I am writing this on a flight from Washington DC to Los Angeles (December 3), there to grab a rental car and proceed North to the Thousand Oaks area. It is time for the annual Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan Library, a day and a half confab dreamt up and run by polymath and natty dresser Roger Zakheim, with whom I once went door to door in New Hampshire scaring up votes for Marco Rubio (this was literally days before Rubio lit himself on fire at the New Hampshire debate, a process he has repeated regularly since). The Forum is a fascinating transplantation of much of the national security community from Washington DC to the West Coast, with dinners, speeches, panels, cozy drinks in corners, and a good bit of schmoozing. I had a perfect record of attendance going until a couple of years ago when I contracted some strange ague that laid me low. I am a very tiny cog in this community, but I get to spend a good deal of time with people who are smarter, more influential, better looking, or some combination thereof.
One would think that an event named after St. Ronald and held at his presidential library would be dominated by the right of center national security community. Not knowing too many folks on the left side of the equation, I can only say that I generally see a lot of familiar faces at these things, and when D’s are in the White House, there are no shortage of name attendees from that persuasion.
I honestly don’t know what to expect out there this year, as the right of center national security community generally bailed on the Trump Administration (to its lasting credit) and a new group gained notariety, both positive and negative. I’m not important enough to be persona non grata, but if I were, I would be. I expect there will be no shortage of members of the Trump team out there, both dedicated and hard working patriots (there were some) and out-of-their-depth charlatans for whom I ardently desire the dustbin of history.
Reveille was at 0400 today, as I had an early flight out of Dulles. My seat (chosen when booking) is in something that United is call-ing “premium plus”, which is a seat that is essentially what most domestic United flights would call First Class. It is lovely. There is a Gucci-class forward, but I am unaware of its name. There is Economy Plus and Economy aft of me. I have status on United, which is why I drive two hours to Dulles for nonstop coast to coast flight, and which is why I get to sit in this exalted seat. I am also in the last row of this section with a little wall behind me, so my rightful reclining into the four inches behind me that I paid for will not be disputed (quietly or otherwise) by some cellular-respiration-wasting giant who sees no problem with putting his feet under my chair (which HE has paid for).
It is now the 7th, and the Reagan Forum is in the rear-view mirror. It turned out, as it always does, to have been a very interesting day and a half. My Friday evening included walking around a reception, catching up with friends and colleagues, and then a dinner with a few other folks where I was seated next to Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) who was a delight to spend time with and who is an old school Scoop Jackson Democrat.
As for the Trump/Never Trump split, perhaps it lives more in my mind than in real life. Saw MANY Trump Administration vets and had pleasant conversations with them. Some kept their heads down and did good work without becoming to closely associated with the shitshow, some were neck deep in it.
The Secretary of Defense gave an underwhelming keynote at lunch, something I immediately concluded and then had confirmed for me by every subsequent conversation I had about it that day. The last panel of the day was Bill Hemmer from FOXNEWS interviewing Leon Panetta and Mark Esper, both former SECDEFS. Panetta was (as he always is) very entertaining and unrestrained, throwing darts in all directions.
Abortion at the Supreme Court
I don’t intend to hash this out in detail here, as there are far better sources for both the ideology and the judicial analysis. I am somewhat squishily pro-life, in that I believe that abortion is killing a human being, and the circumstances of this killing are wrong. I also believe that Roe v. Wade was a travesty, and that Casey was even worse. Applying the derived privacy right to this act was a political move by a judicial body, and it has been illegitimate ever since. I want to see pretty much all of the existing jurisprudence on abortion swept away with a resounding “they got it wrong” and “they made shit up”.
But I do not want abortion outlawed (nor do I believe the Supreme Court could do so if it wished). While being personally against it, I am quite content with the States handling this question as they were empowered by the framers to do on all matters not explicitly delegated to the federal legislature. To the extent that there has been anything “good” about fifty years of legal abortion, it is that there is a much more mature “political” discourse in existence than there was then, and a goodly portion of the country has come to believe that abortion on demand is a civil right (it isn’t) or health care (it isn’t). That they hold these misguided views does not make the views any less salient in the political sphere where they ought best be adjudicated, and that is in the States. If abortion rights are impacted by the Supreme Court, the States will act with dispatch to create law that most closely matches the will of their residents. There will be States with no abortion. There will be States with some abortion. And there will be States with maximal abortion law. This will be a far better place than where we are today.
But it may be interestingly arrived at. I’m watching with great interest the Democratic Party shoot itself in the face by falling victim to the impression that the American Public wanted something other than the removal of the last guy from office, that somehow a close Presidential election, a four seat majority in the House, and a tied Senate give it a mandate to move the country leftward (no, I didn’t say socialism). The off year elections in 2021 and recent polling show the GOP gaining strength, and Minority Leader McCarthy is already measuring for drapes in the Speaker’s Office. But think ahead to the second week in June or so, the beginning of yet another hot summer, maybe one even with COVID STILL the scourge it is today—or possibly worse. And then the Supreme Court drops a (reasonable, required, just) bomb that either dramatically curtails abortion rights or sends the matter entirely back to the States (where it always should have resided).
Now—my guess is that radicalized pro-choicers generally don’t vote GOP, so I don’t think such a decision would impact that portion of the electorate. There are however, a ton of people who voted for Biden in 2020 and who now have buyer’s remorse, who under other circumstances might be happy to vote GOP—but who are pro-choice or pro-choice adjacent. Are these enough voters for a landslide? No. Are they enough to keep Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker’s Chair? I believe so.
Knowing my great disappointment with the institutional GOP, you might not be surprised if I were to say “you’ll get what you deserve, GOP”. But what I really want to happen is for the skewed and misguided Roe decision and its offspring to finally be swept asunder in exchange for a political solution to this question where it most rightly belongs. I do not give a rip about the GOP.
Virginia Basketball Update
We suck.
You rock!