What Should Obama Have Done?

All right, I am a little late to the game, but let me post my thoughts on the Washington Post article  about what Obama knew about the Russian hacking and why he didn't do anything about it.

As for what he knew, the big news is that he received a top secret report in August, 2016 that the Russians were interfering in the election, that they were doing so at Putin's direction, and that they were trying to get Trump elected.  This was at first top secret, known only to the President and three advisers, then to four others, the head of the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, and the head of the FBI.  Later Vice President Biden and various Cabinet secretaries were let in on the secret, and eventually the Gang of Eight -- the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and House and the chairs and ranking Democrats from the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Obama's conversations with the Eight have been known for some time.  The Republicans in the group resisted going public with the information and Mitch McConnell expressed outright disbelief.  The article relates other details that had not been disclosed before.

Obama contacted state Secretaries of State to warn that Russians were meddling in the election and found none of them convinced.  He also considered and rejected various measures against Russia and rejected them largely for fear of retaliation.  Expelling Russian diplomats was rejected on the grounds that the Russians might retaliate against our diplomats (many of whom, as with the Russians and with all countries, are really spies).  A cyber attack against Russia was rejected because it would expose how and where the US had penetrated the Russian networks.  Releasing embarrassing information on Putin was rejected because it looked too much like doing what we were condemning.  Economic sanctions were rejected on the grounds that they might harm Russia's European trading partners. And, of course, with Republicans refusing to back him, Obama decided not to go public for fear of appearing partisan.

It is this last decision that has been the subject of the most controversy, and that I am prepared to defend, although my response may seem a bit strange and self-contradictory.

Some people have defended Obama's decision not to go public for fear that such an announcement would and played into Trump's narrative that the election was "rigged" against him and might even have sparked an armed rebellion by Trump supporters and led to blood in the streets.  This is just plain nuts. First of all, no, there would not have been an armed rebellion.  Maybe a few terrorist outburst here and there, but certainly nothing large enough to be menacing.

And in any event, as I have discussed many times before, any free and democratic government that allows itself to be intimidated by men with guns is abdicating its duties and will end up abdicating democracy as well.  And no, guns are not the way to uphold the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority.  To allow a veto to anyone with a large enough arsenal is to surrender the rule of law in favor of the law of the jungle.  After all, if you don't dare come forward with evidence of Russian interference in the election for fear of an armed response by the alt-right, you might as well just agree to throw the whole election for fear of revolt by the alt-right.  And hell, why not agree never to have another Democratic President at all if certain people might consider it grounds for armed rebellion?

Political violence is a serious threat to a democratic order.  It should be dealt with firmly, whether it comes from the alt-right or from black-clad antifa.

But there were other reasons for Obama not to go public with the information without Republican buy-in.  He had a legitimate fear of appearing partisan.  I realize many people's response to that would be to say, of course he was partisan, the Presidency is a partisan office.  He was out openly campaigning for Hillary.  Why shouldn't he appear partisan?

But this is conflating two different things.  The President of the United States, as an individual, has the same right as anyone to favor a candidate for the office and campaign for her.  As head of his party, he may use the party apparatus for her.  But as head of state, he must not use the power of the state -- the "deep" state, if you will -- to sway the outcome.  Any question of the President using the power of the state to sway an election is a very, very serious matter.  Without bipartisan support, it was reasonable of Obama to want to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

"What?" you may say.  Are you seriously saying that Obama should not have kept quiet for fear of blood in the street, but should have kept quiet for fear of creating the appearance of impropriety? How does that make any sense?

But I guess my answer has to be that in the end, Obama had no control over how the alt-right might react to his actions.  He could only control what he did, and if what he did created the appearance that he was using the power of the state to sway an election, it would have been a serious matter.

So what options did that leave?  I can only suggest, that he take action against Russia whose purpose would be clear to Putin and others who were interfering, but not go public with the reasons, except perhaps to say that it was retaliation for cyber action without saying what sort of cyber action.  Of course, in that case Republicans would have dismissed such action as mere posturing, trying to look tough ahead of the election to win votes for Hillary, but so what?  Tough posturing ahead of an election to win votes, and accusations of such posturing, are politics as usual.  Our democracy would have survived it, as it has survived many such instances.  And, after all, the Republicans could hardly have come forward and say that Obama was only taking such actions against the Russians because they were trying to help Republicans win the election.

The main danger I would see was that sooner or later the truth comes out on this sort of thing.  Right now, as any number of people have commented, the truth is coming out at unprecedented speed as the intelligence community leaks like never before.  But sooner or later it would have become known that the reason for Obama's mysterious actions against the Russians was that they were attempting to sway the election against Hillary.  Would that have delegitimized her her victory?  Would it have led to endless Republican investigations into the Obama Administration's true motives in taking anti-Russian action and major scandals?

Quite possibly so.  But attempts to expose the Obama Administration's true motives would also have led to revealing what the Russians were really up to all the while.  I can only hope that such knowledge would have vindicated Obama's actions in the eyes of loyal Americans everywhere.

A Quick Update on North Korea

The bad news: North Korea now has intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM's) capable of hitting Alaska.

The good news: They don't appear to have the technology to attach a nuclear warhead to their missiles.

The bad news:  Yet.

The good news:  The world has survived nuclear weapons in the hands of a madman before.  Stalin had nukes.  Mao had nukes.  Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il had nukes.  And yet here we all are. Amazing!

The bad news: Nuclear weapons in the hands of two madmen at once is an experiment we have not yet tried.  Buckle your seat belts, folks.

And now for the just plain bizarre.  Donald Trump responded by tweeting, "North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?"  Yeah!  Why can't he watch TV and spew nonsensical comments about in on Twitter like any normal person?

The Trump Administration is Clearly Showing the Flaws of Ignorance as Virtue

Republicans have a long-standing habit of anti-intellectualism, of dismissing expertise and even knowledge as "elitist" and "inauthentic," and praising ignorance and "authentic," close to regular folks and therefore (presumably) good.  Sarah Palin was the extreme example of the tendency until Trump came along.

Speaking as one who blog posts acting much more knowledgeable about many subjects than I actually am, I can kind of, sort of understand it.  After all, the experts disagree on a lot of things.  And they also make mistakes.  (See the Iraq War and their determination to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome). So if experts can disagree on matters of public policy and make mistakes, why shouldn't regular folks be allowed to weigh in with an opinion?

To which I suppose I would answer, nothing wrong with regular folks having an opinion.  But regular folks' opinion is going to be extremely vague and general, not getting into the weeds.  Which is fine. There is no reason for regular folks to go into the weeds. Getting into the weeds on policy is not regular folk's job, and the details are deathly dull, so why should some guy on a bar stool or in front of a TV set have any more than a superficial knowledge and opinion.

But there are professional policy makers, and professional policy makers really do need to get into the weeds to work out the details.

Healthcare is an obvious place to start.  No one is very happy with Obamacare.  The main reason for the discontent is that premiums and deductibles are high.  Regular folks want better healthcare at lower costs.  Well, here is a very basic concept that regular folks should understand.  If insurance companies charge less for a policy, it will be a skimpy policy and make you pay more out of pocket. If insurance companies cover more and charge less out of pocket, policies will cost more.  And if government wants to mitigate this tradeoff by offering subsidies, it will make taxes go higher.  All this is just basic math.  Where this tradeoff should be drawn is absolutely something regular folks and -- and should -- weigh in on.  These are policy decisions with no technocratic answer that should be democratically reached based public opinion.

But public opinion is worth listening to only if it recognizes the basic math involved.*  And we need experts to work out the details.  Giving the job to people who don't know anything about healthcare policy and just want to boast that we did it leads to proposed bills that will strip 20 million or more of their health insurance.

The Qatar crisis is another good example.  Saudi Arabia and its satellites are blockading Qatar and making outrageous ultimatums to lift the blockade, a clear act of war.  Trump, whether because he gave pre-approval to the Saudis (as his tweets suggest), or just out of impulse has been siding with Saudi Arabia.  Then it turns out there is a little complication there.  We have an air base in Qatar that has been vital to our fight against ISIS.  This is probably not the sort of detail your average person on the street would know.  Nor is there any real reason your average person on the street should know it. But it is kind of important that the President of the US know it before heedlessly plunging into a possible war against Qatar.

I think the basic premise of right wing anti-intellectualism is not just that people who hold to it want leaders who aren't snooty enough to know more than regular folks and go with their gut.  It is the basic view that gut-level intuition is superior to knowledge and expertise.  Presumably no one wants a leader who goes with the gut, only for it turn out to be a disaster.  What right wing anti-intellectuals want is a leader whose gut-level instincts are right and prove better than expert opinion. And that can happen, after all.  People who spend their time staring down the microscope do have a certain tunnel vision and can miss something outside their limited range.  But expecting a leader whose gut-level instincts are consistently better than expert opinion, and who doesn't need experts even to work out the fine details, is utterly unrealistic.

It also really isn't conservative, at least not if you define conservatism as the belief that people should work hard and earn what they have.  Well, guess what.  Knowledge, was well as money, must be worked for and earned.  David Frum was brilliant in explaining this in the context of Jewish opposition to Sarah Palin:

Jews do think that knowledge is important to a president. They do think a president should be able to think clearly and to distinguish between true information and wishful delusions. I feel sure most Americans of all faiths would agree.

. . . . . . . .

Ignorance is bad. But we all start ignorant. Jews – again like other people, only more so – expect their leaders to start early and to work hard to remedy their ignorance, by learning things. People who don’t, won’t or can’t learn – whose followers disparage the value or need to learn – are going to forfeit Jewish support, and not only Jewish support.

And if that is not enough to convince Trump supporters of the value of knowledge, maybe they should consider another point.  Hillary Clinton sent State Department e-mails on a private server because of her lack of tech knowledge.

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*Admittedly, it is our leaders' responsibility to explain the basic math to the public.

Not Quite Collusion, but Attempted Collusion

So, the Wall Street Journal has come out with two blockbuster stories which I can't access behind their pay wall and only know second hand.  The gist of the story appears to be that Peter W. Smith, a long-time Republican operative sought hacked e-mails from the Russians, while claiming to act on behalf of Michael Flynn and other senior members of the Trump campaign.

A few things should be noted here.  First of all, Smith might be called an upper-middle level Republican operative.  He was an investment banker rich enough to bankroll investigations, but not Richard Mellon Scaife rich, Sheldon Adelson rich, or Koch brothers rich.  He was not part of the Trump campaign inner circle, but he had access to the inner circle and understood its workings.  Oh, yes, and he can't give any further account because he is now dead.  (Don't get suspicious; he was 81 years old).

Second, although I have not read the second article (and can no longer access the first), the story seems to be extremely well sourced.  No question that this is legit.  Smith apparently talked freely to the Wall Street Journal and showed them e-mails and other documents to support his account.  Their story was backed by intelligence community intercepts showing the Russian intelligence services looking for a way to release e-mails to Flynn through an intermediary.  And a key source in the story has come forward  with his own account, giving greater details, but also saying that he did not understand the big picture of what was happening until he read the story.

Third, the story does not report any actual collusion.  It may better be described as willingness to collude or attempted collusion.

To understand what was going on, one must remember that there were two separate and unrelated scandals underway (or, arguably, two twin scandals and a separate and unrelated one) that got conflated in the public mind, and possibly even in the mind of Trump's inner circle, because they both involved Hillary Clinton and e-mails.

One was Hillary's use of a private server to send State Department e-mails.  There were two parts to this scandal.  One was that she sent State Department e-mails over her personal server that was not properly secured and was therefore vulnerable to hacking, although there is no evidence that it was actually hacked.

The other was that, when Congress ordered her to turn over her e-mails, she deleted some 33,000 that she said were "personal" -- about half of the total.  In Hillary's defense, she gave the order to delete her personal e-mails before they were subpoenaed, but it was not actually done until after.  She also had the e-mails "bleached" and destroyed two phones (apparently to protect classified data in them, but it looks bad).  Many Republicans, Trump among them, suspected that Hillary had deleted her "personal" e-mails because they contained something incriminating.  Trump regularly taunted her over this on the campaign trail.  He said, for instance, that he would release his tax returns when she released her e-mails -- knowing perfectly well that it was impossible because she had destroyed them. It was also in this context that Trump famously said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

The other scandal, also backdrop to Trump's comment inviting the Russians to release Hillary's e-mails was that they Russians really had hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server and published their e-mails through Wikileaks.  The DNC server contained neither classified information nor public records; its contents were private exchanges among private citizens, albeit ones engaged in a public campaign.  But since both scandals involved Hillary Clinton and e-mails, they tended to run together in public perception.

Enter Matt Tait, a British cyber security expert who tweets under the pseudonym of Pwn All the Things.  Tait studied released Clinton e-mails and posted what he considered significant, especially to issues of cyber security.  Smith apparently noticed his posts and (incorrectly) took them to mean that Tait was hostile to Clinton and eager to work as a Trump consultant.  Tait also took an interest in the Russian hack of the DNC (and clearly differentiated between the two events).

About the time of the first Wikileaks document dump, and about the time Trump called on the Russians to find Hillary's missing e-mails, Smith approached Tait to discuss the Clinton e-mails.  Tait assumed that, like so many others, Smith was conflating the two events.  But he was not.  He wanted to find those missing Clinton e-mails because he was convinced that they contained something sinister.  And Smith had, in fact, been contacted by someone on the "Dark Web" who claimed to have the missing e-mails.  Smith wanted Tait to examine them and see if they were authentic.  He apparently had no moral compunctions about publishing fake documents, but feared the bad publicity if he published something that turned out to be fake.  Tait warned Smith that anyone with the missing e-mails might be a front for Russian intelligence.  Smith did not care so long has the e-mails were genuine and hurt Hillary's chances.

Tait was also attempting to set up an "independent" company to do dirty work on behalf of the Trump campaign, operating as closely to it as the law allowed without actually being a part of it.  (Such arrangements are common and the laws governing them are monstrously complex).  It would include members of the Trump inner circle, including some who were not well-known at the time but would become so.  Overall, Smith impressed Tait with his knowledge of the workings of Trump's inner circle -- including some less than flattering information, such as that Flynn might not be confirmable the Senate and head of the CIA and would have to be National Security Adviser (a position not requiring confirmation) instead, and that Trump often tended just to repeat whatever he heard from the last person to talk to him.

And, it must be noted, none of this had to do with the actual, verified Russian hack on the DNC server.  All of it was an attempt to run down the missing Clinton e-mails.  And, although the Russians hacked just about everything else, there is no evidence that they ever breached Hillary's private server.  (Go figure).  Despite all Smith's efforts, her e-mails were never revealed.

I can see three possibilities here.  (1) The Russians never hacked Hillary's server.  (2) The hacked it, but decided to withhold the contents for possible future blackmail.  (3) They hacked it, but the deleted e-mails were so innocuous as not to be worth publishing.

That last seems unlikely.  In a trove of 33,000 e-mails, it surpasses belief that none of them could even be taken out of context to harm her.  (See spirit cooking, for instance).  The second is possible, I guess, but given that the Russians were throwing everything they could find at Hillary (see spirit cooking again), I am inclined to go with (1), the Russians never hacked Hillary's server and did not have her missing e-mails.  (That also matches with the absence of evidence of such a hack).  Which means that whoever was peddling the missing e-mails on the "Dark Web" was just a conman seeking to part a fool from his money.  (Serves him right).  Which means (circling back to the beginning) that these articles do not prove collusion, only attempted collusion and intent to collude.

But it also shows something else.  Remember Trump's challenge to the Russians to hack Hillary and find her missing e-mails?  Ever since he has defended it as a joke.  This article makes clear that he was deadly serious.

But Then Again . . .

I did see a post proposing another explanation of what the Russians have on Trump to make him so eager to please.

The trouble with any sort of blackmail is that it is an attempt to shame the shameless.  I see nothing in Trump's emotional makeup that would suggest he considers himself capable of doing wrong.*  A person who thinks he can do no wrong can be extremely difficult to blackmail, no matter what he does.

As an alternative, that person suggested that maybe the Russians loaned Trump a great deal of money are are in a  position to bankrupt him by calling it in.  No moral judgment there, no fear of exposure, strictly business and the fear of losing money.  This is pure speculation, of course, but it seems in character.

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*Admittedly there is the pussy tape.  Even Trump tried to distance himself from that one.

Second Thoughts on the Salacious Parts

I appear, on second thoughts, to have been wrong in my views on the really salacious parts of the Steele memorandum.  The alleged pee pee tape, like covfefe, was good for some jokes, but ultimately a distraction from more serious matters.

The more serious matters fell victim to the Story of O factor.  In other words, the Steele dossier contained a lot of accounts of Trump campaign figures only dimly at the edge of most Americans' consciousness meeting with Russian officials most Americans have never heard of -- and Trump being blackmailed over a pee pee tape.  The meetings all run together; the tape stands out.

This is understandable, but it creates the misleading impression that it is all just about a pee pee tape and that without it, the Russians would have nothing on Trump.  I think it safe to say whether the tape exists or not, we are well past the pee pee tapes point by now.

Hiring prostitutes is a petty misdemeanor.  And besides, it took place in Russia, which is beyond the power of anyone in the US to prosecute.  At worst, it will be embarrassing, but hardly surprising given all that we know of Trump's conduct.

Then consider all the things Trump and his associates have been accused of.  Failing to disclose foreign contacts while applying for security clearance.  (Perjury).  Obstruction of justice.  Money laundering for the Russian mob.  Collusion with a foreign intelligence service in hacking an opponent.  Attempts to send secret messages from the Russian embassy over secure Russian lines. Revealing top secret classified information to a Russian delegation.

All of this is a whole lot more significant than some piddling little pee pee tape.

But then again, at least Trump has not been accused of the worst crime possible.  Sending State Department e-mails over a private server.

Trump Tries Blackmail, Fails at That, Too

It's easy to dismiss Donald Trump's latest spat with Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as so much fluff, feuding among our elite that belongs in gossip magazines, not serious publications.  And yeah, there is a great deal to that.  But there actually is something serious going on here.

Joe Scarborough is an independent conservative commentator on the liberal MSNBC, so Trump apparently believed that the show should give him unqualified support.  In presumable retaliation, the National Enquirer, a clear Trump ally, publishes a story (true) that they were having an affair while both married to someone else.  It would further appear that (unnamed) persons in the Trump Administration called, trying to get them to apologize for criticizing Trump and give more favorable coverage in the future and they would drop the story.  And not just once.  Apparently they made repeated calls to the hosts, and calls to their friends and children as well.  Apparently these were frequent, ongoing calls that sound like clear harassment.  Scarborough apparently has the texts and phone records to prove all this.

All of which might have been kept quiet if Trump had not, in one of his endless unforced errors, tweeted, "[L]ow I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came … to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"  For reasons I do not really understand, Republicans decided that this time Trump had gone too far and condemned him.  And then then whole story came out.

So, yes, in many ways it looks like so much fluff, a gossipy piece for the National Inquirer, but certainly nothing worth wasting time on when the Senate is trying to figure out how to strip 20 million people of their health insurance, Congress still hasn't figures out how to write a budget or raise the debt ceiling, we are getting drawn into a Syrian quagmire, Saudi Arabia is driving Qatar into the arms of of Iran, and evidence is mounting that the Trump campaign really did collude with the Russians.

But this really is significant and not just fluff.  On the campaign trail, Trump talked about using the power of the Presidency to punish journalists and newspapers that criticized him.  Up till now, it has all been empty talk.  But this is his first attempt to do just that.