Cue the clichés: Third time is the charm. There was no third whiff. Pay dirt was hit.
The context for this letter to the editor was the aftermath of my father-in-law’s passing. After an extended stay in California, I returned to Richmond before New Year’s 2017. I covered The Beloved’s courses for a couple of weeks so that she could spend more time with her mother out west and I reverted to my slovenly bachelor ways. The Better Half discovered that she didn’t have enough of a refrigerated prescription medication, so I jerry-rigged a cold pack for quasi-illegal overnight shipment. I arrived at the Carytown UPS Store too early. Can Can, the nearby French bistro, beckoned. A self-indulgent, decadent breakfast with the newspapers followed.
An unsigned editorial in The Richmond Times-Dispatch disturbed my meal. It contended that President Obama had been successful in elevating nominees to the federal counts despite the Republicans’ glacially slow confirmation of them. It read like an apologia for GOP obstructionism, an aggravating stance against the backdrop of the Merrick Garland kerfuffle. It also seemed off factually. My inner dialogue whispered, “This can’t be accurate.” Its thrust was seemingly to normalize the GOP’s politically larcenous program of fulfilling Lewis Powell’s 1971 clarion call to movement conservatives. The avenue to power according to Mr. Powell lay in wresting control of media, state legislatures, and especially the courts from Democrats. The editorial was displeasing. I did some research, gathered the facts, and concluded that it was misleading. A response was written and submitted.
This was a watershed in learning the letter-to-the-editor ropes and honing a process for putting the bits together. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is due some credit. It’s frequently not to my taste editorially but it is good that it exists and retains a presence in print when so many papers have folded. Its policy on letters is sensible. A liberal maximum length allows for a coherent rebuttal to an editorial. My drafts invariably fracture the limit and are then carved down to the canonical wordcount. The Richmond Times-Dispatch places a sixty-day moratorium on further submissions once a letter reaches print. That too is sensible. Otherwise, I would fire an epistle at the paper weekly because of the silliness of many syndicated columnists.
The letter’s final draft was passed by The Mistress of the House, who offered encouraging words: “They’re never going to print this.” She likely thought it was too polemical and combative. The only reason I’m mentioning this, darlin’, is you’ve been the one banging the drum for me to archive this stuff.
The letter appeared in the paper’s Sunday edition without warning. This was pleasing, because Sunday circulation was then around two-hundred thousand rather than the weekday eighty thousand. The idea was to have the greatest possible opportunity to give a person or two pause to think. I discovered that I was also the correspondent du jour. The paper highlights a single letter each day, which is likely to ensure that more people read it. I learned that comments by readers were permitted online and there was feedback. It was mostly polite and positive, some of it even useful. Negative comments were by and large precious and self-indicting.
The bit, sadly, holds up pretty well, especially in light of subsequent events – Mitch McConnell’s assembly-line filling of judicial vacancies, his encouraging of senior conservative judges to retire and be replaced by barely post-adolescent ideologues, and President Best People’s filling of three Supreme Court vacancies, two more than he should have had. The courts in effect were stacked during the Trump ascendancy.
“The Party of Yes,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 4 January 2017, A8 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/editorial—on-the-judiciary-the-gop-played-ball/article_126ee798-fc23-5e5e-a821-b6604d8db307.html).
“GOP Obstruction is Hurting the Courts,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 15 January 2017, E2 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-jan-15-2017-gop-obstruction-is-hurting-courts/article_cebf7255-2df4-5606-9a56-3bcf0d3f521f.html).
The weeks following the election were dark. Once the sharpest pangs of despair subsided, attention shifted to what was to come. Would the new administration realize Democrats’ worst fears or was there some sliver of hope? The long transition gave a space for forging new narratives. Fabulists gave it the college try. A popular canard held that ascent to the Oval Office would ennoble The New Occupant, that the Resolute Desk would be a philosopher’s stone to transmute the toxic narcissist into a lion of public service. There would be an epiphany. Andrew Johnson would become Abraham Lincoln. Right. Other falderal making the rounds contended that the GOP’s Solons would erect guardrails to keep President Bigly between the ditches. The absurdity of such expectations soon became evident. A paraphrase of a comment attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to the Medici Pope Leo X better characterizes the comportment of the about-to-be chief executive: “Now that we have the presidency, let us enjoy it.”
Election-induced paralysis gave way to hunger for activity, something to fill the void, an antidote to gloom. There was a Renaissance in interest in civics, the high school course that – essential though it is – has been excised from many secondary-school curricula. The November 2016 election was a debacle not just at the presidential level. The Democrats gained seats in Congress but didn’t establish a majority in either chamber. Down the ballot, the 2016 election underscored a damaging legacy of the Obama era: From 2009 to 2016, Democrats surrendered control of fourteen statehouses, thirteen governorships, and 816 state legislative seats, a hemorrhaging of legislative power unseen since the Eisenhower years. The Undramatic One far better safeguarded his own electoral fortunes than he rendered aid in the states. (Quorum, “Under Obama, Democrats Suffer Largest Loss of Power Since Eisenhower” [www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/under-obama-democrats-suffer-largest-loss-in-power-since-eisenhower/, accessed 26 April 2021]; National Association of State Legislatures, “State Vote 2016: Analysis on the Election from the State Perspective,” 14 November 2016 [https://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Statevote/StateVote_Combined%20Presentation.pdf]). The civics conundrum was how an opposition party wielding no national lever of power and floundering in the states could restrain a potentially rogue president and a ruling party betraying signs of political and constitutional sociopathy. Did anything remain in the toolbox, constitutional, extraconstitutional, sub-constitutional, super-constitutional, supra-constitutional, whatever?
For a time, activism became a lifestyle. The urge grew to make a loud public noise, to exercise atrophied First Amendment muscles. The Women’s March following The New Guy’s inauguration most fully expressed this impulse. The geyser of atrocities erupting in Washington made the question not whether but what to protest. Action lists – things-to-do for the activated – proliferated. More than once that I sat in a coffee shop and overheard groups, frequently women, hammering out strategy and weighing the efficacy of tactics. The nascent Trump regime galvanized opposition.
The bit below is another email to a friend suffering post-election angst. It was written a month and half after the election and well into President-Elect Trash Fire’s shambolic transition. Those days were dark both politically and personally. The Better Half and I were in California to visit my in-laws. My father-in-law died just before Christmas. His passing was peaceful and perhaps even merciful. The election had disturbed and enraged him. Part of his ire during the intervening weeks had been directed at the electorate. He muttered darkly and took pleasure from a resurrected H. L. Mencken saw: “People deserve the government they get and they deserve to get it good and hard.” A day after my father-in-law encountered the great mystery, President-Elect Covfefe reportedly quipped, “Let it be an arms race because we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” This nonchalance about rekindling a nuclear arms contest was a slap at my father-in-law’s career as a scientist in government service and a public intellectual. He didn’t need to hear that and what came afterward.
Later that dismal week, The Better Half and I had lunch with a friend, an executive at a Silicon Valley tech firm. We reminisced about the departed, but the conversation soon shifted to The Incoming Guy. This conformed to an enduring conversational pattern: The most casual, inconsequential chat always came around to His Biliousness. Our friend was agitated, as were we all. A follow-up email from him arrived the next day. Because of a poorly preserved, now defunct, email account, my response survives but not our friend’s initial correspondence. The gist of the exchange was how best to defang the new regime. Some topics broached by our interlocutor have faded into oblivion because my replies are unspecific. The rest of it illustrates the groping for ways to act, not to accept supinely what was to come, to think unconventionally – maybe even larcenously – and to resist on many fronts. It also conveys top-of-mind concerns in the moment. Could a recess appointment reverse the shabby treatment of Merrick Garland? Could Mr. Obama employ pardons strategically before his departure, perhaps to protect those vulnerable under the new dispensation? How might government records be preserved? How could the anticipated assault on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the rest of the social safety net be blunted? What would be Mr. Obama’s role in his post-presidency? Beyond addressing these issues, I gave my standard advice regarding how to thwart a wannabe authoritarian: Join the ACLU.
Here’s the bit:
Dear —–,
I too am a longstanding fan of both Robert Reich and Michael Moore. Regarding the list of suggested actions, I still think that no. 1 is problematic. The Republicans have effectively scotched Obama’s use of recess appointments for the lower federal courts by never allowing Congress to go into recess technically. I would be surprised if they’re not doing that now since they are determined to retain control of the appointment. If they’re not doing this or if their tactic applies only to the lower courts and not the supremes, it might be worth a shot but would at best likely only delay the inevitable. In any case, I would love to be corrected regarding any misconceptions I might have about this. The mistreatment of Merrick Garland has been one of the most deflating bits of this sad, sad, possibly needlessly sad year.
Obama could certainly do no. 2. Pardons for groups rather than individuals have been issued in the past. The president, however, has no power to pardon anyone for a crime not yet committed, so the efficacy of the former might be undercut by the latter. No one can be issued a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card.
Obama seems to be on the verge of doing something along the lines of no. 3, if this morning’s news is any indication. Good for him.
The agencies seem to be doing no. 4 already and it’s possible that Obama has quietly already made a move in this direction. Let’s hope.
Nos. 5 and 6 are great ideas and you’ve already mentioned the principal caveat in both.
No. 7 is also a good idea. The Republican response to this might be that they have not yet comprehensively outlined their plans for Medicare and Medicaid. Regarding the ACA, they undoubtedly will argue that it will be replaced with something far superior. The recent jumps in rates and the flight of some of the insurers unfortunately give them some cover on this. I personally think they will slow walk the changes in the ACA. They’ll vote to repeal but give the measure a long sunset to contain some of the political blowback. Another problem will be that Trump via Twitter will directly muddy the water for many of those most affected. The sad reality is that many of those bound to suffer most exist in a void of information and the Donald will likely for some time insulate himself from the consequences of his actions by employing Obama as scapegoat in chief.
In reference to no. 8, as we discussed yesterday, I think Obama should strive to be the best ex-president he can be and to anoint himself Trump’s personal and perpetual and constant gadfly if for no other reason than to preserve solidarity and maybe even a bit of optimism among right-thinking people. There have been modest signs over the past few days that he intends to do something like this. He’s popular at the moment and he shouldn’t waste that.
Beyond this, everyone should continue to fight the good fight in any way they can. After the debacle in 2004, I joined the ACLU. Their work in preserving transparency in government and individual freedom of expression and in defending people from aggressive action by the authorities will become even more important once Trump assumes office. If you have any friends who are attorneys and might be willing to offer a bit of pro bono, they could do worse than volunteer. Since you likely have an iPhone, the ACLU website offers an application that allows you to film and upload to the organization directly any incident in which you think someone’s rights are being violated. This application may be what finally compels me to surrender my Blackberry. Sigh.
It was fantastic to see you yesterday. Please stay in touch, especially during these troubling times.
Yours warmly, David