Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 18
Melvin Laird’s legacy
Melvin Laird was the consummate insider back in the days when that was considered a good thing. More important, he was, in the words of one eulogist, “a Washington grown-up.”
Oh, could we use a few more of those right now.
Laird’s long and distinguished life ended with his death on Wednesday at the age of 94 but his impact on American politics and on his own beloved Wisconsin will live on for many years.
Laird had several careers: first as a Naval officer during World War II, then in politics culminating with his posting as defense secretary during the wind-down of the Vietnam War under President Richard Nixon. Finally, Laird was an elder statesman and influencer within Republican circles, a career that continued nearly to the day he died. In recent weeks, he was thinking about how to get the best people to work at the Department of Defense for the next president, said Bob Williams, a friend and former campaign aide.
Laird’s service in the Pacific Theater was formative. He survived a kamikaze attack on the USS Maddox and when he died decades later still had the shrapnel from that battle lodged in his body. The experience gave Laird great empathy for the average soldier, who was asked to bear the burdens of foreign policy. Laird remained a staunch believer in a strong national defense but saw war as a last resort. He questioned American involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Anti-war activists who bitterly opposed American involvement in Vietnam have long been critical of Laird’s role in the war, seeing him more as a warrior than as a peacemaker. And it’s true, he was more hawk than dove before becoming defense secretary: He had been critical of President Lyndon B. Johnson for not escalating the war faster.
Yet within the Nixon administration, it was Laird who pushed for a faster withdrawal of troops and frequently clashed with rivals such as Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser. Laird initially opposed the resumption of bombing in North Vietnam and the invasion of Cambodia though he later relented. But he strongly opposed a White House effort to keep records of the Cambodian bombing campaign a secret, a position that damaged Laird’s relationships within the administration.
Laird later helped to end the draft and establish the all-volunteer military.
In later years, Laird was sobered by his experiences.
“Wars are very easy to get into,” he said in 2009, “but they’re awfully hard to get out of.”
Laird had another trait that served him well politically, one that current members of Congress would do well to emulate: He was pragmatic and willing to work with Democrats.
Laird was friends with his successor, former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, a Democrat, who succeeded him representing northern Wisconsin in Congress. Laird’s niece is Jessica Doyle, the wife of former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. The former governor said of Laird: “He was a Republican to the core but he was a Republican that really believed government was a worthy cause.”
Another worthy cause for Melvin Laird: Ensuring that the people of northern Wisconsin and the nation had high-quality health care. As a congressman, Laird helped expand both the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and played a role in establishing 12 regional cancer clinics.
As the Marshfield Clinic’s congressional patron and a Marshfield native, Laird pushed for grants and other federal support that helped the clinic grow in size, reputation and influence. The Laird Center for Medical Research at the clinic is named for him.
“Laird was a champion for health care in Wisconsin and the U.S. His work helped shape medical research as we know it,” Dr. Susan Turney, chief executive of the Marshfield Clinic Health System, said in a statement.
Let us go back to where we started.
“He was a Washington grown-up,” Gerald Whitburn, a University of Wisconsin regent, told the Journal Sentinel’s Jason Stein. Whitburn served as an assistant to the secretary of the Navy while Laird ran the Pentagon.
Melvin Laird understood the responsibilities of governance and took them seriously. Just as serving his country in World War II was a duty, he saw serving our republic as an elected representative as a duty. In an uncertain time, his long record of service, bipartisanship, political savvy and common sense is something we should remember - and honor.
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Wisconsin State Journal, Nov. 18
Let the public monitor big bank settlement
It’s no secret some banks behaved badly during the past decade.
But the Obama administration wants to keep the public in the dark about how well these financial ne’er-do-wells are changing their ways.
A lawsuit quietly moving up through the courts could reaffirm the precedent that government records about bank compliance are public records.
The case in question deals with HSBC Bank. The U.S. Justice Department had prosecuted HSBC for laundering money for drug cartels and other entities and for violating sanctions laws.
Rather than fight it out in court, in 2012, HSBC agreed to pay a $1.92 billion fine and to reform its practices. The Justice Department assigned a corporate compliance monitor to make sure HSBC followed through. That monitor periodically completes reports on HSBC’s progress.
And that’s where the public has been cut out. The court has sealed the monitor’s reports from public view.
One American wasn’t satisfied with that. The citizen moved to intervene in the case. He asked the court to unseal the reports, and a lower court agreed to do so. The unsealing is on hold, though, because the case is on appeal.
HSBC’s opposition to opening the reports is understandable, if detestable. It doesn’t want the bad PR. The less the public knows about what it did and how much it must do to reform, the better for its bottom line. Keeping people in the dark is good business.
More disappointing, however, is the Justice Department siding with the bank and also fighting to keep the reports sealed. Given President-elect Donald Trump’s penchants for secrecy - including his tax returns - he’ll probably stick with President Barack Obama’s position. But we hope we’re wrong, given his pledge to stick up for forgotten Americans.
Trump should show Americans the Justice Department is on their side by dropping the Obama administration’s objections to openness.
Judicial transparency is fundamental to a free and open democracy. If the government can strike deals with bad actors and then keep the implementation secret, people won’t know if justice truly is being served. Indeed, word did get out in the spring that HSBC wasn’t doing good enough.
More than two dozen journalism organizations, including the American Society of News Editors, have filed a brief on behalf of transparency. They rightly note that the courts need a good reason to keep the reports secret. In cases such as this, where there is overwhelming public interest involving newsworthy material, release should be the default.
Even if some parts must be redacted, that is far better than total secrecy.
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The Capital Times, Nov. 16
The Electoral College is going to make a loser the president, and that’s wrong
On Dec. 19, the 10 members of the Electoral College from Wisconsin are expected to cast their votes for Donald Trump.
But they will do something else.
For the first time in the modern history of Wisconsin, the state’s electors will contribute to the election of a candidate who lost the popular vote for the presidency.
Wisconsinites, no matter what their political persuasion, should be frustrated by this turn of events.
This newspaper opposed Trump’s candidacy and will oppose his presidency whenever and wherever it threatens the American struggle for economic and social justice and peace. Opponents of our progressive ideals supported his candidacy and will support his presidency. But the issue is not Trump.
The issue is a denial of democracy.
When Americans voted on Nov. 8, they did not choose Donald Trump.
They chose Hillary Clinton.
By the weekend after the Nov. 8 election, Clinton’s lead had grown to almost 600,000 votes, and the Democratic advantage is expected to expand - as the longest counts tend to be in West Coast states such as California, where Clinton is leading Trump by almost 2-1. Nate Cohn of The New York Times said Clinton could end up winning by 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percent of the total; others suggest the margin could go higher.
Clinton’s winning margin is already greater than Richard Nixon’s in 1968. It is greater than John F. Kennedy’s in 1960. In fact, it is greater than the winning margin in more than 20 of the presidential elections that the United States has held since its founding. Of course, the elections of the distant past had smaller overall turnouts. But Kennedy and Nixon were elected in high-turnout elections in relatively recent times.
And there’s an even more recent election that offers an even more relevant comparison. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore beat Republican George W. Bush by 543,816 votes. At the time, that was the biggest ever popular-vote victory for someone who lost the presidency. But Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote victory over Donald Trump will be substantially greater.
Trump is preparing to assume the presidency because he is expected to win the most votes in an Electoral College established at the founding of a country that distrusted democracy to such an extent that it did not allow women, people of color and poor people to cast ballots.
This is the second time that a Republican loser has become president in less than 20 years.
This is not what democracy looks like.
Americans who object to Trump have every right to assemble and to speak in protest. They have every right to chant: “Trump is not my president.”
And they have every right to petition for the redress of their grievances.
The list of those grievances should include a systemic complaint.
Presidential elections should be decided by the popular vote of the American people, not via a convoluted process that assigns the most powerful office in the United States, and arguably the world, to the loser in the balloting.
If America aspires to be a democracy, no one should be happy with the fact that a centuries-old political structure - established when elites fretted that democracy might threaten the institution of slavery - constrains and warps the process by which presidents are chosen.
It’s time to do away with the Electoral College and put the voters in charge of choosing presidents, as they are in charge of choosing members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, governors, legislators, mayors and school board members.
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