The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A25

I

t’s no coincidence that President Trump gave his metaphorical key ring a very hard jangle just as the Commerce Department published data showing that the second quarter was the worst for the U.S. economy in recorded history. There has never been a president better at distracting the media. Let me back up: The government on July 30 published its quarterly report on economic growth, offering a window on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. To say this glimpse was ugly deeply understates the picture. From the first of April to the end of June, the U.S. economy contracted by nearly 10 percent — a sharper drop than in the worst months of the Great Depression. “Worse than the Great Depression” was not the headline Trump was hoping for. But his power over the news cycle has been compared to a cat owner shaking keys in front of a kitten. Within minutes of the report, Trump tweeted a risible suggestion that the November election should be postponed. Off dashed the kittens. The economic report deserves more attention. The pandemic, and the global shutdown it provoked, is unprecedented in the age of data. Never before has an epidemic of infectious disease hit the modern, interconnected world so severe- ly. Covid-19 is, in every respect, a steep learning curve. If we ignore Trump’s shiny, bouncing keys, we can see that the administration’s happy-talk economic team, led by light- weights Larry Kudlow and Peter Navar- ro, cannot be trusted to teach us. They keep saying the economy will spring back — as it plunges over a cliff. The newly reported round of data started on April 1. A few weeks earlier, Trump had declared the national coronavirus emergency and the country locked down — an announcement that immediately caused the biggest drop in the nation’s economic output since the crash of 2008. That shocking initial jolt is not included in the new numbers; it was reported in the previous quarter. In other words, “worse than the Great Depression” is piled on top of “worst since the Great Recession.” No wonder the president preferred to go into tin-pot dictator mode. Better to be denounced as a tyrant than to be held accountable for this disaster. Of course, the president’s idea of accountability is to take responsibility only when the economic news is good. Why, just a few weeks ago, Trump was bragging about the success of his rush to reopen. That’s right: Bored with the work of controlling the pandemic — or as he likes to call it, “the sniffles” — Trump em- braced the freedom of Americans to crowd into bars and political rallies without masks on. For a couple of upbeat weeks, unemployment numbers were moving in the right direction. No key- jangling then. Hailing the May jobless numbers, Trump “took a victory lap” on June 5, according to the Associated Press. “This shows what we’ve been doing is right,” he boasted. A month later, after more good numbers, Trump said the June economy was “spectacular news for American workers and American families.” All of that victorious, spectacular news is factored into the worst gross domestic product number in recorded history. All of Trump’s magic is there to behold. Since the, um, spectacular news early in July, new covid-19 infections have risen to all-time highs. Deaths nation- wide have again surged past 1,000 per day. Planned reopenings are being scaled back or canceled. Major companies are announcing mass layoffs. Three of the four largest state economies — Califor- nia, Texas and Florida — are reeling, gut-punched. The dollar has taken its steepest fall in a decade as the Federal Reserve opens box after box of Monopoly money. That’s how the story begins for Quar- ter No. 3. Unemployment numbers, al- ready at record levels, are climbing again. Congress can’t seem to agree on additional relief to millions of jobless Americans who, at this rate, soon won’t have money for food or rent. Their suffering will push more businesses into bankruptcy. Banks are expecting to see more borrowers default. With tax collec- tions down sharply amid the crash, large-scale layoffs of state and local government workers are likely the next body blow in store. Wall Street, floating free from reality, bobs along like froth atop a tsunami. The money mavens like what they hear about a vaccine for the novel coronavirus just over the horizon. Haven’t they noticed that there is no surefire vaccine for influenza, HIV, viral pneumonia or the common cold? When did virus vaccines become so easy? Beyond that dodgy wager, the equity markets have become a casino full of bored online gamblers, awaiting the return of football. Enjoy it while the game lasts. Trump knows all about casinos. He used to own three in Atlantic City, until he ran them into the trash heap. (His last, Trump Taj Mahal, closed in 2016.) Then he started his new job. Trump went all-in, as gamblers say, on a wager that covid-19 would “go away.” No wonder he’d like to change the subject. Jangle, jangle. [email protected]

DAVID VON DREHLE

Trump rattles

the keys and

we look away

BY ALEXANDER S. VINDMAN

A

fter 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by Presi- dent Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career. This experience has been painful, but I am not alone in this ignomini- ous fate. The circumstances of my departure might have been more public, yet they are little different from those of dozens of other lifelong public servants who have left this administration with their integrity intact but their careers irreparably harmed. A year ago, having served the nation in uniform in positions of critical importance, I was on the cusp of a career-topping promotion to colonel. A year ago, unknown to me, my concerns over the president’s conduct and the president’s efforts to under- mine the very foundations of our democracy were precipitating trem- ors that would ultimately shake loose the facade of good governance and publicly expose the corruption of the Trump administration. At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritari- an regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving. Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents. Those who choose loyalty to American values and alle- giance to the Constitution over devo- tion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished. The presi-

dent recklessly downplayed the threat of the pandemic even as it swept through our country. The economic collapse that followed high- lighted the growing income dispari- ties in our society. Millions are griev- ing the loss of loved ones and many more have lost their livelihoods while the president publicly bemoans his approval ratings. There is another way. During my testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, I reassured my father, who experienced Soviet authoritarianism firsthand, saying, “Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.” Despite Trump’s retaliation, I stand by that conviction. Even as I experience the low of ending my military career, I have also experienced the loving support of tens of thousands of Americans. Theirs is a chorus of hope that drowns out the spurious attacks of a disreputable man and his sycophants. Since the struggle for our nation’s independence, America has been a union of purpose: a union born from the belief that although each individ- ual is the pilot of their own destiny, when we come together, we change the world. We are stronger as a woven rope than as unbound threads. America has thrived because citizens have been willing to contribute their voices and shed their blood to challenge injustice and protect the nation. It is in keeping with that history of service that, at this moment, I feel the burden to advocate for my values and an enormous urgency to act. Despite some personal turmoil, I remain hopeful for the future for both my family and for our nation. Im- peachment exposed Trump’s corruption, but the confluence of a pandemic, a financial crisis and the stoking of societal divisions has roused the soul of the American people. A ground-

swell is building that will issue a mandate to reject hate and bigotry and a return to the ideals that set the United States apart from the rest of the world. I look forward to contribut- ing to that effort. In retirement from the Army, I will continue to defend my nation. I will demand accountability of our leader- ship and call for leaders of moral courage and public servants of integrity. I will speak about the attacks on our national security. I will advocate policies and strategies that will keep our nation safe and strong against internal and external threats. I will promote public service and exalt the contribution that service brings to all areas of society. The 23-year-old me who was com- missioned in December 1998 could never have imagined the opportuni- ties and experiences I have had. I joined the military to serve the country that sheltered my family’s escape from authoritarianism, and yet the privilege has been all mine. When I was asked why I had the confidence to tell my father not to worry about my testimony, my re- sponse was, “Congressman, because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all my brothers have served, and here, right matters.” To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.

The writer, a career U.S. Army officer, served on the National Security Council as the director for Eastern European, Caucasus and Russian affairs, as the Russia political-military affairs officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as a military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

My career is over, but I still

believe in doing what’s right

ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is sworn in before a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in November.

over their markets. Now, it is not true, as some conservatives have suggested, that the banning of certain views by a tech giant represents the same magnitude of threat as the banning of certain views by government. Nor is it true that Amazon’s dominant share of e-commerce, more than a third of the total market, means it can jack up prices on consumers with impunity, as Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) implied regarding Amazon’s ac- quisition of Diapers.com. Conservative views are still readily available on the Internet, and Walmart still exists, so if Amazon raises prices too much, its cus- tomers can just get in their cars. But when things get big enough, differences in degree can, at least theoretically, become differences in kind. Employers have a legal right to discriminate against blond people, or people from Milwaukee or Yankees fans, because such prejudices are idiosyncratic and likely to be canceled out by the equally silly prejudices of oth- ers. Employers are rightly forbidden to discriminate by race, because too many people share the same bigotries. And so you can see why Republicans might get nervous when the vast majority of the employees at those firms seem to share the same narrow set of ideological commitments, and hostilities toward those who don’t agree. You can also under- stand why basic business behaviors, such as “crush the competition by all legal means,” might seem problematic when the result is a firm that doesn’t have much competition for its core business. One could ask, however, why Congress is finally raising these concerns during a pandemic. And I don’t mean only that Congress has more important tasks at hand. Think, for example, how many people

O

ne thing became clear on Wednes- day: Big Tech has no friends in Washington. The most successful tech CEOs were called before the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust to defend themselves from charges of anticompetitive behavior: Apple’s Tim Cook, Face- book’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (who o wns The Post). The usual format for these hearings is that one party is hostile to the witnesses, the other friendly. On Wednes- day, by contrast, the two sides took turns bashing away. You used to be able to rely on Republi- cans to defend big business as vigorously as Democrats attacked it, but those days seem to be over, in no small part because a few years back Silicon Valley became a little too open about the left-wing sympa- thies of its workforce. But not all the Republican discomfort can be attributed to revenge. Underneath the personal grievance you’ll find the same discomfort that Democrats are voicing with bigness — and the power it conveys. Facebook came under attack from the left for mergers and acquisitions that Democrats deemed anticompetitive; Google for its privacy policies; Amazon for allegedly using internal data to compete with independent sellers using its plat- form. From the right, Republicans vied to put companies on the record condemning China and “cancel culture” — in between lambasting them about content modera- tion policies that might disadvantage conservatives. Technology’s “network effects” — the fact that every user added to one of these platforms makes it more valuable to all the other users — have given these firms something close to a natural monopoly

have depended on Amazon for critical goods during the pandemic. Think how much it mattered that Amazon was a big, profitable company that had the money, and supply-chain muscle, to keep essen- tial goods moving when everything was freezing up. I don’t seek to praise my paper’s owner in particular. In general, it’s the big companies that have weathered this pandemic best. They have the capital reserves to avoid insolvency, the management layers to engage in covid risk assessment and planning, and the profit margins to reor- ganize their operations and facilities around hygiene rather than maximum efficiency. Even if you think they could have done a better job protecting workers and custom- ers — and many could have — they still performed far better than most small businesses, even in confederation, could have managed. And given the disproportionate pressures on small businesses, it is the big businesses that are going to lead the economic recovery when this crisis ends. Antitrust policy has always involved hefty trade-offs in efficiency, which is why Democratic antitrust warriors have long struggled in particular with the tech in- dustry, where forcing firms to stop com- peting quite so hard often means forcing consumers to pay another firm for features or services their friendly local quasi- monopolist was providing for free. But those trade-offs have never been more glaring, just when policymakers have finally decided to go after them. Perhaps that’s not a coincidence; perhaps that’s the point. We’ve just realized how much we need big business, and who ever wants to be the needier party in a two-way transaction? Twitter: @asymmetricinfo

MEGAN MCARDLE

Why Big Tech has no friends in Washington

W

hen Margaret Fuller, one of 19th-century America’s public intellectuals, grandly pro- claimed, “I accept the uni- verse,” Thomas Carlyle, the British histo- rian, reportedly said, “By gad, she’d better.” In 21st-century America, people worry about whether President Trump will “accept” defeat in the election. He’d better. Dignified comportment is not his strong suit, but surely he cannot equably contemplate being frogmarched out of the White House. Perhaps hoping to postpone that in- dignity, he has suggested postponing the election — supposedly to prevent fraud — which only Congress could do. Trump’s proposal performs a public service: With it, he probably — one cannot be certain — has finally unfurled a flag so bedraggled that not even congressional Republicans, those gluttons for servitude, will salute it. Today’s presidential noise aimed at fomenting doubts about election integrity should summon the nation to belated seriousness about preventing the calami- ty of a botched election. Low expecta- tions of government competence, although increasingly reasonable, are in- tolerable regarding this election, because governments often live down to expecta- tions. We know what to expect from Trump. Writing for the Bulwark, Kim Wehle, law professor and former U.S. attorney, notes that there are approximately 250 million voting-age Americans. Of those eligible to vote in 2016, Hillary Clinton received votes from 29 percent, Trump from 28 percent — and 39 percent did not vote. A Knight Foundation study of 12,000 “chronic non-voters” found that more than a third abstain because they think their votes do not matter or that “the system is rigged.”

In a normal year, a 60 percent turnout of eligible voters — the 2016 rate — would be sufficient. Normally, it is not urgent, or even prudent, to hector and prod to the polls people so uninterested in the nation’s civic life that they must be hectored and prodded. This, however, is not a normal year, because the nation’s chief executive, possibly anticipating a defeat in the electoral college as well as in the popular vote, is sowing the suspicion that the election will be rigged — stolen by floods of fraudulent votes. This suspicion will ferment in a substantial minority of American minds. Although the polls look bad for Trump’s future, they look even worse for the nation’s. The fact that 46 percent of those who voted in 2016 opted for Trump is much less dismaying than the fact that today, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, 43 percent approve of his job performance. In 2016, he was a largely undefined figure to low-information voters, who are a large majority. Now, however, everyone has had 31 / 2 y ears of expo- sure to him, and more than 2 in 5 Americans seem amenable to four more years of this. Three things are clear. First, Trump will again lose the popular vote. Second, if he loses it narrowly, he will claim — as he did when he won in 2016, and as he is beginning to do preemptively — that fraud produced his margin of defeat. Third, many — perhaps most — of his voters, in their inexhaustible credulity, will agree. So, this year every vote cast against him — not just in the relatively few swing states but also in states he will carry easily and those he will lose decisively — matters. The larger his national popular vote margin of defeat, the more his predictable sore-loser whining will seem not just contemptible but risible. Hence it is imperative that the conduct of this election depend as little as possi- ble on the U.S. Postal Service and state and local governments doing unusually difficult things. Polling places must be staffed during a pandemic. There will be unprecedented demands for mail ballots, which must be tabulated quickly. The Republic’s domestic tranquility depends on encouraging a historic level of early voting. In 2016, more than 41 percent of ballots were cast before Election Day. Ideally, 70 percent will be this year. To minimize the scope for Trump’s sociopathy, the nation needs a timely determination of the outcome — before sunrise Wednesday, Nov. 4. To facilitate this — to prevent days or even weeks of uncertainty, during which Trump can fertilize discord — states should immediately stipulate that mailed ballots must be postmarked five days before Election Day, so that count- ing can be completed by that evening. During World War II, the nation bought 60,000 acres of eastern Tennes- see wilderness and built an instant city — streets, houses, schools, shops and the world’s most sophisticated scientific facilities in Oak Ridge, a component of the Manhattan Project. Americans can do amazing things when alarmed, as they should be about administering the 2020 election. [email protected]

GEORGE F. WILL

Tranquility

depends on a

historic level

of early voting

This year, every vote cast

against Trump matters.

The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

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