monday, july 27 , 2020. the washington post eZ re a1 9
T
hose who genuinely embrace a
creed or hold passionately to a
point of view are, in principle,
always looking for converts. Ye t
the old believers are often suspicious of
the new arrivals.
Sometimes, the converts are annoy-
ingly rigid and sectarian. This can bother
those who are long comfortable in their
faith and thus at e ase with pluralism. But
there is also the opposite fear: that the
new allies haven’t really changed their
thinking and are only trying to sow
heretical notions among the orthodox.
It is the second anxiety that animates
an unease among some progressives
about anti-Trump Republicans and con-
servatives. This has fostered a limited
but vocal backlash against the idea that
John Kasich, the Republican former
Ohio governor, might address the scaled-
back Democratic National Convention
on behalf of presumptive nominee Joe
Biden.
The easy answer to this apprehension
is to say that if you believe (as I certainly
do) that defeating President Trump is the
prerequisite for anything good happen-
ing again in American politics, you
should welcome everyone willing to help
get the job done. And in light of Trump’s
threats to challenge the results if he
loses, the health of our democracy may
depend on Biden’s winning by a land-
slide that would leave not a smidgen of
doubt about what the voters were saying.
This is an all-hands-on-deck proposition.
But let’s not get too far ahead of
ourselves: If the race tightens, the Re-
publican converts could be essential to
getting Biden over the line.
Finally, for a progressive program to
have any chance in Congress, the Demo-
crats will have to take over the Senate.
The bigger Biden’s m argin, the better the
chances of this happening.
I believe all this. Ye t don’t dismiss
progressives who worry that some
among the anti-Trump Republicans
would like Biden to win but be hobbled
by a Republican Senate and thus ren-
dered powerless to do anything of
i mportance.
I share the deep frustration of the
convert-skeptics with a Republican Party
that in the past used some of the very
themes that propelled Trump to power
(on immigration and race especially) to
win majorities on behalf of a corporate
agenda — and to pack the courts with
conservatives who will continue to foil
progressive advances on voting rights,
political reform and economic
r egulation.
To these progressives, I’d argue that
the point of this election, besides defeat-
ing Trump, is to shift the country’s
political dynamic as decisively in their
direction as Ronald Reagan did toward
conservatives in 1980. And doing so
requires not only welcoming new part-
ners, but also nurturing their second
thoughts about a conservative project to
which many of them dedicated their
lives.
As a practical matter, Reagan won
because a majority of the electorate was
upset over the state of the economy and
frustrated by the ongoing Iran hostage
crisis. But he pulled politics and the
intellectual center of gravity to the right
by splitting the old New Deal alignment.
Neoconservatives, after all, were disillu-
sioned liberal intellectuals, and Reagan
Democrats, as the phrase itself suggests,
were once supporters of FDR and JFK.
Now, a similar opportunity beckons
the left and center-left.
Yes, some Biden Republicans just
want to beat Trump and then get back to
business as usual. (I still welcome their
votes and appreciate their moral revul-
sion over what my Post colleague George
F. Will recently called a “gangster
r egime.”)
But others are angry at t he entire GOP.
They are willing to acknowledge, in the
wake of the Trump follies and the pan-
demic, that endless rounds of tax cuts for
the wealthy and knee-jerk deregulation
have damaged our society. Many of them
accept that we need a new and far more
equitable social contract. See, for exam-
ple, the rebellious libertarians at the
Niskanen Center. The think tank’s schol-
ars are not as social-democratic as I’d
wish them to be, but they have broken
decisively with conservative shibboleths.
This, by the way, is why I have a soft
spot for Kasich despite my disagree-
ments with him on many matters, in-
cluding his (fortunately failed) union-
busting efforts in Ohio.
In 2013, Kasich broke with Republi-
cans in his legislature to fight for the
Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.
He argued that a person would ultimate-
ly be judged by “what you did for the
poor.” A devout Christian, he didn’t talk
much about his faith when he cam-
paigned for president in 2016 because, he
explained, he didn’t want to “cheapen
the brand of God.” Would that more of
Trump’s religious apologists pondered
this.
That Trump and Trumpism create a
national emergency is reason enough to
pitch a very big tent. But this election
could also open the way for a durable
shift in the nation’s dominant public
philosophy toward social decency and
greater equality. A t ransformation of that
sort requires the witness of converts.
Twitter: @EJDionnee.J. dionne JR.Progressive
Democrats
should want
a bigger tent
P
resident Trump’s contempt for
the Constitution is deepening at
an accelerating pace.
How can I tell?
In a June 28 column, I updated the
articles of impeachment, imagining as a
thought experiment that the Senate had
postponed action at the beginning of the
year rather than voting to acquit. Based
on Trump’s behavior in the intervening
five months and what we had learned of
his earlier actions, I argued that at least
four new articles were warranted.
Now, only four weeks later, there’s
enough misbehavior to lengthen the in-
dictment just as much again.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that
the House should again impeach the
president. It’s up to the voters to render
judgment, and we will have our chance
soon enough.
But the thought experiment is valu-
able as a measure of whether Trump was
chastened by becoming only the third
president in history to be impeached, as
some Republican senators assured us he
would be — and as a warning of what we
might expect if he is returned to office for
a second term.
You will recall that Trump was im-
peached on two counts: abuse of power,
for withholding aid and a White House
meeting in a corrupt attempt to extort
political favors from the president of
Ukraine; and obstruction of Congress,
for refusing to cooperate with the legiti-
mate House inquiry into his scheme.
In June, I proposed four additional
articles. The first was for willful endan-
germent of the American people, for
political ends, with his fatally negligent
response to the covid- 19 pandemic.
Trump decided that his reelection de-
pended on reopening, so he ignored his
own scientists’ advice and undermined
governors’ leadership with calls to “liber-
ate” the states. The result: a pandemic
out of control. In just the past six weeks,
the number of cases has doubled from
2 million to 4 million.
Ye t, as that has been unfolding, the
White House engaged in a bizarre cam-
paign to discredit the nation’s top
i nfectious-disease doctor, Anthony S.
Fauci. And Trump continues to belittle
testing, the essential tool for reopening.
Let’s add those to the indictment.
My month-old Article 2, abuse of law-
enforcement powers, will have to be
retopped, because the offenses I included
a month ago pale beside the recent,
reckless deployment of federal forces
into U.S. cities for political purposes. As
my c olleague Ruth Marcus wrote, “Some-
thing terrible, something dangerous —
and, yes, something unconstitutional —
is happening in Portland, Ore.” — where,
over the objections of the governor and
mayor, unbadged federal agents have
swept peaceful protesters into unmarked
vans and detained them. All so that
Trump can posture as a “law-and-order”
president.
My Article 3, abuse of appointment
power, will have to be updated, too, now
that the courageous Lt. Col. Alexander
Vindman has been not only drummed
out of the White House but bullied out of
the military altogether.
Article 4, abuse of power in foreign
affairs, gets a new count. The original
cited Trump’s acquiescence to China’s
concentration camps in western China in
exchange for the campaign help of prom-
ising to buy soybeans from Midwest
farmers.
Now we would have to add his unex-
plained, and thus far inexplicable, supine
acquiescence to Russia’s reported bounty
payments for the killing of U.S. service-
men in Afghanistan.
And we would need some new articles
as well, starting with Article 5: Abuse of
power for personal enrichment. The New
York Times reports that the U.S. ambas-
sador to Britain told several people in
2018 that Trump was pushing him to get
the British government to steer the lucra-
tive British Open golf tournament to a
Trump-owned resort in Scotland.
He hasn’t landed the tournament yet.
But attempted sleaze is still sleaze.
But if you want actual payments, we
have those, too, as Post reporter David
Fahrenthold has helped uncover. In this
election cycle, according to the Center for
Responsive Politics, Trump’s campaign,
Trump-affiliated committees and the
Trump-controlled Republican Party have
steered more than $4 million to Trump-
owned businesses. Those aren’t tax dol-
lars, true, but I would not want to be the
defense lawyer arguing in the U.S. Senate
that it’s perfectly fine to use donor funds
and the political process to enrich one-
self.
Article 6 would be abuse of the re-
prieve and pardon power. The Constitu-
tion allows the president to free felons,
including one who has been convicted of
lying to Congress and the FBI to protect
the president. That doesn’t make it okay.
Finally, Article 7 would charge Trump
with undermining faith in the electoral
process. The president’s lies about the
possibility of fraud in mail-in balloting,
combined with his threats to disregard
the results of the election, wouldn’t r egis-
ter as transgressions in the U.S. criminal
code. But could there be any higher crime
and misdemeanor than deliberately
seeking to suppress the vote, seed chaos
and lay the groundwork to obstruct a
peaceful transfer of power?
Well, maybe. Come back in a few
weeks.
[email protected]FRed HiaTTUpdating the
impeachment
articles, again
T
he Ronald Reagan Presiden-
tial Foundation and Institute,
which runs the 40 th presi-
dent’s library near Los Ange-
les, has demanded that President
Trump and the Republican National
Committee (RNC) quit raising cam-
paign money by using Ronald Rea-
gan’s name and likeness.
“It was simply handled with a
phone call mid-last week to the RNC,
and they agreed to stop,” Reagan
Foundation chief marketing officer
Melissa Giller said in an email
S aturday.
What came to the foundation’s at-
tention — and compelled officials
there t o complain — was a fundraising
email that went out July 19 with
“Donald J. Trump” identified as the
sender and a subject line that read:
“Ronald Reagan and Yours Truly.”
The solicitation offered, for a dona-
tion of $45 o r more, a “limited edition”
commemorative set featuring two
gold-colored coins, one with an image
of Reagan and one with an image of
Trump. T he coins were mounted with
a 1987 photograph of Reagan and
Trump shaking hands in a White
House receiving line — the type of
fleeting contact that presidents have
with thousands of people a year.
“Friend,” the fundraising email pur-
portedly from Trump said, “I just saw
our new Trump-Reagan Commemo-
rative Coin Sets and WOW, these
coins are beautiful - I took one look
and immediately knew that I wanted
YOU to have a set. These aren’t any
ordinary coins. They symbolize an
important time in our Nation. This
year, in addition to being re-elected as
YOUR President, it also marks the
40 th anniversary of our Nation’s
40 th President, Ronald Reagan. Un-
fortunately, we already sold out of the
first batch we had in stock. But I liked
these coins so much that I asked my
team to rush order another batch for
my TOP SUPPORTERS ONLY.”
It c autioned: “I’ve authorized a very
limited production of these iconic
coins, which i s why I’m ONLY offering
them to our top supporters, l ike YOU.
This offer is NOT available to the
general public, so please, do NOT
share this email with anyone.”
Proceeds from the coin sales wentto the Trump Make America Great
Again Committee, a joint fundraising
operation that benefits both the
Trump campaign and the RNC.
The joint committee website, where
the coins were for sale, noted: “The
President only authorized the produc-
tion of 5,000 sets of these iconic coins,
which is why we’re ONLY offering
them to our TOP supporters.”
In the 1990 s, both Reagan and his
wife Nancy signed legal documents
that granted the foundation sole
rights to their names, likenesses and
images. Of course, there are countless
photos and videos of Reagan that are
in the public domain. But the founda-
tion claims power to block them from
being used for commercial purposes
and political endorsements. When
Reagan Foundation officials were
made aware of the Trump email solici-
tation, they decided “within seconds”
to put a stop to it, said Giller.
Although the RNC accepted the
foundation’s demand regarding the
fundraising emails, “we still have a lot
of additional work,” Giller said. The
foundation is looking into how many
people might have seen the email and
how many of the coin sets were sold,
and may still decide to get lawyers
involved, she added.
Frederick J. R yan Jr., who chairs the
Reagan Foundation board, i s also p ub-
lisher and CEO of The Post. He de-
clined to offer a comment for this
column.
This isn’t the first time the
45th president has traded on the
name or likeness of the 40 th, who is
revered among conservatives, for his
own purposes. In July 2019, he shared
as “Cute!” a fake quote by Reagan that
was making its way around social
media. According to the apocryphal
story, Reagan upon meeting Trump
supposedly said: “For the life of me,
and I’ll never know how to explain it,
when I met that young man, I felt like I
was the one shaking hands with the
president.”
Trump continued to spread the
made-up quote, even though Joanne
Drake, the chief a dministrative officer
of the Reagan Foundation, had al-
ready told the fact-checking website
PolitiFact that Reagan “did not ever
say that about Donald Trump.”Relations between the Trump fam-
ily and the Reagan Foundation have
generally been cordial. Last Novem-
ber, Donald Trump Jr. appeared for a
lecture and book-signing at the Rea-
gan Library, for which the foundation
charged admission. The event sold
out.
“President Reagan was a proud Re-
publican and supporter of a party t hat
has carried on his fight for conserva-
tive principles of economic opportu-
nity and limited government. His like-
ness is used by thousands of Republi-
cans each year who gather around the
country for ‘Reagan Dinners,’ and his
library regularly hosts debates for our
presidential candidates,” RNC com-
munications director Michael Ahrens
said in an emailed statement. “Given
that the Reagan Foundation just re-
cently hosted the Trump family to
raise money for its organization and
has not objected to us using President
Reagan’s likeness before, their objec-
tion came as a surprise. Even though
we believe our use of the image was
appropriate, we will stop emailing this
fundraising solicitation as a courtesy.”
Nancy Reagan, who died in 2016,
was leery of those who invoked her
husband’s n ame, e ven in efforts to pay
tribute to him. In 2003, for instance,
she publicly opposed a push by con-
servative House Republicans to re-
place Franklin D. Roosevelt’s profile
on the dime with an image of Reagan,
who by then was nearing the end of his
battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
“While I can understand the inten-
tions of those seeking to place my
husband’s face on the dime, I do not
support this proposal and I am certain
Ronnie would not,” the former first
lady said. “When our country chooses
to honor a great president such as
Franklin R oosevelt by placing his like-
ness on our currency, it would be
wrong to remove him and replace h im
with another.”
Nancy Reagan understood that a
president’s place in history is pre-
cious, unique and vulnerable to the
opportunism of those who claim to
follow in his footsteps. I t is not hard to
imagine what she would have thought
of the “iconic” coins that Trump has
been hawking.
Twitter: @ktumultyKaRen TumulTyTrump’s Reagan coin scam
euroPeAn PressPhoto Agency (left) And AssociAted Press
President Trump and Ronald Reagan.the pandemic, which has resulted in
more than 35, 000 deaths.
If the rest of Europe were booming, it
might pull Italy out of its slump. But, of
course, most of Europe is not booming;
it’s also struggling to escape the same
coronavirus trap. Capital Economics
projects that in 202 0, GDP will drop
5 percent in Germany, 8 percent in
France and 12 percent in Spain.
What has so far prevented a debt
default has been the European Central
Bank (ECB), Europe’s equivalent of the
Federal Reserve.
It has been buying huge amounts of
Italian debt and other European bonds.
The ECB is Europe’s “lender of last
resort,” purchasing more than 100 bil-
lion of eurobonds a month, according to
Capital Economics. (At current ex-
change rates, 100 billion euros are worth
about $116 billion.) Although this has
preempted any default, it’s unclear how
long it can last.
Against this bleak backdrop, why have
Italy’s prospects improved?
The answer is this: The euro zone —
the 19 nations using the euro as their
money — is beginning to act more like a
cohesive unit rather than just a collec-
tion of countries.
There’s long been a struggle between
“northern” countries with stronger
economies (Germany, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Sweden and Austria) and
weaker “southern” countries (France,
Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece) as to
who s hould cover t he social a nd political
costs of recent economic crises. The rich
countries don’t think they should have
to rescue the poor countries, and the
poor countries say they can’t manageT
he odds of Europe solving its
“Italy problem” without disrupt-
ing the European Union or the
world economy just got a bit
better. The Italy problem, for those who
have forgotten or who never knew, is the
persistence of its massive governmental
debt, which in 2019 was reckoned at
135 percent of its economy (gross d omes-
tic product, or GDP). The danger is that
Italy defaults.
If this happened — that is, if Italy
could not meet its interest costs or
principal repayments — it could trigger
a global financial panic. To limit losses,
investors and traders would rush to sell
stocks, bonds and other financial assets.
The effect would be perverse. The waves
of selling would drive prices down even
further.
The trouble is that the pandemic has
weakened Italy’s already-precarious
economy. Under existing policies, gov-
ernment debt will rise to 162 percent of
GDP, estimates Capital Economics, a
major forecasting firm. Like most of
Europe and the United States, Italy is
already experiencing its worst recession
since World War II. GDP is expected to
fall 10 percent in 2020 , led by declines in
consumer spending (11.5 percent) and
business investment (21.3 percent). The
annual deficits add to governments’
accumulated debt.
In its forecast, Capitol Economics
cites two factors that have aggravated
the slump: weak tourism, which repre-
sents 5.5 percent of GDP, and Italians’
difficulty of working from their homes,
reflecting “the country’s notoriously bad
internet services.” Last but not least,
Italy had its devastating encounter withalone.
What happened at a recent summit
meeting of European leaders is that the
rich countries moved a few steps toward
the weak countries. Specifically, they
created a Recovery Fund worth 750 bil-
lion euros ($8 70 billion). This is an
economic stimulus that favors weaker
countries in at least two ways.
First, about half the funds ($435 bil-
lion) will be distributed as grants — that
is, t hey won’t have t o be repaid as before.
And second, the funds will be borrowed
by the E uropean Union and not, again as
before, by the individual countries. This
spreads the burden of repayment among
all E.U. countries: It is a subsidy for
weaker countries.
Granted, these steps are fairly techni-
cal and “in the weeds.” But they are
symbolically and substantively impor-
tant, as Nicolas Véron of the Peterson
Institute for International Economics
notes. “For the first time, the E.U. is
wielding significant financial firepower
on its own. It’s a very big deal,” he says.
Also significant, says the Wall Street
Journal, is that German Chancellor An-
gela Merkel favored the plan. Her sup-
port contrasts with her earlier opposi-
tion to debt relief. If she has permanent-
ly shifted, the change is enormously
significant. C ooperation is making head-
way against conflict.
To be sure, all is not sweetness and
light. The differences among the 27 E.U.
countries remain profound. Indeed, they
almost sabotaged the summit. Even if
Merkel has changed, she faces skeptical
public opinion at home. Is the latest
agreement too little, too late? Or is
Europe finally getting its act together?RobeRT J. samuelsonIs Europe finally coming together?