Roger Kimball

Have we reached peak Cuomo? I think that the climacteric came when the media was aflutter with rumors that the governor of New York wore nipple rings. Alas, it turned out to be only a rumor, or so we have been assured. There are two questions that continue to bedevil Cuomo watchers. The first is whether his handling of the Wuhan Flu is the absolute worst of any governor or only among the worst. The second question is how, given how appalling his leadership has been, he has managed to float along with such high approval ratings (some say 80 percent). As to the first, we have a veritable litany of failure, much of it deadly.

Just moments ago, the news came in that Department of, um, Justice has dropped its — 'um' again — Gen. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser. 'The Government has determined,' the Court filing read, 'pursuant to the Principles of Federal Prosecution and based on an extensive review and careful consideration of the circumstances, that continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice.' You think? It’s being blared about the internet that now, finally, at last, the 30-year military veteran has got justice. Not yet he hasn’t.

Among other things, the case of Gen. Michael Flynn reminds us of the old adage that things are always worse than you think. Right from the beginning of the attempted coup some of us took to calling 'the Russian Collusion Delusion', it was clear that the hounding of President Trump and various aides and supporters was shaping up to be the greatest scandal in American political history. In September 2018, I wrote here that it had become 'abundantly clear that [both Flynn and George Papadopoulos] both were set up by the FBI as part of a deliberate attempt to delegitimize Trump’s presidency'. I didn’t know the half of it. Yes, we knew that Flynn had been bankrupted and pressured to plead guilty to a bogus charge of lying to the FBI.

I think it was Sir Charles Dilke who warned against ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’. I live in a small, fairly isolated neighborhood of about 100 houses on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. Most of my neighbors seem to be trying out for the part of Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death. Our neighborhood association issues frequent, increasingly shrill bulletins. Most appeal to the authority of the CDC, warning us and our children to stay at home, wear a mask and, should we dare to venture out, to keep at least six feet apart from one another. We are forbidden from congregating in public spaces. We are discouraged from socializing with friends inside.

Back on March 12, I noted in this space that one of the most potent effects of our latest Chinese import would be as a weapon of political propaganda — a new club, that is to say, which the Dems would wield to beat President Trump. It has taken a while for the Hephaestus of the Left to fashion the appropriate weapon. Back at the end of January, there was a brief moment where a stiletto was thought to be the weapon of choice. Trump suspended air travel from China of January 31: stab him with the charge of xenophobia, slice him with slur of racism, carve him up with the charge of overreacting. Towards the end of February, however, there was a sudden shift in sentiment. There were hardly any cases, even fewer fatalities, but the public-health tea kettles were screaming panic.

Anyone who doubts that Barack Obama has a sense of humor should take a look of his endorsement of Joe Biden to be president of the United States. Really, it’s a masterly performance, and delivered, mirabile dictu, with a straight face. Try it yourself. Grab a mirror. Assume your best 'I’m-being-serious-and-sincere' expression. Then say out loud that Joe Biden would bring 'leadership guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace' to the Capital. https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/1250088269502709762?s=21 How’d you do? Crack a smile? Of course you did.

More and more people, I suspect, are padding about muttering lines from Psalm 13: 'How long, O Lord,...How long must I take counsel in my soul/ and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?' These are good questions. As of April 9, 2020, however, we do not have a reliable answer. You might think that the reason we don’t have an answer to these questions is because we don’t really know the insidious strength of the enemy, the new coronavirus that, with the help of the Chinese back in December and January, has made its way around the world, sickening hundreds of thousands, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson on down. I think that is only part of the answer.

'Never let a good crisis go to waste.' When Rahm Emanuel said that during the economic meltdown of 2008-2009, his Machiavellian cynicism was instantly recognized as the calling card of the new breed of Democrat that he and his boss, Barack 'Bring-a-gun-to-the fight' Obama, embodied. We saw it then, when the gargantuan pseudo-stimulus package stimulated little apart from the federal debt, and we are seeing it again now as Democrats hold up an emergency spending bill (also gargantuan) in order to fill it with profligate and politically tendentious provisions.  As Rep. Jim Clyburn put it,  'This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.' Rahm Emanuel could not have put it any better.

The president delivered an address last night about the Wuhan flu, aka novel coronavirus, aka (if you want to sound scary/scientific 'COVID-19'). The speech was brief, but to the point. It outlined a number of practical steps that the administration has taken, and would be taking, to slow the spread of the disease, help those who contract it, and — just as important—rescue the market from the panic that has surrounded this malady. The wretched Jim Acosta, court jester on CNN, complained about Trump calling the virus ‘foreign’ and his identifying the source of the virus as China. That was 'smacking of xenophobia' said the babbling head.

There are few ironclad rules in American politics. But here is one: if you are a Republican, no tactic is too disreputable to be deployed against you. I think for example, of the disgusting campaign waged to keep Judge Robert Bork from the Supreme Court in the 1980s. 'Lion of the Senate' Ted Kennedy led that charge ('in Robert Bork’s America...'), though he was aided by a young senator named Joe Biden. Journalists went through Bork’s trash and reviewed the movies he rented for incriminating evidence. Other campaigns of vilification against Republican Supreme Court nominees include the one conducted against Clarence Thomas and, most recently, the extraordinary full-court press against Brett Kavanaugh. But the calumny is directed not just against judicial nominees.

Was I wrong, or only early? After Joe Biden’s win in the South Carolina primary, I wrote that his victory 'will not, as some pundits are claiming, "resuscitate" or "breathe life" into the ailing former vice president’s asphyxiating campaign. That ship has sailed, as we’ll all see on Tuesday when Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg divide up most of the delegate cake.' Biden certainly performed better than I thought he would, Bernie a little worse, and mini Mike, despite all his money, was nowhere to be seen. (Neither was the unpleasant female who is senior senator from Massachussetts, but that is another story, beside the point in a column about the race to secure the Democratic nomination for president.

The way our politics has shaped up (up? has it shaped up?), the South Carolina primary is a bit like the puppy bowl entertainment that precedes the Big Game with the leatherette ovoid every winter. On Tuesday, the Big Game in politics kicks off with primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Democrats Abroad, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. Big stakes. Still, people — some people — like the puppy bowl. It’s cute, and though it doesn’t really matter who wins, the contest is good for laughs and does get some people worked up. I was pretty worked up myself in 2012 when Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary and proclaimed himself the 'obvious' Republican nominee.

I like to keep a couple of books within easy reach of my desk to remind myself what sort of creature I am dealing with. As I often write about academics and academic administrators, one of these is Ralph Buchsbaum’s Animals Without Backbones: An Introduction to the Invertebrates, whose title perfectly captures the mushy, moist, moral manner of those matchless, modern martinets. Since I also often write about what Lionel Trilling called the ‘bloody crossroads’, where politics and culture meet, the other book within easy reach is Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.  The chief instigator of madness these days is Donald Trump. He is like that old-fashioned confection called Fizzies.

I see that various pundits are competing to write the political epitaph for Joe 'son-of-a-bitch' Biden. That’s entirely understandable. It’s been clear for some time that Biden is on the threshold of senility, and it is only my charitable disposition that prevents me from speculating about which side of the threshold he occupies. And then there was the desolation wrought by the Democrats’ impeachment entertainment. From the start, it was clear that the chief casualty of that amateur theatrics was going to be Joe Biden and his sniff, sniff, sniffing son Hunter. Everyone who is not Bill Kristol understood that the bullet of that purely partisan hit job would miss President Trump.