Below is a report I wrote comparing Trump and Biden for the 2020 presidential election. I am keeping it here completely unmodified from how it appeared shortly before Election Day. Eventually (after Biden has a real track record) it will be worthwhile to systematically go over this and see what I got right or wrong. For now, I have a few preliminary thoughts.
There was plenty of material surfacing in mid to late 2020 that I neglected, but this was because the overall thrust of the report was pretty obvious and I didn't care much to put a lot of time into it.
Right now I think I made several particular errors with this report. I gave Trump an excessively low score for great power politics. He was still a bad president in this respect, but not as bad as I judged. The cause of these errors was that I wrote the report by accumulating a long list of particular incidents (especially the most newsworthy ones, which reflected very poorly on the administration) but never adequately stepped back towards a holistic consideration of progress and setbacks.
I underrated the importance of COVID19 vaccine development (again, I focused too much on the most widely covered dimensions of the Trump administration, like their failures on masks and testing) and I probably should have given more credit to Trump for Operation Warp Speed or for FDA reforms that the Trump administration implemented before the pandemic, though it's dubious whether this should have mattered much for the 2020 election since the vaccine was already developed. At the same time, I overestimated Trump's ability to force early vaccine approval and overlooked the risk that his administration's sheer incompetence would lead to bad vaccine distribution. I ultimately deferred primarily to superforecasters' estimates of American COVID19 deaths starting in 2021 under different presidents, which were released shortly before the election and actually reflected far more poorly upon Trump than I would have expected. Overall I don't think I systematically overestimated or underestimated the Trump administration on COVID19 but I still had a flawed process for judging it. Again I would have solved this if I had done a serious holistic analysis in late 2020 but at that point I was uninterested in rewriting and perfecting the report and was content to leave it in kludge form.
Support Joe Biden for President. He is far superior to Trump across a broad range of topics including animal welfare, foreign aid, air pollution, immigration, nuclear security, pandemic protection, corruption and government management. While Trump is slightly younger and has a better education policy, this is far outweighed by his downsides. Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, is also significantly better than Mike Pence. Pence has a bad track record on animal votes, and his staunchly conservative views violate many scientific and economic realities.
Voters in swing states should naturally vote for Biden. Even in safe states, it's still best to vote for Biden, because showing the most decisive possible rejection of Trumpism and bolstering the status of the Democratic Party through the popular vote is more important than puffing up any third party.
This is a quantitative scoring of Donald Trump (and Mike Pence) against Joe Biden (and Kamala Harris) on the basis of my policy platform for global welfare. I score them from -3 to +3, with rare exceptions outside those bounds for extreme candidates. The scores are combined via weighted average. The weights are also taken from the Policy Platform section, but are adjusted for the unique features of the presidency. For instance, the foreign policy weights are increased here because the President has a lot of influence on that.
All the calculations are done in this Excel model.
In some sections, praise of a candidate is marked in green; criticism is orange, but I haven't done this everywhere because it's actually somewhat time consuming to rework all the text with this formatting. If you want more background on what policies are are good/bad and why, refer back to the relevant section of the Policy Platform.
Trump tolerates Confederate symbology, going so far as to block an attempt to rename Army bases which are named after Confederate generals, even as most Republicans support this measure. Score: -1.5.
No information. Score: 0.
Biden opposes Confederate symbology. Score: 1.5 points.
Harris opposes Confederate symbology.
Harris said that convicting officers for the killing of George Floyd would be difficult because of jury bias, sidelining the possibility that Floyd died from drugs/heart attack and setting up the issue for more outrage if he is acquitted or charges are dropped. She also hastily and emphatically supported Jussie Smollett's dubious hate crime allegation, and never retracted or apologized after it turned out to be fake.
Score: 0.5 points.
Trump denies the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. He believes that wind turbines cause cancer.
Trump withdrew America from the Paris Climate Accords, but announced that we would contribute to the One Trillion Trees initiative. Trump has proposed lifting a longtime ban on financing the construction of nuclear power plants in developing countries.
Trump also negotiated with Russia and Saudi Arabia for the purpose of mutually restricting oil productionSee this article. A lot of people criticized this for being unfair cartel behavior, but the results are straightforward: less oil production, higher oil prices, less pollution..
Trump's FY2021 budget request included dissolving ARPA-E and cutting the DOE. His NASA budget proposed cutting the CLARREO Pathfinder climate science satellite.
Trump has renewed the fight to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, although the administration undermined long-run prospects for such efforts by getting caught secretly trucking waste in. Trump wants to open areas near the Grand Canyon for uranium mining.
Trump appointed Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator. Pruitt denied that carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to global warming and employed other climate change skeptics in the agency. Many references to climate change were removed from the EPA’s website. Pruitt fired five scientists from the EPA's s review board, seeking to replace them with industry representatives. He broadly moved to shrink the agency’s efforts. Under his watch, the EPA explicitly favored business interests and became vulnerable to regulatory capture by business interests. However, his impact has been somewhat limited because he failed to implement much of his agenda in a lasting mannerSee articles from Politico, NYT, WaPo, and USA Today..
The EPA lacked transparency under Pruitt’s watchSee reporting by NYT, NYT again, and WaPo. . There was an enormous number of controversies where Pruitt was accused of misconduct. Pruitt resigned in response to the controversies. Because he is no longer running the EPA, his failures are not directly relevant for scoring Trump for the 2020 election, but they indirectly show that Trump is likely to appoint and defend bad environmental officials. Similar conclusions can be drawn from Trump’s nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to lead the Council on Environmental Quality.
The new head of the EPA is Andrew Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the coal industry. He has pushed for a rule prohibiting the EPA from using any research without fully visible data, which would hobble its ability to respond to lots of scientific knowledge. He has been accused of scientific ignorance for advocating the use of double-blind studies in contexts where they are unfeasible. Wheeler has vague views on the climate, which are inaccurate but not as bad as real denialism.
Trump appointed Rick Perry as the Secretary of Energy. Perry is a Texas Republican politician who denies man-made climate change. Trump’s Secretary of the Interior is David Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist who doesn’t necessarily deny man-made climate change but said he would defer to Trump’s guidance. Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture is Sonny Perdue, who says we don’t know what causes climate change. Trump’s Secretary of State is Mike Pompeo, a climate skeptic who opposes efforts to combat climate change.
The Trump administration's gutting of EPA regulations will significantly increase air pollution.
The Trump administration is rolling back regulations on harmful toxins.
The Trump administration has also taken other actions which mostly interfere with the goal of reducing air pollution.
Score: -2.1.
Pence denies the scientific consensus on man-made global warming and has consistently opposed actions to stop climate change. I give him -3 points.
Biden's climate plan involves $1.7 trillion in spending, including $400 billion of clean energy R&D over ten years. Biden includes nuclear energy, but also wants to subsidize biofuels.
His plan has no carbon tax, though he has occasionally expressed support for a carbon tax in other communications.
He has an emphasis on foreign policy to push other countries to reduce their emissions. He mentions “tree plantings on a large scale” to cool urban centers.
Biden makes numerous concessions to minority interests. He opposes uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.
In a comparison with other Democratic candidates, Joseph Curtin found that Biden's plan has great value for money, is flexible at overcoming policy barriers, provides for great international leadership, and has very good implementation and prioritization details. Curtin rated the plan best among the 5 major Democratic primary candidates, and best in every individual category except for “environmental justice” which is a poor criterion anyway.
Leftist groups like Sierra Club and Sunrise Coalition have rated Biden’s plan poorly, but these ratings are based on things like their dogmatic complaints against nuclear power, demands for more radical amounts of spending (which are unlikely to pass through Congress anyway), refusals to accept private-sector solutions, or perhaps just a general disdain for Joe Biden not being a leftist like Bernie Sanders.
I think Biden as president would probably prioritize climate change relatively highly although he would still focus first on healthcare reform, like Obama.
Score: 2.1.
During the primaries, Harris’ plan envisioned a carbon-neutral economy by 2045. She supported a carbon tax, adequately placed upstream on polluters, but gave no other details about its structure and indicated that she didn’t consider it a major priority. She didn’t have good details on spending. She expressed some plans for international leadership to reduce worldwide emissions.
Harris’ proposal contained major concessions to minority interests.
Her rhetoric focuses heavily on taking a legal approach, punishing and restricting polluters. She's expressed significant details and has a track record of legally pursuing polluting companies. The emphasis on legal barriers as opposed to more comprehensive policy guidance could be problematic.
Joseph Curtin found that Harris’ plan was unimpressive at overcoming policy barriers and had very poor implementation and prioritization details.
Speaking at a CNN climate town hall, Harris was hesitant about nuclear power plants due to the waste problem. She wanted to leave shutdown decisions to states; it’s not clear if she would support license extensions.
Harris co-sponsored legislation that requires companies to disclose information about how they are causing climate change.
She gets 1.3 points.
The Trump administration has replaced federal inspection of slaughterhouses with self-assessments. Under Trump, the USDA has allowed factory farms to make specious claims of being ‘humane’. In 2018, the Trump administration eliminated a welfare rule for organic farming. In 2017, animal welfare information on laboratories, zoos, dog breeders and other facilities (not farms) was removed from the USDA website; the Trump administration seems to have played a minor role in the change. A 2016 HSLF blog argued that Trump’s agricultural advisory committee was filled with anti-animal-welfare lobbyists and politicians. Trump’s USDA transition team leader was an anti-animal-rights activist. In 2015 Trump tweeted disappointment with the Ringling Brothers for phasing out elephants, disparaging “animal rights stuff”. However he signed a law against “crush” videos.
Trump used the Defense Production Act to force meat production plants to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic, but nearly anyone else probably would have done this anyway, save for some libertarians and ethical vegans.
Animal rights activist Georgina Bloomberg expressed some hope of making progress on animal causes with the Trump administration through her friend Lara Trump, but there isn’t any indication that anything has come of that.
Score: -2.3 points.
Pence got 0/0/17/0/14/33 on his HSLF scorecards. Score: -2.2 points.
Biden got 100/67/67/50 on his HSLF scorecards. I found no actions towards animals while he was Vice President. He did not return a survey on animal welfare. He may be more left-wing now than he used to be.
If Biden wins, Taiwan may rescind a restriction on pork imports from the United States.
Score: 0.45 points.
Harris has 100/100 on her HSLF scorecards. Score: 1.95 points.
Before being president, Trump had harsh tough-on-crime attitudes. He called for execution of the Central Park Five. He supported stop-and-frisk in New York City; evidence on its impact on crime is mixed but it is also believed to have lowered trust in the police force and seems to have heightened perceptions of racism. It appears to have worsened property values. Trump hasn’t repudiated or apologized for his stance, unlike Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Trump pushed bipartisan criminal justice reform that relaxed sentencing rules. His early appointment for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, enforced stronger sentencing laws. The Trump administration supports qualified immunity and generally opposes any deep criminal justice reform.
Trump’s later appointment for Attorney General, William Barr, has a history of harsh ‘tough-on-crime’ ideas but currently acknowledges a more moderate point of view.
Barr has recently wasted time on spurious politically motivated investigations.
Trump signed an executive order discouraging police brutality, though this probably would have been done by any president due to the strong public pressure following the 2020 BLM protests, and it didn’t go far enough.
Trump has used unmarked federal troops to suppress protests in Washington D.C. and Portland. In Portland, they were deployed against the wishes of the local government. They arrested a man into an unmarked vehicle without probable cause, and the deputy director of the force falsely claimed that they were acting legally. They beat a peaceful protester and broke his hand.
Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio.
Trump says he supports hiring cops, but in practice he has extensively obstructed funding for police departments and officer hiring programs.
The Trump administration has pushed stronger enforcement of anti-marijuana laws.
The Trump administration has planned to ban flavored e-cigarettes, which is a bad move for health reasons because it removes an alternative to more dangerous real cigarettes. Only six people have died from vaping whereas over 480,000 die from cigarettes each year, and India and China – countries with huge cigarette smoking populations – are making similar moves, possibly following America’s lead. Taxing e-cigarettes increases smoking. And the vape deaths all appear to be from black-market products. Leaving the cigarette issue aside, restricting flavored e-cigs would interfere with the recreation of people who enjoy e-cigarettes, and we have not seen any argument that the harms of vaping outweigh the recreational benefits. Therefore, restricting vape use would be a bad move. However, some of Trump’s recent comments are more supportive of continued legalization. Trump soon regretted his administration’s actions against flavored e-cigarettes.
Score: -1.6 points.
As governor, Pence signed mandatory minimum sentencing for some drug offenders and supported high penalties for marijuana offenders. Earlier, as representative, he supported re-entry and second chance services. Like any Republican politician, he supports qualified immunity. I give him -2.2 points.
Biden used to be “tough on crime;” he wrote the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which created
incentives to increase incarceration. He also pushed an increase
in drug crackdowns. However, some
of his actions were actually good.
Biden has long supported adding more police officers.
More recently, Biden has come around to mainstream Democratic views on criminal justice reform. Unfortunately he still supports qualified immunity.
Biden supports
decriminalizing marijuana, but seems too authoritarian to change
policy on other recreational drugs. His views on sex work are unclear;
given his track record, he probably won’t be a reformer.
Score: 0 points.
Harris broadly supports progressive criminal justice reform.
She supports marijuana legalization.
Harris took bad, overly aggressive actions as California state attorney. Harris is in favor of decriminalizing sex work, a position which similarly lies under the shadow of a poor track record.
Trump has proposed cuts to federal education programs, and has not attempted to generally expand college assistance.
Trump signed an executive order promoting skill-based hiring over degree requirements in federal agencies. This could generally weaken the credentialing arms race.
Trump’s FY2019 budget for Head Start kept funding the same (adjusted for inflation). His FY2018 budget included some minor increases. His FY2017 budget kept funding the same.
Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, lacks education experience. She rolled back part of the Title IX rules, in order to protect rights of the accused; these rules directly affected relatively few people, but subverted due process and created a toxic bureaucracy which numerous feminist legal professors (among others) have condemned. This type of bureaucracy arguably exacerbates a culture of victimhood, which might be necessary in its basic form given current American social realities but can cause various social failures when it becomes extreme. The LA Times Editorial Board endorsed DeVos’s changes, as have numerous feminist scholars.
Trump has pushed for major programs in vouchers and school choice, and DeVos supports charters and vouchers. However, the administration has not made a lot of progress on this.
DeVos also curtailed investigation of for-profit universities.
Trump rescinded an Obama-era mandate for restorative justice programs in schools.
Trump has opposed active shooter drills.
There is weak evidence that Trump’s rhetoric is increasing schoolyard bullying.
Overall, I give Trump 2.2 points for education.
As governor, Pence supported preschool funding, charter schools and vouchers. It’s probably safe to assume that he, as a Republican, would not support free college and would not support universal pre-K. I give him 2.3 points.
Biden wants to make community college free and provide additional financial support for college education.
Biden opposes school vouchers and charter schools. He supports universal pre-K.
Biden has a poor track record on campus sexual assault, and says he will reverse DeVos’s Title IX reform.
Score: -2.2 points.
Harris supports free public college tuition for most families and universal pre-K; she also supported a strike against charter schools. She gets -2.5 points.
Trump has marginalized science and technology in his administration.
Trump left the Office of Science and Technology Policy understaffed and leaderless for a while.
Trump's nomination of Kelvin Droegemeier to run the OSTP was generally praised and unanimously approved by the Senate.
The Trump administration has a mixed track record on R&D spending. In FY2018, Trump cut the budgets of science administrations that perform research, but this could be compensated by increases in R&D from military funding. For FY2019, Trump effectively transferred R&D funding from the civilian sector to the defense sector, keeping overall R&D funding almost the same.
Most recently, Trump issued an executive order promoting investment in AI, with basic mentions of safety. Trump’s 2020 budget included a modest $208 million for the DOD’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The 2020 budget also includes a moderate $974 million in non-defense AI spending. But these kinds of budget increases would be likely under any administration.
The White House computer security chief resigned over a systematic purging of cybersecurity staff. Trump has been very reckless with sensitive information.
Trump has opposed plans for global privacy rights.
Trump fired the DNI for political reasons and appointed an unqualified person in his place.
Trump withdrew the US from the WHO without building a good alternative, which could undermine efforts to tackle pandemics. While the WHO has problems in how it handled COVID-19, it still provides benefits exceeding costs.
Trump's COVID19 response has been terrible, as described fully in the original Candidate Scoring System document.
Even right-wing elite and former Trump supporter Peter Thiel agrees that Trump's COVID19 response was bad.
Score: -2.3 points.
In
2005 Pence supported making the PATRIOT Act permanent but in 2002
he supported privacy impact statements on federal rules,
indicating a moderately authoritarian stance.
Pence is anti-science in the typical evangelical Christian sense,
and is commonly alleged to have mishandled the HIV crisis in
Indiana.
Pence mishandled the COVID-19 crisis.
Score: -1.8 points.
Biden is moderately authoritarian on the subject of privacy.
One of Biden’s advisors warned on January 22 that the COVID-19 pandemic was coming and we had to prepare. Biden criticized Trump on January 27 for being unprepared.
Biden held eight campaign rallies in March up until March 10 despite the risk of COVID-19, whereas Trump held his last rally on March 2. These figures are not exactly comparable however as Biden was fighting an active primary race whereas Trump’s rallies were more politically superfluous at this time.
Biden gets 1 point.
Harris is relatively pro-privacy. I give her -0.1 points.
The Trump administration has been rather benign in terms of aid and investment in Africa, mostly keeping things the same from previous years, though this is partly because Congress has refused to accept the President's proposed cuts to foreign aid programs.See this article from Foreign Affairs. If somehow Trump ever succeeds in his attempts to cut aid to AfricaSee coverage by Washington Blade, Washington Blade again, and Daily Nation., perhaps if a very right-wing congress is elected, the results would be severe.
Trump has more seriously obstructed aid to Central America.
Trump signed the Global Fragility Act, but it was supported by almost every single senator (except for Rand Paul) so that is not noteworthy.
The Trump administration launched a Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative to improve the economic status of women in the developing world.
Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy which blocks funding for development NGOs that provide abortion services; 729 out of 733 of them have complied with it so the losses are nominally tiny, but a report from CHANGE alleged greater costs associated with compliance. CHANGE – the Center for Health And Gender Equity – does not appear to be a reliable source. They are a lobby group that primarily argues for women’s reproductive rights, their statements inside and outside the report indicate a consistent anti-Trump stance, and they will presumably gain donations when their followers feel that lobbying against the Mexico City Policy is worthwhile. CHANGE does not estimate the overall costs of the Mexico City Policy; they mainly provide anecdotes based on interviews with global development organizations. Bias may impact their choices of who to interview, their selection of statements to include, and the way they deliberately or inadvertently encourage different responses. However, outright fabrication or distortion in reporting is very rare, and the overall number and severity of the anecdotes in the report is notable. Meanwhile, the Mexico City Policy inadvertently increases abortion rates, which suggests problems such as less contraceptive access and unsafe abortions. Overall, the Mexico City Policy appears to be mildly harmful.
Trump’s political appointees have caused some internal tensions at USAID.
Trump withdrew the US from the WHO without building a good alternative, which could undermine efforts to promote global health. While the WHO has problems at least in how it handled COVID-19, it still clearly provides benefits exceeding costs in its general efforts to promote global health.
Score: -2 points.
Pence has supported aid for Palestine but not for Pakistan. Pence has redirected aid towards religious groups, bypassing UN and USAID oversight. As a strong pro-lifer, he would continue the Mexico City Policy.
He supported passage of the PEPFAR bill in 2008.
Score: -0.5 points.
During the primaries, Biden expressed some good ideas for engagement with Africa, but didn’t mention aid. As Senator, Biden supported food and medicinal aid to Africa in 2001, reconstruction efforts in the Balkans in 2001, a greater foreign aid budget in 2000, IMF funding in 1998, and funding to stabilize Russia in 1993 (OnTheIssues). He wants to end the global gag rule.
Score: 1.9 points.
Harris hasn't said much but, as a typical Democrat, she would probably support foreign aid more than Republicans and would end the global gag rule.
Harris has said she would send more aid to Venezuela.
Score: 1 point.
Trump signed an executive order promoting skill-based hiring over degree requirements in federal agencies, which should lead to better federal employees.
Trump’s term has generally been associated with a trend of “democratic backsliding”. The democratic performance of the US has declined during his tenure. In some ways, the United States could benefit from a reduction in democracy, but Trump’s tenure isn't remotely associated with the appropriate kind of shift towards expert leadership.
Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, has undermined the moral authority of the Inspector General by asserting that Durham’s probe supersedes an IG report on the FISA process for the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s campaign. He has also diverted time and money to investigate a spurious conspiracy theory (which is dismissed by informed Republicans and Democrats alike) of hoaxing by CrowdStrike and Ukrainian officials in the 2016 election.
Trump has encouraged and pressured foreign governments to try to manipulate the US presidential election, for instance by announcing an investigation of Joe Biden. There is actually pretty good reason to think that foreigners should have some degree of influence in domestic politics, but in this case Trump has specifically asked for manipulation (releasing hacked emails, spurious investigations in Ukraine) and for interference by autocrats who do not represent broad human interests (Russian and Chinese interference).
Trump has made more ‘not qualified’ judicial appointments than any of the preceding four presidents. While these ABA ratings may be biased against Republicans, Trump is still doing worse than either President Bush. As for his Supreme Court appointments in particular, both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were unanimously well qualified, although Kvanaugh was overshadowed by allegations of sexual assault in his teenage years (further implying that he lied about it under oath). Another problem was the possibility that Kavanaugh was picked on the basis of his opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, which would make his appointment a political maneuver to protect Trump, although he might simply have been the only unanimously well-qualified conservative judge who was a good fit for a SCOTUS appointment. Overall, since ABA ratings are the best indicator, Trump’s SCOTUS appointments seem alright but his broader pattern of appointments seems poor.
The Trump administration represents a more powerful and uninhibited unitary executive, through a combination of ambitious political initiatives (such as declaring an emergency to get border wall funding), backroom maneuvering (such as the Ukraine scandal), and the soft power inherent in having a very high approval rating among the Republican base (many of whom constitute an arguably cult-like following). Trump’s war on the ‘deep state’ is a shift away from the power of the bureaucratic, careerist elements of the executive branch towards centralized power in a unitary elected leader. Trump has shaped the Republican party to be more favorable towards the idea of a president who doesn’t have to worry so much about the courts or congress.
Attorney General William Barr defended this philosophy in a speech to the Federalist Society. I'll ignore Barr’s dubious partisan rhetoric about the particular virtues and vices of Trump and other politicians, and focus on the main underlying idea. One of his arguments is that the Founding Fathers preferred a strong executive. However, it’s not clear whether today’s presidency is strong or weak by the standards of the late 18th century, and the Founding Fathers could have been wrong about this. Barr argues that aversion to a strong executive is founded upon a specific Whig experience of political change that does not generalize well. However, he neglects a common recent phenomenon in flawed democracies (such as the United States) where executive leaders abuse their position to become increasingly autocratic and harmful, with examples including Russia, Turkey, Bolivia and Venezuela. Barr argues that the executive branch has been weakening in America, but I think it’s not clear if he is right when it comes to domestic policy, whereas the AUMF and drone campaigns clearly indicate increased executive power in military policy.
Barr notes that a strong unitary elected executive is important for addressing certain political issues. But there are also significant downsides. First, there is the potential for the leader to distort the democratic process for personal and political ends, as noted previously for other flawed democracies. Second, there is a lack of continuity in policy over elections. Third, such a system subverts technical bureaucratic expertise in favor of obeying popular sentiment; this is a perpetual tradeoff in government where no simplistic judgment can be made, but currently the US seems to usually be erring too far against technical bureaucratic expertise.
Overall, Trump’s increase in norms for a stronger, unitary executive leader seems like a bad development. However it should be noted that Trump is neither capable nor interested in governing like a true authoritarian or fascist. Instead he is more of a weak kleptocrat, who pursues office for personal and emotional reasons rather than implementing a dangerous plan. This was made particularly clear in the COVID-19 pandemic, where Trump did not take advantage of the crisis to implement new powers, but instead fixated on myopic electioneering and petty partisanship.
Trump is certainly setting precedents that a more serious and intelligent political leader could use to seize stronger power and turn America towards more of a right-wing autocracy. This would be very unfortunate, though naïve comparisons to Nazi Germany would still exaggerate the problem.
Score: -2 points.
As a Republican, Pence presumably opposes most of the beneficial reforms discussed here. Score: -1 point.
Biden has sort of been supportive of Puerto Rican statehood but has not definitively made a position. His Twitter account recently said that DC should be a state. He hasn't committed to abolish the filibuster. I give him 0.5 points.
Harris supports D.C. statehood. During the primaries she did not have a section on Puerto Rico. Score: 0.5 points.
Trump has mostly mishandled our great power relations, as described fully in the original Candidate Scoring System document.
Score: -2.8 points.
Pence actively opposed the JCPOA as vice president. In 2008, he supported cooperating with India as a nuclear power. As a Republican, he will likely support a strong military budget.
Pence botched his diplomatic visit to the 2018 APEC summit in Papua New Guinea by initially refusing to stay overnight (citing security concerns) and remaining surrounded by a bubble of aides and bodyguards, granting no time for personal contact except for photo opportunities. Xi Jinping in comparison was much more personal and generous with his time at the same event.
I give him -0.9 points.
“When it comes to foreign affairs, Biden and his advisers are nonideological and mainly transactional. In Obama’s situation room, he sometimes urged restraint, according to people who were there, and sometimes was hawkish. Rather than being associated with a particular school of statecraft or a signature policy accomplishment, Biden is known for his intimacy with world leaders.” He is likely to be heavily influenced by strategic consultants who are reminiscent of lobbyists.See this article.
Biden has a large amount of experience with foreign policy. His election would signal to our allies that we are returning to something like the normalcy of the Obama era as best as can be achieved, and would empower the mainstream foreign policy establishment (especially given his inevitable reliance on staff due to his age), which could imply renewal of American commitment to key allies and institutions but also refusal to abandon or at least properly update the conventional mindset of American primacy.
Biden doesn’t express any realism about North Korean denuclearization.
He supported cooperating with India as a nuclear power.
He has provided some rough plans for nuclear treaties. He also seems to imply that he will work to put NFU into practice, “in consultation with our allies and military,” which may be fine.
Biden seems to want to maintain our military budget, but shifted to more effective priorities.
Biden’s foreign policy outline was highly praised by Charles Lister.
I give him 1.1 points.
See this article.
Harris doesn’t have much track record or substantial statements about foreign policy. She seems similar to other Democrats, taking positions such as wanting to return to the JCPOA. She might promote stronger US-Indian ties due to her ethnicity. Score: 0.4 points.
The Trump administration has taken few concrete steps against lead pollution that weren’t legally mandated, and has rolled back some useful regulations.
Trump’s former EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, tried to expedite cleanup of Superfund sites. However he also damaged the EPA with his gross corruption.
Score: -1.8 points.
Score: -1.5 points.
Biden’s platform doesn’t seem to commit to any specific actions against lead and other toxins, but he is generally a standard liberal environmentalist and would appoint responsible people to the EPA. Score: 1.2 points.
Harris has pledged to reduce environmental pollution disparities, but her climate change plan was flawed compared to those of other Democrats (suggesting poor policy on other environmental issues), and she may be implicated in a Treasure Island pollutant scandal. Score: 1 point.
Score: -2 points.
Score: -2 points.
Score: 2 points.
Score: 2 points.
According to 2018 CBO projections, Trump’s policies have weakened (but not gutted) the improvements from the Affordable Care Act, with an increase of approximately 4 million uninsured people. Trump has repeatedly expressed an inclination to allow the ACA to fail. Trump pushed the AHCA, which was generally criticized and unpopular among a variety of sources. Trump’s current health proposal indicates a continued insistence on repealing ACA without a beneficial replacement in place. He refused to reopen Obamacare markets.
However, the FY 2021 proposal for Medicare seems responsible. He has pushed for price transparency from medical providers.
Trump has promoted stricter Medicaid work requirements. He is also trying to block states from expanding Medicaid. This is despite the fact that Medicaid treats the opioid abuse that harms many American communities.
Psychedelic research has flourished under the Trump administration.
Score: -0.8 points.
Pence opposed the Affordable Care Act and did not offer a clear replacement. In 2016 while campaigning for Trump he stated they would support Health Savings Accounts as a solution; this is inefficient and burdensome compared to regular risk pooling. As somewhat who has been harsh on drug policy, he probably won’t be permissive on psychedelic research. I give him -2.6 points.
Biden’s first priority seems to be expanding the Affordable Care Act, which is unlikely to achieve much because of Republican opposition and the intractable complexity of the law. Biden also supports a Medicare buy-in public option, but perhaps won’t fight much for it.
As somewhat who has been harsh on drug policy, Biden probably won’t be permissive on psychedelic research. Biden would promote treatment over prison for opioid abuse. Biden plans to end tax breaks for pharmaceutical advertising.
Biden wants a nationwide expansion of California’s anti-maternity-mortality system, which arguably cut California’s maternal mortality in half.
Biden opposes the rational practice of prioritizing limited healthcare resources on the basis of age or disability.
Score: 0.2 points.
Harris initially said she supported Medicare-for-all but pivoted to a more moderate plan than Bernie Sanders’. She previously cosponsored public option legislation. She says she would be very aggressive in attacking pharma companies, but she does take quite a bit of money from pharma donors. I give her 0.5 points.
Trump’s appointee for HUD secretary, Ben Carson, stated early on that he would roll back NIMBY laws, but backtracked on this. He has rejected the idea of ending apartment bans. Carson is inexperienced and incompetent at running the agency. Carson has streamlined the AFFH process, making it less bureaucratically onerousComments by Alix Ollivier.. He has stated that he will leave the office at the end of Trump’s term.
Trump took one good action when he signed an executive order to roll back red tape restricting housing. More recently, he railed in defense of single-family zoning.
Trump also condemned the AFFH regulation which helps increase housing supply for minorities. HUD is terminating AFFH because it requires land use reform.
As the election season heated up, Trump and Carson jointly published a terrible op-ed criticizing housing reform and promising to “protect the suburbs”.
Score: -1.6 points.
I was not able to find useful information to judge Pence, so I give him 0 points.
Biden has a comprehensive anti-NIMBY housing plan, though he waited until very late in the race to release it. Matt Yglesias believes the plan is really good. Biden will enforce the AFFH in a manner which removes local control of housing construction.
Biden said he wants to ensure that all formerly incarcerated individuals have housing; this would generally be a good step although it could be considered wrongful if it applies to certain cases like individuals renting out rooms in their home.
Score: 1.9 points.
Harris has a housing policy proposal that does not address restrictive zoning and seems to have more problems than those of other Democratic candidates. It basically issues housing vouchers, which are not an adequate long-term solution. Score: -1.4 points.
Trump initially focused on obstructing undocumented migration. He
suggested shooting
migrants in the legs and implementing other brutal measures;
agencies have and presumably will always refuse to do this because
it is so clearly wrong, but if they are ever willing to act
brutally, then it seems like it would probably be permitted by the
courts under the precedent of Hernandez v Mesa. Also,
Trump’s comments clearly indicate he does not even have a basic
level of humanitarian concern for migrants’ interests.
Trump has also tried to obstruct pathways for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status. Trump attempted to end DACA, lost the legal battle, then decided to circumvent the ruling.
Trump has cut legal immigration in half, and he’s not done yet.
In 2018, Trump passed additional restrictions on legal immigration. In 2019 he moved to suspend visas for immigrants without health insurance. Trump also endorsed the RAISE Act that would have cut legal immigration by half, although it also would have introduced a points system. Fortunately it hasn’t passed.
Trump did occasionally express more positive views towards legal immigration. In early 2019 he occasionally expressed support for increasing legal immigration. In May 2019 Trump proposed a new immigration plan. It included a strong increase in merit-based immigration at the expense of relatives and randomly selected migrants. It required immigrants who can integrate better with American society (could be good or bad depending on how it’s implemented). However nothing seems to have come of any of this. Whether Trump changed his mind about immigration, was restrained by stricter nativists in his political circle, or simply lost appetite for it after unemployment rose in 2020 is unclear.
After this point, the Trump administration became even more nativist. He signed an executive order suspending a variety of temporary work visas for both high- and low-skilled workers, which was allegedly an unlawful action. The Trump administration is ending visas for dozens of foreign journalists working for Voice of America.
ICE has barred new international students from coming to America if their scheduled coursework is fully online. This is significant because many colleges are going online due to COVID-19. However, the rule might be easy to circumvent. Earlier, ICE attempted to expel current international students in the United States who are only taking online classes. After immediate pushback, ICE rescinded the order. But the episode may have eroded foreigners’ interest and trust in the United States as a destination for education and immigration more generally.
Trump has also gutted the refugee program. After cutting refugee admissions by a third in 2019, Trump brought the cap down further to 18,000 for 2020. This is by far the lowest rate in recent US history.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Trump administration has broadly raised a variety of implicit barriers against legal immigration, creating entrenched opposition that will continue for years. The DHS has added pointless paperwork for visa renewals. Some kind of underfunding, ineptitude and possibly callousness at USCIS has prevented many legally approved immigrants from getting their proper paperwork and cards.
Trump also passed a travel ban against some countries, and is recently expanding it to more, including Nigeria, on the basis of spurious fears over terrorism.
Overall, I give Trump -3.1 points.
Pence has opposed the DREAM Act but supported a guest worker program. As governor, he opposed efforts to settle Syrian refugees, though he firmly opposed calls for a blanket ban on Muslims. As vice president, he gave assurances that the administration welcomes legal immigrants. I give him 0.2 points.
Biden supports the DREAM Act. Biden has supported guest worker programs but has opposed visas. Currently he wants to reform the visa system including moderate visa expansion. He wants to take many more immigrants and refugees, setting the refugee cap at 125,000 and raising it over time. Biden was a little late on releasing a detailed immigration plan compared to other Democrats in the primaries. I give him 2.5 points.
Harris supports the DREAM Act. She took one action to protect some existing visa holders of her own ethnicity. I give her 1.4 points.
Trump’s policy towards Israel has been complicated. Early in his term, his policy was surprisingly conventional and balanced. But in February 2019, a political analyst considered him extremely pro-Israel. He was close with Netanyahu before distancing himself in October 2019. The Trump administration created a comprehensive peace plan, which was a badly executed fantasy. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which makes it more difficult to create a settlement.
Due to the general intractability and failure of the conventional peace process, there is hope for some kind of wild Trumpian outside-the-box thinking to create progress, but in reality Trump’s policy will probably continue to be set by steadfast pro-Israel people in his inner circles, and his dealmaking skills are not nearly as good as advertised.
Israel has normalized relations with the UAE and Bahrain, possibly thanks to mediation by the Trump administration, but another administration might have accomplished this too.
Score: -1 point.
Pence is strongly pro-Israel, and probably very dogmatic about it due to being an Evangelical Christian. I give him -2.2 points.
Biden is fairly pro-Israel. He would maintain current aid. I give him -1.1 points.
Harris is strongly pro-Israel. I give her -1.5 points.
Trump did not criticize the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. He did raise controversy over transgender participation in the military. I give him -0.4 points.
I give Pence -3 points.
I give Biden 1 point.
I give Harris 1 point.
Trump has, overall, increased the number of American troops in the Middle East, while making our efforts less effective and more inhumane.
Trump ended the covert US support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria. Trump’s sudden unilateral pullout from Syria early in his term met heavy criticism, though it was subsequently revised to leave 400 troops behind. Trump’s retaliations against Syrian use of chemical weapons are usually considered good moves. Under his tenure, we have stopped demanding regime change and merely pushed for Assad to stop his war crimes and other abuses.
Trump failed to dissuade Turkey from its invasion of parts of Rojava, and arguably gave them an unofficial green light by withdrawing (New York Times), while providing no support for the Kurds until later. The Turkish intervention led to mass displacement, roadside executions of suspected militants, executions of civilians and a politician, and weakening of the Rojava democratic socialist experiment. It led to mass breakouts of ISIS prisoners, though it does not seem to have led to a rise in the overall ISIS threat (2019 DOD OIG report, p. 38). It may lead to the empowerment of Hezbollah. Its erratic execution weakens trust in the US, and it is often perceived as a betrayal of the Kurds. The Trump administration’s behavior was bungling and created a crisis out of internal incoherence. Foreign policy experts consistently condemn Trump’s actions, as do many Republicans and military personnel. The administration managed to partially staunch the crisis by negotiating a ceasefire, which contained an agreement that all Kurds would have to vacate the border area, which is ethnic cleansing. This agreement was promptly followed by violations of continued fighting. It was then superseded by an agreement between Turkey and Russia which cemented Russia as a key player in the region.
Trump has a poor understanding of the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and cannot talk with Erdogan on equal footing. The Trump administration has repeatedly blocked a measure to recognize the Armenian Genocide, adding a moral obstacle to moderating the behavior of Turkey and other countries.
Trump accelerated the defeat of the Islamic State with continued support to the SDF and Iraq, though this probably would have been done by any president. The Trump administration has used economic leverage to try to push Iraq to accept continued U.S. military presence. While the mission in Iraq is basically good, this kind of coercion weakens Iraqi sovereignty, damages perceptions of the US, and creates a moral hazard where American leaders are less accountable to foreigners’ interests.
The Trump administration attempted negotiations with the Taliban to end the conflict in Afghanistan, but did not include the Afghan government and ended up signing a poor deal. Then Trump accelerated the U.S. troop drawdown.
Trump has voiced support for the Libyan rebel general Khalifa Haftar, a very destructive move. A possible path for resolving the Libyan crisis has been proposed, but the Trump administration has not embraced it. And the Trump administration has not significantly supported peace talks.
Trump has overseen American support for the inhumane Saudi intervention in Yemen.
Trump aims to slash the budget for peacekeeping in Somalia, but he has increased direct engagement and support for the AU’s efforts.
Trump has inadvertently emboldened Biafran secessionists.
Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani; it’s unclear whether this was good or bad. According to an Israeli intelligence general, Iran's moves have halted or slowed since Soleimani was killed.
Trump has increased military spending, though he has diverted a little bit to fund the border wall, including OCO funding.
The Trump administration’s actions in the Middle East have been erratic and destabilizing, worse than Obama’s (comments by Barbara Leaf, 1:00:28).
Trump placed Rex Tillerson, who lacks foreign policy experience, as Secretary of State. Tillerson has been criticized by foreign policy experts. Trump then fired him over disagreements. Trump has badly undermined the diplomatic capacities of the State Department. There is an unconfirmed report that the State Department is now deplatforming government speakers if they have been critical of Trump, something which Obama did not do. Trump has refused to make appointments to a large number of national security positions, leaving them filled by inferior acting officials. Career diplomats have been pushed out for bad reasons.
Trump has centralized foreign policy decision making in the White House rather than the State Department, which seems particularly bad given the significant problems of his own decision making and staff. Trump fired the DNI for political reasons and appointed an unqualified person his place. Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel was fired because of a personal grudge by the First Lady.
Trump is ignorant and impatient in foreign policy briefings. Trump has exerted political influence to change military transgender policy, in a manner which contradicts numerous experts and recommendations.
Trump has helped move military aid to Ukraine, but also withheld it for political reasons in the Trump-Ukraine scandal.
Trump has also prodded Europe to improve its defense spending, although this is a bit less good in the context of Trump’s weakening of American ties to NATO, as it may lead to intra-European competition.
Trump has pardoned soldiers accused of war crimes, including Eddie Gallagher who almost certainly murdered civilians, and was subsequently treated as a hero by right-wing Americans and launched commercial ventures profiting off his status. This was one of the most singularly perverse actions of the Trump administration.
Trump halted transfers from Guantanamo Bay, thus stranding an innocent man named Latif Nasser in the prison.
Trump has been severely reckless with sensitive information.
Trump has bizarrely made open statements in favor of taking oil from the Middle East. There are rumors that American officials lied to Trump that American troops in Rojava would seize Syrian oil reserves, because that would be more convincing to Trump than other considerations. American forces were spotted defending oil fields in Northeast Syria in 2019. In actuality there seems to be a legitimate mission of protecting Kurdish-owned oil fields, but the narrow focus on oil rather than other issues in the area, combined with Trump’s own statements, badly damage US legitimacy in the region by vindicating the longtime conspiracy theory that American involvement in the Middle East is a play to steal oil resources.
Many of Trump’s other attitudes and statements have met substantial international condemnation and thereby weaken America’s global moral legitimacy. Global approval of U.S. leadership dropped substantially after Trump’s election, and remained low in 2018. This makes it harder for American soldiers and diplomats to operate effectively around the world.
Score: -2.6 points.
Pence supported the American invasion of Iraq. Score: -1.3 points.
Biden made two serious misjudgments about war as a senator - he voted against the first Gulf War, and then supported the later invasion of Iraq.
As VP, he made further misjudgments. Biden claims to have been right about Libya, but actually praised the decision in 2011, apparently neglecting the need for follow-on engagement. Biden repeatedly pushed for withdrawal from the Iraq War counterinsurgency. At times he wanted to prioritize Afghanistan over Iraq. He also sometimes advocated for reducing deployments in Afghanistan to focus on lighter tools and engagement with Pakistan. Fortunately, he has criticized Trump’s involvement with Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
“When it comes to foreign affairs, Biden and his advisers are nonideological and mainly transactional. In Obama’s situation room, he sometimes urged restraint, according to people who were there, and sometimes was hawkish. Rather than being associated with a particular school of statecraft or a signature policy accomplishment, Biden is known for his intimacy with world leaders.” Biden is likely to be heavily influenced by strategic consultants who are reminiscent of lobbyistsSee this article..
Score: -2.5 points.
Harris, like any candidate, aims to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Score: -0.7 points.
Trump has achieved significant occupational licensing reform. I give him 2 points.
I don’t have information on Pence; I give him 1 point as is probably typical for a Republican.
Biden criticized excessive occupational licensing in 2018. I give him 0.4 points.
I haven’t found information on Harris. I give her -1 point as is probably typical for a Democrat.
The Republican tax bill under Trump included an expansion of the CTC, which Ivanka Trump promoted. The expansion had significant positive benefits for most groups.
The Trump administration has strengthened work requirements for SNAP, expected to take 700,000 people off the program, even though there is no substantial evidence that work requirements are effective. Score: -0.8 points.
I don't have relevant information about Pence, I give him -0.8 points, which is probably typical for a Republican.
Biden wants to expand the EITC to older workers. He supports a child tax credit.
Dylan Matthews thinks that Biden’s programs could achieve the biggest poverty reduction in America since LBJ’s Great Society.
Score: 1.5.
Harris supports expansion of EITC and has been a longtime cosponsor of the American Family Act. I give her 1.5 points.
There are numerous flaws with the TCJA.
Trump removed numerous tax deductions, but provided a pass-through deduction.
The White House is considering a minimum book tax on corporations.
IRS budget cuts under Trump have reduced its audit capabilities.
Trump wants to provide deductions for restaurants and entertainment, which is poorly targeted relief and would reduce the tax base, according to Scott Greenberg.
Trump will create slightly less debt than Biden.
Score: -1.6.
Pence has supported replacing income taxes and estate taxes with a very large sales tax. As governor, he supported a balanced budget amendment. Score: -1.5.
"In 2021, Biden’s proposals would increase taxes, on average, for the top 5 percent of households and reduce taxes on households in the bottom 95 percent. In 2030, Biden’s proposals would increase taxes, on average, for households at every income level, but tax increases would primarily fall on the top 1 percent of income earners."According to an AEI analysis.
Biden wants to create a 10% minimum book tax and repeal the SALT cap. His long-term care tax credit is paternalistic, kludgy, and nonrefundable, making it James Medlock's "least favorite Dem policy proposal of the 2020 cycle."
Biden supports weakening Prop 13.
Biden will create slightly more debt than Trump.
Score: 0.
Harris wants higher taxes on the wealthy, but also supports the SALT cap. She wants to increase the estate tax. Score: 0.5.
Trump has typically opposed free trade.
He started a trade war with China aimed at revising trade in ways more favorable to certain parts of the United States. He achieved only modest success. Since renegotiations, America still maintains significant levels of trade with China. But the trade war caused a 31.5% loss of imports and an 11% loss of exports, and damaged African economies.
Trump has damaged trading relations with a variety of more friendly countries, and has broadly promoted a protectionist doctrine.
Trump has exhibited benign neglect of America's trading relationships with African countries. US trade with Africa has increased over Trump’s term, and it increased faster than the rate of increased trade with the rest of the world, presumably in line with Africa's faster economic growth.
Trump exited NAFTA but then led us back into the USMCA, which is mostly similar, just slightly inferior (with harsher standards to discourage foreign manufacturing). This was a bad disruption of international trade, but the ratification of USMCA at least shows that Trump isn’t as anti-trade as some other politicians.
Trump restricted medical gear exports during the COVID-19 pandemic, though most presidents would likely do the same.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act encouraged the offshoring of pharmaceutical and other high-tech industries, but rather than sending them to low-wage countries (where the offshoring might produce the most welfare), it sent them to “countries known for their high tolerance of transfer pricing games and generous tax treatment of multinational firms.”
Score: -1.5.
Pence supported free trade in 42 out of 66 votes (64%) as representative, according to a now-defunct CATO tool. Score: 1.9 points.
In terms of promoting freer trade, Biden’s platform isn’t good, it’s merely not horrible. In fact it may even create a bipartisan consensus for economic populism. That being said, he’s much more moderate than protectionist politicians. His plan could provide useful resiliency in the event of hostility between America and China.
Biden wants to organize the global trade community to take on China and defended trade deals in debates. Biden supports NAFTA and the TPP; he says he won’t make the TPP a priority but will probably aim to join it as the economy improves. He accurately recognizes the perverse incentive of GILTI.
Biden supported free trade in 27 out of 59 votes (46%) as Senator, according to a now-defunct CATO tool.
Score: 1 point.
Harris opposes the TPP. Score: -0.5 points.
Trump is considering an executive order to make all federal research open access.
Trump signed an executive order getting rid of degree requirements for federal agencies, replacing them with skill requirements.
Trump signed an executive order promoting foster child adoption. It was criticized for giving money to faith-based groups which don’t perform gay adoptions, but that is only a minor downside.
Trump’s Venezuela policy has failed.
Trump has agitated to buy Greenland. This might be a good idea but nothing seems to have come of it.
Trump and his FCC chairman Ajit Pai have implemented net neutrality, which economists tend to agree with. There has been fierce popular criticism to net neutrality, but after watching it happen, it is apparent that the fears were misplaced.
Melania Trump’s efforts seem to be pretty average for a First Lady.
Score: 0.1.
Pence would likely keep much of Trump’s incompetent staff and cabinet. Score: -2.4.
Biden supports AB5, California’s law against gig work. This kind of exclusionary regulation hurts economic mobility and opportunity. Score: -0.3.
Harris supports laws against price gouging. Score: -0.2.
I enter Trump's age into the formula, but I subtract -0.25 because there have been moderately credible allegations that he exhibits signs of dementia or similar mental illness. I also subtract -0.35 because he contracted COVID-19, a disease which inflicts cognitive damage. Trump seems to have had a moderate case which warranted medical attention (he was also hospitalized, but that was probably a privilege granted for the president rather than a signal of how severe his case was). Score: -2.
I enter Pence's age into the formula. Score: 0.46.
I enter Biden's age into the formula, but I also subtract -0.4 because his patterns of speech have become worrying, although his speech has always been somewhat disjointed and erratic. Score: -2.94.
I enter Harris's age into the formula, but with a bonus for her gender. Score: 1.2.
Georgetown senior fellow Matt Glassman thinks that Trump is easily the most corrupt president in American history. Start with this CREW article going over his worst offenses, and follow the links therein for further details. I have a few things to add.
For a deep analysis of the Ukraine scandal and refutations of defenses of Trump, see the addendum at the bottom of this webpage. The scandal is so bad that Trump clearly deserved to be impeached, and almost certainly deserves to be removed from office. The fact that Trump did something that merits impeachment and conviction reflects very badly on his fitness to govern. Even if my judgment on impeachment/conviction is wrong, Trump can still be accused of unethical or corrupt behavior in his dealings with Ukraine and his responses to the resulting scandal. The main defenses of Trump are that his conduct was “wrong, but not impeachable,” or “wrong, but the Democrats haven’t gathered sufficient evidence for legal reasons.” These are poor defenses, but even if they are correct, they don't change the fact that his behavior was corrupt.
Another disputed part of Trump's corruption story is the Michael Flynn saga. Noah Rothman for instance argues that Flynn really didn’t deserve to be indicted. But these arguments don't change the fact that he is a liar and a terrible appointee. Also, there is still a good case to be made that Flynn really did deserve to be indicted. Nearly 2,000 former DOJ officials called on Barr to resign for dropping charges against Flynn.
There have also been a variety of other infractions not included in the aforementioned CREW article. Two severe ones are that Trump has refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power after the election, and that he did not press for more coronavirus testing in part because he believed that positive tests would harm his reelection chances. Other problems include: The Trump administration removed White House visitor logs, reducing transparency. The OPM lacked transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s head of the VOA may have misused nonprofit funds. There is an unconfirmed report that the State Department is now deplatforming government speakers if they have been critical of Trump, something which Obama did not do. In retaliation for Colonel Alexander Vindman’s testimony to Congress, Trump removed him and his brother from their White House positions, and led him to resign through an intimidation campaign. Trump instructed an official to take whatever actions necessary to secure the border, saying that he would pardon him if he got into legal trouble. Ivanka Trump has violated the misuse of position regulation and has violated the Hatch Act many times.
The Trump campaign was also very corrupt. It had “a collection of comically inept crooks and grifters who were looking to gain any advantage they could — without regard for morality, law, or common sense.” A court found that Trump ran a fundraiser advertised as benefiting veterans, then illegally used the money for his campaign. The Donald J. Trump foundation likely broke the law by supporting Trump's presidential campaign. Trump’s Oklahoma campaign chair hired a 17-year-old prostitute and possessed child porn.
The Mueller investigation did not find evidence of an illegal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. However, many members of the Trump campaign did have frequent secret contacts with Russian officials which remain grounds for some suspicion of corrupt dealings. Donald Trump Jr., not officially in the campaign but very informally involved, encouraged Russian agents to share incriminating information about Hillary Clinton and didn’t report it to the FBI, an action which was “unpatriotic and seems pretty unethical.” Trump openly invited Russia to influence the election with hacked emails from Clinton.
Four Trump associates from the campaign have been indicted as a result of the Mueller investigation. Paul Manafort was convicted for financial crimes and obstruction of justice, while his associate Konstantin Kilimnik was indicted for witness tampering that Manafort had requested. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to campaign finance violations, tax fraud, bank fraud, and lying to a Senate committee. He claimed that his violations of campaign finance laws – payments to cover up Trump’s affairs – were ordered by Trump. Campaign advisor George Papadopoulos was convicted for making false statements to the FBI. Trump’s advisor Roger Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering, although one of the jurors later turned out to have political bias, so this verdict is not perfectly strong.
The Mueller investigation found one case where Trump may have committed obstruction of justice during his campaign.
Trump also engaged in many corrupt activities before his presidential campaign, including cheating his way into college and embezzling money from a kids’ cancer charity. He associated with billionaire serial sex offender and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, with activities including attending parties, discussing sex, and visiting his private island. (More recently, Trump sent well-wishes to Ghislaine Maxwell, in jail on charges of handling Epstein's underage sex ring. But frankly this was so stupid and out-of-touch that to me it suggests that Trump has a degree of ignorance and distance from the operation.)
Opinion columnist David Leonhardt has listed some of these and other incidents into a list of Trump’s corrupt behavior, counting 42 instances as of October 2019 (New York Times, New York Times). Another summary was written by Jonathan Chait, who made a comprehensive list of reasons to impeach Trump. Not all are impeachment worthy, but they are still bad.
Conspiracy theories paint Donald Trump as an
anti-corruption figure, but they are deeply wrong.In
defense of Trump, many believe that the federal government has a
thoroughly corrupt system of biased “deep state” bureaucrats and
establishment politicians, and that Trump is facing so much
resistance because they are afraid that Trump will upend the
system and expose their own damning corruption. This point of
view, if true, wouldn’t exonerate Trump for the corrupt behavior
he is known to have committed, except in a rather dubious
ends-justify-the-means fashion. But it would cast doubt on the
veracity of some unproven bureaucratic allegations, it would
imply that Trump’s behavior is not more corrupt than what other
politicians may secretly do, and it would imply that Trump
should also be applauded for starting the difficult process of
“draining the swamp”.
However, this point of view does not seem to be taken seriously
by any policy experts, including those outside the government
and those working outside the country, and including Effective
Altruists who have worked with the US government and might have
firsthand experience of deep state corruption if it exists. The
lead author has met a few people in the intelligence community
and perceived them to lean right-wing, a perception which is
shared by others and makes it more difficult to believe the
conspiracy theory. Rampant, severe pro-establishment bias in the
media, think tanks and academia (across leftist, liberal, and
mainstream conservative sources) would be required to hide
evidence for this theory. But I haven’t seen evidence to
substantiate this level of bias, and even if it exists we would
still have to find actual evidence that this theory about the
deep state is in fact correct. And then we would have to uncover
evidence that Trump actually is trying to reduce the deep-state
corruption in a serious way.
The highest-profile potential example of deep state corruption,
the idea that there was a Ukrainian conspiracy to frame Russia
for interfering in the 2016 election, instead of actual Russian
interference, appears transparently false (Twitter, The
Bulwark). Trump’s former homeland security advisor said that the
Crowdstrike conspiracy theory is “completely debunked”
(Reuters). It’s true that some Ukrainian officials pushed back
against Trump’s campaign (Politico, Washington Examiner), but it
was not election interference (Politico), and it falls well
short of the kind of thing that could justify Trump’s behavior.
Trump supporters also alleged anti-Trump bias in the FBI’s
investigation of Russian links to Trump’s campaign. But an
Office of the Inspector General report found that these claims
were unfounded (Twitter thread). Finally, though Trump and his
defenders alleged that Christopher Steele (a former British
intelligence officer) was trying to take down Trump with a
biased dossier, it later turned out that he had a personal
relationship with Ivanka Trump (Salon).
A far simpler explanation is that Trump simply is a corrupt
politician who runs on a narrative of faux anti-corruption
politics. Trump has a reflexive, partisan,
anti-corruption streak. “Donald
Trump believes that just about everyone he doesn’t like must be
corrupt or engaged in lawbreaking of some manner and should be
investigated.” This is nominally anti-corruption behavior but
in a perverse form. Some historians and political scientists say
that corrupt, autocratic behavior is often disguised under the veil
of “anti-corruption” politics which enables politicians to use the
executive powers of the state to disadvantage or purge their rivals.
Trump clearly does not make a genuine, productive effort to
eliminate corruption. He may really care about corruption in his own
biased partisan way, or he may be cynically exploiting the idea for
political gain. The latter seems more likely. Either way, the
results are the same.
Score: -4.5 points.
Pence has had a fairly long career without accusations of corruption before his vice presidency. He could be considered complicit in the unusual corruption of the Trump administration, but it would be pretty unusual for a vice president to really speak out against the behavior of the president, and as a matter of principle the vice president probably should not comment on impeachment proceedings.
However, he seems to have illegitimately classified evidence in order to protect Trump from impeachment.
He would likely keep many of Trump’s current staff, who tend to be more corrupt. However this is of only moderate importance because the worst Trump associates are generally in his personal circles, not formal appointments to government positions, and these are likely to leave if Pence becomes president.
Score: -1.1 points.
Biden has had a long career without many credible accusations of corruption.
He has been accused of corruption for his actions in Ukraine, but a Republican-led Senate inquiry (as well as mainstream media reporting and analysis of Biden's actions) found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Biden follows a pledge to never own individual stocks while in office.
In response to Trump’s brazen dismissals of many inspectors general, Biden has pledged not to fire a single one. While it is good to avoid politically motivated firings of inspectors general, that could be expected from any halfway honorable president. Biden’s pledge goes so far that it would prevent him from removing corrupt loyalists installed by Trump. Fortunately, it seems like the promise is unlikely to be kept. But more generally, Biden seems too conciliatory towards Republicans to conduct a political purge of Trump appointments.
Score: 0.2 points.
Harris received
an early career boost from California politician
Willie Brown (31 years older than her) in exchange for a sexual
relationship. Score: -1.3 points.
Trump attended Fordham University (average ranked) and then transferred to Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania (highly ranked). His admission is not impressive since he came from an extremely privileged family at a time when that sort of thing was more important than it is today. In fact, Mary Trump alleged that Trump cheated his way in with a false SAT score. Michael J. Cohen testified to Congress that Trump had organized legal threats to prevent his schools from releasing his grades, which (if true) suggests that his grades were average or worse. I give him -2.1 points.
Pence attended Handover University (average ranked) and studied law at IUPUI (average ranked). I give him 0.8 points.
Biden attended University of Delaware (average ranked) and studied law at Syracuse University College of Law (average ranked). In both schools his grades were low. I give him -2.4 points.
Harris attended Howard University, which is average ranked. However, it is a historically black college, which suggests that Harris may have attended for personal reasons despite being able to get accepted in a more selective college. She obtained a law degree at University of California, Hastings which is an average ranked law school. I give her 0.9 points.
Trump will have served 4 years as President of the United States. Still, his only other background is the wide range of business ventures that he ran for many decades. And he doesn’t seem to be learning much on the job. I give him 0.4 points.
Pence will have served 4 years as Vice President (or, with small probability, some of this time as President). He was governor for 4 years of a state with 6.6 million people and representative for 12 years. He was president of a minor think tank for 2 years. I give him 2.7 points.
Biden will have served 8 years as Vice President, 36 years as Senator and 3 years on a county council. I give him 2.3 points.
Harris will have served 4 years as Senator, 6 years as attorney general of a state of 38 million people, and 7 years as district attorney of a city of 800,000 people. I give her -1.3 points.
Trump's honesty score from PolitiFact ratings is 1.85, but after correcting for PolitiFact's 0.42 point estimated bias against him, this increases to 2.27.
Trump’s falsehoods are egregious compared to American political norms. Trump's reelection campaign is actively undermining the credibility of mainstream and local media to sow relativism and partisanship.
Trump has lied to investors about his finances and cheated on his SAT testsThis is alleged in Mary Trump's book..
Score: -3 points.
Pence's honesty score from PolitiFact ratings is 2.54. Score: -1.6 points.
Biden's honesty score from PolitiFact ratings is 2.92. I give him -1.1 points.
Harris's honesty score from PolitiFact ratings is 2.7. I give her -1.4 points.
Trump has spent more time on vacation than typical for a US President. Trump’s personal schedule is very unstructured, which is not necessarily bad, however there are unconfirmed reports that he spends lots of time just watching news and talking with his inner circle from his residence rather than properly dealing with the government and policy issues. Trump allegedly spends four to eight hours a day with the television on, though sometimes muted in the background. Trump has also isolated himself in his residence to avoid dealing with staffers. Trump reportedly does not pay close attention in briefings or read policy reports. According to Politico, he tears up documents when he’s done with them. He wastes officials’ time by throwing out bad ideas.
White House operations in his administration have been chaotic, marked by a high rate of leaks and some difficulty in retaining talent. Many prominent officials have resigned or been ousted, though the rate of turnover is not that much higher than it was under previous administrations.
The Trump administration has cut staff numbers and made political (as opposed to meritocratic) appointments in order to avoid leaks. Trump’s officials in the OPM and PPO have upended the executive hiring process to make political appointments rather than meritocratic ones. Trump has appointed four college seniors to be officials in his administration. Trump has also picked his family members to fill a number of roles.
Based on Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders, he seems to be overly aggressive and even sexist.
Michael Cohen testified to Congress in February 2019 that Trump refused to hire blacks in his inner circle, although he could have been simply saying what Democrats wanted to hear (he had already been convicted of perjury to Congress). Trump’s comment about judge Gonzalo Curiel suggests that he stereotypes people’s political views on the basis of their race and may hire accordingly. But Mary Trump’s extensive psychological account of Donald didn’t reveal any new evidence of racism.
Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault, by dozens of women (Wikipedia, 2019 book). Four cases have gone to court and none have yet been resolved against him. Trump once bragged about committing sexual assault, and with the large number of allegations that have been made, the probability that he is guilty of serious misbehavior is very high. Most allegations were made in or after 2016, in a time of extreme media hostility to his campaign and election as well as viral reporting of sexual misconduct (#MeToo), so there is room for skepticism that all allegations are true. However, victims of sexual assault often do avoid telling their story until they are primed by others or by current events much later on. Trump has also been repeatedly accused of making unnerving visits into female dressing rooms (Wikipedia). Finally, even leaving aside the allegations of serious misconduct, Trump is misogynistic. Overall, it is indisputable that Trump is guilty of much more sexual misconduct than is typical for an American politician.
Score: -2.85.
Pence follows and advocates the Billy Graham Rule (making it known as the ‘Pence Rule’) of not being alone with women other than his wife. This reduces risks of controversies and misconduct, but can also reduce women’s opportunities. Pence has strongly opposed LGBT legal protections, but I have not heard of any evidence of workplace discrimination by him or his gubernatorial administration. Score: 0 points.
Biden has uncomfortably touched a large number of women on places like their neck, hair, shoulders, and legs, and kissed one on the back of her head (randomly, without consent).
Tara Reade, a victim of Biden’s creepy touching, later alleged that Biden pushed her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers in 1993 while she was his staffer; when she turned away, he said he thought she liked him and insulted her.
Listening to the allegation does not provide a good sense of its veracity, because people are incapable of distinguishing false memories from true ones.
For a good overview of substantive arguments for/against the veracity of the story, see the essays by Cathy Young and Ben Burgis. I have a few things to add.
First, Reade’s brother was initially unable to corroborate her story in an interview, but several days later he followed up after having a conversation with Nathan Robinson and said that he recalled her saying that Biden had put his hand under her clothes. This reduces the value of his corroboration, as it seems similar to witness tampering. Nathan Robinson has endorsed Biden over Trump, but is very bitter about his victory over Sanders. Moreover, the media figures who interviewed Reade and broke the story, Katie Halper and Ryan Grim, have very left-wing views and have spread some falsehoods, although they are not total hacks or anything like that.
Third, Reade has a long pattern of unusually deceitful behavior including committing check fraud before she resigned from Biden’s office in 1993. Her deceit of a horse sanctuary was more deeply documented by the Krassenstein brothers, although they are not a reliable source (certainly no better than Halper/Grim/Robinson).
Fourth, there are numerous additional minor inconsistencies in Reade’s story.
Finally, Reade experienced financial trouble around the time that she changed her social media accounts and pivoted to praising Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders and Vladimir Putin. This slightly increases suspicion that she was paid for political behavior.
It could be a politically motivated false accusation, or perhaps Reade was dissatisfied by the way that people responded to the true story of her bad experience in Biden’s office, and wanted to rectify this by inventing a more serious allegation.
Overall, this seems less credible than the majority of such allegations against political figures. But it’s not one of the least credible. It’s more credible than allegations forwarded by Jacob Wohl (which are usually regarded as smears), and appears comparably credible to the groping allegation about Cory Booker and some of the later allegations about Brett Kavanaugh. It’s not as credible to Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation about Kavanaugh. But just making these comparisons doesn’t tell us whether it’s likely to be true or not. Judging whether the assault actually happened requires an assumption of the base rate of just how many such allegations tend to be true or false, and an assumption for how reliably we can tell the difference between more and less credible allegations. However, good data on this is lacking.
In my opinion, this story is about 15% likely to be true.
I give Biden -0.6 points.
Harris’s campaign staff were badly mistreated,
according to a resignation
letter. I give her -0.4 points.
This is a coefficient for how competent or incompetent a candidate will be in getting their goals achieved. According to Neustadt’s theory, presidential power largely consists of the ability to persuade the various organs of government to follow the president’s vision. The ability of a candidate to make laws and policies that ‘stick’ after they leave office is another part of it.
The default score is 1; a candidate with an effectiveness of 1.1 can be expected to achieve 10% more of their policy goals than the average candidate. This gets multiplied with the issue scores. So an ineffective candidate with bad policies will be cushioned against getting as low a score as an effective candidate with bad policies, because the former is more likely to fail at implementing their agenda. Meanwhile the qualifications scores are not affected by this metric.
My prior assumption for both parties is a score of 1. In most cases it’s tough to make any substantive judgement on this subject so candidates will be left with that.
My judgments of Trump are based on his actual track record in office, so I have already taken into account how much of his agenda succeeds or fails. Therefore I leave his effectiveness score at 1.
Pence seems to lack popularity and support from anyone outside of traditionalist conservatives and the GOP's business class backers. I give him 0.98.
Biden is a bit naïve about expecting Republicans to compromise with him, and seems reluctant to end the filibuster or pack the court. I give him 0.96.
Harris is more likely to end the filibuster. I give her 1.05.
I use this calculator to estimate the two-year mortality risk for presidential candidates starting in 2022. This is only half the chance that they will die during their term, but that balances for the fact that the replacement will only serve a partial term. I assume that drinkers have <1 unit of alcohol per day, which seems to be average for the US. For candidates who are much younger than 65 years old, I guess a lower risk to account for their apparent health, but at this point the differences are essentially meaningless for the overall score.
In one way, these numbers are overestimates because these people are often ‘superagers;’ privileged politicians get excellent medical care and are less likely to die than other people. But the president also faces considerable job stress, increasing health risks. In addition, there is also a risk of age-related illness or injury that may force a living president to temporarily or permanently step down.
Trump was born in 1946. He does not drink, he is 188cm tall and weighs 108kg, predicting a mortality risk of 4.6%. There were some controversial reports of him being in “excellent health,” though this seems to be said of every major politician. He might have dementia. After getting COVID19, his health is probably worse. I estimate 9% risk overall.
Biden was born in 1942. He had asthma as a teenager. He does not drink. He weighs about 82kg and is 183cm tall. His mortality risk is statistically 6.2%. He is reportedly in “excellent physical condition”, but this seems to be said of every major politician. I rate his risk at 6%.
The weighted average of candidates’ issue and qualification scores, adjusted for effectiveness, can be used to create merit scores which estimate how good or bad the candidates would be as President of the United States. The weights are taken from the Policy Platform section, but are adjusted for the unique features of the presidency. For instance, the foreign policy weights are increased here because the President has a lot of influence on that. All the calculations are done in this Excel model.
Trump: -206
Pence: -78
Biden: 42
Harris: 28
I then adjust for mortality risks and vice presidential merit, creating ticket scores which tell us who to vote for.
Trump: -194
Biden: 41
This straightforwardly indicates that in all states where we have a meaningful chance of changing the outcome of the election (all the classic swing states, plus marginal ones like Texas and Ohio), we should vote for Biden.
The scores show that this is a relatively important election year. In similar scoring that I have done for other candidates, Democrats are 111 points better than Republicans on average, but here Biden’s ticket is 235 points ahead of Trump’s. This suggests that 2020 is more than twice as important as the average presidential election. However, both candidates in 2020 are (almost certainly) going to have just one remaining term, which mildly lowers the stakes relative to an election where there is more chance of incumbency leading to reelection. Also, the Republican Party may continuously nominate people who are more like Trump in the future, in which case this election is still more important than those before 2016 but perhaps not more important than future ones. Finally, I suspect that I slightly underestimated the badness of other Republicans in my early evaluations, due to the lack of track records on their part and/or detailed research on my part, combined with my reluctance to give strong scores to little-known candidates. I still feel it’s fair to say that 2020 is between 1.4x and 2x as important as the average presidential election.
Every election is hyped to be more important than usual, so this claim will receive some understandable skepticism. But first of all, I will readily say that 2016 was a moderately more important election than this one, for a number of reasons. Electing Trump for the first time did more damage to our norms and governance than will be done by entrenching him for another four years, and Clinton was a better nominee than Biden (with a merit score of 92 as opposed to 42), and whoever won in 2016 was going to have a good shot at reelection in 2020.
Moreover, saying that 2020 is more important than most other elections is consistent with a basic intuitive comparison to the historical record. The elections before 2016 seem less important than either 2016 or 2020. Some say that the Bush administration was comparably harmful to Trump’s thanks to the Global War on Terror, but this is greatly offset by the success of PEPFAR. The elections of Reagan helped to instill pernicious right-wing ideology in the Republican Party and he started some bad social policies which are taking decades to fix, but he is also somewhat highly rated by historians and had some good foreign policy accomplishments, including growing foreign aid.
Looking more directly at policy impacts, it appears that electing Biden will save 110,000-220,000 predictable human lives, while also providing many other benefits to the global trajectory, existential risk, and animal welfare.
For voters in swing states, the most important consideration in voting is obviously to actually change the outcome of the election, so one must decide between the plausible candidates (Biden and Trump) and pick the preferable one (Biden).
If you live in a safe state, things are a bit more muddled.
One idea is to cast a hopeless but idealistic vote for a politician or third party which would imply pressure on the major parties to change their stances. You may have heard of people voting Green Party or writing in Bernie Sanders in order to pressure the Democratic Party to be more left-wing. The first problem with this and many other third-party ideologies is that they can be legitimately worse in their own right than the Democratic Party; they can have dubious policy views, poor appeal among swing voters, or both. The only third party which seems likely to do a better job than the Democrats is the pro-animal Humane Party (but even then I'm unsure, knowing no details about them). The second problem is that it assumes the major parties rationally pick platforms and candidates in order to win, but in reality the party leadership is somewhat weak and these things are driven more by popular pressure and primary voting, processes which seem less responsive to the prospect of gathering extremist turnout. The third problem is that parties are already working to pick up votes from extremists (e.g., Biden has worked closely with Sanders and adopted many progressive items for his agenda), and if you still refuse to reward them for this effort, then you could make them decide to abandon such efforts and focus more on appealing to moderates instead. The fourth problem is that increasing third-party vote tallies could make them seem notable and inspire people even in swing states to vote for them (though this would be a positive if you vote for a right-wing third party, thus helping them distract people away from the GOP). The final problem with this idea is that, if you live in a safe state, the parties don't need your votes anyway so you have no leverage to directly pressure them.
Also, even in a safe state, voting for Biden does some good. It puts great confidence and legitimacy behind his administration and the Democratic Party as opposed to the Republican Party, and it shows a more decisive repudiation of Trumpism.
This page has looked at the presidential election from a perspective of improving policy impacts. However, there is one case where a special exception to this view might be made. The Constitution provides for the impeachment and removal of corrupt presidents. Even if a president’s policies and actions are good on average, it might be important for American governance that constitutional law and norms be respected. I’ve already determined that Trump should be voted out for conventional reasons, but determining that he deserves to be impeached and removed for constitutional reasons would provide additional impetus and certainty to this conclusion.
Donald Trump was impeached for allegedly abusing his power and obstructing Congress, and on February 5, 2020 he was acquitted by the Senate. Democratic politicians have consistently described this acquittal as unfair and incorrect. Meanwhile, many Republican politicians, including senators responsible for Trump’s acquittal, have not denied Trump’s wrongdoing but merely said that the issue should be left to voters to decide in November, for instance because they think the country would be too divided by a conviction vote, or because they wanted to get back to working on legislation (or so they claim). So it is clear from both sides that we need to assume the role of jurors and determine whether Trump deserves conviction for the Trump-Ukraine controversy.
Conviction requires a 2/3 vote from the Senate, so it’s debatable whether we should demand a similar 2/3 standard from expert surveys before condemning Trump, as opposed to most policy issues where a simple majority opinion can suffice.
One way of judging whether Trump deserves to be impeached and removed is to see the judgments of the relevant legal experts. Many have spoken in favor of impeaching Trump. More than 500 legal scholars signed a letter saying Trump committed impeachable conduct. More than 300 American national security professionals from both Democratic and Republican administrations signed a letter in support of the impeachment inquiry. Many major mainstream newspapers’ editorial boards have called for impeachment. My anecdotal perception of government experts on Twitter also shows consistent support for impeachment. However, I haven’t seen any systematic survey.
One could object that partisan bias plays a role. As noted in my evaluation of sources, there can be left-leaning bias in academia, but this is mainly due to the prevalence of liberals rather than to a tendency for liberals to be particularly discriminatory. Therefore, a fair way to get an unbiased view on impeachment would be to imagine a group with equal numbers of liberal experts and conservative experts, plus some number of independents.
Liberal experts in particular seem to generally support impeachment; 83% of the entire Democratic Party supports impeachment, and I suspect that experts are more likely to do so. Jonathan Turley objected to the impeachment process on the basis that it happened too fast, but still seems to acknowledge that Trump should be convicted. Alan Dershowitz seems to be the only substantive dissident; he believes that Trump should be acquitted because his offenses did not rise to the level of impeachable conduct.
Only 10% of Republicans support impeachment, but conservative experts seem to be less opposed. A group of 16 notable conservative attorneys called for an impeachment inquiry. Daniel Larison believes the case for impeachment is overwhelming. Tom Nichols argued “if this isn’t impeachable, nothing is.” Attorney Bryan Gividen argued that the undisputed facts support impeachment. John Kasich called for impeachment. Columnist and J.D. Jennifer Rubin supports impeachment. Julian Sanchez of the libertarian CATO Institute is strongly in favor of impeachment and removal. The evangelical publication Christianity Today has called for Trump’s removal. However, Trump has been defended by the National Review editors, who put out a statement saying that Trump’s behavior towards Ukraine was wrong but not impeachable. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has also defended Trump.
Another approach is to look at the true opinions of Republican senators, who can be considered relevant experts. Because the Republican base is so opposed to impeachment, it is implausible to expect many GOP politicians to come out in favor of impeachment. However, there are allegations that they privately have a different view. A Republican senator allegedly told a Republican strategist that at least 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump if they could vote privately, while ex-senator Jeff Flake claimed that at least 35 would vote to remove him from office. If true, this would be a large majority of Republican senators. Meanwhile, former Republican congressman David Jolly thinks it’s not clear whether Republican congressmembers are acting in bad faith or not.
It seems like 75-95% of liberal experts and 30-75% of conservative experts would favor impeachment. So after making a correction to imagine a group with equal parts liberals and conservatives, we can still say with confidence that a majority would be in favor of impeachment, although it’s not clear whether 2/3 would approve.
It could be very important to see what people in foreign countries have to say, as outside perspectives can have different implicit assumptions and more distance from intra-American tribalism. However I haven’t found any surveys or other good information on what foreigners think about the impeachment.
Before discussing the particular standards of impeachment and removal from office, we go over the background story and relevant facts and possibilities for Trump’s behavior. For further background and details, I mainly recommend reading Wikipedia and the House’s Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry report, and supplementing with media including Lawfare Blog (for good legal coverage), Washington Examiner and National Review (to hedge against potential left-wing bias in other sources).
The Obama administration economically assisted Ukraine during its war with Russian-backed separatists. Vice President Joe Biden then had a major role in US-Ukrainian policy. One of his actions was that he forced Ukrainian prosecutor-general Victor Shokin to resign. He has been accused of doing this in order to protect his son Hunter from an investigation of Burisma that Shokin was supposedly running; however, there is no reasonable suspicion that this was his motivationSee reporting from Bloomberg, PolitiFact, and Reuters..
The Russian government made a concerted effort to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Russian government contractors are known to have created fake American social media accounts and engaged online in ways calculated to help Trump’s campaign, including spreading false news articles. Hackers affiliated with the Russian military are known to have stolen and then released files and emails from the Democratic National Congress and the Clinton campaign. Several officials connected with Russia are known to have established contact with officials in the Trump campaign, offering business deals and damaging information about Clinton. Russian agents seem to have hacked, intimidated and harassed a Democratic staffer named Alexandra Cholupa who was doing political research in Ukraine. A company named CrowdStrike helped discover that Russian intelligence services were responsible for the hacking.
Meanwhile, an independent Ukrainian government agency released a ‘black ledger’ document as part of a corruption investigation. A Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko attracted public attention to the ledger and to details which suggested that Ukrainian pro-Russian politicians paid $12.7M to Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. Leshchenko is likely to have done so with the intention of undermining Trump’s election campaign. It is likely that this publicity was tacitly approved by the Ukrainian president. This publicity was not unlawful interference. But there are rumors that the document was doctored or forged. Leshchenko also provided information to Fusion GPS, a company that was looking for dirt on Trump and his family and associates; it’s not clear whether this referred simply to the ledger or to some other information.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the US wrote an op-ed, and numerous other Ukrainian officials made social media comments, criticizing Trump. In addition, staff at the Ukrainian embassy to the US were discouraged from meeting with the Trump campaign, while they still met with the Clinton campaign. And a Ukrainian aide instructed a Ukrainian embassy staffer to provide minor assistance to Alexandra Chalupa’s political research on Trump-Manafort-Russia connections.
Russia’s interference operations were covered in American media and became a subject of national concern, especially with the Special Counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller. They were frequently cited to criticize Trump, especially since Trump officials had been meeting with Russian officials, and since Trump had openly welcomed some of the Russian interference, making him appear culpable. Trump brushed off the factual story of Russian interference as a hoax. A false theory began to circulate that CrowdStrike in connection with Ukraine was involved in a conspiracy to frame Russia for the hacking.
Joe Biden announced a presidential run and became an early frontrunner. Academic research, conventional wisdom among moderates and conservatives, and preliminary general election polling suggested that Biden would be relatively likely to defeat Trump in the general election, compared to other Democrats.
Therefore, Trump had clear political interests both in dispelling the narrative of Russian interference and in fostering a scandal about the Biden family (for influencing the general election, but possibly for influencing the Democratic primaries as well).
Trump recalled Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch with a smear campaign and established an irregular diplomatic channel into the country.
Congress appropriated $400M in military aid to Ukraine for 2019. The Pentagon certified that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on fighting corruption to justify sending the aid and the White House twice notified Congress that it would send the aid. However, in June the White House ordered a hold to be placed on the aid, which officially went into effect on July 25.
On July 25, Trump called Ukrainian President Zelensky. Trump said that America has been very good to Ukraine unlike other European countries, but that Ukraine hasn’t necessarily been reciprocal. Zelensky said that he was grateful and willing to cooperate in order to purchase Javelin missiles (a separate matter from the congressional aid). Then Trump said “I would like you to do us a favor though” and asked for an investigation of CrowdStrike-Ukraine connections with an implication of overturning the findings of Mueller’s investigation on Russian interference. Shortly afterwards, Trump also asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s actions to oust Shokin.
A CIA official learned of this and filed a whistleblower complaint in August. The White House learned of the complaint in late August. The whistleblower allegations then became public. On September 9, three House committees announced that they would investigate whether Trump was withholding the aid in order to coerce Ukraine into investigating the Bidens. On September 11, the Trump administration released the aid.
Between the administration and the impeachment inquiry, four explanations have been offered for withholding aid. First (P1), it could have been withheld due to indignation that America was bearing too much of the burden for Ukrainian defense relative to European countries. Second (P2), it could have been withheld due to worries that Ukraine was too corrupt to use it responsibly. Third (P3), it could have been done to pressure the Ukrainians into cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation of alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. Fourth (P4), it could have been done to pressure Ukraine to investigate or announce an investigation of CrowdStrike and/or the Bidens.
Before looking at recent evidence for these motivations, I estimate priors by looking at Trump’s demonstrated concerns and priorities from before the scandal broke.
Trump hadn’t specifically publicly complained about European contributions to Ukraine, but he had consistently objected to America bearing too much defense spending burden in European affairs. And in his call with Zelensky, he said that America was doing much more than Europe. Europe has in fact contributed well to Ukrainian aid, but Trump tells many falsehoods and has a very nationalist outlook, so it is still plausible for him to have this objection. Overall P1 is likely; perhaps Trump really cared about European burden sharing in aid to Ukraine.
The Trump administration is uniquely corrupt (see above 'corruption' section), and this includes some corrupt dealings of Trump officials in Ukraine in particular. This doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care about corruption: they may be hypocritical, or blinded to their own faults (due to blaming liberalsleft or the ‘deep state’ for instance). Trump and other Republicans have generally complained about corruption in a variety of contexts, including Ukrainian corruption. However, while Trump’s script for calling Zelensky had included encouragement for him to continue anti-corruption reforms, Trump deviated from the script and made no such general mention of corruption: this suggests that whoever made the script cared about Ukrainian corruption, but Trump did not. Also, the Pentagon had already certified that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on fighting corruption to receive the aid, which makes it less likely (though by no means impossible) that the administration perceived Ukraine as being too corrupt. Overall P2 is possible but somewhat dubious; it’s not clear if Trump really cared about corruption in Ukraine.
Trump hadn’t complained about any Ukrainian noncompliance with the Justice Department investigation. However, he has expressed belief in the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory which would best justify this investigation. In his call with Zelensky, he specifically asked Zelensky to work with Barr on a CrowdStrike investigation. Ukrainian noncompliance is something Trump would be very worried about if it were occurring, but we don’t have much reason to expect Ukrainian noncompliance at all. Overall, P3 is possible but somewhat dubious.
In early 2019, Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani were verbally pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden, according to witnesses of a Ukrainian government meeting, longtime US diplomat George Kent’s testimony in a closed-door deposition, longtime US diplomat Michael McKinley’s testimony in a closed-door deposition, and Trump-appointed diplomat Gordon Sondland’s testimony in a closed-door deposition. Trump’s irregular diplomatic channel through Giuliani to Ukraine was apparently established for this purpose. And in the phone call, Trump specifically asked Zelensky to get to the bottom of the CrowdStrike story and look into the Biden story, although in that context he was talking about the Javelin sales rather than the congressional aid. Overall it is clear that Trump really cared about getting Ukraine to announce or begin investigations, and P4 is likely.
Now I consider whether it would be likely for Trump to respond to any of these issues with an aid hold.
An aid hold would be a flawed response to P1, as the problem is the behavior of other countries besides Ukraine. Trump might have done it anyway, but it’s a little difficult to explain. So this mildly weakens the likelihood of P1.
An aid hold would be a likely response to P2. We would normally expect worries over corruption to lead to a package with both aid and stipulations for reform as was done by the Obama administration, rather than this kind of erratic withholding in contradiction of Congress. The Pentagon had certified that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on fighting corruption. However, the generally erratic nature of the Trump administration makes it plausible that he ignored these considerations in favor of combating corruption in his own way.
An aid hold would be a likely response to P3.
An aid hold would be a likely response to P4.
To summarize, P3 and especially P4 look more likely than P1 and P2, though all remain plausible. I now look at evidence of the actual events surrounding the aid hold. Our first group of evidence, E1-E8, constitutes general events and official reactions surrounding the scandal.
E1: Trump has made relevant comments. Trump initially claimed that the aid was withheld because he was worried about Ukrainian corruption. Trump then changed his story, saying that the aid was held because he wanted European countries to contribute more. Trump made false claims about European contributions, though again this could be due to Trump’s own ignorance or hyperbole or a lie told for other reasons besides coverup. But Trump’s switch from the corruption argument to the European contributions argument suggests that he may not really believe either, although it could be that multiple reasons were at play. Trump omitted mention of any noncompliance with the Justice Department investigation; he may have perceived reason to lie about that, as he lies frequently and the conspiracy theories surrounding CrowdStrike are broadly rejected even by most Republicans, but this is contradicted by his expression of his view in a call with Fox News on air. Of course, if Trump did use the aid as leverage to get investigations, he would be very likely to lie since an admission would be very bad for his political narrative and legal prospects. Overall, Trump’s comments just provide slight evidence against P3.
E2: White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney asserted that both Ukrainian corruption (including the alleged CrowdStrike conspiracy) and European contributions helped motivate the freeze. He would later assert that it was also because Ukraine was not cooperating with a US Justice Department investigation into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. However, when challenged that it sounded like Trump was using the aid as leverage to get an investigation of CrowdStrike, Mulvaney issued a non-denial, saying “we do that [i.e. political influence in foreign policy] all the time” and “get over it”. Mulvaney later explicitly denied that the aid was being used as leverage for a Ukrainian investigation. Therefore, Mulvaney nominally supported the first three possibilities but not the fourth. But between the apparent slip and the background plausibility of Trump officials lying about this scandal, Mulvaney’s comments don’t provide significant evidence.
E3: The Justice Department said they have no knowledge of any aid hold being placed on Ukraine in relation to a Justice Department investigation. This provides good evidence against P3.
E4: A whistleblower report and a White House official statement have confirmed that the call record was moved by White House officials to a highly classified server to prevent leaks. While the Trump administration had generally become worried about leaks and had placed some other call records on this server, it was still an unusual move and shows that Trump officials believed the call record would be politically damaging if discovered (USA Today, Vice). If P4 is true, the true call record is more likely to have more incriminating details that are omitted from the public summary, and the Trump administration would have more to fear from subsequent investigations, thus making them more likely to hide the call. Therefore, this is ‘guilty behavior’ that is more likely to happen conditional upon P4.
E5: the White House has broadly attempted to neglect and obstruct the proceedings of the impeachment inquiry in a way that previous presidents have not done (impeachment inquiry report pp. 202-256), and has provided no substantive evidence of P1-P3 or any other appropriate justification. This is ‘guilty behavior’ that is more likely to happen conditional upon P4.
E6: Trump has attempted to intimidate witnesses (impeachment inquiry report pp. 257-292). This kind of lashing out and intimidation is ‘guilty behavior’ that is more likely to happen conditional upon P4.
E7: On October 3, Trump publicly asked China to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the country from the time when his father was vice president, and said that if they didn’t comply then he would use “tremendous power” to retaliate in ongoing trade negotiations. The fact that Trump was openly willing to make this kind of demand reduces the weight of E4-E6 because it suggests that Trump himself (though not other members of his administration) doesn’t think that this kind of quid pro quo would be politically damaging. On the other hand, it also directly increases the likelihood of P4 by confirming how ready and willing he is to engage in that sort of behavior. One could also speculate that this unusual open demand is a deliberate tactic to make people perceive such a quid pro quo as being ethical and normal, thereby reducing Trump’s vulnerability to the inquiry and indirectly pointing to P4.
E8: An extensive body of evidence shows that Trump conditioned a White House meeting with Zelensky upon a Ukrainian announcement of investigations of the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election (impeachment inquiry report, pp. 83-97). The fact that Trump did this makes it very likely that he was also willing to condition aid for the same purpose. This provides mild evidence in favor of P4.
Updating over the priors, E1-E8 imply that P4 is the most likely possibility, with P1-P3 being relatively unlikely (though still entirely possible).
E9: Ambassador Sondland believed that Trump would lift the aid hold if the Ukrainians announced or began investigations of the Bidens and Burisma. This is well established from multiple sources. Sondland himself testified that he told Zelensky’s aide, Mr. Yermak, that the resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine took action on making a public statement that they were pursuing Trump’s desired investigations (Sondland Hearing Tr. at 31). Likewise, Tim Morrison testified that he had earlier heard Sondland say that he told Yermak that they could help move the aid forward by publicly announcing a Burisma investigation (Morrison Dep. Tr. at 134). And Ambassador Taylor testified in a closed-door deposition and in public testimony that he had earlier learned from Sondland that the military aid was being conditioned on Ukrainian investigations of Burisma, the Bidens, and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election (Washington Post, Kent-Taylor Hearing Tr. at 42). Sondland also told Senator Johnson (R) that releasing the military aid would only happen if Trump became confident that Ukraine would commit to “get to the bottom of what happened in 2016” (Wall Street Journal, Johnson’s letter to Congress, Sondland Hearing). Sondland’s views were based on a general understanding rather than being told directly by Trump, so they are not entirely reliable; it’s possible that he was mistaken. Still, this provides good evidence in favor of P4.
E10: John Bolton’s book alleges that Trump told him directly that the aid depended on Ukrainian investigations. Bolton refused to testify for the House, but said he was willing to testify for the Senate. His credibility is not great, but his allegations still provide more evidence in favor of P4.
E11: Later, in early September, after the whistleblower complaint became public and suspicion was directed at these dealings, Trump and his officials internally insisted “there is no quid pro quo” while still reiterating their interest in Ukrainian investigations (impeachment inquiry report, pp. 134-138). This provides only very weak evidence against P4, since it is very likely that officials would distort or lie as part of a coverup, and they did not substantiate their claims with other evidence (impeachment inquiry report, pp. 138-139).
E12: Ukrainian officials publicly denied pressure. Mr. Yermak denied having the conversation with Sondland about aid. However, they were in a difficult position, and would have had to contend with the wrath of Trump if they contradicted him. Coming forward would not have led to a conviction of Trump; after all, many Republicans said that Trump did condition the aid on investigations but that they didn’t want to convict him for it. Moreover, Ukrainian leaders will prefer to appear strong to their own people, and admitting to being pressured by Trump would undercut that. Finally, Ukraine needs to demonstrate to Russia that they have America’s backing in order to be well positioned to enter negotiations about ending the war in their territory. For these reasons, it would be entirely rational for Ukrainian leaders to lie about not feeling pressured by the Trump administration. In addition, there is empirical evidence that Ukrainian leaders are in fact lying about the pressure. Therefore, Ukrainian public denials provide only weak evidence against P4.
E13: European Responses: Other European countries did not step up their contributions since the hold was placed, Ukraine did not launch new anti-corruption initiatives since the hold was placed, Ukraine did not change their stance towards the Department of Justice investigation since the hold was placed, and Ukraine did not announce new investigations into Burisma, the Bidens, or CrowdStrike since the hold was placed. Therefore, European responses do not provide clear evidence for or against any of the possible justifications.
Taken together, E9-E13 point pretty well in favor of P4, making it the most likely explanation for the hold by a large margin.
In summary:
There is clear and convincing evidence that Trump placed a hold on congressionally approved aid for the primary or sole purpose of compelling Ukrainian leaders to announce an investigation of Burisma, the Bidens and/or alleged Ukrainian hoaxing in the 2016 election (O1).
It is proven beyond reasonable doubt that Trump conditioned a White House meeting on Ukrainian leaders announcing an investigation of Burisma, the Bidens and/or alleged Ukrainian hoaxing in the 2016 election (O2).
It is proven beyond reasonable doubt that Trump ordered the executive branch to refuse to testify or obey any subpoenas for impeachment proceedings (O3).
There is no rule about the standard of proof required for
conviction in this context. It seems straightforward that if proof
beyond reasonable doubt is reached, then – since it is sufficient
for a criminal conviction, and a Senate impeachment trial is
analogous to a criminal trial but with arguably lower standards –
there are sufficient grounds for impeachment.
But criminal trials’ use of proof beyond reasonable doubt is loosely
based on the idea in Blackstone’s Ratio, which says that it is
better for ten guilty people to go free than for one innocent person
to be punished. There is a good reason to use a laxer standard here:
impeachment defendants merely face removal and disqualification from
office, rather than criminal punishments. It is more like being
fired. So unjustly punishing someone is not such an injustice.
One argument to stick with a strict standard would be that we should be very careful about denying the will of the American people (to elect Trump); however slightly more Americans now support rather than oppose impeachment and removal, Trump’s offenses occurred after his election, more Americans voted for Clinton than for Trump, and conviction does not deny the results of the 2016 election or the legitimacy of the first part of Trump’s term, so this is a weak argument.
Thinking holistically about the matter, it certainly would be bad for the republic if we tolerated ten truly corrupt presidents just to save one innocent one. Perhaps we should even remove multiple innocent leaders just to remove one who abuses the powers of office. That could theoretically lead us to adopt an even weaker standard than preponderance of evidence, but I'll leave that possibility aside.
In an informal survey, sixteen out of twenty people believed that no more than one corrupt president should be tolerated in order to protect one innocent one (Twitter poll n=17, my opinion, and conversations with family members), in which case a preponderance of evidence would justify conviction. Three believed that several corrupt presidents may be tolerated to protect one innocent one, in which case clear and convincing evidence would be the appropriate standard. Just one person believed that ten or more corrupt presidents should be tolerated, implying a standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt.
Overall, it’s not clear whether a preponderance of evidence or clear and convincing evidence is required for conviction. But the difference is irrelevant because O1-O3 are all known to the standard of clear and convincing evidence. O1 does not meet the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, but it seems indefensible to maintain such a high standard for impeachment, so we ignore that possibility as well.
Therefore, if any of O1-O3 can be justified as fitting the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” under the Constitution, Trump should be convicted.
If O1 is impeachable, then it’s irrelevant whether O2 is
impeachable. If O1 is not impeachable, then O2 certainly isn’t
impeachable either. Therefore, I can ignore O2 for this judgment.
There has been dispute over whether O1 is the kind of abuse of power
that merits conviction. Here I go through three potential arguments
saying that it is.
Alan Dershowitz has argued that this is too thorny of an argument to justify conviction. Most experts disagree with him, but his views have been strawmanned and there is a decent chance of political bias against Trump and him, so we can’t simply trust the consensus.
Dershowitz’s position is that politicians make all kinds of
official acts in order to win reelection, and we have to tolerate
that. In addition, Trump probably legitimately believes that both
investigations and his reelection are in the public interest. So the
argument does not work.
If this were considered impeachable, then one could say that Bernie
Sanders voting to convict Trump is also impeachable, because he
similarly took an official action that benefited his chances of
winning the presidential election. This is absurd.
Overall, this is not a good basis for convicting Trump.
Manipulating an election is a stricter standard than merely getting the personal/political gain of increasing one’s chance of reelection. It requires that the President do something which distorts the electoral process in an objectively bad manner.
One could say that inviting foreign influence is a kind of manipulation. However, this is too broad, encompassing many activities that might be considered benign.
But Trump undertook actions to promote disinformation. The pressure campaign for aid was secret; had the Ukrainians announced an investigation, it would not have been evident that they were only doing so because of significant pressure from the Trump administration, and people would have viewed it differently. But with Trump’s approach, Americans would have falsely believed that there was enough real evidence of corruption among the Bidens and CrowdStrike to independently motivate the Ukrainians to launch investigations.
Merely promoting disinformation is not impeachable (candidates tell
falsehoods all the time), but since Trump used the powers of his
office for this, it’s much more serious and unfair.
Manipulating elections is serious; elections are the core of
democracy and the only other lawful method of keeping the president
accountable aside from impeachment. So this is a satisfactory basis
for convicting Trump.
The Government Accountability Office has found that the OMB, acting under Trump’s direction, violated the Impoundment Control Act. The GAO is a respectable, independent and nonpartisan institution, and we have not seen any substantive rebuttal of their accusation. Therefore, we can safely conclude that Trump violated the law.
It’s not clear that this alone is serious enough to merit removal. But in combination with the previous argument, this helps further justify removal.
Some have claimed that while Trump’s behavior is wrong, he probably learned his lesson, so there’s no point in convicting him. It’s not clear if we should waive bad behavior just because I think a politician learned their lesson – that would undermine the deterrent effect of impeachment on future presidents, and just seems like a shaky handwave of constitutional principles.
Regardless, the idea that Trump learned his lesson from impeachment and will now respect democracy is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard and it looks a dozen times stupider in hindsight. Trump subsequently fired or transferred any White House staff who he perceived as disloyal, continued to withhold aid from Ukraine, punitively fired the Intelligence Community Inspector General, refused to push for additional COVID-19 testing because he thought that low numbers would improve his reelection prospects, and has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election.
So, between attempting to use the powers of his office to manipulate the election and violating the Impoundment Control Act, O1 merits removal from office.
O3 may be considered an obstruction of Congress in its sole power
of impeachment.
Attorney Jonathan Shaub thinks
it’s unclear.
Law professor Jed Shugerman thinks
it’s a bad basis for impeachment.
Overall I cannot support this measure.
Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office. Republican senators’ failure to do so is a black mark upon their party and further substantiates our judgment that Democrats are better than Republicans. Citizens should arguably vote for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 even if they have good reasons to disagree with our candidate scoring and think that Trump is a better president.