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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Epitaph [1]

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Date: 2023-10-05  

We begin today with Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post and her epitaph to the speakership of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

There was a time when most Americans probably couldn’t have told you who the current speaker — say, Carl Albert or John McCormack — was; the job went to an inside operator in what appeared to be a permanent majority. Now, however, the speaker is both well-known and without any job security. Six of the seven who preceded McCarthy were forced by scandal or political setback to relinquish the gavel. Still, McCarthy’s leadership — if you can call it leadership — was notably rudderless and chaotic. On his watch, the country came to the brink of what could have been a catastrophic default on its debt. His hard-right members regularly humiliated him by blocking vital GOP-backed measures from even coming to a vote on the House floor — among them, recently, one to fund the Pentagon. It was only with the help of Democrats that he managed to muster enough votes Saturday to prevent a government shutdown. And yet, he continued to try to appease the hard-liners, including by unilaterally opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden based on allegations — but no evidence — that the president had benefited from the business dealings of his son Hunter. In a grievance-filled news conference after he announced his decision not to try to get his job back, McCarthy said, with dark humor: “I made history, didn’t I?” Indeed, he has left a mark — a scar on the institution and the office — that will be hard to erase.

David Remnick of The New Yorker writes that in a way, Number 45 is keeping a campaign promise, of sorts, by fomenting even more violence and that we can’t afford to look the other way.

Trump’s reëlection campaign is, by necessity, being conducted as much in and around various courtrooms as it is on traditional podiums. The once and future autocrat has decided to make his legal jeopardy a virtue, to portray himself as the persecuted Everyman standing up to a prosecutorial system riddled with hypocrisy. In August, one day after a federal magistrate judge in Trump’s 2020 election-interference case in Washington warned him not to threaten or intimidate witnesses, he went online to post this: “if you go after me, i’m coming after you!” In New York, the judge in Trump’s civil fraud case, Arthur Engoron, had to issue a gag order after the former President baselessly branded a court clerk as “Schumer’s girlfriend” and added, “How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!” Engoron ordered Trump to take down the post, though, of course, the damage was done: the word was out, and the court clerk could expect endless harassment online and worse. [...] These are not mere anecdotes, “colorful” moments of unscripted temper from a familiar source. (“Just Donald being Donald!”) No, these moments are the essence of Trump and his campaign. In the coming year, you will rarely, if ever, hear discussion of policy from Trump. You will hear expressions of rage and impulse. It is tempting to ignore them, to dismiss them as inconsequential, repetitious, corrosive. They are so painful to listen to, both in their hatefulness and in their frequency, that some have argued the media should ignore them entirely, the better to avoid elevating them. But ignoring them will not make them go away. They are the center of a candidacy that is polling very highly and that threatens so much of what is decent or promising about our politics. Trump’s rage is the inspiration for everything from the Proud Boys to the mailing of pipe bombs to political targets, to say nothing of the deranged behavior of much of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. In the meantime, the gaggle of Republicans who are ostensibly Trump’s rivals for the nomination barely criticize him. In their moral cowardice, they run for attention, for branding purposes, or, perhaps, for a spot in a new Trump Administration.

Lisa Rubin of MSNBC speculates about the reasons that Number 45 decided to make a physical appearance at the New York State fraud trial when he didn’t have to.

First, he was able to physically show his contempt for — and potentially rattle — witnesses, the judge, prosecutors and New York Attorney General Letitia James herself just by being there. [...] Second, Trump would have demeaned the trial as a “disgrace” or a “witch hunt” wherever he was. But by attending for a few days, Trump was also able to more credibly spin reporters that all has been going beautifully — whether or not his own lawyers or outside legal experts would concur — because he has been an eyewitness. [...] Third, by showing up, Trump was able to distract from what actually happened in the courtroom, collapsing the usual split screen of Trump legal coverage, on one hand, and political reporting, on the other, into a single stream. Indeed, he held several impromptu press conferences each trial day where he further attacked his perceived enemies, including James and Engoron, as if a shabby, dimly-lit courthouse hallway were his runway or the White House lawn. But perhaps most importantly, Trump came to court to play victim and raise money...

Just as former San Francisco Mayor and Sen. Dianne Feinstein was lying in state at San Francisco City Hall, Renée Graham of The Boston Globe reminds us that the event that most defined Sen. Feinstein’s political career, Dan White’s 1979 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, is very related to today’s white supremacist violence.

Next month marks 45 years since White killed Moscone and Milk. After abruptly resigning from the board, he soon decided he wanted his position back. But Moscone did not plan to reappoint him. In his confession, White claimed that’s what compelled him to go to City Hall and shoot Moscone four times. He then reloaded his gun, went to Milk’s office, and shot him five times. But to White, the men he killed also personified how the city where he was raised was becoming more liberal and his perception that many like him — white, working-class, and conservative — were being marginalized. His campaign slogan was “Unite and Fight with Dan White.” He denounced those he called “social deviants” and talked about restoring the “old fashioned values that built this country” — a kind of “Make San Francisco Great Again” rallying cry. [...] There’s a through line from White’s assassinations of Moscone and Milk to the white supremacist violence that today poses this nation’s most potent domestic threat. Even incremental progress in America is met with a backlash, often violent. It happened after the Civil War when, instead of recompense for formerly enslaved Black people, the nation hardened into decades of heightened brutality and laws that kept slavery and racist disenfranchisement intact under other names and means.

Craig Spencer writes for The New York Times about the ways in which the strike now affecting the Kaiser Permanente health care system, perhaps the largest in the nation’s history, isn’t all that typical.

The seeds of the Kaiser strike were sown before the pandemic, which certainly aggravated the issues afflicting workers. No matter how this strike ends, the problems at the Kaiser network, which operates in eight states and the District of Columbia, are not unique. Health care workers have already taken to the picket line at hospitals and clinics across the country this year — six of the 19 work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023 were in health care. Providers commit to serving others. That so many are walking off the job in protest means the conditions are so unsustainable, there’s no option left but to take this action of last resort. Health care providers have long experienced burnout, a product of working in a system with grueling hours and byzantine approval processes for routine patient care. But in the first year of the pandemic, levels of reported burnout among providers soared into their own epidemic. According to a study by the American Medical Association, over 60 percent of physicians reported feeling burned out in 2021. And now large numbers of health care workers have joined other Americans in the Great Resignation over the past two years.

Finally today, James Palmer writes for Foreign Policy that China, too, is finding friends in the European far right.

This week, a German report from news site T-Online exposed a politician in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Maximilian Krah, as having extensive ties to a Chinese influence network. Krah is the AfD’s top candidate in next year’s European Parliament elections, running on the party’s Euroskeptic, anti-immigration, and nationalist platform. He is also a longtime defender of Beijing. [...] Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government remains a friend of Beijing, with the foreign minister recently citing “opportunities rather than risks” of working with China. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has kissed the Chinese flag. Former Czech President Milos Zeman, who shifted from the left to the populist right, was so close to Beijing that he appointed Chinese state-linked businessman Ye Jianming as an economic advisor in 2017. Sometimes the focus on individual politicians has backfired on Beijing, leading the political opposition to take up the anti-China cause. By contrast, far-right parties in Western Europe have a mixed attitude toward China. In France, Marine Le Pen—a leader in the National Rally party—has called for a strategy against China in the Indo-Pacific. Italy under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is withdrawing from China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In Britain, an increasingly far-right-leaning Conservative Party also has a strong anti-China faction. (To some degree, that’s a result of affiliation with U.S. conservatism.)

Have the best possible day everyone!

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