Guest Column: Election 2016 Arrives

I'd like to welcome back Anthony Scandora, a friend for over 40 years, as guest columnist again today.  Tony is a native of the Chicago area and long-time resident there, an intelligent and talented gentleman and a fine writer and observer of the world.  The opinions below are, of course, his, and not necessarily the views of the host.  Tony can be reached at scandora@alum.mit.edu.

Until last year, I thought Hillary Clinton was the most revolting possible candidate for president. Then the primaries happened. Tired of a government of K Street, by K Street, and for K Street, voters rebelled and propelled The Bern and The Donald to far greater stature than either ever deserved. With the vice president sidelined by family tragedy, and a few other Democratic senators and governors never gaining traction, Hillary rose to the top. Barely. The best the other side could do (other than The Donald) was a first term senator with no legislative accomplishments?  Didn’t we just try that? We’re now stuck with the two most reviled candidates ever.

Regardless of who wins, there will be an unrepentant sexual predator living in the White House, with a wife doesn’t care. We don’t have enough evidence to know who is worse, and evaluation along party lines might be satisfying but is meaningless. Let’s call it a draw and move on.

Email? The private server was certainly a bad idea and might well have been illegal. So what?  Social Security numbers and other personal information from about 20 million applicants for security clearances were stolen from the Office of Personnel Management. Department of Energy and IRS computers each coughed up personal, including financial, information of six-figure counts of individuals in their files. The Manning/WikiLeaks fiasco exposed 250,000 State Department cables. 

Secretary of State Kerry said it was “highly likely” that Russians and Chinese were reading his email. Last year, State shut down its email system for a while to try to mitigate what it knew was massive compromise of its email. On the other hand, despite a determined, seemingly desperate, search, the farthest any email from the private Hillary server has gotten is to a personal computer belonging to the estranged husband of a top aide, and it stopped there. If it had gotten any farther, her enemies would have been broadcasting it by now. 

There is already talk of impeachment by people who I suspect are clueless about the two-thirds of the Senate requirement for conviction. Do we really want to waste time and money on a futile pursuit like we did on her husband? Regardless of its legality, the fact is her private email server was more secure than official government email servers. Let’s move on to substantive issues.

Secretary of State Clinton accepted a large donation to her family’s foundation from a foreigner of questionable character who was having trouble getting a visa. He didn’t get it. Trump, facing lawsuits in several states on behalf of victims ripped off by his bogus “university” scam, gave a large, illegal donation from his foundation, not his own money, to the Florida Attorney General’s re-election campaign. Is anyone surprised that the Attorney General abandoned the lawsuit shortly after that donation, and left his victims out in the cold? Who’s more crooked than the other? It’s impossible to know.

On the left, we have a candidate who during many years in exalted government positions established herself immune to the concept of transparency. She’s Richard Nixon, but without his personal charm. For just one example out of countless lies, she told us the Benghazi attack was in response to an amateur video. How could she think legitimate journalists wouldn’t soon discover an organized terrorist attack?

On the (relative?) right, we have a guy who is on tape saying what he now denies he ever said, and who abusively attacks anyone who refers to those tapes. Unlike his opponent, he has had very little public scrutiny, no more than is fit for a TV celebrity/casino mogul. We do know that he has built with Chinese steel, exploited the same illegal immigrants whom he excoriates, and is famous for stiffing many individuals and contractors too small to have the legal resources to sue him, and for sticking it to creditors by going bankrupt. Last week the Trump International Tower and Hotel in Toronto went into receivership, with 3000 people losing jobs and untold creditors getting stiffed, many to go bankrupt as in his previous get-out-of-debt-quickly schemes. Deeper examination can only reveal deeper dishonesty.

Like the sexual predator issue, we don’t have enough evidence to know who is the worse liar and crook, and evaluation along party lines might be satisfying but is meaningless. Let’s agree that both candidates are unconscionable crooks and liars, and move on to what, if elected, would be their effect on the economy, the security, and the general welfare of the people of this country and of the world.

The economy is doing well according to numbers cooked up by our government. If it really were, The Bern and The Donald would not have riled up the support they did. The 1% are doing really well. Financial services firms are cleaning up on volatility, but not investing in anything productive. The middle class is shrinking in both numbers and in income.

A printed copy of the tax code might outweigh me. It’s great for accountants and attorneys, and it prevents industries that pay the largest bribes to Congress from paying their fair share, while soaking the rest of us. It’s highly regressive, far more painful to the lower and middle classes than to the rich. Hillary had to capitulate to the far left, and they want to keep its complexity, charge favors to industries that bribe the left wing of Congress, and raise taxes on high-income taxpayers to the point of punishing them for making money. Trump says he’ll make it fairer, but like all of his promises, he offers no details.

Our $20 trillion in debt, with no relief in sight, will eventually have painful consequences. Hillary, apparently not believing in arithmetic, wants to increase taxes and increase spending by even more. Trump is even less cognizant of arithmetic, proposing some rather substantial infrastructure investments along with tax cuts. Eventually there will come a time that investors will resist buying US debt. When asked about it, Trump said, “you deal.” To him that means don’t pay the full amount of some debts and cancel others. I shudder to think what would happen to the domestic and world economies upon news that US debt is no longer a sure thing.

Whoever says he can round up and deport 11 million illegals and get the Mexican government to pay for a wall is either a liar or smoking some really good weed. I do admire the billboard for a restaurant that claims, “Best Mexican food this side of the wall.”  I knew that deposing the Sunni Hussein and replacing his government with an Iran-backed Shi’ite government would leave a large population of angry and well-armed Sunnis. I didn’t know the Islamic State would shoot off al Qaida in Iraq, but I certainly knew both sides were willing and armed to fight a never-ending civil war that neither could win. 

Why didn’t the Bush administration and Sen. Clinton know what I knew? At least she had the decency to admit her support at the time and apologize for her bad judgment. On the other hand, The Donald, who at the time might not have paid much attention to foreign affairs, also supported that action but now lies and says he didn’t, despite tapes proving he did. He reminds me of an old Teamsters head who upon hearing wiretaps in a racketeering trial maintained his innocence by asking, “Who you gonna believe? Me or those tapes?”

After failing to learn a lesson from our destruction of Iraq, Secretary Clinton did the same to Libya. As nervous as I am about letting her do it again, I’m far more nervous about Trump carpet bombing enemy-held territory, killing far more civilians than terrorists, and resuming waterboarding and other Geneva Convention violations, which would put us against our current allies and the rest of the world.

Beyond that, he admires Putin, who takes care of political dissidents and objective journalists by methods ranging from prison to bullets to polonium poisoning (a lingering, painful, torturous death), who thinks it’s OK to shoot down civilian aircraft loaded with passengers and to bomb aid convoys trying to help war zone civilians, and who wants to re-conquer the former Soviet captive nations. While admiring all that, Trump has expressed contempt for NATO and said he might not defend a member from attack.

Even beyond all that, Trump has talked about nuclear arms for Japan and South Korea. We can hope that despite what’s looking like a new Cold War, China and Russia are not stupid enough to fire a nuclear weapon. Arm Japan and South Korea? What might North Korea do?

Both candidates’ partisans overlook their spectacular flaws and dwell on their opponent’s character. They’re both despicable, so rather than concentrate on their character or lack thereof, let’s concentrate on the damage they could do to the country and the world if Congress and the Courts let them. Which would drive the national debt past a breaking point sooner? Which would better handle the consequences? We have Hillary, with a military history looking like a neocon, or Trump, who believes in shoot first, aim second, and ask questions third. 

Should we leave NATO wondering about our support while we express our admiration for Putin? Should we continue destroying evil foreign governments that nevertheless keep some semblance of order and then wish for their people suddenly to develop democratic governments with malice toward none and charity toward all? Should more countries, particularly in troubled parts of the world, be encouraged to get nuclear weapons?

Those bother me a lot more than email or who’s the bigger liar or crook. The misery of this election season could wind up being nothing compared with four years of either of those two in the White House.

Copyright 2016 by Anthony Scandora
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