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Borchers of the Washington Post reflects on why president Trump gave the long rambling interview in July 2017 to the NYT.  President Trump has  called the NYT both "failing" and "a crown jewel." He particularly respects the reporter Maggie Haberman, a reporter with whom Trump has a long relationship and whose reporting he respects. Haberman is seen by Trump as an influential political reporter, whose view counts, and who can be critical but also seeks to be fair in reporting. During the election campaign the NYT carried reporting critical of Trump, yet it also had reporters who were critical of Hillary Clinton. In many ways both the NYT and the WSJ from different points of view seek a place in the middle with fair reporting, needed particularly in today's politics where ideology sometimes trumps common sense and U.S. traditions of fairness.

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Matt Miller, a former Clinton aide, says both U.S. parties have failed to do serious problem solving. The reason is that both are looking primarily for election advantage and are not interested in blending the best of liberal and conservative thinking. He even goes so far as to say both parties don't trust the public enough to lay out all the facts openly and explain what action needs to be taken. This is clearly true in one of many examples- the way Clinton advisor Bowles and Republican Senator Simpson took up the job of coming up with a deficit reduction plan looking at things from all angles, and laying out all the facts. Contrast that with the way a Democratic president Obama shied away from openly discussing Bowles-Simpson's closing of most tax expenditures as a key a part of a new action plan. Republican leaders Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, instead of seriously challenging the Democrats to take up the Bowles-Simpson or Rivlin-Domenici proposals, focussed their attention on defunding the government unless certain conditions were met. Serious debates and discussion that should have taken place to arrive at a consensus never took place, eroding the credibility of politicians of both parties, as Miller points out. The failure of leadership brings America back to its roots in community organizing through independent intitiative at all levels for crucial problem-solving discussion. This is the way to arrive at a consensus of what needs to be done for renewing America....

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Over the last ten years average growth in real per capita income has averaged 1.6%, with declines only in two years of the last twenty years, 2008 with the global financial crisis, and in 1991 a year before President George H.W. Bush lost the election to Clinton. A forecast by Mark Zandl of Moody's Economy.com shows real disposable income per capita is expected to increase by 0.4% by the end of the third quarter of 2010 from a year earlier. This will show up in consumer spending and will weaken the recovery. It is also likely to be reflected in elections in the latter part of 2010.

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Sharp swings in attitudes have left America divided in terms of education. A comparable situation exists also in the UK as areas with more education access have separated from areas with less access to higher education. As the WSJ analysis points out at one time social cohesion prevailed in the postwar years till 1970 with educational attainment playing a small part leaving social cohesion intact. Even in the period 1970-1990 when there was a shift for college educated women to prefer Democratic Party and white men without a college degree to prefer Republicans this was not a significant gap. The Democratic Party appealed to less educated union voters in manufacturing industries as well as it did with college educated men and women. This gradually fractured during the Clinton and Obama administrations as the Democratic Party  moved closer to the higher educated and drawing more support from new tech industries than manufacturing. Nowhere is this more evident  than in the way college educated women have shifted to the Democratic Party and white men without a college degree have moved to the Republican Party. Swings of different types are normal in elections and politics. But swings purely based on education are rare in American politics and not healthy for the democratic system of government. As the analysis from WSJ/NBC News shows college educated women favor Democratic Party by 33 percent margin. And the swing is even deeper for white men without a college educated degree who favor Republican by a 42% margin. This is the situation before the 2018 U.S. Congressional elections. The combined group of college educated women and white men without a college degree make up 40% of the U.S. voting public. This makes each group unreachable for the other party, a situation unimaginable for many of America's leaders if they would be living today- from presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. White voters make up 70% of the electorate, and a situation where they would be unreachable for Democrats would be unthinkable or unimaginable for Truman, John Kennedy. And Eisenhower would also find it unimaginable that he would have to writeoff college educated women in his campaign.  By returning the Labour Party to its roots Britain is combatting this tendency for fracturing of social cohesion. In the way the UK's Blair administration moved away from Labour party's roots in manufacturing and the trade unions, the Democratic administrations under Clinton and Obama  moved away from manufacturing industries and the trade unions.   Most of the postwar leaders of the stature of Eisenhower and Kennedy would have seen such a situation as a significant failure in political leadership. ...

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Obama picks many Californians for his energy and EPA team. Carol Browner Clinton era EPA head takes over as climate change czar at the White House, and Lisa Jackson of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection takes on the EPA head position. Steven Chu who heads the Larence Berkeley National Lab will be Energy Secretary. Add Nacy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and Henry Waxman in Congress all Californians to the team. Colorado Senator Ken Salazar becomes Interior secretary. It will take on a host of challenges in this area to give the US a new energy and environmental protection agenda and policies after years of neglect.

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Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State under president Clinton, describes her meetings with Havel. She describes him as a principled man more concerned with a moral sense of the universe, and affirmation of human values and liberty. She quotes from Havel's writings to show his extraordinary sense of the values of liberty, democracy and ethics. At the same time Havel was able to put this into action, says Albright, as he helped manage the transition to democracy, preserved unity in the Czech Republic, and guided the Czech Republic into NATO and the European Union. Albright is a U.S. citizen of Czech origin and was actively in touch with Czech leaders during the transition to democracy.

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Timeline in NYT on DJT-Jamieson USTR  Tariffs to March 13, 2025. Reciprocal tariffs to go into effect April 2, 2025 on Mexico and Canada. Reciprocal tariffs are seen as based on fairness- "we charge them what they charge us."  Why is this action necessary?  Because Canada, Mexico, EU, South Korea, Japan, China gained unfair advantages due to the inaction of administrations dating back to Clinton, Bush, Obama which were never reversed. Other nations have no incentive to trade on the principle of fairness inducing the US to take action to open discussions on fair trade and on what the tariffs should be going forward from 2025. US Trade Representative Lighthizer under DJT first term was Deputy Trade Representative under Reagan when he negotiated fair trade with the Japanese in the 1980's who he says stalled and stalled till finally agreeing to real discussions. So this is nothing new China, Canada and Mexico have taken the place of Japan. In this second term of DJT Lighthizer's Deputy Trade Representative is now the US Trade Representative. This means the discussions are in the hands of seasoned American trade officials with a keen grasp of details supported by Scott Bessent at Treasury and Luttnick at Commerce Department. What it is NOT is an effort to coerce other nations by the US. Like Japan in the 1980's with Reagan and Lighthizer as USTR, in 2025 China, Canada, Mexico, South Korea Taiwan and other nations would like to slow this return to fair trade by stalling and stalling, and presenting a different picture of the facts. But will that work? As it did not with Japan in the 1980's when Lighthizer got them to sit down to have real discussions on fair trade. ...

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is pushing for a large pandemic stimulus package to ensure the recovery of ordinary Americans after suffering through this pandemic. Yellensays: "We need to make sure that people aren't going hungry in America, that they can put food on the table, that they're not losing their homes and ending up out on the street because of evictions. We really need to address those forms of suffering, and I think we should'nt compromise on it." Mr. Biden has a $1.9 trillion stimulus package for the pandemic related recovery to relieve suffering people and businesses. Yellen and Biden feel it is really important to do this immediately. A recent picture in the NYT shows Stephen Schwarzmann of American finance with Mr. Trump showing him as one who stuck with Mr. Trump to the end. Much of this play as Shakespeare calls it, is the result of Democrats of the old tradition like Yellen trained by economists from the New Deal and Johnson era, who have not walked the talk and forgotten the suffering of American workers. Yellen held a Conference on Equality at a branch of the Federal Reserve during her time at the Fed, used strong language about the neglect of American workers but did little under the Clinton or Obama administration about the underlying structures of tech and shift of American jobs overseas that led to the destruction of America's manufacturing. Today they are faced with the picture of food insecurity in American homes once a situation that afflicted China and India. ...

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General McChrystal gets the support he is looking for against the Taliban in Afghanistan, as Gates, Obama and Clinton, make the decision to continue backing the Karzai government, even though it is very unpopular and the ground reports suggest that this would be amistake. It was NATO that announced the support because the Obama administration had deep concerns about the Karzai government. The US and the UN representative Kai Eide wanted to see arunoff for the elections but the "assumption" that he would be reelected suggests the Obama administration, the UN representative, and the UK and Canadian foreign ministers in ameeting have decided to continue the war in Afghanistan on Karzai's side.

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The racial polarization in the U.S. before the presidential elections of 2012 between Romney and Obama. During the 2008 elections Obama did as well as Clinton by getting 43% of the white vote, it now appears headed into the 30's. This situation is reminiscent of the one facing Mondale in the 1980 election with Reagan, when Mondale received only 35% of the white vote. Fully 91% of the support for Romney comes from white voters as he passes 50% among overall voters in a late Oct. 2012 ABC/Washington Post poll. One irony in this situation is that Obama contested the 2008 election as a person who could bridge the racial divide.

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This leader in The Economist reviews an essay in the magazine's October 8-14th, 2016 edition by U.S. president Obama. In it Obama points to the unfinished tasks of his presidency and what comes next as tasks to be done for the U.S. economy. The Economist points out the problems in the 2016 election campaign where there is a lack of discussion of economic issues as a serious problem. Obama lists as priorities efforts to improve conditions of people left out in the recovery, reducing inequality, offering more job opportunities, and increasing productivity.

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An assessment of progress in free trade and generating jobs in N. America under the NAFTA agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The agreement was signed under President Clinton in 1994. NAFTA removed existing tariffs on over half of the exports from Mexico to the U.S. and phased out remaining tariffs between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The U.S. had two way trade of $918 billion with Canada and Mexico in 2010, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Canada is the U.S.'s top trading partner, with $462 billion in trade through Sept. 2012, and U.S. trade with Mexico- expected to overtake China- is at $369 billion in the same 9 month period of 2012.

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The first rally for Harris in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The road to the presidency goes through Wisconsin and Harris received enthusiastic support with Governor Tony Evers putting it this way-On the Tony Evers excitement scale that goes from ‘holy mackerel’ and maxes out at ‘heck yes,’ I am jazzed as hell to be welcoming our next presidential nominee to Wisconsin: Vice President Kamala Harris.” Harris used the same lines she used in Wilmington at her first rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In her legal career, Harris said, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.” “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type”  On project 2025, the blueprint for the first 100 days in office of a Trump second term, the action items are ones that would jeopardize the safety of American institutions that were set up with so much care by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and nurtured by the first president George Washington with little attention to himself, and protected by president after president through civil war under Abraham Lincoln, through 2 World Wars and The Great Depression under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, through recovery under Harry Truman and Ike, only to falter under a series of mediocre presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama and be endangered by a NBC television show and construction business person with support from new social media networks that were unknown throughout America history till 2010 and television networks that had degenerated into recklessly divisive behaviours to win silo audiences. ...

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This editorial in the Wall Street Journal says the U.S. presidential election in 2016 now looks like a referendum on safety after the Paris attacks. Rand Paul's chances are seen as nill because his policies, says the Journal, most resemble U.S. president Obama's. Hillary Clinton's comments about the need to defeat not just contain terrorism are seen as distancing herself from Mr. Obama, but the situation in Libya is seen as happening under her watch. The WSJ editorial lists a long list of the situations it has warned against in 2012-2015 since the Arab Spring led to the current situation in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the millions of refugees in camps in Jordan and Turkey, and the refugee movement to Europe.

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Note this comment by the head of the U.S. National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration in the Bush Administration. NHTSA Administrator Jackie Glassman says the average mileage for the fleet today is 30 miles per gallon and raising the current standard of 27.5 mpg for an automakers passenger fleet by 2.5 mpg won't put much pressure on automakers. The Bush administration- and the prior Clinton administration- has not committed to making major improvements to the national mileage standards, with the current standards of 27.5 mpg not having changed since 1990! Glassman says the NHTSA starts with the manufacturers product plans and then sees whether it can get additional fuel savings with these plans. This suggests an NHTSA that is more follower to the auto industry rather than a leader in setting the standards that the auto industry then tries to achieve to reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Also note that it takes 2 years for things to change, as it will take months for rule changes, and 18 months have to be given to automakers to implement the new rules. By 2008 the fuel efficiency based on market competition and Toyota focussing on hybrids and higher fuel efficiency across the whole car lines, might well exceed any new standards that are watered down, especially if crude prices hold up. Lawsuits by attorney generals of different states and the Lugar-Obama bipartisan bill pushing the adminsitration to mandate higher standards are intended to put pressure on the Bush administration to come up with new higher standards. The failure of Democrats and Republicans in the Clinton and Bush years to raise standards and require the auto companies to use new technology to meet these standards with government assistance is one of the significant failures. This will affect the prospects for the U.S. economy in the years ahead....

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Zeit Online shows in this article the continued efforts of the Russian government of president Putin to discredit Chancellor Merkel, following efforts to do this for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election.  During the Ukraine crisis and the settlement accords of 2014 Germany was seen as a partner by Russia, following sanctions, and renewal of these sanctions Russia no longer sees Germany as a partner. This report shows Russian efforts to discredit chancellor Merkel and the use of RT German channel, WikiLeaks reports of Chancellor Merkel and the TTIP agreement, for the same purpose. The refugee crisis following what is happening in Syria with Russian involvement, terrorism, financial crisis aftermath from 2008, are being used  says Zeit Online to support a movement for "order" as the state ideology now put forward from the Russian government. This could be an early indicator for the 2017 German federal elections, says Zeit Online. Merkel has said that she supports continuation of western sanctions on Russia. It is hard to see what Russia has gained in improving its economy and the standard of living of the people from this type of political action. Putin was able to achieve economic goals during 2005-2010 using good Germany- Russian relations as shown in LyrArc. This was the earlier period of Putin's terms in office, with a broad group of advisors, including finance minister Kudrin, who set forward a prudent economic course for Russia including foreign investment. The world and Russia are poorer from the departure from this earlier set of policies which would have enhanced Russia's economic growth. Kudrin was fired in September 2011, and the economic course has gradually drifted away from what is most prudent for the Russian economy and growth, and for the global economy. Nationalism was part of an earlier period before 1950, that led to frequent wars and economic catastrophes. A new course has been set since then, especially by American presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and people in India, China, the developing world, in Europe and in the U.S., would see little to gain from the politics of that earlier period in world relations.  ...

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This opinion by Mr. Swain, editorial page writer at the Wall Street Journal says it is regrettable that the expert class in America has failed to acknowledge its errors or conduct self-criticism. A new generation of journalists, think tank authors, and experts, will soon replace the old. They, he says, will make a fair assessment of the Trump years and look at their forerunners as acting in crucial moments, as idiots. He offers an alternative view of lockdowns as hurting the economy and causing a sharp recession in which people had to go without income, and some even hungry. To support this he says many parts of the country did not lock down and managed to keep hospitals running fine. California and New York with Democratic governors and large numbers of Democratic voters have borne the brunt of the pandemic in America. He points out the changes in the Middle East with policy that has brought Israel and the Arab world closer. The wars in foreign lands that are no longer being fought wasting precious resources. Democrats and the news media acted to consider Mr. Trump's election as illegitimate and the result of collusion with a Russian president, says Swain, till the Mueller investigation proved this to be not true. The real reason for Trump's election being that the Clinton-Obama Democrats had neglected working class interests and sent jobs overseas, and the Democratic party had shifted far from its working class base. That there is much for reflection in both political parties is stated in this view as the Democrats rush to a second impeachment Feb. 9, after president Biden has setup his new administration, and in the middle of a national emergency pandemic.   ...