EXISTENTIAL THREATS

The Senate confirmation hearings for members of Donald Trump’s national security team have shone light on the thinking not only of the candidates for these high level and high impact jobs but also of the Senators serving on the committees in charge of the confirmations. Of course, there was the usual political grandstanding in the process, from both sides of the aisle. Softball pitches from Trump supporters like Ted Cruz and pointless narratives from liberal democrats like Kamala Harris. It strikes a casual observer like me as unreal that none of the interlocutors can resist to use a large part of the allocated microphone and TV camera time for the purpose of explaining at great length what their beliefs are in the arena of national security, rather than probing what the candidate’s views are and how they may translate into policy for the new administration. Either way, the process is valuable because it forces an in-depth evaluation of the nature and the risks of the threats to national security we commonly recognize.

The picture that emerges from this public national security review is unsettling in more than one way.

The voices for a larger investment in our military are strong and politically irresistible given the growing awareness of national security threats posed by terrorist organizations and animosity from the governments of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. But we are already $20 Trillion in debt and we are already spending more on our military than the next seven countries (including China and Russia) when ranked by military expenditure. Defense spending is, at 20% of federal expenditure, the third largest line item in the federal budget, after social security (23%) and healthcare (25%). So, the question needs to be asked: “are we spending our tax dollars on the right assets?”

Many voices, including Ike Eisenhower and Robert Gates, have alerted against the inertia inhibiting the required flexibility in adjusting military asset allocation according to the changes in security threats against our nation. The power of the military-industrial complex is well documented and Congress can be relied on to always wanting to spend more on the military without ever taking anything that is arguably obsolete off the table.

The Senate confirmation hearings have repeatedly, and from all corners of the committee table, asserted that we have the best and most powerful military in the world. And that is undoubtedly true in the conventional sense of warfare, but are we not already constantly and sufficiently confronted with the limited usefulness of our existing military assets in defense of the most serious threats to our national security? What use are our soldiers if we have already accepted that we can’t put ‘boots on the ground’ in the fight against ISIS, Al Qaida or Al-Shabaab? What use are our tanks and artillery when drones can do the necessary dirty work? How many nuclear strike instruments do we need when we can’t imagine a war in which nuclear weapons are used that will not inevitably lead to complete annihilation of humanity? Our helplessness in spite of our military might was most painfully exposed on September 11 of 2001 when we could not find a convenient target to retaliate against and ended up settling for a war with the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in which we are still embroiled today and which arguably has increased the threat of terrorism by Islamic jihadists.

We cannot determine with precision what kind of military we need, without first determining what threats we want/need to defend against. That is, assuming that we certainly should not build and maintain a military for offensive purposes.

There is one area in which we need clarity of intent. That is how far America will go in defending its allies against aggression from its neighbors. After the fall of communism, America and its allies have chosen to surround Russia with NATO member states, leaving only Belarus and the Ukraine as buffers between the West and the East. What if, to divert attention from domestic and economic failures, Putin decides to ‘liberate’ a corridor to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic? Much like he has done with Crimea on the Black Sea. What kind of military will NATO need to credibly defend against such adventurism and what does America need to contribute to this defense? How reasonable is it to design a US military first and foremost to deal with these types of aggression against our allies? Trump is right in openly questioning how much of the burden we should carry in the defense of territory far outside of our borders.

The hard question behind this is to what extent we can rely on the deterrent of an effective threat of nuclear retaliation against a conventional attack. The Russians are, logistically and in terms of conventional forces, much better positioned to prevail in clash around the Baltics than NATO is. Will they speculate that the USA will not risk a full out nuclear war if they force their way to the Baltic with conventional forces? And, if that is the hypothesis, does that justify the current composition of the American military forces and the further build-up that is now proposed by Trump and congressional hawks? Aren’t we much better off equipping our European allies to defend their own territory with weaponry and technology that would be strong enough to deter the Russians from any further expansionary adventures?

The same questions and answers apply to South-East Asia and China’s approach in the South China Sea.

Ultimately, our decision makers ought to go by the premise that our military might is of no use, a very expensive redundancy, unless it can be directed against the primary, existential, threats against our national security. And I would argue that in our world of today there are three such existential threats that loom far ahead of Russian or Chinese aggression. All three are hard to predict, hard to control and hard to defend against:

1.       Terrorist use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons

2.       Cyber-attacks against our communications systems and infrastructure

3.       Self-defeat of our democracy

If these are the most severe (and likely) threats against our national security, we have to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the asset allocation in our military, as a core component of our national security infrastructure, is hopelessly out of alignment. At its core, it is built for intervention and retaliation rather than prevention. All the hardware in the world and all the ground troops do nothing to prevent any of these three existential threats from haunting us. And our defense fails if we fail−only once−to preempt or intercept an attack in either one of these three threat categories. The weapons we need most in the fight against existential threats are intelligence, technology and uncompromising value systems.

America is paying a price for its success in building the richest, most advanced and powerful nation of all ages. In the process, it has become the target of global envy, hatred and sabotage. And, paradoxically, the more advanced our infrastructure and systems have become, the more vulnerable we have become as a society. I call this the ‘wealth paradox’: the wealthier a nation becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes to destruction. Just think about the havoc that would be created if, as a result of a coordinated cyber-attack or the deployment of strategically placed 'dirty bombs', our communications systems would be rendered inoperative. Ever seen a lame duck? America without power, data access, internet access, account access, traffic control would not be a powerhouse for long.

There is also a ‘weaponry paradox’: the more destructive weapons become, the less deployable they will prove to be. Nuclear weapons provide no preventive or preemptive power against either of the three existential threats America is now faced with. Our existing military serves one primary purpose: to keep our adversaries from attacking the United States or its allies with military means (like Japan did at Pearl Harbor). Given our capacity to retaliate with exponential force, that scenario, an offensive strike by an adversarial nation, has become less and less plausible. But, if our communications systems go down, will we know who launched the cyber-attack and are we going to retaliate with our existing weaponry arsenal, including nuclear weapons?

The third existential threat may be the most serious of them all. Will we be looking in the mirror before too long and exclaim: ‘I have seen the enemy; it is us’? Half the nation seems to be thinking that way already. That is how divided we have become. The Trump ascendency to the throne, that gave us the confirmation hearings in the Senate, is likely to only exacerbate the division to the point that it could easily become a threat to democracy and our republican system. The weapons we need to deploy against this threat are not military at all. The best defense here is, as so often, offense. Offense against inequality and discrimination. Offense against abuse of power, crime, corruption, greed and avarice. The richer a society becomes the better equipped it is to become a ‘just society’. America has yet to live up to that potential and the longer it delays the more imperiled it becomes. America today is much like Mr. Scrooge from Dickens’ Christmas Carol, before he became chastened by the appearances of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come.

To fend off the existential threats against its national security, America would be well advised to rethink and reorganize the means of defense it needs to deploy and to fund that defense by a matching budget reallocation. Will the new administration and the Congress be up to the task?

CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Open letter to my friends who voted for Donald Trump

Dear friends:

First of all, I will still cherish you as a friend even though I am fearful that you made a fateful decision when you cast your ballot for Donald Trump to be our 45^th President. The whole long election campaign has been woefully short in civility and I will not contribute to it. Let’s face it, The People have spoken and it is a fait accompli: Donald J. Trump will be our next President and, for all of our sake, we should hope for him to be successful in the much loftier office than the one he has in the Trump Tower.

Second, I grant you that you did not have a palatable choice. This was a rare occasion where I was content not having to make the choice, as I have no vote as a permanent resident in the USA. Democrats apparently were hell bent to give Hillary a second chance after she had been unceremoniously upstaged in 2008 by Barack Obama; but who was looking forward to bringing the Clintons back into the White House with all the ballast they were carrying? The only thing she had going for her was the unwavering support of the Democratic establishment and being seen as ‘the lesser of two evils’ by a large number of people.

Third, you had good reasons to be looking in a previously unexplored direction because eight years of Bush and eight years of Obama, had done nothing but run up the national debt without solving any of America’s existential challenges. But Donald Trump? Really?

Have you noticed how easily and unapologetically he switches opinion about people and issues? Most remarkably, after vilifying President Obama all through the election campaign, he meets with Obama in the Oval Office much longer than planned and then he calls the man whose nationality and faith he had openly questioned ‘a good man’ and he vows that he will continue to seek his counsel (which he apparently has done even though it is unclear if he has heeded any such counsel.) Similarly, Trump in a Sixty Minutes interview called Hillary Clinton, the person he and you loathed, ‘very strong and very smart’.

After calling Paul Ryan ‘a weak and very ineffective leader’ and refusing to endorse him in the Wisconsin GOP Primary, he now compares the speaker to ‘fine wine’, adding ‘every day I appreciate his genius more and more’.

Mitt Romney is a different case. We know that Trump called him ‘a miserably failed candidate’ during the campaign but then, while looking for a Secretary of State, invited him twice to the Trump Tower. Was that a change of heart or just a revengeful humiliation knowing full well that he would pick someone else for the job?

A change of heart can be a sign of mental agility and willingness to adjust to changing circumstances, but in Trump’s case it looks more like a case of deception: make you believe one thing while carefully hiding the true intent or judgment. The bottom-line is: do you really know what you will get from Donald Trump, the man you voted into the White House?

For the sake of the country, I hope that he will change his mind (or reveal his true intentions in contrast with his campaign slogans) and that you will find yourself led down the primrose path once more if you voted for him based on his campaign rhetoric:

1.       Let’s hope that the three generals in his cabinet and Rex Tillerson will keep him from breaking up the Western Alliance by giving up on NATO and cozying up with Putin.

2.       Let’s hope that he will not wreck the US economy by deporting all undocumented immigrants and withdrawing from NAFTA or any other trade agreements and initiatives that integrate the US economy with the global economy and allow the US to play a leadership role in international relations.

3.       Let’s hope that he will not kill promising new technology, jeopardizing the jobs in upstarts and green energy sectors that can diversify our energy sources, in order to deliver on his campaign promise to keep West Virginia coals miners at work.

4.       Let’s hope that he will drop his belligerent tone towards China and just focus on building inherent American strength in its economy and its social structure. Let’s beat the Chinese on merit not on bluff and bluster.

5.       Let’s hope that he will change his mind on withdrawing from the multinational agreement with Iran on nuclear power and just focus on pressing back on Iran in places where that country interferes with a peaceful world order.

The Romans had a saying that so much fits the mold here: ‘Mundus vult decipi, decipiatur ergo’. Loosely translated it means that ‘If you wish to be deceived into believing what you want to believe, then be deceived.’

Let me quote you from a recently released non-fiction book by Volker Ullrich:

‘How did this most unlikely pretender to high state office assume complete control of a once democratic country? By using an arsenal of demagogic tools (lies, fake promises, theatrical rallies, mantra like phrases) to exploit a constellation of crises, including economic woes, unemployment and political dysfunction.’        

Sounds familiar? No, Ullrich did not write a prospective history of the Trump era. He is German and wrote about Germany in the 20^th century. But the parallels are striking and menacing.

Congratulations. You got your wish and you got the president you voted for. Let’s hope he will bely most all of the positions and promises that got him elected.

THE NEXT FOUR YEARS

My post-election counsel to my American friends: Take a deep breath and take a long-term view. This too will pass. America has now elected 45 presidents and less than a handful of them have been statesmen and world leaders. Yet, America has survived and prospered (most of the time). Let’s keep in mind that a prospering and prosperous America has never meant that all American citizens were prospering.

Let’s also acknowledge that, had the election gone the other way, we would be lamenting as well. In fact, it is probably a good thing that the Clintons don’t get a second turn in the White House and that the election defeat almost certainly spells an end to the Clinton dominance of the Democratic Party. The Clintons now go the way of the Bush’ and that is a good thing, because the last thing American politics needs is dynasty building.

Nevertheless, the American people pulled off an astonishing act on November 8, 2016. They defied conventional wisdom, changing demographics, polls and pundits and elected a man who has all attributes of a pied piper but, on paper, zero credentials to qualify him for the toughest and most influential job in America. They have done a lot more that they almost certainly will come to regret:

1.       They have elected a septuagenarian to lead the nation and the world

2.       They have elected a Congress that consists for 72% of representatives of the baby-boomer generation and older and for 1% of Millennials

3.       They have diminished some of the checks and balances by putting the same party in charge of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives

4.       Forty-two percent of them, while eligible to vote, stayed home

5.       They have left it to the Electoral College to decide the election in deviation of the popular vote.

The democratic process and the constitution require that we respect the outcome delivered at the polls. It is undeniably true that eight years of conventional republican management under Bush and eight more years of conventional democratic government under Obama have done nothing to solve America’s most urgent problems brought to the fore in this ugly election campaign: an underperforming economy, the glaring inequality and the unease about race and immigration. So, you can’t blame the electorate for seeking salvation from outside of the political establishment. By doing so, they gave themselves two chances. First you have to accept the possibility that Trump has indeed the answers required to turn the battleship around. He has defied the conventional wisdom at every turn of this election campaign and he may do so again. He certainly has put everything, including his brand and his reputation, on the line to deliver on his promise of a miraculous resurrection of the American experiment. Yet, if he fails in this attempt, the fury of the deprived has a good chance of reaching revolutionary proportions, which may blow up the whole existing political construct. It may have to come to this. Real change is normally not accepted until the pain caused by the status quo exceeds the pain caused by the change. I think we are getting close to that point.

If nothing else comes about under the Trump presidency, he will be able to take credit for having shaken up the Beltway and, like a human earthquake, having lifted both major parties off their foundations. The question is if Trump’s courtship with the deprived, particularly the white underclass, will prove to have been just a campaign ploy or become a strategic underpinning of his administration and a serious attempt at spreading the wealth and reducing the disturbing level of inequality that has resulted from globalization, the technological revolution and an inadequate government response to the changing economic and social landscape.

I have great concerns about many Trump statements made during his campaign. And I condemn him for playing on voters’ fears and bestial instincts with his inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims and immigrants in general. I am inclined to take a man by his word and his word has been hateful, disrespecting of American values and, more often than not, misleading or outright incorrect.

Yet, already in the immediate aftermath of his electoral victory, Trump has retracted from many of his harshest positions. Just listen to his praise for Hillary Clinton in response to her concession call and his professed respect for president Obama following the first transition meeting between the two. It made me tweet: “will the real president-elect please stand up”. I find it utterly disturbing when you can’t take a man by his word. How can you vote for someone who will say one thing to get elected but without compunction will say the opposite the next day? But the voters have chosen to give him a chance and we should respect that. So, let me put in my five cents worth:

“Mr. Trump, I assume with no hesitation that now that you have been elected you want to be a most successful President. I know that you are not seeking and probably don’t want my advice. But I want you to be successful so that America can get back on track and so I counsel you to use your new office to implement the following policy initiatives:

1.       Push a complete tax overhaul with the intent to simplify, stimulate investment and mitigate inequality.

2.       Push global free and fair trade while protecting the inevitable domestic victims from the ill effects of globalization by means of income protection and re-education.

3.       Adopt the Common Good stance on regulation and facilitate a broad infrastructure investment.

4.       Put the American fiscal house in order.

5.       Get the Congress to help you implement your agenda.

The system is not rigged. The People have spoken. They are now expecting to see results.”

UNEASE

I can’t wait for this election to be over and behind us. It’s been too long and far too dispiriting. And it has left me with a worrisome feeling of unease. Unease at multiple levels. In the first place the prospect of seeing the White House occupied by a person who should never have survived a serious vetting process, like a new corporate CEO or a new justice for the Supreme Court would be subjected to, but who survived a two-year long election campaign where sense of entitlement, hubris, bluster and deceit account for more than competency and character.

Unease about the nefarious role our two parties have played in this election. The democratic party by pulling all the strings of power to deliver the nomination on a silver plate to its chosen but deeply flawed heiress and the republican party by given up control of the nomination process to the point that it ended up with a nominee who will destroy the party and is demonstrably unfit to become the leader of the free world. Isn’t it ironic that the democratic party fails as a result of being too controlling while the GOP fails as a result of relinquishing even the marginal control required to keep undesirables out of the halls of power?

Unease about the fact that in two years of bickering and campaigning we have not heard from either candidate how this proud nation can right the ship, get its fiscal house in order and begin to deal with the most serious challenges it faces: inequality, national security, climate control, the cost of healthcare and higher education, drugs and immigration.

It is now more than two years since I addressed these matters in my book NEITHER HERE NOR THERE and offered my suggestions for a more productive American political system, but in our era of being in near permanent election mode, nothing has been accomplished and our problems have only grown.

The unease that feels more uncomfortable than all of the above is the sense that the relationship and communication with my friends and my network have been damaged in the process. There is a long standing unwritten rule that politics and religion are to be kept out of social conversation, unless you have up-front determined that all conversation partners share the same persuasion. But rules are there to be broken and with my best friends I have had numerous conversations about American politics. After all, my book dealt with the subject matter, be it not in a partisan fashion. This time is different though and it is because just about everyone in my social circle sees the upcoming presidential election not as a choice for the better of two qualified candidates, but as a choice for the lesser of two evils. It is different this time because there is very little consensus on which of the two pretenders to the crown constitutes the lesser evil.

I do not trust polls, because I have seen too many times in my life that people will say one thing and do another. Thank goodness, the privacy of the voting booth is still sacrosanct and so I can easily proclaim my support for one candidate and yet cast my ballot for another. In a group of people who have accepted the Donald as the lesser of two evils, it takes superhuman courage to proclaim that they have it wrong and that only crooked Hillary can keep us safe and lead us to the promised land. So, it is better and safer to just keep your opinion to yourself. It is somewhat more acceptable to go half way and say, like governor John Kasich of Ohio says, that you cannot, in good conscience, vote for either candidate, because both are unfit in your eyes to accept the mantle of the highest office in America and the free world. (How many of us wonder now why, when given the chance, we never gave John Kasich a real shot at the nomination?). But then who do you vote for? We sorely miss a credible third party candidate.

The bottom line is that in the discourse on one of the most important issues of our lives, sincerity and truthfulness are out of the window. The factual negatives that come with each of our two presidential candidates are so overwhelming that it can only be overcome by an article of faith. Faith that, when elected, the preferred candidate will do the right thing in spite of the track record and all the rhetoric used in the election campaign to the contrary. And we don’t argue about faith. End of conversation.

Sometimes setbacks bring out the best in people.  Not in this case, at least not with me. I don’t go as far as thinking of the people in my social circle who differ with me in their choice of the lesser of two evils as irredeemable dummies, but the fact of the matter is that, for the life of me,  I can’t imagine how intelligent, well educated people and upstanding citizens can be so naive to think that the candidate of their choice will throw off all the ballast they have brought into this campaign and magically morph into a reincarnation of the great white knight who will solve all of our problems.

It makes me uneasy that this election campaign is making me question the good judgment of many people who are otherwise dear to me.

DAMAGE CONTROL

With only six weeks to go until the November 8 elections, the country better starts preparing for the inevitable. It will take a miracle now – or an act of God – to prevent the election of an utterly flawed candidate for the Presidency of the United States. And a septuagenarian. A representative of a generation that had its chances and did little or nothing with them. And a representative of a generation that is far removed from the mindset and aspirations of the people who will represent the large majority of the population and the driving force behind the future of this country.

It still blows the mind that this is really happening. That the country with an abundance of proven talent and character has managed to offer up two of the most undesirable egomaniacs as the choice for the future. How much better would we all feel if on November 8 the country could vote for someone like Mitch Daniels, John Kasich or Condoleezza Rice on the republican side or for someone like Jim Webb, Tim Kaine or John Hickenlooper on the democratic side. But it is not to be and we only have ourselves to blame. The question now becomes: how can we limit the damage from this self-inflicted disaster?

The thing to watch out for most is the further creep of the ‘imperial presidency’. The only way to do damage control to compensate for having the wrong person in the White House is for the Congress and the Supreme Court to strictly limit the executive reach of the president to the constitutionally enshrined powers, preferably with a minimalist interpretation. Given the character and the hubris of the two candidates running for the highest office in the nation and given the likelihood of a split Congress, it looks certain that both Trump and Clinton would try to test the boundaries of the executive power and authority, much like Obama has tried in an effort to overcome a hostile and ineffective legislative branch.

The next thing to do is to accept reality and prepare for the future. Whoever wins this time, it is hard to imagine that it will result in more than a one term presidency and in four years we will have the opportunity to erase our mistakes and do it all over again. It would be tremendously beneficial if in the intervening four years a political realignment takes place that would restore the dominance of the moderate center of the right leaning democrats and the left leaning republicans. The impetus for this would have to come from the party that is going to take a drubbing in the 2016 elections. Even with a win for Donald Trump, the republican party will have to decide if it will be the party of Trump or the party of Paul Ryan and Ben Sasse.

What is really missing in our political system is a constitutional requirement for a national strategy. The nation’s challenges are manifold, but we are not in any way forced to have a national discussion about priorities in addressing these challenges and a time-frame within which we expect to get our problems solved. America as a nation should have a clearly articulated vision of where it wants to be ten and twenty years from now and it should have established strategies for implementation. A national strategy like this should be binding upon the Congress and the White House and transcend the changes in administration but be set at a high enough level (like 30,000 ft.) to leave ample room for the two branches to select their ways of implementation in line with their policy views. A constitutionally mandated and protected national strategic plan would limit the freedom of the president to veer off in a direction that would be off strategy.

The existence of a national strategy would also help in restoring faith and confidence in the American miracle. Today there is so much negativity in the media about America’s place in the world that it risks becoming self-fulfilling. The optimism that was so palpable in the Reagan era has evaporated, gone up in thin air. If America had a plan in place that dealt with the future in a constructive sense, people could rally behind it, because in spite of all the political polarization, the love of country has not been lost. People just have very different images of what the USA stands for.

The current election campaign has whipped up passions like seldom before in our recent electoral history. Most people seem to look at the choice in front of us as a choice for the lesser of two evils. But even among friends there is no consensus on which of the two candidates represents the lesser evil and opinions are all based on emotion and extrapolation. The political climate is vitriolic. Some of this is the result of mounting frustration with the ineffectiveness of our politicians to deal with the challenges the country and its people face. But it is raised to a fever pitch by the rhetoric and demagoguery used in this campaign. The genie released by the inflammatory campaign rhetoric will be impossible to be put back into the bottle, regardless of the outcome of this election. At least half of the nation will feel defeated and angered on November 9 and the reaction will either be rebellious or constructive (we lost this one but let’s do something about it). America will have four years to do damage control and offer the people an outlook on a better political future.

THE B-TEAM

If this election was going to be a contest between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, we would be in familiar territory. A centrist Democrat running against a conservative Republican would make it an unremarkable race between true representatives of the two parties that have dominated the American electoral landscape now for more than a century. It would likely cause a low turnout, because passions around these two candidates would not run very high and it would almost certainly result in a Democratic victory, because that is where demographics are steering the outcome of our national elections, all other things being equal.

It is enticing to think that this ‘B-Team election’ might still come to pass, even though it is getting to be late in the day. There are a good number of people who believe that Donald Trump will abandon the race at some point, before November 6 if he sees that he cannot win or after November 6, if he gets elected. The reasoning goes 1) that his candidacy, from day 1, was all about enhancing the Trump brand and proving to the world that a fraud could actually win a presidential election in the USA, even though this would undermine his claim that ‘the system is rigged’; and 2) that he never had the intent to occupy the White House, but just wanted to get on the cover of every magazine and monopolize the media for almost two years. I don’t share this opinion, because I think that he would have picked another, more electable, running mate, if this had been his intent all along. But we can’t rule it out given all the other tricks Trump has already pulled in this campaign, his proven disdain for the GOP and his demonstrated disregard of anyone’s interest other than his own.

John Oliver, the host of HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight’ show, latched only half-jokingly on this theme when he explained that dropping out would be in the best interest of the Trump brand by saving him from the embarrassment of defeat or being condemned to a government job (and government housing) for the next four years.

On the other side of the race, the pressure on Hillary Clinton keeps mounting. The public seems to have already accepted that she is not trust worthy (not any better than her opponent) and apparently (disturbingly) that fact alone is not enough to deny her a victory in November. But between the continuing FBI investigation of her use of private email servers, the questionable role that the Clinton foundation has played in her service as a public servant (Senator and Secretary of State) and now rumors about her health, more and more facts come out that could derail her presidential ambitions at the last moment.

Given this state of affairs, we can’t completely rule out that, in the end, the race for the White House would be contended by two candidates who were never elected in primaries but nominated by their parties’ first choice candidates. And that, in turn, could mean that America will elect a President who was not vetted in the exhaustive primary process, but simply put in place by a personal decision from a disqualified contender. That does not look like a democratic outcome, does it?

But in this case we simply may have to accept an imperfect execution of the democratic process (who said that democracy is a messy process?) and here is why.

The country could not have come up with worse first choices than it has done in this go-around. Conventional wisdom says that we have to respect the outcome of the political process. That the will of the people, as expressed in the voting booths, will have to be obeyed. But sometimes we have to be contrarian because conventional wisdom is hardly ever forward looking and unequipped to deal with exceptional circumstances.

If we let the A-team have its way, we are going to hand over the leadership of the Western world to a septuagenarian (over the hill) who, for good reasons, is mistrusted by more than half of the American population. If it is Hillary Clinton, we elect someone who has demonstrated to consider herself above the law, of a privileged caste and entitled to the throne. We get a self-serving ‘First Couple’ in the White House that will have put its personal ambitions above the interest of the nation. The only reason why Hillary Clinton would deserve getting votes is to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

If it is Donald Trump, we elect someone who takes advantage of the growing number of dispossessed by whipping up the flames of their anger, hopelessness and frustration. Someone who refuses to do his homework, disrespects the law, disrespects women, minorities and immigrants and makes us wonder, at every outburst of campaign rhetoric, about his mental state and capacity. We would hand over the reins to an unbridled egomaniac who aspires to nothing else than putting the Trump brand on America’s identity.

Is this an acceptable choice for a time when America’s global position and reputation is at stake?

I long for decency, normalcy and predictability and will be rooting for the B-Team.

CLEVELAND 2016

One has to wonder if the people who pushed very hard some time ago to get the Republican Party to hold its 2016 national convention in Cleveland are having buyer’s remorse, much like the initiators of the ‘Leave’ campaign for the BREXIT referendum in England.

In a small town like Cleveland, holding an event like a national convention, during a work week in the city center, imposes unreasonable burdens on people and businesses that want to go about their life and business without additional stress. As if the stress of daily life and work in the city in a hot July is not enough! Between the delegates, the security people, the media, the protesters and their entourage, center city Cleveland will be totally taken over, occupied, by the invasion of conventioneers and the people who normally live and work there will be deprived of their normal ingress and egress, their parking spots, their cafes and restaurants and their freedom of movement. No surprise then that a number of businesses, those  that can afford to do so, have chosen to move their offices out to the suburbs for the duration of the GOP convention. Of course, there are beneficiaries too, like the hotels and restaurants that will be fully booked all week and be able to charge top price for their services. And the owners of mansions and condominiums that can rent their real estate out for the week and demand exorbitant prices for doing so.

It looks like the GOP convention in Cleveland is going to be the perfect metaphor for what ails this country and for what drives the anger that is brewing at or just below the surface in this election year: All the burden is going to be on the ordinary citizens and all the spoils go to the select few.

I am a greater Cleveland resident but I have long ago decided that I don’t want to be anywhere near this scene. My family will spend the last two weeks of July at an Atlantic coast beach to escape the madness and the inconvenience.

So far, this year 2016 has been an exceptionally good year for Cleveland. LeBron James has delivered on his promise to bring an NBA championship to the Cleveland Cavaliers and, at the brink of the All Star Game, the Cleveland Indians are overwhelming the competition for the leadership in the central division of the American League. The city, that has worked hard to shed its image of a corrupt and bankrupt place where even the river could catch fire, has justifiably taken pride in being chosen as the site for the GOP convention, that is, until the primaries had played themselves out and it had become clear that what was supposed to be a festive convention would turn into either a coronation of a fraudulent demagogue or an unprecedented last minute power grab by the party establishment. Either way, with all the other protests already alive on America’s streets, it is hard to see how the Cleveland convention can be spared the ignominy of turning into a street fight.

What happens in Cleveland between July 18 and 21 transcends the interest of the Republican Party and its adherents. It poses a dilemma of constitutional significance. It will put the question to the nation: ‘When will the interest in a competent, trustworthy and responsible person in charge of the highest office in the free world trump the expressed will of primary voters?’

I will not go as far as comparing Trump to Hitler or Mussolini, but I will use their names to illustrate a point. And the point of analogy is that Hitler and Mussolini too were sanctioned by the constitutional rules in place at the time in their respective countries. It was only after the constitutional process had placed these misfits in a position of power that they systematically abused that power with disastrous consequences for their nations and the world.

By my book there is a legitimate question: ‘When will good governance require that the expressed will of the voting public be overruled on the grounds that the chosen candidate is morally, emotionally and intellectually unfit to ascend to the highest office in the land?’ Think about all the death and demise the world would have been spared if Hitler and Mussolini had not been allowed to rise to power!

In the case at hand it is important to establish that even though Trump got more votes and won more delegates than any of his GOP contenders only a small fraction of the American voting public gave him a vote of confidence (that is the nature of primary elections).

Our constitution does not offer a ‘work-around’ for situations like this. This is somewhat remarkable given the fact that our founding fathers loudly and repeatedly warned against the rule by the mob. But, of course, in their time only the economically and intellectually privileged men had voting rights, which addressed that threat. In this day and age, under normal circumstances, the general election should expose the flaws in the nominee of either party and lead to the election of the nominee of the other party. But this year is anything but normal with the presumptive nominee of the opposing party despised by many, representative of an un-American dynasty mentality, and narrowly escaping prosecution for mishandling sensitive and secret information. If there ever was a choice between the lesser of two evils, this is it! Our nation, desperately in need of getting things done, would not be well served with such choice.

That’s why maybe, in this case, Republican leaders need to step in at or before the Cleveland convention and prevent a Trump ascendency. You may not want to be in the streets of Cleveland when that happens. But you may not want to live in America when it does not.