On Calling Balls and Strikes
It's Still Important
This post will be short. I won't waste readers' time. I fundamentally believe it is the writer's duty to be honest, and that means calling balls and strikes. When Democrats do something praiseworthy, I will praise them. When Republicans do something praiseworthy, I will praise them. My punditry is often negative, and since so much of oxygen is taken up by the current administration and the extra-large figure of President Trump, I spend a lot of time criticizing Trump.
However, I think it is important to retain perspective and not to lose sight of the original principles I set out to defend. While I agree with many critics of Trump who see him as a threat to democracy, I depart from them in my assessment of the imminence and extremity of that threat. If I thought Trump was about to usher in a fascist dictatorship tomorrow, I would say so. I do not. If that assessment changes, I will say so.
I also agree with many critics of the Democratic Party who see them as a threat to our constitutional republic. I don’t trust current Democratic leadership on the subject of the independence of the judiciary (especially the Supreme Court), nor on the sanctity of the Constitution.
To be honest, I don't see much to like in either side. There aren't very many figures in American politics whom I trust to do what is right and to carry on the work necessary to restore the health of our constitutional system. That said, I also have more faith in our constitutional system than many doomsayers on right and left, and historical perspective compels me to point out that we have been in far graver danger before than we are today. The system we inherited from Madison and Hamilton is designed not to achieve perfection, but to let us survive more or less as a free nation. We have done that so far, and continue to do that. I’m neither optimistic, nor pessimistic about the future (I’m largely agnostic about what will happen), and so I will continue to call balls and strikes as I see them, rather than pretend I can predict what path we will take based on current trajectories (often a fallacy).
All of which is to say that while the focus of this newsletter will often veer away from punditry, my attitude towards punditry remains what it has always been. Some in my camp are growing nervous about the state of American society (including my fellow traveler, Barney Quick), and there is much to cause this nervousness. But temperamentally, I’m with Calvin Coolidge (who, as Rob from Robert Newton Peck’s Soup and Me pointed out, was the greatest president because he was from Vermont): “If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will go in the ditch and you have only one to battle with.”