Not at war, just at work

Hello, there! I’m a journalist, a member of one of the many national institutions that have over the past four years been the target of relentless undermining by the current occupant of the White House.

Reading that, one might suspect that people in our profession feel singled out for this treatment. We don’t, inasmuch as you can’t feel “singled out” when you’re in the company of (deep breath) the judiciary, state attorneys general, ESPN, public health officials at the federal, state and local levels, NASCAR, inspectors general at numerous federal agencies, U. S. military leaders, current and former leaders of the intelligence community, Alec Baldwin, former Cabinet officials and so forth. It’s a list that could fill this column and several more, made up of individuals and entities who have at times assessed reality in a way that veers away from the president’s sense of what’s best for him.

This week, we can add to the list another venerable American institution: the peaceful transition of executive power after an election. It had a good run in terms of presidential support, but things change.

It’s an article of faith among Trump’s fans that “the mainstream media” has an animus against the president — that we are, to use the president’s own phrase, at war with him. This argument was given an odd spin in a June column in the Boston Herald by Peter Lucas, who wrote that “the mainstream media covers President Trump the way an earlier generation of reporters covered the Vietnam War. … They hated that war and the U. S. involvement in it as much as they now hate Trump.”

Now, I dig a provocative column as much as the next guy, but it takes real chutzpah to analogize the Trump administration to a war generally acknowledged by every credible historian as a colossal waste of American lives and resources — especially when it’s a conf lict the president himself has called “a disaster. … It was too far away.” (Trump received five deferments during the conflict — the last for “bone spurs” — and has likened his endeavors in the New York dating scene of the 1990s to “my own personal Vietnam” because of the peril of STDS. “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”)

The other possibility is that journalists did their jobs during the Vietnam war by accurately reporting the conditions on the ground and the larger context of the mismanagement of the war by top Pentagon officials and civilian leaders. And they’re doing the same thing today in terms of Trump’s actions and policies: As Marty Baron, editor of the Washington Post, put it in 2017, “We’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work — we’re doing our jobs.”

For a devastating analysis of

the war in Vietnam, one could read, “Dereliction of Duty” by H.R. Mcmaster — not a member of the mainstream media — who lasted almost 14 months as Trump’s national security advisor near the beginning of his term.

Mcmaster, a retired Army lieutenant general who has a new book out that pointedly doesn’t function as a tell-all regarding his tenure under this commander-in-chief, responded on CNN after Trump’s refusal last week to assure the American people that they can expect a peaceful transition if he loses the election.

Mcmaster called Trump’s stance “very disappointing, and … something that our founders feared. … We have to demand that our leaders restore confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes.”

Good luck with that.

An update

Speaking of peaceful transitions of power: A month ago, I wrote about the rather awkward status of Risa Sugarman, enforcement counsel at the state Board of Elections, who has remained in her post for a year as an “at-will” employee despite the fact that the will in question is that of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose campaign falls within her oversight.

In late August, the governor’s spokesman Rich Azzopardi said a decision on the future of the post would be coming “soon.” A month later: crickets.

I also noted that the state board was still down one Republican commissioner due to the sudden departure of Gregory Peterson at the end of 2019. The state GOP chair is supposed to submit two names to the governor, who selects his favorite.

The other Republican commissioner, Peter Kosinski, stopped attending board meetings over the summer to protest the empty fourth seat. He showed up for the board’s Sept. 8 meeting, where the agenda included certifying the November ballot, and said he had “accomplished what I wanted to” by publicizing the vacancy. ( Did he thank me for the column? Hell no.)

“It’s my understanding that the governor is going to make an appointment in the imminent future,” Kosinski said in the meeting.

As of Friday, there had been no announcement on that front, either — though Azzopardi said the names of Ray Walter and Tony Casale, both former state Assembly members, had been submitted for consideration.

Not to repeat myself, but with six weeks to go before an election of unprecedented complexity, it would be nice if the state board charged with overseeing it was at full strength.