Is Ukraine trying to draw the U. S. into war with Russia? Is Israel trying to draw the U. S. into war with Iran?

This lament by writer Bartle Bull in the Wall Street Journal is, if nothing else, a cautionary tale:

I’ve been an outspoken Democrat since 1948, when I was the only student in my fifth-grade class to “vote” for Harry Truman. It’s been astonishingly difficult to disclose that next month I will vote for Donald Trump.

Like many, I will be doing so in the European way, voting for a party and its issues, rather than in the American way of supporting someone I like. When I have expressed my views—on economics, security and cultural matters—long-time liberal friends have said, “You sound like Trump, or some uneducated hillbilly.” Ignoring my schooling at Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne, these friends sound like well-meaning dilettantes, otherwise described as self-righteous, useful idiots or bien-pensant.

and

For a long time, like an old locomotive, I have been building steam inside when liberal friends, with the certitude and arrogance of the righteous, decry me as a “right-winger.” In a Harvard class-reunion speech many years ago, I said that “Harvard should stand up to the tyrannies of the left today the way it stood up to the tyrannies of the right in the days of Joe McCarthy.” But the progressive agenda doesn’t seem to include what Truman and John F. Kennedy considered liberal values, such as true political tolerance.

Now, as a lifelong Democrat, I am voting Republican for policy reasons, not because I like Mr. Trump. I believe my old party, as it abuses the powers of office and threatens to pack the Supreme Court and end the filibuster, now supports a government that is far too strong at home and far too weak abroad.

I wonder how many lifelong Democrats the party can afford to alienate in promoting the agenda they’re hellbent on pursuing?

I agree with everything that Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux say in their latest Wall Street Journal op-ed about tariffs. Here’s a sample:

It’s true that America had high tariffs throughout the 19th century and experienced substantial economic growth. But tariffs were the nation’s primary revenue source until the ratification of the 16th Amendment—which authorized income taxes—in 1913. Alexander Hamilton, who supported industrial subsidies that Congress rejected, was skeptical of high tariffs since no tax revenue is collected on goods that tariffs keep out of the country and tariffs funded about 90% of the government.

and

Proponents of more government spending used the politically expedient argument that tariffs helped infant industries by protecting them from foreign competition. But in 1831 the nation’s longest serving secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, rejected the conclusion that high tariffs promoted economic growth. He wrote that “the American people, amidst all the fluctuations and vicissitudes incident to human affairs, had never ceased to make the most rapid progress in agriculture, arts, and commerce. To ascribe that unexampled and uninterrupted prosperity, which even legislative errors cannot arrest, to a tariff is one of the most strange delusions by which intelligent men have ever suffered themselves to be deceived.”

In 1875 the great British economist Alfred Marshall visited the U.S. to see whether protective tariffs fueled economic growth. Before his visit, Marshall thought the infant industry argument for tariffs might have merit. What he observed in the U.S. changed his mind. In 1903, reflecting on his trip, Marshall wrote: “I found that, however simple the plan on which a protective policy started, it was drawn on irresistibly to become intricate; and to lend its chief aid to those industries which were already strong enough to do without it.”

I agree that tariffs are lousy tools. I have two related questions for them though. First, let’s consider a simplified model of the U. S. economy. In this model we produce no actual physical products. No iron. No steel. No automobiles. No airplanes. No lumber. No minerals of any kind. No soy beans. No wheat. No physical products at all—just services.

We continue to need things to survive. How will we pay for the goods we need? Continue to inflate the currency? Won’t China refuse to take it eventually? Not to mention everyone else. Sell Land to China? That’s what we’re doing now. Here’s a pretty balanced primer on Chinese ownership of prime U. S. farmland. It’s also true of mines and timberland.

Here’s my second question. President Biden has said that if China attacks Taiwan, we will defend Taiwan. Every major U. S. weapons system requires components made in China. How would we fight a protracted conflict with China?

I think the answers to both of those questions is that we can’t and that it is an economic and security necessity that we make a lot more of the stuff we need and that we shouldn’t be using components made in China in our weapons systems at all. How do Mssrs. Gramm and Boudreaux propose that we accomplish that?

For thirty years I have been saying that it would be a lot less fun and a lot more expensive to reindustrialize than it would be not to deindustrialize in the first place.

At RealClearPolling Sean Trende doubles down on his complaints about the vice presidential picks of both parties:

When the election is over, one side will claim that the selection was obviously correct, given that the candidate won. Someone has to win, though, so let’s do a little pre-mortem.

Let’s recall that there are a handful of things that a pick can do. It can shore up a wavering portion of the party base, as Mike Pence did for Donald Trump in 2016. It can reinforce a message, as Al Gore did for Bill Clinton in 1992. Or it can help deliver a state, as LBJ likely did for JFK in 1960.

Walz still doesn’t seem to have delivered any of this. The polling in Minnesota is roughly where it was prior to the Walz pick. This means that Harris-Walz will carry the state, but Democrats were already poised to do that. Republicans haven’t won Minnesota since 1972. If they win it this cycle, the election is already over.

Moreover, there’s an opportunity cost here. Pennsylvania has continued to be the state with the closest polling. There is a charismatic, popular governor of the state who was passed over for the nod. Vice-presidential picks can’t do much, but they can move a state a point or so. In Pennsylvania, that difference appears to be meaningful.

What about Vance? He seems to have done his job, debating Walz skillfully and carrying the MAGA flag. But he also doesn’t seem to have energized voters beyond the party faithful.

I think that Sean is missing what has, sadly, become an additional distinctively contemporary motive for picking a vice presidential candidate: impeachment insurance. Don’t like the president? Would you like the vice president better? No—impeachment may not be a good choice.

I don’t think that’s the only reason that Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris for his vice president. He had promised to pick a “woman of color”. But Kamala Harris was not the only possible pick. However, she was clearly the most assertively progressive candidate he could pick. She didn’t help Biden carry a state or “shore up” a wavering part of the base. To the extent that she “reinforced a message” that message was clearly identity politics. Did that need reinforcement? I don’t think so.

However, she did discourage Republicans from pursuing impeachment proceedings against President Biden. It’s hard not to think that the choice was deliberate.

Now consider the vice presidential picks in that light. Republicans, would you prefer Tim Walz as president over Kamala Harris? I don’t so. Democrats, would you prefer J. D. Vance over Donald Trump. I doubt that even more.

In the Wall Street Journal Paul Kiernan and Anthony DeBarros report something that may surprise some of you:

WASHINGTON—Most economists think inflation, interest rates and deficits would be higher under the policies former President Donald Trump would pursue in a second administration than under those proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a quarterly survey by The Wall Street Journal.

The results of the Oct. 4-8 survey echoed those of the Journal’s survey in July, when Trump was facing President Biden. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, and Harris became the nominee shortly afterward.

Since then, both Harris and Trump have released significant new policy proposals. Harris, for example, has called for new credits for newborn children and home buying, while Trump has proposed tax cuts on overtime pay and Social Security benefits, and breaks for auto-loan interest and state and local taxes.

The upshot: Economists still say Trump’s policies are more likely to add to inflation, deficits and interest rates. If anything, the margin has grown since July.

No word on how many of those economists failed to predict the inflation produced by Trump’s tax cut, Trump’s COVID lockdown spending spree, followed by Joe Biden’s spending spree in quick succession.

I think both Trump and Harris have awful economic policies with only a few glimmers of hope. One of those is that neither one of them is likely to follow through on their campaign promises. Another is that we may have no choice.

This is the worst presidential election in my adult life. I am being deluged with phone calls, text messages, and emails—sometimes as many as 20 a day. Nearly every video I watch and most web pages I read are interrupted by pleas for political contributions.

In my opinion the two presidential candidates are objectively the worst of my lifetime. I have said many times that I have not and will not vote for Donald Trump. My reasons are somewhat different from those of most people. Many people complain about his lying but I don’t think that’s true. I think he lives in a world of his own imagination, something the Japanese call kizoku no sekai in reference to their own aristocracy. It is a malady of the rich and powerful. In addition he is remarkably poorly informed and incurious.

Furthermore, I believe that those who think that Kamala Harris is just being cagey during the election are kidding themselves. I think she’s vapid, even vacant.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter what she believes or if she believes in anything at all beyond getting elected. Perhaps she’s just a placeholder for those who are actually running our government. That’s not a relief to me since they are wrong about so much.

Jury selection on the corruption trial of long-time Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan continues to day. They need one more juror and several alternates. The challenge is finding people who a) don’t know anything about the case or b) are willing to lie about what they know and say they haven’t formed an opinion.

Mr. Madigan was the longest-serving speaker of a state legislature—any state legislature—in U. S. history. He was speaker from 1983 on (with a small gap when the Republicans held the Illinois legislature for two years) and was chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party for 23 years. It is simply not credible than anyone in his district, anyone in the Illinois Democratic Party leadership, or anyone in the national Democratic Party leadership did not know about his corruption. That includes Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. They all knew. They just didn’t give a damn as long as he kept delivering votes.

Mr. Madigan presided over the decline of the State of Illinois which is ongoing and the decline was due in large part to the policies he championed. Those included not just reckless spending and taxation but extended to not paying into public employees retirement funds over lengthy periods of time.

and Indigenous Peoples Day.

I found the report from ABC 7 Chicago encouraging. At least it’s better to have Italian-Americans and Native Americans celebrating their own and each others heritages than at daggers drawn.

Today is my dad’s birthday. It’s not his centenary—that was quite a while ago. Although it has been well over a half century since he died, I still miss him, particularly since he and I were just beginning to develop a mature relationship when he died.

I’ve written quite a bit about him over the years. Phi Beta Kappa, Summa cum laude, editor of the college newspaper in his senior year. Graduated from law school, law review, graduated with a JD (somewhat unusual all those years ago). Spent a year in Europe (1937-1938!). Arrested as a spy in Serbia. Was in Munich on November 9, 1938—left Europe shortly thereafter.

It was still the Depression so he had some difficulty getting a job as a lawyer when he returned from Europe. Worked as an insurance adjuster. Tried unsucessfully to join the military during World War II although the OSS asked him to join after the war. Got a job with the (then) biggest law firm in St. Louis as an associate. The firm dissolved in scandal and he went off on his own. Taught law school

He was the smartest, wisest, hardest-working, most decent man I’ve ever known.