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.

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.

Doris Has a Point, and Obama doesn't get it

When President Obama gets something right, I’ll be the first to admit it.

The problem is he’s got such a lousy track record for ever getting anything right.

Most politicians have a hard time answering a question directly, especially if the question doesn’t exactly fit in with the talking points that they have chosen to cover at the time.

But Obama set a new standard for exhibiting the symptoms of diarrhea-of-the-mouth with his answer to Doris’ question last week.

You can read the entire exchange here, and you can see the first part of it here.

At a recent event in Charlotte, North Carolina, a lady who identified herself as Doris asked a very simple question: Is it wise to add more taxes with the health care reforms that have recently been passed, since we are over-taxed as it is?

A simple question. It deserved a simple answer. If I had been asked that question, I would have no problem coming up with a concise response: No, it is not, and that is the primary reason I was against health care reform as it was passed by Congress.

The President never sees things as simple as that. Maintaining his campaign mode in spite of his recent victory, he rambled incoherently for 17 minutes and 2500 words.

He talked about cobra. He referred to people with insurance as being “lucky”. He said that lifetime limits are “fine print”. He made a “final point” at the four-minute mark and kept talking for 13 more.

He talked about federal health care systems already being out of control and suggested that they be replaced by — wait for it — another federal health care system.

He talked about the deficit — which Doris never asked about — and then cited programs that will by their very existence, blow the deficit out of the water.

He talked about the “quality” of medical tests and suggested that doctors send emails to each other, even thought the health care bill doesn’t address those issues and Doris never asked about them.

Somebody must have told him that an analogy of fixing the roof on a house resonates well, because he told some sort of awkward story that claimed if I fix the leaky roof in my house, the people who are shivering outside in the cold are somehow going to benefit.

He complained about President Bush’s war in Iraq — supported by virtually every Democrat in Congress. He complained about the Medicare prescription plan — passed by Democrats in Congress. He complained about Medicare Advantage — passed by Democrats in Congress.

He threw one of his biggest supporters — Warren Buffet — under the bus, calling him out by name and bragging that he was going to raise Mr. Buffet’s taxes on dividends and capital gains, not to raise more revenue, but because it was an issue of “fairness”.

Finally, he interrupted himself as he was explaining the Congressional Budget Office’s accounting gymnastics to make sure he was answering the question — which he never did.

If the President had been philosophically honest, he could have given Doris a very succinct answer: “Frankly, Doris, I don’t believe you are taxed enough already”. It could have been that simple.

If he had answered the question honestly, he would have to reveal the fundamental difference that he has with the Tea Party movement, which received its name by blending the name of the famous 1773 Boston tax revolution with the acronym “Taxed Enough Already”.

Unwittingly, perhaps, Doris expressed her sympathy with the primary purpose of the revolutionary movement.

I’m not sure what a “fair” amount would be for a federal government to involuntarily extract from its citizens to promote the common welfare. Five percent? Ten percent? Ninty percent (as suggested by some members in Congress)?

I just know that we passed that threshold a long time ago. Enough is enough.

Who to Blame

Yesterday, we elected our first African American to the Presidency of the United States.

Although he wasn’t my choice, I wish Barack Obama the best for the next four years. I’m not going to whine; we survived four years of Carter and eight years of Clinton. Let’s see what can be learned as we suffer through four years of Obama.

I had to wonder how we got into this mess. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around — on both sides of the aisle. John McCain obviously ran the most inept national campaign since Mike Dukakis rode around in that tank with that goofy helmet.

McCain certainly wasn’t my first choice. (Mike Huckabee dropped out several months ago; Fred Thompson never registered a blip on any charts.) Barack wasn’t my choice, either. A year ago, I lined up all the potential candidates on both sides in order of my preference. McCain was dead last on the Republican side and Obama was dead last on the Democratic side. Sometimes, you just can’t buy a break.

Back to how we got here...

It can all be traced back to the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991. Bear with me; this is the only place you’ll see this analysis. I’m going to share with you how an ill-qualified, unknown product of the Chicago Political Machine became the President of the United States.

The confirmation of Clarence Thomas was arguable one of the most contentious displays of dirty politics ever held in the United States Senate. George H. W. Bush was pressured on all sides to replace Thurgood Marshall with another African American. But the Democrats couldn’t bear the fact that a Republican would have the gall to nominate a conservative black guy to replace a liberal black guy. Of all the nerve!

So the televised mud-slinging started. Charges of pubic hairs on Coca-Cola cans and mentions of “Long Dong Silver” filled the air waves.

Since the Democrats had a 57-43 majority in the Senate, Bush needed to convert every Democratic senator he could to his side — while at the same time preserving his Republican base.

Bush and Thomas won with a vote to spare: 52 to 48. They did it by garnering the votes of eleven Democrats.

One of those votes cost a senator his job, and set into motion Obama’s trip to the White house.

Illinois Senator Alan Dixon was one of those turncoat Democratic senators who voted to confirm Judge Thomas. That single act so enraged Carol Moseley Braun — a former state legislator and the Cook County Recorder of Deeds — that she decided Dixon would have to pay. She decided to run against him in the Democratic senate primary in 1992

It was a bitterly-fought election. Moseley Braun had several things in her favor. She was black — always a plus when you’re a Democrat. She was a woman — how convenient. She was liberal — the trifecta of the left.

And she had the backing of the Chicago Political Machine. Icing on the cake.

Al Hofeld, a millionaire attorney, ran as a third candidate in the Democratic primary. He didn’t see Moseley Braun as a legitimate threat; he was only out to defeat Dixon. So he ran a series of vicious anti-Dixon ads to bring down the incumbent. The result was that he just split the vote. Moseley Braun barely won the three-way race and became the Democratic candidate.

She had no problem defeating a total unknown Republican, Richard Williamson, in the general election. Thus, she became the first African-American woman to win a seat in the Senate.

Once in Washington, Moseley Braun showed her true colors. Everywhere she went, she tried to out-liberal the liberal establishment. Her term was full of charges of corruption and was total embarrassment to the Democratic Party (and to politicians in general).

Not even the Illinois Democrats could salvage her miserable display. She narrowly lost her reelection in 1998 to Republican millionaire banker Peter Fitzgerald.

As much as Moseley Braun tried to out-liberal the liberals, Fitzgerald tried to out-maverick the mavericks. He was always at odds with the Republican establishment in Illinois. The home boys probably didn’t think he had much of a chance to defeat Moseley Braun in the first place and were frankly surprised by his victory. They did everything they could to make sure he stayed at odds with the party. And he obliged.

In 2001, his was the only dissent in the 99-1 vote to aid the airline industry after the September 11 attacks.

Seeing the writing on the wall, lacking support of his local party, and not needing the job, Fitzgerald decided not to seek reelection in 2004.

Moseley Braun, by this time, had enjoyed a nice stint as the us Ambassador to New Zealand. She was spending her Senate pension, running a private law firm in Chicago while working on a run for President. She said she wasn’t interested in being a Senator again. (Later, she wisely withdrew from her presidential bid and threw her support to Howard Dean. Maybe that’s why he screamed in the Iowa caucus.)

That left a huge vacuum for the position of junior senator from Illinois. Barack Obama was biding his time in the Illinois State Senate, having been groomed by the Chicago Political Machine. He was now ready to strike.

The primary race involved 15 different candidates. Obama hired political strategist David Axelrod, who launched an advertising campaign featuring former Chicago mayor Harold Washington and the daughter of the late Illinois Senator Paul Simon. The voters rewarded the campaign with 52% of the primary vote. The only thing that stood between Obama and the us Senate was the Illinois Republican Party. They proved to be as effective as a wet paper napkin.

In a crowded Republican field, one man was left standing after the torturous primary. Millionaire Jack Ryan barely garnered more votes than Jim Oberweis (36% to 23%) for the privilege of challenging Obama. Other than being rich and beautiful, Ryan’s primary claim to fame was being the ex-husband of former Miss Illinois and Star Trek:Voyager actress, Jeri (“Seven of Nine”) Ryan.

Jack and Jeri had split up several years prior. In order to protect their son, they both agreed to have their divorce records sealed. The judge obliged and nobody cared. At least, nobody cared until Jack became the only roadblock between the aforementioned Obama and the Chicago Political Machine’s quest to fill the us Senate vacancy.

The Chicago Political Machine contacted the Los Angeles Political Machine and finally found a judge that would over-rule the wishes of the parents and the best interest of the child and open the court records. Allegations of public sex tumbled forth, the Illinois Republican leadership withdrew their support, and Jack Ryan, seeing the damage done, withdrew from the race in June, 2004.

Meanwhile, what was Obama doing? He was busy writing a speech that would change the history of America. It’s very rare that a sitting state legislator would give a keynote address at a major political convention. But never underestimate the power of the Chicago Political Machine.

The Democratic Party was set to nominate John Kerry in Boston. The Chicago Machinery — aligned with the Kennedy machinery — was eager to humiliate their arch-rivals, the Clintons, while on Kennedy’s home court.

Obama — admittedly a great orator — spoke of change to the convention. Bush was bad, socialism is good, widows and orphans are starving, the Iraq war was a mistake, the Democrats have a better plan. He conveniently belied his own liberal agenda as he proclaimed, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.”

The audience went wild. The news pundits drooled and crowned him the successor to Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson.

And two presidential hopefuls in the audience — Hillary Clinton and John Edwards — put on their poker faces and gamely smiled. Behind those smiles, their jaws were on the floor as they could only mutter to themselves, “Oh ... my ... gawd!”

Meanwhile, back in Illinois, the Republican Machinery — who by now couldn’t get a dogcatcher elected in Peoria — were desperately trying to fill the gap left by Ryan’s fall from grace. Remarkably, not one Republican in the entire state was deemed worthy. Not one candidate — not even Republican primary runner-up Jim Oberweis — was either willing or able to be a worthy opponent to the newly-anointed Kennedy-esque black messiah.

When their last chance of a Great White Hope — Da Bears’ Coach Mike Ditka — declined to run, the Republicans sunk to a new low in stupidity.

In one of the most amazing examples of futile desperation in modern political history, the Illinois Republicans reached all the way to the state of Maryland to persuade Reagan-sidekick-turned-talk-show-host Alan Keyes to carpet-bag his way to the ticket. Keyes, already coming off several failed attempts to be a Maryland senator, obliged. He rented an apartment and a post office box in Chicago and said “Where do I sign up?”

He didn’t need to sign up. Three months later, the Illinois voters saw through the transparent sham and sent Obama to Washington with 70% of the vote — a mandate by any standard.

Keyes went back to Maryland to prepare for his 2008 presidential run. Obama went to neighboring Washington dc to prepare for his 2008 presidential run.

His run for the presidency culminated last night.

It’s been said that we walk through life backwards — only glimpsing at the present, ignorant of the future, while staring at the past.

In this case, we stare at the bold nomination of a Supreme Court justice, the fateful vote of a senator from Illinois, and the rage that ensued — and we now realize that it set into motion the election of a President, and the future of our nation.