Talking Coast to Coast to Coast on CBC Radio: Trump and Russia Edition

Tomorrow, August 17th, I will be doing some CBC syndicated radio to talk about the strange role played by Russia in this election.  Here's my schedule (the more west coast ones are likely to be taped if prior experience is any indicator):

6:40

Kitchener-Waterloo Host: Craig Norris Twitter: @cbckw891

6:50

Thunder Bay - Superior Morning @CBCSuperiorMorn Lisa Laco - Host @morningshowlisa

7:20

Winnipeg - Information Radio **IP** Marcy Markusa - Host Twitter: @CBCInfoRad

7:40

Ontario AM Wei Chen - Host Twitter: @CBCOntMorning

7:50

Victoria - On The Island Gregor Craigie - Host Twitter: @cbcontheisland @GregorCraigie

8:09

Calgary--The Eyeopener David Gray - Host Twitter (host David Gray): @graydio1 Show: @cbceyeopener

8:18

Regina - The Morning Edition Host: Sheila Cole, Coreen Larson - Producer, Twitter handle: @sheilacolescbc

8:40

Saskatoon -- Saskatoon Morning Leisha Grebinski - Host Twitter: @cbcsaskatoon

Real Problems in The World

Trump is, well, a freaking disaster when it comes to pretty much everything but especially foreign policy.  One of the less obvious ways he is fucking up discussions of foreign policy is not the possibility that realism might become tainted, but that we don't notice important stuff.  So, a quick run of the news and what we are missing by focusing on the epic dumpster fire train wreck (imagine a train of dumpster fires derailing) that is Donnie.

• Indonesia seems ready to start a war in the South China Seas as it is promising to sink more than 70 foreign fishing boats.  I cannot claim to be an expert on anything in the Pacific, at least not until I spend a month in Japan, but, to this amateur's eyes, this does not look good.  China is already riled up over losing the adjudication decision.  This will be some kind of independence day for Indonesia--starting a war!  Woot!  No, not woot.  Most of the impounded ships are not Chinese, but some are.  Apparently destroying impounded ships is nothing new, but a grand symbolic gesture?  Right now, after China's big loss?   Not good.  The link above has a great gif showing the various claims and trends.  
• Russia just bombed Syria via planes based in ... Iran.  This is NEW and completely unnecessary.  The latter first: Russia can and has been bombing Syria from planes based in Russia and in Syria.  Russia does not need bases in Iran for that chore.  The former: no foreign troops have been based in Iran since ... 1979.  So, Iran is compromising slightly on its tradition of robust independence since the revolution by letting the Russians fly out from its territory.  A great way to say "screw you" to the US.  The Russia-Iran friendship, largely built on keeping Assad in power and a shared interest in undermining US interests in the region is now becoming an alliance.  A couple of key implications are:
• Iraq once again has let the Russians use its airspace.  Sure, Iraq has no anti-aircraft capability, but the symbolic stuff is important.  And this symbolic stuff says: Iraq is heavily influenced by Iran and is willing to do stuff that contradicts the US even though the US is spending a heap of resources helping Iraq take back its territory from ISIS.  
• It might must provide some support for ye olde Iran nuclear deal.  Remember, the sanctions required multilateral support, especially Russia's.  If there were no deal, would Russia be sanctioning Iran today?  My guess is that the sanctions regime would have broken by now.  So, we got a decent agreement before the chances for one disappeared.
• The NYT is overreaching---calling Russia the "primary broker in the region."  Please.  US still has heaps of influence, friends and allies in the region.  Russia is a significant spoiler, but the US is still the biggest player.
•  Canada is still trying to figure out where to make its new peace operations commitment with MND Sajjan on a tour of Africa.  I will try to remember to write tomorrow for why Canada should focus on Haiti and/or Colombia.
• Brexit?  I have no idea the state of play there, but then again, does anyone else?

I am sure there are heaps of other hotspots and crises that are getting too little attention, but that is a quick tour of the stuff that our Trump focus is causing us to miss.

Summer Days Drifting Away

The seven jobs meme that is going around twitter and facebook reminded me that this weekend is the 30th anniversary of the last weekend of my last summer at camp and the 40th anniversary of the last weekend of my first summer at camp.  I spent 1976-1983 as a camper at Camp Airy, and I spent the next three summers as a counselor.  As I have said before, I lived for those summers growing up.  Why?

Mostly because I didn't feel like I fit in where I lived the other 44 weeks of the year, but I did feel like I belonged at camp.  Once I started going eight weeks a year when most kids only when two or four, I felt like an insider with a steady set of friends who also went the distance.  Not only did my counselors know me, but counselors in the rest of the camp did as well as other staffers. 

The strange thing is that I was an outsider.  Most of the kids were from the Baltimore or DC suburbs, but I was from Philly.  My family learned of the camp when we lived in DC, but I only started going two moves later.  So, I didn't know people from school.  Still, it was my home away from home for the most formative years of my life. 

It was where I first played ultimate.  It was where I kept winning in the various wrestling tournaments despite always being the underdog.  It was where I first shot a rifle (and last shot a rifle for that matter).  I played a heap of basketball (badly) and of softball (fairly well).  I did heaps of arts and crafts badly. 



My first time acting was there as well as well as a couple of plays at the girl's camp. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Little Indians, as a doomed doctor.

Lots of other firsts at camp--holding hands, kiss, girlfriends, broken heart.  

I often joked that camp was for the counselors. Perhaps not, but it was a close race, as I had a heap of fun.  Indeed, of my first seven jobs I had, being a camp counselor was, by far, the best.  

New Counselors Pic 1984, just before we get hit by
water dumped from the roof.  Jon, on the front left, and, I,
on the right, knew and were strategically
positioned to avoid the worst of it.

I could have been a better counselor, but I did embrace the silliness of the experience, twice winning the award for the Wackiest Counselor in my unit during the Wacky Olympics, which involved lots of silly games.  How did I manage that?  Um, by doing stuff like this:

 Facebook has been great at connecting me with my old friends from camp.  The internet has shown me that the camp has changed greatly with lots of new, hip things to attract the new campers like zip lines and go carts.  In my day, it was pretty basic: lots of softball, basketball, archery, swimming, wrestling, arts and crafts, some street hockey with crappy equipment, and a bit of riflery, modest hikes and optional trips for rock climbing, caving, rafting.  I miss the capture the flag games most of all of the larger activities. 

Not a particularly fancy place, but a great environment that was fostered by a terrific director and staff with big hearts.  I have often imagined going back to be some kind of staffer, but it would not be the same.  Anyhow, on this anniversary of the end of my first and last summers at camp, I am just grateful that I had that time in that place.

The Fundamentals Are Fundamental

I keep referring to the fundamentals in this election cycle in a way that is not conventional.  The ordinary meaning refers to the economy (inflation, employment) and whether the country is at war (is the war going well or poorly, what is the public opinion of the war).  I have focused instead on the fundamentals that are usually assumed away, nicely presented by Nate Silver of 538:

But the theory behind “fundamentals” models is that economic conditions prevail because most other factors are fought to a draw. In a normal presidential election, both candidates raise essentially unlimited money and staff their campaigns with hundreds of experienced professionals. In a normal presidential election, both candidates are good representatives of their party’s traditional values and therefore unite almost all their party’s voters behind them. In a normal presidential election, both candidates have years of experience running for office and deftly pivot away from controversies to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses. In a normal presidential election, both candidates target a broad enough range of demographic groups to have a viable chance of reaching 51 percent of the vote. This may not be a normal presidential election because while most of those things are true for Clinton, it’s not clear that any of them apply to Trump.

Exactly what I have been saying: Trump fundamentally sucks, as he has:

• Not much of an organization, and one that seems to keep popping out complete amateurs.
• Not much money.
• No discipline, which means he keeps reinforcing mistakes.
• Alienated 50% plus of the population: African-Americans, Hispanics, women, Jews, Asian-Americans, Mormons (hey, that's new!), LGBTQ, Native Americans and on and on.  
• A divided party to say the least, which has lead to:
• A very weak bench of surrogates--Guliani and Gingrich?  Please.

Hillary Clinton may have had made some mighty significant unforced errors of her own that would hurt her in a normal election cycle--the Clinton Foundation, the emails, etc.  But she has many positive fundamentals working for her:

• A professional campaign organization
• A strong digital game--the tweets and videos are quite good.
• Heaps of discipline as the campaign has been smart enough to stay out of Trump's way of making messes
• Appealed broadly to traditional Democratic constituencies and opening the door to GOP defections.
• Has a unified and deep bench starting with Bill, the President (who is very popular these days), Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and scores of others.

The polls are where they are for a reason--Hillary has made the case that Trump is profoundly unqualified and that she is.  If the conventions can be viewed as minor tests of skill/capability/discipline, then Trump failed and Clinton passed with flying colors.

I would say that the next major point in the campaign are the debates except for two things--there may be no debates if Trump cowers away from them, and Trump may have seven more blowups over random things before then.

Just a reminder that folks worrying about what might happen if Trump loses are spending their time better than those who worry about Trump winning.

Failing the Kobyashi Maru with Pride!

Today, Mrs. Spew, College Spew, and myself went to the the Star Trek exhibit at the Aviation Museum in Ottawa.  It was a heap of fun, but not quite the same thing as the Star Wars experience we did three years ago.  There were far less artifacts from the making of the movies, although there were some.  The experience was mostly the same--you are given a doo-hickey (like a watch this time, I forget what shape it was last ime) that you press against a variety of interactive things along the way.  In the Star Wars experience, it was about identity and what kind of Jedi (or Sith) one might be.  Here, it was to determine which specialty one should have in Starfleet: Command, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Comms, whatever.  Didn't provoke as much thought as the identity theme of Star Wars.  But it did get me interested in watching the Enterprise series led by Scott Bakula. We started watching long ago but then stopped after a few episodes.  Apparently, it got better.

Overall, the experience was good, but too crowded as there were many lines for the various interactive activities.  Still, some were quite cool, including being teleported:

The Point of No Return?

Today was a bad day for the Trump campaign and a bad day for democracy as Donnie joked/or not about the NRA fans (Second Amendment people) dealing with Hillary Clinton and/or her judges after she wins (because Donnie knows he is going to lose?).  Yep, Presidential candidate incited violence again.  So, is this the point of no return?

What does that mean?  That Trump cannot pivot back?  No, he has no discipline and not much of a learning curve, so that was never in the cards.  I think people are saying essentially that this is too far, that this is beyond the pale, that this is unacceptable.  Once you cross this line, there is no returning to decency, to a candidacy that decent people can support.  Indeed, folks are wondering if this is the point at which Paul Ryan can walk away.  No answer yet as he has mastered the five D's of dodgeball to avoid the many questions today.

But I think people are missing something--Trump crossed the point of no return last year when he announced his candidacy, when he said that Mexicans were rapists.  Ok, sure, one could say even before that since his birther fixation made Trump a racist and a conspiracy theorist and a panderer to white supremacists.  But, if we want to date the time at which his Presidential campaign became so tainted by his utterances, by his policy stances, by his awful Trump-ness, then, well, his announcement will do since it attacked Mexicans and the rest of the Hispanic community by extension.  Oh, and for the GOP, that first move also may help to kill your party for a generation since you embraced it.

That Trump kept then saying stuff and taking stances that seemed to be "new points of no return" kind of misses the point--it is not that these were now the new standards of alienating folks, but that he just went past the point of no return and then just kept going deeper into the land of awful stances, including:

• POWs are not worthy of much respect since they get caught (Hey, McCain, how could you possibly endorse this guy?)
• Megyn Kelly and the first early but inevitable misogynist outburst.
• Telling his supporters to beat up the protestors. 
• Suggesting that Cruz's dad killed Kennedy (so much for democratic discourse).
• Yada, yada, yada 
• Questioning whether a Hispanic judge could fairly adjudicate the case involving the fraudulent Trump University.
• Attacking NATO, making it seem like US should run its foreign policy like a protection racket
• Calling Elizabeth Warren Pocohantas
• Inviting Russia to release more hacked materials.
• The convention speech
• Insulting a Gold Star family--the Khans.
• Inciting violence against the opponent and/or the judges she chooses if when she wins.

I had to illustrate it thusly:

 The whole idea of the point of no return is that once you pass that point, you don't return, right?  Well, Trump passed the point of being minimally acceptable last summer and kept on going further and further down the road of hate/fear/indecency/inciting violence.  He ain't coming back.  Once one appeals to white supremacists, that should be it.  Everyone should have run away from him and never looked back.  Yet folks keep needing a new line to be drawn, a new pivot back that .... never happened.  I wonder tomorrow how the craven folks will justify sticking with Trump now that he has passed the latest point of no return.

An Iron Law of Polls

I long ago wrote something about how in any community 15-25% of the folks are, um, problematic. 

Well, we have been seeing many polls that remind me of that, such as this:

from http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/08/clinton-leads-in-nc-for-first-time-since-march.html

The math for me is something like this: if Trump voters are now something like 40% and 48% believe, somehow, that Obama was able to influence the rules of engagement when he was a state Senator, it means that roughly 20% of the American people (probably less) believe this crap. 

Over the course of time, I have come to the conclusion that any poll will get roughly 15-20% answering: "Yes, I am ignorant/reality-averse."  Yes, it is bad that so many people believe stuff that is so clearly wrong, wrong, wrong.  On the other hand, these people always exist no matter what the issue.  Do we pander to them?  Trump does, but I say we should not.  Can we lure them into being reasonable, reasoning, informed people?  Um, not so sure.  Should we marginalize them as we should marginalize dysfunctional professors (see the link at the top)?  Not sure, as marginalizing people deepens alienation and that can lead to violence.  But I would not want these folks to be shaping outcomes either. 

I have no solution, but just want to note that we should not be surprised when 20% of the polled say stuff that is just very wrong.  Appalled? Maybe, but surprised?  No.

Pan Canadian Defence Review

Today, the Centre for Security, Intelligence and Defence Studies at NPSIA along with the Conference of Defence Associations Institute and the Centre for International Policy Studies (Queens) held a workshop that involved much of the Canadian defence academic community.  The idea was to feed into the Defence Review Canada is running this summer.

Andrea Charron, our Centre's director, did a great job of organizing so that the day was very engaging.  We were split into four groups: threat environment, the forces, readiness, and missions/allies.  Each group was tasked to come up with five ideas/priorities.  Then each group would Red Team (criticize, respond/react) to two of the other groups.  My group was Missions/Allies led by Andrea C and Jim Fergusson.   This group included Sjrdjan Vucetic and Thomas Juneau of U of Ottawa, Justin Massie of UQAM, Theo McLauchlin of U of Montreal, and Kim Richard Nossal of Queens.  

I really didn't know what I was going to say going into the event, as I had never done something like this before (of course, anyone who knows me would have predicted that I would talk alot).  Also, the missions for Canada are pretty established--that we will not be changing what Canada is likely to think its role is in the world: defending Canada, jointly via NORAD with US, NATO, UN, and occasional coalitions of the willing ops.  We did come up with a bunch of questions that one should always ask when considering a mission--what are the rules of engagement, who is involved, what are the desired goals, etc.  Kind of akin to the Dutch's Article 101 letter procedure (see the Dave and Steve book).  

The big point I pushed was that the classic Canadian question of whether to provide small units in many operations or concentrate in one place for extended period of time should be resolved thusly: do the latter.  If you want to make a difference, concentrate the effort and be patient.  

The challenge for any review is that there is not much room to move Canada. That is, the budget is mostly set, 47% is dedicated to personnel, the big procurement decisions are decided/have a process of their own, AND Canada faces few threats and has limited capabilities.  So, neither our review nor the big government one can really alter the path of the CAF and DND much.  Still, it was a very useful exercise for thinking about this stuff and giving input to government.

Personally, it was mighty good for me both because I could connect with the many folks I know who attended and help set the stage for one of my major sabbatical priorities: applying for a partnership grant to create a Canadian Defence Research Network so that we can meet more often, develop shared research agendas, communicate our results and train the next generation of defence scholars.  

In short, woot!

Harry Potter and the Play as Sequel

I finished Harry Potter and the Cursed Child this weekend, and have many feels about it.  Spoilers dwell below

When Ignorance Is Bliss: Friends?

The NYT has a piece reporting that only about 50% of the people one thinks of as friends see one as a friend.  Friendship is not reciprocated nearly as much as people thing.  This is perhaps one of the cruelest pieces of social science to float its way onto the internet and the NYT because it gets at a basic insecurity: do they really like me?  Not all of us get a Sally Fields moment.

Ok, maybe it just seems cruel to me as this has long been one of my most basic insecurities.  I spent my childhood/teenage years/way beyond wondering if people liked me or just put up with me.  I never felt like I was a member of a group in high school as my group seemed to be the group-less--not the brains, not the athletes, not the stoners, not drama folks, just the residuals.  Perhaps were were Hufflepuffs before they were a thing?  My imagination of college (thanks, Hollywood) and my reality were two separate things--as I did not have a solid group of the same friends from freshman year to graduation.  Yes, I played on the frisbee team for almost four years, but I never felt like I fit in there--I didn't eat at the co-ops nor hung out with them very much.  Grad school?  Jeez, everyone around me was so smart and worked so hard and also lived so close together (my girlfriend/wife and I kept moving to find cheaper places and eventually one that would accept dogs) and they were so cool, I just felt like an outlier.

The funny thing is that I really felt like one of the group, rather than an outside, perhaps first in my life (except for summer camp) at my first tenure track job.  Perhaps the junior/senior split created an us-ness that I felt apart of.  Or perhaps because most of us didn't fit into the town very well, but we did fit with each other.  Anyhow, I felt part of the group for the first time.  Surprisingly, my time on the Joint Staff made me feel included, rather than Rudolph.  Despite being one of a handful of civilians with no military experience, I felt like I fit in.  Mainly because the folks there accepted one if one dealt as much friendly abuse as one received.  Perhaps because the Joint Staff itself is a group of group-less folks--everyone is out of their comfort zone of their own service.  That the folks at the old job still hang out with me now that I have left is another bit of evidence that I should feel good about my 50%. 

Professionally, when I started out, my time at the conferences was mostly empty, and I would spend time walking around, hoping to find a few people that I might recognize.  These days? I spend most of my time in the bar, meeting with folks who I have met over the years.  Conferences are much more fun these days, and I don't see them as reminders of being an outsider anymore. 

Tis a good thing I read this article the morning after I had my big birthday bbq.  Being surrounded by friends last night makes me a bit less vulnerable to this piece although it reminds me of how I felt for so many years. 

As it happens, someone on twitter posted something that reminded me of this video, and watching it also compensates as my closest friends do resemble the core essence of the song.

Standard Science Fiction/Fantasy Hubris: We are the Bestest

I was reading something (folks who know me can guess, but I shan't spoil) that had a spot of time travel in it, and, of course, changing the past wrecks the present.  I have always been struck by how consistent it is that efforts to change the past always produce a worse time-line.  It is almost as if the time-line we are in is the best one of all, and that every other one is inferior.  This is some hubris, fellow Earth-1/Earth-prime/whatever-we-want-to-call-ourselves.  Perhaps one of the best visualizations of alternate timelines was the episode of Community.

Sure, there are some very few exceptions: Quantum Leap was is the primary exception as Sam's efforts to change the past generally worked out, improving people's lives without breaking the space time continuum in any major way.  Back to the Future is another example, but one with plenty of warnings about how much more damage can be done than fixing.  The fixing here is mostly to un-do the damage but turns out, by accident rather than by intent, to produce a better present--Marty's parents are cooler and more successful in the revised 1985. 

Mostly, however, efforts to change the past lead to utter heartbreak.  I remember reading a Marvel series "What If?" which would ponder basic questions of the Marvel Universe and always, always, always the lesson would be that if that event was changed--Gwen Stacy dying, the death of Phoenix, etc--the new reality would be much worse. 

This smug attitude about the "real" time-line seems problematic.  Sure, it is fun for writers/filmmakers to set things up this way since doing otherwise would mean that our reality is inferior.  That probably does not sell books or tickets.  But it does represent some arrogance to suggest that the current timeline is the best possible one, does it not?

Hip Deep in Schadenfreude: A Drive By of Some Election News

The Trump campaign has reduced the spigot of crap that was flowing so heavily early in the week, but not much good news for Donald Trump.  I don't have heaps of things to say about any one of the latest items, but I have one or two things to say about some of them.

• Are Democrats being hypocritical as they revel in Melania Trump's potentially illegal immigration?  Sure, as they want to reform immigration so that folks like Melania don't end up lying on their forms.  However, this is a basic reality--that when you notice someone else's hypocrisy (Trump's on immigration), it tends to conflict with one's own stance (illegal immigration is messed up) most of the time.  So, I am not chuffed about the hypocrisy.  I think it is more important that Trump sees himself and his kin as above the law (something that the Clintons, alas, tend to share).
• Re the Iran deal.  I am not surprised that Trump would make a big stink about this.  The optics, as Dan Drezner suggests are bad, even as the basic deal has been known for quite some time.  What I like about Trump's stance here is that it symbolizes his basic take on everything: "Wait, you kept your word on an agreement? Why would you do that?"
• Perhaps the best anti-Trump letter was written today by Michael Morrell, former head of the CIA.  He lays out the case for Clinton clearly and cogently and does the same for the case against Trump.  And, well, the Clinton campaign are sharp to post this the same day.
• I may be a victim of confirmation bias: I love the Keeping It 1600 podcast, and they did a great job of predicting the waves of polls the past few weeks, but I have doubts about their latest predictions, probably because of my own desire not to believe it. 
• How so?  Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, who worked in the Obama campaign and then White House, argued before that folks should not get nervous during the conventions about the polls as they would shake out afterwards, and that the important ones are the battleground state polls.  And woot!  We have great outcomes: HRC is up by 9 or more points in the national polls and up in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and even Georgia.  HRC is cutting TV ads in VA and CO because the campaign is confident about how they are doing there.  
• But they insist that the polls will tighten, and this I am not so sure about.  Sure, they are the experts, but is this just a bad week for Trump or something that will keep on happening.  I have seen some folks say that Trump will inevitably have a good stretch of days, but can that happen if he is so easily trolled?  Can he and his organization (I use that word loosely since their organization is small and staffed by less competent folks [more on that in a minute]) actually not shoot themselves in the foot for a significant stretch of time?  I am doubtful.  
• About that organization, one of the realizations this week is that Katrina Pierson, Trump's spokeswoman is simply awful.  She was hired despite/because she had a history of loose tweets, such as being a truther.  This week, she and others in the campaign blame Obama/Clinton for Captain Khan's death despite the fact that it happened in 2004.  Unless Obama has a time machine, I am not sure how he could affect the rules of engagement five years before he was President.   Indeed, it belies one of Trump's key points--that he will hire the best people to run the government.  What evidence do we have that he can do that?  None as far as I can tell.

Anyhow, this week of news may have done more to talk down my family who were mighty spun up last week while we were on vacation together than I could do, despite my self-assigned role to chill folks out.  Of course, as my brother keeps hectoring me--complacency needs to be avoided.  So,

Free Dissertation Topic: Change or Continuity in American Civil-Military Relations

There has been some discussion on facebook and twitter about whether the new "crisis" in US civil-military relations concerning retired senior officers at the conventions is new or not.  I have already written some about it--that this tension, not really a crisis, is inevitable given the competition among the parties making their own restraint irrational (that is, it is a poor strategy in a game theoretic sense) and that heaps of retired officers are available so surely a few will step out.

The difference this time, to be clear, I think, is that Flynn and Allen were major/featured speakers at the conventions, which is distinct from previous elections where the recruited retired officers mostly just signed joint letters of endorsement (or opposition, like this one I recently signed).

But I don't know, because I cannot recall really who appeared at which conventions (I watched more of these conventions than any other and I don't think I am alone in that) nor know which acts by politically active retired officers garnered criticism from active or retired officers or random experts.  Indeed, one of things that is different this time around is that we have twitter/facebook/other social media in a much bigger way, so it is easy to get quick criticisms out there than ever before.

All this means: an enterprising graduate student interested in US civil-military relations could design a project that examines whether retired officers spoke at prior conventions, as well as other political activities, and also examines the reactions.  It should not be that hard to develop plausible hypotheses for either side--that things have been mostly constant or that there are relatively new dynamics. The constant hypotheses would focus on things I mentioned before: the nature of party competition and the availability of officers as well as the norms of a professional military.  For change?  Perhaps more upset because some officers are endorsing the Democrat, which is a relatively new phenomenon (maybe) and this disturbs the largely conservative military more (H/T to NB/JF).  Or perhaps the more batshit crazy the candidate and the officer, the more likely there is controversy--the Trump/Flynn hypothesis.

Anyhow, I don't have an answer for this as I just don't have a good sense of the change over time.  Recency bias is a killer here, and the best weapon against recency bias is a fully armed and operational PhD student.

Loud Generals and Crises in Civil-Military Relations

LTG (retired) Mike Flynn has become a Trump advocate and appeared at the Republican National Convention.  General (retired) John Allen surprised many by not just speaking at the Democratic National Convention but giving such enthusiastic support to Clinton.  The big question is: is this problematic to have recently retired military officers take such public positions in the middle of a national election?  Yes.  But what can you do?

Let's talk about the yes.  The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, is peeved (update: so much so that he wrote more here).  Peter Feaver, who is perhaps the best published and certainly one of the sharpest minds on civil-military relations, does a nice job of laying out the case why it is bad.  It degrades the military which becomes seen as a partisan actor in US politics.  It raises questions for the President and for Congress whether generals/admirals near retirement (and all are near retirement in the up or out promotion system that is particularly intense at the highest levels) are offering their best military advice or are shaping their views based on their political preferences.  The US is best served by an apolitical military.  So, yes, great privileges are accompanied by great responsibility (almost the Ben Parker principle).

Moreover, these officers are not really adding much to the debate despite the risks to the military and to civil-military relations.  Each campaign can find some officers, so it really does not demonstrate that one candidate is better for national security than the other.  Sure, some campaigns will see a candidate with a longer list, but most Americans do not count how many officers are on one side or the other.  It may matter if one surrogate sucks (that would be you, Flynn), but not much really.  The good news about the state of US civil-military relations is that there are plenty of other experts, not dressed in uniforms in the recent past, who can speak about the national security implications of each candidate and their platforms.  Campaigns can roll out former Secretaries of Defense (ok, maybe not Trump), think tank experts and defense pundits, and even former junior officers who don't have the same weight of responsibilities as the former senior officers.

But there is a basic problem as Feaver alludes to when he mentions arms race.  The major parties face, dare I say it, a prisoners' dilemma.  Each is best off if only their party gets a major ex-officer to speak for it, each is second best off if both parties refrain, a party is worse off if it refrains and the other party does not, and both parties face the second worst outcome if both get officers to speak as they don't get much benefit but have tarnished the military.  And guess where we are?  The usual equilibrium of prisoners' dilemma--both worse off.

Trump's campaign as first mover could have refrained, which would have put less pressure on the Clinton campaign to have a general speak.  Once Flynn spoke at the RNC, the Clinton campaign could have unilaterally disarmed in this competition, it could have sent up a sharp, well-respected former Sec Def, or it could have done nothing.  It chose to put a general in prime time, complete with a bunch of vets standing beside him (a bit much?), and had Leon Panetta speak (a former SecDef even if not a universally lauded one).  I do think that doing nothing was not possible.  I would have loved to see Robert Gates instead of Panetta, but that was probably not possible.  So, I cannot condem the Clinton campaign although I, like others, can wish that neither general spoke out.

To be sure, this is not a big crisis in civil-military relations.  The big one is if Trump becomes President as he has already promised to ask the military to do things that they find to be illegal, counter-productive to American interests, awful and/or all of the above.  And Turkey also reminds us what a real crisis in civil-military relations.  This "crisis" is very much a first world problem--the US military is not going to be a significant actor in the 2016 race, just as it played no role in the contested 2000 race, where the sides ran not to the military but to their lawyers and to court.

Anyhow, the basic points here are that expecting restraint by the campaigns is pretty unrealistic, and the number of retired senior officers is big enough that campaigns can always find someone who is willing to speak despite the preferences of the current and recent Chairmans.

Taking Back Real America

I used to take a great deal of pleasure in Sarah Palin's appeal to "Real America" since her definition--white, rural--would consign the Republicans to losing national elections.  But this election cycle, with Trump's appeals to a narrow slice of the country and with newspaper reports about polls criticizing Hillary Clinton for doing poorly among white males, I have to just say something:

Real America is not white males but those who tolerate and celebrate diversity--of races, of religions, of gender, of sexuality and sexual identity, of ethnicity, of where one was born, etc.  The America always celebrated in the history books, often glossing over real problems, is a heterogeneous America.  The founders, for all their sins, created a founding document that was not aimed at any one religious group, but at providing freedom for all to practice their religion (or not practice), to speak and assemble (protest), to publish (that free press thing seems to be mighty relevant these days), and on and on. 

Real America is about accepting the differences.  The folks who most energetically support Trump are not real America.  America First is actually a betrayal of what the US stands for now, and is tied to Nazi sympathizers of the past.  Trump's fans include white supremacists, and while racial discord is built into American history, white supremacy is not something that most American see as an American value.   Real Americans don't sell out allies to autocrats either.  Trump's Putin-love is really quite problematic for most Americans.  The far left and the far right might admire Putin for his America-hating, but that, of course, makes them lousy Americans.

I am not asking for a House Un-American Activities Committee.  My basic point is that Trump is Un-American, that the concern about Hillary Clinton's relative weakness with white males (especially those without a college degree) are missing the key point.  Trump is doing awfully among African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, I am guessing Native Americans (I have seen no polls), a big gender gap as women apparently are not fans of misogyny, and on and on. 

Whose poll weaknesses are more telling and more deserving of attention and scorn?  The United States is a diverse place, and if you cannot appeal beyond a single demographic, then you are the one who is not appealing to Real America.

So, yes, I am taking back Real America--it applies to the multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-national, multi-gender, multi-sexual identity, multi-sexuality constituency that finds one person and one party appealing and the other not at all. 

The Heights of Narcissism

When I started this blog, the sidebar "About" section focused on admitting my narcissism--that I cared about my thoughts and wanted to talk to myself via my blog and that other folks might find me sufficiently interesting.  Indeed, narcissism has been a running theme here as I label posts about myself with "narcissism" label.  Yet, Trump makes me recoil as his narcissism is so very destructive that I have a hard time being in the same category.  And, yes, I get the irony that I am making Trump's narcissism about me.  Anyhow, there is a larger point I am getting at.

Trump's reply to the Khan family about their son's sacrifice included Trump's assertion that he has sacrificed.  Examples?  Um, he hired people?  Perhaps he might think that paying people for their labor is a "sacrifice" but it really shows that he has no conception of the word.

Of course not, because a sacrifice means doing something painful to help others.  Like confronting a suicide bomber so that one's buddies don't get hit (Capt. Humayun Khan).  Sacrifice is other-regarding, and Trump has never apparently had an other-regarding instinct.  He is utterly, pathologically self-regarding.  So, yes, the concept of sacrifice utterly eludes him. And we should not be surprised.

We don't need to require presidential candidates to have sacrificed significantly along the way, but requiring them to understand the concept ought to be a job requirement.

Super short Convention Reaction

Today's vacation schedule kicks off early, so very short reactions to the last day of the convention.

• I don't usually indulge in I told you so's (maybe because I am often wrong?) but what a deep bench the Democrats have.  Last night, HRC got another big surrogate--retired Marine General John Allen.  His endorsement was full throated---and that may be an understatement.  I don't love having recently retired military officers engaging in politics.  But the real threat to American civil-military relations is not HRC, but Trump.  So, this one time, sure.
• The Muslim family that lost one of their kids who fought for the US, with the father willing to lend Trump his copy of the constitution?  I have no words.  Just incredibly touched.  This is the America that was and is great. 
• The immigrant who lost much when we saved his combat buddies and earned the Medal of Honor?  Again, touching, moving, and amazing.  The Democrats have more visibly become the party of Patriotism, but I agree with others--the Dems have always been patriots.  Just now they embrace it more visibly at the convention.
• Speaking of which, yes, the Democratic Party is the party of national security.  But this is not as new as people think--people forget that the GOP lost its credibility on this issue when they bungled the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and also when no WMDs were found.
• Hillary Clinton's speech was the best I had seen of her stuff.  It was long, but it didn't feel long.  It touched all the bases, trolled Trump effectively, and made a good case for why she should be President.  Before this week, I was a "well, Clinton is Democrat in the race, so I will vote for her, especially against the very worst the GOP can throw at us" candidate.  Now, she is the "super-qualified and historically effective" candidate who might do some real good along with the pathbreaking first woman to become President.  I still get annoyed by the Clintonian bent for unforced errors (email stuff, Clinton Foundation crap, speaking at Goldman Sachs), but I cannot argue that Hillary will not be an effective President and a pretty progressive one at that.
• Oh, and one last thought--the two conventions demonstrated so very well the big gaps in the two campaigns--of organization, of competence, of tone and of substance.  

As always, don't believe the polls this week.  Wait a week or two, don't panic.  The fundamentals solidly favor HRC.  All Trump can and will do is demonstrate how awful he would be for the US and for the world.  It will be a long 100 days, but the state polls in a couple of weeks will start to tell the tale.

Reaching the Midway Point

I am turning 50 this week.  Aside from buying Ray-Ban wraparound sunglasses with my latest prescription, the mid-life crisis has not been too full of over-compensation.  Perhaps too much over-eating.  Sure, I could be insecure and blame others, but I leave that to the orange one.  Over the course of the past few years, I have realized that I am really quite lucky.

I am mostly healthy, and my family is mostly healthy,  I have lost only a few friends and only one non-grandparent relative.  That will certainly be changing, and I know that I am not really ready for it.

I have never broken a bone (mine or anyone else's), and only sprained a few ankles.  I can still play ultimate reasonably well, and now have revised how long I expect my frisbee career to last well beyond 50.  Thanks to the old guys in the Montreal leagues for showing me how it is done.  Despite one stupid skiing accident (trying to stop fast to throw snow on my daughter), I can still get down the mountain ok.  Climate change may end my skiing career before my body breaks down.

My daughter is thriving in college, working far harder than I ever did and getting far better grades.  That she is pursuing a far more challenging career, in film-making, amazes me.  My wife has been willing to move wherever my career took me (well, she put some limitations but none that mattered), and has done all of the family accounting, which my research/conference/book promotion travel greatly complicates.  She continues to indulge my silliness, whether it is comedy shows (Carrie Fisher this weekend), my Star Wars obsession (Carrie Fisher this weekend), or blogging (Carrie Fisher this weekend).  We have a lot of fun together--and the ride has been far less bumpy now that the daughter sleeps past 5 am.  My extended family is thriving, with the next generation doing great in college or about to start that cool part of their lives.  I am pretty happy to be doing something for some of them that will probably be the best thing I ever do.

I have been very lucky in my career.  Yes, there have been bumps in the road, and my success in job talks is below the Mendoza line (under .200).  I do have one professional enemy as far as I can tell, but only one.  I have amassed a large group of super supportive co-authors for my various projects, helping me to pursue my curiosity as far as it takes me.  In the past, that meant places like Hungary and Romania.  More recently, that has meant Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  In the next year, it means Japan, South Korea, and a hunk of Latin America.  I have experienced plenty of rejection--jobs, articles, grants--as it is inherent in the enterprise, but I have been able to get enough funding to do what I want to do.

I have now ended up at a place that is pretty perfect for me--in a national capital, which means great access to policy makers, with students deeply engaged in the policy world, and a great set of colleagues.  I do miss the students from McGill and the friends I made along this very long and strange academic journey, but I am really loving this phase of my career.  And it will probably be the longest one.
 
I have not bought a sports car in my mid-life partly because I am too cheap, but because I have mostly confronted my major insecurities: fear of missing out, imposter syndrome, and so on.  I used to feel left out of the reindeer games and uncertain about why people put up with me. Facebook, twitter and other social media are very handy for reminding me of the connections I have made over the year and renewing them.  The birthday wishes that pile up thanks to Facebook are quite meaningful--making me feel like Sally Fields or Stuart Smalley.

Lot of words to reflect on where I stand today when I could have just posted the oft-posted:

Tyson Zone? Nope, Not Strange Enough

I thought I wrote a few months ago that Trump had entered the Tyson Zone (can't seem to find the post), and today, Michael Cohen said the same thing.  The idea is that a person can be so consistently off the wall that nothing they do can be really that surprising.  Sorry, but Trump has officially blown my mind.  He keeps doing stuff that is more appalling, more beyond the pale, more beyond the imagination.  Yes, he continues to shock me.

Yes, asking for Russia to release HRC emails is shocking.
Yes, saying that he might recognize Russia's conquest of Crimea is shocking.

So, I'd like to say he can't shock me, but he can.  Amazing what one can do when one has absolutely no shame, no principles and values nothing but attention.  Makes an ordinary narcissist like me feel bad.

Focusing on the last bit of news--the Crimea stuff, I joked on facebook and twitter that Trump was trolling me directly.  Why?  Because who cares strongly about Crimea?  Scholars of irredentism!  Ordinarily, one would look at the electorate and find some interest group, some diaspora, somebody that would favor an issue and say, aha!  Candidate x is pandering to this group.  But there really is not much of a pro-annexation of Crimea constituency in the US.  Russian-Americans as a voting bloc?  Crimean Russians as a voting bloc?  Nope, not that we can observe.  So, who is the audience for this stance?


Ok, not Satan, but could it be ... Putin?  It would seem to be the case that Trump is putting Putin's interests ahead of the American national interest committee.  Which led me to ponder whatever happened to the House Un-American Activities Committee?  Trump is promising via weakening NATO, defaulting on the debt, throwing out NAFTA, tossing aside our Asian allies, and accepting Russia's boundary changing to hurt the US in big ways, to betray American values and interests, and to make the US worse off.

One cannot really overreact to Trump--he may not be Satan, but only because the devil has far more discipline, intelligence, and organization.  I am still pretty confident that Trump will not be elected.  He is not pivoting to the center unless Russia somehow became the center of the American political system.  He is going to lose responsible Republicans. I just wish more Republicans were responsible this past year.   Trump is not going to gain more independents or wavering Democrats with these stances that tie him to Putin.  So, thanks for being a self-fulfilling prophecy, Trump, as a repeated loser. I just wish he didn't do so much damage domestically and internationally along the way.

Vacation Convention Blogging

I am on the road, so only a few quick reactions to last night's DNC first night:

• Thanks to all of the speakers for proving my repeated point that Hillary Clinton has a far, far deeper bench than the GOP.  In one night, we got a whole series of speeches that were far better written and spoken than most, if not all, of what we heard last week.
• I get that folks want to blame trade for their troubles, so hence the anti-TPP stuff.  But NAFTA was mostly a net good for the US (and Canada and Mexico--why is illegal immigration down from Mexico? Hmmm).  And what has really harmed manufacturing in the US?  Automation.  How is killing TPP going to stop the robots?
• Franken might not have been as sharp as usual, but he hit heaps of good points.  Reminding everyone of the scam artist that Trump is and always has been was great.  Also, more humor in one speech than in all of last week.
• Sarah Silverman went off script, maybe re-energizing the Bernie fans a bit much, but she was a Bernie fan for quite some time and she made it clear that it is ridiculous to not support HRC now. 
• Cory Booker went on too long, but had enough good stuff in the speech. We can see why he was seriously considered to be VP and perhaps why he didn't get it.  
• Elizabeth Warren had a very tough job, following Michelle Obama, so she presented a very different style that works for the left part of the party.  
• Bernie went on too long, but he did his job--moving from his campaign to the Democrats' campaign, calling for stuff he never supported much before--HRC Presidency, Dems winning House and Senate.
• Much better celebrities.  Eva Longoria was terrific, reminding us why people keep on giving her TV shows and why Scott Biao is C or D list at best. 
• The disabled girl was terrific as was the victim of Trump U scam.
• I can understand why the DNC did not save the best for last, but I can: Michelle Obama was just terrific, as everyone has said.  When the incumbent President's wife is this popular and this powerful, the team is mighty deep indeed.  
• the key paragraph was moving from house that slaves built to her beautiful black girls playing with the dogs on the White House lawn (Bo and the other dog get mentioned!) to Malia and Sasha being able to expect women to become President thanks to Hillary Clinton.  
• I love that she ripped Trump apart without mentioning his name, just like, um, Ted Cruz.
• I love that she used parenting as the key line of attack, given how pretty and well spoken the Trumpkids were, where it is clear that their father had little role in it.  Indeed, we are reminded of Trump's repeated skeevy comments about how he'd like to date/fuck his daughters.
• "When they go low, we go high."

I probably will not see as much of the convention going forward, at least not live.  But what a great start.  Oh, and the boos that the press wants to make much of?  Whatever.  No delegations walked out, no governors/senators/party luminaries did their best to dodge, duck, dive, dip or dodge their way from appearing at the convention.  This is what unity looks like for the Democrats.  And the polls show that Bernie voters will vote for HRC.   But the press, even PBS's crew, must try to play up this stuff to make things closer than they are.

Oh, and let confirmation bias be your guide on the polls since they are all over the place.  Wait until mid-August before taking them super-seriously.

Jill Stein?

Folks are tweeting at me that they are going to choose Jill Stein, of the Greens, because they don't like Hillary Clinton.  Might I suggest that they don't like America?  Ok, that is brutal, but let's consider a few things:

1) The separation between Stein and Clinton on the issues is actually quite narrow as Stein herself admitted:

Just took the @iSideWith quiz. Unsurprisingly I was a 99% match w/ @BernieSanders. Let's keep the revolution going. pic.twitter.com/ID1HfhEeqp

— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) June 13, 2016

So, if you care about the policies that affect Americans, then perhaps one should vote for the person who is likely to win rather than waste a vote.  There is a time for purity, and there is a time for doing what is best for the county.

2)  The other 91%?  Not great, Bob.  Banning of GMO's? Replace NAFTA?  Free tuition?  Cut defense spending by 50%?  "Restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense"  hee, hee.

3)  Voting for Stein and not for HRC helps Trump.  Trump has promised to be almost everything that Stein stands against--a homophobic VP, destructive to the economy, nasty policies for immigrants and on and on.  There is a reason why African-Americans and Latinos are voting en masse for HRC and very few for Trump. 

I could say that voting for Stein is a great example of white privilege, but that would be unkind.  Trump, to put it as bluntly as I can, is essentially an existential threat to democracy, peace and prosperity.  So, voting for Stein might feel good, but is pretty much one of the worst things a progressive or left wing person can do this fall.

Surprising Sabbatical Mission: Reassuring Folks About Trump

I don't know how I have found myself with a new sabbatical assignment, but it seems to be the case.  What is it?  Reassuring folks--friends, acquaintances, people I meet in Europe and Canada, etc--that Trump will not win. 

Last night, I spoke at a synagogue as one of my colleagues had recommended me to his Rabbi.  The theme of the talk was: the Rise and Inevitable Fall of Donald Trump.  The keys to the argument were that the primaries and the general elections are two different processes, and what it takes to win the former may not be all that helpful to win the latter.  I also made arguments about the weakness of the opposition in the primary, which facilitated the ethnic outbidding that worked for Trump, and the strengths of the Clinton campaign.  Much of this should be familiar to Spew readers. 

After my talk, folks came up mostly to argue about my answer* to the Netanhayu and HRC question (will the relations be better? Yes, but not much since US and Israel have some real differences and the Dems have a multiethnic constituency that includes Jews and Muslims and pro-Palestinian folks), but several wanted to get more reassurance about Trump.  The problem is that Trump has created two sorts of fear--that whites are under assault in the US and that Trump might win.  Obviously, two different audiences are feeling these kinds of fears. 

I do think the second set of fears might be productive--getting folks to vote (including some American ex-pats in Canada who have not voted recently in the US).  Folks worry about complacency--that people are taking for granted that Hillary will win and will not vote or they can vote for a third or fourth party candidate. Um, have you talked to anyone lately?  Lots of panic.  I think concern is productive, but not sure panic is.  The good news is that Brexit happened (sorry, UK), which will do much to encourage people (yo, young folks!) to vote and not to waste votes for protest candidates.  The stakes are, indeed, mighty high.

Indeed, I started my talk by suggesting what the stakes are this time: that Trump's promises include defaulting on the debt (hellooooooo depression), breaking NATO, ripping up NAFTA, sucking up to Russia (goodbye to generations of European stability), and on and on.   I also read a key quote that references the Holocaust as Trump is, indeed, the closest thing to Hitler the US has had.  Sorry, Godwin.

But as I keep saying: HRC has a smart, disciplined, organized, funded, learning campaign, with the electoral college and demographics on her side.  What does Trump have on his side?  White supremacists, Putin, and ?

Why do I feel it is my role to reassure folks about Trump's inevitable defeat?  I am not exactly sure.  I guess I just don't want people to be so stressed out for the next four months.  Anyhow, don't take my word for it.  Just keep an eye on the fundamentals--not just the absence of major war and the presence of low inflation/low unemployment, but also that the Democrats are united and have their stars out fighting for Clinton while the Republicans are divided and sending the D team out.


*  I learned at my second job talk a long, long time ago that I should never speak in public about Israel as I do not research/study it while everyone who cares thinks they are an expert.  Does not lead to productive conversations.