American Carnage

 

Tim Alberta, “American Carnage: On The Front Lines Of The Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump,” Harper and Collins, 2019, 612 pp.

This book is derived from hundreds of interviews—including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus—American Carnage describes the transformation of the Republican party into an entity that has now been mostly taken over by Trump and Trump's base.  The carnage did not begin with Trump.  

My Notes:

Pg. 3:  To consider Trump’s rise is to recognize the essential ingredients of American life: instinctual outrage and involuntary contempt, geographic clustering and clannish identification, moral relativism, and self-victimization.  The Republican slide began in the 1990s with Newt Gingrich who encouraged Republicans to use words such as ‘traitors’ and ‘radicals’ to describe their political opponents; (and not stay in DC on weekends).  Then there was the impeachment of Clinton with all the Republican hypocritical and opportunistic indignation.  Later the Bush administration's disastrous handling of the Iraq War (think WMD's and "Mission Accomplished), followed by Hurricane Katrina. 

Pg. 30:  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than two million manufacturing jobs were eliminated between December 2007 and June 2009—15 percent of the entire manufacturing workforce vanished in just eighteen months.

37f:  Obama won the presidency in a landslide, carrying the Electoral College by a margin of 365 to 173 and winning the popular vote by nearly ten million—the biggest spread since Reagan’s forty-nine state reelection romp in 1984. More concerning for Republicans than the scope of Obama’s victory were the fundamentals behind it.  Obama had turned out huge numbers of minorities, young voters, and women with college degrees.  While McCain captured 57 percent of white men and 55 percent of whites overall, he won just 43 percent of women, 31 percent of Hispanics, and 32 percent of voters under age thirty.  Republicans were at risk of entering a demographic death spiral. 

Pg. 38:  As Obama assumed office, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning.  For the past generation, the party had promoted a set of principles described as a three-legged stool: fiscal responsibility, social conservatism, and strong national defense.  By 2008 that stool had collapsed: Republicans had spent recklessly while exposing their military’s limitations after fighting a two-front war for the better part of a decade.  Only the social conservatism leg remained and had been strictly adhered to as the Bush administration’s effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage had rankled many in the Republican professional class.

Pg. 81:  Congressional primaries typically draw a fraction of the eligible voter pool: between 10 and 20 percent—and are therefore dominated by the most passionate, ideologically motivated constituents.  House members fear primaries more than general elections, and this is where they face voters less willing to compromise on issues such as immigration.

Pg. 94:  Polling throughout Obama’s presidency revealed that 41 percent of Republican voters questioned Obama’s citizenship:  In 2011 it was 43 percent; 61 percent in 2015; and 72 percent in 2016.  Birtherism aside, the reality was that Republicans simply did not like Obama. 

Pg. 114: In 1986 Gallup found that 65 percent of Americans felt a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the press.  By 2016 it was 32 percent, and just 14 percent among Republicans.

Pg. 204f:  In fiscal year 2014, a total of 68,541 unaccompanied children had been apprehended at the US-Mexico border, a 77 percent increase over the previous year. Republicans blamed Obama of providing a magnet for the illegal minors with his executive actions to provide amnesty; Democrats blamed Republicans for railroading a bipartisan bill that would have secured the border.

Pg. 230:  In 2004, 60 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage with just 31 percent approving.  By 2014, the numbers were 52 percent approving and 40 percent opposed, an astonishing net swing of 41 points in the span of a decade.  (Note: On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses in the 2015 case 5 to 4 Obergefell v. Hodges; note: Prior to Obergefell, same-sex marriage had already been established by law, court ruling, or voter initiative in thirty-six states)

Pg. 258:  Trump does hold some core beliefs: globalization is irredeemably injurious to American society; more specifically, the unrestricted levels of immigration, uneven trade deals, and unchecked foreign cheating have undermined the American business and the American worker. (I agree with these positions).

Pg. 299:  The twin phenomena of outsourcing and automation, on top of the broader transition to a tech-based economy and lack of retraining programs for a generation of workers who had never earned college degrees, created a political powder keg.  In 2016, it exploded.  (I don’t think retraining programs would significantly help; they certainly did not help in Janesville WI).  Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin voters in 2016 significantly felt trade policies were doing more harm than good.

Pg. 302:  On March 15, 2016, Trump trounced Rubio in the Florida primary, winning 46 percent of the vote to the home-state senator’s 27 percent and driving him from the presidential race.

Pg. 305:  Trump in 2015 came to an understanding with long-time friend David Pecker, chairman and CEO of American Media Inc., the country’s largest tabloid publisher.  Pecker offered to protect Trump from women who came forward alleging sexual escapades.  He would use AMI and its biggest brand, the National Enquirer to ‘catch and kill’ on behalf of Trump: purchasing testimonies that could be damaging to Trump, purchasing testimonies and having the women sign NDA’s. Trump loved the idea and instructed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to work with Pecker.

Pg. 328:  Trump committed to Evangelicals to appoint only Conservative justices to the Supreme Court, in fact, he provided a list.  In the wake of Scalia’s death and McConnell’s refusal to allow a hearing for Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, the looming Supreme Court vacancy was the ultimate mobilizer for Christian conservatives.  (Yet, after gaining three seats, a majority, they still voted for Trump in 2020).

Pg. 363: In an era defined by friction over ‘snowflakes’ (overly sensitive people) acting ‘woke’ (highly attuned to political correctness) in response to ‘micro aggressions’ (perceived slights to marginalized persons or communities), Trump’s hostility toward the press, increasingly perceived as the arbiters of American dialogue, made him a hero to the right.

Pg. 364:  Poll numbers as of early October 2016, showed Trump trailing Clinton by 9 points in Pennsylvania; by 7 points in Michigan; by 6 points in Wisconsin; and by 3 points in both Florida and North Carolina. 

Pg. 379:  On October 7, 2016, the Washington Post published a video and accompanying article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having "an extremely lewd conversation about women" in 2005. Yet, two weeks later, Trump’s poll numbers began climbing back; he still trailed Clinton in the key states but had weathered a firestorm no politician before could have.  This was explained by:

*Public distrust of the media and believed to be a partisan combatant by conservative voters.

*It was impossible to overstate the depth of disdain for Clinton on the right; a disdain that had been cultivated for the past quarter-century.

*the unflinching support of Trump by the Christian right because of their concern for Supreme Court nominees.

Pg. 424:  In December 2016 the Financial Times reported that of the estimated 5.6 million manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2010, 85 percent were attributable to technological change—largely automation—rather than international trade.

Pg. 505:  When Trump entered office, he effectively contracted out all the policymaking decisions, the things that would require votes, to two people: Ryan and McConnell.  They put forward a contemporary Republican platform: repealing Obamacare, cutting taxes, rebuilding the military, slashing regulations, reforming the Veterans Affairs Department, and above all, confirming conservative judges to the federal courts.

Trump's contribution: implement a travel ban targeted toward Muslims; launching multiple trade wars that hurt the American worker; enforcing a ‘zero-tolerance” policy at the southern border by separating children from their parents.

509f:  While in Europe in July 2018, Trump disparaged NATO allies—condemning Germany, belittling the British prime minister, and referring to the EU as a ‘foe.’  Yet when asked by a reporter whom he believed, Putin or his own intelligence officials regarding whether or not Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, Trump stated ‘they (US Intelligence Agencies) think it’s Russia.  I have talked to President Putin and he just said it’s not Russia.  ‘I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.’  This lent credence to the theory that the Russians had kompromat on the US president.

Pg. 519:  For all the talk of a ‘witch hunt,’ Mueller proved incredibly skilled at finding hats and brooms.  By July Mueller had collected 187 criminal charges in active indictments or to which individuals had pleaded guilty, while another 23 counts against President Trump’s former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates were vacated when he agreed to cooperate.  Additionally, thirty-two people and three businesses had been named in indictments or plea agreements and Mueller had extracted ‘six guilty pleas from five defendants.’  Among the charges ’52 counts of conspiracy of some kind…113 criminal counts of aggravated identity theft or identity fraud…Four guilty pleas for making false statements.’  And this still left the biggest threat: to Trump: Michael Cohen. 

Pg. 606:  Muller’s released his 448-page report on April 18, 2019, illuminating in jaw-dropping detail the web of lies woven by Trump and his team, the chaos and paranoia consuming the White House throughout Mueller’s investigation, and the president’s multiple efforts to impede its advance.  While the report found no criminal conspiracy with Russia, Trump’s team were receptive to offers of assistance from Moscow—and in fact expected help to arrive.

Pg. 543:  Senate and gubernatorial contests aside, Election Night 2018 was defined by the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives—Democrats had won a net gain of 40 seats, well above forecasts in both parties. 

Pg. 576:  President Trump is not the cause of a revolutionary political climate, he is its consequence, a by-product of a cultural, technological, and socioeconomic convulsion that bred disparate yet interconnected strands of populism on both the right (Tea Party) and the left (Occupy Wall Street). 

Pg. 578:  Just as the 2010 election saw the purging of Congress's Blue Dogs,’ coinciding with Democrats losing their foothold in rural America, 2018 saw the annihilation of Congress’s moderate Republicans, coinciding with the GOP’s presence fading in the suburbs from coast to coast.  This was the definition of a realignment: Democrats flipped two-thirds of the GOP-held House seats with the highest median incomes, while flipping just 6 percent of the GOP-held seats with the lowest median incomes.  Also, Republicans were left representing just two of the thirty congressional districts with the most college-degrees. 

Pg. 601:  It has been argued that politics is downstream from culture; that elected officials govern in a way that reflects the rhythms of society itself.  Politicians are reactionaries, not leaders; they achieve and maintain power by responding to public opinion, not by driving it.  Still, it’s hard to see America finding its way out of this current predicament of mass polarization without the government setting an example.

Pg. 609:  Whenever Trump does vacate the White House, the Republican Party will face a reckoning.  It will have been rebranded as a protectionist, big-spending, anti-immigration entity.  Its coalition will be overwhelmingly reliant on exurban and rural working-class whites and less dependent than ever on affluent, diverse suburbanites 

Addenda:

Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the Republican Party—and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and technological disruption during that period—can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America’s current turmoil. How did a party obsessed with the national debt, vote for trillion-dollar deficits and record-setting spending increases? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and walls? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-divorced philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?