I don't get MAD

Today, I saw a Professor Heldman of Occidental College opine that we are “behaving like Persians don’t understand mutually assured destruction, when clearly they do.”  Here’s why that is so dangerous.

Up until now, the political dialogue has been between those who favor going to war against Iran now, and those who say, “wait a few more days to see if there is a negotiated solution.” It is predictable that some will say, “let’s wait a couple more weeks.” I’ve been in the few-more-days camp, and even if Secretary of State Kerry is in the couple-more-weeks camp, I wouldn’t want that communicated to the other side just yet.

Basically, this puts me out of step with my peacenik friends so let me say straight away: War is hell and it should be avoided if at all possible. Every effort should be put into negotiating a solution to the problem of Iran, and I am more optimistic than my right-wing friends. But if they are correct, then this may be one of those terrible instances when war cannot be avoided. We’ll know soon enough.

It doesn’t help that a man who has been so wrong, so often, on such important questions seems to agree with me. Of course, I am referring to John Bolton, author of an article that appeared in the New York Times and entitled, “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran.” Though I detest everything about the man, (except his moustache) I am okay with the bottom line, which is No Nukes for Ayatollahs, and the idea that if necessary we can back it up with our own Air Force.

As usual, Josh Bolton, goes way beyond what the evidence will support. He suggests that Arabs would welcome a strike in Iran, and that he thinks that we could bring down the Iranian regime. Well, maybe he should be assigned to cleaning up the candy and flowers that greeted American liberators in Iraq. Thanks to American gullibility regarding Bolton's last prediction of being greeted as liberators, we are now giving air support to a Iraqi counter-insurgency in Tikret to oust Islamic State, in which effort we find ourselves allied with the Iranians.

I don’t know if Arabs would welcome an America strike in Iran or not, but, frankly, I don’t give a damn. If they have a better plan for achieving a “No Nukes for Ayatollahs” solution, I am open to it. I have been listening, and haven’t heard anything, but, as I said, I am willing to wait till the end of the month.

But along comes Professor Heldman, and she says that we don’t have to insist on No Nukes for Ayatollahs, because we can manage the risk of a nuclear Iran. She suggests one means of control is the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, but presumably she is open to other strategies. But I am not. And here are two reasons why.

First, if Iran acquires a nuclear breakout capability, other nations in the area are going to insist on the same. Reliance on mutually assured destruction is complicated and involves a series of very careful calibrations. With two parties, the complexity is great, but each new party raises the complexity exponentially. Ayatollahs-with-nukes is unacceptably bad. A nuclear arms race in the Middle East, with Israel and Iran already having nuclear capabilities, is far worse.

Second, assured destruction sounds bad to me, but I confess I have no way of knowing the degree to which that is a threat for Ayatollahs. I respect religious folk, but I don’t understand the Islamic religion, especially in its eschatological aspects.

Professor Heldman may have other strategies for managing the proliferation risk and the Ayatollahs with a finger on the nuclear button, but the one she came out of the gate with was mutual assured destruction. If the professor has another idea, let’s have it, because that dog won't hunt.

Even someone as consistently wrong as Josh Bolton got that one right. But what bothered me more about Professor Heldman’s suggestion is that it is the camel’s nose in the tent. The camel in this metaphor is the idea that a nuclear Iran can be managed. It is an attractive proposition to peaceniks like me, who believe that war is hell, which should be avoided if at all possible. But that doesn’t make it true.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Natural born questions

Every-word of the Constitution is important. Let’s take a look at three that have been in the news today: “natural-born Citizen.” First of all, it is clear that there are two classes of citizens in the vision of the framers, namely “natural born citizen,” and “others.” Clearly, naturalized citizens are in the “other” class and therefore not eligible to be President of the United States. 

Are there citizens who are neither naturalized nor natural born? Such a citizen would not be eligible to be President, according to the express terms of the Constitution.

Of course, there are those who are citizens but not eligible because of age or residency requirements –- thirty-five and 14 years respectively. But are there people other than naturalized citizens who are ineligible for the presidency because of the nature of their citizenship? And might Ted Cruz be one of them?

First, some background: The Constitution says that a qualification for being President is being a “natural born Citizen.” However, the Constitution doesn’t define “natural born Citizen.” The Third Congress enacted The Naturalization Act of 1790, which provided "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States." Presumably, this is the law that Ted Cruz referred to when he said the matter has been settled law for over two hundred years.

The statute clearly recognized a distinction between non-naturalized, foreign born citizens of the US, and “natural born Citizens.” The 1790 Act provided automatic citizenship to the minor children of persons duly naturalized, and according to the language of the statute, such individuals, providing they are residents, become “citizens of the United States” automatically. In the very next sentence, act grants to the children born to citizens overseas the status of “natural born citizens.” The proximity of the two clauses strongly supports the conclusion that the statute creates two different classes of citizens: (1) Natural born citizens (and those granted that status) and (2) others, including naturalized as well as those who are minors acquiring citizenship automatically as children of naturalized citizens. Those in the first class are eligible to be President: those in the second class are not. And the facts of the case support the conclusion that Ted Cruz is in that former class: the class of automatic citizens who receive the additional status of the “natural born citizens” who are eligible to be President. As Ted himself might say, “Case closed, eh?”

But here’s the funny part. That statute was superseded by the naturalization Act of 1795, which provided, “the children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits of jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States,” provided that the father of such a child had been a resident of the United States. Did you catch that? The superseding statute removed the words, “natural born” from the description of children born to citizens abroad. These children are "birthright citizens" to be sure. 

Far be it from me to suggest that Ted Cruz is not a birthright citizen. But the statute makes it clear that not all birthright citizens are natural born Citizens, eligible to serve as President. 

Congress is presumed to have intended to make a distinction between the language of the 1790 statute, and the language with which it superseded that law.  And the courts are tasked with giving effect to the Congressional intent. In fact, there are lots of people who say that the courts should stick to the literal letter of statutes and these people were out in force recently when King v Burwell was being argued.

What will they say now? 

I hope that as a minimum, any defense they have to what looks to me like a slam-dunk will at least have the decency to include an apology for the last 6 years of birtherism. But don't count on it.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Give 'em hell, Barry! Part III

Back in August of 2008, I argued that President Obama should recall the election of 1948, and run against a “do-nothing, good for nothing” Congress in his campaign for re-election.  See, here and here.

Once again, I am urging the President to emulate the predecessor known for plain-speaking.

First, an example of how President Truman earned that reputation.

Truman didn’t much care for a review of his daughter’s singing performance that appeared in the Washington Post on December 6, 1950. The music critic Paul Hume described Miss Truman as “extremely attractive,” but went on to state “Miss Truman cannot sing very well.”

The president jotted off a note to Mr. Hume: 

“Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”

All of this comes to mind because the President who has made a career of being “the least aggrieved black man in America,” has just had to endure a mean-spirited attack from the one of whom Joe Biden once said, “The only three things he mentions in a sentence—a noun and a verb and 9/11.” 

Republicans are not exactly distancing themselves from Rudy Guiliani.

The White House responded to Guiliani’s despicable comments. Press Secretary Josh Earnest dealt out the most genteel smack-down ever uttered without using the words “Bless his heart.” Said he:

"It's sad to see when somebody who has attained a certain level of public stature -- and even admiration -- tarnishes that legacy so thoroughly. The truth is, I don't take any joy or vindication or satisfaction from that.

"I think really the only thing that I feel, is I feel sorry for Rudy Giuliani today." 

Now, I have been saying that Guiliani was a complete fraud since May of 2007, as you can see here.  A couple of months later, Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, joined me in calling “Bullshit!” on Guiliani’s self-promoting narrative. 

Nowadays, Wayne Barrett is with the NY Daily News, and he is obviously still disgusted by Rudy Guiliani, this time attacking Rudy’s pathological family relations.

Why can’t the President do the same? He might be accused of picking the low-hanging fruit, but considering the pass that Guiliani has enjoyed, it’s time someone mentioned some of the things that Barrett brought up. They say it is a rule of politics that you don’t want to punch down, but when you are at the top of the heap, what else is there to do?

It will be hard to top Truman’s directness. Still, the President is liberated from having to run for office again and someone has to mention the fact that when Guiliani attacked the President’s upbringing he crossed into forbidden territory. To get the ball rolling, let me suggest an opening gambit:

“Mr. Guiliani has attacked me, which is part of his shtick. That’s fine, because when I signed up for a lifetime of public service to the country I love, I knew full well that there would be guttersnipes along the way that would put hatred of me over their professed love of country. But I didn’t sign up for an attack on my mama. That’s not acceptable coming from a lying son-of-a-bitch like the worthless Guiliani.”

Fill in the rest, Mr. President…

“   and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Making history with Iran

The U.S. and Iran may be on the verge of making a historic deal on nukes. The possible compromise was revealed ahead of the next negotiating round on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that starts Friday. Will it be historically good, or historically bad?

First, let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. Reagan famously said of the Soviet empire that one must, “Trust but verify.” It’s a Russian proverb, Доверяй, но проверяй (doveryai, no proveryai) and the Gipper used it to great effect in negotiating arms reductions with Gorbachev, or so they say.

Some people also say that we are in a “Trust but verify” situation with Iran. This is completely false. Trust must play no part in our dealings with Iran. They absolutely cannot be trusted to comply with any treaty obligations. The only thing they can be trusted to be is true to their nature. You can trust that they are an atavistic, apocalyptic, totalitarian theocracy, determined to destroy Israel, and that they have financed terror operations against Jewish targets in Argentina, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere.

As for their nuclear ambitions, trust that the Iranians will pursue weapons before, during and after these negotiations. The question on the table is whether or not sufficient obstacles can be placed in the way of an Iranian bomb. And by sufficient, I mean, sufficient to be certain that they won’t get a bomb that can be used in any way, including as a threat, or to arm a proxy.

The plan being floated about is that Iran will keep 10,000 centrifuges. That’s a lot – enough to build a bomb. However, the idea is that Iran will have to export all of its production, and there will be an inspection and regulation regime to regulate the inputs and outputs to prevent Iran from getting the capacity to build a bomb. Finally, the centrifuges will be modified to limit how much nuclear fuel produced. I haven’t heard that the grade of the uranium produced is subject to controls under the proposed agreement, but my gut tells me that it is.

This might be a good outcome but only if Iranian compliance can be verified. Can the U.N. International Atomic Agency be trusted with the responsibility of verifying Iranian compliance, as contemplated in the compromise? I trust the Iranians to try to skirt the regulations, avoid the inspections, and get away with breaching the agreement. And then what?

War is the obvious option. The problem is that it takes time it takes to recognize a breach of the agreement. And then it takes more time to act on that knowledge, even in the case of unilateral military action under the command of the Commander-in-chief. What if, in that time, Iran gets a nuke? Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, Iran might be as little as one month and as much as a year from having a nuclear bomb under the terms of the compromise.

The work-around for this little problem is that, at least in theory, the U.S can act upon less than certain knowledge. Maybe there is no will to go to war, but in the past, the U.S. has used sanctions to coerce Iran to behave better. The main sanction that the U.S. can impose is in the area of banking. By freezing bank accounts, the U.S. can more or less freeze the Iranian economy. As we shall see, this is a mixed blessing.

Before we dismiss the rumored agreement out of hand, we need also to see what else is rolled into it. Will Iran commit to no longer funding Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the PLO (or, rather, it’s successor, the PA) and other terrorists around the world? What about a promise to stop its mischief in Iraq? All of this would be good, but there’s a rub.

How would we enforce these collateral deals? Obviously, war is not an option because if it were, we would have gone to war a long time ago. Recall that the proposed deal depends upon Iran exporting all of its nuclear fuel. If, by a series of sanctions, we can prevent Iran from participating in international trade, that leaves them with no money, no food, and an excess of nuclear fuel. That’s not good. In other words, the problem is that the nuclear deal may reduce our leverage in non-nuclear arenas.

The devil is in the details. How certain can we be that we will be able to detect Iranian cheating when it occurs? How much time will we have to react once we detect evidence that Iran is cheating? What will be our options, once we confirm cheating? Without these details we won’t know if this is a historically good deal or the opposite.

We can be certain that this deal is not good enough for the Israelis, if for no other reason than that the current PM will go to any lengths to embarrass our President, especially if he thinks it will advance his chances of re-election. Bibi giving his hechsher to a deal negotiated by President Obama is not in the cards. I am concerned that this is the attitude of Republicans, especially the fundamentalist wing of the party. What a shame it would be if a good deal is scrapped for this reason. As has been said, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

There’s talk that the deal is not likely to be good enough for France. And I must confess that I was disappointed when I heard the number 10,000 both because it is a large number, and because it does not reflect any movement by the Iranians. I am a big supporter of Obama, but I need to be persuaded that this is both a good deal, and the best deal we could get. I guess, I trust Obama, but I want to verify.

In the last analysis, any deal with Iran must include the condition that a breach means a “shock and awe” style attack on the mullahs. And that has to be the outcome if no deal is reached, too. And that’s why I am not in favor of provisional sanctions.

Stay tuned.

Time for an old joke to explain what’s going on.

First, the joke:

“Zeyde! Zayde! Babe Ruth just hit his 6o home runs.”
“Nu? Is this good or bad for the Jews?

So, let’s take a look at where we are. Things are very nasty between the Democrats, who control the White House, and the Republicans, who control the Congress. As with any grievance, the decisive factor will be this: Who frames the narrative? Each side has a tale to tell in Washington, D.C. Call it “A City of Two Tales.” As usual, each grievant tells a tale in which he plays the role of victim in the opening salvo.

Republicans claim that the President started it all when he took unilateral actions regarding immigration. It’s hard to take this seriously, but at the time, Boehner talked about “poisoning the well,” or “playing with matches.”

They also claim that the President threw down a gauntlet at the State of the Union address when he said that he would veto any bill that would result in a break-down of negotiations with Iran, such as the conditional sanctions bill in the Senate now. These Republicans didn’t pay attention to the fact that the President also said that if negotiations break down, we will have to go to war.  

Some Democrats, including Jews join these Republicans, because they are disappointed with the progress of negotiations with Iran. Some find the demands of Israel to be unrealistic. Iran will not dismantle anything that can be used for a nuclear weapon program, especially since, as signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to develop a civilian nuclear program.

In the Democratic narrative, the story starts with Boehner’s invitation to Bibi and the attendant breach of protocol. Not to mention law: The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 30 January 1799, currently codified at 18 U.S.C. § 953) is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. It was passed in 1799 and last amended in 1994. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years. Some say that Boehner does not have the authority to invite any foreign leader to Congress and that only the POTUS or his designated official can.

The Democratic view is that Mr. Obama is the duly elected mouth-piece for foreign policy, especially if the message is one everybody absolutely agrees upon. Everybody absolutely agrees on this message: The alliance between the United States and Israel is ironclad, inviolable, and sacrosanct. Everyone also agrees that Iran absolutely cannot be permitted to become a nuclear military power.

We should be saying these things with a united voice. Choose your patter: “We are not a red country or a blue country,” or “Politics stops at the water’s edge.” Some Republicans are attracted to this message just out of respect for the office of President. Some Democrats, inclined to take Bibi’s side, are pulled back onto the reservation just out of loyalty to the occupant of the office of the President. So battle lines in this dispute are not completely congruent with party lines.

Nu? Is this good or bad for the Jews?

Funny you should ask. As it turns out, some Jews are Republicans, and they think the President can’t be trusted with negotiating an existential threat. They can say, with some validity, that they are standing with the duly elected PM of Israel, so who can complain? 

President Obama's supporters say, we are willing to threaten war against Iran if they don’t figure out a way to live without a nuclear bomb, but we draw the line at Bibi interjecting himself in partisan domestic politics. And further, international norms of behavior look upon interfering with another country's election. Inded, Obama used this as justification for announcing that he would not meet with Bibi when he was in Washington.

Should Bibi be taking a side in the debate that we are having in the U.S. between two political parties on the issue of how to conduct foreign policy?

Bibi says, “It’s my job. I will go anywhere, anytime I feel I can influence the debate in favor of not making a deal with Iran, unless it is an acceptable deal to Israel. After all, the bomb is intended for us!” I’ll give him that. But he doesn’t have to give the President a gratuitous dose of disrespect. Message to Bibi: Put your personal animosity for our President aside. There are some things that are more important than you getting re-elected. And, by the way, being rude to the POTUS might not help your chances of getting re-elected anyway. Right now, you're no better than a coin-toss.

The real debate should be about what will be most effective in preventing Iran from getting nukes. The President is entrusted with foreign policy, and, so far so good. Are we okay with Syria not having chemical weapons? Thank you, Mr. President. But, remember: that outcome required cooperation from Iran.

Basically, the way I see it is we need an adult to negotiate with Iran, and the Congressional foreign policy caucus is not that adult. They have proved this with the impudent, childish way Bibi’s visit came about.

The difference in the approach is that one side wants to negotiate until failure is clearly the fault of the Iranians, and then go to war. Good faith requires that the negotiation be conducted with the belief that it is possible and reasonable to come to a peaceful solution. But realism requires that you acknowledge that “the biggest long-shot Louie at Hialeah wouldn’t put a fin on the fate” of a nuke deal with Iran.

I heard an AIPAC guy say that “Obama believes that he should appeal to the Iranian’s better nature.” That’s not what Obama believes at all. If war comes, America will want the right to say, “We tried diplomacy.” That’s important, because we will need allies if we go to war with Iran, and, they will need to hear that. And, there’s no way a war plan can get the requisite support from the American people, if they don’t hear that every alternative was exhausted first.

Team Boeher, as well as Bibi, say, “enough already with the diplomacy,already” and “It’s time for the U.S, to be strong.” They should recall that for America to flex military muscles she must have the support of a war-weary public, and this is so much harder to do because the previous President was a little too promiscuous with his use of force. The result is great instability in the mid-East, and that can’t be good for the Jews.

Even if the U.S. did resolve to torpedo the negotiations and use force, consider for a moment some of the problems that would involve. You’ve got the rise of ISIL, which directly challenges the Jordanian regime, the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah in Lebanon, instability is Afghanistan, regime change in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and Hamas in the Gaza. It’s hard to see how military action could be confined to stopping Iranian centrifuges. 

Maybe Republicans are right to believe that war is inevitable and to say, “If not now, when? When will Iran be more vulnerable?” I trust the President to arrive at good answers to these questions, and I don’t trust the Congress, especially in the run-up to the 2016 silly season.

Two out of three Jews voted for the President, most of them twice. Jews are a core constituency of his party. Significantly, the pro-Israel Evangelicals are a core constituency of the Republican Party. The two constituencies are at odds with each other in this matter, even though each sees itself as staunchly pro-Israel.I blame Boehner and Bibi for aggravating the rift and, no, it's not good for the Jews.

AIPAC and Likud side with the CUFI Republicans. J Street and most Jews, especially liberal ones, side with the President and the constitution. In a rather unpleasant moment, left-leaning MS-NBC host Ed Shultz called Netanyahu a “war-monger,” a term that is usually reserved for American neo-cons. It made me decidedly uncomfortable and I wondered if what I was feeling was a visceral reflex to come to the defense of a fellow Jew being attacked by a gentile. Now, to be sure, Ed Shultz is no anti-Semite. But was he aware of how the choice of words sounded like age-old anti-Semitism? (And how did the Rothschilds make their money?)

But then I reminded myself that Netanyahu is not the State of Israel. In fact, he might not even be the PM of Israel in 6 weeks. Still, whoever is responsible for lefties publicly rebuking the PM has not served Israel well. Some of the blame goes to Bibi himself, but Boehner is clearly responsible. It is understandable that when the Speaker of the House, and Bibi conspire to disrespect the President, someone might just conclude that, to borrow a phrase, there will be a price to be paid. Already, we have seen very sharp criticism from the White House directed at the Israeli ambassador, accusing him of putting Bibi's interests ahead of Israel's.

Boehner wanted to appeal to his base, especially the growing number of pro-Israel evangelicals, who share Boehner’s view on social issues like gay marriage and abortion. Christians United For Israel (CUFI) is an organization emblematic of this constituency. Boehner figured that he could dis the prez, boost his pro-Israel bona fides, and side with Israel in a spat between Israel and the United States. What could go wrong?

What went wrong is that Jews and most Americans don’t want to see our President dissed, don’t appreciate Boehner playing nuclear roulette to help Republicans polish their anti-Obama cred, and don’t particularly like to see a spat between Israel and the U.S. especially one that is aired in public.

So, nu? Is that good or bad for the Jews?

It’s not good. But it’s what will happen inevitably if you put CUFI  ahead of Jews. Eventually, their hatred of the President will trump their love of Israel. Their love of Israel exceeds their love of Jews, and that's why I can't trust it. And that’s why I condemn Boehner and Bibi. They put the first crack in the non-partisan wall of American support for Israel, by playing politics with the special relationship. And it didn’t work.

The timing is right for Obama to make a bold move in the Middle East if he wants this to be part of his legacy. Actually, he has no choice in the matter: He must make a bold move. The situation in the mid-East demands it. He knows that an atavistic, Iranian apocalyptic theocracy with hegemony over so much of the world’s oil reserves, extraterrestial ambitions, and a nuclear bomb just won’t fly. 

But what else can be rolled into the deal? Obviously, the Iranians want relief from sanctions, but what else? U.S. to step up against ISIS? Assad to be gone in Syria? Progress in Israel-Palestinian conflict?

What even constitutes progress? 

The U.S. and Israel are both officially committed to a two-state solution, but how committed are they? And can Obama ever really believe that he can get from here to there in two years or should he simply accept that it is hopeless. Ought he to be guided by the words of Pirke Avot: “Yours is not to finish the work, but neither are you free to walk away from it.” For now, I am gratified by the fact that he is not pressuring the Israelis to make a bad deal with Palestinians.

At present, the important thing to do is to repair the Israeli-American relationship. That has to start with Bibi figuring out a way to back out of his date with Congress. He may also have to recall Ambassador Ron Dermer, who is credited with having the horrible idea of having Bibi go over the head of the President to speak to Congress.

If not, I fear that the U.S. will declare Dermer persona non grata. Would this be good or bad for the Jews? It might seem good to you especially if you are the kind who believes that Republicans are better for the State of Israel than Democrats, and that Republicans can frame this as the President snubbing our most important ally. Further, you must believe that expelling the ambassador will bolster Bibi’s election prospects, and that Bibi is good for Israel. I am doubtful of each of these propositions. On this last point -- is Bibi good for Israel? -- a majority of Israelis seem to think not, but we will know for sure on St. Patrick’s day, when Israeli elections are scheduled. 

What seems incontrovertible is that the relationship between Israel and the U.S., and especially between Bibi and Obama, is at a low point. I condemn Boehner for aggravating the situation, especially since it was not merely a miscalculation. It was a conscious decision to insult the President. 

The most generous thing I can say about Bibi is that he was sucked into this, though obviously, he was not dragged kicking and screaming. If AIPAC takes up with Boehner and Bibi, they are siding with the ones who thought that it was okay to play politics with the special relationship. It's not even nearly okay.

And they owe us an apology.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Twenty years ago, there was a massacre of Jews in Argentina.

Twenty years ago, there was a massacre of Jews in Argentina.

A bombing of Argentina's largest Jewish center killed 85 people and injured more than 200. The identity of the terrorists has not been established. Recently, however, there have been allegations that the government of President Kirchner of Argentina may have reached a deal with the Iranian sponsors of this attack.

Testimony was expected in the Argentine Congress on January 18th, regarding the claim that President Kirchner had secretly reached a deal with Iran to shield officials wanted in connection with the biggest terrorist attack in the country's history. The testimony never came because the witness, a prosecutor named Alberto Misman, himself a Jew, was found dead in his bathroom with a .22 pistol by his side just hours before he was to testify.

At first, the President’s response was to suggest it was a suicide. Lately, it is acknowledged that Misman was murdered. This is awkward because the President is the obvious answer to the question, “who benefits?” Kirchner has tried to suggest that the Iranians did it. The issue threatens to disrupt the remainder of the President’s term as well the subsequent future of Argentina.

Here's what Big Mitch knows:86 Jews were killed, and hundreds were injured. Their lives were snuffed out because they were Jews. And it was to further someone’s political agenda. Ad mosai?*

If either President Kirchner or her accuser is telling the truth, Iran is right in the middle of it. So, if Bibi goes a little meshugah about the Iranians getting a bomb, forgive him.

He really doesn’t want to alienate the President of the United States, or the 2/3 of American Jews who voted for him. Nor did he think America’s special relationship with Israel should be a matter of partisan politics. Besides, Bibi is smart and one thing he has to figure is that Obama is going to be president for 2 more years. Sure, it’s a little early to call the 2016 election, but if you have to place your bets today, Hillary Clinton is the early favorite. Do you think Bibi wants to be a tool of a permanent minority party in the U.S.? Forgive him already. What do you always say? “Forgive he because he knows not what he is doing?”

Iran is the threat we need to focus on. And in case of Iran, let’s not forget what the President said in the State of the Union Address. If negotiations break down, we are going to war. So, Bibi, relax. America’s got your six. Always will. Maybe you’re working too hard. Cancel some speaking engagements.

"...and tell 'em Big Mitch sent ya!"

The Iranian Nuclear Threat: What to do

It has been an interesting week for U.S. Israel relations. As is well known, both the U.S. and Israel are extremely concerned about the prospect of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. The issue is how to stop the Iranians from pursuing a nuclear bomb, and on this issue, the White House and the Republican-controlled Senate don’t see eye-to-eye. 

In his State of the Union address, President Obama said: 

"New sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails — alienating America from its allies and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn’t make sense. That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress.”

Indeed, the Senate is not of one mind, as differing bills work their way through the legislative process. Here  is a good review of the bidding.

Moreover, Israel does not adhere to only one view of the matter. Prime Minister Netanyahu favors a bill that would impose conditional sanctions on Iran, but at a press conference with European Union foreign policy chief  Federica Mogherini, Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that 

“In Israel, one of the top intelligence –- one of the top intelligence personnel within the Israeli intelligence field –- I won’t name names, but this person was asked directly by a congressional delegation that visited there over the weekend what the effect of sanctions would be. And this person answered that it would be like throwing a grenade into the process”

Perhaps LIndsey Graham heard this Mossad official, because on Meet the Press, Graham said that he would be willing to forego a provisional sanctions bill if the President would submit any agreement with the Iranians to the Senate for ratification. 

This is an idea that, to borrow a phrase from Wolfgang Pauli, is "not even wrong." Any resolution of the problem will require many interim agreements, and submitting each one to the Senate would make progress impossible. This is especially true when one considers that the partisans in the Senate would never aprove of anything that the President negotiated, because they are dedicated to making sure that he fails at everything, regardless of the cost to the country.

To round out this catalogue of difficulties, Speaker of the House John Boehner has invited the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to address Congress in early March. In a rude breach of protocol the Speaker did not even notify the White House. It has been theorized that this is pay-back for the President acting unilaterally on immigration. If so, it is beyond ironic that the acolytes of Ronald Reagan forget his admonition that “Politics ends at the water’s edge.” (1)

If you want to see the extreme of using Iran to bash the President in a disgusting appeal to the religious right, I give you Ted Cruz. 

Bibi will be standing for early elections on March 17, and he will be speaking to Congress in early March. There is a longstanding norm of international politics that disapproves of any action that smacks of involving one country in the internal politics of another. Although Bibi is arguably guilty of breaching this norm in November of 2012, the White House referred to it in explaining why neither the President nor John Kerry would be meeting with him in advance of the Israeli election.

So, now might be a good time to re-read what I wrote in February of last year, "AIPAC reconsidered."

Of course, today it is difficult to be as sanguine as I was about the Arab Spring when I wrote that. However, I still think that things are a lot better now than they were six years ago. ISIL is a source of great concern but I have it on reliable information that no less an expert than  General Anthony Zinni.opines that the U.S. could defeat this rag-tag non-professional gang of 30,000 fighters in about 2 weeks, if we could only summons the political will to do so. Problem is we can't and therefore, Syria remains an impossible situation, perhaps, because people did not heed the advice I gave here.  

So, there are two questions:

First, where is AIPAC going to come out on the sanctions bill? Will they see the wisdom of the President’s approach, as they did last go-round, or will they defer to Bibi Netanyahu, thereby bolstering him in his election campaign?

Second, what does Big Mitch think we should do?

Regarding the first we can only wait and see. 

As to the second question, I think it is obvious that the U.S. needs to speak with one voice, and that it should be the voice of a grown-up. Sadly, the only one who seems to fit that description is the President of the United States. 

Wish him luck, and, 

“… tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

(1)  It was actually Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg who first uttered these words in 1947. Most of the Gipper's best lines were written by someone else. 

Je suis Juif.

While watching the famous liberal media on TV, I saw Ron Allen, a reporter in Paris, talking about the number of Jews leaving France because of the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in general, and in France in particular. The problem is real and substantial. Then, he used an expression that jangled my ears.  He said that more and more Jews are “going back to Israel.” 

The choice of words rankled because the Jews of France are generally not part of an immigrant community. Jews have lived in the south of France since at least the first century, brought by the Romans as slaves after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Indeed, the preeminent commentator on the Jewish Bible and the Oral Law, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known generally as Rashi, was born in Troyes, France in the year 1040.

Jews prospered after the French Revolution, which gave them truly equal citizenship for the first time anywhere in Europe. Their emancipation in 1791 was the signal for ghettos to crumble all over the Continent. This is what French Prime Minister  Manuel Valls referred to when he said, “To understand what the idea of the republic is about, you have to understand the central role played by the emancipation of the Jews,” and, “if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.”

The endless list of famous French Jews includes two prime ministers, a Secretary of State, and literary giants such as Marcel Proust. Marc Chagall, “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century,” made his home in Paris, having emigrated there as a young man before the first World War.

At least a quarter of the 330,000 Jews in pre-war France were murdered by the Nazi and their sympathizers. After the war, many Jews immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. These Jews were joined in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by large numbers of Jews from France's predominantly Muslim North African colonies as part of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. The Jewish community is strong in France, and Jews are integrated into all levels of society. Negative attitudes towards Jews in France are less common than in other European countries. One of the victims in the Charlie Habdo was a much-beloved Jewish cartoonist.

And then, it occurred to me. Jews in France are, literally, exiles from the Holy Land, as am I. The Hebrew word for exile is galus. Nearly 2,000 years ago the Jewish nation was driven out of its homeland and sent off into a tear-soaked galus that lasts to this very day. We wait and yearn for the day when our galus and suffering will come to an end, when we will be returned to the Holy Land, with the coming of our redeemer, the Moshiach (Messiah) may it be speedily and in our times.

The race that is too tough to understand.

Here is the election.princeton.edu final predictions for Senate Races, presented on a handy-dandy scorecard.

And here are the predictions for Governor's races.

Major news media are ignoring an exciting race in Alaska. Is it is too hard to cover because of the time zones and the environment? Or is it too hard to explain? To make the matter worse, people like Sam Wang, of election.princeton.edu, don’t understand the situation in Alaska; and therefore, their math doesn’t add up.

Here’s what you need to know.

In both the gubernatorial and the senate races, the favored candidate is given a 62% chance of a win because he is ahead by one percentage point (plus or minus 3 or more percentage points.) The surprising prediction is that in the Senate, Dan Sullivan (the Republican) is favored, while in the Governor’s race, the Republican is considered more likely to lose.

For that to happen a LOT of Alaskans would have to split their votes, choosing a Republican senator, and a Governor who ran as an Independent and then formed a fusion ticket with the Democratic nominee, Byron Mallot, a leader the Native Rights movement. Given that former AG, Dan Sullivan is to the Native Rights movement what the bus driver who kicked Rosa Parks off the bus is to the Civil Rights Movement, it’s difficult to imagine anyone who would vote for Native Rights Activist Byron Mallot and Former Attorney General Sullivan, prosecutor of Katy John So much the more so in light of the endorsement given to Begich by the Alaska Federation of Natives.

It follows, that at least one of Sam Wang’s two Alaska predictions is wrong. We don’t know which, so the odds that it could be either is 50-50. Therefore, both races are precisely toss-ups. This sounds like some arithmatic sleight of hand, but it is no different from the process by which Dr. Wang averages polls in a particular race. The novelty is that I am averaging a senate race with a governor’s race: I reject the assumption that the two variables are independent. Do the math,  (But note that Dr. Wang is ever so slightly more sure of Sullivan than he is of Walker/Mallot.)

However, and here’s where subjective feeling enters in, I say it is the prediction that Sullivan will beat Begich that is incorrect. I am betting on Mark Begich and I say, it’s easy money. He is an Alaskan, son of an Alaskan congressman, who done good, and we don't set the bar too high up here. (Just google Sarah Palin, or Don Young.) Factor in women's issues and this ain't as hard to figure as some Sci-Fi movie. It's psephology.

Plus: can you say, "ground game?"

“… and tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!”

(Written the night BEFORE the election.)

The cure for predator corporations

If you are a corporation and you pay non-unionized labor so little that they can’t live on their salary without government benefits such as food-stamps, WIC, and TANF, then you are a predator corporation. You are taking profits from the labor of others, and not paying for it. Instead, the government is paying for it, and passing the bill along to the taxpayers. Some might say it is highly immoral to “wring[ your] bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.”

Anyway, it isn’t illegal.

Now, just about any solution to this problem will undoubtedly be condemned as “income redistribution” or, worse, “socialism.” Never mind that anytime you go into Walmart and pay 25 cents for a trinket that they got from China for 10 cents, your income is being redistributed to the Waltons and the Chinese.

But the Republican fetish for free markets regards the Waltons as geniuses who are simply playing by the rules and making money. Ain’t that what capitalism is supposed to be?

Here’s an idea which is so crazy, it just may work.

Supposed you passed a law that said that anybody who works for a non-union shop with more than 500 employees is ineligible for government benefits unless they are paid $15.00/hr.  The Republican anti-government crowd would have to at least acknowledge that it is not an expansion of the social safety net. 

They might even welcome it as a dismantling of what they see as a “welfare state.” Since, by its terms the law would enable some employers to pay union workers less than non-union workers it might be seen as a blow to the unions.

Most states and localities will see a savings from the reduction of need for social services. They can pass the savings along in reduced taxes. Or they can do a little infrastructure building, producing jobs and higher quality of life. Or they can undo some of the cuts to education that been necessitated by the recent reign of austerity.

But you know who isn’t going to like it? That would be the Walton family. You see, their business model doesn’t work without getting someone else to pay for their workers. What will they do when people refuse to work for them unless they are paid enough to live on? And by “paid enough to live on,” I mean, paid by their employers enough to live on. You see, it is just not worth it to work for the Waltons, without subsidies from the government. 

Maybe they will decide that unions aren’t such a bad thing after all. I doubt it, but as they say, it’s hard to predict the future. After all, unions have the power of numbers with which to negotiate a living wage. Maybe the Walton family will have to tighten their belts, though it is hard to imagine what they will have to do without. Maybe the CEO of McDonalds will have to scrape by 4.1 million a year (as he did in 2011) rather than the $13.8 million he was given this year. I think we can all agree that this is a bummer for him but it is not as bad as working for 30 hours a week and making $217.50.

It may be that prices at Walmart and fast food places have to go up. That’s not so bad, either. According to the laws of supply and demand, people may eat less Mickey D. You got a problem with that? It may be that the trinket that Walmart purchased in China for 10 cents to sell to you, may cost you 27 cents instead of two bits. Think of the two cent difference as the amount your locality saved on costs, and if you didn’t get it back on your tax bill, enjoy your new road, or your kid’s music class. By the way, if you would like to manufacture trinkets in American, to sell in your own trinket boutique, you are two cents closer to being able to compete with Chinese imports.

Talk this over with the next economist you meet,

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

The Catholic vote

In the last six presidential elections the candidate who won the Catholic vote has won the popular vote. Al Gore won the popular vote handily but lost the Supreme Court case of Bush v Gore. (Held: counting votes is unconstitutional.)

President Obama carried the Catholic vote 50 percent to 48 percent while he won the overall national vote 51 percent to 47 percent. That's the third straight Presidential election where the Catholic vote has been a near-carbon copy of the overall vote.

Many Catholic voters are Latino, a group that gave Obama 71% of their votes. Republican attitudes towards immigration aren’t going to win over many of these voters. Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the GOP shouldn’t even bother to field a presidential candidate in 2016 unless Congress passes immigration reform this year. Spoiler alert: they are not going to do it.

The Catholic vote historically was solidly Democratic, but Richard Nixon undertook to create a “new majority” and enlisted Pat Buchanan to capture the Catholic vote. Buchanan suggested, among other things, appointing Italian-Americans to visible positions, going so far as to suggest that the so-called “black seat” or “Jewish seat” on the Supreme Court be given to an ethnic Catholic when it became available. (He was for quotas before he was against them.) Today, there are no Protestants on the Court, and the only Black on the court is Catholic. There are three “ethnic Catholics” – Alito, Scalia, and Sotomeyor.

In 1972 President Nixon, upon the suggestion of Buchanan, wrote to Cardinal Cooke expressing his opposition to abortion and supporting the effort to repeal the liberal N.Y. law. (Interestingly, in the 1970s, conservative Christian protests against sexual immorality began to surface, largely as a reaction to the “permissive sixties” and an emerging prominence of sexual liberties arising from Roe v Wade and the gay rights movement. Christians began to “wake up” and make sexuality issues a priority political cause, per Wiki. I’ll discuss how these voters can be recaptured at a later date.)

The Republican efforts to appeal to Catholic voters achieved some success. Today, it is still assumed that for many Catholic voters -- especially white Catholics -- abortion is a key issue, that many of these voters went for Romney, and that they may go to the Republican nominee in 2016.

I am not so sure that the issue of abortion has as much salience for Catholics as it once had. In a poll in October 2013, thirty-nine percent of all respondents — and 42 percent of self-identified Catholics – felt abortion should be illegal in either “all” or “most” cases. Catholics are just not that different from Americans as a whole.

Pope Francis is not going to change church doctrine regarding this issue. But he has suggested that the church’s focus on abortion can be re-examined. Here is how he put it:

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”

It is clear that he prefers to keep the attention on wealth inequality and concern for the poor. His comments on fairness very nearly amount to an open rebuke of Paul Ryan, an early contender for the Republican nomination. For sake of discussion, let’s call the issue of wealth inequality “fairness.”

This is not the place to discuss the many reasons that “fairness” as an issue can be embraced by a huge majority of voters, though they are not necessarily the most motivated. Suffice it to say, that 2016 has the potential to pit populists against plutocrats and Catholics are the natural constituency of the populists. Of course, this is true of Latino Catholics, but it is also true of white Catholics in general, many of whom are blue collars workers including those who are feeling disempowered by the decline of labor union power.

Can the issues of abortion and fairness be linked? It will take more than the formulation that Bill Clinton used, which has been taken up by Hillary Clinton: “Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.”

In point of fact, abortions are down in the United States under President Obama. In 2011, approximately 1.06 million abortions took place in the U.S., down from an estimated 1.21 million abortions in 2008, 1.29 million in 2002, 1.31 million in 2000 and 1.36 million in 1996. The main driver of abortion levels is the economy. Put another way, improving the economic circumstances of the poor is the most effective anti-abortion program available in America.

If this point can be driven home to Catholics, a significant shift in voting patterns can be achieved. “Want to eliminate abortion? Vote Democratic!” “Access to Birth Control means fewer abortions.” “Fairness = fewer abortions.”

One hundred, twenty-seven million voters cast votes in the 2012 election One quarter of the votes (i.e. almost 32 million) were cast by Catholics.

A 51.1 – 47.2 percentage split of the popular vote in favor of Obama produced a margin of victory of 1,053,000 votes, and a decisive victory in the Electoral College. 

If the next Democratic candidate can shift just 2% of the Catholic vote in his or her favor, that’s a 1,280,000 cushion that would virtually guarantee a victory for the Democratic nominee. 

And, if you are listening, Joe Biden, it wouldn’t hurt if the nominee himself was a proud Catholic. And, Joe, if you do decide to run …

“… tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

AIPAC reconsidered.

AIPAC is at a cross-road. It has sided with President Barack Obama in a very public dispute with some of the most pro-Israel members of both houses of Congress.

First the background. The U.S. and Israel share a foreign policy goal of keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel’s reasons are existential. The American administration is motivated by our strong commitment to Israel, as well as the realpolitik observation that Iran with nuclear weapons is unstable enough all by herself, but if that were to come about, the resultant nuclear arms race in the region would pose unacceptable risks.

The U.S. has waged a campaign against Iran that included sabotage, in which effort they have received support from the Israelis. Iranian nuclear scientists have a habit of dying in suspicious circumstances, though, of course, nobody is taking credit. And then there were the sanctions. Here’s where you can read about the history of the U.S. efforts to first support and then discourage Iran’s nuclear program. (Executive Summary: Democrats are tougher on Iran than Republicans. By far.)

The election of 2008 produced Democratic majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and, of course, a Democratic President. Congress passed “the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA), with bi-partisan support and President Obama signed it into law July 1, 2010. The CISADA greatly enhanced restrictions in Iran. The sanctions regime had the desired result: Iran came to the negotiating table.

The negotiations resulted in an interim agreement which I discussed here. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said that the agreement was the “deal of the century” for the Iranians, but President Obama argued that the interim agreement was a reasonable effort to avoid war, and further that the movement in Congress to pass additional, conditional sanctions would be counter-productive.  This is what he said at the State of the Union address:

 “It is American diplomacy, backed by pressure, that has halted the progress of Iran's nuclear program -- and rolled back parts of that program -- for the very first time in a decade. As we gather here tonight, Iran has begun to eliminate its stockpile of higher levels of enriched uranium. 

“It's not installing advanced centrifuges. Unprecedented inspections help the world verify every day that Iran is not building a bomb. And with our allies and partners, we're engaged in negotiations to see if we can peacefully achieve a goal we all share: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. 

 “These negotiations will be difficult; they may not succeed. We are clear-eyed about Iran's support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, which threaten our allies; and we're clear about the mistrust between our nations, mistrust that cannot be wished away. But these negotiations don't rely on trust; any long-term deal we agree to must be based on verifiable action that convinces us and the international community that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb. If John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries today.

 “The sanctions that we put in place helped make this opportunity possible. But let me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it. For the sake of our national security, we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed. 

“If Iran's leaders do not seize this opportunity, then I will be the first to call for more sanctions and stand ready to exercise all options to make sure Iran does not build a nuclear weapon. But if Iran's leaders do seize the chance -- and we'll know soon enough -- then Iran could take an important step to rejoin the community of nations, and we will have resolved one of the leading security challenges of our time without the risks of war.”

That “new sanctions bill” that the President referenced was actually a thing, and AIPAC had been pushing it for months. But last week AIPAC reversed course, and agreed with Democrats who had said that “now is not the time” for new sanctions.  This move angered Republican supporters of the new sanctions bill, and it didn’t go down too well with the Israeli administration. According to the Daily Beast one GOP Senate staffer put it like this: “Republicans responded with a big middle finger.”

How did it happen that AIPAC was on the wrong side of this issue for so long? And how could it be that AIPAC could fail so spectacularly in bringing along the Republicans when it saw the light? And worst of all, how could it possibly get cross-wise with the Israeli administration?

There are people – you may even know some of them – who just hate President Obama. Netanyahu’s strained relationship with the American President has been reported on extensively. Perhaps it is because of Bibi’s close association with Mitt Romney, which led to him breaching the well-known norm of international behavior and interfering in the American internal politics.

More likely, he regards the change in American policy as a cause of the Arab Spring and therefore a dangerous thing. He’s wrong, of course, since as we have seen, the Arab Spring has resulted in the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, (exactly as I predicted here) and the emergence of a free Libya with the death of Quaddafi. And let's not forget the disarming of the Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles. So, AIPAC could be negative about Obama and be in line with the Israeli PM’s opinion, misguided though it was. And if Bibi said that the interim deal with the Iranians was bad, AIPAC can’t be blamed for saying so. After all, they are the Israel Lobby, aren’t they?

Well, actually, I do blame them for saying that the interim deal was bad. I’m willing to forgive and forget in light of the fact that they have come to the position that I advocated before last Christmas. But I would hope that AIPAC would learn from their mistake. And what was that mistake? The mistake was in confusing Israel’s interests with Bibi Netanyahu’s interests. It has been observed that AIPAC is no longer the Israel Lobby, but rather, the Likud Lobby. (President Shimon Peres and many other prominant Israelis were much less critical of the interim deal than the PM.) 

But Bibi isn’t the only one who doesn’t like Obama. There’s a contingent of Americans who can’t stand the sight of him. I won’t speculate on why that is, though others have suggested that, like everything else in America, considerations of race enter into it.

Although AIPAC has taken steps to reverse the perception (or fact) that it has a right-leaning bias, AIPAC has also reached out with renewed vigor to a core Republican constituency, viz., evangelical Christians. Groups like CUFI (Christians United For Israel) are a natural target audience for this effort.

Some Jews say that Israel – or Jews in general, for that matter – cannot be too selective in her friends. It’s a case I might have made with regard to Israel’s association with apartheid Union of South Africa in a by-gone era. But in that case, I would have been observing Israel’s relationship to a third party. Now, we are looking at the relationship between Israel – a country and a people I love –and the United States, a country that I am proud to call my own.

I am not the first person to question whether or not Israel can trust the love of our Christian brethren. One of the founding documents of Zionism was Leo Pinsker’s, Selbstemanzipation (Auto-emancipation), published in 1882. Or more recently, Bob Dylan wrote, “Well, he got no allies to really speak of; What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.”

I’m all in favor of making strategic alliances. But in this instance, we see that fundamentalist Christians’ love of Israel was trumped by their Republican hatred of Obama. And since Republican politicians are petrified of being challenged in a primary by some fundamentalist Tea-party buffoon, they dance to whatever tune these fundamentalists call. 

Even if that amounts to a big middle finger to AIPAC.

After all, AIPAC committed an unforgiveable offense: it agreed with Obama. 

“… and tell ’Big Mitch sent ya!”

What does it mean if Chris Christie survives this political scandal?

Let’s begin with something we can all agree on: Chris Christie is a mean, vindictive son-of-a bitch.

It seems unbelievable that Chris Christie would exact retribution against a mayor in his state for the perfectly reasonable position that he, the mayor, as a democrat should not endorse a Republican candidate for governor. So much the more so because the prank didn’t hit directly at the mayor of Fort Lee, but rather severely inconvenienced (and endangered) Fort Lee residents, most of whom voted for Christie.

Rachel Maddow and Steve Kornacki have other theories to explain why Christie would take such a mean, punitive action. These theories might be right or they might be wrong, but the fact is that the prevailing story is that Christie was just being mean because Mayor Mark Sokolitch of Ft. Lee refused to endorse him.

When such stories are not dismissed out of hand, and indeed, they are widely believed, it’s time to look at the culture that prevails in New Jersey. The picture that emerges is one of a political culture that has been described as “brass knuckles,” where revenge is not merely to be expected, but rather it is engaged in with the glee and élan that attaches to a favorite sport.

Let's take a closer look.

Christie hectors a member
of the Teacher's union

When Christie disagreed with the politics of State Senator Raymond Lesniak, a Democrat, whose district includes Elizabeth, the governor shut down the DMV in that city, the fourth largest in the state, to show his displeasure.

Here’s another example: Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop accuses Christie’s office of canceling several meetings with N.J. department heads on the day after he refused to endorse the governor. You may remember that Fulop’s name has already come up in connection with Bridge-gate. Emails reveal that a top Christie aide asks then-Port Authority official David Wildstein whether the agency had responded to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich’s complaints about the closures. “Radio silence,” Wildstein, a Christie ally, wrote on Sept. 9. “His name comes right after Mayor Fulop.”

In the spring, when Christie asked Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer to endorse him for re-election during a face-to-face meeting, Zimmer, a Democrat, told the governor no. After Hurricane Sandy, she applied to the state for a Hazard Mitigation Grant. When her request for grant funding came back, she said, Hoboken received $300,000 of the $100 million in grants requested — less than 1 percent. Pay-back, as they say in N.J., is a bitch.

Do you will recall that in Christie’s marathon press conference he talked about how important loyalty was to him? After Christie won the last election in a landside, former Gov. Tom Kean, Sr. said, “Chris just won reelection, he’s popular, and there is a sense he would be able to compete everywhere.” Kean is the only Republican in modern political history to score a higher percentage of the vote than Christie did in November. When he ran for reelection in 1985, Kean won with 71 percent of the vote. More importantly, he was Christie’s first political mentor. There’s a guy who deserves loyalty.

Unfortunately, it didn't extend to Kean’s son, Tom, Jr., who was in the Senate. He had a rather public feud with Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D), with whom Christie has to work to get legislation through. As part of his effort to produce a Republican majority in the Senate majority, Kean had targeted Sweeney’s seat in the election. This is considered bad manners: New Jersey legislative leaders usually do not target each other for electoral defeat, and it didn’t go down well with Sweeney.

Rather than support his fellow Republican, Christie avoided campaigning in Southern NJ, where Kean hoped to oust Democrats. At a post-election news conference, Christie wouldn’t say he supported Kean’s continued leadership of the Senate caucus. Instead, Christie pointedly said he had just spoken — with Sweeney.

In 2010, when a blizzard paralyzed the state, State Senator Sean T. Kean, (no relation to Tom Kean) a Republican, told a reporter that the “one mistake” the Senate president and governor had made was not calling earlier for a state of emergency, which might have kept more cars off the roads. Christie could not abide that level of criticism. As the NYT tells the story,

Mr. Christie was smarting from criticism that he had remained at Disney World during the storm. When he returned, he held his first news conference in Mr. Kean’s home district. Shortly before, a member of the governor’s staff called Mr. Kean and warned him not to show up. His seat was eliminated in redistricting the following year. 

In another incident, Christie used his line item veto to eliminate a program to help women who suffer from post-partum depression. Why? Because the head of the foundation was married to State Senator Richard Cody, who happens to be a former governor. And what was his gripe against ex-guv Richard Cody? Nothing in particular. “I have to send Codey a message about who’s in charge,” said Chris Christie.

On another occasion, Christie tried to blame Cody for stalling two nominations that were not progressing in the Senate fast enough to please the governor. Quite reasonably, Cody pushed back by pointing out that he had not only signed off on the nominations, but had held a meeting to try to hurry them along. Christie reacted by stripping Cody of the security detail that is customarily afforded former governors. And, just in case that was too subtle, “that same day, his cousin, who had been appointed by Mr. McGreevey to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was fired, as was a close friend and former deputy chief of staff who was then working in the state Office of Consumer Affairs,” according to the NYT.

Last year, another Republican, State Senator Christopher Bateman, voted against the governor’s plan to reorganize the state’s public medical education system. Mr. Bateman had been working with the governor to get a judge appointed in his home county. Suddenly, after months when it looked as if it would happen, the nomination stalled.

Consider the example of noted and respected Rutgers Professor of Political Science Alan Rosenthal. He had been the chair of the New Jersey Congressional Redistricting Commission in 1992 and again in 2001. His obituary notes that “Rosenthal cast the deciding vote in the 2011 legislative redistricting, a process that dragged on for weeks, approving the map favored by the commission’s Democratic members.”  What happened after that? The two programs at Rutgers that were most dear to Dr. Rosenthal were slashed in the next budget.

Bill Baroni, who resigned over Bridge-gate had in the past been tasked with executing the governor’s vengeance. When Bill Lavin, an officer with a state firefighters’ union, publicly called for more productive dialogue between his organization and the governor, he received a call from Baroni, who said more than once, “The governor told me to make sure you don’t get this message mixed up; say these exact words.” What were those exact words? The New York Times didn’t consider them fit to print, but other sources have said that Mr. Baroni, quoted Mr. Christie as, “Go fuck yourself.”

The question raised by this sordid portrait is this: Suppose Mr. Christie survives this scandal. Will this rough and tumble attitude play well in Iowa where it is assumed that traditional values of courtesy and fair play prevail?

Before Bridge-gate, Cristie was the leading candidate for the Republican nomination. It is not because he was a soft-spoken, “blow-dried” creation of image consultants. Rather, he was famously rude to teachers and other constituents. Although this might have been off-putting, it set him apart from the anodyne Washington politicians. Some regarded his brusque, no-nonsense manner as an endearing quirk. 

As Bridge-gate develops, the public will become more familiar with the dark underside of his cruelty, some of which is catalogued above. Psychologists and social scientists have long been aware of the authoritarian personality type. Originally, it was measured on something called the f-scale. The f stands for fascism. More recently, social scientists have refined the concept and now speak of Right Wing Authoritarian Personality Type.

Call it what you may, but one characteristic is that the authoritarian personality admires a “leader who will use any means necessary.” It values “power and toughness.”

If the good people of Iowa turn from the nice man in the sweater vest who won last go-round, and they decide that what the country needs is a mean son-of-a-bitch to run against Hillary Clinton, then we will know that the soul of the Republican is really, at its core, pretty high on the f scale.

Of course, in the meantime, a steady trickle of revelations may lead to a situation in 2016 where Christie is, at best, irrelevant, and, at worst, a pariah.

“... and tell 'em Big Mitch sent ya!”