No Grace Period

No Time for a Honeymoon———————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                It was a nice, peaceful inauguration, something America badly needed. Former president Donald Trump didn’t attend, breaking a longstanding tradition, but I doubt that too many of those who did attend missed him. The nightmare has ended but the memory lingers on. President Joe Biden faces significant challenges and he deserves a grace period to get settled in but there really isn’t time for that. So, true to his promise, he set to work on day 1, issuing over a dozen executive actions including: creating a Covid-19 coordinator position, cancelling Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, implementing a 100-day mask mandate on federal property and interstate public transportation, rejoining the Paris climate accords and revoking a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

                Coordinating the response to the Covid-19 pandemic would appear to be his number one domestic priority. Vaccines were developed in record time but getting people vaccinated has been dreadfully slow, resulting in avoidable pain, suffering, anxiety and death, especially among the elderly who are most at risk and account for most of the deaths attributed to the disease. State-by-state performance in managing the challenging logistics involving in getting almost everyone vaccinated with a perishable vaccine with unpredictable shipping data varied from barely adequate to mostly awful.

                Here in the nation’s most populous state, currently the epicenter of the pandemic in America, it seemed to take forever just to get even front line medical personnel vaccinated. Available doses were not getting into enough arms fast enough to avoid wastage. Then, just before the MLK holiday weekend, a decision was made to allow vaccinations to be given to anyone over 65 and anyone else with an underlying condition, including, incredibly, smokers. This is, obviously, a huge segment of the population and would quickly have resulted in long waiting lines, rapidly depleted supplies, frustrated people whose appointments were cancelled, often after waiting in line in vain, overextended websites malfunctioning and hotlines ringing unanswered. County vaccination centers were then told to vaccinate group 1b tier 1 (persons over 75) before persons over 65, but the online application process for many still took hours and many of the elderly didn’t have access to a computer. The Coronado vaccination site at the city’s community center was difficult for disabled persons to access because of adjacent pipe-laying operations involving heavy equipment. One site in Imperial Beach showed a wrong address on the website. To make matters worse, all the county vaccination sites were closed for the holiday weekend. What sense did that make during the worst medical crisis in a century?

                These were not problems of Mr. Biden’s making but he now owns the rollout problem and if a national Covid-19 coordinator can help get more Americans vaccinated and keep them out of overextended hospitals, by all means give him or her all the resources and authority necessary to get things done. The number one domestic priority is getting the pandemic under control. Domestic priority number two should be getting businesses open again, Americans back to work and economic growth back to pre-pandemic levels. Some of Mr. Biden’s executive actions on day 1 will not be helpful in this regard, among them, the decision to rejoin the Paris accords, revoking many of Mr. Trump’s actions in removing climate-related restrictions on business and revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit.

                The Keystone pipeline would carry crude from the oil sands of Canada’s Alberta Province south across the border to Nebraska, on the way to American refineries and maritime terminals on the Gulf Coast. It was already expected that Biden would take this action if he won election, in deference to the left wing of his party, which will demand this and much more to try to prevent the extraction of carbon-based fuels from the ground. But the Canadians had hoped to change his mind by promising to use all- green energy in the construction and operation of the pipeline, U.S. steel for the pipe, and employ 10,000 U.S union workers. But Mr. Biden, with a virtue-signaling stroke of the pen, cost the nation thousands of good-paying jobs and stuck a finger in the eye of our closest friend, neighbor, ally and leading trading partner, while signaling to the rest of the world that a deal with America is often only good until the next election.

                This comes on the heels of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s order to shut, by May 12, the Great Lakes Pipeline 5 which runs from Superior, Wisconsin, across Michigan to the Lake Huron port of Sarna, Ontario. This 645-mile pipeline carries much of the oil used for the production of gasoline, jet fuel and heating oil for the Canadian residents of the border regions where most of Canada’s population lives. It will raise prices for these products dramatically. With friends like the U.S., who needs enemies? Mr. Biden telephoned Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau after Mr. Trudeau expressed his disappointment with the decision. The White House Press Corps might consider asking Mr. Biden, “What did you say to Prime Minister Trudeau when he asked ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ instead of the usual softball questions they will continue to feed to him.

                These actions to satisfy the climate fanatics in his party, who are convinced that only they have access to the facts and to “the science”, will cost many American and Canadian jobs, harm both economies, raise the price of petroleum products and possibly sour relations between our two nations which share a common border that, while the longest in the world, is essentially invisible. But it will do absolutely nothing measurable to prevent global warming or climate change or even to keep crude oil in the ground. One way or another, crude will get to refineries and maritime terminals and eventually to markets that need it and are a long way from being able to rely exclusively on renewable energy. And it will travel, if not safely by pipeline, then by truck, train, barge or ship, greatly increasing the risk of spillage, highway congestion, catastrophic accidents, pollution and product cost, which of course, will be passed on to consumers. But the climate warriors will feel very virtuous.

January24, 2021

Changing of the Guard

Change of Command————————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                Today marks the end of the turbulent Trump presidency. Let us rejoice and be glad. As President Joe Biden starts his term, let all of us, regardless of political persuasion, rally around our new leader and wish him good health and success in guiding the ship of state. Having been privileged to serve as a commanding officer four times in my naval career, I’ve always been impressed at the amount of good will a new captain inherits from the crew as he or she assumes command. They want their captain to succeed because life is usually much better onboard when he does and can be miserable when he doesn’t. Republicans won’t always agree with him, but they should conduct themselves as the loyal opposition and not the enemy.

                Mr. Biden has promised to be president to all Americans including the many who didn’t vote for him and to work toward restoring unity. That won’t be easy because we are much divided. Unfortunately, unity, to many at each extreme of the political spectrum, means that everyone must always agree with me and refrain from promoting a different view. It means that my view is the correct one and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and I am justified in demonizing and even silencing them. Seeking common ground today is difficult because, on many polarizing issues, there just doesn’t seem to be any. But that shouldn’t preclude efforts to compromise which means, inevitably, that each side must yield some ground. Biden has been in politics long enough to know how that works.

                Donald Trump has left, hopefully never to run for office again. But his followers remain and so does the movement he inspired. Seventy-four million votes were cast for him, the second-highest total ever compiled by a presidential candidate. It would be naive to think that they will just fade away, especially when so many believe that the election was stolen, just as so many Democrats believe that Trump’s 2016 victory was not legitimate. Rightly or wrongly, many Americans have doubts about the integrity of our elections and will not be persuaded otherwise until reforms are enacted by some state legislatures to avoid some of the issues that resulted during this election including eleventh-hour changes to procedures and timelines and prolonged vote counting beyond election day.

                President Biden has said that now is a time for healing. That sentiment would have been more reassuring had he advised against impeaching a lame duck president in his final week in office. Healing will not be facilitated by continued attempts to punish a former president and seek revenge against his supporters and those who served in his administration. That’s what happens in banana republics. It will prolong bitterness and division, create martyrs and will distract from the Biden agenda. Winning elections, as Mr. Biden did, is enough revenge. True healing will also be facilitated by governing as the moderate that most Americans identify as.   

                An impeachment trial in the Senate could drag on for weeks, dominating the news and tying up the Senate in the early days of the Biden Administration when he should be focusing on real problems and getting off to the running start he needs to deal with issues that cannot wait. But Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just can’t seem to stop themselves from keeping Trump and his followers in the news. It might come as a surprise to them, but that’s probably what he craves and it energizes his followers. The 116^th Congress was preoccupied with removing Trump from office and it accomplished little else besides making history by impeaching a president twice.

                As I’ve said before, Mr. Biden’s first priority must be getting Americans vaccinated for Covid-19 and back to work. Operation Warp Speed brought us vaccinations in record time but the logistics of getting the vaccines into people’s arms was left largely to the states with the usual mixed, mostly unimpressive, results. China recovered from the pandemic which started there much faster that we did and we have some catching up to do. There will be much pressure on the president to focus on domestic priorities but foreign affairs need at least equal attention. 2020 was a horrible year, punctuated by riots and unrest on top of a pandemic and 2021 has not started out much better. Riots and assaults on police for any reason or in the name of any cause need to stop and that will require zero tolerance for aggressive and belligerent demonstrators who try to incite violence. A common sentiment heard during the disgraceful assault on the Capitol building and Congress by Trump supporters was “This is not who we are.” Really? You could have fooled me. It seems, increasingly, to be at least part of what we’re becoming. Demonstrations that become confrontational incite riots. They are a national embarrassment and provide fuel for the likes of Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin who tell their people that this is exactly who we are: undisciplined, divided and disrespectful of authority while they extol the supposed virtues of their communist systems where demonstrations against authority or criticism of the party is, to put it mildly, strongly discouraged.

                  Our adversaries rejoice in the fact that Americans are divided which makes us weaker and vulnerable to foreign provocation. As Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The changing of administrations is always a time of heightened security concerns, none greater than this troubled transition. Biden will be tested early by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. China represents by far the gravest international threat and It is imperative that he display resolve in the face of any provocations such as cyber warfare, any further threats to freedom of navigation or outrageous claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea or any international waters, or attempts to dictate to us what our policy toward Taiwan must be. That resolve must not be limited to toothless rhetoric but must be backed by visible strength, increased naval presence in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans and strengthened military and trade alliances with Japan, Australia, India and other friendly Indo-Pacific powers.

January 20, 2021

A Few Priorities for 2021

Some National Priorities for the New Year—————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                Let’s start the year off on the right foot by wishing the new president and his administration success in dealing with the many challenges we face as a nation. It behooves us all that he succeeds because his success is our nation’s success. No one who really cares for the future of our country will benefit, at least for long, from a failed presidency. There will, of course, be inevitable policy disagreements but I would urge my Republican friends to put aside the bitterness of the past, including Democrat attempts to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and accept these election results, seeking common ground with our Democratic friends. There is still more that unites us than divides us. My hope is that the Biden Administration will govern from the moderate center and I believe that this also is the wish of a majority of voters, just as it was following Bill Clinton’s 1992 election victory. Mr. Clinton failed to recognize this until it cost his party both houses of congress in 1994. His subsequent shift to the center won him easy reelection in 1996.

                President-elect Joe Biden will need a running start because time and the world won’t stand still while we change leaders and staffs. There is no grace period while they settle in. Mr. Biden faces immediate challenges which he will own regardless of the fact that he inherited them. Domestically, the federal government must take whatever steps are necessary, including using the military, to ensure the availability and efficient distribution and use of the Covid-19 vaccines in order to get this pandemic under control and people back to work. Operation Warp Speed was brilliant but the vaccines aren’t getting into enough arms. Leaving it up to the individual states to figure out how to do it doesn’t appear to be working.

                There will be a continued need for financial relief for businesses to reduce the number of business failures and the loss of jobs caused by the shutdown orders. This will add, of course, to the spiraling national debt already at dangerous levels. The public needs to be disabused of the increasingly popular notion that the federal debt doesn’t really matter anymore. It does and just printing more money to service it can eventually lead to a worthless dollar. The only way this level of debt can be sustained is through continued, robust economic expansion.

                We need to move toward a more colorblind society. Identity politics and over-emphasis on inclusion and racial diversity will further divide, not unite, Americans. Martin Luther King yearned for a world where people are judged by their character, not by the color of their skin. It is insulting and patronizing to insist that some minorities will always need affirmative action and victim status in order to compete and to suggest that any success they achieve is not a result of their own effort and ability. Racial diversity should be a characteristic of a colorblind society, not a goal in itself or an excuse for racial quotas.

                Eliminating remaining traces of racial injustice must remain a priority, but riots, arson, looting, violence and demonizing law enforcement weaken support for racial justice, make matters demonstrably worse and must cease. Plummeting morale and retention among police departments, many of them headed by black police chiefs in cities run by black mayors, has contributed, predictably, to rapidly increasing crime rates. Murders in the ten largest metropolitan areas in the country are up nearly 40% from last year. In Chicago, the rate is 55%. Nearly half go unsolved. Minority neighborhoods are the most impacted. Increasing crime is cited as one reason why some large cities are seeing declining populations.

                While changing administrations always bring some change, governments function best when there is some continuity, especially in foreign policy. Both allies and rivals will be sizing up the Biden Administration to determine how any change in U.S. foreign policy will affect them. We need to avoid drastic changes which raise uncertainty regarding how we stand on defending our vital interests and supporting our allies. We need to speak with one voice on issues like freedom of navigation, the future of Taiwan, support of NATO and relations with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. With respect to Taiwan in particular, the People’s Republic of China needs to know what actions taken by them against Taiwan would be unacceptable to the U.S. and what that might mean. The Japanese government has already reportedly requested clarification on our position on this issue which can only be described as vague.

                Thanks to negotiations headed by Jared Kushner, Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in recognizing Israel which has done more to stabilize relations in the Middle East and serve as a counterbalance to Iran than the efforts of any previous U.S. administration. These efforts should continue and Biden should not pursue his promised efforts to rejoin the flawed nuclear agreement with Iran or relax sanctions.

                Finally, we are a maritime nation with global vital interests which require a global presence. In spite of increased defense expenditures by the Trump Administration, our naval forces are still insufficient in numbers of fully-capable and deployable ships to meet all our commitments without extended deployments. Our navy needs to be sized, not by comparing it to the size of potential adversaries, but by determining what we need to meet our commitments. This means more ships and because of the lengthy timelines required to procure them, additional funding and shipbuilding capability is needed now. 

                This is a partial list, of course. More to follow.

January 10, 2021

Chaos at the Capitol

Day of Infamy————————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                Donald Trump was a ticking time bomb from the start. On Jan. 6, 2021, just two weeks before the end of his rapidly deteriorating presidency, it finally detonated when he incited thousands of his frenzied followers at a Washington rally to march on the Capitol building where Congress was in session for the routine tradition of counting the state-certified electoral votes proclaiming President-elect Joe Biden the winner. The resulting riot, as mobs invaded the Capitol building, made for one of the darkest days in America’s history, endangering the people’s elected representatives, forcing the evacuation of the Vice-president, causing the death of four persons, shaking the nation to its very core, inflicting serious damage on the Republican Party and destroying his own legacy.

                As members of Congress were herded to shelter while rioters broke into their chamber and offices, Utah’s Sen. Mitt Romney was heard to call out, ”This is what you’ve gotten, guys!” He was so right and I was reminded of why I voted for him in 2012 when he ran for president and wrote in his name in 2016 when I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Trump or Hilary Clinton and why I wrote in this space and elsewhere during the GOP nomination campaign in 2016 that it was “Time to Dump Trump” because of his belligerent and insulting behavior toward anyone who disagreed with him, his lack of experience in government and his inability to construct a sentence or complete a thought. I also referred to him as a buffoon with the communications skills of a high school sophomore which, in retrospect, turned out to be an unintended insult to high school sophmores.

                There are a dozen or more traits that characterize a transformational leader but four strike me as essential for success. They must be competent decision makers, able to weigh the merits of various alternatives. They must have mature ethical judgment, able to distinguish right from wrong and truth from fiction. They must have excellent communications skills and, finally, they must, by their behavior and manner, inspire and model confidence and trust. Mr. Trump is deficient in all four but especially the latter three. While I defended the legitimacy of his election, opposed efforts to delegitimize his election and applauded many of his accomplishments and promises kept, I always felt that it was a mistake to have nominated him.

                Mr. Trump is entirely responsible for his own undoing and for the harm he has inflicted on his party, the nation and his legacy which overshadows all that he has accomplished. His attempts to intimidate elected officials in Georgia to overturn election results and “find” 11,800 votes amounted to criminal behavior. So did his attempt to bully Vice-president Mike Pence, also an elected official with responsibilities under the Constitution, into invalidating Mr. Biden’s electoral college victory. Finally, his inciting a crowd of supporters into becoming a mob that invaded the Capitol building amounted to sedition. Many of those supporters had been led to believe that the Vice-president, presiding over Congress, could actually overturn state-certified election results. What astonishing ignorance. What a sad commentary on the state of education in the nation.

                This conduct by the president and by those who invaded the Capitol building cannot go unpunished nor should a president who abused his power be permitted to retire gracefully from office. There isn’t time to impeach him but his entire cabinet should resign if he refuses to do so, letting Mr. Pence, who did not give in to the president’s pressure, finish out the few remaining days of Trump’s disgraced presidency. Since Trump refuses to concede, he remains an unpredictable and dangerous commander-in-chief.

                As Trump continued his outlandish campaign to overturn the election results, Georgia held its runoff election for its two senate seats that would determine control of the Senate. I urged, again in this space, that Mr. Trump could best serve his party by refraining from doing or saying anything that could harm the chances of the two GOP candidates and that perhaps he should just stay out of Georgia and leave the campaigning to prominent southern GOP officeholders who were more knowledgeable regarding Georgia politics. Instead he insulted and threatened Georgia’s governor and secretary of state, falsely claiming that he actually won in Georgia and that the election was stolen from him.

                Both GOP candidates subsequently lost and, with their defeat, Republican control of the Senate was also lost. It was Trump’s final gift to the party that made the grave mistake of nominating a TV personality and real estate mogul with poor judgment, an inflated ego, primitive communication skills, no self-control, no experience in government and, apparently, no conscience.

January 7, 2021

A Better Year Ahead

The New Year Will Be Better——————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                It started on a high note, but then became discordant and ended on a somber one. 2020 began with the economy in high gear and unemployment at an all-time low, including for minorities. There was wage growth and, in fact, more jobs than qualified American applicants, and almost anyone who really wanted a job could find one. Although President Donald Trump could claim credit for keeping most of his campaign promises, including tax reform and the end of scores of job-killing restrictions on businesses and industry, Americans were sharply divided in their opinion of his presidency. Yet in spite of the polarization, optimism regarding the future seemed prevalent.

                Then, in March, our lives changed. Initial reports of the strange, new virus from China were met at first with assurances that it posed no great threat to Americans. But China’s lack of candor in reporting on the outbreak in Wuhan and failure to control the travel of those exposed resulted in a global pandemic. We were urged to listen to the experts in dealing with Covid-19 but the experts didn’t always agree and their advice was often inconsistent. First, masks were not recommended except for hospital workers and could provide a false sense of protection. Then they were absolutely required to stop or slow the spread of the disease. We were warned that vaccines could be years away. The pandemic was, of course, no fault of the president, but, as the nation’s chief executive, he owned the crisis, just as President-elect Joe Biden will own it after Jan.20^th, during what will probably be its final, deadly phase before enough people are vaccinated.

                The tragic death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis policeman focused public outrage on instances of police brutality and prompted mostly peaceful street demonstrations calling for reforms to the use of force by police. But many of the demonstrations turned violent resulting in rioting, arson and looting and a few even resulted in the occupation of public property. There were calls to defund police departments and violent crime subsequently increased in many cities. The violence and unrealistic demands to defund police detracted greatly from the effectiveness of the Black Lives Matter movement.

                Trump-hating Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, continued a relentless campaign to remove a duly-elected president from office, with the House impeaching him in August without a single Republican vote even though they knew full well he would be acquitted in the GOP-controlled Senate. Rancor and bitterness continued to characterize American politics making bi-partisan legislation in Washington all but impossible except for the initial $2 trillion CARES Covid-19 relief package. Opinion was sharply divided over, among other things, whether the federal government or the states should lead in dealing with the pandemic.

                After the initial spring surge in cases stressed medical capacity in some states, the summer brought some relief only to have infections surge again in the fall and especially after the Thanksgiving holiday. Still, thanks to the administration’s Operation Warp Speed and the incredible work of the pharmaceutical research community, vaccines were developed, tested, manufactured and approved and started to become available at year’s end.

                Even with a pandemic raging, much of the energy and attention of the political class was focused on the Democrat nomination process and the national election. With presidential elections every four years, about one-quarter, more or less, of an incumbent’s first term is focused on campaigning for re-election. Mr. Biden’s primary victory brought a measure of relief to those who feared the ascendency of the radical left wing of the party.

                Regardless of impressive achievements including his third appointment of a conservative associate justice to the Supreme Court, a resurgent economy in spite of the pandemic, U.S.-brokered peace initiatives in the Middle East which had eluded past administrations, and no new wars, Mr. Trump continued to be his own worst enemy because of his ill-considered habit of tweeting about everything and everyone who displeased him plus his revolving-door style of staffing his administration.

                He subsequently lost an election that he might have won if only he had made an effort to act and speak more like the president of the world’s most powerful nation and leader of the free world. Even so, the election was close enough that he still might have won if at least one of two things had happened before, instead of after, the election, to wit: the availability of the first vaccines and/or the announcement by the Department of Justice that Hunter Biden was the subject of a federal investigation.         

                The election itself was a mess. Although claims of fraud were never substantiated by hard evidence, many differences among the states regarding the rules, timelines and authentication procedures and last-minute changes to the rules and deadlines not authorized by state legislatures as the Constitution requires, resulted in a contested election. This ensures that the bitterness between the parties will persist and worse, public faith in the integrity of our elections will continue to wane. But the good news is that the pandemic should end in 2021 and many lives will be spared. Let us rejoice in that and work together to make the next year better. Happy New Year and stay safe.

January 3, 2021