ON TRUMP, JOHNSON AND DEGREES OF IGNORANCE

By Dominique Paul Noth

Gary Johnson's Libertarian brain lock.

I think the former Mexican president Gary Johnson was trying to remember  was Vincente Fox, who famously threw the f word at Donald Trump on video.

Or it could have been Felipe Calderón, who was president for six years ending in 2012. But I think it was Fox,  who came before Calderon and thus would have overlapped Johnson’s time as governor of New Mexico.

Yes, New Mexico, a state of multicultural heritage. Yet the Libertarian candidate for president who led that state for two terms couldn’t think of the name of a single foreign leader he admired on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC “Hardball” Sept. 28. If his vice presidential compadre Bill Weld hadn’t been there to throw in Merkel (Angela of Germany), Johnson would have been left dangling. (Weld’s lightness on his feet is one reason many think the Libertarian names on the ballot should be reversed.)

Johnson admitted he was having “an Aleppo moment,” describing a deer in headlights look he gave weeks earlier on “Morning Joe” where he blanked on the  one Syrian city that has been all over the news because of the refugee crisis and raging combat to liberate it from ISIL.
  
I’m not running for anything so my knowledge is not at issue.  But  Johnson’s blind spots on foreign affairs had me running my mind over how many admirable foreign leaders I could think of quickly, and that was two minutes I’ll never get back.

Netanyahu?  No, I think Bibi is almost as self-centered as Vladimir Putin. I certainly admire Justin Trudeau, who is far more than a People magazine hottie and is carving an impressive record, in two languages, on environmental, economic and  indigenous people issues.

I’d understand if Johnson had trouble digging out Theresa May’s name since she has only been the United Kingdom prime minister  since July. And this may not have been the moment for him to point out a successful woman in high office. (Why remind voters that the only bright spot in the presidential race was Hillary Clinton? I think one reason so many Republicans hate her is they realize she is the far superior candidate and can't bring themselves to admit it.)

I do admire France’s Francois Hollande who has dealt with two large terrorist crises with aplomb – and on the other extreme is Myanmar’s noted chief  councilor (equivalent of prime minister) who has gone back and forth from house arrest to humanitarian prizes (including the Nobel for Peace) and now is technically leader if the country is serious about giving her some power.  Her name is Aung San Suu Kyi and I confess to having double-checked the spelling.

All the above have been in the news recently and should be instantly familiar to anyone seeking the White House.  I know some aspects of the libertarian credo have appeal to millennials  (legalizing marijuana, pro-choice) but Johnson is also keen on fracking, the TPP and less controls on business.  So it is hard to understand any Bernie Sanders fan slipping that way – or, on the other hand, disillusioned Republicans heading into those high weeds.

When Obama says a vote for him or  Jill Stein, or no vote, is a vote for Trump,  I understand --  but don’t completely agree. I would look hard at where the voter lives, because in some precincts it makes no difference. In others, it matters mightily. In Wisconsin it could matter wherever you live.

I mean, libertarians like freedom, but freedom from knowledge is a bit much.

It was ironic after thinking about Johnson’s gaffe, in the next  hours I had to think about Trump.

Trump trots out stagecraft in Waukesha.

He was in Wisconsin Sept. 28 for a rally in the reddest area of the state, setting up in the Waukesha Expo.  A word about staging. The Expo is noted for expandable space and adjustable seating depending on the event. Since state Republicans have been tepid about Trump, the arena was arranged so that a crowd of about 1,000 looked on the TV screen like a Packers game.

In another  bit of Barnum,  Trump kept referring in his talk to thousands more waiting outside.  Well ask the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which according to its Twitter feed had more people covering a rather standard rally  than would have been used had the Pope come to town.

I just dipped in by live stream,  and the first thought was that the Expo was the appropriate venue since the audience is penned like cattle and there were endless delays. Just my experience at events there.

The attendees, clutching their signs and trying to keep their cool,  were kept suffering through multiple replays of Trump’s amped up audio tape interspersed with Ted Nugent style  screaming heavy metal. The music choice was understandable because the crowd has be kept agitated and on  nerve ends and so many recording artists had warned Trump not to use their music anymore.

I heard my favorite spiel line several times on tape --   that America needed  “a leader in the worst way possible,” which spoke for itself.

The event finally started off with an invocation from a female minister. It flatly preached  Trump as the embodiment of Christ’s values and Hillary, well, there’s that other guy. In the live stream a video of Hillary’s coughing was inserted (the music should have been Cheap Trick) and Trump’s actual speech claimed victory in the Monday night debate though all the polls say he lost badly. So in fact did sensible people in Waukesha County who stayed home.

He was preceded by an almost endless array of  enthusiastic politicians (Waukesha County Exec Paul Farrow, Waukesha Rep. Adam Neylon, state GOP leader Brad Courtney, DNR’s bubbly blond deerstalker Cathy Stepp, current arms merchant and former Sen. Bob Kasten, former Gov. Tommy Thompson (whom,  Trump claimed,  told him Wisconsin was back in play) and Trump’s traveling majordomo Rudy Giuliani.

Obviously Trump needs huge turnout from Waukesha. Also obvious at the rally he has his work cut out for him. The only special moment for me in Trump’s 40 minute speech (after hours of waiting) was an unintentional prediction of his future:  “If we don’t win, it will be one of the great wastes of time, energy and money — certainly in my life, that I can tell you.”

The brain does  strange things shifting from Johnson to Trump – it is sort of like a nightmare where you only dream of losers. But back in the real world it clarified a difference.

Johnson at least doesn’t mind looking like a fool, though he should.  Trump would have handled the question defiantly, saying he doesn’t need to know names because there’ll be people in the White House to teach him.  He so hates looking like a fool, which considering how often he acts like a fool is egocentric shameless.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.

Sure I’m for Hillary, but STOP YELLING!

By Dominique Paul Noth

To all the email money-raisers peppering my in-box, yes I’m reasonably responsive, as if you really care, yes I’m voting for Russ and both he and Hillary are on my front lawn and I am listed as financial supporter.  But my responsibility is to them, not you.

I’m sure there is some professionally prominent telemarketer behind your methods who thinks he knows how to motivate the herd for political survival, but I for one am sick and tired of your groveling for money and trying to make me grovel –four times a day in some cases, raising the level of panic and fear with each mailing.  To wit:

IT’S ALL UNRAVELING!

Honestly it’s terrifying! (guess this one wasn’t that terrifying since it wasn’t all in caps).

Trump is surging in the polls. Democrats should PANIC.

WE KEEP EMAILING BECAUSE PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS HELP. BUT TIME’S UP!

DO YOU THINK HILLARY CAN STILL WIN?

NO RESPONSE RECEIVED (in flashing code)

And on and on and on and on.

Now what university did these folks go to, teaching them that Democrats and millennials only open their wallets or purses when they’re worried to death? Who told them to demand daily that we tell them our vote? Or want us to dip back into the same well?

I troll Republican PAC and presidential sites, too, and find similar somewhat lighter techniques whenever Trump goes down or up in the polls, which happens frequently. The body politic as well as these marketing geniuses are amazingly predictive.  Every twitch in the polls sends whatever side is affected into the Saint Vitus Dance. 

Poor Rachel Maddow, whose reputation as a liberal commentator is being used regularly to warn about "the future of our country” if Trump wins, which she meant as common sense but is now being used by senatemajority.com to make folks dig in their  pockets faster or Rachel will spank. I’m sure she never expected to play Cassandra.

Poor Nate Silver, whose reputation as an infallible pollster was already diminishing, for those who closely follow such things.  But nevertheless, since he keeps giving Trump a chance, his name has become part of the hysteria campaign to raise money in one camp and pronounce elevation in the Trump camp by such surrogates as Kellyanne Conway, the blond motor-mouth who has now switched candidates to say nonstop glowing things about her new employer just as she once criticized him.

End result. The same media Trump incites violence against at every rally is embraced by him for every poll bump. In her rallies, Clinton placidly plows ahead trying to talk issues and ignore the hiccups – but not her supporters on the Internet! They sure haven’t got the message.

In some ways I sympathize. By sheer contrast in ability Hillary should be way ahead. And she needs big changes down the ballot to turn the Senate and make strong inroads into the House – because then Congress will stop sitting on its GOP hands and begin moving forward on something, anything.  (Republicans don’t like to hear that, but the gridlock is mainly theirs and it is sickening.) 

I do understand that there’s a massive concern for turnout lest the people wake up Nov. 9 and flagellate themselves for what they let happen. So Democrats and independents recognize that this is the time to get busy.

But not the time to panic or sell fear! Yet some pretty notable fund raisers are doing just that on the web.  Biggest offenders are the End Citizens United campaign, Democratic Governors Association (sorry, not worried about governors right now – catch me in 2018), the SenateMajority (a com named in anticipation) and, sadly, my old friends ActBlue. 

There is more sensibility from Hillary Clinton’s own website, which sticks with issues and just a hint of let’s get going alarm. But even there the temptation is to bash Trump first and get around to reasons later, which reflects the media headlines. Since never before have so many Republicans abandoned their standard bearer, that’s a reality that can’t be ignored if you’re appealing to unsettled voters.

Emily’s List is fairly factual, too, and gives accurate poll rundowns of how Democratic female candidates for Senate are doing in local polls, which saves me the trouble of daily checking as telemarketers do to decide which panic button to push.

I also respect the sober “counting toward goals” methods of the sites of Tammy Baldwin and Russ Feingold, plus the thank you tone of Marc Pocan.

The Republican sites, for individuals other than Trump, are interesting, because they don’t rise and fall with his enthusiasm and panic but with the panic and enthusiasm of their own local polling!

Take Kelly Ayotte, in a tough race in New Hampshire against strong Democratic challenger Maggie Hassan. She can’t endorse Trump while saying she will vote for him, a schizoid hair-splitting that is understandably hurting with voters.  So she has now called in her senate buddy from Iowa, Joni Ernst, to borrow her “Let’s Make Them Squeal” pig holler to raise cash.

Sure, I’m bothered that Hillary isn’t winning in a walk, according to the polls. But I guess I’m more a realist about this measure of judging voter interest months in advance.

I talk to Democrats all the time who expect Clinton on pure merit to wipe the floor with Trump at the debates and seal the thing. But that’s only if Joni Ernst’s pigs can fly.  

I think her fans are waiting for a “Big Eyes” moment of embarrassment for Trump. That (true story, not just a movie invention) was when a judge ordered a paint-off between Margaret Keane and the charlatan Walter Keane to prove she was the only real painter -- and he could only muster bluster and excuses. How great that sort of defining putdown would be!

But even with the capable Lester Holt as moderator Sept. 26, this will not be that clear an eye-opening opportunity to expose the mountebank bluster.  She is playing on Trump’s home turf – electronic media, which illuminates every boast and outrage into “strong leader” and reduces every detailed logical explanation into ho-hum.  She’s answering with her head to an audience susceptible to fear and heartstrings.

Plus the TV audience will be grading him on a curve. If you are a traditional Republican you’re desperate to snatch some reason to feel better about your own party. You might just buy his spiel as long as he’s still standing at the end.

The debates will not be as conclusive as the Clinton forces hope and on the Internet are dangerously selling as decisive.  I take the longer view, the Obama view I guess, of trusting the American voters to act in their own best interests and security of the country when the final bell rings. 

I do worry that poor attention, lack of education, political ignorance and celebrity fascination will take a toll, but I think the panic from the Democratic fund-raising machinery is more likely a goad for the opposition. “Look how scared of us they are, the wimps!”

I will give in time and money as I can, but my email box is being embarrassed by the raw desperation.  It’s supposed to be the Republicans who treat raising money as the deciding god.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional  journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

WHAT KEEPS REPUBLICANS FROM TURNING SENSIBLE?

By Dominique Paul Noth

What this country needs is an election divorced from traditional Republican and Democratic labels. 

It's hard for Republicans to look
Hillary in the face.

That’s a strange statement since for nearly 40 years the name Clinton has been the Democratic Party label and often the center of GOP hatred (only changed of late -- thanks Obama).

Breaking the mold, you would think, benefits Trump, except for the number of Republicans straining to break the leash of a party that so ineptly let him take over and are forcing them to embrace the tone, statements, divisiveness and spastic values the presidential candidate embodies. 

For decades Hillary has been Medusa for Republicans. How can they now look her in the eye and admit they were misled on Whitewater, Benghazi, emails, you name the manufactured scandal?  A lifelong Republican has got to put those stories in perspective first before they recognize the importance of voting for her.

They may just stay away, which is not healthy for democracy.  But if you examine the platforms and personalities of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, it’s not just they don’t have a chance, it’s that they sound distant from Republican values and even more naïve.

How reality is changing things. For Republicans I’ve talked to and even suffered insults from, there is now something that quietly bothers them more than Hillary. It’s their own candidates dissembling. Candidates who say they may vote for Trump but can’t endorse him.  Or that they can’t endorse him or vote for him but won’t vote for her. Or just don’t ask me, I’m too busy. The confusion looks like profiles in cowardice, but there’s a lot of Republican heritage standing in the way of being sensible and voting for Hillary. Republicans are actually angry at their own candidates because that uncertainty reflects their own.

As a national party Republicans are in a struggle to be honest with themselves. It’s not just that they disagree with some Democratic approaches to government. They have lived with those for eight years and survived quite nicely.  Now it  is their own beliefs that have been shanghaied and are subject to whatever change Trump thinks will fly in the winds of his own bloviating.  What do they now stand for – and behind whom? 

Be kind. Who among us can admit that we were wrong for decades? Many Republicans are going through the stages of grief, particularly denial and still not ready for resignation and acceptance.

Traditional members are accustomed to the give and take that underlies American politics. They expect to win some, lose some and negotiate others to a result they can claim is a victory.   They’ve had Reagan and the Bushes and even of late Republicans have represented nearly half the country (and more in terms of statehouses).  Now, confronted by a gridlock in D.C. based on many issues they have mixed feelings on, from health care to background checks, from infrastructure to environmental protection, they have been hooked into standing by their party’s “principles.” 

But using the name ”Trump”  and the term “principle” in the same sentence has become impossible. 

No matter how he tries to cool his image and stick to the teleprompter, not matter how he tries to sound like a mellowed policy wonk, the real Trump continually exposes himself, and his vagaries.  Supporting him risks joining the  “deplorables” who genuinely exist and in noisiness dominate his rallies. No wonder so many in the GOP are  conflicted. 

The GOP  is a party regionally strong but likely to grow nationally weaker because of  Trump.  He would have a harder time than Hillary in forming coalitions in Congress. The smarter members of the GOP have already made the pivot to work down the ballot, supporting people who say never Trump and even  those who say maybe Trump or halfway house Trump.

The universal reaction to Hillary’s bout with pneumonia proves the point. Republicans were almost as panicked as Democrats at the specter of illness playing a role in who wins the White House.

But in this time of needed rescue,  how can Republicans turn to Clinton to protect their nation after so many years bashing her?  And then there is the left side of the Democrats, who want the 69 year old Hillary to be  the 75 year old Bernie or at least an agent of change though both have been pillars of the establishment.  (Both Hillary and Bernie would despise that statement, since both in their own way have spent their careers pushing against the establishment, but time in service  alone makes them vulnerable to that charge.) Nor can Hillary  repeat the might of the Obama coalition (who could?). But at least those younger voters and progressives are slowly recognizing that only Hillary in office represents their own advance and security.

If Republicans continue to think like Republicans, and Democrats do the same, Clinton won’t win the majority she and America deserve and the GOP will have wasted energy it needs to spend down the ballot, where the party has a stronger chance to survive (as painful as that is for a liberal like me to admit).  That’s why even conservative writers are warning that a Trump victory would more likely destroy the Republican Party than a Clinton win.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional  journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

TRUMP SHAPING UP AS HISTORY’S MOST BIZARRE FOOTNOTE

By Dominique Paul Noth

Years from now historians will look back at this presidential campaign with a mixture of disbelief and laughter. (That’s probably a pro-Hillary statement, since it assumes there will be historians years from now.)

They will wonder not just how Donald Trump hijacked  the once respected Republican Party and ground it into national rubble but  also how he did it with an issue that doesn’t even make the top five in problems facing the United States – the undocumented among us, whom  statistics demonstrate are far more criminal-law-abiding than their homegrown counterparts.

Trump lathered that up as the “only important conversation” for Americans. If that were not silly enough, his Aug. 31 ravings about their invented criminality were accompanied by crocodile tears for photo-ops in Mexico and at a black church. Those acts of false normalcy and almost total reversal of his rallies were given equal media time.

Historians will spend most of their ink on why so many GOP leaders, knowing what they were saddled with, found ways to tolerate Trump, either gently steering their own campaign away from his toxicity or playing that crazy confounding game of saying they’ll vote for him but not endorse him.

Let’s also hope the historians don’t forgive the unforgivable.  That is, the two faces of the mainstream media.  One face has done a pretty thorough job dismantling the falsehoods, half truths and deliberate deception of the Aug. 31 speech as well as his broadside attacks on Clinton. 

But the other face is ratings hunger, programming more for eyeballs than meaning.  So in report after re-report after looped re-reports both the Trump yelling and the contrasting crocodile tears were pounded out relentlessly. And every mention of Trump must be followed by a mention of Clinton in negative fashion whatever the reality may be. 

For me the most amusing was when she delivered a pretty sterling policy on mental health, but all the media could discuss were her emails.

We are in an era where visual images count more than analysis, and in this game of false equivalency Trump got an artificial leg up.

The best reporting these days is the mockery by faux news (late-night hosts and Comedy Central) who know exactly what to do when Trump points to “my African American” in the crowd or tells an incredulous congregation that the African American church is “so important, so important.”  Even as the establishment media tries to explain him they are electronically plastering his poster on city walls, the way we expect streets to be lined in dictatorships.  

Unquestionably the misdirection that Trump laces into his speeches are the biggest conspiratorial theories we have going, suggesting that Americans want to pick crops in the field or clean hotel toilets but are being deprived because of a porous border. Not by a needed wall around corporate greed.

On that real border, people are no longer a traffic problem – it’s more guns from American heading south and opium heading north.  The real issue the wall can’t address is comprehensive immigration, since most of the Trump targets already are in this country or overstaying legitimate visas.

Trump the supposed businessman is under pressure from GOP regulars who want him to back down on long-held promises to deport all the undocumented. They represent sizable tax revenue and also add some $12 billion to Social Security, which makes the cost of educating their children (hello Jan Brewer) a mere pittance compared to the giant profits.

These days both sides are eager to exaggerate.  I can collect examples from the far left as well as the far right.   One key device: Angry and anguished relatives speaking about deaths of loved ones.  This not only sells medical clinics in TV commercials. It has become a favorite emotional ploy for both political sides.  The relatives of the fallen soldier speaking to the camera. The veteran denied the care he needs. They tug at our hearts as do starving dogs in yet another popular TV commercial.

But this pull was dragged to preposterous heights by Trump in his immigration tirade. At the end he lined up for sympathy and “Trump our savior” comments some parents whose children were killed by “illegal aliens.” Truth often bends before emotion, especially parental emotions. As manipulative as I realized the Trump display was, it still tugged at my feelings.

Until you examine the particulars of each case.  All these lost relatives could have even more readily been killed by legal citizens. Actually more frequently. 

There are 1,500 hit and run deaths per year in the US, but plucking out two committed by the undocumented is hardly a convincing statistic. If we could only lower the rape rate to those done by “illegals” that would be a great statistic to boast about. In terms of home invasions, gang beatings, recidivism  and the like, US citizens unadorned by scapegoats are not only doing the majority but at far higher percentages.  Crime statistics bear out that such atrocities emerge far more in non-immigrant communities.

This is not to make light of these families’ tragedies or the holes in our law enforcement or incarceration imbalance. But every moment spent deciphering Trump’s ramblings or his motives is a moment lost to genuine solution.

No wonder that Obama, stifled for most of his two terms because of GOP obstinacy, simply plows ahead doing what he can without Congress – and believe me,   historians will have a lot to say about that. 

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his own culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.