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Time to face reality, Obama — Trump is going to be president
By Michael Goodwin
So this is how it ends — in a whimper wrapped in self-pity and recriminations. With President Obama on the defensive at his final press conference and Hillary Clinton’s last campaign event resembling a wake, the Democratic Party is limping off the stage and into the political winter.
It was supposed to
sit atop the national power pyramid for decades, a new paradigm of liberals,
progressives, the young, the old, the unions and blacks, Latinos, Muslims and
Asians.
The torch would be
passed from Obama to Clinton, a liberal Supreme Court would vastly expand
executive power and the regulatory state would enforce climate-change orthodoxy
on all industry and elitist dictates on every American. Globalism would be the
new patriotism.
But a funny thing
happened on the way to one-party dominance: The people who work for a living
said no, hell no. Their revolt brings Donald Trump to the White House amid
hopes of a revival of the economy and of the American spirit.
Thoroughly beaten,
the Dems are at their lowest point in nearly a century. From the White House to
Congress to statehouses, they are on the outside looking in.
Their punishment was
well-deserved, as demonstrated by Obama and Clinton. Full of excuses and
blaming everyone except themselves, their closing acts proved it is time for
them to go.
They have nothing new
to offer, with their vision of the future limited to larger doses of the same
failing medicine and their intolerance for disagreement showing they would
never learn from their mistakes. Their bad ideas had run their disastrous
course.
Yet instead of
analyzing what went wrong and trying to find new organizing principles, party
leaders and activists are pointing fingers at the FBI and Russia, and engaging
in a mad bid to overturn Trump’s Electoral College victory.
Because they are
doomed to fail, we could be witnessing the death throes of the Democratic Party
as we know it. With Obama and the Clintons encouraging the attempted theft of
an election they lost and failing to denounce intimidation and death threats
against Trump electoral voters, most Americans have reason to consider the Dems
a dead letter.
Yet the final verdict
on 2016 depends on Trump’s performance as president. If he delivers “jobs,
jobs, jobs” and peace-through-strength abroad, he will forge a new governing
consensus and remake the political landscape.
While it’s too soon
to know what exactly Trumpism stands for, it’s clear that many Republican
orthodoxies and special-interest debts are being tossed overboard. His cabinet
nominees are incredibly accomplished individuals who come to their new jobs
without the burdens of past Washington gridlock. If he can attract centrist-minded Dems,
some of whom he is courting, Trump has a chance to build a pragmatic coalition
that keeps faith with mainstream America.
The obstacles, of
course, are many. Much of the Islamic world is on fire and the great powers are
moving ever closer to confrontation in Europe and Asia.
Obama leaves office
with Russia, Iran and China eating our lunch, with the Chinese theft of a Navy
drone a goodbye insult. The unspeakable horror of Syria and the rise of the
Islamic State will forever be part of the 44th president’s legacy.
So too will be
domestic divisions, which grew more stark and bitter in the last eight years.
We are now perilously close to a boil, and that too falls partially on Obama’s
shoulders given his fear-mongering about Trump.
Against that dark
reality, it is reasonable to worry the nation is on the verge of a crack-up.
But there is also a possibility that America is on the verge of a new
greatness.
It’s up to Trump. The
ultimate outsider and a historic disrupter, he bears some responsibility for
the polarization. But victory presents him with an opportunity to make
government work for the people, instead of the other way around.
He is off to a great
start and must stay focused to avoid falling down the rabbit holes of petty
disputes. America needs the change he promised and he needs to commit every
ounce of his being into keeping that promise. If he succeeds, so will the
nation.
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USA TODAY
Title IX is 'bureaucratic sex creep' gone wild
Title IX is 'bureaucratic sex creep' gone wild
The feds tried to fix
discrimination and instead created a regulatory Tower of Babel.
If you want to see
how the federal bureaucracy can mess things up, and create huge new areas of
overburdening regulation, just look at what it’s done with Title IX of the
Education Amendments of 1972.
Title IX
simply reads: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex,
be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected
to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal
financial assistance.” That’s all.
But from this small,
simple statement — there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex — has
been created a regulatory Tower of Babel governing sports teams, student
discipline and even, and most dubiously, sexual
consent.
One doubts that the
members of Congress who drafted Title IX intended to produce what Harvard Law
School professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk have called ”bureaucratic
sex creep,” in which colleges — allegedly to ensure compliance with Title
IX’s non-discrimination mandate — micromanage the sex lives of students, and
subject them to Orwellian levels of surveillance, investigation and
supervision. In essence, students now risk being kicked out of school for
not getting express consent for every sexual act, all based on a law that was
intended, 45 years ago, to end discrimination in college athletics.
This has been done not
because Congress ordered it, or even because the Education Department
promulgated regulations with notice to the public and an opportunity for
comment. Instead, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights
has issued “guidance,”
in the form of letters to colleges and universities stating its opinion as to
what the law required. And its opinion represents quite a stretch from
what Congress intended, and wrote. So far, in fact, that a University of
Kentucky professor was punished for “sexual misconduct” for singing the Beach
Boys’ “California
Girls,” which the University of Kentucky said contained “content of a
sexual nature.”
Sen. (and former
Education Secretary) Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., grilled Education Department
officials about this, noting that although the department told the Senate its
“guidance” wasn’t legally
binding, it was simultaneously telling colleges and universities that they
faced loss of all federal funding if they didn’t comply. But that didn’t
change anything.
The sad story of how
we came to this pass is told in Robert Shibley’s Twisting Title IX. Between
the bureaucracies, the consultants, and the university offices that have
expanded under this approach, people now speak of a ”Title
IX industry,” — one that is absorbing large amounts of resources but
not doing anything to actually educate students. But having come to this
point, what do we do next?
President-elect Trump
has named Betsy DeVos to be secretary of Education, but there’s no word yet as
to who will be the head of the Department’s Office for Civil Rights. (Maybe
they should consider Shibley). But it seems clear that the overreach we’ve
seen needs to be rolled back.
One possibility would
be to repeal or amend Title IX. Congress could do that, though my concern
is that if the bureaucracy can make such a hash out of a single sentence, how
likely is it to be restrained by any amendment over the long term?
Another would be for
the new Education Department to do something the previous department didn’t do
— probably for fear of being overruled by the courts — which is to actually
promulgate new binding regulations after notice and comment. Those
regulations might say that colleges should turn over complaints of sexual
assault to law enforcement authorities, and that things like “microaggressions”
and opinions with which one disagrees do not constitute “discrimination.”
Or, if the Trump
administration is feeling mischievous, it could emulate the Obama
administration and use guidance to enforce Title IX strictly according to its
own views. Perhaps policies that discriminate against fraternities could
become grounds for loss of funding based on discrimination. (Especially if
university officials use derogatory sexist terms like ”frat boy.”) Perhaps
admissions criteria that lead to student bodies that are disproportionately
female could be analyzed for discrimination under “disparate impact”
theories. Perhaps a sexual assault program that produces overwhelmingly
male defendants despite evidence that women are equally
likely to be perpetrators might be seen as prima facie evidence of
sex discrimination by universities.
Ideally, we’ll take
an approach based on due process and common sense, which would represent a considerable
change over the past several years’ policies.
One thing is clear:
The micromanagement of universities — and of students — in the name of Title IX
needs to change. I hope that the Trump administration will return some
common sense to this area.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of
Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American
Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board
of Contributors.
