Virology knows no political bounds

I have friends on the right who suggest that the President was infected by his enemies during one of his Covid tests.

I have friends on the left who suggest that the president is faking his infection to receive more attention and sympathy from the press, as well as to avoid another debate appearance.

Politicizing a virus makes as much sense as politicizing a chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The virus has political implications, but not political intent.

Viruses are mini-microscopic. They are invisible and almost impossible to detect.

They are also difficult to study and their behavior is difficult to forecast. Conclusions based on the best research are aggravatingly ambiguous at best.

Masks, hand washing, social distancing, and other protocols are effective, but not fool-proof.

In spite of his outward bravado, the President exists in the most sterile environment possible for any world leader. But even that wasn’t enough to protect him. He was infected just as was Herman Cain, Boris Johnson, Placido Domingo, and Tom Hanks.

If he can get it, anybody can. Virology knows no political bounds.

Instead of making political statements, I’m asking my friends of both ideologies to join me in wishing and praying for a speedy recovery for the President and First Lady, and an end to this madness, hate, and divisiveness.

Ranking the Presidents

C-SPAN has just published the 2017 results of their Presidential Historians Survey.

As any good data geek would do, I threw all the data into Excel to see what I could discover. You can download my work here.

I’ve always been interested in these types of studies because, on the one hand they advertise themselves as being totally objective, it’s really hard to squeeze the subjectivity out of them.

After all, any historian — no matter what he claims — brings to the table a certain amount of historical bias. Today’s political climate tends to make that bias even more obvious.

For example, Glen Beck — admittedly nobody’s example of political objectivity — ranks Woodrow Wilson as the most evil man in all of American history. But the survey ranks Wilson a respectable 13th out of 45.

And James Polk — not on the general public’s list of great American Presidents — ranks number 16 — proof that the C-SPAN academic advisors sure know their pre-Civil War history.

To produce the rankings, C-SPAN asked a team from academia to rank all presidents using ten “qualities of presidential leadership”:

• Public Persuasion
• Crisis Leadership
• Economic Management
• Moral Authority
• International Relations
• Administrative Skills
• Relations with Congress
• Vision/Setting An Agenda
• Pursued Equal Justice for All
• Performance Within the Context of His Times

It’s probably a good idea that such a panel is used and that they don’t ask me or Glen Beck to serve on that panel.

All those categories gave me plenty of data to load into Excel. Let’s see what I discovered.

I thought it would be interesting to measure the presidents on a combination of rank and “consistency”. I measured consistency based on the rank of the standard deviation of the rank in for that president in all the categories.

A consistent president is one who ranks the same in all categories. A president may be consistently good, consistently bad, or consistently mediocre. Is there anything to learn from this?

Here is a scatter plot of the results:


To validate the data, let’s look at a couple of corners. Yep, not only does Abraham Lincoln rank as the number one president, he ranks as the most consistent president. That places him in the lower left corner. A good president all around.

In the other corner are both Lincoln’s predecessor and his successor. Wow. We always knew that James Buchannan did more to cause the Civil War than any other individual. And we know that Andrew Johnson did more to screw up Reconstruction than just about anybody else. Bad presidents all around. Thanks for the legacy, guys.

Here’s another way of looking at things:


This graph color codes the presidents by their rank in each of the ten categories. Since they are ordered by the final score, any place you see “islands” of a different color, that’s an anomaly that’s worthy of discussion.

For example, Lyndon Johnson was a pretty decent president. He ranks at the top for “Relations with Congress” (he had to fight his own Democratic Party to get the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed; a greater percentage of Republicans voted for the bill than did Democrats). But he rightfully ranks near the bottom for international relations for getting us deeper in the Vietnam war.

Bill Clinton ranks a decent number 15 overall, but comes in near the bottom in for “Moral Authority” because of his fondness for oral activities.

It’s a little harder for me to explain the person that I believe to be the nicest, worst president of them all: Jimmy Carter. A dreadful president who ruined both the American economy and our relations with Iran, I don’t know how he ranked as high as number 26. On the other hand, he’s a decent man in a strong, loving marriage, a Baptist deacon and Sunday School teacher, and a Habitat for Humanity volunteer into his 90s; doesn’t he deserve to be ranked higher than number 14 in “Moral Authority”?

And how did Barack Obama perform in his debut appearance? He came in at number 12, between Woodrow Wilson and James Monroe. That’s probably fair.

He ranked near the bottom in “Relations with Congress”. The only way he got ObamaCare passed was with back-door deals and a “gotta-pass-the-bill-before-you-read-it” mentality, even though his party controlled both houses of Congress at the time.

He also scored pretty low on “International Relations” by touring the world while apologizing for America’s past policies, weakened our position with Russia, and managed to worsen our relationship on both sides of the Middle East — quite an accomplishment!

He scored the highest in the category “Pursued Equal Justice for All”. That sounds about right for somebody who thinks “it’s good for everybody” to “spread the wealth around”.

We’ll have to wait a few years to see what historians think of our Mogul-in-Chief. My guess is his drain-the-swamp and build-the-wall dreams will score high in the “Vision/Setting an Agenda” category.

Fortunately for Mr. Trump, there is no category for “Relationship with the Press”.

Citizen-in-Chief

Bill O’Reilly’s Super Bowl interview with Donald Trump gave us the famous quote: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country is so innocent?” Everybody’s talking about it.

So many people are talking about it, I have nothing further to say about it.

Instead, I’m going to analyze an exchange near the end of the interview.

Attempting to humanize the President, O’Reilly asked: “Do you ever say to yourself, ‘I can’t believe I’m here’?”

The President gave a typical Trump-esque ramble:

“The other day, I walked into the main entrance of the White House, and I said to myself, this is sort of amazing. Or you walk into Air Force One, it’s like a surreal experience in a certain way. But you have to get over it because there’s so much work to be done, whether it’s jobs or other nations that truly hate us; you have to get over it.”

I think he missed the chance to make a good point so I guess I’ll have to make it for him.

Much has been made of the fact that Donald Trump is our first President with neither previous political or military experience. Heck, most of our presidents had an abundance of both.

The fact that can even happen is a testament to the genius of our representative form of government.

In many countries, the head of state is actually required to be a member of Parliament, because the office is elected from their ranks.

In other countries, you have to be a member of a particular family or blood line to be King.

And in still others, the General of the victorious army becomes the de facto leader.

But in America, we can actually elect a Citizen-in-Chief. And that’s exactly what we’ve done this time. It’s amazing that it took us this long.

George Washington literally came out of retirement to become President. And he immediately returned to retirement at the end of his service. His concept of a perfect country was a party-less system run by a citizen administration.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams screwed that up. They started a string of professional politicians in the form of diplomats, governors, senators, and congressmen to become President. Even in their private life, more than half of our presidents have been lawyers. Very few were successful businessmen (both Bushes, Carter, and Truman). One was even an actor.

Maybe this is the start of a trend. Maybe it’s a good idea to let our lawmakers be professional lawmakers, but demand our Presidents be professional administrators. Maybe that’s the kind of division in power the Founding Fathers had in mind.

So if I had been the President, and O’Reilly had asked me “Can you believe it?”, my response would have been:

“Bill, it’s an honor to be here. I am humbled that the voters of this great country put their trust in me. But yeah, I can believe it. Because this is what is meant to be. It’s the very nature of a Republic. The citizens hiring a fellow citizen to go to Washington and make sure that the government is administered in a fair and equitable way and that laws are enforced and that their money is well-spent. That’s what this office is about; and that’s why I’m here.”

Maybe some day Donald will hire me as his speech writer.

CEO-in-chief

In the world of TV journalism, only Charles Krauthammer has the cred and the guts to interrupt Bill O’Reilly in mid-sentence.

But there he was on The O'Reilly Factor, cutting into Bill’s Prose. Bill graciously allowed it because, hey, he’s Charles Krauthammer.

Krauthammer — only barely a fan of Donald Trump — was making the point that The Donald, in his Inaugural Address, seemed to be making extraordinary promises.

Not just that we’re going to “drain the swamp” to “make America great again”; he also promised that the carnage in our cities stops right here, right now. It was reminiscent of his speech at the convention where he was going to end violence in America. Not diminish it -- end it.

Krauthammer reminded O’Reilly that Trump said that he was going eradicate Jihadism from the face of the Earth.

Bill tried to dismiss it as hyperbole. He said Trump has never been understated; he’s always been bombastic...

Charles wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “... But he’s never been President!!”

He’s right.

Donald Trump is the first American president to assume power without military or political experience. Most Presidents have both; Trump has neither.

That’s a pretty big deal. But it’s not a show-stopper.

Neither military experience (Ulysses S. Grant) nor political experience (James Buchanan) is a guarantee of a successful presidency. As a transformative figure, Donald Trump comes to us as a CEO-in-chief. Maybe that’s just what we need right now.

As a businessman, Trump is accustomed to making rash claims. That’s his negotiating style. Demand the stars, settle for the Moon.

Charles may be right to criticize him for his hyperbole. But we must remember that Trump got where he was because he’s a successful negotiator.

He doesn’t need to be a military genius or a political genius. He’ll surround himself with those people. Meanwhile, he’ll be with leaders in Congress and leaders of the Free World cutting deals to make America great again.

And you gotta hand it to a guy who names his son “Baron”. That’s a sign he is projecting his hope into the future.

The Transition of Power

Kings die. That’s just what they do.

Some die slow, peaceful, gradual deaths, eventually succumbing in their old age to their Creator.

Others die grand and glorious deaths in battle; sometimes as martyrs, sometimes as disgraced and defeated failures.

And others die suddenly and unexpectedly in the prime of their life, cut down by an assassin’s bullet or sword.

But they die. And die they must. How else can succession of power proceed? For thousands of years, there was only one way the next prince, political foe, or conquering hero could take charge: the reigning king must get out of the way.

All that changed on March 4, 1797. The people wanted a king. But George (and the Constitution) thought otherwise. Although he was unanimously elected to the office twice, he felt it was important that the office be shared, and that the transition must be smooth, orderly, and lawful.

So the surveyor-turned-farmer-turned-general-turned-president handed the seat of power to his Number Two, John and returned to his farm. In doing so, he set a precedent of peaceful transition that has endured for almost two and a half centuries.

There have been times that bad actors have sought to take advantage of the transition for their own good. In 1861, seven states used the transition period between President Buchannan and President Lincoln to secede and form the Confederate States of America. The American economy nosedived during the transition in 1933 as both departing President Hoover and President-elect Roosevelt sat powerless and watched the banking system implode.

And in 1981, 52 American hostages were forced to sit for hours at the edge of a Tehran airport runway until just after noon Washington time, denying President Jimmy Carter the satisfaction of having them released on his watch.

Although the transition is always lawful, that doesn’t mean it’s without drama. The presidential election of 1800 ended in an electoral tie, which wasn’t resolved until a scant 15 days before the planned inauguration.

And 200 years later, America held its collective breath for 35 days while Florida’s hanging chads determined the election results. It was ultimately settled when the Supreme Court ruled that the margin of 537 votes should give George W. Bush the victory.

In a few days, a lawyer-turned-organizer-turned-senator-turned-president will hand over the keys to the front door of the White House to a magnate-turned-billionaire-turned-politician. And this one should be an interesting one to watch. Eight years ago, Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Apparently, Americans didn’t like the way they were fundamentally transformed. Seeing the possibility of Hillary’s four-more-years of Barack, they chose Donald’s promise to “make America great again".

By design, Trump’s presidency will be the polar opposite of Obama’s. But the transition itself will be a model of democracy. After thousands of years of monarchal transitions, the concept of a democratic transition had its roots in the American Constitution and is now the accepted standard in the civilized world.

The Founding Fathers should be proud.

My thanks to the History Channel’s “Transition of Power” for the inspiration for today’s post.