Category: National

When it comes to our schools, we talk about testing; we talk about charters; we talk about   vouchers. And all the while, we’re talking about “accountability,” however defined.

But how “accountable” are we if we don’t prioritize real-world preparation for 21st century America? The election results of the last month have underscored the challenge. It’s a lot more than STEM classes.

Civics–and not just watered-down versions of Social Studies–needs to be back in the middle-and high-school curriculum. Especially if we still want 18-year-olds to vote. It might be the last time young Americans can learn objectively about how their country works–and where the problematic areas are–before they’re on their own and subject to manipulative, partisan influences.

A presidential voter turnout of barely more than 50 percent is not acceptable. Neither is a Tampa city council turnout of 9.5 per cent. Lecturing, shaming, negative advertising or voter inflaming later on is not how it should work. A Donald Trump presidency can’t happen without voters who are indifferent, uninformed and more than vulnerable to a blatantly pandering pedagogue.

Because manipulation and partisanship are such electoral staples, a modern media primer should be more mandatory than American lit. Prepping students to hone critical-thinking skills–without outsourcing to those with agendas–should be a priority. And those outside-agenda sources, as we know, range from partisan websites and cable news “infotainment” to the knave new world of fake news on social media. “MAGA,” alas, can also mean “Most Americans Get Ambushed” if they don’t take responsibility for their electorate actions–or inactions.

And finally, there needs to be a formal acknowledgement that it’s critically important to understand that we live in a global context. It’s about interdependence and common sense. It’s about our environment, our economy and our security. In short, where does America–and where do Americans–fit in this world? It’s not a rhetorical question.

* Given Trump’s global business interests–from Brazil to India–he’s at least a de facto co-brand with the U.S. Beyond awkward. Geopolitically complicating. Nationally embarrassing.

* Donald Trump: Get the hell off Twitter and make sure incoming calls are not from Taipei. At least give the impression of trying to look presidential–rather than being a weekly mother lode of Alec Baldwin fodder. Speaking of, Baldwin’s SNL Trump portrayal–despite the steady stream of material–is not as easy as first appears. He has to satirize a parody.

* President-elect ______ _ _____. Sorry, I just couldn’t finish that. Still in recovery.

* Progressive can be a relative term. Now more than ever. Think: Ivanka Trump.

* For those advocating compulsory voting–as in, say, Australia–they should be aware of what would still be beyond any legal decree. As we know all too well, you cannot mandate being informed and impervious to blatant pandering. American exceptionalism wasn’t supposed to yield this.

* Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Secretary of Transportation nominee Elaine Chao: Are they not candidates for oddest couple since Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki?

The first thing we need to remind ourselves when discussing Cuba is that, as opposed to scenarios with other non-democracies, this one is personal. There are those among us who have lost everything.
Having said that, it is still unacceptable for a vendetta agenda to be the basis of foreign policy. That wasn’t the case for Germany or Japan or Vietnam. It isn’t for those who are more strategically relevant–and less democratic–than Cuba. Think Saudi Arabia, China and Russia. It’s hypocritical, counter-productive–and, yes, personal.
The second thing is that it is imperative to move forward with the diplomatic and economic thaw introduced by President Barack Obama. His initiatives are not a series of concessions to a dictatorship–but long-overdue, common-sense acts of enlightened self interest. The American perspective should be this: The one that stands to benefit big time from Cuban-American rapprochement is the U.S. Most notably, Florida and the Tampa Bay area. From TIA to Port Tampa Bay to transshipments facilitated by the expanded Panama Canal.
While the transition to a Trump Administration is obviously nothing to celebrate, including on the Cuban front, the combination of Trump narcissism and inherent prioritie$ could have an ironic upside. The incoming president, after all, is defined by his artistry in deal-making.
And timing, of course, is everything.
The most reviled Castro, Fidel, is now dead. His brother Raul, 85, will be stepping down about a year into the Trump Administration. The successor-in-waiting, Vice President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 56, is from a different generation, a different family and a different–non-military–orientation. He’s the former minister of higher education.
Vice President Díaz-Canel is not exactly Joe Biden, of course, and nothing is guaranteed, including Díaz-Canel’s relationship with the military. But a non-Castro in charge of a Rube Goldberg economy with no Venezuelan subsidies, a dire need to attract investment and tourists and an antsy young demographic increasingly aware of what they still don’t have has possibilities.
It will take negotiating skill and domestic spin on both sides. If successful, credit will be parceled out to the leaders. It’s what fuels Trump. The ultimate accolade–the winner who cut a better deal than Obama, the winner who officially ended the last remnants of the Cold War era–would beckon. As would this rhetorical question: What matters more to a consummate 2017 deal maker–last-gasp exile- and co-opted-political pressure or corporate prioritie$?
Put it this way: If anti-communist Richard Nixon can open China after calling out Mao, why can’t uber capitalist Donald Trump further expand Cuban relations after blustering on Twitter about a better deal?
The Castro brothers, especially Fidel, have been their own worst enemies with cavalier anti-yanqui attitudes surfacing at all the wrong times. Hell, if you can’t get along with Jimmy Carter, you aren’t trying. And a string of U.S. presidential administrations were intimidated by the political hard ball played by the South Florida exile-community and their congressional lackeys.
Trump would not want to be part of an intimidation continuum. There’s nothing “great” about it.
Speaking of greatness, President Trump won’t be able to substantiate it without corroborating numbers. That includes jobs created by infrastructure projects, for example, but it can also mean Cuba-related, increased jobs and improved trade- and smuggler-count statistics that will notably benefit Florida, still the quintessential swing state.
As the Castro brothers literally leave the scene, face-saving scenarios become more viable. Cuban friends have called it the “biological solution.” It gives both sides maneuver room. We’ve already proven we can work with communist governments and autocracies of various stripes.
America and Cuba are in transition. Maybe the art of the deal–with both sides getting trophies for domestic consumption–trumps all scenarios. Let’s hope so. In fact, let’s keep hope alive.

It seems that retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, 66, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, is being well-received as a prime candidate for secretary of defense. Known as smart, plain-spoken and up front, Mattis was popular during his CentCom years (2010-13) at MacDill AFB. Only cautionary note–his nicknames: “Mad Dog” and “Chaos,” most notably.
But, no, nobody is calling him the second coming of Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay.

* If President Trump makes good on his various promises to boost military spending–and end sequestration–that could be good news for the Tampa Bay area, where the defense industry’s impact is estimated at $16 billion annually. It’s a regional economic anchor and all upside–unless, of course, you’re haunted by President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about some “military industrial complex.”
* The political consulting industry is now a $6 billion enterprise. It’s embedded into our political culture and grows continuously through each cycle. It’s how candidates get their message out, albeit too often through disingenuous, negative ads. Shouldn’t that be the “political consulting industrial complex”?

* President-Elect Donald Trump has been, as we know, generally sparing of details about his still nascent economic program. But he has underscored one notable priority: infrastructure. “And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it,” he has said. To that end, he has set up a transition team website that, among other things, calls for $550 billion to be spent primarily on roads, rail and airports.

How ironic would it be if a President Trump, who puts such a premium on infrastructure, jobs and moving America forward, were to revisit high-speed rail for Florida? He knows all about the ultimate swing state’s I-4 Corridor, the need to expedite transit in the Orlando-Tampa megalopolis and the number of jobs awaiting creation–both from infrastructure as well as synergistic developments around stations.

Think Rick Scott would respond to President Donald Trump the way he responded to President Barack Obama?

* Interesting move by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to fire off that heat-seeking epistle to President-Elect Trump. It took no rhetorical prisoners in criticizing his transition team’s Wall Street ties. It was a blatantly obvious preview of likely upcoming confirmation battles.

It was also a sign that Warren, 67, is assuming the mantle of populist, establishment trappings-be-damned, de facto leader of the Democrats. She’s saying, in effect: “I’ll be keeping score and I’ll be keeping this party in movement mode.” And she could be positioned as next up to finally shatter that historic glass ceiling–but without Hillary Clinton baggage.

Had Clinton won the election, Warren would likely be looking at a cabinet appointment. But in 2020, she could be eyeing up a 74-year-old incumbent who might have worn thin and fallen demonstrably shy of making America “great again.”

* Everybody agrees that Attorney General Pam Bondi, who whored out for Trump early on, has the inside track on a position with the Trump Administration. She’s already met with the president-elect’s transition team. Drug czar has been mentioned. Too bad it’s not chancellor of Trump U.

* Here’s the good news on actual Trump cabinet selections and those rumored in the running. Trump supporters Dennis Rodman, Ted Nugent, Charlie Sheen, MikeTyson and members of the Robertson Duck Dynasty family are not–repeat not–being considered. And no truth to the rumor that Ann Coulter is a lock to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

As with anybody in the opinion-scribbling business, I occasionally get asked what it’s like to have to come up with columns, typically involving politics, on a regular basis.

My standard response: “The good news is that there’s always something to write about. The bad news is that, well, there’s always something to write about.” It’s the nature of the diabolically double-edged sword of punditry and our political mosh pit.

Case in point: NOW.

You can’t insulate yourself from visceral feelings. This is our country. Our democracy. Our values. Our security. Our White House. Our presidency. Our president. You can disagree, you can disrespect, but you can’t disown.

Now we have to make this work as best we can. It’s either that or devolve further into our fear-stoking tribes.

But in the short term, I have changed routines. I’m still reading a newspaper, and I can’t help the snapshot headlines on AOL. But that’s it for now. No social media. No network news. No in-your-face, cable-TV insiders overanalyzing the obvious. I’m passing up any end zone-spiking optics.

But a reality that can’t be denied is the media’s critical role in enabling what just happened.

It helped create a viable candidate from a vain caricature. As a pop-culture celebrity and brand, Donald J. Trump was great copy. Simplistic, bumper-sticker themes; obnoxious, off-color rhetoric and racist, misogynistic, bar-stool quips qualified as campaign rhetoric. He knew his channeling fan base, and he knew what was left on his ultimate, narcissist’s bucket list.

The media, although ironically–and strategically–skewered by Trump, gave the “Apprentice” celeb billions of dollars in free, momentum-churning coverage. Networks routinely cut away from scheduled programming to cover his early primary concert tour that masqueraded as a campaign. The Republican debates were ratings and sponsor bonanzas–however outrageous, juvenile, insulting and Faustian.

Goethe would have understood.

* Like a lot of you, I’m still processing this thing called democracy in action, even if that meant about 45 percent of the electorate were recent MIAs. So be it. We know what just happened: The Trump White Out. Who would have figured this version of demographics as destiny?

* Hillary Clinton ran a charisma-free, ground-game-oriented, surrogate-stumping establishment campaign that referenced ideals and a direction for the country. Donald Trump ran a “tell-it-like-is” George Wallace concert tour that pandered to the lowest common denominator. That shouldn’t have been rewarded.

* Indeed, the system seems rigged. The one who got the most votes finished runner-up. Maybe the Electoral College is as flawed as Trump University.

* “Women for Trump.” How was that even possible? It’s an oxymoron.

* Whatever else factored into the vote, history will not be kind to FBI Director James Comey. His last-minute, political blindsiding should be an indictable offense.

* But Comey’s unconscionable intrusion and the Trump phenomenon notwithstanding, this election was more a function of unforced errors. Smart and experienced should have carried the glass-ceiling shattering day against a disingenuous populist wastrel channeling frustration, resentment and hatred.

Clinton is part of a calculating power couple. She had been told since high school and college that she could be the first female president. The talent and ambition were more than manifest.

By 2008 she was formally running–and would have won had she not overlapped the historic candidacy of the charismatic Barack Obama. But she knew she would be back. We knew she would be back. A stint as secretary of state further burnished her credentials.

So why not separate herself from the Clinton Foundation then–instead of waiting until her official presidential announcement in 2015? Why court the pay-to-play accusations? And why the private email server? Carelessness and arrogance are not indictable–but, alas, they are indicative of something very unflattering and politically fatal.

And let’s not forget Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.” While that label is frankly accurate–if not an understatement–it is campaign contraband. It was an insulting, gift-wrapped, red-meat morsel that was doubled down on by the Trump campaign’s anti-elite messaging to working-class white America.

Such a shame. It was hers to lose, and she lost it. We saw a Sunshine State version in 2010.

* President Barack Obama’s White House sit-down with President-Elect Donald Trump looked pitch perfect. It was reserved and respectful. It was what transition-of-power optics should look like. Especially this one.

It would be no surprise, however, if off-camera Obama let it be known that there were serious, non-legacy reasons not to trash the Paris Accords on climate, the Affordable Care Act, the Iran nuclear deal and the Cold War-ending rapprochement with Cuba.

* Sarah Palin presaged Trump. Thanks again, Sen. John McCain. That’s your most lasting legacy–not being shot down, captured, tortured and ridiculed by Donald Trump. Palin paved the way for an uninformed, unhinged, celebrity-demagogue to make a viable White House run.

* Trump is really a cult figure; the rules are different. Your followers will find a rationale to justify anything you say; anything you do; and anything you don’t do that you said you would. The Kool-Aid works with a vulnerable, easily-pandered-to electorate.

Maybe we should have seen this coming. Timing is everything.

The world is too much with us, and we don’t like a lot of it. Dumb, unnecessary wars. Alliances that we take for granted. Trade deals that inevitably don’t work for everybody. Immigration paranoia in a post-9/11, ISIS world.

Plus, upward mobility that leaves too many behind.  And Washington gridlock. And all the frustration that begets.

And yet.

You don’t elect a Donald Trump to fix it. Any more than he will fix Trump University credibility, make good on the Trump Tower Tampa, get up to date on everything he doesn’t know about running a government and dealing with allies and trade partners or adopt a classy mien toward women and all things requiring an ethical approach.

The world inherited by the leader of the Free World is a complex cultural, economic and geopolitical mosaic, one requiring experience, intelligence and temperament–not bluster, vanity and simplistic memes. One flawed candidate, however personally off-putting, was up to the job. The other flawed candidate, beyond off-putting, indecent and ignorant, was up to a con job. His own party knew it–but was too craven, hypocritical and Hillary-hating to disavow him and take one for their country.

This electorate, with its perfect-storm troopers fueled by frustration and anti-establishment resentment, was ripe for picking by someone who was a beacon of perverted populism. Huey Long never looked so good.

Lose a job in the global economy? Blame NAFTA or TPP. The fact that the job went to a microchip–not a Mexican–is beside the point. Worried about the ISIS threat? Insult the very people who are needed to help gather intelligence amid the Muslim community. Resentful that your life reeks and a black guy has been president for eight years? Channel your inner bigot with the founder of the birther movement.

Here’s the bottom line. We have allowed ourselves to become a democratic society that undervalues its underpinnings: an informed, participatory electorate. We now have an electorate that has arguably become lazy, uninformed and ripe for pandering. So we have Sarah Palin on ‘roids, the pitchfork-and-flambeau-crowd candidate who will now morph into America’s deus ex MOCKina.

As noted, timing is everything. This was not a Mitt Romney, John Kasich or Joe Biden moment. This was an anti-Clinton, anti-establishment implosion.

And, yeah, I’m pissed. This is my country too.

The markets could take a hit because they loathe uncertainty. Has there ever been a more certain uncertainty than the unconscionably unqualified, temperamentally unhinged Donald Trump in the Oval Office?

Our global partners could doubt our allegiance, while our adversaries can fist bump over American chaos.

Civil unrest can’t be precluded. Does the in-your-face, “Lock her up” candidate with fans who channeled their favorite drunk at last call now reach out to all those he demonized?

But the final take has to be this. America is bigger than Donald Trump and his white-flight, fanatical fan base. We’ve been through trying times before–depressions, wars, assassinations. We are far more resilient as a nation than we realize. We have a democratic republic with separation of powers. We are the leader of the free world with the largest global economy–and a special calling.

That didn’t change.