The Wall Street Journal - 24.02.2020

(Barry) #1

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, February 24, 2020 |A


Sanders Isn’t Trump’s Challenger So Much as His Sequel


W


e’ve seen this movie before,
but for some reason the
critics seem convinced it
will have a different ending this time:
A bombastic septuagenarian political
outsider calls out a rigged system to
the cheering masses. He finishes sec-
ond in Iowa and first in New Hamp-
shire and Nevada. He leads all the
national polls while the establish-
ment candidates wage all-out war on
one another. Meanwhile, the media
dismisses his chances and an increas-
ingly worried political establishment
convinces itself it’s only a fluke, that
the worst case is a chaotic conven-
tion that ultimately nominates a
mainstream candidate.
You’d think we political types
would know better by now. The most
important thing I learned managing
Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential
race was that the old political norms
were dead. Experts and pundits’ pre-
dictions were often no more than
guesses based on the way things
used to be. Media groupthink only


made these outdated and misguided
notions more stubborn.
Am I the only one who was em-
barrassed enough at missing the
2016 political movement that elected
Donald Trump that I rethought my
approach to modern politics?
Like Mr. Trump, Sen. Bernie Sand-
ers is leading an insurgent campaign,
riding a nationwide wave of discon-
tent as many Democrats no longer
think the party represents them. He
inspires the most radical and disen-
franchised members of his party. Yet
he still manages to expand his sup-
port among more-moderate voters,
even though they disagree with some
of his extreme positions. It’s exactly
his passionate willingness to defend
the crazy things he says that draws
broad support. If I had a dollar for
every voter I’ve heard say, “I don’t
agree with everything Donald Trump
says, but I like that he has the guts to
say it,” I could buy Trump Tower. Mr.
Sanders is benefiting from that same
sentiment.
It isn’t policy positions that draw
voters to Messrs. Sanders and

Trump. It’s their perceived authentic-
ity. At a time when almost no person
or institution is above reproach, the
electorate craves someone who tells
it like it is. From government to
churches and from universities to
Wall Street, many Americans feel let
down and lied to. You can’t even
trust baseball anymore. So listening
to someone give you the raw, unvar-
nished truth is very appealing.

This pattern plays out in other
elections too. While the establish-
ment politicos of both parties remain
convinced that the country if fixated
on issues, it’s actually fixated on per-
sonalities. That’s why Reps. Alexan-
dria Ocasio-Cortez and Dan Cren-
shaw are so popular. Put Ilhan Omar

and Matt Gaetz into that bucket, too.
These rising political stars have de-
veloped reputations for speaking
truth to power and sticking it to the
establishment. Americans in 2020
eat that up.
In Mr. Trump, the man and the
political moment were perfectly
timed. Could this be Mr. Sanders’s
year to pull off the same trick? The
three-term Vermont senator has al-
ways styled himself a socialist revo-
lutionary. His cutting rhetoric has
alienated him from the party estab-
lishment and media. He doesn’t
mince words about “millionaires and
billionaires,” who he claims have
weaponized their wealth against ev-
eryday citizens. Their goal, he says,
“is not to strengthen the middle
class, but continue the trend in
which the rich are getting richer at
the expense of everyone else.”
That’s debatable, but it reveals Mr.
Sanders’s fundamental strategy: He
isolates his target group, demonizes
it, and relentlessly attacks. Sound fa-
miliar? Replace billionaires with ille-
gal immigrants and throw in a huge

helping of the “mainstream media is
unfair to me,” and you have a perfect
match. Mr. Sanders is exploiting the
same sentiments that Mr. Trump
rode to the presidency on in 2016.
If Mr. Sanders’s momentum con-
tinues, he may topple Joe Biden in
South Carolina, where the two are
now tied. If that happens, it’s hard to
see how Mr. Sanders doesn’t end up
winning the nomination. He leads by
double digits in the most recent na-
tional poll and is surging in other
state polls.
The funniest part of this block-
buster sequel may be that if Mr.
Sanders does win the nomination,
those same pundits and politicos
will swear he can never win in No-
vember. I learned enough from 2016
not to make a definitive political
prediction this far out about the fi-
nal outcome. Maybe we’re watching
“Groundhog Day.”

Mr. Sullivan is a founding partner
at Firehouse Strategies and was
Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential
campaign manager.

By Terry Sullivan


He’s brash outsider who’s
leading the pack. Experts
swear he can’t win. We’ve
seen this movie before.

OPINION


W


hatever the outcome
of a case, then-Attor-
ney General Robert H.
Jackson observed in
1940, “the government

... has really won if justice has been
done.” It’s worth keeping that truth
in mind as we consider the dispute
over Attorney General William Barr
and Roger Stone.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson last
week sentenced Mr. Stone to 40
months in prison—a term within the
range Mr. Barr had suggested when
he overruled prosecutors who recom-
mended a term of seven to nine
years. The attorney general’s move
generated accusations that he was


doing President Trump’s bidding by
showing leniency to Mr. Trump’s
friend and former political adviser. It
even prompted a petition, signed by
more than 2,000 former Justice De-
partment employees, demanding Mr.
Barr’s resignation.
Before we address these attacks
directly, we think it useful to con-
sider a few data points in Mr. Barr’s
recent tenure. Notwithstanding his
own skepticism about aspects of spe-
cial counsel Robert Mueller’s investi-
gation, he allowed that probe to run
its course. Mr. Barr supported the de-
cision not to prosecute Andrew Mc-
Cabe, a former deputy director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and
frequent critic of Mr. Trump, despite


Lawyers Cast a Stone at William Barr


overwhelming evidence that Mr. Mc-
Cabe not only lied when he denied
leaking information about an investi-
gation but also berated others for the
leak to deflect suspicion from him-
self.
Mr. Barr has said publicly that he
believes Mr. Stone’s prosecution was
warranted, and that, given his con-
viction, so is a prison sentence. And
the attorney general has pointedly
criticized the president—rightly, in
our view—for commenting publicly
about cases pending in court and be-
fore the Justice Department. That is
not the behavior of someone doing
the president’s bidding.
The criticisms of Mr. Barr’s deci-
sion about the Stone sentencing rec-
ommendation were unmoored from
the case itself. Whatever the line
prosecutors thought, the decision to
reduce the proposed sentence was
reached by others at the department
as well, including career attorneys,
one of whom signed the lower rec-
ommendation.
The Stone prosecution was initi-
ated in an indictment filed by the
Mueller prosecution team, for ob-
structing Congress’s investigation
into whether there was a Trump-Rus-
sia conspiracy. By the time these
charges were brought, it was clear
there was no such conspiracy.
Mr. Stone was also charged with
threatening a witness by suggesting
that he would kidnap the witness’s
dog and by telling the witness to
“prepare to die”—but also by vowing
that Stone’s lawyers would tear the
witness to shreds on cross-examina-
tion. There is no doubt about the fac-
tual basis for these offenses; Mr.
Stone communicated with the wit-
ness in text messages introduced into
evidence.
The obstruction counts ordinarily
would have generated a recom-
mended sentence under the U.S. Sen-

tencing Guidelines of 37 to 46
months or less. A word about the
guidelines: They were adopted in
1987, and although at first they were
presumptively binding, they are now
strictly advisory, owing to a 2005 Su-
preme Court ruling, U.S. v. Booker.
The recommended sentence under
the guidelines shoots up to 90 to 108
months—the range the line prosecu-
tors recommended for Mr. Stone—
when threats are involved. But it’s
obvious such higher sentences are
meant to be imposed only when the
threats are real. In this case, the wit-
ness was on record as saying he
didn’t take them seriously.
The prosecutors’ initial sentencing
memo was far from a dispassionate
discussion of facts and law. It sug-
gested a link between Mr. Stone and
“foreign election interference,”
which, quoting Federalist No. 68, it
characterized as the “most deadly
adversary of republican govern-
ment,” although the proof never tied
Mr. Stone to any such activity. The
prosecutors dismissed the witness’s

testimony by asserting that a threat
doesn’t have to be serious to justify
additional years in prison.
Prosecutors are supposed to seek
justice, not to play the Sentencing
Guidelines as a pinball machine, see-
ing how many times they can ring
the bell, or to use a sentencing rec-
ommendation to put public pressure
on the judge for a harsh sentence. In
a highly publicized and politically
fraught case, it was not only proper
but advisable for the attorney gen-
eral to ensure that the government’s
sentencing recommendation not
serve such unworthy ends.
The much-publicized letter from
former Justice Department employ-
ees is a curious document. The sign-
ers seek to inoculate themselves from
criticism as politically motivated by
pointing out that many served under
Republican attorneys general. Still,
it’s hard to escape the impression
that the letter writers think of them-
selves as an elite clerisy, gifted with
a superior understanding that should
dictate the management of all cases.

The letter writers cite their oath
and urge colleagues still at the de-
partment to follow it. But it’s lawless
to encourage Justice Department
lawyers to defy their supervisors, up
to and including the attorney gen-
eral, who take the same oath.
All that said, the president has se-
verely burdened Mr. Barr’s conduct of
his office by repeatedly sounding off
about pending cases. He has justified
his comments by saying he is the
highest law-enforcement officer in the
land, and that’s technically true. But it
cuts against the president’s narrow
interest in at least two ways.
First, he has at least the same ob-
ligation as any other actor in the law-
enforcement hierarchy to refrain
from statements that could prejudice
anyone’s chance to get an impartial
hearing. Whether he likes it or not,
courts will enforce that obligation if
he violates it, whether by dismissing
charges or by taking other steps to
undo any damage.
Second, the attorney general and
others at the Justice Department
must consider whether public confi-
dence in the department will be
shaken if their decisions agree with
the president’s expressed views. That
would have the perverse effect of en-
couraging Justice Department deci-
sions with which the president dis-
agrees.
Mr. Barr has agreed to testify be-
fore the House Judiciary Committee
on March 31. We have no doubt he
will do so with the same integrity,
and clarity of thought and word he
has shown thus far. Frankly, we can’t
wait.

Mr. Meese served as U.S. attorney
general, 1985-88, and is a distin-
guished fellow emeritus at the Heri-
tage Foundation. Mr. Mukasey served
as attorney general, 2007-09, and a
federal district judge, 1988-2006.

By Edwin Meese III
And Michael B. Mukasey


WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Former officials urge


current officials to defy


their supervisors. That’s


an affront to the rule of law.


Barr at a Jan. 13 press conference in Washington.

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Modi Bashes Nehru, but Rejects Only His Good Ideas


Mumbai

P


resident Trump is visiting India
on Monday and Tuesday, and
his agenda includes meeting
the country’s top business leaders.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will
probably use this visit to try to show
that he cares about the economy,
which, thanks in no small part to his
policies, isn’t doing very well these
days.
Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata
Party love to blame India’s first prime
minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who died
in office in 1964, for the country’s
problems. The irony is that the BJP
hasn’t rejected all of Nehru’s ideas—
only the good ones, such as secular-
ism and freedom of the press.
The Modi government embraces
Nehru’s disastrous economic policies.
Nehruvian socialism was character-
ized by Soviet-style central planning.


There were five-year plans. The gov-
ernment decided which industries
would be encouraged and which
wouldn’t. These decisions were often
driven by politics, not economics.
Government would lavish subsidies
on industries deemed important
while depriving others of capital. In
parts of the economy where private
businesses were allowed to operate,
they needed approval from as many
as 80 different government agen-
cies—a system known as the Licence
Raj. The government could at any
point decide to nationalize the few
private companies that managed to
comply.
Another core tenet of Nehruvian
socialism: an extreme distrust of any-
thing foreign. India’s tariffs were
among the highest in the world. The
country imposed import quotas; raw
materials and spare parts, among
many other foreign goods, needed
special licenses to be imported. Strict

control over the foreign-exchange
market hindered trade and foreign
investment. The rupee could be ex-
changed only with government per-
mission, and only at a rate dictated
by government.
Not surprisingly, the economy
grew at 3.5% a year from the 1950s to
the 1980s, which is slow for an
emerging market. Per capita income
grew at 1.3% a year, and the share of
the Indian population living below
the poverty line rose from 45% in
1951 to 47% in 1980.
These policies weren’t sustainable.
In 1991 the government faced a bal-
ance-of-payments crisis. India almost
ran out of foreign currency to pay for
imports and needed a loan from the
International Monetary Fund. As a
condition for the loan, the P.V.
Narasimha Rao government had to
open up the Indian economy. The
government slashed tariffs, let mar-
kets decide exchange rates, reduced

licensure requirements, and made
foreign investment much easier. All
this led to more and better employ-
ment opportunities.
Indians’ average income today is
more than 3.5 times what it was in


  1. More than 270 million people
    have been lifted out of poverty. Even
    this understates India’s economic


progress: The population has also
grown by more than half since then.
Tens of millions born after 1991 have
never lived in poverty.
But parts of India’s economy are
still choked by central planning. Agri-
cultural restrictions—such as limits
on where and at what price farmers
can sell their products—entrench ru-
ral poverty. Manufacturing is ham-
strung by labor laws that make it un-
profitable to hire lots of low-skilled
workers. Firms often rely on automa-
tion instead, producing mostly capi-
tal-intensive goods. Another problem
is that even in labor-intensive indus-
tries, Indian manufacturing firms
tend to be smaller than those in
other countries. For instance, most
Chinese apparel firms employ more
than 200 workers; most Indian firms
in the same industry employ fewer
than eight. This means that most
people don’t have formal jobs with
fixed salaries. More than 80% of In-
dia’s workers hold informal jobs with
low and unstable incomes.
When Mr. Modi was elected in
2014, he promised to fix these prob-
lems. Not only has he failed to de-
liver, he has undone salutary reforms.
For example, Mr. Modi has repeatedly

raised tariffs. Last year the govern-
ment opted out of the Regional Com-
prehensive Economic Partnership, a
major Asian trade pact. The govern-
ment has also threatened to bring
back import licenses. Writing in the
Indian newspaper Mint, columnist
Vivek Dehejia laments that “a three-
decade commitment to trade open-
ness has been all but abandoned.”
What about foreign investment?
Here again Mr. Modi has turned hos-
tile, much like Nehru. In February
2019, the government imposed new
burdensome regulations on foreign e-
commerce firms such as Amazon and
Walmart, which owns Flipkart. This
move wasn’t about social justice or
economic efficiency. It was a pure po-
litical sop to local retailers before the
2019 election. This explains why Mr.
Modi snubbed Jeff Bezos on his re-
cent visit to India.
The government will sometimes
dangle subsidies to attract foreign in-
vestment. For example, the govern-
ment has teased a planned $6.3 billion
subsidy fund to lure electronics man-
ufacturers such as Apple and Sam-
sung and their contract suppliers. But
the message from the Amazon deba-
cle is clear. The government will turn
on a dime against foreign investors if
domestic politics demands it.
India’s economy is facing its worst
slowdown in three decades and, ac-
cording to a spiked government re-
port from last year, a 6.1% unemploy-
ment rate, its highest in 45 years.
Poverty has increased in 22 states
since 2018. Consumption in rural In-
dia has fallen from already low levels.
Wages have declined in many parts
of the economy such as trade, finan-
cial services and real estate. What In-
dia needs right now is open markets,
not a return of Nehruvian socialism.

Mr. Devadiga is an economist spe-
cializing in public policy and eco-
nomic history.

By Jairaj Devadiga


He’s copied the socialist’s
penchant for tariffs and
regulations, shedding
jobs and slowing growth.

From a Feb. 23 Los Angeles Times
report:

The Bloomberg 2020 operation is
hiring more than 500 people at a rate
of $2,500 a month to text friends and
post on social media in support of the
former New York mayor....One,a
recent college graduate living in Sac-
ramento, describes himself as an ar-
dent supporter of Vermont Sen. Ber-
nie Sanders.... But the Bloomberg
gig seemed like easy money, he said.
The ambivalence shows up in his
outreach efforts.
“Sam Donaldson just nailed it:
Mike Bloomberg is the president we
need to unite our country!” he texted
one of his friends....Buthequickly
followed up with a personal adden-
dum: “Please disregard, vote Bernie
or Warren.”

Notable & Quotable

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