Rogue Columnist

'Constitutional crisis'

Illustration by Carl Muecke.

Every norm broken by the Trump administration, every norm threatened, brings commentary using the words above. Violating the emoluments clause, firing James Comey, threatening the Mueller investigation, leaning on the Attorney General, nominating a manifestly disqualifying Supreme Court Justice while withholding 100,000 pages on him, etc. Constitutional crisis.

The biggest is that the Republican-controlled Congress will not exercise its duty to hold the executive branch to account. It won't because Republicans are getting all the right-wing goodies (tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks) and they fear Trump's base. Checks and balances? We don't need no stinking checks and balances.

Cynical Ben Franklin is looking down, shaking his head. Leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was approached by a woman who asked whether we would have a monarchy or a republic. Said Franklin, "A republic, if you can keep it."

In reality, the current Constitutional crisis began on Nov. 6th, 2018, when Trump won the Electoral College thanks to 80,000 votes in three states with the help of a hostile foreign power.

No, it preceded that, with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refusing to grant President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland even a hearing, so the GOP might get the seat (as it did). The sainted John McCain promised he would vote against any nominee of a President Hillary Clinton. This was unprecedented.

Or it began in 2000, when the Supreme Court, with the deciding vote cast by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, made the constitutionally unsound decision to intervene in the presidential election, swinging it to George W. Bush.

The Roman Republic died of a thousand cuts. So it is with the American republic. 

'No hurricanes in Arizona!'

This piece of boosterism is not technically true — the state has been hit by the remnants of powerful Pacific hurricanes. Indeed, Arizona should take stock of Hurricane Florence and its effects in North Carolina. Let me explain.

Hurricanes are nothing new to the Carolinas. What is new is their severity, in part caused by climate change, combined with population growth and development.

Hurricane Florence was only a Category 1 storm when it made landfall, yet it caused historic levels of flooding. This came only a year after flooding damage caused by Hurricane Maria. In some cases, the very same areas saw severe flooding. Parts of South Carolina saw some damage, too.

North Carolina's population grew by more than 21 percent in the 1990s and nearly 19 percent in the 2000s. In 2017, it had more than 10.2 million people. South Carolina added more than 15 percent in those same decades.

A good part of that came in vulnerable coastal areas. For example, Wilmington's New Hanover County, an epicenter of Florence flooding, stood at 227,000 last year, more than double from its 1980 population. Horry County, S.C., another hurricane target, held more than 333,000 last year, more than three times its 1980 numbers. 

Ten years after

Newspapers are full of retrospectives on the Panic of 2008, the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession. Phoenix and Arizona were one of the ground zeros of the housing crash, the result being the worst recession here since the Great Depression.

True, its effects were buffered by the safety net of the hated Franklin Roosevelt, including the copious amounts of Social Security checks that kept coming from the hated federal government. Still, unemployment shot up to nearly 11 percent statewide by 2010, slightly less in Phoenix and Tucson. The main industry, housebuilding, had been shot in the head. Prices fell 50 percent in many cases. Recovery was much slower than peer metros.

A decade later, single-family building permits are back at early 1990s levels. Construction employment is not only not recovered from the 2000s bacchanal but far below historic trend. This would be good news for conservationists but for the fact that much of existing and planned construction involves suburban pods in bladed desert, farmland, or forest.

So let others discuss Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve, how close we came to a second Great Depression, the good and bad of the response and recovery. What's so striking in Phoenix is how little was changed by this tectonic event. 

McCain, an assessment

A man who made “straight talk” one of his trademarks would surely not be satisfied with the flood of worshipful accolades enshrining him as a unique hero, statesman, and patriot for the ages. My aim is to remedy that.

I put my shoulder to this necessary task knowing that he was admired and even loved by people I respect. They range from Grant Woods to Alfredo Gutierrez and Neil Giuliano. I never much cared for John McCain, both because he did so little to use his prestige and power to help his adopted state, and because his conservatism helped set the table for today’s emergency.

More about that later.

McCain suffered terribly as a prisoner of war and heroically refused an early release as the son of the admiral in charge of Pacific forces. This denied a propaganda coup to the communists.

Still, hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, airmen, and naval aviators suffered at the hands of Hanoi as well.

In World War II, the treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese was barbaric. After they were liberated, Gen. Jonathan Wainwright who surrendered the Philippines and British Gen. Arthur Percival who surrendered Singapore were positioned beside Douglas MacArthur on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri for the Japanese surrender. Nearly walking skeletons in uniform, their presence was powerful. No one remembers them today.

McCain served 31 years in the Senate. But his legislative record was minimal. This is certainly so compared with giants such as Edward Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert Taft, Robert La Follette Sr., Arthur Vandenberg, or Arizona’s Ernest McFarland.

Mac, who served as Senate Majority leader, was the father of the GI Bill. Along with Carl Hayden, another towering figure from Arizona, he worked tirelessly for the Central Arizona Project. So did Sen. Barry Goldwater and Reps. Stewart Udall, Mo Udall, and John J. Rhodes.