Let's Do This Today

Okay, Friends, here's the situation:

1.  We're in a national crisis, which Donald Trump is turning into a 24/7 campaign infomercial for his re-election campaign, while the Democrats - aside from performing well as legislators - are getting no media attention at all.

2.  The Democratic contest for President is over.  We might wish it were otherwise, but Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.  The time for hand-wringing is past.

     2a.  Because of his age, if he is elected, Joe Biden will be a one-term
            President, and his Vice-President will be the odds-on favorite to
            succeed him in 2024.  And the choice of that person is entirely up
            to Joe Biden.

3.  The coronavirus pandemic will likely peak before a new Administration can take office.   For the moment, we have the least effective imaginable national leadership, but we'll just have to do the best we can through citizen and community efforts, and the leadership of state and local officials, to survive this thing.

4.  The economic impact of the pandemic will be devastating, and will require the wisest possible leadership to restore prosperity here, and around the world.

5.   The pandemic, and its economic consequences, have created two possible courses of action for America - either a corporate-led effort to "rebuild" the economy, so that the 1% and the .1% are even better off, and more dominant, in future OR a progressive-led effort to restructure our society so that we come out of this crisis with an economy which is much fairer, provides greater opportunity to more Americans, and is far more environmentally sustainable.

Given these apparent realities, there seems to me no question that Joe Biden must choose Elizabeth Warren as his running-mate.  Senator Warren is, because of her deep understanding of health-care issues, the most competent person in national politics to assist Biden in managing whatever continuing health crisis exists when he takes office.

Warren is also, by any measure, the smartest, most dynamic, most creative, and most far-sighted advocate of the sort of big structural change our society will need as the coronavirus crisis recedes.  If Biden is to be President, Warren must be his designated successor.

And the time to act is now.

Today, I went to the official Biden campaign website and signed up as a supporter.  Clicking through the website, the second page asks the question, "Looking ahead to the 2020 election, what are you most concerned about?"   I skipped past all the options provided, clicked on "Other", and wrote "Electing Elizabeth Warren Vice-President". 

Then I clicked through to the end and contributed $12 dollars - or, if your budget is tight (as most are) $1.20 or even $0.12- as a signal that, in your opinion, the Number One thing for Biden to do is to name Elizabeth Warren as his Number Two.

And that's what I'm suggesting that every other progressively-minded American do.  Today.  Send a signal to Joe Biden that he needs Elizabeth Warren at his side.  And do that at a time when the Democrats desperately need a headline-grabbing story to compete with the President for attention.

I'm guessing, if 100,000 of us do the same thing - sign up with Joe, indicate that Warren for VP is our number one priority, and contribute exactly $12 - that gesture will have the desired impact.

But there's only one way to find out.

At Home with Kids? Learn a Language Together!

With schools closing around the country, millions of parents are suddenly confronted by the problem of what to do about their children's educations.  The prospect of having the kids at home for weeks - perhaps, months - presents a daunting challenge.

It could also present a rare opportunity.

As an old history teacher who has delved pretty deeply into educational policy, here's my suggestion:  Learn a language together.

The advantages of language learning are enormous.  Most Americans - including college graduates and professionals - are effectively monolingual.  We might know enough to order food or wine in a French or Mexican restaurant.  Or find a restroom or get back to our hotel when travelling abroad.   If our jobs require it, we might be able to speak enough of one or two languages to communicate with co-workers on work-related issues.

But few of us are truly fluent, and - in a once and future global society - that's a handicap.  It's also a national embarrassment.

When I was teaching high school, in my early 30s, I used to take groups of students on three-week tours of Europe in the summer.  One summer, I let the kids fly home with a colleague so I could stay for a few weeks on my own, bumming around on a Eurailpass.  One day, I found myself on a train, in conversation with a pretty woman sitting across from me.  She was Swiss, a secretary, no more than 20.  I complimented her on her English - which was, in fact, very good.

She smilingly demurred.  Her English was not that good, she said.  Her German, French, and Italian were much better.

This young woman was obviously intelligent, but she wasn't a college graduate.  But she spoke at least four languages fluently.  I was at least twelve years older, and had a BA and a law degree from one of America's best public universities - and I spoke my native English and slightly rusty German.

I've never forgotten that moment.  It was humbling.  We are citizens of a super-power, at a time when the world has become one community - and most of us can't speak to anyone who hasn't taken the trouble to learn English.

And neither can our kids.

Now, I could go on and on about why this must change.  But we all know this.  The problem is, our educational system is not set up to make that change.

Our schools operate on the basis of short classroom sessions - 50 minutes daily, or 90 minutes on alternate days - with 20 to 30 students in a class.  Language learning works best when it's immersive.  You can't learn a language very well when it's just a box on a schedule.  You have to live with it.

For language learning, the class period or block is basically a waste of time.  Likewise the large, standard class of 20 or more students.

And, of course, one learns languages most easily as a young child - not a teenager.  The older you get, the harder it gets.

Which is what makes the present moment so ideal for language learning.

If you're at home with a child, or several children, learning a new language is something you can all do together.  Unlike other subjects, the younger children won't struggle to keep up with their elders - they'll probably excel.  If anything, you'll be the slow learner.

The other great thing about language learning is that there are so many ways to go about it - most of which don't feel much like work.  There are lots of on-line programs for basic instruction.  I personally enjoy Duolingo, a free app with short lessons and lots of little incentives, like a video game.  My favorite thing about Duolingo is that it doesn't let you finish a lesson until you get everything right.  There's no shame.  You just try again until you get it - and then you're congratulated.

There are a lot of low-tech ways to learn a language, too.  When I learned my German, it was in an eight-week immersive summer course.  I was 32, and I achieved decent fluency, with a very good accent, in eight weeks.  One of our first-day exercises was to label everything in our residence house - doors, windows, tables, refrigerators, floors, etc. - with hand-lettered index cards.  Within days, these nouns were ours.

We also did a lot of non-work-like things.  We watched movies in German.  We sang songs.  We talked to each other - clumsily, at first, looking up words in our dictionaries as we went.  (Our program's rule was, no English, from Day One - so we started with baby talk, but we quickly got better.)

During this enforced time out-of-school, a lot of parents will try to keep their kids on track with the curriculum of the school they were attending.  There's a case to be made for that, and if your kids' school is offering meaningful distance learning, you might try it.

The problem is, not every family will do that - or do it in the same way.  When the kids eventually get back together, there will be marked discrepancies - and a lot of the curriculum will have to be re-taught, to get everyone back on the same page.  Those kids who've worked hardest to "keep up" will likely have to suffer through it all a second time.

Rather than subject your children to sitting through a repeat of what they've labored to learn while school was out, why not take the opportunity to learn something together - in a way the schools can't possibly match?  It's a lot more fun - and it would bring the family together in a new and exciting way.

A little exploration will do for finding the necessary resources.  They are almost infinite.

Looked at optimistically, this time is yours.  Why not seize it?

Burr Should Resign, Now.

Throughout the endless years of the Trump Presidency, I've had a grudging respect for Senator Richard Burr (R-NC).  While Republican Congressmen such as Devin Nunes and Mark Meadows were, shall we say, obfuscating candidate Trump's involvement with Russia, Chairman Burr worked hand-in-hand with the Ranking Member, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), to lead the Senate Intelligence Committee through what looked like an honest, bipartisan investigation of the same subject.

Here, I thought, is an okay guy.  A Republican, admittedly, but a North Carolinian.  As a native and long-time Virginian, I've always tended to give residents of the Tar Heel state the benefit of the doubt.  (Unless, of course, they played basketball for Duke.)

To be sure, my estimation of Senator Burr was clouded by his voting record.  Mitch McConnell had a reliable Yea or Nay in the senior Senator from North Carolina.  But still, he seemed willing to investigate the President's Russia ties - and if you start investigating anything to do with Donald Trump, ain't no way it's going to come up smelling like roses.

So I was staggered to learn, from this morning's NPR newscast, that Mr. Burr had given a very realistic appraisal of the risks of a coronavirus pandemic to a handful of well-heeled contributors - mainly corporate types - who shared lunch with him on February 27.  A date when the Senator was saying absolutely nothing similar to the millions of ordinary North Carolinians who weren't members of the "North Carolina State Society" - but who were his constituents.

My immediate thought was, "He should resign."

Then I looked to see who happened to be the Governor of North Carolina - the person who would appoint someone to replace Mr. Burr, if he resigned.   Turns out it's Roy Cooper, a Democrat.  I quickly amended my thought to, "He must resign."

Now, to be sure, under North Carolina law, Governor Cooper is obligated to appoint someone who is of the same party as the vacating Senator.  So he couldn't appoint a Democrat.

But surely, there is, somewhere in the vastness of North Carolina - a state noted for independent-minded men and women - a Republican who holds as low an opinion of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell as do other right-thinking Americans.

A Republican who would be willing to fill out the span between now November 3 denying Mitch McConnell - and the Stable Genius in the White House - a reliable vote for things like:  giveaways to corporations under the guise of doing something about the pandemic; wall-building as a way of keeping out viruses that are already here; and, most of all, nominees to the Federal judiciary.

All of which led me to this inevitable conclusion:  The Democratic presidential primary is over.  It's gonna be Joe Biden, and whomever he chooses for Vice-President - unless the Democratic Party insists he include someone else in the decision-making process.

But the Senate is going to spend the next seven-and-a-half months dealing with one of the biggest natural disasters in American history - and we need to be sure it does so in the interests of the citizens, not just the big donor class.

So, to me, the answer was obvious.  We should take our frustrated political energies and start demanding that Senator Burr resign.

Except, I knew that wouldn't happen.  Leaking information to your rich buddies, while concealing it from the rest of your constituents, is contemptible, dishonorable, and just plain wrong.  But in the Age of Trump, it also seems pretty routine - and it's not technically illegal

So I wasn't sure about writing this piece, until this evening, when I went on that Search Engine We All Hate to check my facts about Mr. Burr of North Carolina, and read that he and his wife had also dumped between a half-million and one-and-a-half-million dollars worth of stock two weeks before he told his rich buddies the frightening truth about the coronavirus.

Which certainly stinks.  And might just be illegal.

This new revelation made up my mind for me.  Burr must go.  We must all demand it.  We'll leave it to Governor Cooper to play Diogenes, looking for an honest Republican in North Carolina to fill Burr's seat until a special election can be held.

No harm if he takes a while making his choice.  No harm at all.

But Burr must resign.  Now.

So write a letter, and lick a stamp.  On second though, use a sponge.

You don't know where that stamp has been.

Who Chooses the Veep?

The unexamined life is not worth living.  
                                              - Socrates

Sometimes, the most consequential things in life go unexamined.  In the last century of American political history, one matter of high consequence is the unchallenged assumption that the newly-minted presidential nominee of a major party has the unfettered privilege of choosing his - so far, it has always been his - running-mate.

When you think about it, this makes no sense.  While some modern Presidents have chosen to make use of their Vice-Presidents, the truth is that - while the President has a pulse - a Vice-President's main function is ceremonial.  A Vice-President presides over the Senate, unless he is elsewhere, in which case some member of the Senate - nominally, the President Pro Tem, but any member of the majority party will do - fills in. 

Otherwise, the Vice-President is available to meet dignitaries, donors, and Girl Scout troops the President can't fit into his schedule; make speeches to groups the President doesn't need to address; cut ribbons; dedicate things; and attend funerals.

The Vice-President is also available for assignment to major Federal undertakings from which the President would rather distance himself - most often, undertakings with a substantial risk of failure.  As of this writing, for example, Vice-President Mike Pence has been tasked with heading up - in some vague way - the Federal effort to address the novel corona-virus pandemic.

In naming Pence, President Trump has signalled that he, at least vaguely, understands that his administration has badly fumbled its early response.  By losing about two months, the administration has virtually assured that more Americans will be infected, that critical public and private institutions will be more badly disrupted, and that - simply stated - more of us will die than would have happened had our "leader" done his job properly.

But with Pence on the job, Mr. Trump will, to an extent, be able to deflect the blame onto his understudy.  Should things go very badly, Mr. Trump will have a perfect excuse for dumping Mr. Pence in favor of a running-mate - perhaps Nikki Haley - who gives him a better chance of re-election.  Should things go well, Pence will be pushed into the shadows while Trump claims credit.

All of which is to say that Vice-Presidents do have some uses while a President is alive.

But the main function of every Vice-President is to be available to take over if the President dies - which, when you think about it - leads to this curious conclusion:

Of all the people who might have a say in the choice of a presidential candidate's running-mate, the one person certain to be least impacted - if that choice turns out to be consequential - is the person making it.

Because that person will no longer be among the living.

The year 2020 raises the question of the choice of running-mates to an altogether new level of immediacy.  Of the two remaining, viable candidates for the Democratic nomination, the younger - Joe Biden - is 77 years old.  Without going into the question of Biden's mental fitness for the Presidency, the basic fact is that - should he be elected - Biden would take office at the age of 78.  This raises three possible scenarios for a Biden presidency.

It's hardly unimaginable that a man of Biden's age would die in office - or become manifestly unfit to perform his duties - in which case, his Vice-President would become our President.

An equally likely scenario is that Biden would serve out his first term - even if his physical or mental health had rendered him unfit - shielded by the massive protective machinery which surrounds every President.  In such a case, he would almost certainly not run for re-election, but his Vice-President would have an enormous - probably insurmountable - head start in the race to succeed him.

Even should Biden weather his first term intact and decide to seek a second term at the age of 81, he would almost certainly be challenged for renomination and forced to retire.  Again, his Vice-President would be the presumptive nominee of the party.  Any challenger would face an uphill battle against an entrenched party establishment.

Should Bernie Sanders engineer a surprise comeback and seize the 2020 nomination from Biden, he would start his Presidency at 78, facing the same three scenarios in a somewhat modified order of probability.

But in either case, this July, if not before, one old, white man will get to choose - without recourse - a person who is very likely to become his successor as our President.

Upon examination, this makes absolutely no sense.  The trouble is, we don't examine it.  Americans will get into a quadrennial stew about the undemocratic character of the Electoral College, but few question that fact that several modern presidents have been chosen by one man, sitting in a hotel room with a few key advisers.

After today's primaries, it seems highly likely that the Democratic contest for the presidency will be ending its final phase.  An elderly man - chosen largely because of his bland inoffensiveness - will be on the way to an election which seems every day more probable because of the manifest incompetence of the incumbent in an hour of crisis.

That elderly man - whose very prominence was the result of another man's solitary choice twelve years ago - will, in four month's time, have the freedom to nominate someone who will very likely become President as his designated or elected successor.

Americans have just gone through the year-long, extraordinarily expensive, and intermittently entertaining process of choosing a Democratic nominee for president.  Millions of us have contributed to our chosen candidate, attended rallies, or worked as volunteers in this effort.  Millions more have watched some of the endless series of debates, or otherwise researched the candidates on-line, or through other media.

That none of us should have any say in choosing another probable president - that one old man should soon make that choice for us - seems too absurd for words.

The Democratic National Committee has the power to change this, by providing a mechanism which gives its convention some say in the choice of vice-president.  Democrats - regardless of which candidate they have supported or now support - should insist that the DNC take this long overdue step.

We should demand that they do this.