The Wall Street Journal’s William A. Galston Gets It Right! When Will His Paper Join Him?

By Donald A. Collins | 4 August 2024
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

While I have for years been a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal for its coverage of news, its opinion writers seem wedded to the repetition of hard right-wing views which ignore the facts of GOP candidates including Trump.

Thus, his July 30 column entitled “J.D. Vance’s Disregard for the Rule of Law” frankly startled and enlightened me on Vance who many have pronounced a Trump clone.

Galston begins by arguing:

J.D. Vance is unfit to be vice president of the United States for many reasons, chiefly because he has shown a disregard for the constitutional balance of powers and the rule of law.

In a 2021 interview with podcast host Jack Murphy, Mr. Vance said that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he should sack federal agency workers en masse. Mr. Vance said that if he could give Mr. Trump one piece of advice, it would be this: “Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts—’cause you will get taken to court—and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’ ” Historians dispute whether Jackson actually said that. The quote’s provenance aside, by citing it Mr. Vance reveals an apparent contempt for the authority of the judicial branch of government.

Mr. Vance’s idea of overhauling the administrative state is in line with an executive order Mr. Trump issued near the end of his first term, which created a new category of federal worker (Schedule F) without traditional civil-service job protections, allowing for easier firing and hiring by the president. President Biden rescinded the executive order shortly after taking office, so it’s unclear to what extent it would have been challenged in court. What’s troubling is Mr. Vance’s assertion that if courts did block the president from firing federal employees, the president should refuse to obey their ruling.

Without the executive branch’s enforcement, the judicial branch is toothless. As Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 78, the Supreme Court “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” The president is required to provide this aid. Every president takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 3 provides that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”—all the laws, not only those with which he agrees.”

Later he treats the implications of this thesis as it applies to abortion a particular Vance No No.

“To say that the court is final isn’t to say that its judgment about the meaning of the law or the Constitution ends the argument. Lincoln pledged to continue debating the civic status of African-Americans until the disastrous Dred Scott was reversed by legal means. In our own time, it’s consistent with the rule of law to criticize Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and to enact legislation that would restore abortion policy to what it was when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land or, conversely, that would create a national abortion ban. It isn’t consistent with the rule of law for anyone—a private citizen or a president—to take the law into his own hands.

Read his full denouement of Vance–and of course Trump–here.

Thinking this op ed might be an aberration, I brought up 2 other recent Galston pieces.

One piece dated July 2nd entitled Jill Biden, Put Your Country First, It’s not too late for the president to step aside in favor of an abler candidate.

Here Galston says,

Although party leaders issued pro forma statements of support for the president, concerns are mounting over Mr. Biden’s capacity to lead the Democrats to victory in November and carry out his duties in a second term. Pressure on him to stand down has intensified.

Predictably, the president’s campaign team has argued that although Mr. Biden had a “bad night,” his performance doesn’t have broader implications for his public support, which rests on his four-year record rather than a 90-minute debate. Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said the debate “did nothing to change the American people’s perception.”

Emerging evidence suggests otherwise. A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday found that 72% of registered voters now believe Mr. Biden doesn’t have the “mental and cognitive health to serve as president,” up substantially from the network’s previous poll. An identical share said Mr. Biden shouldn’t seek re-election, including a remarkable 46% of his own party. Meantime, a Democracy Corps controlled study that surveyed voters before and after viewing the debate found a significant drop in support for the president, especially among black, Hispanic and third-party voters. The five national surveys conducted since the debate show Mr. Trump expanding his lead over Mr. Biden to 3.2 points from the pre-debate average of 1.5 points. While it’s possible that voters will forget about Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance in the coming weeks, it’s unlikely.

Read here his full column.

Then a column dated July 9th two weeks before Biden made his historic decision on July 27th entitled “If Biden Steps Down, Democrats Could Win the Election” argued that if Jill Biden tells her husband the truth Galston recognized her key ability to get her husband to step down.

Is Galston offering this advice which is obviously is horrified as most Americans are of Trump’s re-election?

This certainly separates him from his colleagues in their continuing accolades for Trump.

He concludes:

What happens next will come down to Mr. Biden. If he soldiers on, the Democratic Party will have no choice but to support him. He needs to ask himself whether he wants to go down in history as the man who sacrificed his ambition for the sake of the country—or as the man whose pride opened the door to a second Trump term. His closest adviser, Jill Biden, should ask herself whether her admirable loyalty to her husband will serve the best interests of her country. Fate has given Mrs. Biden the power to shape history. May she use it wisely.

So he is praying for Biden to give Democrats a chance to win.

Finally, his July 23rd piece entitled Kamala Harris’s Rocky Road to Victory, The vice president is trailing Trump. To beat him, she’ll need a clear plan of action.

He is clearly pleased with Biden’s decision to withdraw as he begins here:

Democrats have responded publicly to President Biden’s withdrawal with three emotions: gratitude for his half-century of public service, relief that senior officials’ counsel finally overcame his reluctance to end his campaign, and excitement that a woman of color more than 20 years his junior will likely replace him. After Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance, most Democrats concluded that he had no chance of defeating Donald Trump. With Vice President Kamala Harris, they think there is a chance.

This renewed sense of hope isn’t groundless. After a rocky first year in office, Ms. Harris steadied, and she learned on the job. She met scores of foreign leaders and became more comfortable representing the U.S. overseas. Back at home, she helped the president implement ambitious domestic policies.

The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was the pivotal moment for her vice presidency. As a Catholic, Mr. Biden was never comfortable with the issue, even as he moved with his party and public opinion. He was reluctant even to use the word “abortion.” By contrast, Ms. Harris is fully committed to the cause and speaks about it eloquently. As a national figure, she became the administration’s most effective emissary to the pro-choice community.

Read here.

That the WSJ has at least one patriot encourages me to hope our major media (called “fake news” for years by Trump) will mount a cacophony of opinions matching the date NYTimes piece eloquently stating why this multiple felon must not serve again in any political office.

While none of Trump’s 3 big cases will get to trial before November 5th, at least the biggest one his coup attempt is now before the judge.

As the August 2, 2024 Associated Press article reports “Trump election subversion case returned to trial judge following Supreme Court opinion”.

Read the full article here.

As the title of my latest book asks, “Does Trump Go to Jail Or The Oval Office?”.

My hope gets higher and higher that even the WSJ along with the rest of the mainstream media will be getting on board as the Trump ranting increases and the unfitness of either Trump or Vance for these offices gets more and more obvious.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk” and “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”.

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