Tom Keane

Ditch The Frontrunners!

How about Kerry vs. Romney instead?

Hey, America! Massachusetts here. You’re in trouble. Republicans are in disarray; Democrats can’t believe they’re heading for Clinton 2.0.

Don’t worry. The Bay State is standing by, ready to help.

For you Republicans, we offer up one Mitt Romney: well-coiffed business genius, former Bay State governor and former presidential nominee. And for you Democrats, we’ve got John Kerry: lantern-jawed war protester turned U.S. senator, present-day secretary of state and also, you’ll recall, a presidential nominee himself.

And in our dreams? Romney versus Kerry! Heck, even we aren’t sure who we’d vote for!

OK, actually, we do know how we’ll vote. After all, we are, as Jon Keller says, “the bluest state.” But for the rest of America? A toss-up.

You may think this a fantasy but, in fact, the possibilities are quite real. Consider what’s going on with both sides of the aisle.

Turmoil grips the Republican Party; the primary process a shambles. Donald Trump rides high on the polls, currently fetching 40 percent or more. In second place is Sen. Ted Cruz. Trump may horrify party insiders but Cruz, to be frank, isn’t much better. In his brief tenure in the Senate, he has managed to alienate all of his colleagues — he’s “the most hated man in the Senate,” according to a profile in Foreign Policy magazine.

One doomsday scenario for the GOP is that either Trump or Cruz walks into the July convention in Cleveland with enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Another scenario, more probable but still scary, is that no candidate has a majority. If so, things can become a little crazy: We enter the world of a brokered convention.

The last time the GOP had a brokered election was 40 years ago. In 1976, then sitting President Gerald Ford battled it out with rising star Ronald Reagan. Back then, most delegates were comfortable with either choice (the nod eventually went to Ford, who then lost to Jimmy Carter).

This time around, things will be more chaotic. Trump or Cruz are flat-out unacceptable to many party regulars. As the convention goes through round after round of votes, convention managers will get increasingly desperate to find some figure around whom everyone can unite, someone trusted, someone — dare we say? — sane.

Who ya gonna call?

Mitt Romney!

Really. Since his loss four years ago, the 2012 nominee has worn well. His name constantly emerges in discussions by Republicans frustrated by their party’s current field. Indeed, a November poll found New Hampshire Republicans would prefer a hypothetical Romney candidacy by a wide margin over the real candidacies of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and others. He’s well known and, obviously, experienced in the ways of campaigning. Critically, he probably wouldn’t alienate any key GOP constituency — something that could not be said for the current GOP frontrunners.

Meanwhile, Democrats face their own problems. Admittedly, the worries are less severe. Hillary Clinton is odds-on the nominee. Her only credible opponent is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but her current standing in national polls overwhelms his. She has well over 50 percent of support from Democrats nationwide with some polls putting her at close to 60 percent. In all likelihood she walks into the convention with enough delegates to get a first-round victory.

And yet. Clinton polarizes, with some of the weakest favorability ratings imaginable; more people dislike her than like her. She appalls many on the left the same way Trump and Cruz appall the right. “Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security,” wrote commentator Christopher Hitchens — and that was in 2008, before Benghazi, before the email scandal, before Humagate! Does the past somehow catch up with her? Does she show up at the Democrats’ own July convention — this one in Philadelphia — fatally weakened, with the party craving an alternative?

Enter John Kerry.

You laugh, and I understand why. Even in Massachusetts, Kerry has never drawn much love. His aloofness, stentorian tones and seeming humorlessness were never endearing and one can imagine Bay Staters collectively grimacing as they contemplate another Kerry presidential run.

Yet in 2004 the man almost beat George W. But for New Mexico and Ohio — both narrow wins for the Republican — Kerry would have been president. Might he manage it 12 years later?

Perhaps you think this is parochialism run amok. Surely across the United States there are others to whom the parties might turn, right? Not really. But hyper-liberal Taxachusetts, you ask? That shouldn’t surprise. Massachusetts, with a scant 2 percent of the nation’s population, has always fought above its weight when it comes to politics. It’s been true since the country’s inception — after all, we started the revolution — and we’ve remained deeply engaged in the great experiment over the last 240 years. We’re the home of presidents (the Adamses, Coolidge, Kennedy), nominees (Kerry and Romney, of course), influential pols (Elizabeth Warren being the most recent) and big ideas (national health care, education reform, same-sex marriage).

We’re Massachusetts, waiting in the wings, ready to answer America’s call.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on December 22, 2015

The Trump Paradox

Republicans for Hillary?

It could come to that.

Donald Trump’s latest shocker – calling “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” – has provoked widespread outrage and predictions of his campaign’s demise. Such predictions, of course, have been made each time Trump has made some seemingly appalling statement, whether it’s calling undocumented Mexicans “rapists” or mocking a disabled reporter. And each time, of course, his standings in the polls have only improved. Right now, according to Real Clear Politics’ averaging of recent polls, he leads the field by 14 points nationally and is ahead in New Hampshire by 16 points.

And the predictions will be wrong this time as well.

Across the political spectrum, Republican politicians and senior figures – including House speaker Paul Ryan (“this is not conservatism”) and former Vice President Dick Cheney (“goes against everything we stand for and believe in”) – have denounced Trump’s proposal. Finally, it appeared (and many hoped) he had jumped the shark, he had simply gone too far.  This was the moment his campaign would unravel.

No way. As far as Trump supporters are concerned, he did nothing wrong.  Indeed, a December 9 poll from Bloomberg Politics finds that two-thirds of likely Republican voters agree with Trump’s ban on Muslims. Rather than being outside the mainstream, he reflects the mainstream – a telling comment on just how attune the billionaire is to the real desires of the GOP’s base.

In other words, the Trumpernaut proceeds unchecked. The Trump Towers are not about to fall.

But something, in fact, has changed. Trump may continue to be popular with the electorate, but among the party establishment, he is increasingly an anathema. Party elders figure a Trump candidacy can’t win the national election, and his policy on Muslims makes that even truer (the same Bloomberg poll found a majority of all voters oppose Trump’s Muslim policy).  They fear, too, that Trump will drag down the GOP in Senate and House elections around the country. And many also think, quite genuinely, that he is simply unfit for the office – that he would be a disaster as president.

This split underscores Trump’s fundamental argument, of course.  He has pitched himself as an anti-establishment candidate, and the fact that elites are increasingly adopting an “anyone but Trump” mindset only proves his case – and improves his standing among voters as well.  They think he’s the only one willing to speak the truth, the only one not tethered by insider interests. (Indeed, on the Democratic side, that same dynamic is what pushes along Bernie Sanders’s campaign, although his target is the wealthy, not the dispossessed.)

It is, of course, possible that some other candidate is able to topple Trump. As long as the field remains large, that’ll be hard. But if the other fractious candidates could ever settle on one designee, Trump might well be beaten in a one-on-one face-off.

It’s also possible that party insiders could somehow rig things to deny Trump the nomination come July 2016. But the primary process is intentionally designed to stop this, handing power to voters. And even if party elders have some trick up their sleeves, that almost certainly would cause Trump to run as a third party candidate. As Republican National Committee spokeswoman Alison Moore told Politico, “Everyone knows that a third-party bid would instantly hand Hillary Clinton the keys to the White House.”

But assume for the moment that some other candidate doesn’t beat Trump, and the RNC can’t engineer a coup.

Elections are about making a choice, and sometimes that choice comes down to “bad” and “even worse.” For a great many Republicans, I suspect, Hillary Clinton (assuming she’s the nominee) may be bad, but Trump would be even worse. In exchange for their support, one could imagine the GOP suing for some sort of peace – perhaps a more bipartisan cabinet, action on a few favored items, or a truce on the budget wars. That might give Clinton the opportunity to build a coalition that would allow her to govern, one far different from the hyper-partisanship of the Obama years.

So too, Trump’s nomination – and presumed loss to the Democrat – will likely force the Republican Party into some deep soul-searching. Today’s GOP is like some sort of unholy alliance, a stitching together of aggrieved southern whites, religious fundamentalists, business interests and libertarians that makes no coherent sense. It’s a tattered fabric that may finally be about to come apart at the seams. The current craziness that seems to define the Party – one that pushes away the centrists necessary for a presidential victory — is loathed by many who call themselves Republicans. They remember the GOP as the party of Lincoln and wonder where it has gone. Trump may be just the one, perversely, to help bring those glory days back.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on December 11, 2015

In Theory, Everyone Wants To Slow Climate Change. In Practice? Not So Much

World leaders are meeting in Paris, the beginning of a two-week effort to tackle the massive, thorny and alarming problem of global climate change. Getting nearly 200 countries to agree on anything is a daunting task. Even more daunting, however, will be the folks back home.

From the pope on down, it seems as if almost the entire planet (with the exception, apparently, of the Republican presidential field) is rooting for the Parisian talks to be a success. But lofty words about being green ultimately run up against blunt economic realities. A case in point: gasoline. Reducing CO2 emissions means using less fuel. But in fact, things are going in the opposite direction. Gas, it turns out, is too cheap.

That’s news you might be inclined to dismiss. After all, decades ago gasoline was just pennies a gallon: 57 cents, in fact, back in 1975. Today, we’re not surprised to see it priced nearly $4 a gallon.

Except that, adjusted for inflation, the 57 cents from four decades ago is now the equivalent of $2.57. And $4 gas, you may have noticed, is no more. It dropped to $3.50 a year ago, to $2.50 earlier this year and now, with just a little searching, it’s below $2 — currently $1.95, for example, at Stan Hatoff’s in Jamaica Plain. And many analysts think gas will go lower still, perhaps, even, to $1 a gallon. The real price of gas, in other words, is at historic lows.

At the same time, cars have become more efficient. Back in 1975, the average car got 13.5 miles per gallon. Today, with dramatic improvements in technology, efficiency has more than doubled, to over 27 mpg. Run the numbers and you’ll see that, back in 1975, the real out-of-pocket cost of driving was 19 cents a mile. Today? A paltry 7 cents.

No wonder our streets and highways are clogged with traffic. Norwood to downtown costs $7 via commuter rail. That’s 21 miles by car — or an out-of-pocket cost of $1.47. Which would you choose?

Judging by the jams on Route 93, I guess we know the answer.

I know what you’re thinking: It’s more complicated than that. Drivers have to pay for parking (or maybe not; employers often pay). Driving in rush hour takes longer than a train (unless there’s an all-too-frequent breakdown in the commuter rail). Cars are subsidized (but so too public transit — and often for more per mile). There are other costs of driving, such as ownership and insurance (but those are fixed anyway; if you own a car already, a few extra miles really is just the cost of fuel). More efficient cars help cut CO2 emissions (but they also encourage more driving).

So yes, an apples-to-apples comparison is complicated. Still, I think you get the point.  If the cost of driving is going down, people will, pretty naturally, drive even more. They’ll buy bigger cars while sales of electric and hybrid vehicles — very cool, no doubt — will plummet. Public transit — with its lack of privacy and competition for a seat — will look less and less attractive. Carpooling will decline.

And CO2 emissions will climb.

So what’s a government that just signed some accord in Paris to do? One obvious approach is simply to boost the price of gasoline, adding in taxes that bring fuel to $4 or $5 a gallon. Such an increase would spur all sorts of wonderful behaviors. It sounds great in the abstract. But in practice?

Some states, such as California, have in fact imposed a “global warming fee.” But that additional tax is just a dime a gallon, hardly enough to counter the dramatic drops we’ve seen in fuel costs. Anything truly significant — say $2 a gallon or more — would be near impossible. The politicians who would do so would make easy targets on Election Day, and for good reason. For a typical family driving 20,000 miles a year, (and assuming a car with 27 mpg) such a boost in gas taxes would amount to close to $1,500 annually — OK for the rich, perhaps, but hardly acceptable for the already stretched middle class.

Thus the challenge that the U.S. and other countries face in the aftermath of the Climate Change Conference: Even the best of agreements may founder in the practicalities of getting them done. Global climate change may be terrifying, but it’s a distant, far-off terror. For many — probably most, in fact — money in the pocket counts for more.

This column was first published in Cognoscenti on December 2, 2015.