Author: BC

Perhaps no concept is more central to understanding the former Soviet system of totalitarianism than the apparatchik. The parallel deployment of party overseers to keep an eye on every facet of government activity defined what evolved in Russia beginning with the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. Both the clear line in the sand between civil servant necessary to make the trains run on time and party politicos there to make certain nothing counterrevolutionary went unnoticed, and the unspoken understanding apparatchiks generally had the final word, was the steroid required to distinguish Soviet despotism from run-of-the-mill authoritarians.

Indeed, throughout the Cold War the good faith and bipartisan confidence succeeding Presidential administrations afforded to careerists who constituted American bureaucracy provided the unarguable contrast of democracy’s superiority to what diplomat and historian George Kennan labeled the Kremlin’s “jealous preoccupations.” In fact our ability to vanquish the exceptions to this rule, most notably McCarthyism, have only strengthened our appreciation for it. Many now understand old Joe McCarthy could learn a few things from Donald Trump about baselessly attacking career public servants. What’s playing out in the House’s impeachment inquiry is a struggle to turn back a principle tenant of our first Fox/AM Presidency: that government is inherently incompetent and corrupt, requiring a political class to “drain the swamp” and ensure MAGA priorities are carried out despite the fact many contradict the mission statements of the departments they now infect.

Taylor, Kent, Yovanovitch, Vindman, Morrison all have testified to how jarringly irregular the Trump scheme to extort Ukrainian cooperation against Joe Biden was. From the moment EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland clumsily inserted himself into the policy stream Kyivgate has fully embodied Trumpism’s seditious war against the professional class US governance has always nurtured and depended on. These impeachment hearings clarify what anyone paying attention ascertained near three years ago, a Trump Presidency can only be a clash between the nihilist rabidity that propelled his candidacy and the steady competence of careerists with a job to do.

Sondland was merely a Soviet-style apparatchik, a prototype of what a Fox/AM Presidency seeks to deploy throughout US society, not only at the federal but state and local levels as well. From his first incursions into US-Ukraine relations Sondland made sure everyone with skin in the game knew he was a Trumpie, with direct authorization from the man himself to bend whatever continuity existed to White House whims. However things had been done, whatever best practices and communication flows had been established, would not be recognized if they became obstacles to White House objectives. As Taylor made clear, once Sondland got involved there became two US policies which almost immediately forced a choice of allegiance on the professionals, as they were now forced to participate in what they knew wasn’t either normal or appropriate. Guiliani was watching.

GOP House Intelligence Committee members last week found themselves in the unenviable position of either attacking the credibility of exemplary public servants or tacitly accepting the obvious: an open and shut case of impeachable extortion against a foreign country for the purpose of corrupting the 2020 US Presidential election. This dilemma was heightened still further when, as she was testifying, the POTUS actually tweeted out an attack against the ambassador he fired without cause. What to do?

The pasta they decided stuck most to the wall was to argue it is a President’s prerogative to be preoccupied with disloyalty, domestic or foreign. Executive intrigue eclipsing pesky things like the national interest is not for career foreign service officers to consider. Stick to your pay grade. Indeed, Republican Counsel Stephen Castor spent much of his time fleshing out conspiracy narratives in an effort to somehow create empathy for Trump’s grievance and paranoia of Ukraine as one of his original haters. Witnessing both Taylor and Kent struggle to follow along felt surreal and clarified the chasm between institutional competence and Fox/AM chaos, rationality and the fantasy martyrdom Trump always seeks to embrace when attacking institutions tasked with checking his recklessness.

The race to the bottom by Fox personalities is always neck and neck; lately the leader is Greg Gutfeld. Caustically nasty and utterly inane, to feel anything more substantive than a pressing desire to get back however many minutes of life one just wasted watching the shrill imp’s tired routine, requires checking even trace thoughtfulness at the remote. Yet and still, Gutfeld’s toxicity toward Marie Yovanovitch this weekend was illuminating, and perfectly illustrated this President’s reign of ugly vindictiveness. “Boo hoo,” Gutfeld taunted referring to the former ambassador’s testimony. The entitled snowflake had it coming… good for Trump. It’s us against them, and we know which one she is. Good riddance. You’re fired!

Any hesitation believing Gutfeld’s venom didn’t reflect the President’s thinking to the last wretched syllable wouldn’t survive a glance at his Twitter feed, where he proudly retweeted Rush Limbaugh’s take on Trump versus careerists. Rushbo gushed he had never supported Trump more than during last week’s proceedings:

“You elected Donald Trump to drain the Swamp, well, dismissing people like Yovanovitch is what that looks like. Dismissing people like Kent..and Taylor, dismissing everybody involved from the Obama holdover days trying to undermine Trump, getting rid of those people, dismissing them, this is what it looks like. It was never going to be claen (sic) they were never going to sit by idly and just let Trump do this!”

The articles of impeachment against Trump practically write themselves, and like his idiotic real time attack against Yovanovitch exemplified, he is far too unhinged to sweat adding to the list as he goes. But underwriting everything the Democrats do must be a clear understanding what’s most endangered by this atrocious Presidency…. the competence and integrity of US government institutions reflected in the ability of qualified careerists to do their jobs, free of apparatchiks looking for disloyalty to MAGA’s nihilism.

It’s an established fact the White House has no talent pool or even a functioning process to replace the exodus of qualified professionals hightailing it for no other reason than who is now President. A burgeoning class of Trumpie tattletales looking over the shoulders or outright excluding career professionals from policy and its execution portends disaster for the nation’s future as, forget world leader or even adequate provider of basic services, but a going democratic concern as well. House Republicans, in their defense of the President’s wretched Ukrainian scheme, are making clear that’s not a concern to them…. maintaining power, even if it requires the Sovietization of American government is just another consequence of Decision 16’….. get over it. That’s how ruin proceeds and four more years is not sustainable. BC

Mark Twain once said a half-truth is the most cowardly of lies. Never was a group more determined to define themselves by that insight than the Republicans of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday. Were it only so that full throated, 100 percent deceit could somehow be a badge of courage, then they would have more than nullified their abject cowardice by hearing’s end. Throughout the day, within the full spectrum of rank GOP dishonesty was the kind of overt disgrace that always accompanies authoritarian impulse…..kabuki in service to absurdity.

To find more impressive and unimpeachable witnesses than William Taylor and George Kent one would have to take pen to paper with Twain’s talent for creating characters. There was Taylor, the distinguished war hero and consummate diplomat, and Kent, seemingly his younger protege with an encyclopedic grasp on protocol and procedure. Both are trained professionals at saying exactly what they mean to convey, and nobody was in a position to question their veracity.

Devin Nunes went a step further, however, and attacked their motivations. With facts replaced by Hannity fever dreams, Nunes insulted both witnesses, contending they “auditioned” in secret hearings and were part of a “media orchestrated smear campaign” along with other “partisan bureaucrats.” Whatever the truth may be, unless it somehow can be connected with the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS, Nunes isn’t interested. His special gift is clarifying exactly what a lawmaker in full service to or possibly just as compromised as Trump acts like. Look at Nunes’ manic eyes and there always seems to be fear, as if he’s certain they’re coming for him. His opening statement employed Trump’s dependable “hoax” standby, a term even his most servile spin meisters avoid.

Perhaps as recently as just 10 years ago Nunes would have been the committee’s nutty outlier whose five minutes would have come and gone with a bipartisan eye roll; now he’s the ranking member and set the ugly tone for his colleagues to emulate. It’s both ironic and significant Nunes nonsensically charged the committee with auditioning its witness list because that’s exactly what each and every Republican was doing with their time. Whether for Trump or the wretched core back home, it hardly matters; coming up with new shades of lipstick to apply to their pig was the paramount aim of each. And make no mistake, this swine needs whatever edge cosmetics can provide.

The case is open and shut, as both Taylor and Kent’s “hearsay” testimony laid out. The President dispatched Rudy Guiliani and Gordon Sundland to extort a newly elected leader to dig up dirt on a principle domestic political opponent, shocking foreign service professionals they enlisted, who made clear today they had never seen the like before and considered the scheme an outrageous act at odds with US national interests. Moreover, both witnesses testified Vice President Biden’s efforts to press Ukrainian officials to up their anti-corruption game was a legitimate part of established US policy designed to bolster the nation’s law and order institutions, apples and oranges compared to Trump’s quid pro quo duplicity.

Like the entire Mueller saga, GOP questioning starts with a buffet of options that each member selects from. A little “does or doesn’t the Ambassador work at the pleasure of the President?” here, and a little “but you have never even met with the President, right?” there. A bit of “it really all boils down to the call, this piece of paper” here, and a spoonful of “I move that we subpoena the whistleblower” there. Yet and still, nothing they choose contains any meat for their defense. Everything is a side order meant to fill the proceedings with empty carbs, which hopefully will make everyone forget the main course.

The stunning surreality of the Republican counsel using much of his 45-minute time allotment to parse ridiculous internet conspiracy brought to life by, first Sean Hannity, and then his biggest fan, our POTUS, for serious public servants without a notion of what he was talking about, perfectly illustrated the perilous cliff our governance teeters at. It was a tale of two counsels, one focused on facts and timelines, the other on staccato gibberish designed only to elicit a pregnant pause from the witnesses, which could later be sold by Fox/AM as a gotcha exchange, proof of Trump’s noble intentions. And what to make of rabid dog for hire Jim Jordon? It gets increasingly harder to witness his unhinged antics without immediately conjuring Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle… “you talking to me.?!”

To be as fair as one can be navigating a sea of bad faith, Joe Biden has a problem he can’t ignore. Kent in particular was frank and even a bit expansive on the corrupt history of Barisma and its ownership. While making clear Biden’s actions as VP were only informed by established US policy, Kent had no issue agreeing that Barisma was part and parcel of Ukraine’s panoply of bad actors. That Biden’s son was game to take a paycheck from them, and his dad had nothing more to say than “I hope you know what you’re doing” is a legit issue voters should consider. What it’s not is an excuse or justification for Trump’s two-bit extortion racket.

The Republicans today have the same problem they had back in the summer of 2016, their wretched core base wants nothing to do with anything thoughtful or intelligent, experienced or constructive. Before Election Day 2016 they figured a lopsided loss would wipe the slate clean and permit recalibration, perhaps lead their followers for a change. Trump’s impossible victory offered a deal with the devil they were all glad to make: power for raw undisciplined populism, complete with fully erratic and egocentric behavior. Most thought White House handlers could offset the bargain’s worst elements; yesterday’s hearing is yet another appalling confirmation of how wrong they were. Worst of all, though, is the reality, fully clarified every other five-minute interval, that the devil’s agreement has reconfigured its recipients, now they embrace its worst and dutifully attend to the results. Another shade of ruin. BC

The other day I picked up my wife and son from Reagan National and on the way home we decided to stop by The Italian Store, which offers perhaps the best Italian sub anywhere. My son Luke came to the counter with me and I ordered several menu items, which a nice young man began to make. Luke has autism and began to …Er, act autistic, bouncing around with little care as to conventional decorum. My teenaged sandwich maker took notice and asked politely if perhaps Luke had autism. I said yes and he offered a knowing smile. “My older brother has autism he confided, sometimes he acts kind of the same way.” Think about that. Some random kid making me sandwiches had been touched by the condition just as directly as I have. Of all the gin joints…..What are the odds? Sadly, way too good!

So many of the challenges America faces in the coming years are going to call for collective patience and empathy. Start with the disabled community. The autism epidemic ensures an unprecedented influx of adults who will require support and outside intervention their entire lives. When their parents and other family members pass on, so many will be alone and at the mercy of whatever safety nets we have created for them.

And speaking of parents, America is right now welcoming baby boomers into their golden years. With medicine and technology pushing forward life expectancies, the next few decades are going to challenge our children’s tender mercies and literally put our well being in their hands. Seniors without children are going to be alone as they give way to dependence on others. How will they be treated? Many in both of these vulnerable groups will be poor and unable to pay for the assurance of attention and care. Where will it come from? It’s going to require more than our best intentions; there is going to be a financial sacrifice to it, not to mention the collective patience to tolerate those with little left on offer but their faltering efforts to meet society’s expectations.

What about our veterans? After a generation of continuous war and occupation, we now have thousands returning home with an entire range of injuries, PTSD to brain damage. They served bravely and deserve the best care, and many will rely on it the rest of their lives. All agree it isn’t up for discussion, but as the years pass and resources tighten their level of care will surely come down to our collective compassion.

As the nation’s overcrowded prison system releases men sentenced to decades at the height of American justice’s “zero-tolerance” golden days, they, too, will be defenseless and most likely without funds just as their bodies and health begin to fail. Who will advocate for them? What slice of the pie will voters allocate them as they struggle after adulthoods regimented by institutional life? And on and on, the list is long and getting longer. Fact is, the tidal wave of adults at least partly dependent on the better nature of the rest of society will intertwine with every other facet of American life and governance; nobody will be able to ignore them.

The GOP since Reagan has held fast to the premise that our politics should be divorced from our better natures. Charity should be in the heart of every individual and not mandated by the state. Public policy should proceed on the maxim our better angels exist and can be counted on. Of course this presumption is at odds with the Hobbesian foundation of conservatism; that mankind is at our core fairly malevolent and, as a guiding rule, in need of structure to impel law and order. But no matter, consistency is the hobgoblin of simple minds and all that.

What counts is that for near 40 years Republicans, whether informed by the Reagan Revolution, or HW Bush’s “a thousand points of light,” or W Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” held fast to the notion of compartmentalization of America’s goodness. One could be a John Kasich-like deficit hawk, prepared to make tough-love cuts to social programs, yet willing and able to step in with private largesse to fill the void. If one received a dollar for every time disgraced Fox prime timer Bill O’Reilly averred “we are the most generous people on Earth,” a substantial slush fund could be amassed.

Whatever confidence one could once muster that friends and neighbors who supported otherwise Scroogian political platforms went about life’s routines exhibiting essentially the opposite inclination toward those in need, surely has been decimated. Even the most ardent proponent of the necessity for segmentation of political and private sensibilities must surely be disheartened by what MAGA proponents are willing to, not simply look past, but enthusiastically cheer on. Forget the indifferent callousness of Trumpism’s policy agenda, the ability to abide their champion’s atrocious personal behavior should lead any discerning person to doubt a Republican’s commitment to the least of these on any level.

Education secretary Betsy DeVos smirking at lawmakers as she postured what a hard call cutting funding for Special Olympics was – something no Administration before this one even gave a moment’s consideration to – was a stunner, but quickly passed into the chaos of another news cycle. When Trump openly mocked a Washington Post reporter’s disability on the campaign trail it was rightfully seen as an unthinkable breach of established standards for decency, but it too faded as MAGA partisans shrilly declared our own eyes couldn’t be trusted. Ditto credible recollections of the President’s disdain for poor “shit hole” countries and the refugees they create.

This particular news round up features perhaps the ugliest evidence yet of Trump’s despicable nature. To settle a suit brought against the Trump Foundation a New York judge ordered the President to make good on $2 million worth of fraud his charity perpetrated on those naive enough to believe anything with the Trump name abided legitimacy. Back in January of 2016 Trump made a point of boycotting a GOP debate and holding a veterans fundraiser. Where did the donations go? According to the settlement, which Trump accepted, everywhere but to veterans. From using donations for political purposes to settling civil disputes to, incredibly, actually obtaining a portrait of himself to hang in the bowels of Mar-A-Lago…. no abuse seemed too outrageous.

The White House response? A typical Trump screed, completely ignoring the case itself and lying repeatedly about what the judgement entailed, and of course whining about the Clinton Foundation. By the usual sorry Trump numbers. Regardless, the gist of the suit’s resolution could not be clearer: as recently as 2016 the POTUS was actively scamming disabled veterans out of donations to their welfare. That is a fact.

MAGA sympathizers are flummoxed by what they now label as gratuitous “hate” they receive from “never Trumpers.” For the life of them they can’t understand why the traditional walls between politics and personal relationships are now suddenly being breached. Many a meme now circulates pleading for civility and perspective. Hey, it’s just politics…, quit being sore losers! It’s so unfair to make us suffer for our grievance and resentment. Trump has fully passed down his narcissistic victimhood to wretched core supporters. They deserve nothing but deaf ears.

Nobody sets out to think less of their friends and fellow citizens. What piece of mind can be achieved with the understanding many of your peers lack basic compassion? Yet and still, nasty self-absorption, antonymous to empathy and understanding, is a primary MAGA component. Go to most any Fox/AM thread and you’ll find boastful declarations about looking out for number one at the expense of the more vulnerable. Those in need are fraudsters, reliance a vice to be scorned. Who can take any satisfaction in that? But ignoring it can’t be an option or it becomes normal.

A vile bully, who instinctively mocks any weakness he detects in others, occupies the White House. The notion supporting such a disgrace shouldn’t taint one’s standing with peers seems as dense as Trump himself. As he daily spirals to deeper and deeper depths, the willingness of his supporters to shrug their shoulders, or worse, try to revise the record becomes ever less tolerable. The suggestion it’s just a difference of opinion politics typically creates, part and parcel of democratic life, is no longer simply oblivious, it’s willful ignorance on its best day.

The world we want to see is reflected in our politics; our governance can’t be some hobby or sidelight….. especially now. In the past there was more than enough moral ambiguity within the differences of our two major parties to permit one’s choice exemption from scrutiny as to good faith and best intentions. Now there isn’t. Trump and his customized GOP have obliterated any previous benefit of the doubt. What once could rightly be seen as self-righteous and judgmental intrusion, has become a modicum of civic responsibility, a shred of common decency. The President’s ceaseless preening about the economy aside, it’s the people who depend on us, stupid! BC

At about 5:00 PM on April 12, 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt died. Anyone close to Roosevelt could not have been shocked by the news. In fact, looking at photos of FDR during the last year of his life, including famous images of him with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, one marvels at the collective delusion exhibited toward Roosevelt’s inevitable mortality; the man had simply not been at all well.

Yet and still, on the fateful day he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage it seems none was more surprised than the man who would succeed him. As all who mattered rushed to the White House to oversee the empowerment of a new POTUS, Truman sat “looking dreadful…. absolutely dazed,” according to biographical accounts. Taking the oath, Truman would later ruminate, he felt the “moon, the stars, and all the planets” had just fallen on his shoulders. Regardless how much previous thought Truman had given to FDR’s demise, it’s clear when the time came he was, at least for a while, a deer in the headlights. And why not? America hadn’t had another President in more than a decade, and the world was at war, a conflict yet to be fully decided by any stretch.

Fortunately, there were good men available to advise Truman and help develop a White House decision making process. Truman, was as well read as any President ever to serve, but he knew what he didn’t know, particularly after being near fully shut out by FDR from inner circle war planning. Luckily there was Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, who Truman recognized for the great statesman he was, and whose advice the new President was not shy to seek and consider.

Later, Truman would appoint Marshall Secretary of State, where he would be responsible for the Marshall Plan, one of the great US foreign policy achievements. Early on, however, it was merely the understanding Marshall and other able advisors were available for counsel that afforded Truman the critical confidence and well being to take on the plethora of momentous challenges he immediately faced. One can only shutter at how different history may have been if Truman had not been up to the task he suddenly inherited, if he had been too insecure and arrogant to cultivate wisdom from the braintrust available to him.

It’s a certainty Donald Trump was at least as startled when he became President as Truman was in the spring of 45’. By all accounts, nobody within the leadership of the Trump campaign, least of all the candidate himself, expected to prevail three years ago. As Election Day neared, Trump rallies were more him hissing about a “rigged system” that would ensure his defeat than any plans for a presidency. Indeed, to hear Trump “campaign” in Decision 2016’s homestretch was to absorb all of the whiney conspiratorial grievance and resentment MAGA had represented from day one. The feeling was it would simply continue as a central part of Fox/AM’s post-election sedition. Nothing is more ironic within the ever expanding slew of Trump outrages than the projection to those considering his overt corruption the “sour grapes” diatribes he was honing to a fine edge before snow fell in hell and he won.

There is a great picture of the Trump inner circle looking at television monitors as the impossible was playing out. While all look flabbergasted at what’s unfolding, the winner looks horrified, crestfallen at the cruel karma his hubris had created. Suffice it to say, Truman could not have looked more “dreadful” than our President-elect felt at that moment. Unfortunately for all of us, Trump never enjoyed access to the nation’s best and brightest, and moving into the final year of his term, it couldn’t be clearer this President only feels threatened and aggravated by counsel he makes no effort at all to digest.

All of which brings us to the last man standing in the West Wing with any sort of relationship at all to the purgatory between Trump’s unhinged impulses and the levers of government responsible for somehow translating them to practical policy. Saying Mick Mulvaney is no George Marshall is like saying Boone’s Farm Apple isn’t a Chateau Lafite Rothschild; Marshall would have thought twice about entrusting Mulvaney his sandwich order, but here we are. It’s comical to hear MAGA minions in Congress claim the President is focused on his policy agenda. Anybody with eyes and a twitter feed knows this is nonsense and looming impeachment completely obsesses Trump. To that end, Mulvaney is mobilizing his troops to go to war against House investigators, refusing any and all requests for cooperation.

Mulvaney’s impact on DC bureaucracy is as vast as any in the White House. After all, he currently holds three jobs. In addition to chief-of-staff, Mulvaney also still heads Office of Management and Budget, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all of his concerted efforts to fully destroy the latter notwithstanding. Word now is that Mulvaney loyalists at OMB like Russell Vought will stonewall Democrats as they piece together the mechanics of placing a hold on near a half billion dollars of military aid previously authorized for Ukraine.

Of course, Mulvaney, himself, admitted publicly during a news conference the aid had been held as a lever to pressure the Zelensky government to follow Trump wishes. Mulvaney declared without hesitation such actions were near routine, nothing at all worth a second thought. “Get over it” was the advise he had for reporters at the time. The contortions he subsequently went through to walk his prattle back, amid rumors he had sealed his fate on the way to becoming a former Trump lackey, confirmed chaos in the West Wing about which narrative to follow. Nothing new there.

What is new and increasingly ominous is the incredible idea that Trump may actually shut down the government later this month as part of his continuing tantrum against impeachment. Nobody believes for a second, the President came up with that one by his lonesome…. all roads point to Mulvaney. What better way to get back in Trump’s good graces than come up with out-of-the-box scorched-earth militancy? There is a reason Mulvaney is reviled by most who regret having to share his company; this idea illustrates why. It is at once as servile and gratuitously nasty as imaginable. What’s next? We’ll give San Francisco a little taste of a tactical nuke if Shifty doesn’t back off?

The battle lines in the White House are clearly drawn, the litmus test for loyalty unmistakable: you either cooperate with investigators or you tell them to get bent. As for shutting down the government, that’s always been in Mulvaney’s wheelhouse. As a Freedom Caucus backbencher, then Congressman Mulvaney was perhaps the most reliable yea on the Hill when it came to budgetary gridlock. Now he can furlough government workers just in time for the holidays as a foolproof way of insuring his own job security. What would George Marshall have said?! ….. “Son, are you sure you’re up to this? Last time you got me pastrami instead of corned beef. Maybe you better write it down.” Another ugly tint of ruin! BC

Historians and political scientists are scrambling to provide real-time academic terms and definitions for what currently ails our polity here in America. Those looking for solace search ardently for previous precedents in our national timeline, the better to assure we have faced this before and survived to tell the tale. Yet and still, the further down our current road we travel, the more difficult that task becomes.

Those who talk aimlessly about the prospect of civil war surely don’t appreciate the trials the last one created. And few would dispute that only the protection two oceans afforded at that particular moment in human technological development prevented foreign incursions seeking to capitalize on our cannibalism. Whatever another such conflagration would look like, it’s a sure bet our adversaries are in a better position to manipulate it for their purposes. But, histrionics aside, where do we really stand on the spectrum of national dissolution? After all, whatever our current plight, nobody around DC let it keep them from game 7 and World Series glory…. did they?

“Regime cleavage” is one of those preposterously obscure terms only a poly sci major with nightmares of mid-terms past or present would recognize. In a nutshell it refers to an erosion of respect of/concern for a governmental system’s foundations and established practices by a significant bloc of citizens and leaders who convey their will. Yesterday’s straight party line House vote on the next phase of impeachment fully clarified a GOP within the throes of such inclinations, stridently equating the rule of law with leftist intrigue, and setting forth competing elements that cloud our civic horizon.

The pattern for Republican ingestion of and steady immersion by Trump’s incessant disdain for any sort of established propriety has been predictable and wholly unsatisfactory since the toxic launch of his campaign back in 2015. Now, however, it has metastasized into outright servile homage, where anything other than unquestioned support of his rabid sedition is seen as apostasy. Early on the routine had four main steps: first shock and measured criticism; then deflection of the act by attacking the Democratic response; next creating equivalence for the act and asserting the other side does it as well; finally, forgetting about the whole thing and declaring the American people expect bipartisan solutions to problems “they care about,” not dwelling in the rear view to make political hay out of yesterday’s news.

The ugly saga of Trump’s scheme to extort a newly elected Ukrainian government for the purpose of disabling the Biden presidential campaign now highlights an odious new trajectory to the way Republicans respond to his corruption. Instead of shock there is simply grudging passivity, with both deflection and equivalence almost immediate and reactively prosecuted without reservation. Instead of coping with the burden Trump’s fait accomplis force them to bear, much of the House GOP now sees opportunities to brandish pro-MAGA bonafides with no quarter to the facts that are beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, pressuring Zelensky to do Trump’s dirty work is ennobled as exactly what “this President was elected to do,” another promise kept!

As Trump’s term has deteriorated into one unprecedented nadir after another, GOP lawmakers have actually narrowed their range of options, more comfortable putting themselves into the same corner Trump occupies. Of course, unhinged Trump rhetoric is now business as usual, Trump being Trump. “Inappropriate” or “not how I would have put it” is the most one gets these days up to and including the worst of his rabid gibberish. As for patently impeachable conduct like the Ukrainian affair? It’s no longer the crime but instead how it is investigated… process.

A steady stream of rock solid witnesses, with comparable credibility, continue to come forward to fully validate the President wanted to withhold near a half billion dollars of critical military aid to a former Soviet satellite now again under siege by Russia, yet the House Minority Leader is only interested in “transparency.” When a group of Hannity darlings “stormed” a hearing they whined was “shutting out the American people,” the implication was sinister Dems were secretly kneeling around a cauldron chanting Soros mantras. Last anybody checked every committee in Congress consists of exactly half minus one Republican, but mobs seldom dwell on details.

The White House has based its entire defense on the transcript it provided to the public of Trump’s July conversation with Zelensky. Despite one nail after the other being driven into the quid pro quo coffin, the President has tweeted again and again the transcript renders all else void and absolves him. But now, as both decorated veteran and National Security Council staffer George Vindman, and another NSC staffer, Tim Morrison, decimate that proposition, a shameless shift is underway toward regime cleavage territory. Who cares if there was a quid pro quo, what’s wrong with doing whatever is necessary to drain the swamp? Why should we give military aid to a pipsqueak who won’t help lock the Bidens up? Add that to what Minority Whip Steve Scalise breathlessly terms “a Soviet-style process” and we get 40 percent or so of the US and their elected officials saying “so he did it, who cares?…. Try and do something about it! The Constitution doesn’t apply to, how did our beloved leader put it, oh yea…. human scum!”

A quick trip to Twitter or Trump’s Facebook page confirms wretched core sensibilities are now at least malleable, at worst outright hostile, toward the Constitution or any previous White House best practices. If the Mueller Report’s meticulous verbiage and open ended conclusions left enough light for a benefit of the doubt, the Ukraine investigation does not. It really is open and shut.

Yesterday not one House Republican voted to even approve the open impeachment inquiry they have ceaselessly claimed the Democrats were resisting. Even Florida Republican Francis Rooney, who was literally forced into retirement after only two terms for casually stating a desire to “get all the facts on the table,” fell back into line. Incredibly, more Democrats (2) voted no than Republicans voted yes. Forget “big tent,” this GOP couldn’t muster a lean-to.

About 160 years ago roughly half of America declared their desire to secede rather than take yes for an answer on slavery. “Do something about it” was their challenge then, just like it’s the seditious wretched core’s now. This is what it’s come to, the manifesto of Trump’s GOP: we back a lazy, unhinged and utterly seditious lunatic, who brazenly breaks the law and engages in conduct the Constitution clearly defines as impeachable. Elections have consequences and you’re just going to have to lump it until 2020. But, by the way, since you have refused to do that with this latest coup attempt, we reserve the right to fully discredit 2020’s results if we don’t like them…. we’re playing under protest. Oh, and also you all are socialists who want to disarm us and teach our kids to be atheists; if you take back the White House all bets are off! The regime cleavage of Trumpism and the $64,000 question…..“What are you going to do about it?!” BC

Between 1936 and 1938 Joseph Stalin moved to fully complete his total hold on Soviet power by purging most every remaining founding member of the Bolshevik party. In a series of farcical show trials, badly tortured and defeated men were paraded in court rooms to confess to crimes that ran the gamut from plotting to assassinate Stalin to mobilizing counterrevolution in service to the Romanov Dynasty. No accusation was too absurd, and the entire sham confirmed for many western observers their worst fears, that Russia was now under the iron grasp of, not only a devout communist, but also brutal autocrat. Many an international comrade saw the spectacle as a tragic crossroads as well, when they realized Marxist ideals had succumbed to individual depravity.

George Kennan, then a young deputy and translator to American Ambassador William Bullitt, would be so affected by the public purges that it would solidify his view of the Soviet system as a grave international threat. The post-war “Long Telegram” he would wire to Truman Administration officials more than a decade later, which provided the foundation for US containment policy until the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in November of 91’, was fully informed by lasting impressions the Moscow show trials had on Kennan.

Authoritarians use a panoply of methods to repress opposition and corrupt government toward their narcissistic whim. Perhaps the underhanded deceit most often employed is the libelous discrediting of critics. Whoever the opponent is, or how lofty their public standing may be, autocratic strategies require whatever is necessary to bring their veracity into question. Rumors, half-truths, innuendo, third-party whispering…. outright lies; nothing is out of bounds if it helps to confuse the issue and cloud the facts. The focus is never on what is being said, but who is saying it and what their motives may be. To actually address the substance of the charges validates them. Far easier to simply destroy the reputation of the person providing the testimony.

Were one to be tasked with making up a resume of distinguished public service, it would be hard to exceed the career of William Taylor. A graduate of West Point, Taylor served in the famed 101st Airborne in Vietnam, where he was decorated for heroism. A subsequent graduate of Harvard’s public affairs program, Taylor served as a staffer for Senator Bill Bradley before moving on to postings ranging from the Department of Energy to the US Ambassador’s office for NATO, Afghanistan to Iraq under Colin Powell. In 2006 Taylor was appointed by W. Bush to be the Ambassador of Ukraine, where, it was later reported, “he took charge of the embassy in a remarkably effective and positive way.” After serving in the Middle East under Obama and eventually becoming the executive vice president of the Institute for Peace, Taylor was called on by Trump in June to head back to Ukraine as interim charge d’affaires, presumably to clean up the mess made when Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch was recalled in May.

Taylor’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about Trump’s efforts to extort incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could not have been more damning. If Trump’s own admissions, or the clumsy public confession of inept acting Chief-of-Staff Mick Mulvaney weren’t enough to confirm nefarious intention, certainly Taylor’s meticulously documented timeline of events and his purely professional and non-partisan concerns got the job done. What he verifies in exquisite detail is far more than a phone call, it’s a systematic extortion effort in plain sight, before the incredulous eyes of a top notch foreign service professional.

If Taylor’s testimony indicted the entire scheme that led to Trump’s fateful July phone conversation with Zelensky, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security staffer with his own sparkling life story, convicted the phone call itself. A decorated veteran wounded by an IED in Iraq, Vindman’s family actually escaped the Soviet Union. His is an idealized vision of America and the Constitution he expects to guide its governance. Calling him a patriot is like calling Tom Brady a QB; it doesn’t near hit the mark.

Like Taylor, his testimony reflected a straight arrow shocked at what he was witnessing, appalled at its sleazy brazenness. Trump and his minions have latched on to the “transcript” defense, claiming the written account of the call with Zelensky the White House furnished offers full vindication, case closed. When Judy Woodruff of PBS, an inquisitor nobody would mistake for Perry Mason, had Trump poodle VP Mike Pence on the ropes the other night, he continually fell back to the Alamo of the transcript and its cascading flow of exoneration. But Vindman told House investigators of his dissatisfaction with the furnished account’s veracity, and made clear he thought it incomplete. Game, set, match.

Taylor and Vindman now join Yovanovitch, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strok, Lisa Page, Robert Mueller and his elite team of investigators, and a host of others who all share two main attributes: they dutifully performed their jobs, which required investigating the most corrupt Administration in American history; and they all boasted previously exemplary careers and reputations as public servants. All are now under scurrilous attack by our real incarnation of Buzz Windrip and a host of cowards whose ambitions can only be pursued as servile expendables to his lies and criminality.

The hideous crescendo of the show trials of Stalin’s Great Terror was the persecution of Nikolai Bukharin, an OG Bolshevik present at the creation of the Soviet State and previous right hand to Stalin himself. At his proceedings, the once vibrant Bukharin was a shell as he listlessly heard the state’s prosecutor label him a cross between “a fox and a pig.” Of course Bukharin’s crucifiers got nothing on Trump in the abasing insults department. Speaking of those he has collectively libeled as “never Trumpers,” the leader of the free world declared: “Watch out for them, they are human scum.”

Right now the Attorney General of the US is devoting the full resources of his office to skew and augment puzzle pieces, jamming them into a conspiracy tapestry recklessly created on the fly with no other purpose than to discredit Trump’s investigators. Whether his efforts end up as the desperate gasps of a criminal enterprise cornered by democratic institutions they failed to destroy, or a specific place and time where previously inept miscreants mutated into cogs of an unleashed machinery for repression, it’s no longer crying wolf to equate the well being of those on Trump’s ever expanding enemies list with our prospects as a going concern. A critical juncture. BC

Seems in every high school class there is the one guy and girl who rise above the needless parameters idiotic cliques impose. Since I wasn’t yet much on fully interacting with girls back then, I’ll limit my observation to Churchill 78’s baddest dude. His name was Lester and he was something to behold. Blond and Adonis-like, but with a slight scar on his face that only added credibility, he moved with confidence through the halls and meeting areas, fully comfortable in his own genetically blessed skin.

It was impossible to label him. He was way too athletically gifted and involved to be a stoner, even though few appreciated Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull or not inhaling more. And while he was one of the track team’s fastest runners, and may still hold a record or two at his swim club, nobody bemoaned him as some oafish jock. Although he sometimes joined us chronic truants at the house of somebody’s working mom, more of a rarity back then, I always enviously assumed his academic performance was more than adequate.

What Lester effortlessly demonstrated back when Carter was President is the priceless freedom self-assurance provides, the blessings of the road less traveled. He moved free from inane narratives about who was and wasn’t worth befriending, who could or couldn’t elevate your stature, who had or didn’t have something worth offering.

He liked to run, so he ran, and enjoyed the friendship of other runners. He loved rock and roll and partying, so he counted all of us as amigos. He saw girls as fellow humans rather than startling enigmas or prey grazing on hormonal hunting grounds, so he enjoyed their company. It was all so easy for him because it came so natural; nothing was overthought, no pretense entertained. If it felt right he did it, free of any taint pre-judgement could impose.

For those of us bound by adolescent insecurities and the failure ghosts they conjured, Lester was viewed as, say Ted Williams, on a different playing field we weren’t qualified for. When I was in his company I felt fortunate and paid attention. He had a way of casually admonishing inanity with a sarcastic chuckle as he intoned your last name with a hint of dismissiveness; it was all that was required. He hailed from one of those families everybody knew, each of his siblings both receiving and getting respect for their loyalty to the other. If his older brother was intimidating and a bit aloof, his younger brother was easy to talk to and great to hang around with; each was their own person, but proud to be part of a set.

After graduation I believe he and a good buddy hitchhiked across the country, a saga fully in line with his gigantic persona. While my opportunities to hang with him during my 20s and early 30s were spotty, they were always rewarding. He never became rich and famous, instead settling down and raising a family like most of us. Yet and still, the natural awe and respect for him I always felt never substantially waned, and enjoying his company was always a privilege.

Today is his 60th birthday and I was honored with an invitation. No doubt the party will reflect his life, attended by folks who feel as I do about the good fortune of counting him as a friend. His wife is wonderful, his 20-something kids are as attractive and refreshingly genuine as he was at their age. Years pass, but the song usually remains the same. Who we become generally owes to who we were. In this case that’s an indisputably good thing.

I’m fairly certain most of us have occasional fantasies of what we would do differently if somehow permitted to revisit our formative years. Who doesn’t ponder the senseless counter-productiveness of youth with an eye toward solutions impossible revisionism can provide? Speaking for myself, the answers are never very hard and always take me back to the same proposition…. I would have been more like Lester. BC

The rivalries of the various Eastern European peoples go back centuries upon centuries. To adequately understand why Hungary now has testy relations with Ukraine would, at minimum require returning to before WWI and the days of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Ten to twelve paragraphs will not get that job done. Suffice it to say that a sizable minority of ethnic Hungarians – more than 150,000 – reside within Ukraine. Many have pursued duel citizenship even though it violates Ukrainian law. Their native tongue is Hungarian, which they insist their children should be permitted to be taught in, lest they lose the foundations of their ethnic identity. Such sensitivities and other cross-border issues make for tensions ripe to be manipulated in service to nationalist political agendas.

From his arrival on the international scene with nothing but, first handlers futilely trying to keep his worst under wraps, then the guff that came when he was eventually left to his own devices, Trump has offered seasoned strong men around the globe a soft target to take full advantage of. Enamored by the imagery of world leaders coming to DC to pay him homage, Trump’s objectives for face-to-faces with a plethora of previously persona non gratas have seemed little more than photo ops designed to simply propagate the idea he was actually doing something. Intentions on the other side have been a bit more focused and most often yielded desired results, none more than Hungarian aims toward Ukraine.

Within the loathsome history of The Holocaust perhaps no subplot stirs anger in one’s soul more than the destruction of Hungary’s Jews. By mid-1944, with Germany’s fate sealed by its defeat in Stalingrad, Hungary’s government decided that maybe it had backed the wrong horse when it fell in with the Axis powers and sought distance from the alliance. Hitler wasn’t having it and invaded Hungary to ensure its obedience. Within just several months Hungary’s Jewish population was annihilated with the methodical efficiency Adolph Eichmann would later be hunted worldwide for. More than 550,000 perished in an operation that had no chance of succeeding without the full servility of the native infrastructure. An indelible stain on the country.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is as experienced and savvy a European politician as one will find. Since his election in 2010, he has also near fully transformed into an autocrat with ever lessening tolerance for constitutional restraints and a burgeoning docket of corruption allegations. Perhaps more odious has been Orban’s “double game” of pursuing close ties with Israel’s Netanyahu even as he plays to a burgeoning bloc of right-wing anti-semites, going so far as to openly question history’s emphatic verdict of Hungary’s Holocaust complicity. In short, just the type of “great friend” Trump wants at a podium several feet away while he tells most Americans how awful they are.

When adults were still allowed into the West Wing, no effort was spared to make certain Orbán would never get near the White House. All understood nothing good could come of it. But as McMaster and Mattis and most any other counselor with the national interest in mind ran for their lives – or at least reputations – the Pompeos and Millers and Mulvaneys took charge of Trump’s itinerary…. and Orbán suited them just fine. By May of this year he received the coveted invite, and proceeded to DC with a focused agenda pertaining to the discrediting of Ukraine’s incoming government.

It’s a mystery why anyone would be shocked that Trump would embrace any or all nonsensically dangerous conspiracy theories for explaining events he has never mustered the ambition to study factual sources about. After all, during the 2016 campaign he held the sinister Alex Jones close, and was never shy of, say, baselessly accusing a primary opponent’s father of helping to kill JFK, or giving comfort to any and all internet fever dreams about the Clintons.

How does this impact foreign policy, in Ukraine for example? Start with a base of macro-assumptions such as NATO allies are moochers, always looking to duck their fair share, and the image of immigrant hordes storming civilization as hapless libs do nothing. Throw in a phone call with Putin, who relentlessly pounds the narrative of Ukraine as an ultra- corrupt failed state. Add to that whatever wild rumors or quarter-truths an Iago-like lackey, say a Guiliani or Miller, may hiss into his ear, and voila!…. our current decision-making process.

Last May, as Viktor Orbán made his way for his photo-op, this was the chaotic prism Trump was looking through. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a foreign service stalwart, was already targeted for termination for not sufficiently resembling US Ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, a former jeweler and virulent Trumpie, who enthusiastically coddled Orban even as he moved steadily toward authoritarianism. Conversely, Yovanovitch had relentlessly pressured Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to address the corruption that had become endemic before reformist Volodymyr Zelensky swept into office.

Since 2017 Orban had intensified efforts to make Ukraine a straw man for his ultra-nationalism, railing at a mandate ethnic Hungarian middle and high school kids in Ukraine – Ukrainian citizens – be taught exclusively in the native tongue. Hungary aggressively opposed Ukrainian membership in NATO, and was accused of promoting illegal duel citizenships for ethnic Hungarians within Ukraine. On most all things Ukraine, Orban moved in lockstep with Putin, which was surely conveyed when he sat down with our feckless anti-statesman.

So it now appears last May the President, ever resistant to any sort of “deep state” policy briefings that reflected established US policy and common US-European interests, near solely relied on, first a lengthy telephone call with Putin, and then a White House meeting with Orban to fully poison his view of Ukraine and it’s resistance to Russian incursions. Meanwhile, America had already, with full bi-partisan Capitol Hill support, pledged more than $400 million in military aid to assist Ukraine’s fight against Russian hegemony. Although it seems clear neither of the autocrats suggested relegating Ukraine to merely a platform in service to Trump’s vile domestic political schemes, they succeeded in fully discrediting the country and its cause, convincing their vapid audience to view providing any US resources as far from the done deal everyone else in his government assumed it was. The sad sack plot to transform the aid package into a quid pro quo for extortion soon followed.

What’s so stunning about Trump’s disgusting odyssey with Ukraine, which has ended up in a basement House hearing room, a procession of witnesses fully connecting the dots of impeachable idiocy, is the certainty its far more rule than aberration. Autocrats everywhere, from China to North Korea, Poland to Russia, Turkey to Egypt understand orange chum is in the water. America is there for the fleecing, get in front of Trump while you can…… Another shade of ruin. BC

The most shocking epiphany Trumpism has foisted is the ease with which American politics, media, law enforcement and citizenry have digested a now near daily menu of unprecedented outrages. Anybody predicting back in January, 2017 that Trump would brazenly steer the premiere conference for Western allies to one of his resorts, and then cart out his chief-of-staff to flip off reporters and assure them taxpayers, who will foot much of the event’s bill, were not privy to the selection process, would have surely been labeled an alarmist.

Ditto for the surreality of the same servile minion admonishing the press to “get over” it’s interest in a quid pro quo for extorting a foreign government to screw with a Trump political opponent that the lackey was in the process of admitting to. Mindless authoritarianism requires the hits to just keep coming, and we’re doing our best to keep integrating them into lifestyles still attuned to the pre-2016 luxury that our politics can be categorized from our daily routine. As our mad king does his worst, most simply now rely on Decision 2020 to deliver us, even as more than a few mutter it’s the Democrats we really have to worry about, at least Trump’s a capitalist.

The canvas of the US electorate has never been more discouraging. As Democrats argue over plans for everything from tax policy to health care to gun control, one seems to always come back to the disclaimer “what does it really matter?!” Whatever merits or liabilities reside in any particular plan, the sad fact is there are precious few left whose vote next November actually rides on any distinctions. Abiding this conclusion makes the other night’s Democratic debate seem futile, almost an exercise in collective delusion. It also makes candidates concerned about dotting policy i’s and t’s appear petty and needlessly combative. After all, the menace we face is nihilist populism; the bar is very low for demonstrating wonkish bona fides.

Thirty-five years ago GOP god Ronald Reagan was clear as he could be that assault weapons belonged only on the battlefield. Now the Republican Party will crucify any of its own for the suggestion such guns even deserve additional scrutiny, or modifications to make them even more lethal may need to be prohibited. Do what you will with that information, but it strikes me anyone all in with that proposition isn’t voting for anybody on the stage last week. Moreover, it’s doubtful they are very receptive to any details of a buyback program, which is more for reassurance there will be some carrot with the stick than any step-by-step blueprint.

Yet there was Mayor Pete disdaining Beto O’Rourke’s plan to insist on gun sanity with jabs that the plan isn’t fully thought through. Does anyone believe the people who own these weapons care about the details right now, or are they simply ready to burn Beto in effigy for proposing it. In other words, at present it’s the balls that count, not the cerebral specifics. Following one mass killing after another the real issue is will one party demand we return our national sensibilities to what even the Gipper was glad to embrace. No program for doing it is going to be pretty because most of the people it effects are ugly on the issue. And they will surely get uglier regardless of details. Dismissing the moxie to insist on it says, at least to me, more about trying to gain traction with debate points than a focus on the crisis at hand.

Democrats make a needless mistake by failing to distinguish positions that reflect the existential battle against Trumpist nihilism and those where intelligent people can reasonably disagree. Culture war issues for the most part reflect what was either settled before 2016 or should be finally settled after it. Banning assault weapons, gay rights, abortion law, voting rights, climate change awareness and other environmental safeguards, the assumption arbitrary tariff regimes are economic liabilities, all of these areas were under an umbrella of national consensus before 2016, reflecting the fruits of American progress we attained through often painful trial and error.

That Fox/AM retrograde madness has assaulted such hard-earned lessons, should be labeled what it has been, a destructive aberration, going into next November. In other words, you think Climate Change is a hoax, that’s your problem, we’ll trust science and our own eyes; there is no discussion here, we’re going to get back on track. Now, is there really any chance a voter who wants to make that conflict the crucible of their decision going to vote Democrat under any circumstance? Of course not. Getting rid of assault weapons should be like the sun comes up in the east as far as the Democratic platform is concerned. Why pick a fight about details more than a year out? Thoughtful gun owners will draw a distinction, radicalized dittoheads won’t.

Conversely, arguments concerning health care or tax policy or higher education assistance should follow a different path. Details matter. We’ve seen before exactly how public fear and uncertainty can weaponize GOP messaging which now knows no restraint when it comes to the slimmest obligation to fact. Debating big approaches to policy and their execution is prudent, although one minute debate snippets are not exactly explanation-friendly.

Yet and still, whatever the time restraints, any discussion of Democratic ambitions must be tied at the hip with Trump’s wretched record on the matter. Constantly, relentlessly. Democrats suffer for intelligence in the messaging wars. The GOP has long known repetition is the key, boredom be damned. And while it’s true a smarter audience may demand more variety, the same thing can be pressed in different ways.

Whether it’s Medicare For All (MFA), a more relaxed hybrid or simply fixing Obama Care, the alternative is Trump’s nihilist policy of trying to wipe out all progress that has been made with nothing else on offer. Talking about one without assailing the other lets failure off the hook. If you are self-employed another Trump term will end your coverage., that simple. Tax policy? Well after Trump has needlessly blown up the debt during full employment with a near $2 billion giveaway to the upper brackets, here’s a plan to restore some sanity and economic equilibrium. One 30 seconds must always either proceed or follow the other 30 seconds of the answer. Every time. Without fail.

It’s inconceivable the coming Presidential election should be anything but a referendum on Trump’s disastrous first term. By next November his re-election should be a horrid specter to anyone other than his wretched core, who any effective campaign will do its best to identify and segregate; they are lost to us. More than a few worry making MFA a campaign centerpiece could scare undecideds into voting Trump for fear of losing their private health coverage. While I won’t dismiss such a concern, supporting MFA in itself won’t result in a Trump win. Only embracing a “horse race” strategy that fecklessly assumes the onus is on Democrats to “win the battle of ideas” and then offering policy seminars as campaign speeches instead of taking dead aim at our current pestilence will snatch defeat from victory.

This isn’t going to be Jimmy Carter futilely attempting to paint Reagan as the end of days in 80’. This is whether a Democrat will be determined and insistent enough to force undecideds to look past the unemployment rate and Dow to admit what most understand…. it has been four years of the perilously abnormal and four more years will only bring worse. The President at all times wants to be the centerpiece issue; next November is one time he should be. Trump’s term in office has been one vile outrage diluted by the next, creating a web of chaotic confusion. His effort to get re-elected must become a reckoning, a public education of how harmful he and the GOP have been, if for no other reason than we can be sure of where things stand the first Wednesday morning next November. If Trump is gone, it should be a mandate for never again. If he isn’t we’ll be certain what Americans want, or don’t want, and decide accordingly on how to proceed. BC

In 2005, when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, the owner of the company I worked for, ever the marketer searching for fresh signage opportunities, became one of the franchise’s first sponsors. Back then the line was not long for companies eager to jump onto the team’s bandwagon and the price was certainly right. Moreover the partnership came with perks, and as one of our sales staff’s bigger hitters, I was able to partake in most of them.

At the time Major League Baseball owned the team. With no new ownership group yet on the horizon, the Nats’ marketing and sales department was working on a shoestring budget that year. They focused much of their efforts on making sure those who had taken the leap of faith and signed on received access to the very basic menu of goodies they had to offer. Early in the season they flew my boss and I down to Atlanta for a game against the Braves. I don’t believe we were put up in the Ritz, but the downtown hotel was more than plush. Even better was a round of golf we were treated to at a local club.

However, best of all came that evening at the game when, dining from a nice buffet in the Turner Field VIP area, Henry Aaron ambled over to our table to shake hands. I felt weak in the knees as I rose to try and make intelligent conversation with the game’s greatest living legend! As he smiled and reached his elegant hand out to me, the best I could do was “Mr. Aaron, Ernie Banks will always be my number 1 but I God you’re a very close number 2!” He smiled graciously and said simply “Ernie is a good friend. You must be from Chicago.” I started to say yes I was and saw him get no-hit by Ken Holtzman but he was already pivoting to someone else. It was more than enough.

The spring of 2005 was a great sports period for me. Tiger won his fourth green jacket at Augusta, finally beating pesky and unheralded Chris DeMarco on the first hole of sudden death; I had 50-1 winner Giacomo in the Kentucky Derby (although I only got 28-1 when I bet my $80 on him in an early March future pool and favorite Afleet Alex getting necked out of second by 70-1 Closing Argument cost me a multi-thousand exacta payoff); and I could enjoy near any Nats home game from box seats about 12 rows up from home plate. Winning or losing was beside the point. Like glorious Redskin games from years past, Metro dropped you off a stone’s throw from RFK; the whole experience couldn’t have been easier.

So, after more than a decade of devout fantasy baseball participation and the calculated cynicism it engendered, I once again became a genuine fan. It was the Nats or bust for me… emphasis often on bust. Indeed the 2005 Nats were a team only a real partisan could love, frustratingly uneven, offering hope and futility in even doses. Like most expansion franchises, the lineup was a hodgepodge of journeymen and diminished stars, rookies and cast offs existing on the margins. Yet and still, there was one name in the team’s game guide that stood out above all others, granting enduring credibility follies on the field could not tarnish….. Manager Frank Robinson.

Class can’t be faked; it can be earned, but often is simply a trait people either possess or are bereft of….. you know it when in its presence. With Frank Robinson it stemmed from both avenues. When speaking of baseball royalty there is usually a two camps approach. There is the old school – i.e Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Wagner, Johnson et al – and there is the “modern” game elites, who begin with DiMaggio and progress through Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Koufax, Gibson …. and of course Frank Robinson.

When Robinson retired his 586 home runs trailed only Aaron, Ruth and Mays; could it possibly get more elite than that? He won MVPs in both leagues, the result of the worst trade in sports history…. the Baltimore Orioles sent Milt Pappas to the Cincinnati Reds for their best player, who front office idiots figured was over-the-hill at 31! Robinson showed just how feeble he was, carrying the Orioles on his back to the 66’ World Championship over Koufax and Drysdale’s LA Dodgers.

Of course, by 2005 Robinson had long ago broken historic ground by becoming Baseball’s first black manager when he took over the Cleveland Indians as player-manager in 1975. Thirty years later, his career now squarely in the rear-view, he would slog through the Nats’ first season in DC along with the rest of us, generously granting his experience and wisdom to an enterprise often within the throes of futility, but showing gleams of promise. Whether it was calmly taking somebody to task for shoddy fielding or getting tossed for arguing an umpire decision on the base paths, offering lessons to rookie Ryan Zimmerman, who had Cal Ripken potential written all over him, or mercilessly giving a starter the early hook after being roughed up, “Robby” was the grizzled face of a team hoping for a future, even as it often stunk up the joint in the present.

Incredibly, at season’s end, the Nats stood at a respectable 81-81, .500 ball from a big bunch of nothing much! And all played out in a venue that wasn’t simply dying, it had already passed on and was now resurrected. Even so, stale hot dog buns and nasty restrooms only accentuated things to my eyes. The 2006 season was a struggle for the team as its roster limitations had their say, but also saw the emergence of a well heeled new ownership group, who showed their gratitude to my company by choosing an industry competitor at our expense for a new sponsorship deal, and their regard to Robinson by promptly firing him as manager. As I said before, you know class, or lack of it, when you see it. By the time Nationals Park opened in 2008, my privileged access to games and the club was history.

I reminisced about that wonderful first season last night watching today’s incarnation wipe their now pristine field with the Cardinals to take a 3-0 lead in the NLCS. Despite a recent history of choking up playoff advancement, there is zero chance this squad isn’t going to the World Series, the first in DC since Franklin Roosevelt was President. Only Ryan Zimmerman remains from the 2005 roster; and while the Hall of Fame will never mistake him for Cal, he has remained the face of the franchise while providing solidly consistent production and leadership.

Meanwhile, even though the great man passed in February, if and when the Nats attain championship glory, Frank Robinson must be one of the first names mentioned when thanking those responsible. Nobody deserves this franchise’s gratitude more than its first skipper, who defined what baseball excellence is and added the luster a struggling new team required to succeed. Washington may have been his last stop, but to him, and us, it was as important as the rest of them. He earned what he is owed. BC