apart like a leper in a hot tub, while Russia itself plunged into corruption and economic chaos.  The United States employed its victory to push forward the boundaries of the “one right way”: free markets, an open world economy, democracy, human rights, and cultural freedom. 

            What a difference thirty years makes.  First, the economic component (labelled “globalization”) is under attack and in retreat.  Second, the political component (democratization, human rights) has not developed at the pace expected by many people.  (The unfulfilled promise of the economic and political components explains much about the flood of migrants from authoritarian developing countries into democratic developed countries.)  Third, the post-Cold War American-dominated world politico-economic system is under attack.[1] 

            At the heart of the matter lies China.  Zi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” initiative envisions building strong bonds, at the least, with surrounding countries.[2]  On the one hand, it means a focus on Central Asia.  On the other hand, it means domination of the little countries around the South China Sea.  Eventually, it may mean entirely driving the United States out of the Far East.  In the meantime, Russia’s war against Ukraine and Iran’s disruption of the Middle East pre-occupy the United States. 

            Vladimir Putin has been pursuing the resurrection of Russian power for two decades.  To this end he has used political manipulation, the fostering a Eurasian economic community among former members of the Soviet Union, the disruption of American policies in the Middle East, and war.  He has sought to escape isolation by tightening Russia’s relations with China, North Korea, and Iran.[3] 

            All through the Cold War, India was “neutral” on the side of the Soviet Union and at odds with China.  The Sino-Soviet conflict worked to India’s advantage.  Then the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s post-Mao economic and military transformation left India adrift.  Now, the working alliance between China and Russia leaves India in a more awkward position. 

            Real conflicts still divide China and Russia.  Putin’s desire to reunite the old Soviet Union (or recreate the Tsarist Empire) run cross-wise to Zi’s ambitions in Central Asia.  Putin’s recent tightening of relations with North Korea intrudes on an area of Chinese interest.  Putin’s recent visit to Vietnam may have vexed Zi because Vietnam is one of those nations around the South China Sea that China hopes to dominate. 

            No one should expect these conflicts to disrupt cooperation between China and Russia in the near term.  First they have to topple the Americans. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Asia’s New ‘Game of Thrones’,” WSJ, 9 July 2024. 

[2] See: Belt and Road Initiative – Wikipedia; or Jane Perlez and Yufan Huang, “Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order,” NYT, 13 May 2017. 

[3] All of which serve as “enablers” of his war against Ukraine. 

Trump-secutions.

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“Lawfare” is a slippery term for a slippery subject.  One definition is: “the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual’s usage of their legal rights.”[1]  The goal of “lawfare” is to delegitimize an opponent in the court of public opinion, or to bleed their economic resources. 

At the heart of the investigations and prosecutions of former President Donald Trump lie three problems.[2]  First, Donald Trump faced a legal onslaught during his time as President.  He survived a protracted investigation of alleged “collusion with Russia” that turned up little but evidence of misbehavior by his political opponents.[3]  He underwent a prolonged parallel investigation by the House Intelligence Committee; Then he survived not one, but two self-inflicted impeachments.  In the case of the impeachments, he escaped in large measure thanks to party solidarity holding, regardless of the merits of either case.  Then Congress’s “January 6 Committee” elicited voluminous testimony on Trump’s attempts to overturn the election of 2020, culminating in the riot at the Capitol building.[4]  The varied presidential investigations and trials were all undertaken by his enemies.[5]  “Teflon Don” beat the rap each time.  He seemed primed to walk off into the sunset unscathed.  All of this enraged many Democrats. 

Second, there came the post-presidential legal prosecutions.  All were all undertaken by Democrats.  In the majority of cases, these were highly partisan Democrats elected in wildly anti-Trump districts, sometimes after pledging to prosecute Trump for something.[6]  As a result, the prosecutions can be portrayed as “lawfare,” rather than the pursuit of justice.[7]  In the case of delegitimization, Biden election ads on television constantly hit Trump as a “convicted felon.”  In the case of exhausting resources, Trump has used money donated to his campaign to pay for the legal expenses.  By June 2024, the meter had hit $80 million.[8] 

Third, the cases have not under-cut Trump’s popularity with a large segment of voters.[9]  Nor will conviction prevent him from serving a second term as President.[10]  Perhaps seeing those cases as “lawfare,” many voters shrug off the claims.[11]  On the one hand, almost continuously from 1 March to 10 July 2024, Trump has maintained a narrow lead in polls over President Biden.[12]  His share has never fallen below 40 percent in that period.  On the other hand, Trump’s conviction by Alvin Bragg met an immediate answer from pro-Trump small-donors: $34.8 million in a single day.  A further $111.8 million flowed in during June 2024.  None of the donors seem to object to their money being diverted to paying Trump’s legal bills.  Perhaps they see it as all part of the same campaign? 

Finally, there are the unexpected consequences.  In August 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained an indictment of Donald Trump for four crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.  In October 2023, Trump’s lawyers claimed that the indictments should be dismissed on grounds of presidential immunity.  In December 2023 the presiding judge rejected the claims by Trump’s lawyers.  Trump announced that he would appeal.  Jack Smith, determined to keep the case moving forward with dispatch, asked the Supreme Court for an expedited decision on the limits of presidential immunity.   The Supreme Court turned him down flat.  The appeals court then rejected the claim of immunity.  Trump announced that he would appeal and asked that the case be paused until after the election of November 2024.  Jack Smith again stomped on the gas by asking the Supreme Court to hear the case right away.  This time he got what he wanted.  The Supreme Court issued its decision on 1 July 2024.[13] 

            That decision greatly extended the previous view of presidential immunity to all official acts within the President’s core areas of responsibility—those not shared with another branch of government.  So, to paraphrase one of the earlier judges, Joe Biden could order SEAL Team 6 to kill Donald Trump, then would have to be impeached before he could be tried.  Would he be convicted? 

[1] See: Lawfare – Wikipedia  This is different from “Lawfare,” the website.  See: Lawfare (website) – Wikipedia 

[2] Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman, “Trump Prosecutions Have Been Political Gift,” WSJ, 6-7 July 2024. 

[3] Well, they nailed Paul Manafort and Rick Gates for financial misdeeds related to Ukraine long before they became associated with the Trump campaign; they got George Papadopoulos for making false statements to the FBI; they got General Michael Flynn (ret.) for making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during his brief tenure as National Security Adviser.  See: Inspector General, Department of Justice, A Review of Various Actions by the FBI and DOJ in Advance of the Elections of 2016 (2018);  The Mueller Report: Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the Presidential Election of 2016 (2019); Inspector General, Department of Justice, A Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation (2019); Report of Special Counsel John Durham, Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns (justice.gov) (2023). 

[4] The January 6 Report: Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (2022). 

[5] In the case of the 6 January Committee, the nominations of two Republican Trump-supporters to the committee were rejected by the Speaker of the House, while two anti-Trump Republicans were accepted and three of the Democratic managers from Trump’s impeachments were also included. 

[6] Letitia James, during her campaign for the New York Attorney General’s Office in 2018, promised to prosecute Donald Trump, whom she described as an “illegitimate president” and she won; in January 2022, she filed a fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization for overstating the value of assets in loan applications.  In 2021, Alvin Bragg won election as District Attorney for New York County (Manhattan).  “A key issue in the election was which candidate would be best equipped to criminally prosecute or civilly sue former President Donald Trump.” 2021 New York County District Attorney election – Wikipedia.  Bragg won conviction using a “novel” legal theory.  Trump won 12 percent of the vote in the county in 2020.  Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis has charged Trump and a host of others under Georgia’s RICO law for election fraud.  Biden won 72 percent of the vote in Fulton county in 2020, Trump won 26 percent.  Willis’s case has been delayed—and may be completely derailed–by the intrusion of what seem to be irrelevant issues.  Jack Smith acting for the Department of Justice, has charged Trump with election interference in Washington, DC, and with unlawfully retaining secret government documents in Florida. 

[7] See: “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1974).  Actually, don’t see it.  Awful movie. 

[8] How are Trump’s legal bills and the 2024 campaigns being funded? There’s a lot we don’t know | CNN Politics 

[9] Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal has long argued that the federal prosecutions, at least, were intended to rally support for Trump at the expense of other Republicans.  Trump, he thinks, is the only Republican that Joe Biden can beat.  For the latest installment in this argument, see Holman Jenkins, “Team Biden’s Cynical Gambit,” WSJ, 10 July 2024.  However, Trump led in the primaries from first to last.  

[10] Although, who knows?  We might see journalists stuck reporting from the “Florence, Colorado, White House.”  There are half a dozen restaurants in the town of 3,500 people.  THE 10 BEST Restaurants in Florence (Updated July 2024) (tripadvisor.com) 

[11] A WSJ poll found respondents almost equally split between those who believed that Trump’s conviction showed that the system works to hold people accountable (47 percent) and those who believed that the courts respond to political pressure (49 percent).  This matches pretty well with support for the two men in polls. 

[12] Trump’s conviction was followed by a decline in his lead over Biden from 1.7 percent on 30 May to Biden being ahead by 0.2 percent on 25 June 2024.  Then came the first presidential debate.  Over the following two weeks, Trump went from 0.2 percent down to 2.1 percent up.  National : President: general election : 2024 Polls | FiveThirtyEight 

[13] Trump v. United States (2024) – Wikipedia 

Never Mind the Politics.

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Never mind the politics that dominate in the media coverage of President Joe Biden. Never mind “Can he still beat Donald Trump?” Never mind “If he does win, can he hold it together–even stay alive–through a second term?” Never mind “If Biden does go, how do we get in a possible winner as nominee?” Never mind the “But he’s got the delegates locked up, and he’s determined to run, and we’re mostly old ourselves, so we might have to retire, so there’s no solution to the problem.” Never mind that, among the Democrats, the knives are out and scores are being settled through leaks and blaming. Never mind the Republicans chortling “told ya so.” Never mind any of it. Focus on the essentials.

Many Americans watched as much as they could stand of the first debate against Trump. Many Americans watched the “extended” (22 minutes) interview with George Stephanopoulos. The latter did nothing to repair the damage done by the former. He has “good” days and “bad” days. All of those days run between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM. Before or after that, he isn’t reliably present. He’s best when reading a prepared statement from a teleprompter. Sometimes he makes do by reading public statements from 3×5 cards or having his staff point out where everybody else is in the binder of documents. His staff tries to shield him from extended exchanges with reporters and donors.

Foreign leaders saw what Americans saw. Some of those leaders are “friendly.” It must give them pause to think of the “leader of the Free World” in such a decrepit state. Some of those leaders are “enemies.” (Again, never mind the “challenging the rules-based international order” stuff. They are enemies out to bring us down.)

China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all threaten different interests of the United States. If they believe that the United States will be slow to respond to a threat or action, if they think that delay and uncertainty will let them get a bite at the apple, then they will do what their rulers deem to be in the best interests of their regimes. They don’t have to coordinate a plan beforehand. They just need to be agile and ready to pounce. They will see our weakness and harm us, perhaps destroy us.

If you need an example, look at Benjamin Netanyahu. President Biden flew to Israel to offer solid American support after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. Netanyahu is nothing if not predatory and a sharp observer of the people with whom he has to deal. He surely read Biden like an open book. Since then, he has continually defied Biden over the war in Gaza. Part of that reflects American domestic politics during an election year. Part of it reflects Netanyahu’s judgment that Biden will be uncertain, wavering, and just a bunch of talk in his response to Israel’s actions.

The evident already-occurred mental and physical decline of President Joe Biden represents a grave threat to the national security of the United States. It will only worsen in time.

Crisis and Succession.

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Logically, if Joe Biden is cognitively unfit to serve as President six months from now, then it is because he is cognitively unfit to serve as President right now.[1]  The objection to removing him from President right now appears to be that he is a nice man and it would hurt his feelings.  So, the best that we are going to get is a pained, but dignified announcement that he will not seek re-election and that he releases his delegates for the convention in August 2024. 

            Vice President Kamala Harris is often mentioned as Biden’s logical successor.  How will Harris fare if she seeks a term as President in her own right? 

Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley, then won a term in his own right. 

Calvin Coolidge succeeded Warren G. Harding, then won a term in his own right. 

Harry Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, then won a term in his own right. 

Richard Nixon followed Dwight Eisenhower, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy, then won a term in his own right. 

Hubert Humphrey followed Lyndon Johnson, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

George H. W. Bush followed Reagan and won a term in his own right. 

Al Gore followed Bill Clinton, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

Thus, between 1900 and 1964, four of five former Vice Presidents won the presidency in their own right.  So, the odds are good? 

Not necessarily.  Since 1964, one of four former Vice Presidents won in their attempt to win election as President in their own right.[2]  Why the change?  I don’t know. 

Those odds argue against any coronation of Vice President Harris as the Democratic nominee in 2024.  In turn, holding a truly open convention would allow a bunch of aspiring politicians to duke it out in smoke-filled[3] back rooms.  This might not produce a winner, but neither will Biden or—by the odds—Harris. 

However, past performance is no guarantee of future results.  Harris supporters can point to George H.W. Bush as a counter-example.[4]  It could happen. 

[1] Look up Woodrow Wilson and Edith Galt Wilson.  Or Winston Churchill’s second time as prime minister. 

[2] I omit Joe Biden because he did not try for election as President until after a full term out of office.  Others may well disagree with my decision.  That’s what makes horse races. 

[3] Yes, I do know that no one smokes any more.  I’m just having a hard time coming up with “la juste mot.”

[4] They may have to put up with some eye-rolling from their audience in response.