FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
FRIDAY Opinion
T
wo weeks after the defeat of a
president who campaigned
against globalization, former
New York mayor Mike Bloom-
berg will gather the Davos crowd for a
virtual conference. The event next week
is called the “New Economy Forum,” but a
subtitle might be “Back to the Future.”
The gathering is a “who’s who” of the
order that Donald Trump rebelled
against. The prime minister of India, the
vice president of China, the heads of the
United Nations and all the major interna-
tional organizations, the CEOs of the
world’s biggest banks and tech compa-
nies — the masters of the universe who
seemed, momentarily, to be in retreat but
remain as potent as ever. The idea that
their global power would vanish was a
Trumpian illusion.
Bloomberg spoke with me this week
about the gathering, joined by two of the
most prominent Americans who will
speak at the event: Henry Kissinger, the
former secretary of state, and Henry
Paulson, the former treasury secretary.
These three embody what in pre-Trump
days was known as the Establishment.
They fought its battles and have the scars
to show. They are the residue of U.S. pow-
er that persists as Trump’s presidency
begins to swirl down the drain.
What advice does this group offer for
President-elect Joe Biden? Pretty much
what you’d expect: Govern from the
center; expand dialogue with traditional
allies and new rivals; mobilize great
corporations and international organiza-
tions to solve big problems. Don’t be
afraid of power; use it for the common
good.
“Vengeance may be sweet, but it
does n’t accomplish anything,” Bloom-
berg told me. Asked about the political
center, which Bloomberg tried to capture
during his spectacularly expensive presi-
dential bid, he made an intriguing com-
ment: “The ‘center’ is like quantum me-
chanics — you’re never quite sure where
it is, and when you try to measure it, it
goes away.” Politics isn’t binary. “The
world is not yes or no.”
Kissinger did as much as anyone alive
to create the modern global order and,
love him or hate him (I’m in the former
category), he remains an intense intellec-
tual presence. I asked him whether there
are lessons we can draw from his brilliant
1957 book, “A World Restored,” a study of
the diplomacy of the 1815 Congress of
Vienna, which brought balance between
the established and rising powers of the
day. Does that era have any applicability
to the imbalance between the United
States, China and today’s other rising
powers?
Kissinger, 97, took a long pause (the
thought bubble over his head might have
said: “Really?”) and then produced a
compelling response. Reestablishing a
successful global order today would re-
quire the same tools as in 1815: An
architecture that assures mutual security
for all the major powers; a common
purpose on big issues, even as other
rivalries continue; and an intellectual
framework that anchors rapidly chang-
ing technology to clear philosophical
principles.
Paulson’s focus was China, a country in
which he probably has better high-level
contacts today than any other American.
He illustrates how the elite consensus
toward China has shifted from optimistic
encouragement of its rise to a far more
wary stance. He cautioned that the
U.S.-China relationship would remain
“fraught for the foreseeable future” and
said the Trump administration has been
“largely right” in taking a tougher line on
trade, technology theft and other issues.
He was supportive, too, of Trump’s effort
to prevent China from dominating 5G
telecommunications and other sectors.
“Clearly, we’ll need to sequester some
technologies to protect them,” he said.
But he urged constructing “a high fence
around a smaller yard, rather than trying
to build a moat around everything.”
Paulson also offered an emphatic
war ning about keeping U.S.-China com-
petition within bounds and avoiding
what he called an “economic iron cur-
tain” that would be self-destructive.
“What I really worry about is that in the
effort to isolate China, the U.S. will end
up hurting itself,” he said. “Our core
strength is innovation and openness.”
These three are creatures of the center,
like Biden himself. Bloomberg is a one-
time Republican, if a quixotic Manhattan
version of the breed, who spent $500 mil-
lion to support Democrats and defeat
Trump. Kissinger has advised every
U.S. president since John F. Kennedy.
Paulson worked closely with Democrats
to prevent a meltdown of the global
financial system after the Wall Street
collapse of 2008.
The grandees who attend next week’s
“New Economy” gathering may be listen-
ing to an old record, but I don’t think it’s
broken. Biden’s task is to reinvent the
center so that it doesn’t seem so soggy
and, well... old. But, folks, this is
Joe’s terrain, and there’s a w orld out there
waiting for him to resume the
c onversation.
Twitter: @IgnatiusPostDAVID IGNATIUSThe global
establishment
has a few tips
for Joe Biden
D
on’t listen to lying Republicans,
like Sen. Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (Ky.), who say Presi-
dent Trump “has every right to
look into allegations” in an attempt to
overturn the election. This is nonsense.
Trump has no “right” to file frivolous
lawsuits in bad faith and demand re-
counts that have no chance of changing
the outcome. He has no “right” to make
wild claims of fraud without presenting a
shred of credible evidence. He has no
“right” to delay and disrupt the most
important performative act in our democ-
racy — t he peaceful and orderly transfer
of power. But he does have a duty to his
country, and, like with so many other
obligations, Trump is neglecting it to the
point of abuse.
Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris won an
election that was not all that close, and
GOP quislings McConnell, Sen. Ted Cruz
(Tex.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.)
know it. They know this is nothing like the
cliffhanger of 2000, which hinged on a
few hundred votes in a single state. Trump
is trying — or pretending to try — to
somehow change or nullify hundreds of
thousands of votes in at least six states.
In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ne-
vada, attorneys pressing Trump’s “elec-
tion fraud” lawsuits have basically been
laughed out of court. In Georgia and
Wisconsin, election officials confidently
predict recounts will not erase Biden’s
five-figure leads. In Arizona, where some
news organizations still decline to call the
race, the Republican attorney general
says he believes Trump — trailing by more
than 11,000 votes — i s “very, highly unlike-
ly” to triumph there, either.
As Republican eminence grise Karl
Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal,
“the president’s efforts are unlikely to
move a s ingle state from Mr. Biden’s
column, and certainly they’re not enough
to change the final outcome.” But he made
this acknowledgment only after first
quoting McConnell’s nonsense about
Trump being “within his rights” to make
specious legal challenges. That’s not good
enough.
All Republican officials should im-
mediately do what a scant fe w, such as
Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), have done:
Congratulate President-elect Biden and
wish him well, just as Democrats congrat-
ulated Trump in 2016.
Some Republicans have reportedly
said privately that they are just giving
Trump time to “process” his loss. Do they
think he’s a c hild? Is he really so emotion-
ally immature? He has had plenty of
setbacks in his life — multip le bankrupt-
cies, two divorces. He kn ew he was likely
to lose this election and had plenty of time
to prepare his tender ego for the blow.
More likely, McConnell and the rest are
more concerned about the bruised feel-
ings of Trump’s millions of voters. Repub-
licans are looking ahead to the Jan. 5
runoffs in Georgia that will determine
control of the Senate. Republicans believe
they need Trump’s base to prevail — and
fear that if they don’t indulge his fantasy
of having won an election he clearly lost,
Trump could be indifferent or even hostile
regarding the two crucial Senate contests.
Potential contenders for the GOP presi-
dential nomination in 2024 — among
them Cruz, Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Sen.
Marco Rubio (Fla.) — have even more
reason to avoid crossing Trump and an-
gering his most passionate supporters.
That is probably why Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo, an ambitious man, made
his dangerous and appalling wisecrack
about “a smooth transition to a second
Trump administration.”
It is wrong to write off such cynicism as
“just politics.” This is the one moment in
the life of our democracy when we pre-
tend politics don’t exist, when we act as if
the tribal identities “Democrat” and “Re-
publican” are made insignificant by our
common identity as Americans. The af-
termath of a presidential election is a
ritual, a s et-piece in which everyone plays
an assigned role, and it is vitally impor-
tant.
The loser congratulates the winner.
The winner finds something nice to say
about the loser. The president invites the
winner and their spouse to the White
House for a chat. A transition begins —
the handoff not just of power but also of
legitimacy.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did
all of this, and more, for Trump in 2016. He
refuses to do the same for Biden, breaking
a tradition that goes back to 1801 when
John Adams handed power and legitima-
cy to his bitter political enemy, Thomas
Jefferson.
The symbolism of a graceful conces-
sion is more important than the nuts and
bolts of the handoff, especially for a
p resident-elect with Biden’s vast experi-
ence, though especially in this pandemic,
the nuts and bolts do matter. The Biblical
book of Hebrews defines faith as “the
substance of things hoped for, the evi-
dence of things not seen.” Trump is petu-
lantly weakening a divided nation’s faith
in its hoped-for and unseen foundational
ideals — a nd of all the terrible things this
awful man has done to our country, this
could be the worst.
Twitter: @Eugene_RobinsonEUGENE ROBINSONTrump chases
his ‘rights’
and neglects
his duty
T
he predictions most people
make about the outcome of this
election are probably right.
President Trump’s refusal to
concede to Joe Biden will not change
reality. His lawsuits appear to be going
nowhere, with one judge describing a
Trump campaign legal brief as “inad-
missible hearsay within hearsay.” Re-
publican state legislators are not going
to designate their own slates of electors
in defiance of the duly recorded vote
totals. So, once all the ranting and suing
is over, Biden will almost certainly be
inaugurated as president of the United
States on Jan. 20.
But Trump is attacking, defaming
and delegitimizing U.S. elections in a
manner unprecedented in the country’s
history. His obstructionism won’t keep
him in power, but it will deeply wound
America’s democratic culture. He is
whipping his base into a frenzy about a
stolen election, and few of them are
going to change their minds because of
court decisions and recounts. The con-
spiracy theory of the stolen election of
2020 is here to stay.
A reminder: Whatever one may say
about Democratic anger and allega-
tions after 2016, Hillary Clinton con-
ceded to Trump the night of the election
and made her formal concession speech
the next day, saying, “I congratulated
Donald Trump and offered to work with
him on behalf of our country. I h ope
that he will be a successful president for
all Americans.” The following day, Pres-
ident Barack Obama invited Trump to
the White House, spent an hour and a
half talking with him and promised full
cooperation for a successful transition.The historical parallel that seems
most appropriate today is a very dark
one. After Germany surrendered at the
end of World War I, ultra-right-wing
groups concocted the myth that Ger-
many was actually on the verge of
winning the war in November 1918 but
surrendered because of a conspiracy to
destroy the country plotted by certain
communists and Jews. In his book, “The
Death of Democracy,” historian Benja-
min Carter Hett explains why this “stab
in the back” theory endured: “The trau-
ma of defeat left millions of Germans
believing a particular narrative about
the war not because it was demonstra-
bly true, but because it was emotionally
necessary.” Adolf Hitler often raised the
topic during his rise to power. During a
1922 speech, he said, “We must call to
account the November criminals of- It cannot be that two million
Germans should have fallen in vain and
that afterwards one should sit down as
friends at the same table with traitors.
No, we do not pardon, we demand —
Vengeance!”
Today, Newt Gingrich says, “I think
[Biden] would have to do a lot to
convince Republicans that this is any-
thing except a left-wing power grab
financed by people like George Soros,
deeply laid in at the local level.... It’s
very hard for me to understand how
we’re going to work together.” Trump
retweeted a video of actor Jon Voight
saying, “This is now our greatest fight
since the Civil War, the battle of righ-
teousness versus Satan. Yes, Satan, be-
cause these leftists are evil, corrupt and
they want to tear down this nation....
Let us fight this fight as if it is our last
fight on Earth.”
Historian Timothy Snyder points to
the danger of such rhetoric: “If you have
been stabbed in the back, then every-
thing is permitted. Claiming that a fair
election was foul is preparation for an
election that is foul. If you convince
your voters that the other side has
cheated, you are promising them that
you yourself will cheat next time. Hav-
ing bent the rules, you then have to
break them.”
A political system is not simply a
collection of laws and rules. It is also an
accumulation of norms and behavior.
When Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) says Trump is
“100 percent within his rights” to be-
have as he is, he is missing this crucial
distinction. There is a reason past presi-
dents have conceded defeat when it was
statistically clear that they had lost,
without waiting for the last vote to be
counted. And Trump’s defeat is deci-
sive. Biden is on track to win as many
electoral votes as Trump did in 2016.
Biden’s margin in Georgia, which he
will probably narrowly win, is more
than 25 times larger than the difference
in Florida between George W. Bush and
Al Gore in 2000. Biden enjoys a larger
margin in Pennsylvania than Trump got
in 2016.
It is a cliche to say, but it ’s true:
Democracy is above all about the peace-
ful transfer of power. Trump is shred-
ding those norms for his own egotistical
needs. But his actions today will have a
large and lasting effect on this country’s
politics for decades, creating a cancer
that will metastasize in gruesome ways.
[email protected]FAREED ZAKARIAThe damage he is causing
will far outlast Trump himself
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Trump in the White House briefing room on Nov. 5.much of his rise to prominence by happily
inhabiting the role of birther in chief.
More ominously, leading figures on the
right have openly abandoned the obvious
standard that those who bring allegations
should also bring evidence. This is not a
recent development.
Let me share a 2017 email exchange
between myself and Fox News host Tucker
Carlson after he broadcast my face on his
television show and permitted his guest,
conservative activist Charlie Kirk, to false-
ly allege that, in my classroom at Harvard,
I taught that the rise of Trump was similar
to the rise of Hitler. Immediately follow-
ing that broadcast, I received death
threats called into my office phone. I
wrote to both Fox News and Carlson
requesting a correction. I r eceived none.
Here is the exchange that resulted:
Danielle Allen: You failed to vet your
interviewee for factual accuracy or to take
responsibility for the falsehoods articulat-
ed on your show.
Tucker Carlson: How would I have
vetted that claim? You compared Trump’s
election to the rise of Hitler in the Wash-
ington Post. It didn’t seem outlandish to
suggest that you might teach similar
things in class. And, in fact, I still have no
evidence that you haven’t taught that in
class. How can I veri fy that?
Allen: Before accepting the interview,
you should have asked him for his sources.
Journalism should be based on facts, not
your gut instinct for what is or is not
outlandish. You were broadcasting a na-
tional story that directly affects people’s
professional reputations. Also, even here,
in this email, you are inaccurate. I wrote
my piece in [February] 2016. Trump was
not yet even the party nominee. I d id not
ever compare his election to the rise of
Hitler. Not in print, not orally, ever. I
compared his fast rise within a fractured
Republican party during the primary to
Hitler’s rise in a s imilarly fractured Ger-
many.
Carlson: I’m committed to accuracy.I
n an important recent book, “How
Democracies Die,” the political scien-
tists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Lev-
itsky argue that healthy democracies
depend on two key norms: mutual tolera-
tion and institutional forbearance. Mu-
tual toleration involves accepting the le-
gitimacy of on e’s opponents, as long as
they play by the constitutional rules. Insti-
tutional forbearance means refusing to
exercise the full extent of a l egal right if it’s
the morally wrong thing to do or violates
the spirit of the law. These two norms are
important, and they have been under
pressure for some time in our democracy.
But Ziblatt and Levitsky missed another
important norm: Don’t make unsubstan-
tiated allegations or false accusations.
It’s a s tandard that is being violated
daily by those disputing Joe Biden’s victo-
ry in the presidential election.
This norm is truly fundamental to a
rule-of-law system because that system
swings an immensely expensive appara-
tus into operation in response to allega-
tions. Responding to an allegation in
court requires the expenditure of public
funds, as well as the expense of time,
money and energy of the parties. When
the allegation is false, it is equivalent to
the brazen theft of the victim ’s reputation
and standing in the community, and the
fight to repair the damage can eviscer ate
that person’s life force. It also diminishes
the value and viability of the legal system
as a whole, gumming up the works, under-
mining legitimacy and confidence in the
fairness of our system. A healthy legal
system requires that we minimize false
accusations.
This is why we have penalties for frivo-
lous lawsuits throughout our legal system
— state and federal.
President Trump’s challenge to vote
counts — c ommunicated mostly through
angry tweets and thus-far baseless and
specious lawsuits — has been rife with
such accusations. This shouldn’t perhaps
surprise us from someone who gainedYou say you’ve never compared Trump’s
rise to Hitler’s rise in class. How can we
prove that?
Allen: Basic journali stic protocol
would suggest that you should have begun
by asking Mr. Kirk that sort of question.
Carlson: I had no idea he was going to
say you’d made that comparison in class.
I’d be happy to correct the record. Just
send me conclusive evidence you’ve never
made that comparison while teaching.
Thanks.
Allen: You have my word and until
Mr. Kirk provides you with any evidence
to support his claim or any sources for his
claim, the burden is not on me.
Carlson: I hear that a lot, unfortunate-
ly.
In ancient Greece, Athenian democrats
understood that establishing social sanc-
tions against false accusations — and
avoiding situations in which people are
being asked to prove a negative — w as one
of the most important pillars of maintain-
ing a healthy democratic culture. For this
rea son, they reserved one of their most
bitter epithets for people who trafficked in
false accusations. They were “syco-
phants,” a colorful and metaphorical
Greek word whose literal meaning of
“fig-sucker” hardly disguises its vulgar
connotations. Sycophants were the lowest
of the low because they took the best of
democracy — the rule of law, process and
procedure — and sought to turn it against
itself to incapacitate opponents and se-
cure power.
For us, the meaning of the word has
changed. No longer does it name the
person who traffics in false accusations.
Instead, it refers to the person who se-
cures power through deceitful enable-
ment of the powerful. But it seems like
we’ve got plenty of both problems on our
hands these days.Danielle Allen, a Post contributing columnist, is
the author of “Cuz: The Life and Times of
Michael A.”DANIELLE ALLENThe danger of false allegations