Saturday Q&A

While not unprecedented, this week is a little unusual in that the subject we got the most questions about is something we didn't even write an item on (the Baltimore bridge collapse).

If you're still working on the headline theme, well, we regret that you're having treble.

Current Events

M.T. in Linköping, Sweden, asks: When reading articles and comments about the judgment that Donald Trump does not have to come up with the full amount of the bond in the New York fraud case, I can't find any reporting on the reasoning from the judges. Why did they decrease the bond and grant Trump another 10 days to pay?

(V) & (Z) answer: The judges' order does not give any reasoning. However, they also stayed other elements of the decision that, if enforced, would do immediate harm to the defendants (like their being banned from doing business in New York for multiple years) while leaving in place elements that don't do all that much damage (like a special monitor overseeing all transactions).

Add it up, and it's clear that the judges were trying to keep things "fair," such that if Trump does somehow win on appeal, he and his co-defendants are not harmed irreparably. By contrast, if he loses the appeal, the state of New York is not harmed very much by having to wait a bit longer to collect. The Trumps can't pull any asset-hiding shenanigans thanks to the special monitor, and whether AG Letitia James seizes a bunch of property now, or she seizes it in 6 or 9 months, it's about the same. In fact, since the Trumps know they are likely to lose, they might just take this time to liquidate some assets in order to satisfy the judgment, making James' life easier.

In comparison, Trump was given no leeway on the E. Jean Carroll bonds. The state of New York will presumably be around in 100 years; Carroll will not. In that case, time matters, and so there was no leeway.

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R.C. in Des Moines, IA, asks: In response to the $454 million judgment against Trump in New York, I hear Trump defenders say something along the lines of "the banks got their money, there was no actual harm, where is the crime?" I do not understand this line of thought. It seems to me that if Trump's fraud got him lower interest rates then even if he paid off a loan in full, the bank got less money than they should have. Isn't that harm? Can you please help me understand?

(V) & (Z) answer: Just because the victim of a so-called "victimless" crime doesn't have a face, doesn't mean that harm wasn't done. First, screwing over banks means that they earned less money than they should have. That means less profit for shareholders, less money available for employee wages, and less money available for loans to other, possibly more honest, businesses.

Second, paying less in taxes means that the city and state of New York get screwed. It's estimated that, through his various misrepresentations, Trump paid something like $160 million less in New York tax than he should have. Do you think the local schools, police departments, transit authorities, etc. miss that money? We do.

Third, and finally, engaging in shady behavior and getting away with it encourages others in the same position to follow suit. In fact, it all but FORCES the competition to do so, since the system rewards liars over truth-tellers. Businessman Kevin O'Leary, a.k.a. "Mr. Wonderful" from the show Shark Tank, has been all over TV complaining that "everyone in real estate development does this" and how it's not wrong and how unfair it is that Donald Trump was targeted. This is a B.S. argument, which essentially boils down to decreeing that very rich people should be allowed to steal because they are rich. Further, O'Leary himself does not actually believe what he's saying, at least not when he's the potential victim of such fraud. Jon Stewart built his entire monologue this week around this subject, and that included a lengthy segment shredding O'Leary and including clips of "Mr. Wonderful" slamming contestants on Shark Tank for overvaluing their companies. The video is here; the O'Leary portion begins around 7:15.

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D.S. in Boston, MA, asks: I am curious to know: Where is Trump's Bible printed?

(V) & (Z) answer: That information is not publicly known, and it's not for a lack of trying by reporters.

Originally, before Trump joined the "project," it was set to be published by HarperCollins, using an imprint that is mostly for religious books. That publisher got cold feet, and so did a couple of others, such that there's a list of entities who definitely DID NOT publish the book, but no clear indication as to who DID.

The fact that Trump and Lee Greenwood are clearly working to keep this information secret, and that it takes 4-6 weeks for the Bibles to be delivered, very strongly suggests a foreign supplier, and probably one that would look bad if its identity became publicly known. The most obvious candidate is a publisher/printer in China, but one suspects that would-be Bible buyers would be none-too-happy to learn that production took place in ANY non-predominantly-Christian country. And if the publisher/printer happened to be in a predominantly Muslim country, then look out.

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M.B.T. in Bay Village, OH, asks: Regarding Donald Trump's new publicly traded company, if the shares are really worth only a fraction of their current price, why can't Trump simply short sell a chunk of them, then rake in the millions when the prices fall? He might even be able to do it semi-secretly through third parties so that it would be days or weeks before anyone realized he'd done it.

Let's see how many people short sell the shares—it could even boost the stock price temporarily before the tulips hit the fan.

(V) & (Z) answer: It is against the law for insiders to short sell their company's stock, or to invest in put or call options. And insiders are defined by the SEC as "an officer, director, 10% stockholder and anyone who possesses inside information because of his or her relationship with the Company or with an officer, director or principal stockholder of the Company."

Trump could TRY to do this through a third-party, but that would also be illegal. The SEC is on the lookout for shenanigans like this, and Trump is historically not very good at hiding his tracks. So, he'd be at big risk of getting popped.

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K.L. in Los Angeles, CA, asks: Taegan Goddard had an item "Trump Posts Video of Biden Bound and Gagged." He quotes The Washington Post: "In the video, two trucks decorated with giant Trump flags and altered American flags are driving on a highway. On the tailgate door of one of the trucks is the image of [Joe] Biden lying horizontally, bound and gagged."

Another outburst, another day of TFG going off the rails. How can this not be illegal? Wouldn't this be considered an actual threat to the president? How can there be no legal repercussions?

(V) & (Z) answer: Trump is very, very good at approaching the line without crossing it. As we wrote last week, threats are only criminal if they are imminent. If Trump had said "Here's what we're gonna do to Biden next Thursday," then THAT would be actionable. But Trump didn't say that.

On top of that, Trump obviously does not own the truck in the video, so it's not him who is technically threatening Biden, it's the truck owner. Yes, by reposting the video, Trump is tacitly signaling his approval; that is how he operates. But tacitly approving, while perhaps enough to earn censure from Congress (see Gosar, Paul), is not criminal.

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J.C. in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, asks: What are your thoughts on the bridge collapse as relates to politics: Joe Biden's ask for $1B, GOP allegations of bad infrastructure, one of America's busiest ports...?

(V) & (Z) answer: The instant carping from Republicans was, as is so often the case, evidence that either they are operating in bad faith or out of ignorance. We are not engineers, but we've read plenty of analyses from people who are, and they are unanimous in saying that if you hit a pylon with a 95,000-ton object traveling at 8 knots, that pylon is going to collapse, no matter how well built it is.

There are two factors that made this situation particularly bad. The first was a fairly limited system of concrete barriers, called "dolphins," which are meant to absorb and deflect damage in a crash like this. The second is that the bridge was pretty old and was built without redundancies, such that one big blow was enough to take it down. That makes it what is known as a "fracture critical bridge." It might be nice to go back and fix all such bridges, but there are 17,000 of them in the United States.

The bottom line is that the tragedy was unavoidable. If this had been a newer, better-built bridge, it might have held up longer than it actually did, allowing time for the half-dozen dead or missing people to escape. But this is not some gross failure of oversight by the Biden administration. It is like Titanic; once the Dali lost control, the fate of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was sealed. The only question was how long.

As to Biden's ask for $1 billion to fix it ASAP, it's the right thing and the decent thing to do. But imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot, with Donald Trump in the White House and, say, the Golden Gate Bridge that was fatally damaged. It is unlikely Trump would have lifted a finger; certainly, he made a big point of withholding federal funding from California after the devastating wildfires of 2019. And the fact that the Republicans in Congress are balking at the ask is just another reminder that they don't have any interest in helping blue states, no matter how much the blue states might need it, nor—if we may say so—how much it might be in line with biblical teachings. On the other hands, the red states are quite happy to stick their hands out when they get hit by, say, a hurricane.

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R.H.D. in Webster, NY, asks: I wanted to follow up my question about "knowns" and "unknowns" for this election season.

Specifically, with the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse this past Monday, I would call it an "unknown unknown." Nobody anticipated this would happen, but it does have an effect on the election with regards to the supply chain, infrastructure, and federal/state relations.

Do you agree this is an example of an "unknown unknown," and how will this impact the election?

(V) & (Z) answer: This is a classic example of an unknown unknown. However, we don't have enough information yet to know how it will affect the election. The East Palestine, OH, train derailment was just over a year ago, and it's been forgotten. Maybe this will be, too, particularly if Congress agrees to send money to Baltimore (something that would only require a handful of Republican votes). On the other hand, if Republicans in the House and Senate decide to dig in, this could become a big political football, with Democrats talking about how heartless Republicans are, and Republicans talking about how careless the Democrats are about spending money and running up the national debt.

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S.M. in Pratt, KS, asks: What are the Republicans thinking in their opposition to federal funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore? I keep seeing all the usual suspects with their usual mindless opposition to anything to help anyone not in their state. They have run out their normal line of racism (DEI did this), homophobia (Buttigieg is unqualified) and misogyny (the port authority leader is a Black woman, she must be unqualified).

Do they not know that Larry Hogan has a decent chance to take the Senate seat in what is normally a very blue state? After they stop, or slow, the funding to a vitally needed project, why would anyone in Maryland want to vote for a Republican, even if he had been a good governor? The campaign commercials will almost write themselves.

(V) & (Z) answer: Our guess is that it's the usual suspects doing the usual posturing they do whenever there's a news event (even a tragedy) they can take advantage of, and that there will be many Republican votes for the money once Congress is back in session.

The only other explanation is that they don't really think Hogan can win, and so don't mind throwing him under the bus.

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A.S. in Black Mountain, NC, asks: Joe Biden said he wants to fund the bridge replacement. I saw a story about how the insurance coverage for shipping companies is facing one of the largest claims ever for such an event. How do all the funding sources, state, federal, insurance work together and who pays what?

(V) & (Z) answer: To start, either the federal government, or the government of Maryland, or both, will get to work rebuilding the bridge and will front the costs for that. Waiting for all the legal stuff to play out simply isn't an option.

That said, claims will be brought against the Dali's insurer, which is the Britannia P&I Club. That entity insures 90% of the world's ships, and is a liability-pooling arrangement, very much like Lloyd's of London. When the claims are adjudicated, things will get messy, as is often the case with maritime law. There is a U.S. statute, the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851, that says a ship's owner is only liable for losses equal to the value of the ship and its cargo. That probably means that the Britannia P&I Club will write a check to the owners of the Dali for whatever the ship and its cargo were worth, and then will be done.

That is when things will get messy. The government agencies that paid for rebuilding the bridge, the families of those people who died and the businesses that lost cargo might all go after the owners of the Dali in hopes of being made whole. It is likely that the latter two groups will be paid off, while the government will get some smallish amount of money and will have to eat the rest of the cost of repairing the bridge.

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A.M. in Brookhaven, PA, asks: I'm curious who would set the agenda for the Alejandro Mayorkas Impeachment trial. If it is primarily Democrats, could they potentially give minimal time (say 2 minutes) to the impeachment managers and significantly more time to the defense (say an hour)? The defense could then spend most of their time giving a campaign speech for Biden's reelection knowing that the votes aren't there to convict so they don't have to waste their time with that.

(V) & (Z) answer: The majority, in this case Senate Democrats, sets all the rules. The only thing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his team are thinking about is what approach would send the best message. They could hold a trial that lasts 5 minutes, to make the point that this whole thing is a waste of time, and there's no "there" there. But the downside is that they would be open to attacks that they were pulling strings to hide Mayorkas' alleged criminality.

Alternatively, the Senate could hold some version of a real trial, and let the Republicans show they have no evidence of impeachable offenses. Given Schumer's cautious style, we assume this is the option he will choose.

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S.N. in Charlotte, NC, asks: I saw a video on PBS NewsHour of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing his running mate, and the sound and cadence of his voice alone should be enough to turn people off. Does he always sound like that? Oof.

(V) & (Z) answer: For those who have not heard RFK Jr. speak, and who do not wish to click on the link, he sounds like someone who has been smoking 6 packs a day for 60 years.

Kennedy was a little more scratchy-voiced than normal on the day he announced the VP pick, but not a lot. He is in serious competition with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for the title of "worst public speaker among current nationally known politicians." Junior is also Exhibit A for "public-speaking skills are not heritable," because his old man was one of the finest public speakers of the last century.

Politics

D.L. in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, asks: While you've covered this quite a bit, The New York Times' penchant (like that of so many other media outlets) for both-sides "journalism" has me in a debate with another like-minded chap. He believes they're doing it out of fear of retribution during a possible Trump re-infestation, while I attribute it more to the social-media model of generating engagement with enragement. In other words, if they can have me and others like me foaming at the mouth, they've certainly got our attention. Thoughts?

(V) & (Z) answer: There is no chance that the Times or other non-right-wing publications are hiring a few token right-wingers to curry favor with Trump, should he become president again. They are the enemy, and will remain the enemy no matter what they do, because Trump needs to be able to blame his problems on the media.

There is every chance, on the other hand, that these outlets are operating on the principle that controversy attracts eyeballs. After all, an angry reader is still a reader. Some of the most commented upon articles at The Washington Post, for example, are the garbage put out by Hugh Hewitt and Marc Thiessen. And nearly every comment is very negative. Meanwhile, the rather more reasonable, but still certainly conservative, Henry Olsen does not get nearly as much engagement. It is obvious what kind of hires this incentivizes when it comes to new columnists. If lefty readers were smart, they wouldn't engage with Hewitt or Thiessen at all—don't click, don't read, don't comment. Lack of interest is much more likely to keep them from having their contracts renewed, as opposed to enormous amounts of negative interest.

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E.W. in Skaneateles, NY, asks: Why do so many conservative politicians, including TFG, use the term "Judeo-Christian" values, as opposed to just "Christian" values? Is it a ham-fisted attempt to attract Jewish voters? (Pun intended). Is it due to some sort of anti-Muslim bias? Or is there some actual difference between Judeo-Christian values and Christian values? Where did the term "Judeo-Christian" even come from?

As an aside, growing up as one of the few Jewish kids in a rural Appalachian town, I had the strange experience of hearing two Christian kids argue about the fate of my immortal soul—with each other! One kid was insistent that people could be saved by the Book (Old Testament) or by the Word (Jesus), and the other kid was equally adamant that I was set to burn for eternity unless I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. Does this difference have something to do with the use of Judeo-Christian?

(V) & (Z) answer: (Z) has a lecture on the construction of Disneyland and the rise of California's tourist industry. And as part of that lecture, he shows a video of the little speech Walt Disney gave as, essentially, a benediction for the opening day of Disneyland on July 17, 1955. Consistent with that, the Disney Company invited several religious leaders to be there to stand next to Walt. And they really wanted to cover "all faiths," so they rounded up a Protestant minister, a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi. If you'd like to see for yourself, the broadcast is here (Bonus: The narrator/host for that portion of the show was then-television-personality Ronald Reagan).

So, you're in the ballpark when it comes to the origins of this term, at least as it is commonly used today. In essence, it was the 1950s version of DEI. And the desire to be more inclusive was prompted in part by changes in American culture, but it was prompted even more by the politics of the Cold War. One of the foremost Soviet critiques of the American way of life was that American society was highly divided along religious, economic and racial lines, while Russian society was allegedly unified. Switching from "Christian" to "Judeo-Christian" was meant to create an impression of broader religious unity among the American people. Of course, that particular version of unity did not find room for Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Wiccans, Baháʼí, etc.

And, in case you are wondering, in its original usage (pre-1940s), Judeo-Christian meant something along the lines of "person of Jewish background who has embraced Christianity."

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D.A. in Brooklyn, NY, asks: You raised the quadrennial question: "Were you better off then than now?" with the comment "we ask, you answer." But my question is this: politically speaking, what makes people decide that they are better or worse? Is it a strict, hard-boiled assessment of their personal finances?

(V) & (Z) answer: Clearly, as we demonstrated in that item, people don't take that question literally. As we've written recently, in relation to Joe Biden's alleged dementia, people aren't really wired to recall events from 4 years ago, segregating them from events 3 years ago or 5 years ago. Because if they were, it would be a very dumb question for Donald Trump to ask, since virtually everyone outside of Zoom shareholders was worse off 4 years ago than they are now.

What the question really asks, we think, is something like this: "Do you think your life is headed in a positive direction right now?" And so, we suspect that is what people are actually considering when they try to answer that question. It may be, and surely often is, their financial health that they are pondering, but it could also be their physical health, or their level of happiness, or how safe they feel, or a bunch of other things.

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D.S. in Palo Alto, CA, asks: Based on multiple comments on your part, you appear to reject Cassidy Hutchinson's hearsay claim that Donald Trump very much wanted to go to the Capitol but was forcibly prevented from doing so by his Secret Service people. Instead, you accuse him of cowardice for inciting the mob and then not joining them. What is the reason for this disconnect?

(V) & (Z) answer: The U.S. Secret Service works for the president, not the other way around. If Trump absolutely insisted on going to the Capitol, they have no power to stop him. It was very convenient for him that, dadgumit, he really, really wanted to go, but he just couldn't, and it wasn't his fault.

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K.G. in Atlanta, GA, asks: Why can't Judge Tanya Chutkan put the D.C. insurrection trial on the docket for July or August? That gives TFG's lawyers plenty of time to prepare, since for this case they're just twiddling their thumbs waiting for the late-June SCOTUS decision. (If SCOTUS rules in his favor (!), she can always cancel the trial, the way she did the original March 4 date.)

Since the appeals court very clearly ruled (doing the Supremes' work for them) that no, he doesn't have absolute immunity from crimes, she has plenty of basis for moving forward.

(V) & (Z) answer: She certainly could. As readers know, Department of Justice policy prohibits employees from taking adverse actions against politicians within 90 days of an election. But Chutkan is not bound by that, since she doesn't work for the DoJ. She's not even in the same branch of government.

Ultimately, she will have to decide if she thinks holding a trial relatively close to the election is improperly prejudicial. We suspect she will decide it is not, reasoning that: (1) It is Trump's own choices that led to this schedule, (2) the American people deserve to know if he's a felon or not before voting, and (3) if he does not face justice now, he might never do so.

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R.W. in Brooklyn, NY, asks: A question about the fundraiser that jealous, petulant toddler Donald Trump is planning to hold at Mar-a-Lago next month. Given that he is asking people to pay $814,600, and given that is the precise limit for contributions to his new joint fundraising committee ("Trump 47 Committee"), let's assume that is where the money is going. Let's also assume that after the event, Trump announces that not only did he top Biden's $25 million fundraiser, but he actually took in the $33 million that he was aiming for. Of course Donald would never lie, but how can the media (or others) fact-check that?

(V) & (Z) answer: His campaign, and all of his PACs, have to file reports with the FEC documenting every dollar they take in, and how each of those dollars is spent. If he claims a haul of $33 million, then at some point he will have to show expenditures that account for where that $33 million went. And if he doesn't, it either means he (or someone in his orbit) illegally stole money from his PAC, or it means he lied on his disclosure forms. Either way, it's a crime, of the exact sort that he's about to be tried for in New York.

In short, it is much wiser for him to tell the truth here. There's just too much of a paper trail to risk lying.

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A.S. in Chicago, IL, asks: I have a question about prominent Republicans who say they won't support Donald Trump. Do you think this will have any real effect with the electorate, especially if they say they can't support Trump but don't publicly say they are voting for Biden? My feeling is if they do not encourage and vote for Joe Biden, their refusal to endorse Trump is pretty meaningless. To me this is saying that they don't like Trump but aren't really taking any action to do anything about it and acting like there is no difference between Biden and Trump.

(V) & (Z) answer: You are exactly right. "I am so concerned about Donald Trump that I am going to vote for someone whose politics I don't agree with in Joe Biden, just because I believe that is essential to the future of democracy" is far more powerful than "I dislike Trump and Biden, so I'm just not going to vote for either."

There have been presidential elections where the two candidates were pretty darn similar, like Alf Landon and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, or Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison in both 1888 and 1892. This is not one of those elections. The strengths and weaknesses of Trump and Biden are so very different that it is nearly impossible to even compare them, much less to argue compellingly that they are equally bad. It's not merely apples and oranges, it's apples and soyrizo.

By the way, it's no fun to be put in the position of voting for the less bad candidate in a presidential election, but that's sometimes how the system works. We just don't find it credible that, if someone thinks both 2024 candidates are bad, they truly cannot decide which one is worse.

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R.L. in Alameda, CA, asks: Now that the RNC has been gutted and all funds are being diverted to Trump's legal fees, are we looking at a situation similar to the Democrats in 2010? President Obama dropped the ball in directing the DNC to focus on his re-election, to the detriment of downballot races, leading to the "shellacking" that Democrats received in those midterms. The GOP took over state legislatures in droves, gerrymandered the heck out of their states, and here we sit today, with maybe 50 competitive House districts, and probably fewer competitive districts for state Senates and Houses. Donald Trump happened, in part, due to the power that was ceded to the GOP in 2010. With down-ballot GOP candidates probably being starved for funds that they were counting on from the RNC, are we going to see a correction or reversal of the 2010 Democratic shellacking?

(V) & (Z) answer: It is certainly possible that we will see something like that, but there's one rather large difference between 2010 and 2024, namely that 2024 is a presidential year. It's going to be the race at the top of the ticket that gets voters to the polls, and expenditures on things like get-out-the-vote operations are likely to matter far less than they would in a non-presidential election.

In other words, the RNC's financial woes will hurt the GOP some, but it probably won't be as bad for them as 2010 was for the Democrats.

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D.V. in Columbus, OH, asks: Obviously the national poll showing RFK Jr. pulling Biden down below Trump is semi-meaningless if he can't get on the ballot in the 5-6 swing states where there could be a real impact. Has he gotten on the ballot for the likes of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin yet? If not, how close is he to getting there? Semi-worried minds would like to know!

(V) & (Z) answer: The Kennedy campaign has announced that it's made the ballot in Nevada, and that it's got the signatures it needs in Georgia and Arizona. Obviously, sometimes signatures are rejected, so don't put those two in the bank quite yet.

The campaign has said nothing about the other three states, which just so happen to be three of the four most populous states on the list. It's fair to assume that RFK Jr. isn't yet close to making the ballot in those places.

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B.W.S. in Pleasant Valley, NY, asks: Many sites (including Electoral-Vote.com) have written about the prospect of the House majority shifting to the Democrats before the election—which, as is equally observed, has never happened in America before—and what some implications of such an occurrence might be. What would be the most likely scenario in which this might happen? And, just how likely is it, at this point?

(V) & (Z) answer: The only plausible scenario, in our view, is if some number of GOP members have formed a pact to resign and give the majority to the Democrats. If they did so, it would be in service of some agenda, possibly trying to defeat Donald Trump, or maybe to make sure Ukraine gets funding, or something like that.

We don't think it's terribly likely at this point. However, now-former Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) implied that such an arrangement exists, and there HAS been an unusual number of premature retirements by Republicans. So, it's not impossible. If six of the 19 Republicans who are retiring were to go to Speaker Mike Johnson and say: "Either you bring the Ukraine funding bill up for a vote or we are retiring right now," he would probably do it.

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D.M. in Richmond, CA, asks: If the House Democrats were to attain the majority (through Republican resignations) and vote in House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as speaker, would the one-vote-to-vacate-the-chair thing still be in play? Or are new House rules formulated each time the speaker changes? Before the current speakership, what was the norm or threshold in terms of vacating the chair? (We're sure all learning a lot of details about courts, Congress, etc that used to be mundane. I hope we get to keep these institutions so that this learning matters.)

(V) & (Z) answer: When a new House convenes, they adopt, by majority vote, the rules that will govern the chamber for the next 2 years. A majority is free, at any time, to update the rules.

That is surely what the Democrats would do if they regained control of the lower chamber, eliminating the one-vote-to-vacate-the-chair rule and restoring things as they were before Kevin McCarthy. This is a little weedy, but it's actually always been possible for one member to propose to vacate the chair. However, that member had to be either the majority or minority leader. For everyone else, a motion to vacate had to pass through the House Rules Committee before it could be brought to the floor. So, a motion to vacate needed at least half the votes of that Committee, which usually means/meant 7 votes.

McCarthy's concession, then, was to give EVERYONE the power to skip the Rules Committee, as opposed to just the two party leaders.

Civics

R.C. in Des Moines, IA, asks: Why do candidates get the cheapest TV rates? Is it law or a courtesy by networks? Something else?

(V) & (Z) answer: It's not exactly a law, but it IS an FCC rule adopted in the early 1970s. The reason for the rule is that the FCC did not want television and radio stations to have undue influence over elections by making commercials cheap for some candidates and expensive for others. So, those stations must sell commercials to "legally qualified candidates" (basically, anyone who has qualified for a ballot) at the cheapest rate they charge to any customer (this is called the "lowest unit rate"). So, if Al's Mattress World buys 1,000 commercial slots a year, and pays $500 each due to a bulk contract, then the station has to charge the politicians $500 per ad even if those politicians only run one ad.

TV and radio stations can opt out of a particular race—for example, no U.S. Senate commercials. But once they show one Senate candidate's commercial, they have to accept all, and charge the lowest unit rate to all of them. The stations can, of course, reject offensive ads. And the FCC also realizes that ad slots are limited, so a station can refuse a candidate if inventory is sold out. This is why candidates usually make large ad buys, and well in advance of when the commercials will actually run.

The FCC only has authority over broadcast stations, based on the fact that the electromagnetic spectrum is a publicly owned resource being leased to the stations. So, cable TV stations and not-over-the-air audio broadcasters (podcasts, SiriusXM, etc.) are not subject to these rules. That said, such entities offer cheap rates to candidates nonetheless, just because they have to in order to be competitive with their over-the-air counterparts.

If you would like more details, the FCC's fact sheet on political advertising is here.

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A.J. in Baltimore, MD, asks: Has any state ever permitted all residents to vote in both Democratic and Republican primaries? If that happened, do you think it would result in more extreme candidates (due to ratfu**ing) or less extreme candidates (due to moderates of one party being genuinely more appealing to the opposing party)?

(V) & (Z) answer: There are several ways to interpret your question, but we assume what you mean is states allowing all residents to vote in both the Republican and the Democratic primaries. This is called double voting, and it's explicitly outlawed in nearly all states, and has been for as long as there have been primaries.

Those states who want people to be able to weigh in like this have, instead, blended both primaries into one. That way, voters are only casting one vote. Louisiana does this, so do California and Alaska. And results in those places are mixed. Sometimes letting everyone vote produces more moderate nominees, sometimes it produces more extreme nominees. Generally, the best way to eliminate the extremists is to have an instant-runoff general-election ballot, like the one Alaska has.

History

K.H. in Scotch Plains, NJ, asks: I was born in summer 1992, George H.W. Bush was President at the time and in the midst of that year's presidential campaign, Clinton and Bush were running and Perot couldn't seem to decide whether he was or not.

I would love to know your assessment of every president from Bush Sr. up through Biden (so far) and how well they did as president and leader and the basic responsibilities both entail, as both of you are learned men. I'm a political/American history junkie myself but it would be enlightening to me.

(V) & (Z) answer: Here's a brief rundown of those six presidents:

1. George H.W. Bush: A decent man, but one who was too much in the thrall of far-right elements in his party. He deserves credit for successfully liberating Kuwait, and for standing by his principles even when it wasn't politically expedient, but there was also too much sleaze, including giving the Iran-Contra crooks a pass.
   
   
2. Bill Clinton: Future generations won't understand why he was so popular, since his achievements were mostly related to economic prosperity, and because of his significant #MeToo-type issues. He was charismatic, and a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle were comfortable with his hand steering the ship of state.
   
   
3. George W. Bush: A decent man, like his father, but even more in the thrall of far-right elements (while less able to rein them in). He handled the short-term post-9/11 fallout well, and should be credited for coming to the defense of American Muslims. But the wars he started (on the urging of those far-right elements) were disastrous, as were many other assaults on American civil liberties and the norms of democratic government. He was also, like his father, largely uninspiring. He will remain in the basement when it comes to presidential rankings.
   
   
4. Barack Obama: The most charismatic and inspiring president since Ronald Reagan, and a man of great integrity. Obamacare was a real feather in his cap, but he should have gotten more out of a filibuster-proof Senate while he had one. He spent most of his second term idling in neutral, excepting the Paris Accord.
   
   
5. Donald Trump: If he is not rated the worst president in American history 20, 50 and 100 years from now, the only possible explanation is that there was somehow someone worse that came after him. President Cruz?
   
   
6. Joe Biden: It's too bad for him that history tends to remember charisma and dramatic speeches, because those aren't his fortés. However, his legislative record is as impressive as any president of the last half-century, given the Congress he was dealing with.

You didn't ask for anyone prior to these six, but if you had, we would have had very positive things to say about Gerald Ford, who has a case as the most admirable Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: Why was Reconstruction on the whole a failure? What went wrong? And were there any positive long-tern positive effects of the Reconstruction Era? And how would you have handled Reconstruction if you could re-do it?

(V) & (Z) answer: The Reconstruction Era was not, on the whole, a failure. Consider the impossibility of passing amendments to the Constitution today. And then remember that during Reconstruction, a fundamentally very racist country nonetheless adopted three amendments that ended slavery, guaranteed equality before the law and extended the vote to men of color. That's a big deal. There was also much progress made in the area of education for the freedmen and women.

The primary failures of Reconstruction are that the economy of the South was not reinvented, nor was the basic racial order. As Americans have learned many times, nation-building is very tough, even when we are talking about part of the American nation. The country just didn't have the stomach for the kind of investment it would have taken to completely remake the South. Remember that the federal government expended substantial effort there for a decade, which is really quite a long time, and still progress was limited. It would probably have taken 50 years (time enough for virtually every Southern adult from 1860 to have died off). The benefit of hindsight does not offer a solution to this problem, so there's nothing different that we might have done, had we been in charge back then.

The notion that Reconstruction was a massive failure was primarily the work of the Lost Cause thinkers, who not only needed to justify their actions during the Civil War, but also those afterward, as they oppressed Black Southerners and re-established total white supremacy. Their success in rewriting the history books is indicated, in particular, by the massive success of the movie The Birth of a Nation.

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S.K. in Drexel Hill, PA, asks: K.P in Coventry asked if any presidents besides Donald Trump have had their VP refuse to endorse them for a later campaign for office. In your response, you noted that Theodore Roosevelt remained on good terms with his only VP. Can that truly be the case, given that Roosevelt's next run for office was a third-party presidential bid, opposing William Howard Taft's re-election? I thought that run would have wrecked any goodwill Taft had toward T.R., and surely Taft did not approve of the challenge.

(V) & (Z) answer: It is true that Roosevelt and Taft became somewhat bitter rivals, but Taft was not VP, he was Secretary of War. Roosevelt's VP was Charles W. Fairbanks, with whom he remained on good terms.

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H.M. in San Dimas, CA, asks: This seems woefully trivial considering all that is going on this election year. But that has never stopped me before, so.... I have been reading a lot about Richard Nixon lately. It's amazing how some of his quotes on his tapes remind me of Trump. Anyway, I like to ponder "What If?" scenarios, as it helps distract me from current events. While reading a couple of biographies on him, both of which praised his foreign policy expertise, I then read All the Presidents Men and The Final Days, both of which included remarks from those in the administration that Henry Kissinger was the real foreign policy genius, not Nixon.

All of this leads me to two questions: (1) How much of Nixon's foreign policy accomplishments do you credit to him and how much to Kissinger? and (2) Let's assume there had been no Watergate. Hadn't happened. Everything else remained the same. And let's say that, because we have no idea what Nixon would have done if he had completed his second term, that he died in mid-1974 instead of resigning. How do you think history would treat Nixon? Would he be ranked among the top 10 presidents? Top 20?

Like I said, trivial to be sure. Thanks for responding, if you do.

(V) & (Z) answer: It's hard to fully trust administration insiders to evaluate Nixon vs. Kissinger because there was definitely a "Nixon" faction and a "Kissinger" faction, and there was also much reason to badmouth Nixon after Watergate.

In any event, Nixon was brilliant, and he was showing off his foreign policy chops while Kissinger was still a grad student at Harvard. So, we just can't buy the argument that Kissinger was the real, and only, power behind the throne. Plus, the greatest diplomat in world history isn't going to be of much value if their boss, in this case the president, does not put them in a position to make use of those skills. So, we conclude that Nixon deserves more credit than Kissinger, but that Kissinger nonetheless deserves a big chunk of the pie. Let's say something like 60/40 for Nixon, if you want to visualize our thinking.

And Nixon was personally uninspiring, notoriously sleazy, had a great legislative track record, and bears some responsibility for the horrors of the Vietnam War. Lyndon B. Johnson was personally uninspiring, pretty sleazy, had an even better legislative track record, and bears more responsibility for the horrors of the Vietnam War. In other words, absent Watergate, the two presidents are reasonably comparable. Johnson tends to check in between #10 and #15, and that's around where Nixon would be, we think, if not for the scandal that brought him down.

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M.B. in Cleveland, OH, asks: In 2020, Joe Biden's margin of victory was fewer than 100,000 votes from Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. In 2016, Donald Trump's margin was fewer than 100,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In 2000, the entire election came down to fewer than 1000 votes in Florida.

Is there a source that summarizes this margin for every election? How many votes in which states would have changed the overall outcome?

(V) & (Z) answer: Actually, the best source for this is Wikipedia. Their presidential election pages all have a sub-section for "close states" (you can see the one for 2020 here), in which you see exactly how many votes swung the closest states and, when relevant, which state was (or would have been) the tipping-point state for each candidate.

Gallimaufry

K.B. in Manhattan, NY, asks: I assume you have each taught: (1) capable, but unmotivated students and (2) motivated, but struggling students. Do you have general strategies to help both groups?

(V) answers: The European system is very different from the American one (and much less student-friendly). The U.K. is more like the U.S., but in much of continental Europe, the professor gives a lecture once a week for 2-3 hours (with one or two breaks in the middle), there is an assigned book, and a final exam at the end. There is no homework and no small recitation sections taught by grad students. If the student passes the final exam, the student passes the course. If the student fails the exam, the student fails the course. Pretty straightforward.

Early on, I decided I wanted to have a midterm exam for half the grade. I thought this would motivate the students not to wait until the week before the final to read the book. I asked my colleagues if a midterm was even allowed. They had never heard of such a thing. I then asked the department chairman and after some thought, he said he didn't see anything wrong with it, provided the students were told on Day 1 about the midterm and the way the final grade would be computed.

Computer science was very popular from the day it began, so classes were held in the biggest lecture hall in our building. It held 300 people. And that wasn't really big enough, so students stood in the back and sat on the steps on the side. During the breaks, students would come up to me and ask questions, but these were always the best students, who had good questions that went beyond what I had discussed in the lecture.

I instituted office hours, which was unheard of, but none of the other professors objected, of course. They just didn't see the point of it since their lectures and the book covered all the material on the final exam. Again here, the students who showed up were the best and the brightest, the ones who were interested in the subject matter, had difficult questions about the more advanced material, and wanted additional reading material. Needless to say, I was happy to spend as much time with them as they wanted and always encouraged them to go deeper into the subject. Weak students didn't dare show up.

Office hours were fun because I got to know the smartest and most highly motivated students personally. It must have worked, because at least half a dozen times over the years I'd be walking around some foreign city where I was speaking at a conference and somebody would come up to me and say: "Hello Prof. Tanenbaum. I was your student back in [YEAR] and you motivated me to have a career in the ICT business. I'm going to the [NAME] conference today. Is that why you are here?"

So for better or worse, my personal interaction was always with the best students, not the weakest ones. Sorry I can't answer the question better.

(Z) answers: In contrast to (V), I've always taught at public universities in the United States. The culture is much more student-friendly, and in some ways, it's like extended high school. That's more true at the community college level than at the university level, but even at a 4-year-school, there's some amount of hand-holding.

As to your questions, there's no panacea here, and maybe not much brilliant wisdom to share at all, keeping in mind that I have 100 to 500 students at a time, and I only have them for two or three months. It's hard for there to be huge amounts of effort targeted at individual students, because there just isn't time.

In any event, if a student is unmotivated, the best thing to do is teach an interesting class, with material presented in an accessible and interesting fashion, a fair number of changes of gears (e.g., lecture, some discussion, more lecture, a film clip, etc.), assignments that afford some amount of creativity/leeway (things like "select a picture from the 1950s and analyze it" so the students can gravitate towards the things that interest them), etc. I have had plenty of students who had a reputation for flaking out on other classes, but who were all-in on my classes.

It is also necessary to accept that, for some students, unmotivated is just the way it's going to be. If it's a month until graduation, and they are clearly burned out, and all they want is a C- to graduate, maybe you give them a little leeway. Not too much, but a little.

As to motivated but struggling students, every college professor has some amount of time set aside for one-on-one interactions (i.e., office hours). You encourage them to come to office hours with questions, outlines/drafts of their essays, etc., and you also try to boost their morale/self-esteem. That doesn't mean you lie, but you can certainly tell those students they are capable of doing the work, otherwise they wouldn't be here.

In this case, it is necessary to accept that sometimes, you grade a bit more on the level of effort and a bit less on the quality of work. A C+ essay where you know the student worked really, really hard might reasonably become a B- or a B, particularly if it reflects growth compared to earlier assignments.

Reader Question of the Week: Unsung Heroes

Here is the question we put before readers last week:

M.G. in Boulder, CO, asks: Recently, you gave us a list of usually forgotten persons who have caused great harm to Americans and the U.S. What about a corresponding list of usually forgotten people who have served us well and should be remembered more often?

And here some of the answers we got in response:

C.S. in Minneapolis, MN: As the father of the nuclear powered navy and the person most responsible for the United States' formidable submarine navy, Hyman Rickover should be credited with the prevention of World War III. Thank you, Admiral.

It might be worth remembering too that Rickover's extreme, unwavering standards may be what made nuclear power safe and therefore acceptable.

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P.L. in Denver, CO: I am always surprised when a book or movie comes out that shares some significant occurrence of invention that revolved around a woman that we have never heard of. The movie Hidden Figures is a great example. Here are a few examples of woman who were instrumental in some significant innovation:

• Katharine McCormick, a millionaire philanthropist and biologist, was the woman responsible for providing the funds for research that paved the way for the discovery of the birth control pill.
  
  
• The oncologist Jane Cooke Wright initially pioneered the use of "chemotherapy" through methotrexate, a type of drug used for the treatment of skin cancer and breast cancer.
  
  
• Patricia Bath developed the patented Laserphaco Probe in 1986. It makes it possible for doctors to dissolve cataracts fast and painlessly before they apply new lenses to the eyes of the patient. This technology continues to be used all over the world to prevent blindness as a result of cataracts.
  
  
• Maria Telkes, an MIT researcher, is considered a pioneer in the industry of solar thermal storage systems. It was in 1947 that she invented the very first solar-heated system for her house in Dover, Massachusetts.
  
  
• VoIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, is the same technology that lets you make phone calls using the Internet. Marian Croak is the woman you should be thanking because if it weren't for her, you would never be able to have long-distance chats over Skype or connect with your colleagues via Google Hangouts. It was in 1982 that Croak became a part of AT&T, and there, she invented the core technology that made it possible to use the Internet to communicate through video and audio alike.
  
  Croak holds more than 200 patents, one of which is for text-based donation services. Yes, you've read that right. It was all thanks to Croak that you can simply text a code every time you want to make donations to charitable organizations. In 2014, Croak parted ways with AT&T and is now a part of Google, working as the vice president of engineering and supervising YouTube's reliability engineering.

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J.B. in Pinckney, MI: Ulysses S. Grant. Although his stature is rising, he is still underrated thanks to the Lost Cause narrative. He was one of the best military minds in American history when it comes to the overall outcome of a war. Within the context of his time, he was one of the most progressive politicians when it came to race relations. A strong supporter of the Fifteenth Amendment, he likely would have supported rewording it had he anticipated future interpretations. He also largely eliminated the KKK from the South for a period of time, giving a short glimpse of greater equality in that region.

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R.P. in Oxford, PA: George H. Thomas. "It is possible to say that the rock on which the Confederacy foundered was the Rock of Chickamauga."

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O.E. in Greenville, SC: My favorite unsung hero, both politically and not, is Henry Agard Wallace. He was chosen as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture, where he was a pivotal figure in the early days of the New Deal; he not only made tough decisions but was able to communicate them to the people. Following that, he served a term as FDR's VP, and was an exception to his predecessor's remarks on that office, being involved in more government decisions than many of his predecessors... and successors. After party insiders voted him out at the convention, despite the best efforts of supporters, he took the post of Secretary of Commerce and served well for several years.

These things would be impressive enough, but his biggest accomplishments were outside politics. He was among the first to breed hybrid corn scientifically, which has transformed American agriculture. He also bred chickens, and one-tenth of the world's chicken population are descendants of the chickens he bred, resulting in a major increase of the world's chicken population. Were there no Henry Wallace, there would be no Green Revolution in Agriculture. Both those fields of accomplishment have their critics, but many people don't even know about either of them. I was impressed when I read about Wallace in the early 2000's, and he majorly influenced me. I do think his actions in both fields deserve more attention.

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D.R. in Grayling, AK: I would nominate Ida B Wells-Barnett. She was an investigative journalist, teacher, and one of the founders of the NAACP. The fought a crusade against lynching and fought for women's suffrage. She published A Red Record (1895) which detailed lists of the victims of lynching in the south. As she noted: "Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so."

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D.S. in Berlin, Germany: Vasily Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov. Those two Russians did not only serve the U.S., but the entire world, as they—on separate occasions—contributed decisively to preventing a nuclear war.

Arkhipov served during the Cuban Missile Crises in 1962 on the Sovjet submarine B-59 which was equipped with nuclear torpedos. A launch required the authorization by three officers: the submarines's Captain Valentin Savitsky, its Political Officer Ivan Maslennikov, and Arkhipov as the chief of staff of the brigade. Arkhipov was the only one voting against the launch, which could well have sparked World War III.

Almost 21 years later, in September 1983, Petrov played a similarly important role. He was the duty officer at the command center for the Sovjet nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that six missiles had been launched from the U.S. Instead of immediately reporting the missiles, which might have led his superiors to instantly launch a nuclear counterattack, he suspected a false alarm and waited for a confirmation of the American attack... that never came.

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T.P. in Highland Park, NJ: My nomination for an unsung hero is Norman Borlaug, who is probably the greatest hero of the 20th century. He—along with his numerous and less renowned aides, colleagues, and supporters—is why almost all of those horrible predictions about inevitable mass famine did not come to pass, thanks to their agricultural innovations. While this might not have had a powerful direct impact on America, it did PREVENT many bad consequences rolling downhill to America, and that is leaving aside the authentic and profound morality of feeding the world.

It is now commonplace that world hunger is a question of distribution rather than production. It was not always so. The film Soylent Green was set in 2022 or 2023: Borlaug saved us from that one. May we have many more Norman Borlaugs (Normans Borlaug?)

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B.H. in Atlanta, GA: Edward Coles. This guy did the following:

1. Wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson to join him (Coles) in freeing his slaves. Jefferson wrote back, saying "Nah, you just have accept it as a 'peculiar institution.'"
2. Was private secretary for James Madison
3. Freed his slaves and gave them land
4. Bought pro-slavery newspapers and turned them into anti-slavery papers
5. Became the governor of Illinois and survived proslavery violence
6. Worked hard to make Illionios a free state. The vote was close, and if Illinois had been on the other side, it would have made a big difference in Civil War.

Just saying, he did a lot, and no one knows of him.

P.S.: Sadly, his son fought for the confederacy and died after a month of fighting.

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M.F. in Olympia, WA: Hugh Thompson Jr., the US Army pilot who landed his helicopter between U.S. troops and unarmed Vietnamese civilians at My Lai during the 1968 massacre. His intervention and actions with crew members Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn ended the killing on that day and rescued Vietnamese who would have otherwise been among the victims.

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M.G. in Boulder, CO: I choose John Gilbert Winant, American ambassador to the Court of St. James during World War II. Three times governor of New Hampshire and a Republican supporter of the New Deal, Gil Winant was widely considered as a possible Republican candidate for president. American magazine reported, "He's rich. He can't make a speech. But he wants to do something for the people. And he does it." A New York Times reporter said that listeners "begin by feeling sorry for him. They end by standing in the aisles and cheering him." As ambassador, Winant followed outspoken appeaser Joe Kennedy, who was increasingly disliked by the British for his defeatist attitude. The new ambassador made headlines all over Britain on his arrival when he replied to a journalist who asked if he had a few words for the people of Britain: "I am very glad to be here. There is no place I'd rather be at this time than in England."

Then he proved it. After air raids, Winant walked the streets, offering help to anyone he met—air raid wardens, ambulance drivers, dazed citizens, firemen. He served, as a Times reporter said, as the "adhesive" that held the countries' political and military leaders together, interpreting words and actions, alleviating tensions, and enabling cooperation. On a personal level, he and his friend Edward R. Murrow worked to promote understanding between the citizens of the two countries, especially important in England, as American soldiers arrived by the shipload and began appearing everywhere. Although Winant was a notably poor speaker, journalists loved his honesty and sincerity and covered him with extraordinary favor, promoting the U.S.-U.K. alliance and making Winant a household name in England. In 1945, in a speech decades ahead of its time, Winant expressed his belief that if we are to survive, we must, as nations, live as if "the welfare of a neighboring nation was almost as important as the welfare of our own." He acknowledged that the task was difficult, but said, "So was D-Day. If we could do that, we can do anything—if we really care to do it."

The British Order of Merit was the only honor Churchill was willing to accept for his war work. The first American to receive it was Dwight Eisenhower. The second—and last—was John Gilbert Winant.

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L.G. in Columbus, OH: I'd like to nominate Frank Murphy. In a none-too-long life he was a criminal court judge, Mayor of Detroit, Governor-General of the Philippines (and then the first High Commissioner), Governor of Michigan, Attorney General of the U.S., and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. A remarkable series of public jobs, but what is even more remarkable is how successful and pioneering he was in each:

• As a young judge in Detroit (1923-1930) he presided over the Ossian Sweet trials, arising from a Black family's defense of its home against a hostile white mob. Clarence Darrow represented the defendants, winning an acquittal of one and the dismissal of charges against the rest. In a city with substantial Klan support, Judge Murphy conducted a conspicuously fair trial, with Darrow calling Murphy "the kindliest and most understanding man I have ever happened to meet upon the bench."
  
  
• As Mayor of Detroit (1930-1933), he led the city's response to the Great Depression, pioneering relief and public works programs that anticipated the New Deal. He also founded the United States Conference of Mayors, serving as its first president and organizing cities to make concerted claims for urban support. In his 1993 survey of historians, Melvin Holli found Murphy ranked as the seventh-best big-city mayor between 1820 and 1993.
  
  
• As Governor-General of the Philippines (1933-1935) and then High Commissioner to the Philippines (1935-1936), Murphy led the peaceful transition from colonial status toward independence. In particular, he extended the franchise, reformed an oppressive tenant-farmer regime, and began significant social reform, while balancing the budget.
  
  
• As Governor of Michigan (1937-1939), his most important accomplishment was the resolution of the GM sit-down strike. Murphy called out the National Guard—not to drive out the strikers, but to protect them from the police and from company strike-breakers. He mediated an agreement that led to GM's recognition of the UAW as a bargaining agent. This led to the rise of the UAW and contributed substantially to the growth of the labor movement.
  
  
• As Attorney General (1939-1940), he set up the Department of Justice's first Civil Rights Division.
  
  
• Finally, as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1940-1949), he wrote some of the most powerful opinions and dissents in the history of the Court. The greatest among them is his dissent in Korematsu v. United States (1944), in which he charged that the exclusion of those of Japanese descent from the Pacific Coast "falls into the ugly abyss of racism." Many of his dissents in matters of civil liberties and criminal procedure were adopted by the Warren Court.

Apart from his dissent in Korematsu, Murphy's accomplishments have fallen from view. But he did much to make the United States a more humane nation. He should not be forgotten.

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M.M. in San Diego, CA: David E. Harris, the first Black airline pilot for American Airlines. I was curious to know what aircraft he flew for the USAF and was extremely pleased to find out it was B-52s and B-47s; hence, he flew for Strategic Air Command during the Cold War. Pleased again that Harry Truman's order to desegregate the armed forces was so effective. Furthermore, Captain Harris had light skin and green eyes, so on his job applications for all the major carriers he wrote, "I am a Negro." He was hired in 1964. He was a brave and proud man, and definitely an unsung hero of the Civil Rights movement.

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B.J.L. in Ann Arbor, MI: He just passed and he doesn't have a Wiki entry, but he was known locally for his impact in Ann Arbor and would qualify as any town's unsung hero. His name was Larry Dishman. He worked in Ann Arbor's Parks and Recreation Department, where he was the team sports coordinator, from 1975 to 2015. As part of his job, he was to come up with creative content and he coordinated with Ann Arbor's Sister Cities programs in other countries to develop youth recreational soccer exchanges. The most successful one was the "Arborough games," where middle schoolers from around Ann Arbor and Peterborough, ON, Canada, were rounded up and bused to the opposite venue for games of soccer, baseball, track, field hockey, etc., with families hosting the kids during the exchanges. The name was, obviously, a melding of the town names. The games rotated between Ontario and Michigan for 17 years from 1983 until 2000, when the logistics proved too difficult to continue. Larry passed away just this last month. he seemed to touch everyone he met. Here is his obituary.

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A.G. in Scranton, PA: Prosecutors who invite the ire of the armed and militant religious right when they prosecute my mother... er... um... Ruby Franke and her ilk.

Poll workers who still do what they do, knowing full well the price they might pay if the voters don't choose the candidate some armed and militant people want them to.

Every bank teller in the world as kind and decent as the one who refused to give an impact statement (a damning one well earned) when she heard what the useless junkie who robbed her had gone through that had gotten him to that point.

The pastors and priests and nuns who return, time and again, to Death Row and other prison locations to minister love (most of them) to people who often times show no remorse and who, in some cases, they will have to watch die in unbearable agony, flopping like a fish on a gurney.

Defense attorneys, most of whom know that the person they are defending is lying to them in some way but still give them the defense the Constitution requires and that those armed and militant people who claim to love the Constitution say they don't deserve. And those, as well, who truly believe in the innocence of their clients and spend decades trying to get them released from unjust confinement.

Here is the question for next week:

A.P. in Kitchener, ON, Canada, asks: I enjoyed reading about the best presidents America never had. But who was the worst president America managed to avoid, and why do you say so?

Submit your answers to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Dodged that Bullet"!

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