Columnist.
It is here in the industrial Midwest, not in the South, where Ted Cruz's audacious theory of the 2016 race was supposed to be put to one of its most important tests. Michigan's primary on Tuesday — and especially what happens that day in the Detroit suburbs that in 1980 were ground zero for a new political species, "Reagan Democrats" — will answer this question: Can Cruz locate and motivate legions of recently nonvoting conservatives, millions of them nationwide, especially whites without college experience, who can be pulled back into voting in numbers sufficient to determine the election in November?
Donald Trump's distinctive rhetorical style — think of a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" under water — poses an almost insuperable challenge to people whose painful duty is to try to extract clarity from his effusions. For example, last week, during a long stream of semi-consciousness in Fort Worth, this man who as president would nominate members of the federal judiciary vowed to "open up" libel laws to make it easier to sue — to intimidate and punish — people who write "negative" things. Well.
"Hell," said Alabama's Democratic Gov. George Wallace before roiling the 1968 presidential race, "we got too much dignity in government now, what we need is some *meanness*." Twelve elections later, Wallace's wish is approaching fulfillment as Republicans contemplate nominating someone who would run to Hillary Clinton's left. Donald Trump, unencumbered by any ballast of convictions, would court Bernie Sanders' disaffected voters with promises to enrich rather than reform the welfare state's entitlement menu — Trump already says, "I am going to take care of everybody" — and to make America great again by having it cower behind trade barriers. If elected, Trump presumably would seek re-election, so there would be no conservative choice for president until at least 2024.
Lyndon Johnson simply was exasperated. Barack Obama's mischief was methodical. Four days before the 1966 congressional elections, Johnson, asked about criticism from Richard Nixon, testily responded: "I do not want to get into a debate ... with a chronic campaigner like Mr. Nixon." Johnson's disparagement endeared Nixon to Republican voters, thereby propelling him toward the presidency. Four days before Saturday's South Carolina primary, Obama improved Donald Trump's standing with Republicans by volubly deploring him and cannily placing him in the Republican mainstream: "He says in more interesting ways what the other [Republican] candidates are saying." Not exactly.
Notice the Newtonian physics of America's Madisonian system. Barack Obama's Woodrow Wilsonian hostility to the separation of powers, expressed in his executive authoritarianism, is provoking equal and opposite reactions from the judicial and legislative branches. The Supreme Court has inflicted on Obama a defeat accurately described as the court's most severe rebuke of a president since it rejected Harry Truman's claim that inherent presidential powers legitimated his seizure of the steel industry during the Korean War. The court has blocked Obama's Clean Power Plan, which rests on the rickety premise that the Clean Air Act somehow, in a way unsuspected for four decades, empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to annihilate the right of states to regulate power generation.
Antonin Scalia, who combined a zest for intellectual combat with a vast talent for friendship, was a Roman candle of sparkling jurisprudential theories leavened by acerbic witticisms. The serrated edges of his most passionate dissents sometimes strained the court's comity and occasionally limited his ability to proclaim what the late Justice William Brennan called the most important word in the court's lexicon: "Five." Scalia was, however, one of the most formidable thinkers among the 112 justices who have served on the court, and he often dissented in the hope of shaping a future replete with majorities steeped in principles he honed while in the minority.
Bernie Sanders, greedy for power to punish people he considers greedy, has occasioned 2016's best joke (reported in Bloomberg Businessweek): "In the Bernie Sanders drinking game, every time he mentions a free government program, you drink someone else's beer." But neither Sanders' nor Hillary Clinton's hostility to the First Amendment is amusing.
It is frequently said that, unfortunately, Americans disdain government. It is more usefully said that, unfortunately, they have abundant reasons for doing so. In coming days, the Supreme Court, by deciding to hear a case from Connecticut, can begin limiting a contemptible government abuse that the court's passive deference to legislatures has encouraged. The case concerns a minor economic activity, teeth whitening, but a major principle: Can a state limit Americans' opportunities by restricting access to particular professions for no reason other than the enrichment of people entrenched in those professions? If the court refuses to hear the case, or if it hears it and decides it incorrectly, the "rational basis" test for judging government regulations of economic activities will no longer test anything — it will be completely severed from reasoning based on evidence.
Settling unhappily into his Super Bowl seat, Himalayan high behind the end zone, Joe spots an empty seat low and on the 50-yard line. He descends to it and asks the man seated next to him why the wonderful seat is unoccupied. The man says, "Its mine. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she died. This is the first Super Bowl since 1967 we have not attended together." Joe says: "But couldn't you find a friend or relative to come with you today?" The man replies: "No, they're all at the funeral."
When Huck Finn asked Tom Sawyer what a Moslem is, Tom said a Moslem is someone who is not a Presbyterian, which is true, but not the whole truth. Donald Trump says he is a Presbyterian ("I drink my little wine ... and have my little cracker"), which apparently was not good enough for enough of Iowa's evangelicals. One person who left Iowa having earned the nation's gratitude is Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse. He campaigned with three Republican aspirants (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina) in order to advance this year's most urgent task, which is to elevate the Republican race by removing the Trump distraction.
Woodrow Wilson, who enjoyed moralizing about the mundane, called paying taxes a "glorious privilege." In 1865, when there was a Civil War income tax, one taxpayer shared this sensibility, sort of. Mark Twain said that his tax bill of $36.82 (including a $3.12 fine for filing late) made him feel "important" because the government was paying attention to him. Today, Rep. Kevin Brady wants to change the way government pays attention to taxpayers. Congress is like a Calder mobile: Something jiggled here causes things to wiggle over there. When conservatives toppled Speaker John Boehner, they inadvertently propelled Brady into the House's most important chairmanship, that of the Ways and Means Committee. Because revenue bills must originate in the House, Brady now wields Congress' most important gavel, all because the committee's previous chairman, Paul Ryan, now sits in Boehner's chair.
Michael Bloomberg's epiphany about the 2016 presidential proceedings is that what is missing is a second bossy, big-government billionaire from Manhattan's East Side — another candidate with malleable party loyalties. Bloomberg, whose net worth estimated by Forbes is $38.6 billion (eighth on the list of richest Americans), is again exploring an independent presidential candidacy. In 2001, he spent $74 million to become New York's mayor. He had been a registered Democrat but ran as a Republican to avoid a competitive primary. Re-elected in 2005, he left the GOP and in 2009 won a third term as an independent, spending $102 million — $174 per vote — to eke out a 50.6 percent victory against a negligible opponent. He had persuaded — not a Herculean task — the city council to alter the law, enacted and reaffirmed in *two* referendums, limiting mayors and city council members to two terms.
During Watergate, Henry Kissinger's mordant wit leavened the unpleasantness: "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." President Obama often does both simultaneously, using executive authoritarianism to evade the Constitution's separation of powers and rewrite existing laws. Last week, however, the Supreme Court took a perhaps momentous step toward correcting some of the constitutional vandalism that will be Obama's most significant legacy. The court agreed to rule on Obama's unilateral revision of immigration law.
China produces an astonishing number of astonishing numbers, including this: In the 20th century, America made automobiles mass-consumption items, requiring prodigious road building. China, however, poured more concrete for roads and other construction between 2011 and 2013 than America did in the 20th century. This fact is emblematic of China's remarkable success. And is related to its current difficulties, including its 2015 growth rate (6.9 percent), its slowest in 25 years.
Iowa and New Hampshire together have just 1.4 percent of the U.S. population, which is actually why it is fine for them to begin the presidential selection process: Small states reward an underdog's retail politics. Chris Christie relishes such politics and has fresh evidence that voters are enjoying his enjoyment.
What boxer Sonny Liston's manager said of him (Sonny had his good points, the trouble was his bad points) is true of Marco Rubio. His strengths include intelligence, articulateness and, usually, cheerfulness. His misjudgments involve, in ascending order of importance, the Senate immigration bill of 2013, sugar, Libya and S-590. Together these reveal a recurring penchant for ill-considered undertakings.
When the Supreme Court contemplates changing its mind, it must weigh the institutional interest in the law's continuity against evidence that a prior decision has done an injury, even a constitutional injury. The court took 58 years to begin, with the 1954 school desegregation decision, undoing its 1896 decision affirming the constitutionality of "separate but equal" public facilities and services. On Monday, oral arguments at the court will indicate whether it is ready to undo 39 years of damage to the First Amendment rights of millions of government employees.
The impulse to ferret corruption from politics corrupts the criminal justice system when it causes overzealous prosecutors and judges to improvise novel interpretations of the law of bribery. Consider Robert McDonnell's case. Virginia's former Republican governor has been sentenced to prison for actions that he could not have reasonably anticipated would be declared felonies under a dangerous judicial expansion of federal law defining bribery of public officials. Friday the Supreme Court will decide whether to review McDonnell's conviction.
Soon, voters will have the opportunity and impertinence to insert themselves into the 2016 presidential conversation that thus far has been the preoccupation of journalists and other abnormal people. The voting will begin in Iowa, thanks to Marie Jahn. When, after 38 years as recorder for Plymouth County in northwest Iowa, Jahn decided to retire in February 1975, local Democrats decided to throw her a party. When it came to attracting a speaker, the best they could entice from their party's national ranks was a former one-term governor of Georgia.
E.B. White reportedly said "the most beautiful sound in America" is "the tinkle of ice at twilight." In 2015's twilight, fortify yourself with something 90 proof as you remember this year...
