https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/07/05/affirmative-action-us-clarence-thomas/

Rather than being “colorblind,” the US Constitution has always been aggressively color-conscious, mostly to the extreme detriment of minority groups.

The US Supreme Court has issued another shocking but unsurprising ruling that arbitrarily dispenses with precedents and upends long-settled law at the expense of the historically disempowered. Last year, women were denied a 50-year-old individual right in America to early-term abortions. Now African American and Latino students will be deprived of “affirmative action” programmes considering race in university admissions.

The hypocrisy and absurdity were best illustrated by Justice Clarence Thomas’s passionate invocation of “our colourblind Constitution.” All six Republican-appointed Justices describe themselves as “originalists” or “textualists,” meaning that they seek to discover the “original” or the literal meaning of constitutional texts, respectively.

Originalism is unworkable not just because of radically transformed sociopolitical contexts, but because the framers of the Constitution frequently disagreed about the broader implications of their compromises. Each was willing to live with a passage based on their own interpretations. But the assumption there was a shared originary understanding of constitutional texts is demonstrably false.

Rigorous textual analysis is indispensable to jurisprudence, but “textualism” tends to reduce it to a crude game of definitions, etymologies, centuries of Anglo-American legal technicalities, and other questions having little to do with a decent outcome or rational interpretation of constitutional law under current circumstances. It often hints at the old BBC radio game My Word!, only without the charm and wit.

These methodologies are intended to transfix the meaning of constitutional law, insofar as possible, in bygone eras when black people were enslaved or excluded, women subordinated and disenfranchised, racism codified throughout society, and segregation, enforced by brutal lynching, the norm in many states.

The Constitution has had many anti-racist admirers, most notably Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, who saw in it potent correctives to such barbarism. But originalism and textualism are thinly-veiled efforts to slow, block, or now reverse much of the constitutional progress since 1954.

The ruling involved extraordinary colloquies between Mr Thomas and two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and newcomer Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Ms Sotomayor outlined the undeniable endurance of structural and institutionalised racism and its profoundly negative effects for African Americans and Latinos. Mr Thomas countered that discrimination based on race can never be tolerated in any context. He posed as a champion of highly qualified Asian-American student applicants, arguing that Harvard’s admissions policies come primarily at their expense.

He accused Ms Jackson of viewing all aspects of life through an irreducible racial framework. She denied this and countered that his insistence that race is, or should be, irrelevant to law is so divorced from the social realities shaped by the Constitution it is effectively delusional.

Mr Thomas’s implacable hostility to affirmative-action is especially noteworthy because he is arguably the greatest-ever beneficiary of these programmes and ethos, and concomitant expectations of inclusivity. He attended Holy Cross College and Yale Law School based on affirmative action. He enjoyed a meteoric rise on the political right, and, at the tender age of just 33, headed his own federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A mere 10 years later, following a contentious Senate committee hearing chaired by current US President Joe Biden, he was confirmed to the Supreme Court.

His spectacular career, especially given his upbringing amid poverty and segregation, is undeniably impressive, even inspiring. But it’s equally undeniable that, at every stage, and precisely because it coincided with the institutionalisation of affirmative action and the imperative of greater racial diversity in universities, corporations and government, his race played a significant role in his cascading triumphs. Unfortunately, he now appears mortified by this appropriate corrective, as if it were a badge of shame.

He was one of few Black conservatives available to run Ronald Reagan’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and then replace the first Black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.

As EEOC Chairman in 1983, Mr Thomas acknowledged: “God only knows where I would be today” without affirmative action policies, which he correctly called “critical to minorities and women in this society.” Now, he resembles a survivor in a lifeboat using an oar to beat back others attempting to clamber on.

Crucially, Mr Thomas’s “colourblind Constitution” dogma is especially unworkable from originalist or textualist perspectives. The original Constitution didn’t explicitly mention slavery, but plainly allowed it, defining slaves as “3/5 of a person” for purposes of congressional representation. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that no Black residents could be considered citizens and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

After constitutional amendments outlawing slavery and ensuring citizenship for following the Civil War, and a brief period of greater equality in the South known as “Reconstruction,” by 1896 the Supreme Court had promptly endorsed the growing practice of abusive racial segregation. Unequal separation by assumed race was consistently endorsed by the Court until the first legal cracks appeared in 1954. But the attempt at real redress only began in the mid-to late 1960s when policies such as affirmative action were developed.

It is impossible to argue that this project is complete, given the ongoing socio-economic gaps between “African Americans” and others, particularly those currently considered “White.” Instead, Mr Thomas and the court majority argue that any effort to redress centuries of rampant racial mistreatment with decades of limited succor is racist against everybody else.

The “colourblind Constitution” canard might just barely be plausible if US history began in 1965, although that would still involve a grossly unequal playing field. In fact, the Constitution has been aggressively colour-conscious throughout its history, mainly at the expense of minority groups. Consequently, Mr Thomas and his ilk are forced to rely on ahistorical myths to rationalise halting and reversing efforts to correct these monumental and profoundly lasting government-imposed wrongs. Many suggest income-based preferences instead, but that would probably intensify a troubling trend towards elite student bodies split mainly between the very rich and the very poor.

Meanwhile back at Harvard, over 40 per cent of “White” students were admitted because of family “legacies,” parental donations, ties to staff, or participation in, often boutique, sports teams rather than academic merit. Yet none will likely feel the neurotic sting of assumed inferiority that haunted Mr Thomas at Yale and until today. White preferences are normalised and normative in US society.

As the country celebrated its 247th birthday on Tuesday, this radical Supreme Court, wrapping itself in the disingenuous twaddle like “our colourblind Constitution” that informs this privilege and inequality, appears determined to preserve and protect as much of it as possible.

Happy birthday, America.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/06/19/america-looks-set-for-a-biden-trump-rematch-and-voters-are-rightly-dreading-it/

The president and his main challenger have yet to convince most voters they can succeed, and yet they are the only real choices.

As incumbent US president Joe Biden formally kicked off his re-election campaign at a rally in front of 2,000 union members in Philadelphia, last week the 2024 election campaign came more sharply into view – and most Americans appear decidedly underwhelmed. A rematch of the last election, pitting Mr Biden against his predecessor, Donald Trump, seems to be shaping up, though most Republicans and Democrats say they would prefer a different choice.

Mr Biden is effectively running unopposed. His only noteworthy challenger is Robert F Kennedy, Jr, noted for anti-scientific opposition to most vaccines. Were Mr Kennedy running as a Republican, he might be polling ahead of several well-established candidates, although surely not Mr Trump. However, as a Democrat, he really doesn’t stand a chance.

Many Democrats are frustrated by Mr Biden’s slow start. A major fundraising quarter went by with virtually no activity from his nascent campaign. Instead, Mr Biden was happy to leave matters to the Democratic National Committee. From his perspective, especially since he’s effectively unopposed, it makes sense. But many Democrats would have preferred a more vigorous and earlier re-election effort, if nothing else for party morale.

Moreover, there are growing doubts that Mr Biden still has the energy and physical wherewithal for a long and gruelling campaign against the likes of Mr Trump, who adores campaigning but profoundly dislikes governing, or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who has been focusing heavily on his youthful 44 years and three young children, all under age 6. That’s now mainly aimed at Mr Trump, 77, but could be even more powerful against the 80-year-old Mr Biden should Mr DeSantis upend the current trajectory and secure the Republican nomination.

Mr Biden is clearly showing his age. He still speaks lucidly on policy matters, and journalists who have had extended lunch and other meetings with him privately report he’s alert, acute and on point. However, he has shown signs of confusion at times and, to take just one particularly odd recent example, he ended an otherwise unremarkable speech about the importance of greater gun control measures with the cryptic comment “God save the Queen, man”.

The video of the moment suggests he knew perfectly well what he was saying and it was some kind of eccentric joke. Unfortunately, his aides were unable to explain just what it might have been about, and later suggested he was somehow referring to an audience member. But they were unable to successfully assuage doubts that, perhaps, Mr Biden had a spectacular and public “senior moment”.

But even if it’s true, as it would appear, that he remains mentally formidable, there are significant reasons to question whether he has the stamina for months of exhausting campaigning. In 2020, campaigning was remarkably light because of the coronavirus pandemic, but that will not be the case for the next 17 months before Americans return to the polls. And there is virtually no enthusiasm for his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, suddenly emerging as the Democratic presidential nominee.

There are numerous potentially impressive Democratic candidates who could credibly replace Mr Biden – mainly, governors including Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Jared Polis of Colorado, none of whom are elderly. But if Mr Biden cruises to an unopposed nomination only to find himself physically overwhelmed by the demands of an exhausting campaign, Ms Harris could end up inheriting the nomination by default.

Yet Mr Biden has been a figure of endless surprises since he roared back to the head of the pack after the South Carolina Democratic primary in February 2020. As President, he has secured a remarkable string of legislative achievements with very little leverage in Congress. And his administration’s handling of the war in Ukraine is surely the best US foreign policy performance since the liberation of Kuwait in 1990-91. So, the millions of Democratic doubters may find themselves, yet again, pleasantly surprised by Uncle Joe.

The polls consistently suggest that Mr Trump, if not going from strength to strength in the Republican primaries, is at least maintaining a very healthy lead over Mr DeSantis and all other challengers. Yet he, too, is showing his 77 years, and more importantly, is facing severe legal and reputational peril that, although it may not threaten his ability to secure the Republican nomination, could very well render him effectively non-competitive in a general election.

The indictment brought against him in the federal Espionage Act case filed two weeks ago by special prosecutor Jack Smith cannot seriously be dismissed as a partisan vendetta or an exaggerated triviality. The indictment tells the story of a former president who, with apparent disregard for national security and the well-being of US troops around the world, treated the most sensitive military and intelligence documents as, at best, trophies or keepsakes, leaving them completely unsecured in open public places at his Florida hotel and displaying them to random individuals with no security clearances.

There is every reason to fear that the trial will drag on well past the general election, and possibly for many years. However, even some of Mr Trump’s diehard supporters will be given pause if they ever actually read the damning charging papers, complete with photographs and other documentary evidence.

These days, presidential elections are effectively decided by a few hundred thousand Americans in five or six swing states. These voters, including many suburban women, turned decisively against Mr Trump in 2020, delivering the White House to Mr Biden. They appear to have moved even further from Mr Trump, his candidates and his brand of politics in the 2022 midterms. And since then, Mr Trump, with his threats of “retribution” against his adversaries – not to mention the civil judgment that he sexually assaulted a well-known writer in the 1990s – has, if anything, alienated them further still.

It may still be that the general public will get their way, and that neither Mr Trump nor Mr Biden will be their party’s nominee. However, it’s far more likely that most Americans will again face a distasteful binary choice between A and B. If so, Mr. Biden is very likely to secure a second term – or as much of it as he can complete.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/06/12/donald-trump-indictment-classified-documents/

The former US President is going to find it extremely difficult to explain his obstructionist actions.

Last Thursday, former US president Donald Trump was indicted, for a second time, on serious criminal charges. Unlike the hush money and tax evasion case brought by the elected Democratic district attorney in Manhattan, the new charges stem from the very federal government that Mr Trump used to lead. Thirty seven counts regarding core national security concerns have been brought by an independent, non-partisan, special prosecutor, Jack Smith.

Before they had even seen the indictment, Republican leaders rushed to Mr Trump’s defence, accusing US President Joe Biden of being personally responsible, even though both he and attorney general Merrick Garland, who appointed Mr Smith, ensured that there was no political input from the administration. A personal aide, Walt Nauta, who followed Mr Trump from the White House into private life, is accused of physically moving and concealing from the authorities boxes of allegedly purloined classified documents.

The substance of the indictment is devastating, including an apparent”smoking gun”: audio of Mr Trump apparently waving around highly sensitive military planning documents while declaring them classified and noting that while he was president he could have declassified them, but, out of office, he no longer could.

That not only adds almost irrefutable proof that Mr Trump deliberately absconded with classified material, and that his claims to have created a system whereby any document he removed from White House offices were automatically declassified are nonsense. All of his former senior officials have scoffed at the idea, which flouts the official declassification process to which even presidents must adhere.

Even if the documents were declassified, the Presidential Records Act mandates that all presidential documents be transferred to the National Archives, and the Espionage Act prohibits any unauthorised removal of government documents and, especially, their dissemination. The indictment outlines at least two cases of dissemination, wherein highly sensitive classified documents were shown to individuals with no security clearances whatsoever.

Mr Trump is going to find it extremely difficult to explain away his obstructionist actions and statements, such as asking his aides: “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here? … Look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?” exactly as his attorneys eventually falsely attested; or when he praised an attorney who had allegedly destroyed official documents; or when he instructed Mr Nauta to move 64 boxes of documents just before authorities were coming to search for classified material.

The indictment details with photographs how these boxes including some of the most highly sensitive US government information involving military plans against key adversaries, one country’s support for terrorist activities, and the nuclear capabilities of other states were piled high on an open stage at his Florida hotel. Many were then moved to a nearby bathroom, and after that disseminated among offices and storage places, none of which had adequate security – if any at all – and which were accessible to virtually anyone coming and going and what amounted to an open public space.

Any hostile intelligence services that failed to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity must be kicking themselves. Unlike the dull and technical Manhattan charges, any American juror will readily understand these laws and why it is unacceptable, from a national security perspective, to have them broken, especially in this cavalier manner.

Mr Trump’s attorneys will no doubt argue that because other senior former officials like Mr Biden, Mike Pence, and Hillary Clinton were found to be in possession of sensitive materials after they left office, he is being unfairly singled out. However, none of them attempted to conceal the material from the authorities or obstruct justice.

The case appears so strong that Mr Trump’s best option may be to try to obstruct and delay proceedings so endlessly that they continue beyond his lifetime. In that, he may have an invaluable ally: Judge Aileen Cannon, who will be presiding. She was one of Mr Trump’s last appointments, and at a hearing last September granted his outlandish requests, including restricting government access to its own classified documents.

Her ruling was harshly struck down by a highly conservative appellate court, and she is now widely regarded as one of the least competent and most pro-Trump judges in the country. That this evidently highly partisan judge would be appointed, apparently randomly, twice in a row on Mr Trump’s cases seems extraordinarily unlikely. Yet it has happened.

In a criminal trial, especially under close scrutiny, her rulings can probably only go so far in protecting him from a jury verdict. However, she could assist him by approving endless delays and otherwise making the government’s task as difficult as possible. But she may not end up presiding over the full trial after all, especially if Mr Smith makes a major effort to somehow secure any other judge in the Southern District of Florida.

Mr Trump’s reaction was predictably outrageous. He denounced the entire law enforcement system, called Mr Smith “a psycho,” and declared himself “an innocent man” victimised by yet another “witch hunt”. He also hinted at violence by his supporters, and authorities are preparing for that. But his mayhem-prone supporters may be incarcerated or deterred by the long prison sentences given to ringleaders of the January 6 insurrection.

A bigger complication than threats of mayhem is how unprecedented this trial will be. Mr Trump is not only the former president, he’s also the current front runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Ms Cannon, in her widely derided September ruling, argued that former presidents and current candidates deserve special consideration and safeguards. This was firmly and specifically rejected by the appellate court, but there’s every danger that, if she is the trial judge, she will continue to kowtow to the former president.

If she continues to carve out special protections for Mr Trump, Mr Smith may find his mountain of damning evidence repeatedly sidelined, or the proceedings endlessly delayed. The first task of the special prosecutor, then, is to do everything possible to secure a different, more competent, and less shamelessly biased judge for the full trial.

But for the country, the result of the 2024 election is infinitely more important than the outcome of this trial. Mr Trump has been frank about his authoritarian intentions. Whether he ever goes to prison or not, politically, the verdict is already in: he cannot be allowed anywhere near the White House ever again.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/05/29/biden-debt-ceiling-deal/

The US President has shown once again his superpower is his normality, transparency and predictability.

A few days ago, in these pages, I predicted that the ongoing debt ceiling crisis would reveal US president Joe Biden to be finally out of his depths or have unexpected depths of sophistication. Or, I added, a jerryrigged agreement could simply postpone a day of reckoning.

The first scenario has been avoided as Mr Biden has neatly escaped a dangerous trap. The emerging solution appears to be a combination of scenarios two and three: a familiar deal that vindicates several of the President’s defining strategies.

On Saturday night, Mr Biden and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, announced an agreement to extend the debt ceiling for two years in exchange for strikingly narrow spending cuts and caps.

Many significant details are not yet known, but the broad outlines are clear. The White House and the House of Representatives have done a fairly standard deal, at least when Democrats hold the presidency. Republican presidents ask for, and receive, unconditional debt ceiling expansions, which allow the Treasury Department to borrow money to pay for debts already incurred by Congress.

However, a pattern has emerged whereby Republicans do not extend this courtesy to Democratic presidents. Republicans suddenly remember that they are supposed to be alarmed at national budget deficits and debts, no matter whether they are becoming a greater or lesser percentage of GDP.

Many Democrats were petrified that Mr Biden, negotiating almost entirely in secret and apparently on Republican terms, was poised to cheerfully give up far too much to avoid a massive crisis. Yet this does not appear to have happened.

The actual cuts in spending are extremely limited, and even the caps to spending increases seem to hew reasonably well to major White House goals developed under the last Congress. Republicans gained a symbolic sop – at least in terms of national expenditure, although undoubtedly with alarming significance for many individuals and families – with some potential restrictions on nutritional and other support for poor people and, more importantly, new work requirements on “able-bodied” individuals without dependents.

Savings will be decidedly modest. For Republicans, it’s a matter of principle. And while few Democrats are going to be happy about these changes, even fewer will be kept up at night. It was a big win for one side, in their own eyes, and not much of a loss for most people on the other side.

The numbers are not going to be huge. For Republicans, it’s a matter of principle. And while few Democrats are going to be happy about these changes, even fewer are going to be kept up at night. It was a big win for one side, in their own eyes, and not that much of a loss for most people on the other side.

On the other hand, Mr Biden appears to have protected much of the most important spending he was able to secure in the first two years after his election. Total spending cutbacks over 10 years under these terms may be limited to a mere $650 billion.

Mr Biden had no white rabbit to pull out of his hat, no brilliant and unanticipated gimmick, or unexpected genius solution. As is so often the case with the wily old fox, the President’s superpower is his normalcy, transparency and predictability. While he disingenuously insisted he would never negotiate over budget issues with the debt ceiling being effectively held hostage – though of course that’s exactly what he did – from the onset he stressed the two biggest themes of his presidency: bipartisan compromise and political patience.

This approach and rhetoric has consistently infuriated many progressive Democrats. But it has just as consistently worked. It is exactly what secured the huge pandemic bailout which began his term. And the hard infrastructure act. And the high-tech investment act. And the social spending and climate change bill. And more besides. Very little of that appears meaningfully threatened, indeed it would be more accurate to say it largely has been protected, by the terms of this agreement.

In effect, Mr Biden has again delivered what he said he would, in exactly the way he said he would do it, despite numerous doubts, including my own, particularly as the witching hour approached. The Treasury Department, by the way, has cited next Wednesday as the first day a potential default might begin. Presumably it’s ready to come up with a few last-ditch workarounds to buy extra time to test the legislative viability of the agreement.

And here’s where Mr Biden truly got the better of Mr McCarthy.

Both leaders now must sell a compromise agreement that no one is going to be happy with to members of Congress on both sides, including the Democratic progressive-left and Republican hard-right. While their tasks may be roughly similar, the obstacles and consequences for failure each will face are radically different.

The murmurs of unease among progressives is extremely muted compared to categorical opposition already emanating from right-wing conservatives. It may not be simple or comfortable for the President to get his House ducklings in a row, but it just may not be possible for the House Speaker.

And now the political calculation has completely flipped. Before this agreement, there was every reason to suspect the sitting president would face most of the blame for any financial calamity. But if the Republican House Speaker makes a solemn agreement with the President to save the economy, and that is sabotaged by his own extremist faction, they, and he, will be left holding the bag essentially alone.

Unless Democrats make the unimaginable blunder of opposing the agreement in sufficient numbers to create a real obstacle to passage, which seems highly unlikely, this has now become an internal Republican problem and, probably, crisis. There will be members of the extreme right who will tell Mr McCarthy they didn’t support him for Speaker so that he could release the only real “bargaining chip” hostage they have for such limited restrictions. It will be very surprising not to start hearing hyperbolic fulminating about betrayal, treason and a war against the country’s fiscal sanity and financial future.

In the old Roadrunner cartoons, the hapless predator Wile E Coyote – a self-declared “super-genius” – produces one apparently ingenious trap after another, only, in horror, to find himself holding the bomb just as it is about to explode. In the coming days, the House Speaker may discover he, too, is unexpectedly in possession of a round, black, hissing object that his vanished opponent has surreptitiously managed to hand back to him.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-27/great-lebanon-bank-heist-needs-solving-for-imf-world-bank-bailout?srnd=opinion&leadSource=uverify%20wall&sref=tp95wk9l

A Ponzi scheme at the Banque du Liban brought the economy to its knees, yet the alleged culprit remains at large.

The pilfering of Lebanon’s wealth is, arguably, the bank heist of the 21st century. The long-serving governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, has become the focus of international pressure for accountability, leading to frustration over his, and Lebanese institutions’ generally, refusal to cooperate with Western investigations.

Untold billions of depositors’ money, stored in a number of banks in many currencies and supposedly delivering implausibly generous interest rates, turned up missing during a financial crisis that took hold in 2019.  The BDL is Lebanon’s central bank, controls the lire, and regulates the commercial banks that were once a bedrock of the economy.

The Lebanese lire has since lost more than 90% of its value, and most depositors are still unable to access their savings. They are allowed small monthly withdrawals, almost always in the form of unreliable lire, no matter the designated currency denomination of their deposits. Ordinary people have been repeatedly driven to staging half-baked armed robberies to finance medical emergencies and other crises.

No one knows how much cash was spirited out of the country over decades of systematic plunder, while an illusion of solvency was maintained by a Ponzi structure using newer deposits to back older ones. But the national wealth was gutted. The middle classes who can are leaving en masse. Those who can’t flee have been reduced to poverty, and the working classes to savage penury.

Like all other massive crimes committed in Lebanon in recent decades — including the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 and the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion that reduced much of the capital to smoldering ruins — there’s been no real effort to investigate or hold anyone accountable. But the de facto cover-up of this financial malfeasance raises particular problems because of the ripple effect into the economy as a whole.

Lebanon requires a bailout from the international community, especially banks and investors taking their cue from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which would have to be at the helm of a rescue. But, while there is every reason for the developed world to want to help save Lebanon, nobody wants to throw good money after bad. Reforms will be required, and before that, an accounting of exactly how much was stolen and by whom.

That places Salameh in the crosshairs. At least six European countries are actively investigating the heist. France, which has deep historical and colonial ties to Lebanon, issued an arrest warrant for him this month when he failed to attend a judicial hearing. So has Germany, which formally asked Interpol to apprehend him. Yet Lebanon does not extradite its citizens, and earlier this month a judge released Salameh from custody pending further investigation.

Salameh, who remains in his top post at the bank, isn’t just accused of participating in the heist to the tune of $300 million for himself. He allegedly oversaw the regulatory and institutional mechanisms that allowed wealthy Lebanese institutions and individuals to surreptitiously spirit billions out of the country. Even the terrorist group Hezbollah, which is allergic to any hint of economic — not to mention institutional or political — reform has said he should resign. He says he intends to step down when his term ends in July.

Salameh is supposedly being investigated by Lebanese authorities, who say they have confiscated his passport and forbidden him from traveling. But that conveniently protects him from real scrutiny in other countries, something he certainly won’t get at home. Growing pressure on the Lebanese state to do a more convincing job of at least pretending to investigate the decades of unimaginable theft is dovetailing with yet another crisis over the selection of a new president.

Gebran Bassil, son-in-law of the outgoing president, Michel Aoun, and target of significant US corruption sanctions, passionately wants to succeed his father-in-law. France has reportedly proposed a compromise: If Bassil will support the candidacy of his top rival, Sleiman Frangieh, he would be permitted to select the new governor of the Banque du Liban succeeding Salameh. But it doesn’t seem as if Bassil is willing to step aside.

In any case, an agreement along these lines would represent a meeting of the minds among Lebanese political elites to avoid any genuine investigation into this mind-boggling crime. They wouldn’t want Salameh to spill the beans.

The Catch-22 for Lebanese power centers is that to admit that the Banque du Liban house of cards collapsed along with the economy would be a confession of the profound corruption in which they are all implicated. But without some accountability, there won’t be an international bailout, and they can continue to lord it over an increasingly hollow, decimated society.

The Catch-22 for the West and the international community is that Lebanon remains strategically and politically well worth saving. Yet there is no real reason to think the Lebanese political class is capable of contemplating, let alone undertaking, the necessary investigations and reforms, beginning with an audit of the bank.

Lebanon will have to be saved, not exactly from itself, but from a united front among its politically dominant factions. Right now, it’s hard to imagine where that even starts.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/05/16/both-biden-and-trump-face-problems-in-the-run-up-to-the-2024-elections/

The incumbent is in more trouble than Democrats anticipated but Trump self-sabotages like no one else.

There’s a long way to go before the 2024 US presidential election, but as things stand a 2020 rematch – incumbent President Joe Biden versus former president Donald Trump – looks likely, though few Americans say they want either man to be their party’s nominee. Democrats, overall, are somewhat more confident about their chances, based on the broader political landscape, the outcome of the 2022 midterms and a widespread belief, including among many Republicans, that Mr Trump may be practically unelectable.

However, both candidates face mounting and significant obstacles to regaining the White House. As with most sitting presidents, Mr Biden is virtually assured of his party’s nomination, and faces no plausible opposition. Mr Trump has a much broader range of potential rivals, but all of them are either slow off the mark and losing momentum (notably Florida Governor Ron DeSantis), have failed to make a coherent case for their candidacy (such as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley) or just don’t seem to be viable candidates in today’s Republican Party (such as former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie).

Yet Mr Trump’s own candidacy tends to provoke doom, gloom and even despair among mainstream Republican operatives. That’s nothing new. Yet Mr Biden appears to be in considerably more trouble than many of his supporters would have imagined at the end of last year. He faces three obvious and significant obstacles in the short, medium and long terms.

The US president does not appear to have a viable strategy to resolve the rapidly approaching debt ceiling crisis. It’s looking increasingly likely that his failure to do anything to forestall this potential catastrophe after the midterm results were known but before the new Congress came into session, when he held many more cards, was his biggest blunder thus far. If Mr Biden can pull a dramatic rabbit out of a hat in the coming weeks, and not only resolving the debt ceiling in this instance but even potentially taking the issue off the table for the long term, he will have produced one of the most stunning victories in modern presidential history and made a tremendous contribution to fiscal and political stability in the US.

But he doesn’t seem to have any plan whatsoever. Mr Biden is refusing to negotiate with de facto hostage takers in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, who are threatening to force a default on existing US debts – all incurred by Congress in the past – if the White House won’t commit to gigantic and unspecified budget cuts. It is a dangerous and contemptible gambit.

However, if enough Republicans are willing to compromise and give Mr Biden what Democrats several times gave Mr Trump and previous Republican presidents before that, there’s no sign of it. Anyone who thinks the current batch of House right-wingers isn’t capable of deliberately demolishing the national and, to some extent, global economies simply to damage a Democratic president hasn’t been paying attention to their unprecedented radicalism and recklessness.

Mr Biden obviously thinks that when, as Barack Obama’s vice president, he compromised with former House speaker John Boehner, only to see the whole agreement fall apart under pressure from the far-right, he made a huge mistake that he intends not to repeat.

But the White House plan cannot be to simply, no matter however accurately, blame Republicans for a devastating outcome. He is the sitting president, and the chances that he will have to shoulder most of the blame for a probable cascade of ensuing disasters are quite strong – it’s a lot easier for the public to blame one person everyone has heard of rather than a couple of hundred, or even 20, that they have not. This is almost certainly what Republicans contemplating economic armageddon are counting on.

Time is running desperately short. The jig is likely to be up in as little as two weeks and, even if it can be postponed slightly, it will soon after have to be somehow resolved.

In the medium term, Mr Biden finds himself squeezed by a border crisis not of his own making. The US immigration system is badly broken, and a compromise between the parties on even the simplest aspects has proven maddeningly elusive.

A perfect storm of causal factors is driving increased waves of migration from devastated countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. They are gathering on the Mexican border and, while the Biden administration is trying to keep them there, immigration remains one of the most potent Republican weapons, appealing even to core Democratic constituencies such as labour, African-American and even Latino groups.

Democrats tend to view immigration as a matter of fairness to migrants and Republicans as a cultural and racial invasion. Both get it wildly wrong: the country badly needs more workers and a rational migration system. But the anti-immigration case is politically much more potent.

Knowing this, Mr Trump has been vowing to restore the borderline-criminal policy of systematically separating children from their parents to deter migration. Unfortunately, there is a real mass political market for cruelty on this issue.

In the long run, Mr Biden is haunted by his age. If he runs against Mr Trump, it will be less of a problem because both men are showing their considerable years. But right-wing media has long ago made the issue a centrepiece and won’t let it go.

Mr Trump’s campaign is already a proverbial dumpster fire. His recent “town hall” on CNNwas an unmitigated catastrophe for his chances. Mr Biden and his policies barely came up. Instead Mr Trump, spouting falsehoods in virtually every sentence, fixated on imaginary fraud in the 2020 election, the glories of the January 6 insurrection, and phony grievances involving the recent civil ruling against him in a sexual assault case and a set of probable looming criminal trials.

Of course it appealed to his diehard supporters. But if Mr Trump wanted to present a message ideally calibrated to convince crucial swing voters in evenly divided “purple” states, such as suburban women, to not even consider voting for him next year, he could hardly have done better.

Much of the country is looking at this emerging campaign with emotions ranging from disquiet to disgust. Most Republicans want to move on from Mr Trump and most Democrats would prefer another nominee than Mr Biden. But it appears the country is going to be facing this unpalatable choice, like it or not.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/05/10/a-jury-of-trumps-peers-have-judged-him-now-more-voters-will-too/

Voters, espeicllay women, will find it hard to ignore the $5 million verdict against the former president in his case against writer E Jean Carroll.

The verdict in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, in which a jury found that former US president Donald Trump had sexually abused and defamed writer E Jean Carroll at a New York City department store in 1996, cut savagely through the veil of nonsense and gaslighting that has come to dominate US political discourse, especially on the right.

While Mr Trump and his lawyers insist that this is a “hoax” and part of “the greatest witchhunt” in the country’s history, in fact a jury of his peers has formally held Mr Trump to account for his reprehensible actions. He will have to pay Ms Carroll $5 million even though the jury also held that she had not clearly established that he raped her.

Ms Carroll proved an excellent witness. Though taunted and provoked continuously by Mr Trump’s attorneys, who harped on ancient accusations thrown against virtually every rape victim since the dawn of time – for example that she did not scream or immediately file charges with the police – she remained adamant that the attack took place. Given the amount of time that has passed, her account remained impressively consistent.

Two of her friends testified that Ms Carroll called each of them immediately after the alleged attack and told them about the harrowing experience in detail, which strongly corroborates the accusations. One of them recalled imploring Ms Carroll not to go to the police, because Mr Trump would use his financial clout in courts and elsewhere to make her life miserable. It just wasn’t worth it, she says she counselled. Ms Carroll first went public with the story in a 2019 book.

Mr Trump’s attorneys were in the unenviable position of having to argue that these three women colluded in fabricating a vicious tall tale and hugely perjured themselves to try to inflict political damage on a leader they freely admit despising. But they were unable to provide any rational explanation for why these women would do such a thing beyond sharing a highly negative view of the former president.

Moreover, Ms Carroll was backed up by two additional witnesses who said that Mr Trump had assaulted them in similar fashion. A former stockbroker testified that he groped and kissed her in the first-class cabin of a commercial airliner in the 1970s before she fled back to the safety of coach. And a former journalist for People Magazine told the jury that Mr Trump had coaxed her into a private room at his Florida hotel, pushed her against a wall and began kissing her as she tried to get away.

All of that strongly contradicted claims by Mr Trump’s lead attorney, Joe Tacopina, that “everything in this case” is either “Amazing. Odd. Inconceivable. Unbelievable.” It took the jury less than three hours to conclude precisely the opposite.

But Mr Trump proved the strongest witness, by far, against himself. Though he avoided the trial and declined to testify, his own words provided overwhelming circumstantial and characterological indictments against him. His attorneys will never allow the former president to ever again take the witness stand if they can possibly prevent it. He may or may not be the worst US president ever (a lively debate about this continues), but he’s certainly a nightmarish legal client and witness.

The jury got to hear Mr Trump’s bizarre primary argument dismissing these accusations, and the over two dozen others like it, which is that Ms Carroll is, he insists, “not my type”. It was bad enough when these claims seemed to suggest that a sexual assault and rape might be more understandable if she somehow were “his type”. But, disastrously, in a roughly contemporaneous photograph he misidentified Ms Carroll as his then-wife, Marla Maples. “That’s my wife,” he said casually, as his attorneys rushed to contradict him. No juror will have missed the irreconcilable chasm between “she’s not my type” and “that’s my wife”.

The court was also treated to Mr Trump’s account of his own predatory sexual habits as he explained in the infamous Access Hollywood videotape. In an outtake from the series, he notoriously told the interviewer that he made a habit of kissing attractive women without waiting or seeking their consent and grabbing them by their genitals. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he insisted.

When the video was leaked before the 2016 presidential election, Mr Trump dismissed the conversation as “locker room banter”. But the stunning verdict suggests it may have been unnervingly accurate.

Worse yet, in a deposition also played for the jury, Ms Carroll’s attorneys asked Mr Trump about those remarks. He confirmed he considered himself “a star,” and said “If you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.” Not only is this highly debatable, that this supposed historical pattern could be construed as “fortunate” appears catastrophically revealing of deep-seated predatory and misogynistic attitudes.

After all that, an effective defense required something more substantial than dismissing Ms Carroll’s allegations as simply inconceivable or unbelievable. The standard in a US civil trial is demonstrating a claim by the preponderance of the evidence, not without a shadow of a doubt. Her lawyers obviously cleared the first hurdle, except on the rape accusation, and most likely even met the second.

Putting aside other potential or looming criminal trials in Manhattan, Georgia and at the federal level, will this judgment harm Mr Trump’s chances for 2024? Thus far, his legal woes appear to have done nothing but strengthen his grip on the Republican voter base, and while he still could be defeated for the nomination, he seems in a very strong position right now.

But in a general election, and despite President Joe Biden’s dismal polling results, this verdict will almost certainly weaken his already bleak prospects. After decades of living in a grey zone of legal ambiguity created by his largely inherited vast wealth, and the protections unduly afforded to white-collar defendants by the US system, reality is finally catching up with the poster boy of privileged impunity.

Voters, particularly women, who pulled the lever for Mr Trump in 2016 while dismissing the Access Hollywood video as irrelevant macho bluster, will surely have a much harder time repeating the gesture next year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-10/saudi-uae-had-to-bring-assad-s-syria-back-into-arab-league?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l&leadSource=uverify%20wall

Assad is a mass murderer but he won his war, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE have vital interests to protect across the Middle East.

It should have come as no surprise that the Arab League voted overwhelmingly to restore Syria’s membership after more than a decade of suspension. The move isn’t unanimous, with Qatar remaining the primary holdout, and Washington registering muted objections. Yet, while the outrage the vote has provoked is more than understandable, it has long been inevitable.

The protracted isolation of Syria was motivated by clear moral and strategic reasons. The brutality with which the Bashar al-Assed regime put down what began as peaceful, pro-democracy protests has few parallels in the 21st century. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, including through widespread use of chemical weapons.

Torture and summary execution have been systematic, as thoroughly documented by whistleblowers like the former government photographerknown as Caesar. Nearly 7 million Syrian refugees have been forced to flee abroad, with around the same number displaced within the country.

Because of this incredible record of brutality, much of the world, including many Arabs, are dismayed at the practical re-embracing of the dictatorship. Yet there really hasn’t been any long-term alternative for the Arab states ever since the rebel-held parts of Aleppo fell to pro-regime forces at the end of 2016. That functionally ended the main part of the war for what the dictatorship has called “necessary Syria,” the central swath of the country running from the Lebanese border up the Mediterranean coast and inland far enough to encompass all the major cities.

The regime didn’t survive on its own. In the summer of 2015, high-level Iranian delegations traveled to Russia in a bid to convince Moscow that only an intense, coordinated military intervention could save their mutual ally, Assad. That fall, Iranian forces and militias they controlled, including Hezbollah from Lebanon, made a decisive intervention on the ground, with Russia providing crucial command-and-control, air and intelligence support.

Rebel groups were no match for this new coalition, and within a little more than a year the war more or less ended when eastern Aleppo fell to the pro-Assad forces. Fighting continued in peripheral areas, involving Turkey, Kurdish fighters and a small number of US troops in the north; Iranian, Kurdish and US forces in the East; and significant remnants of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

However, re-engagement by the major Arab countries was always a matter of time, because they continue to have significant interests in Syria but no way of securing them. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have led the reintegration of Damascus into the Arab League, have legitimate concerns involving undue Iranian and Hezbollah influence in the country, Syria’s role in Lebanon, Turkey’s role in Syria, refugee return, and drug smuggling and other crimes associated with the regime, to name just a few.

Although Arab countries have made tough-sounding demands of the regime on many of these issues, it’s unlikely functional reintegration will be contingent on their implementation.

Arab governments were hoping to see the back of Assad after the uprising broke out in 2011. But with his survival, they are not prepared to walk away from Syria permanently, and don’t feel they can rely on outside forces like the US, Turkey and Israel to contain the dictator and his foreign supporters.

They’ve concluded their only real option is to hold their noses and try to use diplomatic, political and commercial leverage — was well as aid in helping Syria rebuild its shattered infrastructure — to regain influence in where that country is going.

As usual, the UAE — a small power unburdened by regional and global leadership roles — acted first. This opened the door for Saudi Arabia, a much more important country with regional Arab and global Islamic leadership aspirations, and much more complex domestic politics. (This same pattern applied to recent Gulf Arab rapprochements with Iran.) They have been joined by a set of countries including Algeria, Egypt, Oman and others that never really turned their back on the Assad regime no matter how bloody things got in Syria.

Qatar wants to sit this out because it feels it can rely on Turkey to pursue their common interests, and it wishes to avoid annoying the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups with which it is aligned. But that changes practically nothing.

Washington clearly isn’t happy, but it didn’t provide the Arab League with any practical alternatives to ensure its interests. Hence the rather attenuated US protests. Assad leads a regime soaked in blood. Sadly, the balance of power on the ground in Syria, combined with always-heated regional politics, made this distasteful reintegration inescapable.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/2023/05/05/civic-virtue-expected-of-those-in-high-office-goes-missing-all-too-often/

There is one standard for ordinary Americans, another for the wealthy, yet another for the politically powerful.

Many Americans, on the left and right, are profoundly alienated from a political system they regard as deeply corrupt. This cynicism even primes some to believe former US president Donald Trump and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake that US elections are shams. Mr Trump even declared that Senator Bernie Sanders was cheated in Democratic primaries – a claim Mr Sanders dismissed.

There is no evidence of any rigged elections, but both parties and all three branches of federal government have helped create an atmosphere of sleaze.

Most Americans are willing to accept a degree of social inequality. For example, the more money one brings to a criminal trial, the better the likely outcome. Battalions of lawyers with diverse specialisations, forensic scientists and accountants, private investigators, psychologists, psychiatrists, former police officers and so on provide a much more formidable hurdle for prosecutors than overworked public defenders.

Prosecutors, for instance, won’t seriously consider pursuing the death penalty, where it exists, against defendants of means. Execution is therefore in effect reserved for non-wealthy individuals, especially when the defendant is a black man and/or the victim was a white woman.

Late 18th century assumptions that shaped the way the US system deals with power and accountability have proven defective. The framers of the constitution expected everyone to operate in their self-interest. But they assumed that the social and political elite would largely indulge in a somewhat attenuated form of bias.

All systems, they understood, ultimately rely on civic virtue. The more prestige and power individuals or factions accumulate, the more members of that elite need to exercise a higher form of “self-governance” – not merely repudiating corruption but embracing self-regulation in the national interest.

This is an intended feature (alas a bug) of the American system to not just informally (as with wealth influencing the quality of legal protection) but often formally granting unusual degrees of unregulated autonomy and exemption to those dominating the national political hierarchy. With civic virtue playing an increasing role, they presumed, such elites would conceptualise their self-interest more in terms of institutional than personal prerogatives and privileges.

Congresspersons would naturally fight to preserve legislative authority and powers, while presidents and the courts would stick up for the executive and judiciary, respectively. Within a few years of the Constitution’s ratification, however, it became clear that the emergence of formalised political parties produced a huge and largely unanticipated partiality that greatly impeded the functioning of political checks and balances. Parties instinctively protect their own, across institutional lines.

Some of the most important guardrails established at the Constitution’s founding were greatly weakened as bad actors found significant protection within the party system. Whether real or perceived corruption has gotten worse over time or not is immaterial. As a practical matter, the system is shot through with impunity that only increases with greater authority – the opposite of the arguably intuitive notion that greater power requires stronger restraints.

The (reportedly) relatively robust restraints over who can order the firing of US nuclear weapons illustrates that such a system of limitations can work if real checks and an honest, equitable outcome were the goal. But it doesn’t appear to be. It is possible to give someone the authority to say “no,” as when it comes to national survival. But there is nothing similar regarding many truly egregious forms of corruption.

Examples are everywhere. Hardly a week goes by without a new revelation about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and/or his wife behaving improperly, unlawfully failing to report or disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from interested parties, and other improper financial relationships with vested interests on the extreme right.

Mr Thomas’s behavior is beyond outrageous. But because the Supreme Court has no ethical code and prefers not to police itself, thank you very much, he remains completely unaccountable.

Congress and the Democrats are no saints. During the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was implored by countless patriotic groups and individuals to restrain stock market trading by members of Congress, which can obviously and easily become a form of insider trading. At first, she said she simply wouldn’t consider the matter, and then she admitted it was important but ultimately and predictably did nothing.

As for the White House, Mr Trump, his cabinet and, especially, his family (his administration gave itself permission to ignore laws against nepotism) seemed to have set to work as soon as he was inaugurated milking the system in what often seemed simply a for-profit venture. The US system never saw anything like it before. We may never know how deep the rot went.

But what we certainly do know is that, as long as he was in office, he was immune from prosecution and, in many cases, even investigation. He may face the music now for some of his more egregious, scandalous misdeeds, but as long as he was president, he was untouchable.

The Biden White House has been a lot less tainted, to say the very least. But the President’s son, Hunter, although he’s never been a government official, does seem to have tried to profit by his last name. The Justice Department has been taking an inexplicably long time to decide whether he should face criminal charges on a tax matter. Once again, the impression is terrible.

Meanwhile, revolving doors between the government and private sector, and processes of bidding on contracts and outsourcing – particularly when it comes to military expenditure (the biggest chunk of discretionary, and often even non-discretionary, national spending) means that there is a huge federal trough by those who can find a way to get their snout in it. This pervasive, fundamental set of mechanisms driving the US system often may not be unlawful, but it’s another big factor reasonably informing public cynicism.

The bottom line is that, with very rare exceptions, there is one standard for ordinary people, another for the wealthy, yet another for the somewhat politically powerful, and near-total immunity and impunity for those at the very top such as Supreme Court justices and sitting presidents. Some of them even seem to enjoy flouting the rules.

No wonder so many Americans are disposed to dismiss the entire process, including perfectly legitimate elections, as a sham and a scam. The stench of corruption hangs heavy over the Washington swampland and poor old civic virtue all-too-often seems to have been quietly abandoned.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/04/25/trump-republican-2024-us-president/

It doesn’t look like there are candidates who could derail Trump next year but it’s still early in the race.

In the US, Republicans skeptical of former president Donald Trump seem trapped in a nightmarish doom loop. Nothing, it seems, can be done to stop him from once again becoming their party’s nominee for president in 2024, and then probably losing to President Joe Biden.

Mr Biden is expected to announce his re-election campaign this week, and he is unlikely to face any serious Democratic challengers. Mr Trump faces several announced competitors while numerous other hopefuls are biding their time. This suits him ideally.

He can rely on about 20-30 percent of the party’s base voters. Unless another candidate in the pack secures higher numbers, the Republican winner-take-all primary system will transform that sizable minority into unstoppable victories. You don’t need 50 percent plus one. To win all of a state’s delegates, you just need one more than a runner-up. So, Mr Trump relishes a crowded field.

But are Republicans doomed to eventually nominate Mr Trump again? Can anyone plausibly stand in his way?

For a few months, conventional wisdom held that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was not only a formidable challenger, but had Mr Trump back on his heels, clocking significant leads in most opinion polls.

But many Republicans focused on regaining the White House watched in horror as that lead rapidly dwindled and then reversed, with Mr Trump re-building commanding advantages in virtually every poll. Yet Mr DeSantis hasn’t even announced he’s a candidate. How did that happen?

The early excitement over the Florida Governor failed to account for several key factors. Mr DeSantis is totally untested on the national stage and looked distinctly unimpressive during a recent book tour that was a proxy for an early campaign.

Presidential elections are, in fact, popularity contests. Mr DeSantis is, by most accounts, a decidedly unpleasant individual, lacking personal charm, particularly in close quarters. Unfortunately, he also lacks Mr Trump’s formidable demagogic talents in front of large crowds, and so appears effective neither with big nor small groups.

His most obvious competitive advantage over Mr Trump, 76, is Mr DeSantis’ relative youth at 44. Those decades could be a potent weapon against Mr Biden, but we may never find out.

The two have launched very revealingTV attack ads against each other. Mr DeSantis criticised Mr Trump for having been open to cuts in social spending for the elderly. Mr Trump responded by mocking Mr DeSantis’ purported use of his fingers to consume pudding on an airplane when he didn’t have a spoon.

Mr DeSantis apparently imagines he can win the Republican nomination on policy issues. Mr Trump knows it’s all about shamelessly asserting dominance with impunity. He shares his followers’ belief that leadership is most clearly demonstrated through bullying in a style borrowed from professional wrestling.

However, Mr Trump has been, as usual, canny. Since leaving office after refusing to acknowledge his defeat and seeking, instead, to overthrow the constitutional system, he has plunged into new depths of extremism. But this was not merely a neurotic symptom.

He has been carefully mapping out new space on the extreme right that has never existed in mainstream American politics – vowing to dismantle much of the government and take bitter revenge against opponents if re-elected, in the spirit of his insistence that the US Constitution should have been “terminated” to allow him to remain in power. Judged by both word and deed, he now poses a far greater threat to the constitutional order than in 2016 or 2020.

In the process, he has blocked any path by which he could be attacked from his political right. What would that look like? What’s more extreme than “terminating” the Constitution and seeking “retribution” against opponents? Yet no one can win the Republican nomination by attacking him from his left. He has cleverly both outflanked and boxed in his Republican opponents, leaving them little room to manoeuvre.

It is hard not to suspect Mr DeSantis has squandered his big opportunity and his path to a comeback is not clear.

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley shows even fewer signs of gaining significant support. Before almost any of the others, she exemplified the conundrum all Mr Trump’s Republican opponents face: she feels the need to be perceived as sufficiently pro-Trump not to completely alienate his huge support base, but somehow also needs to make the case that she’s a better choice. That’s very tricky. Since leaving her post in his administration, she’s been trying to square that circle, with no success.

Her best bet is for Republicans to conclude they need a woman of colour to erode Democratic support among women and ethnic minorities. But, like all the others, since she is stridently anti-choice, abortion’s rise as a dominant issue is disastrous for Republicans in general, and Ms Haley in particular.
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The rest of the announced field includes a couple of wealthy non-entities and a trivial talkshow host. But there are some more interesting unannounced candidates, particularly Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. He is the most prominent African-American Republican, with a style that’s essentially a mashup of the Trump/DeSantis brand of dour culture war politics but with a sunny disposition and uplifting tone. His best bet is probably for Mr Trump to lead the party into another atrocious debacle in 2024 and try again in 2028, when there may be more takers.

He can rely on about 20-30 per cent of the party’s base voters. Unless another candidate in the pack secures higher numbers, the Republican winner-take-all primary system will transform that sizable minority into unstoppable victories. You don’t need 50 per cent plus one.

Mr Trump is also facing an unannounced challenge from his former vice president Mike Pence. The stigma of having followed the Constitution on January 6, 2021 and not unlawfully blocked the certification of Mr Biden’s victory has led to Mr Pence being vigorously booed by core Republican audiences in many recent public appearances. Perhaps he’ll think better of it after all.

Yet even he won’t strongly criticise Mr Trump. That’s being left to one declared candidate, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and an undeclared one, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Neither seem particularly formidable, to put it charitably.

It’s very early, and things could change. But it doesn’t look as though even criminal trials, or for that matter convictions, are going to be enough to derail Mr Trump. Yet it would probably take a huge unexpected development to create enough space for him to regain the presidency in 2024.

There’s a long way to go, but right now Mr Biden looks incredibly well-positioned for a second term in the White House