“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman: How Republics End
Many people are reacting to the rise of Trumpism and nativist movements in Europe by reading history — specifically, the history of the 1930s. And they are right to do so. It takes willful blindness not to see the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political nightmare.
But the ’30s isn’t the only era with lessons to teach us. Lately I’ve been reading a lot about the ancient world. Initially, I have to admit, I was doing it for entertainment and as a refuge from news that gets worse with each passing day. But I couldn’t help noticing the contemporary resonances of some Roman history — specifically, the tale of how the Roman Republic fell.
Here’s what I learned: Republican institutions don’t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms. And tyranny, when it comes, can flourish even while maintaining a republican facade.
Lawrence H. Tribe: Donald Trump will violate the US constitution on inauguration day
When Donald Trump swears at the inauguration that he will “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States”, he will be committing a violation of constitutional magnitude.
The US constitution flatly prohibits any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States]” from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State”.
Known as the emoluments clause, this provision was designed on the theory that a federal officeholder who receives something of value from a foreign power can be tempted to compromise what the constitution insists be his exclusive loyalty: the best interest of the United States. The clause applies to the president and covers even ordinary, fair market value transactions with foreign states and their agents that result in any profit or benefit. That a hostile government has gotten its money’s worth from our president is obviously no defense to a charge that he has abused his office.
Charles M. Blow: Donald Trump, This Is Not Normal!
This is my last column of the year.
In 2015, my last column was a roundup of the year’s biggest social justice stories as ranked by intellectuals and activists.
I thought that I’d make that a year-end tradition for the column, but this year Donald Trump has intruded.
That is not to say that issues of social justice have receded. They haven’t, at all. But the election of Donald Trump poses such a significant — and singular — threat to this country that for me all other issues are unfortunately, temporarily I hope, subsumed by the unshakable sense of impending calamity he presages.
The nation is soon to be under the aegis of an unstable, unqualified, undignified demagogue and with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, there is little that can be done to constrict or control his power and unpredictability.
It’s like seeing an ominous weight swinging toward a limb, sure to break it, while you feel utterly helpless to prevent the fracture.
Robert Kuttner: Trump And Trade: A Plus For Workers?
On a good day, Donald Trump can fool some people into thinking that he will be a change for the better on trade policy, and by extension on American jobs. He’s for keeping more jobs in the US, renegotiating NAFTA, and taking a tougher line with China.
He did a cute publicity stunt, strong-arming Greg Hayes, the CEO of Carrier’s parent corporation into keeping several hundred jobs in Indiana (lubricated by tax breaks).
Progressives were on the verge of killing the misconceived Trans-Pacific Partnership, when Donald Trump administered the coup de grace—and took the credit.
Trade deals like TPP, and NAFTA before it, signaled American workers that trade policy was mainly for corporate and financial elites, not for regular people. Despite the repeated claims that these deals would produce expanded benefits for all, the benefits went to the top.
The fact that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all promoted NAFTA and TPP (until Hillary awkwardly tried to walk back her support), split the progressive coalition and helped Trump.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Will the GOP be the pro-Putin party?
Beneath the surface of the controversy over Russia’s efforts to help Donald Trump become president is a dramatic reconfiguration of opinion on foreign policy.
Many Republicans who had long been critical of Vladimir Putin’s despotic rule are adjusting their positions to accord with Trump’s more sympathetic views. Others are hanging back, fearful of picking a fight with their party’s incoming president or undermining the legitimacy of his election.
At the same time, Putin’s fiercest Republican critics, including leading neoconservatives, find themselves allied with Hillary Clinton’s supporters. They are calling out the Kremlin’s interference with the election and demanding a full accounting of what happened. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey O. Graham have been among the most outspoken.
While some on the left worry about starting a new Cold War, there has been a broad toughening of liberal and Democratic opinion toward Russia. This shift owes in part to outrage over Putin’s efforts to sabotage Clinton, but the roots of the mistrust of Putin can be traced back several years.
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