Yesterday I went to the various opinion sections of the major news outlets. At the New York Times every editorial, column, or op-ed was an anti-Trump rant. The Washington Post was a bit better. In addition to the anti-Trump diatribes they had an editorial on the plight of the Uighurs, something on which they’ve opined in the past, and a few pieces about local DC politics.

In his column at the Wall Street Journal Holman Jenkins pointed out:

As recently as this week, the New York Times allowed only that there is “no evidence so far to support Mr. Trump’s claim that Mr. Biden improperly intervened to help his son’s business in Ukraine” (emphasis added).

And simply fraudulent are news reports insisting that Mr. Biden wasn’t influenced by his son’s presence on the Burisma board, because it’s impossible to know. Mr. Biden, instead of insisting that Ukraine’s chief prosecutor be fired, might have insisted he prove his bona fides by reopening his dormant Burisma investigation. We just can’t know. This is why the mere “appearance” of a conflict of interest is rightly considered compromising to U.S. policy (as the vice president’s own aides reportedly tried to warn him).

But all such questions now are illegitimate in a rush to paint Mr. Trump as impeachable. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough quotes the White House transcript until its words no longer suit him and then invents his own to portray Mr. Trump as asking for information to “smear an opponent.”

The transcript says no such thing. Mr. Trump certainly has political motives, as all politicians do, but asking a foreign government what it knows about a story that fills the U.S. media (the New Yorker’s extraordinarily detailed report had appeared that very month) simply may not be the unprecedented act that some assume. (They haven’t seen transcripts of other presidents’ calls.)

OK, you aren’t shocked that much journalism is conducted not in a spirit of inquiry, but to realize the desired talking points. Everything in the Ukraine call is ignored that doesn’t fit the reductionist trope of “inviting foreign interference” in a U.S. election. I get it. Journalism is a business. The “talent” is rewarded for bringing in the desired demographic. But if we really want to restore measured discourse, let’s go back to being reliable arbiters of fact and reason, rather than producing home pages designed as clickbait for target audiences (the Washington Post is an especially ignominious showpiece in this regard).

More than anything, today’s coverage dumbifies everything it touches in our interesting country, in our interesting time.

A final point: A consensus has formed that Joe Biden will be collateral damage in the Democrats’ desired Ukraine-related impeachment spectacle, with some progressives seeing this as a feature and not a bug. Mr. Biden never struck me as presidential material but he might well be the best we can do in 2020. He doesn’t think America wants a socialist revolution. He’s old. He might decide he doesn’t care about a second term. He’d be free to enter office with a mandate from himself to govern from the middle, to work with the GOP regardless of his party’s Twitter shriekers.

That possibility, which might look pretty good a year from now, is likely disappearing fast in the media’s latest half-cocked frenzy.

I listened to the “talking heads” programs this morning. The allegedly impartial journalists generally took on a prosecutorial air. No one had made additional to say but I do know that they hate Trump.

I had meant to post on this earlier. The Chicago Teacher’s Union has voted to authorize a strike. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Chicago Teachers Union members have voted by a huge margin to authorize a strike, setting the stage for about 25,000 educators to walk off the job as early as Oct. 7.

Though an actual strike remains uncertain, Thursday’s vote results mark a big step toward what would be the first teacher walkout in Chicago Public Schools since 2012 — not counting a one-day labor action in 2016 — and represents a major challenge for Mayor Lori Lightfoot early in her first term in office.

The earliest date on which the teachers could walk out is October 7.

It’s not entirely clear to me what the teachers want. The city has already offered a 16%—generous is not extravagant. How much is that in money? It means that the average wage for Chicago teachers would be $95,000 (for a nine month year). The other factors that have been mentioned (like class size and resources) are not ones for which the teachers may strike by law.

If the CTU goes out on strike it will be the second consecutive mayoral administration in which this has happened. The CTU last struck in 2012, about a year after Rahm Emanuel took office. It makes you wonder if they’re not showing Mayor Lightfoot who the boss is.

I disagree with Peggy Noonan’s assessment in her Wall Street Journal column of Nancy Pelosi’s calculation in moving to an impeachment inquiry albeit so far without the formal vote to authorize the inquiry:

Impeachment is a grave constitutional and governmental act, but it is also a political one that requires public support. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has calculated that the case is strong and the people will come along. She wouldn’t have moved forward if she didn’t think she was going to win. The president is wrong when he says she’s finally bowed to the mad progressives of her party, who are so colorfully belligerent, who last summer pushed to impeach William Barr and last week wanted to impeach Brett Kavanaugh. Mrs. Pelosi is an attentive vote-counter and a practical pol. I think she’s moving now because she thinks she got him and the jig is up.

I agree that Speaker Pelosi is an attentive vote-counter but I think it was a different vote she was counting. I think the votes she was counting were the votes to remove her as speaker if she didn’t start an impeachment inquiry.

But I agree with Ms. Noonan’s assessment of the likely outcome of the whole sorry process:

In the end, in purely practical political terms, the one person who will be hurt by this story will be Joe Biden. Every telling of this story necessitates pointing out that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter had cozy financial relationships with other countries, including Ukraine. It’s real swamp stuff. It looks bad, say the former vice president’s friends. No, it is bad.

It is infuriating that members of America’s leadership class so often show themselves to the world as self-enriching. As a nation we spent the 20th century presenting ourselves to the world as a truly moral leader, a self sacrificing country, one to be looked up to. In the 21st century our political figures and their families too often look like scrounging grifters—Americans with connections who can be hired, who leverage connections to fame for profit. There’s a fairly constant air of soft corruption, of an easy, seamy reality of big-power back scratching.

It makes America look bad. It makes us look weak and craven, like we can be bought.

There’s a reason for that. Our elected officials can be bought. We might start thinking about that far before election day when the candidates who will be on the ballot are selected and the kinds of qualities we look for in our elected officials.

Heretofore the editors of the Washington Post have never met a war they didn’t like. Consequently, while I welcome their more tempered reaction to an offer by Yemeni Houthi rebels:

The Houthis have told diplomats and a U.N. mediator that they are willing to settle the war for a share of power in Yemen’s central government, and would break their alliance with Iran, which has supplied them with rockets they have fired at Saudi targets, among other weapons. But while U.N.-sponsored peace talks started in Oslo, the Saudis have been recalcitrant: They say they won’t go forward until a stalled cease-fire in Hodeida is fully implemented.

The latest Houthi offer is conditioned on Saudi steps to de-escalate the war, including an end to bombing and the reopening of the international airport in Sanaa. Those are reasonable requests that would put an end to the mass killing of civilians in airstrikes and help ease the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Yet Monday brought another Saudi air raid that struck a mosque and reportedly killed at least seven people, including two children.

leaves me mystified. What difference would it make? The Saudis started this war and they have shown no signs of the past to take the lead from the United States. Quite the opposite if anything. If we wanted to de-escalate the conflict between the Saudis and the Yemenis the most obvious step we could take is to stop supporting the Saudis, stop furnishing arms and assistance to them.

And what difference would it make to the Iranians? If it was, indeed, the Iranians who attack Saudi oil facilities, why would they pay any attention to American attempts to de-escalate the conflict while continuing to support the Saudis?

My only guess is that this is what the editors mean by the “American leadership”, the lack of which they and their columnists complain about so frequently. The United States does something. The rest of the countries in the conflict ignore it and continue on as before. That is American leadership.

The editors of the New York Times explain Nancy Pelosi’s decision to support an impeachment inquiry like this:

So was Ms. Pelosi’s announcement just empty political theater? All politics include an element of theater. But this was far from empty. However this process plays out, the public unveiling of an impeachment inquiry sends important signals to multiple audiences.

The message for Mr. Trump is the most straightforward: Enough. After months of watching the president ravage democratic norms and taunt lawmakers about their inability to hold him accountable, Congress is making clear that there are lines that cannot be crossed without repercussion.

The American public needs to hear this as well. Amid the clamor of Mr. Trump’s perpetual outrages, Tuesday’s announcement signals: This moment is different. Pay attention. There are constitutional and national security issues at stake.

Mr. Trump has long argued — and continues to argue — that impeachment will benefit him politically. Many Democrats, including Ms. Pelosi, have not disputed that possibility. Pressing ahead with the proceedings despite such political uncertainty conveys Democratic leaders believe matters have reached the point where the costs of inaction are simply too high.

If you want to send a message, use Western Union. The action sends other messages as well, for example, that all this Democratic House can do is impeach. That Nancy Pelosi values her job as Speaker more than the good of the party.

Here’s a prospect for you. Having been impeached by the House and removed by the Senate is not a barrier to seeking the presidency.

In his New York Times column this morning David Brooks explains why, guilty or not, impeaching Trump would be a mistake:

Donald Trump committed an impeachable offense on that call with the Ukrainian president. But that doesn’t mean Democrats are right to start an impeachment process.

Remember, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. There is no obligation to prosecute. Congress is supposed to do what is in the best interest of the country. And this process could be very bad for America:

This will probably achieve nothing. To actually remove Trump from office, at least 20 Republican senators would have to vote to convict him. If you think that will happen because of this incident, you haven’t been paying attention to the Senate Republicans over the past two and a half years.

Usually when a leader takes a big risk, it’s because there’s a big upside. But Nancy Pelosi is taking a giant risk and there is little upside. At the end of this process Trump will probably be acquitted by the Senate. He will declare himself vindicated and victorious in his battle against The Swamp. An ugly backlash could ensue — in both parties.

This is completely elitist. We’re in the middle of an election campaign. If Democrats proceed with the impeachment process, it will happen amid candidate debates, primaries and caucuses. Elections give millions and millions of Americans a voice in selecting the president. This process gives 100 mostly millionaire senators a voice in selecting the president.

As these two processes unfold simultaneously, the contrast will be obvious. People will conclude that Democrats are going ahead with impeachment in an election year because they don’t trust the democratic process to yield the right outcome. Democratic elites to voters: We don’t trust you. Too many of you are racists!

Read the whole thing.

At RealClearMarkets Andy Puzder and Jim Talent respond to John Tamny’s criticism of their support for actions against China intended to convince China to end its one-sided trade policies:

Beijing’s “techno-national toolbox” includes walling off their domestic markets from foreign competition, massive subsidies to its companies so that they can undercut their competitors and capture markets abroad, regulatory discrimination against foreign companies, manipulation of what passes for the Chinese legal system to deny protection to foreign intellectual property, forced technology transfers as a condition of selling or producing in China, China-specific technology standards to raise the costs of market entry for foreign competitors, and outright, systematic theft of valuable technology through espionage and cybertheft. (Estimates are that Beijing steals anywhere from $225-600 billion dollars from the United States every year.)

We emphasize that this is a partial list. The whole economic system set up by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – what Beijing calls “socialism with Chinese characteristics” — is essentially designed to con, cajole or steal wealth from the rest of the world, in support of what Xi Jinping has called “the Chinese Dream.”

I’ve been pointing all of this out for decades. It’s why I opposed granting China most favored nation trading status or admitting it to the WTO.

All I ask for is a level playing field. There should be one set of rules for all. If we played by China’s rules, Americans would know that Chinese property was free for the taking. Every container ship arriving from China would be looted as soon as it approached the dock. Chinese businesses would be required to put their proprietary technology in the public domain. Chinese companies would be required to take American partners to trade here. And so on.

I don’t think the Chinese would like it. I think they would consider it terribly unfair. It is.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are not pro-Trump. Hamiltonians to the core, they like tax cuts and deregulation, they hate tariffs, they would like an open border. Like me and unlike the editors of the New York Times or Washington Post their views are more instrumental than political.

They think that the transcript does not show what the editors of the WaPo think it does and that it’s a fizzle:

The White House on Wednesday released the transcript of President Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the news is that Mr. Trump was telling the truth about it. The conversation was largely routine diplomacy, and even the reference to Joe Biden was less than promoted by the press. Good luck persuading Americans that this is an impeachable offense.

The five-page transcript shows that Mr. Trump called to congratulate Mr. Zelensky on his party’s victory in Parliament. After niceties, Mr. Trump waxes on as he often does that the U.S. “spend[s] a lot of effort and a lot of time” on Ukraine, while complaining that European countries don’t do their share. At no point does Mr. Trump threaten a withdrawal of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Trump does ask for a “favor”—that Ukraine look at 2016 election meddling. “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike,” he says, referring to the company that investigated the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.

He also disparages former Special Counsel Robert Mueller—no surprise there—and notes that “they say a lot of it started with Ukraine.” Mr. Trump is clearly still sore about the attempt by the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up foreign dirt on him, but there is nothing wrong with asking a foreign head of state to investigate meddling in U.S. elections.

Only after that does Mr. Zelensky mention Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who has been publicly urging the Ukrainians to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s activities in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky says he is “hoping very much” that the former New York mayor comes to Ukraine. He promises that all “investigations will be done openly and candidly.”

Mr. Trump responds, “Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.” After some praise for Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump adds that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution” of corruption in Ukraine. Mr. Trump also says that he intends to get Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to call, and he asks that Mr. Zelensky work with them.

That’s it. No quid pro quo. The references to the Bidens are in the context of fighting corruption, not as a prerequisite of U.S. aid. Mr. Trump was unwise to mention Mr. Biden, but the tenor of the conversation is congenial. It’s amusing to hear the same critics who call Mr. Trump an oafish thug on a daily basis now say this was all a subtle masterpiece of extortion. When is Mr. Trump ever subtle?

The challenge for the House Democrats is to appear statesmanlike and convince the American people who aren’t already convinced unshakeably one way or another that Trump is the traitor and villain they think he is.

The editors of the Washington Post read the transcript of the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskiy as damning:

Mr. Trump and his amen chorus claimed Wednesday that there was no “quid pro quo” in the call. In fact, the memorandum — a partial transcript compiled from the notes of aides — strongly suggests otherwise. Mr. Trump first makes a request for a political investigation in direct answer to Mr. Zelensky’s statement that Ukraine wants to buy more U.S. antitank missiles. “I would like you to do us a favor though,” Mr. Trump says, “because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

An even more explicit exchange comes when discussion turns to Mr. Zelensky’s top priority at the time, which was obtaining a firm commitment to a meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House. The Ukrainian leader felt he needed a Washington visit to show his country and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin that he would continue to have U.S. support against Russian aggression, but Mr. Trump had been stalling in granting a date. Toward the end of the call, Mr. Zelensky raises the subject of a visit, then reiterates that “I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.”

They are putting quite a bit of weight on the word “though” and none at all on the assertions by both parties to the conversation that no quid pro quo was involved. Based on the commentary I’ve read so far, the transcript doesn’t appear to be changing many minds. What people are taking out of it appears to depend on what they’re bringing into it. As I’ve said before I think the larger question is whether the conversation constitutes an abuse of power.

I wouldn’t be unhappy if this whole affair brings an end to the “imperial presidency” as some have breathlessly proclaimed. Frankly, I doubt it. Presidents like power and Congress likes to effect its will without leaving fingerprints which is how the imperial presidency came to be in the first place. I wouldn’t be unhappy if a careful, unimpassioned inquiry led to the impeachment and removal of Trump from office.

I would be unhappy if an hysterical, partisan inquiry led to an impeachment and failure of removal of Trump, strongly suggested the Democrats were political hacks, and led to Trump’s re-election in 2020. We’ll need to wait to see which scenario or some other actually materializes.