Tom Keane

The Week That Was: Trump Abroad, White House Budget, Manchester Tragedy And More

It was the week when, after 119 days of sowing chaos in America, the president left to sow chaos in the rest of the world — and suddenly went all statesman on us.

• Over there. Trump made his first trip overseas and was focused, modulated and — dare one say it — presidential. In Saudi Arabia, his language was politic and his ire correctly directed at terrorism, not Muslims. He evenhandedly met with both Palestinian and Israeli leaders. A well-orchestrated meeting at the Vatican left Trump “more determined than ever" to pursue peace. And he conducted himself with aplomb in Brussels. What happened to the man America elected?
• Bad medicine. The left thinks it knows the answer to that question: Trump has Alzheimer’s disease! Remember the goofy claims during the campaign that Hillary Clinton had some sort of neurological disorder? Like the Hillary fiction, the dementia story originated in the far corners of obscurity. But suddenly it’s gone mainstream, appearing this week in publications such as the Boston Globe and Vanity Fair, with so-called medical experts who’ve never examined the man making their diagnoses from afar. There’s a kind of narcissism undergirding these kinds of stories. Rather than just concede that there are legitimate differences in opinions and ideologies, we vilify as mentally ill any who disagree with us.
• Vacation, all I ever wanted. Trump’s trip abroad couldn’t have come at a better time, what with one bad story following another and even Republicans talking about impeachment. By contrast, his week abroad has so far been marked by flattering press, sycophantic leaders and luxury accommodations. “Now this,” you can imagine the president thinking, “is what I signed up for.” The only problem: The trip is scheduled to last just nine days. Reflecting on the differences between his treatment at home and abroad, Trump must be wondering — can I get it extended?
• And the beat goes on. Even with the president gone, the news stories about the Russia scandal continued unabated. Press reports said Trump asked the directors of national intelligence and the National Security Agency to deny his campaign had colluded with Russia. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn took the Fifth, refusing to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. And the Russians supposedly conspired to use those close to then-candidate Trump to sway his opinions. Yet for all that, the frenzy of last week is gone. The FBI is doing its work and Washington seems calmer. Maybe it’s safe for Trump to return after all.
• Money changes everything. While Trump was out of town, the White House unveiled next year’s budget. Two contradictory strains of criticism emerged. First, there were repeated, agonized moanings that the budget was heartless, cruel and economically illogical. The second was that, like pretty much every president’s budget, it had zero chance of passing — “a snowball’s chance in hell,” in the words of GOP Senator Lindsey Graham. Of course, if that’s the case — and it is — why waste breath and ink complaining? The spending plan proposed by a president is a political document, designed to make a statement to his supporters. But it’s Congress, not the president, that writes the budget that is actually adopted.
• Welcome to my nightmare. Horror struck England when a suicide bomber blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. Doubly horrifying was that he seemed to be targeting children for death. Of course, the whole notion of terror is that it isn’t “civilized” war, where combatants go after other combatants and there are rules about its proper conduct. And ISIS in particular has made the slaying of innocents a core part of its ideology. Depraved? Yes. Surprising? Sadly, no.
• Time is on my side. The Congressional Budget Office released a report saying the Republican health bill passed three weeks ago by the House would result in 23 million more Americans losing their health insurance by 2026. Don’t you just hate facts? This, you see, is the real disaster of the Trump-Russia scandals. If the administration hadn’t been so distracted trying to put out fire after fire, the White House could have focused on quickly pushing the legislation through the Senate. But the delay gave the CBO time to finish its work, meaning that instead of a bill now awaiting the president’s signature, the health care proposal — at least in its current form — is almost certainly dead.
• Happy birthday, Mr. President. And finally, John F. Kennedy would have turned 100 this week. (Check out WBUR's special series here.) Looking back at old photos, it’s funny how stylish and flat-out cool the guy looked. Looking back too, it’s striking how his personal élan coupled with his political élan — he made public service cool as well. It’s a marked contrast to today’s Washington where those in government are immediately assumed to be corrupt and politics is all about anger and attack. JFK is missed.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on May 26, 2017.

The Week That Was: White House Red Herrings, Possible Impeachment, Ransomware And More

It was the week when the typically out-of-control White House outdid itself, getting even more out of control.

• Red herring No. 1. Besieged by wall-to-wall stories about his termination of James Comey last week, Donald Trump cleverly distracted everyone’s attention by revealing classified information to the Russians.
• Red herring No. 2. Besieged by wall-to-wall stories about his revealing classified information to the Russians, Trump cleverly distracted everyone’s attention by leaking a Comey memo saying the President asked the FBI director back off his investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and “let this go.”
• Red herring No. 3. Besieged by wall-to-wall stories about Trump asking Comey to back off on the Flynn investigation, his deputy attorney general cleverly distracted everyone’s attention by appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate any Russian ties ... hey, actually, this one might work! Mueller is widely respected, any investigation will doubtless take weeks if not months and Trump now has some breathing space to make his much-anticipated overseas trip with visits to the Vatican, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
• Analogies. Nearly every scandal large and small gets its own “-gate” designation — be it Bridgegate or Deflategate. But does this now 45-year-old Watergate scandal truly compare to the Trumpgate, as so many now claim? Surprisingly, yes. Watergate started with a burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s offices. The FBI investigated and found ties to President Richard Nixon’s campaign team. Nixon didn’t know of the burglary at the time, but when he finally learned, he tried to cover it up — and then everything blew up. In the case of Trump, substitute Russia for burglary and the parallels --- campaign team, FBI, coverup, tapes, obstruction of justice — start to seem eerily familiar.
• Article II, Section 4. And those parallels are why talk of impeachment is suddenly everywhere. But for that to happen in a Republican-controlled Congress, three things must occur. First, the GOP would need to be convinced that its policy agenda would have a much better shot of passing if Mike Pence were president. Second, Republicans would need to believe that if Trump remains, they’ll lose their House majority in the 2018 mid-term elections. Finally, and most difficult, the party would need to be willing to risk the wrath of the almost 40 percent of the population that remains undying, hard-core supporters of the president. Sure, you could get rid of Trump. But you might also lose your base in the process.
• Meanwhile, the war rages on in Syria. What should have been one of the biggest stories of the week — Syria conducting mass executions and burning the bodies in a crematorium — was widely ignored. The reason? Trump’s White House antics leave no room for anything more. And that is the real downside of scandal-tainment. The world genuinely needs the United States to be engaged, but the drama in the White House is so constant that the nation seems powerless to act.
• The reason bitcoin was invented. Beginning last weekend, computers worldwide were hit by ransomware attacks. Not much discussed was the source of the ransomware. The National Security Agency, apparently, created the malicious software but then lost control of it when its computers themselves were hacked. For years, government and law enforcement types have been arguing that tech manufacturers should build in “back doors” that allow them to hack into mobile phones and other devices when needed. The attacks show why that’s a terrible idea. Even if we say only the good guys will have access to the back doors, eventually the bad guys get in too.
• Can you trademark “trademark”? As I was googling around, I saw that a federal appeals court had ruled Tuesday that Google is still a trademark even though people like me now use it as just a regular word. I read the decision while at the laundromat, which gave me a headache, so I took an aspirin from a cellophane wrapper, washed it down with water from my thermos, then took an escalator to the second floor, walked across the linoleum to a TV and watched a videotape of the president delivering a speech from a teleprompter, all the while marveling that Google had managed to avoid the fate of Aspirin, Cellophane, Thermos, Escalator, Linoleum, Videotape and TelePrompTer.
• Don’t blame us! We’re green! And finally, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh made the seemingly unobjectionable observation that both bicyclists and pedestrians should pay attention when riding or walking. The victim culture took umbrage. Cyclist advocate Steve Bercu huffed about “Boston’s clueless Mayor” while StreetsPAC MASS called Walsh’s remarks “offensive, uninformed [and] victim blaming.” Meanwhile, every day I watch earphone-clad folks crossing streets without even a glance and bicyclists zipping in and out of moving traffic and running red lights. Sorry, guys. Walsh is right on this one.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on May 19, 2017.

The Week That Was: Comey Fired, Russian Hacking Backfired, Nudity On Stage And More

It was the week where Donald Trump proved that French voters really made the right decision.

• The strongman’s club. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro moved to rewrite his country’s constitution, completely abandoning any pretense at democracy and giving him near-dictatorial powers. Great! Another new BFF for Donald Trump!
• Getting what you asked for. For months, Democrats have been demanding that FBI Director James Comey be ousted from his job and so finally Trump fired him and Democrats were then outraged that FBI director Comey had been ousted from his job.
• I am not a crook. Of course, the outrage over the Comey matter has to do with timing. Comey deserved termination — he essentially threw the election to Trump — but that was months ago. So why the sudden firing? The suspicion is that Trump was trying to thwart Comey’s investigation into his campaign’s Russian ties. If so, it was a huge miscalculation. The FBI will be more determined than ever to prove it is not a political pushover. Comey is now expected to testify next week before the Senate Intelligence Committee. And the cries for some sort of independent investigation continue to mount. Instead of sweeping the Russian issue under the rug, Trump has succeeded in making it front and center.
• Look here! Look here! As the Comey termination erupted into a full-scale media conflagration, with the White House providing shifting explanations as to how and why, Trump responded by … issuing another executive order. This one takes aim at voter fraud and, as with so many of the president’s previous executive orders (including ones boosting trade, reviewing the federal government’s role in education, examining national landmark designations, reducing tax burdens or buying American), is more fluff than substance — public relations moves aimed at placating a particular constituency or, as with the most recent order, trying to distract attention from what’s really going on. Here’s betting no one takes the bait.
• Qui n’avance pas, recule. The French election really was a repeat of the U.S. election, but with a different outcome. Emmanuel Macron was the unapologetic globalist while Marine Le Pen — with a troubling background of bigotry — was the Trump-like nationalist. Much of the commentary following Macron’s win was of the “yes, but” variety, pointing out Le Pen’s new prominence. I’m not buying it. A 66-34 win is a landslide. French voters gave Le Pen a thumping from which she’ll not soon recover — and at the same time, set their nation on a new course.
• And while we’re at it, can we bring back happy hour? Massachusetts liquor regulators went after Budweiser for providing inducements to bar owners (such as beer dispensers with prominent logos) in order to get them to sell its products. Why is this a crime? In other fields of commerce, it happens all the time. Food companies, for example, pay expensive “slotting fees” for prominent placement in supermarket aisles. It’s time for the Bay State to stop trying to tell liquor businesses how they can compete and simply let them compete.
• Fight Club. Chaos continued in the nation’s airlines. A fight broke out on a Southwest flight to Burbank, California. Passengers at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport nearly rioted after Spirit Airlines canceled flights. A family was booted from a Delta flight when they refused to give up a toddler’s seat. And an American Airlines flight attendant got into a confrontation with a passenger after removing her baby stroller. So, should we all start traveling by automobile? Nah. I remember family trips with my siblings in the back of my parent’s sedan. I’ll take the perils of the perhaps not-so-friendly skies any day.
• Never nod if you can wink. Russia got a taste of its own medicine as hackers released embarrassing emails describing efforts by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to hide his ill-gotten wealth. Everyone was quick to assign blame to the hackers and to the weak security of the internet, but really, the incident underscored two key points everyone should know. First, emails (or texts or Instagrams or whatever) are incredibly easy to share, meaning they are essentially public documents. Second, if you don't want everyone reading one of your emails, maybe you shouldn’t write it in the first place. Antiquated as they may seem, phone calls or — even better — private conversations are much more secure.
• Overexposed. And finally, the Boston Children’s Theatre caught flack for featuring a nude scene in one of its productions. Granted, nudity can be a legitimate artistic choice. But the BCT’s original mission — and I once sat on its board — was theater for children by children. The play at issue, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” however, is so adult that children are warned off from attending. And the undressed actor in question is 21 years old — a grown-up by any measure. So now we have theater for adults by adults. BCT, I fear, has lost its way.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on May 12, 2017.

 

The Week That Was: Racism At Fenway, Clinton's Confession, Trump's Strongmen, And More

It was a week when Donald Trump reverted to his bad old ways and Bostonians suddenly worried that maybe they had too.

• One bad apple. It may be that only one or two Red Sox fans shouted racial epithets at outfielder Adam Jones on Monday night, but that was enough to make national news and bring back all of the old stories about bigoted Boston, be they the busing upheavals or Tom Yawkey’s refusal to hire black players. Such is the enduring power of stereotypes. A racist taunt in, say, Seattle would just be an isolated racist taunt. In Boston, it defines an entire people.
• Let’s make a deal. After a few weeks of trying to appear presidential, the old Trump reappeared, wondering why Americans went to war over slavery. “Why could that one not have been worked out?” he asked, thinking there must have been a deal to be had. Actually, there was dealmaking aplenty. One was with the writing of the U.S. Constitution, where the framers cut a deal declaring slaves three-fifths of a citizen. Another was the Missouri Compromise, which allowed one free state to be admitted if a slave state also was admitted. Here’s what Trump doesn’t get: Dealmaking is fine when it involves matters such as regulation, programs, spending, taxes or foreign relations. But not when it comes to basic human rights.
• Strongmen of the world unite, you’ve nothing to lose but your elections. Trump also spent the week saying he would be “honored” to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, inviting the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte to visit the White House, having a nice conversation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and calling China’s Xi Jinping “a very good man.” If the world was a neighborhood, the United States increasingly seems to be living on the wrong side of the tracks.
• Do your job. On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton in an interview said she would have won but for FBI Director James Comey’s email investigations and Russian-led email leaks. It’s easy to blame others but, really, she’s wrong. The FBI investigation only happened because she made the mistake of using a private email server. And the leaked emails were embarrassing not because they were leaked, but for what they said.
• What gives? Meanwhile, Comey told a Senate committee it made him “mildly nauseous” to think his email investigation may have influenced the presidential election. Moreover, given the same circumstances, he said he’d do it again. I’ve yet to figure the guy out. He’s not obviously partisan. But why did he reveal this investigation before the election and not, for instance, last spring’s investigation into Trump’s Russian ties?
• Fractured. Democrats scored big victories in the latest budget showdown when internecine Republican squabbling made Democratic support critical to reaching a deal. And although the House managed to pass an Obamacare repeal, it did so narrowly when centrist Republicans refused to go along. The GOP has long described itself as a big "tent," but increasingly it looks like there are really two tents: one extreme right, the other centrist. It makes for a fascinating opportunity for Democrats, who once thought the GOP-controlled Congress a monolith. Might one of those tents want to join theirs?
• Running on empty. The president said he would consider raising the gas tax to pay for his ambitious infrastructure program. Seems good, but here’s the conundrum: Any rise in gas prices would only hasten consumers’ move to hybrid and electric vehicles. That’s because drivers using gas-free cars don’t pay gas taxes. Thus, a gas tax increase may look like a Laffer curve: the higher the tax, the less is collected.
• Pew you. Trump signed an executive order Thursday that allows religious organizations to make political endorsements. Conservatives are thrilled because, in general, churches in the United States lean to the right. But Trump may regret the move. If Ted Cruz, for instance, mounts a primary challenge to him three years from now, it’ll be Cruz the pastors support. Trump’s problem is that conservatives don’t really like him. He’s just the only thing they’ve got right now.
• Make America Great Again. And finally, the New York Times reported its best quarter ever for subscriber growth. The internet nearly destroyed the newspaper industry, but now — thanks to heightened interest in Donald Trump — it’s on a rebound. Hmm. When Trump said he’d bring back American business, I don’t think this is what he had in mind.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on May 5, 2017.