Sunday School 12/2/18

Today we'll spend time in the CBS Face the Nation classroom, since we missed them on last weeks' rounds. As I'm sure was the case in the other classrooms, there was a considerable amount of time devoted to remembering President George Herbert Walker Bush, who passed away on Friday at the age of 94.

Host Margaret Brennan talked with her CBS colleagues Bob Schieffer and Norah O'Donnell, as well as with his former staffers  Secretary of State James Baker, who was with him on Friday, and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Both shared personal and professional memories of 41.

Elsewhere on the show, Brennan talked with Sunday regular Senator Mark Warner, (D-VA) about Bush first of all. Warner outlined a distinction between the Bush brand of Republicanism and the current version - the key difference being moral character.

President Bush was a class act and I think he realized, and reflecting on this program this morning, American leadership is critical. But that leadership needs to be both economic, military but also moral leadership... He always knew that America was stronger with alliances and the rest of the world looked to that American leadership in all those realms, as I mentioned - militarily, economically, but also morally, and I think it would be -- all of us as we reflect on his legacy to remember that those lessons are still important for all of us to keep in mind. 

They also talked about the Senate Intelligence Committee, and about Michael Cohen's guilty plea for lying to Congress; that all came about because the Mueller team asked for a transcript of Cohen's testimony before the Committee.  Warner noted that if you lie to Congress, they'll go after you and they'll make a referral to Mueller if necessary - and that a number of referrals have been made. He also noted,

I think if I'd been a Republican delegate going into the summer of 2016 I think it would have been a relevant fact to know that actually Donald Trump was still trying to do business with the Russian government; maybe that's why he was so reluctant to say anything bad about Vladimir Putin.

Even though, of course, Trump denied as a candidate and continues to deny any prior relationship with Russia or any business dealings with them - at least until this week, when he describe loose and very cool business practices.  And, he pointed out that it can be argued whether whatever happened was a crime, but the president's still a liar.

Brennan wondered whether Cohen was ordered to lie; Warner doesn't know but thinks it's a relevant question. She also pressed him a little on the referrals he mentioned, asking if that meant the Committee has told Mueller that "a number of Trump associates are lying and we have proof of it." He was non committal on details but that they have an ongoing relationship with Mueller, but that the Committee is a counterintelligence investigation vs. the Special Counsel, a criminal investigation. And, that

...We want to make clear that lying to Congress is a crime. 

Next up, the unpronounceable USMCA, the new trade agreement that's so much like the old one, NAFTA (see how that rolls off the tongue?)  Warner thinks, without having fully reviewed the new agreement, that it could probably have been renegotiated within the existing NAFTA framework. And he expects push back from Congress on both sides of the aisle.

From the panel discussion, here are a couple of highlights:

Jeffrey Goldberg (The Atlantic) on what people on Capitol Hill are thinking about the investigation: ...this week I was asking a number of Democrats how aggressive they think (the Russia investigations are) going to get. They think it's going to get extraordinarily aggressive and we're going to be entering a whole new phase where the subpoenas are going to be coming, flying fast and furious, and the fights between the White House and Congress over who can - who will be able to testify are going to be ferocious.

David Nakamura  (WaPo) on agreement with China from the G20, which Trump called a 'major success': I think it's more a limited success. It did avert, you know.. the next level of this trade war with China because new tariffs could go or have gone into effect at the beginning of next year. But they seem to have averted that at least for 90 days. They basically said they're going to have a truce, sort of a temporary cease fire on these tariffs.. But I think more deeper analysis shows that these intrinsic problems between US and China on trade are not going away and to say it could happen within 90 days is somewhat unrealistic. 

I'll close with something from Schieffer from almost 40 years ago, a conversation with Bush 41 on toughness. Schieffer set it up by saying

He ran for president when Reagan left office but his campaign got off to a terrible start. George Bush was a nice man - modest, kind, a man who actually wrote thank-you notes. Trouble was, some mistook niceness for weakness. The question, "are you tough enough?" was asked of him repeatedly. 

Here's Bush answering that question on FTN in 1979:

I equate toughness with moral fiber, with character, with principle, with demonstrated leadership in tough jobs where you emerge not bully somebody, but with the respect of the people you led. That's toughness. That's fiber. That's character. I have got it. And if I happen to be decent in the process, that should not be a liability. 

Yes - that should not be a liability.

See you around campus.