Friday News Analysis — August 31, 2018: McCain’s Legacy & Conservatism’s Future; NAFTA Theatrics; and News You Might’ve Missed

The unofficial end of summer is near, as Labor Day approaches, and Washington remembers the legacy of Senator John McCain and service to the nation as he lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda. This week, we look at the legacy of John McCain and the future of conservatism; the move forward on NAFTA renegotiation with the U.S.-Mexico agreement; and other news stories that you may have missed this week.

We welcome your feedback and can be reached at Dan.Mahaffee@thepresidency.org and Michael.Stecher@thepresidency.org.

In addition to the news analysis here, check out Dan’s latest weekly political analysis and other news about the markets and investing at the FarrCast podcast hosted by Michael Farr. You can listen online here, or add it to your iPhone’s podcasts via iTunes.


John McCain & Conservatism “Worth Fighting For”

Dan Mahaffee

U.S. Defense Department Photo

The excellently-produced HBO documentary “John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls” takes its title from the late Senator’s favorite novel. That For Whom the Bell Tolls was McCain’s favorite novel perfectly fits a life that was marked by service to noble causes — no matter the odds for success. Senator McCain lived his life guided by a moral compass of service to his country, its people, and its values. He would be the first to admit that there were times he fell short of the standard he set for himself, but, each time that happened, he would redouble his efforts to not only improve himself — but also make America, and the world, a better place.

Senator McCain’s life of service is worth emulating in its own right, but it is important to remember that his life did not exist in a vacuum. It was a life marked both by friendship and legacy. His friendships with Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, and John Kerry, to name a few, demonstrated that partisan affiliation was not a barrier to personal comity and the political pragmatism and cooperation needed for results. His legacy as the son and grandson of admirals was a polestar for service to the country. His mother’s “roving classroom” and the nomadic life of a military child exposed him to a wide range of cultures. As the successor to Barry Goldwater in the Senate, he carried the torch for an iconoclastic, individualistic brand of conservatism — along with Ronald Reagan — that reflected the spirit and optimism of the American frontier. It was a spirit that drew many to conservatism, including myself.

Over his life, the Republican Party left John McCain and these values behind — a departure that only accelerated in the twilight of his life. Once, conservatism fueled a Republican Party that once saw America as a beacon to the world, willing to open its arms to the world and fight for its values. Fundamental to this belief was that the American Experiment was an example to the world, and it was guarded not by walls or guards but rather by each generation’s service to, and renewal of, our country.

Save for a few examples, it has been replaced by fear, isolationism, conspiracy theory, and a shameful willingness to tolerate immorality and grift for the sake of political expediency. This shift in the Republican Party is reflected in the microcosm of the Arizona senate seats that will soon have neither McCain nor Jeff Flake. Following the death of McCain, Trump-pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who finished third in Tuesday’s GOP primary to replace Flake, paused when asked whether McCain was a hero and instead said that he found his hero in Donald Trump. Indeed, it is telling how all the candidates in the Arizona senate primary ran away from the record of McCain and Flake.

John McCain was a national hero and conservative warrior. He fought for small government, a strong military, and the rights and freedoms of the oppressed. He also knew that conservative orthodoxy was not a barrier to solving shared challenges such as reconciliation with old enemies, climate change, and immigration.

With McCain’s passing, American conservatism has lost a powerful voice for its future. The anxieties of an increasingly older and rural Republican Party are not the foundation for the future of the party. In an article in CSPC’s Presidential Studies Quarterly, Professor Gary Jacobson of UC-San Diego found that President Trump was crystalizing the tribalism in American politics and turning young Americans away from the Republican Party. As researchers at Brookings simply put it, “President Trump owns a shrinking Republican Party.”

Conservatism is stronger when it affirms the values for which it fights — and when its leaders exemplify those values. It is at its weakest when it succumbs to fear and division. For our economy, our security, our environment, and our values, America needs optimistic conservatism to join with principled progressivism for pragmatic solutions.

From the skies of Vietnam to the depths of the Hanoi Hilton, from the campaign trail to the halls of Congress where he now lies in state, John McCain never shied away from fighting for those values. For those who want American Conservatism to endure — for what it means for our country and its role in the world — they can draw strength from Senator McCain’s favorite novel and the line that best exemplifies his life:

The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.


The Political Theater of NAFTA Negotiations

Michael Stecher

U.S. State Department Photo

This week, President Trump announced a preliminary deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA has been unpopular with broad swaths of the electorate on the right and left since its adoption, but the pact is a particular target of President Trump; he called it the “worst trade deal ever made”. The announced elements of the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement update NAFTA in several ways, including in labor standards and agricultural goods, but the most important change is the amount of manufacturing of an automobile that must be done within the pact area for it to qualify for tariff-free trade. The other major change is that the third member of NAFTA, Canada, has been left out. President Trump gave Canada until today to join the new agreement and repeated his threats to use “national security” authorityto place duties on automobile imports from Canada, saying, “I think with Canada, frankly, the easiest thing we can do is tariff their cars coming in.”

The deal is expected to pass through the Mexican Senate easily, as supporters of incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador have signaled strong support for provisions that are designed to raise wages among Mexican factory workers. In the United States Congress, however, the road will be substantially more challenging. When President Trump initially announced his plan to renegotiate NAFTA, Congress approved Trade Promotion Authority, which would allow the updated deal to receive a straight up-or-down vote for passage with no amendments. This would prevent a legislative filibuster in the Senate or attempts to undermine the bill through the inclusion of poison pill amendments in either chamber. However, the TPA for NAFTA only covers a trade deal that includes the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Institutional hurdles would likely also push the passage of a new trade deal until after the midterm elections. Most forecasters are projecting that the Republicans will lose seats in the House of Representatives in November, making passage in the next Congress even more challenging.

The North American trading system has become very integrated in the 24 years since NAFTA’s initial passage, so the threat to disentangle international supply chains has drawn criticism from American manufacturing groups.More to the point, however, the details that have been released about the new deal make it clear that it is an update on the margins of NAFTA, not a complete overhaul of the United States’s trading relationship with Mexico. It also does not have as many of the goals of American trade negotiators as would have existed under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that President Trump pulled out of last year. So with important institutional hurdles, limited substantive upside, and the risk of pushback from the very industrial sectors that President Trump seeks to benefit, we are left to wonder why the administration has chosen to pick this fight now.

Phil Levy, a former member of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors and Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, argues that we should understand this entire episode as a piece of political theater for domestic political consumption. If the goal is political theater, then failing to do the legwork of getting stakeholders on board make sense, because it is not designed to make any substantive changes, nor even necessarily to be implemented. Similarly, having the agreement die due to opposition from the establishment in Washington — especially if it dies in the newly-Democratic House — is a feature, not a bug if the strategy is to use “Democrats love NAFTA” as a talking point in the industrial Midwest in a reelection campaign.

Even if we are unwilling to sign on to the full extent of Levy’s argument, the weaker form of the argument is that the NAFTA renegotiation fits the pattern of flashy summit, rebranding existing policies, and declaring victory, a strategy that the president has used on several occasions since taking office. In the same vein, the focus on automobiles makes sense because of the way that Americans understand car manufacturing as a part of a lost vision of the blue collar middle class, especially in states like Michigan that the president narrowly carried in 2016. The focus on cars as a metaphor also explains why, this morning, the president rebuffed an offer from the European Union to lower reciprocal tariffs on car imports to zero, saying that “[European] consumer habits are to buy their cars, not to buy our cars.” The goal is not to lower tariffs or open markets: it is to make pronouncements that conform to the political opinions of domestic audiences whose support he needs.


News You May Have Missed

Pariah President?

In The Washington Post, Ashley Parker lays out how President Trump is increasingly “President Non Grata” at a range of events from state funerals to royal weddings to the traditional role played by the president at cultural and athletic events.

Federal Judges Invalidate North Carolina Congressional Map

Describing North Carolina’s gerrymandered Congressional districts as ones in which voters are “packed or cracked,” a panel of Federal judges invalidated the North Carolina Congressional map. While the state will appeal to the Supreme Court, North Carolinians face the prospect of voting in a

Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria Death Toll Closer to 3,000

A study from researchers at George Washington University has examined the population statistics of the U.S. Commonwealth and has determined that an estimated 2,975 deaths may have resulted from Hurricane Maria—a 46-fold increase from the official death toll.

Student Loan Ombudsman Steps Down in Protest

At a critical time for U.S. student debt—with an estimated 42 million Americans holding $1.4 trillion in student debt—Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Seth Frotman has stepped down due to concerns about Trump Administration policies that he believes are weakening protections against predatory student lending.

Russia Holds Largest War Games Since Cold War

With over 300,000 troops and participation from Chinese and Mongolian units, these planned “Vostok-2018” war games in Central and Eastern Russia are the largest Russian-led military exercise since 1981. In response, a NATO spokesman said, “Vostok demonstrates Russia’s focus on exercising large-scale conflict. It fits into a pattern we have seen over some time: a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defence budget and its military presence.”

Violent Protests in Germany over Migration

Following the murder of a German citizen by Middle Eastern migrants during an altercation, violent protests between far-right and anti-Nazi groups broke out in the city of Chemnitz, raising the temperature in a German political scene that has already been torn asunder by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome migrants to Germany.

Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress

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CSPC is a 501(c)3, non-partisan organization that seeks to apply lessons of history and leadership to today's challenges

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