Trump goes to the mattresses

Trump goes to the mattresses

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BlueRidgeNow 

Times-News Online

May 20, 2018

No, this isn’t about Stephanie Clifford, aka porn film star Stormy Daniels, or Karen McDougal, the former Playmate model, each of whom claims she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump.

It’s about the warfare that crime families engage in that is so vividly described in Mario Puzo’s novel “The Godfather,” which was brought to the screen in the ’70s by Frances Ford Coppola. And it’s about how the lessons of that sort of warfare apply in Washington today.

“The Godfather” teaches us that we need to know about “going to the mattresses.” It’s what criminal gangs do when war erupts among them. They retreat to safe houses, usually seedy apartments, that can accommodate 15 to 20 gang members who sleep in shifts on mattresses on the floor while others stand guard in the event their lair is discovered. There they wait until the order comes for them to strike at the rival gang.

Such a war was triggered when Virgil Sollozzo gunned down the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone. In retribution, Vito’s son, Michael, murders Sollozzo and his bodyguard, one of New York’s “finest,” NYPD Capt. Mark McCluskey. That ignited a five-gang bloodbath.

Such gangland carnage is brutal, unforgiving and most importantly pointless. Pointless because these gangs control their own territory, are immensely wealthy and have well-established tentacles that enable them to corrupt too many politicians, police, prosecutors and the press. Yet they cannot resist the temptation to poach on the territory of rival gangs. What fuels that death wish is a combination of fear and greed they cannot control.

And there’s the rub. The alluring power of fear and greed as the principal motivators of so much destructive human behavior isn’t unique to criminals. It’s alive in well in most of us, and now it’s largely responsible for the corruption in and paralysis of our political system.

President Trump has gone to the mattresses!

Whether one likes it or not, and none of us should, the Trump administration, its allies on Capitol Hill and most importantly Trump’s ardent and unquestioning supporters across the nation have been forced to turn away from a governing agenda so they can concentrate their full efforts on protecting Trump from the long arm of the law and the possibility of impeachment proceedings in Congress.

The president’s strategy is becoming clearer every day. The game of musical chairs among his lawyers with the departure of John Dowd and Ty Cobb, who attempted to work cooperatively with special counsel Robert Mueller, and the arrival of Rudy Giuliani and Emmet Flood makes it evident that Trump will not agree to be interviewed by Mueller even though he or his lawyers may say just the opposite.

Should Mueller attempt to subpoena the president, it’s likely that Trump would successfully ignore the subpoena. In fact, Trump’s real agenda is to continue his relentless effort to discredit Mueller and his investigation. He’s already called it a witch hunt, and that’s just the beginning.

Trump’s real agenda is political, not legal. His intention is that his onslaught against Mueller will bring enough of his supporters to the polls this November to keep Republicans in control of Congress.

Trump knows a U.S. House under Democratic rule will be a House that will use its subpoena power to pursue multiple investigations into him and his administration, and may also begin impeachment proceedings.

In case you haven’t noticed, Washington has ground to a halt in terms of governing the nation. It’s so bad that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans take the time to even pretend they are doing their jobs.

Washington has descended into the theater of the absurd. The Democrats are headed into the fall election without having crafted a message that can broaden their appeal and resonate with voters. Instead, they have taken the easy way out and placed their bet on enough voter opposition to Trump and the Republicans to give them a working majority in at least the House, if not the Senate, this November.

Trump, on the other hand, is directing (not masterminding) a gang war against fellow Republicans — Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI Directory James Comey and others. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is the least popular member of Congress, and House Speaker Paul Ryan can’t get back to Wisconsin quickly enough.

The White House’s Lincoln Bedroom (no seedy apartment) is strewn with mattresses for the Don’s family and soldiers. Consigliere Giuliani has put out a call for Peter Clemenza to come and show them how to make the spaghetti sauce, as he did for Michael Corleone.

Not even Mario Puzo could have imagined and penned a tale as disgustingly bizarre as this!

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

“WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED” STINKS

 

“WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED” STINKS

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

TimesNewsOnline

April 15, 2018

 

The United States Supreme Court did not cover itself in glory when in 1896 it ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” segregated public facilities did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution's 14^th amendment. It took the High Court 58 years to begin the process of reversing the stain of Plessy.

In 1954 the Warren Court in a unanimous decision ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. It appeared separate but equal, was dead. But it wasn't.

The Court delayed in ordering the states to enforce its decision in Brown. When it did it instructed lower Federal courts to “enter such orders and decrees consistent with this opinion as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases”.

Thurgood Marshall, who had represented Brown and argued the case before the Supreme Court, stated that the Court's use of the language “with all deliberate speed” meant, “S-L-O-W”. He was right.

The High Court should be ashamed of its use of “with all deliberate speed” to undercut its decision in Brown. But the Supremes have a penchant for finding ways to slow-walk both their decisions and the remedies that flow from them. And that brings us to the Court's current consideration of three cases involving partisan gerrymandering.

The High Court's glacial approach to finding and implementing a remedy for racial segregation in public education has a parallel in respect of its tortured consideration of partisan gerrymandering. For a very long time the High Court viewed partisan gerrymandering as something that it should not and could not address. That changed in 1962 with the Court's landmark decision in Baker v. Carr. In that case the Court ruled, 6-2, that congressional districts of unequal size were an unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th amendment. Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan concluded that redistricting case raised justiciable issues. By 1964 the Court had ruled that congressional and state legislative districts had to be approximately equal in size.

However, over the ensuing half century the Courts have been reluctant to grapple with the much more vexing problem of the drawing of district lines such that only one party has any real opportunity to win. The Court's reluctance to come to grips with this problem has permitted both parties to use partisan gerrymandering to turn democracy on its head.

There is no doubt that gerrymandering has enabled members of Congress to select who gets to vote for them, rather than the other way around. Instead of us picking the Congressman we want. Elected officials now pick they voters they want. That's election rigging.

The last time the Court confronted this issue in 2004 it was bitterly divided and, not surprisingly, punted. Justice Kennedy was the swing vote in the decision to not step into the case from Pennsylvania, but he did say the Court might intervene in subsequent cases of partisan gerrymandering. Think of that as more “with all deliberate speed”.

Now the Court is considering three cases of partisan gerrymandering from North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Maryland. The first two are examples of GOP election rigging. The Maryland case is one where the Democrats have run amok. By June we'll know if the Court is finally willing to rein in partisan gerrymandering or if they will punt again.

But, even if they curtail partisan gerrymandering, their work will be incomplete. That's because none of these cases presents the opportunity for them to deal with the equally vexing and related problem of racial gerrymandering.

According to Ballotpedia there are 122 Majority-Minority congressional districts. These are districts that have a majority of African-Americans or Hispanics in order to guarantee their election. However, packing minorities into these districts has enabled the Republicans to win many other districts that would have otherwise been competitive in the absence of the Majority-Minority districts.

In the 1990s the Court decided three cases from North Carolina that challenged the constitutionality of these racially contrived districts as racial gerrymanders. Unfortunately In the final case, Easley v. Cromartie, the Court ruled 5-4 against the challenge when then Justice Sandra Day O'Connor switched her vote after having previously said, “a reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographic and political boundaries...bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid”.

A new case successfully challenging the constitutionality of Majority-Minority districts is urgently necessary because the best way to curtail unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering is to simultaneously curtail unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Racial minorities no longer need racial super majorities to win. Think Obama.

The Supreme's addiction to the slow motion of “with all deliberate speed” leads them to believe it shields them. What it really does is undermine public trust in the Supreme Court. That is especially dangerous in today's hyper-polarized political climate.

Happily, not all Supremes bow to dilatory tactics. My favorites are Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, and Mary Wilson.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Public education is PC-centric

Public education is PC-centric

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BluRidgeNow Online

March 18, 2018

Long ago, my parents taught me that America’s future was its children, and that getting a good education was the path forward. They also taught me that the person most responsible for getting there was me. That was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

My 10th-grade English class was a writing class taught by Miss Irene Jennings. She was so short we called her “The Mouse.” She was a strict disciplinarian — in my mind, a tyrant. I didn’t like her, and I had no interest in learning how to write well.

The conflict came to a head early. She returned a writing assignment of mine with an “F.” I knew I had given the assignment short shrift, but I also knew it was of “C” quality. When I confronted her after class, she agreed with me, but she said I was capable of far better, that I was lazy, and that she would continue to fail me until I performed up to my potential.

At dinner that night, I vented my outrage to my parents. My dad said we would go and talk to her. She told us what she had told me. He thanked her and we departed. I felt vindicated until my dad unloaded on me. He told me he wanted to see every one of my writing assignments from that point forward. I was trapped. My final grade in English that semester was a “B” — an earned “B.”

Although it took me time to realize it, The Mouse and my Dad had taught me an invaluable lesson, one far more important than writing.

Can you imagine what would happen if a modern-day teacher deliberately failed an under-performing, able student? She would be crucified — by the parents, the PTA, the school administration, the school board and political correctness advocates of all stripes. And that means teachers today and the systems in which they work have capitulated to an evil that casts a dark cloud over not only public education but also over the competence of the nation’s citizens and future leaders.

Political correctness has seeped into the nation’s education system at every level. Its effects are ubiquitous and deleterious. It travels on cat’s paws unless challenged. When challenged, it goes to DEFCON 1, charging those who have the temerity to confront it with discrimination, its ultimate weapon.

National education policy and local school performance have been transmogrified by political correctness. The worst of it dates to the enactment in 2002 of the No Child Left Behind Act that passed Congress with large bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. At the signing ceremony, the president said that “you must show us whether or not every child is learning.”

By the time Barack Obama took office, it was clear the law was not working well. Another bipartisan bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by him. Predictably, it retained the previous statute’s fatal flaw.

The current law is called the Every Student Succeeds Act. It supposedly will work because it gives individual school districts more flexibility about things like student testing. Don’t bet any of the ranch on that outcome.

The real problem, which the doctrine of political correctness deliberately disguises, is that there are too many schools, too many teachers and too many students who are destined to fail, regardless of how much money is available. Accepting that reality, while striving to open the door to success for every student who is willing and able to succeed, is essential to put public education back on the right track.

When federal law proceeds from the precept that NO child shall be left behind, or that EVERY student must succeed, it means the central focus of the school administrators, the PTA, the elected school board and, most importantly, the teachers is on the least-able, worst-performing students. That’s because unless they perform, the teachers and the schools are in jeopardy.

That’s the insidious way bureaucracies work. That’s political correctness gone mad!

Economics professor Walter Williams of George Mason University has written that many college-bound high school graduates are not prepared for or belong in college. Many must take remedial courses, and many of those never graduate. But admitting such students, Williams wrote, “gets the nation’s high schools off the hook. ... (They) can continue to deliver grossly fraudulent education — namely, issue diplomas that attest that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when they may not be able to perform at even an eighth- or ninth-grade level.”

Thank God for Miss Jennings, the Mouse who really roared, and the public education system that supported her.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Bipartisanship a mixed blessing

By:  LeRoy Goldman

Columniust

BlueRidgeNow Online

Times-News

February 18, 2018

In case you haven’t noticed, bipartisanship has broken out in Congress. It recently passed a two-year budget deal that was the product of weeks of intensive negotiations among congressional Republicans and Democrats.

The compromise was the antithesis of what we witnessed earlier in the failed efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the successful effort to cut taxes. Both of those efforts were the handiwork of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Not only were the Democrats excluded from the process, so, too, were most rank-and-file Republican members of Congress.

In both cases, McConnell used the arcane budget reconciliation process in order to attempt to pass the bills in the Senate without having to achieve the 60-vote supermajority. His effort failed on Obamacare when Sen. John McCain voted to kill the bill.

McConnell’s effort succeeded on the tax bill, but at a terrible price. The measure is tilted too heavily toward the super wealthy and corporations. Moreover, it will add $1 trillion to the national debt. No Democrat voted for it.

But having used up the once-each-fiscal-year chance to pass bills with only 51 votes in the Senate under budget reconciliation, McConnell had only two choices for anything else: Do nothing or work with the Democrats. Wisely, he chose the latter with respect to the recently passed budget deal as well as the open-process immigration legislation now being debated in the Senate.

Doing that is a big-time change for the better. The budget deal passed 71-28, way more than the 60-vote threshold for the required supermajority. But more important than the fact that the bill passed is how it passed.

Both those who voted for the bill and against it were made up of significant numbers of both Republicans and Democrats. More importantly, most of the bipartisan group who voted against the budget deal were the extremists in both parties, including Democrats like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republicans like Mike Lee of Utah.

The measure passed the House in the same way. The final vote was 240-186. Both groups were made up of significant numbers from each political party. And, like the Senate vote, it was the extremists who were on the losing side, like Black Caucus Democrat Maxine Waters of California and Republican Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows of North Carolina.

You don’t have to be a congressional savant or clairvoyant to understand that the way to marginalize the extremists in both parties, and thus enable Congress to do the nation’s business, is for the two leaders in each chamber to work together. Bipartisan majorities are built from the middle out, not from the extremes in.

But, as heartening as it is to see the fruits of bipartisanship, that doesn’t necessarily mean the results are always in the national interest. Bipartisan majorities can sometimes get things wrong or leave vital work unaddressed.

The budget deal, and to a much larger extent the recently passed tax cut, have the same problem — red ink. The budget deal is projected to increase the deficit by $320 billion and the tax cut is projected to increase the national debt by $1 trillion.

That’s not to say the budget deal and the tax cut should not have been enacted. It is to say the nation’s escalating deficit and debt are way too high and out of control.

Moreover, there is no mystery surrounding why this is so and why Washington won’t fix it. The “why” is found in the uncontrolled escalation of four federal mandatory programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest payments on the debt.

Every president and every Congress since Lyndon Johnson has recognized this growing clear and present danger to the American economy and way of life. None has had the courage to confront the American people with the pain involved in reining in these entitlement programs.

Remember the Simpson-Bowles Commission? Its purpose was to propose ways to solve this problem. Its 2010 report did just that. Before its ink was dry, President Barack Obama and most members of Congress, regardless of political stripe, ran from it like scalded dogs.

Donald Trump’s no different. On June 16, 2015, he said, “Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts.” That’s political legerdemain.

A good barometer of the current over-stimulation of a full-employment, low-inflation economy is the imploding stock market correction. It puts an ominous warning shot across the bow of America’s burgeoning debt and predicts punishing interest rate hikes.

Washington politicians who put their job security ahead of their oath of office deserve the retribution that the ballot box offers.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Give The Man A Chance

Give The Man A Chance

By:  LeRoy Goldman

BlueRidgeNow Online

January 21, 2018

“Give the man a chance” is one of the most impactful lines uttered by Dr. Jack Ryan in the taut thriller “The Hunt for Red October” about a Soviet, first-strike nuclear submarine.

Ryan, the film’s protagonist, believes the captain of the Red October, Marko Ramius, intends to defect and hand the Red October over to the Americans.

Ryan attempts, but initially fails, to persuade the skipper of an American attack submarine, the Dallas, that Ramius intends to defect. Dallas’ skipper, Bart Mancuso, has been ordered to destroy the Red October.

Suffice to say, fate intervenes and Mancuso realizes Ryan may have it right. Ryan confronts him and says, “Give the man a chance.”

That’s what President Donald Trump deserves, and too frequently the press denies him that chance.

Let’s start where we all agree. The federal government is hopelessly broken. That has been the case for the better part of a quarter-century, and it makes no difference which political party rules the roost inside the Washington Beltway.

The underlying cause of Washington’s dysfunction resides not within the Beltway but here in the heartland of the nation. That’s where you find the growing legions of radicals of the left and right who share the same ideological fervor — take no prisoners.

Their fanaticism has turned compromise into a dirty word. To these radicals, compromise and surrender are synonyms. Thus, none of us should be surprised that Congress and the president apparently cannot agree on a 2018 budget, cannot agree on what to do about DACA and broader immigration reform, cannot agree on the necessity to raise the national debt limit, or any other issue of legislative significance.

It was in this hyper-partisan context that President Trump did something extraordinary in a meeting with congressional leaders on Jan. 9. Typically the press is invited into such a meeting for only a few minutes at the beginning. But not this time. The president allowed the press to remain and the cameras to roll for about an hour.

We got to see the back and forth on a complex and controversial subject, DACA and immigration. We saw a president who was clearly in charge of the meeting, who repeatedly emphasized that the issue could only be resolved by compromise, who said he was willing to support a substantive agreement on both DACA and broader immigration, and who said he was “prepared to take the heat” that would inevitably attend any such agreement, including his willingness to allow natural terrain be the wall where possible.

However, during the meeting, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked the president if he would support a “clean” DACA bill. To Feinstein and other Capitol Hill veterans, a “clean” bill meant one without any other provisions, such as enhanced border security that she and everybody else knew was essential to the president and the GOP.

Thus the ever wily Feinstein’s question was a ploy designed to see if she could entrap President Trump. He, not being familiar with the term “clean” bill, responded affirmatively — until it quickly became clear what Feinstein was up to. At that point, the president put the meeting back on its bipartisan trajectory.

But rather than the ensuing press coverage of the meeting being focused on the growing bipartisan accord the president had so carefully and skillfully tried to cultivate during the meeting, the press chose to hammer him for his vacillation and ignorance.

For example, Cristiano Lima writing in Politico stated, “Trump’s meeting with lawmakers was marked by shifting policy stances from the president … .”

In the Washington Post, Ed O’Keefe and David Nakamura wrote that “Trump appeared to contradict himself” and that “Trump seemed to indicate he would support a proposal from Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) for a ‘clean DACA bill’ … only to be quickly corrected by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)”.

And Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker in the Washington Post wrote that “he also muddled through the policy by seeming to endorse divergent positions … .”

Give me a break! Instead of the mainstream press reporting on what was a clearly successful, presidentially led effort, to find common ground and to take the heat on the contentious issues of DACA and immigration reform, the president was portrayed as ignorant.

This sort of shameful reporting does violence to the essentiality of a free press. It exposes the bias of selective reporting that is designed to cleverly shoehorn a predetermined conclusion into what necessarily should be an illumination of what actually transpired. That amounts to an assault on the press by the press.

It doesn’t give the man a chance, and that’s something we should all oppose, but don’t. Shame on us.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

The odd man out is no shocker

 

The odd man out is no shocker

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

TimesNewsOnline

December 17, 2017

 

Scrooge, the Grinch or Donald Trump. If determining which of the three is the odd man on his way out were a multiple choice test, I suspect most of you would correctly guess what’s coming.

You’re right, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

In addition to the Gospel of Matthew, my Christmas favorites are “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” by Dr. Seuss and “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. In their very different ways, they enable us to know the true meaning of Christmas.

The child in me still treasures the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Other than its unconscionable and repetitive self-promotion of NBC television programming, it remains a heartwarming tradition.

And this year it had something new, and for me, something special. Not only was there a new helium balloon, it was the one that I’ve been waiting for ever since I first read Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” to our sons back in the ’70s.

As the Grinch came into view on 34th Street on Thanksgiving morning, the key thing for me was the Grinch’s grin. Would it be a faithful rendering of Dr. Seuss’ illustrations in the original?

It was, and that meant that the Grinch’s expression conveyed two mutually opposing thoughts. That signature grin tells us that he’s up to no good, but that he’s not evil.

And, while the Grinch successfully steals what he wrongly believes is Whoville’s entire Christmas, Christmas survives, and the Grinch is profoundly transformed when he hears Cindy Lou and Whos down in Whoville singing on Christmas morning. That’s when he realizes that the “stuff” he grabbed is only meaningless “stuff.” That’s when his heart grows three sizes.

In Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge’s countenance is nothing but foreboding. For him, Christmas is humbug. For him, life is only about the acquisition of wealth — his own. Unless we look very carefully, there is no evidence that Scrooge is redeemable.

But there is one sliver of hope. However grudgingly, Scrooge is willing to grant his beleaguered employee, Bob Cratchit, a paid day off work on Christmas Day so that he can spend it with his family and his dying son, Tiny Tim.

Transforming Scrooge is going to take much more than the joyous singing in Whoville that the Grinch heard on Christmas morning. It’s going to require confronting Scrooge with the fear of God.

As Scrooge sleeps on Christmas Eve, that fear arrives in the form of spirits who take Scrooge back to his desolate and lonely childhood, then to Bob Cratchit’s family and two emaciated children named Ignorance and Want, and finally to an unattended grave, Scrooge’s grave.

Shock and terror produce Scrooge’s epiphany. He awakens on Christmas morning a changed man, a man who becomes Tiny Tim’s second father.

No, the Grinch and Scrooge and are not the odd men out, but President Trump is. Perhaps he believes he’s America’s savior. His campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, suggests such a glorious role for his presidency.

But his campaign and his first year in office are in fact the mirror opposite of his promises. They foretell his doom.

The truth is that President Trump is unfit to serve. He is incapable of fulfilling the oath of office he took last January that requires him to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Trump’s behavior is an ongoing assault on the pillars of our Constitution. He has attacked free speech, a free press and freedom of religion. He has attacked the independence of the federal judiciary. He has demonstrated ignorance of the Constitution’s doctrine of separation of powers.

He has surrounded himself with sycophants. He has undercut the nation’s intelligence and national security apparatus. He has insulted and disparaged America’s allies while giving a pass to undemocratic oligarchs like Vladimir Putin.

He has soiled his unique bully pulpit by disparaging women, African-Americans and Hispanics.

And worse, he can’t help it. Late last month, the New York Daily News editorialized, “The president of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is, by any honest layman’s definition, mentally unwell and viciously lashing out.”

It’s simply a matter of time before Robert Mueller presents a compelling case of obstruction of justice and/or abuse of power against the president. At its heart will be the spoken words, tweets and actions of Trump himself.

All of this reminds me of President Richard Nixon’s prophetic words the night before he resigned: “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

In 2016, the American people were forced to choose between two thoroughly corrupt and despicable candidates. Unbelievably and thankfully, Donald Trump’s legacy will be that he successfully destroyed both of them.

Merry Christmas.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Perhaps a Thanksgiving miracle?

Perhaps a Thanksgiving miracle?

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Tines-News Online

November 19, 2017

Perhaps a quarter-century of deadlock in Washington is ending. And amazingly, the issue that now gives hope is one that has been at the center of Washington’s descent into recrimination and paralysis — health care. Maybe it’s the key that unlocks what has shackled and crippled presidents and Congresses since Bill Clinton took office.

President Clinton asked his wife to take the lead on health care reform in 1993. She failed miserably. She devised a plan so complex that no one could understand it. It was a sitting duck for the devastatingly effective Harry and Louise television ads that the health insurance industry ran against Hillarycare.

More importantly, its collapse set the stage for the Republican tidal wave in the 1994 election that put Newt Gingrich and the GOP in control of the House for the first time in 40 years. By the end of the Clinton presidency, the House had impeached him.

Immediately following his historic victory, President Barack Obama unwisely decided to make health care reform his top priority and to do so on a partisan basis. In 2009, the Democrats had a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. Thus Obamacare was rammed through Congress without any Republican support, assuring the upheaval that followed.

Upheaval’s name was “Repeal and Replace.” During the Obama presidency, two consequential things occurred: partisan stalemate at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and a series of Republican election victories that has brought the GOP to its high-water mark not only in Washington but also in the states.

In 2010, the Republicans recaptured the House. In 2014, they took the Senate. They also defeated about 1,000 Democrats in state legislative chambers and won numerous governorships. And to almost everyone’s surprise, they won the presidency last year. Voter opposition to Obamacare fueled the meteoric rise of the GOP.

But delivering on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster for the Republicans. So much of a disaster that the election results earlier this month make evident that it now threatens their control of Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020. Without a major course correction, the GOP is headed into oblivion.

However, that the course correction now appears possible. And we can thank Sen. John McCain for that.

Recall that McCain returned to the Senate in late July after having had surgery for brain cancer. His return occurred just as Senate Republicans were attempting to pass their version of the legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. However, like the House version of the same measure, it was deeply unpopular, principally because its enactment would result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance.

On July 25, McCain took the Senate floor and delivered a stinging rebuke to both Republicans and Democrats. In it, he said:

“The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare. And we shouldn’t do the same with ours. ...

“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. ...

“I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. ...

“Let the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under Chairman (Lamar) Alexander, and Ranking Member (Patty) Murray hold hearings, try to report a bill out of committee with contributions from both sides.”

At 1:29 a.m. on July 28, McCain voted against the Republican bill, known as Skinny Repeal, thus killing it. An hour later, a petulant President Donald Trump tweeted, “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode, then deal. Watch!”

Thanks to McCain’s courage and then Alexander and Murray’s willingness to work together, regular order has broken out. Their committee has held hearings, workshops attended by more than 60 senators, and executive sessions on a bipartisan bill to stabilize the collapsing individual insurance market in Obamacare.

Their bill would also extend cost-sharing subsidies to insurance companies through 2019, thus enabling millions of Americans to retain their health insurance. In addition, it would enable states to obtain waivers to shape their own health insurance programs.

Their bill has two dozen co-sponsors equally divided among Republicans and Democrats. That means the bill is filibuster-proof!

The enactment of this bipartisan fix is the necessary precondition to the larger bipartisan overhaul that must follow. However, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will not bring the bill up unless the White House signals that Trump will sign it.

That signal would be worthy of Thanksgiving.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.