Well it finally arrived. Retired Col. Douglas MacGregor gave a response to President Biden’s Hitler-like state of the the union address two days ago.

Good.

Not so good is everything else.

Whether this is just a vanity move by the good Colonel, or a “testing of the waters” for some future Presidential run, who knows. Perhaps he sees himself as a latter-day Dwight Eisenhower. But, whatever. He’s a smart guy and, I thought, worth listening to.

However there is a lot of “not so good”, and it is a big problem. Namely the wooley-headedness Col. Doug displays on an alarming number of subjects. In terms of sophistication about how the U.S. government and laws work, this humble author lived under Dwight David Eisenhower, and Col. Doug ain’t no Eisenhower. Sadly, he’s not even up to the level of a local city councilman.

And I say this being, up until now, a big “Col. Doug” supporter, since I agree with almost all his statements, widely dispersed on YouTube, on both the Ukraine war and the war in Gaza, as well as our over-extended worldwide military footprint generally.

The problem is that Col. Doug is career military with a distinguished, though brief (approximately one week), combat record in which he commanded an armored – i.e., tank- squadron. There is nothing in that record that would have given him high level D.C. experience except for a multi-week status as “advisor” to Trump’s worthless lobbyist – cum – Secretary of Defense, right at the end of the Trump administration. One would have hoped that, notwithstanding, he might have been a life-long observer of the Washington scene, having picked up sophistication at least by second hand, or, perhaps, engaged in enough local politics to see how things operate on the political front, even if at a small scale. Apparently he has not.

Eisenhower, in contrast, of course, commanded an entire theatre of war, was a five-star General, and, before he became President had negotiated for years face to face with senior members of Congress, the President, and a whole covey of actual or nominal heads of state – Churchill, DeGaul, ad infinitim.

So it is not surprising that “Col. Doug” is a bit more oblivious than Ike to the realities of our Constitutional system and how power actually operates at the high levels of our government. However, his apparent ignorance of how things work (apart from the short-small-unit level combat he directly experienced) is still breathtaking.

So let’s go.

Here are the main parts of the speech:

1. Opening. With an impressive, one might say, sonorous, even Presidential, delivery the Colonel states that the Constitution mandates that the government promote the “general welfare”.

Actually, his statement is not correct. The opening language of the Constitution says that “in order to promote the general welfare” The-Constitution.pdf (bri-wp-images.s3.amazonaws.com) the Constitution provides for the following things, i.e., the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the new federal government, with enumerated responsibilities.

Macgregor uses this mis-reading to state that, therefore, the government is obligated for our people “to secure the basic necessities of life: food, energy, and shelter”. WHAAAT! The drafters of the Constitution intended exactly the reverse – that the government be small enough and sufficiently non-intrusive, that the people in their individual capacities could provide for their own food, energy, and shelter.

None of the carefully enumerated powers granted to any of the three branches include the power to provide every ol’ okie from Muskogee vittles, central heating, and a (presumably multi-room) log cabin. Quite the reverse. Of American Presidents, only FDR has indicated – and obliquely at that

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis–broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

It should be noted, even FDR, in his first inaugural, refrained from promising food, energy, and housing. He promised policies that would provide jobs from which citizens themselves could provide food, energy, and housing. Even later on, in his “Four Freedoms” he was oblique: he promised “Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear” I guess “freedom from want” could be interpreted as freedom of “grub, central heating, and houses”, but, if so, the thought, nice as it may be, is disguised. The closest FDR came to providing freebies to folks was AFDC welfare, which he convinced Congress to enact just before World War II and may have regretted prior to his untimely demise. — a governmental duty to provide these things. But even he realized that, to do so, the government must act despite, rather than by command of, the Constitution and the views of its framers. Although dishonest in many respects, FDR was honest enough to deal with this issue in public, stating in his very first inaugural, that in a time of crisis, either the Congress would give him the power to act as necessary, or, by necessity, he would act. He rightly claimed no Constitutional mandate, only that the Constitution should be flexible enough to allow what he wanted to do.

The Macgregor opening opening is simply an embarrassment. Unfortunately, it is a preview of things to come.

1. Doug says we must “restore the rule of law”. Good. But his two proposals are problematic in the extreme.

Number one is to “remove activist judges”. Presumably that means making a list of, oh, 400-600 federal judges and convincing a badly divided Congress to impeach them all! Good luck. Has been done. Never. Will be done. Never.

His second proposal is even more problematic. It is to make federal judgeships elective. Really? Does he realize this would take a Constitutional Amendment at a time when the warring factions of Congress can barely pass a budget? And what if we did? Does he really think that federal judges elected, say, by New York City or Atlanta Ga. voters would be better than we have now? Look at Laticia James, Fannie Willis, and Alvin Bragg. Please!

Trump never said something like this. He promised a firm deliverable. He promised that “I will appoint” good federal judges that are judges not re-writers of the law Since the appointment power over judges is firmly placed in the hands of the President, this is a sensible and deliverable promise, even if any appointment is subject to Senate confirmation.

One would think Macgregor could have thought of something short of his two undeliverable proposals, i.e., something the President – even on his own – might even be able to effectuate. As Trump did, promising to appoint better judges. Or, if Macgregor wanted to go further, propose reducing the geographic jurisdiction of left wing courts like the DC federal courts and the Ninth Circuit, unlikely as such provisions would be likely to pass in today’s environment. Or perhaps even stating the God’s truth, that the FBI and CIA have come out openly as enemies of about half the people of the United States since about late 2016. Although Macgregor could never be able to micromanage either as President – look what happened to JFK and Nixon when they tried – (and does he even know this) he could eliminate them entirely by simply refusing to sign a budget and closing them down, seizing the files, and appointing independent prosecutors to rifle through those files to find and prosecute indictable offenses committed by FBI and CIA personnel. This sounds extreme, but it is far less extreme than supporting a Constitutional amendment of questionable quality. We happily survived as a country for 128 years (1789 – 1917) without an FBI and for 158 years (1789 – 1947) without a CIA. We have not survived a single year with an elected federal judiciary and the fact that the founders did not want one should give pause.

2. Restore our economy.

His first recommendation appears to be to eliminate the federal reserve. ?? I know this is a bug-bear of the tea-party types, and, who knows, might ultimately be desirable. However, under the current system, the Fed is the lender of last resort. Given the massive leverage that (yes the Fed) has allowed the greedy massive money-center banks to create with trillions of dollars of derivative liabilities among other things, doesn’t he think that, initially, one would want to slowly de-leverage the system before taking away the dangerously over-leveraged system’s only real safety net?

Later on, he does advocate re-shoring of our industrial base. This is a good position, but of course Biden is trying to do the same thing, so lets give credit where credit is due.

3. Energy.

First he complains about high energy prices, saying they are Biden’s fault for preventing oil companies from drilling for oil. Huh? I’m not a big Biden fan, but American oil and gas production is at an historic high (whether this the last suck of the proverbial straw is of course another matter). If oil prices are too high for Col. Doug’s taste, they are due to the sanctioning of Russia’s and Iran’s oil. To his credit, he obliquely mentions this in his brief description of the Ukraine war. However, they are not due to whatever minor domestic restrictions Biden put on. If the good Colonel is instead referring to Biden’s revocation of the permit for the tar sands crude pipeline from Canada, fine. But, even ignoring the fact that Canada is not the United States, he should have mentioned it specifically so people would know what he is talking about. In fact the main recent action Biden has taken on the “o&g” front is to refuse future permits for LNG export facilities. By trapping American gas in, well, America, gas prices in the U.S. will in fact go down, not up. Hello!? And of course, lower energy prices depress U.S. production rather than increase it. Its called “supply and demand”, Col. Doug.

He also says that “America must become energy self sufficient”. Well that will increase the price of energy, not lower it, Col. Doug. In the short to mid-term, the way to get the lowest fuel prices is to import from energy rich sources like Russia and Iran, not to create energy in the U.S. that the free market would not itself stimulate. Whether he supports this, he never mentions (in fact, in other interviews, he appears to oppose) sanctions on Russian oil. In fact, does he know that of the 12 million barrel-equivalents of oil the US produces each day, about 1/3rd are exported because it is of a kind of which we have an excess, and of the 19 million barrels we consume, we import 7 million plus another 4 million boe (11 million total) to feed our demand for specific types of crude? A an old Army infantry Captain of my acquaintance, with 3 years (not weeks, Col. Doug) of combat experience in World War II plus 20+ years in the Department of Defense would have said: “Jesus H. Christ!” Does this guy know what end is up?

After trashing the current green energy devices (presumably solar and wind) for using rare minerals processed in far away lands (good, from my point of view), he then says that we make America self sufficient via, among other things, “wind and solar”. Doug needs to fact-check himself to prevent internal inconsistencies. They detract from his narrative. Fortunately, he mentions nuclear. But does he know the time-scale difference between converting everything to uranium-based nuclear versus breeder reactor nuclear? It might be worth mentioning, since knowledgeable observers know that a conversion of all our electrical generating capacity to uranium nuclear would deplete the world supply of uranium far faster than we are depleting carbon based fuels.

3. Immigration. He is against illegal immigration. Good. But proposes no methods to eliminate it, although apart form “securing our airports and our borders”. Nice sound-bite. But how about mentioning working with Mexico, since the main source for immigrants is no longer Mexico (net migration from Mexico has been negative for a while) but from the denizens of other countries transiting through Mexico’s southern border. Working with Mexico (and with Panama, to close the Darien Gap transit point), plus naval operations to block “by sea” access to Mexico and Central America might also have been mentioned. But at least his heart is in the right place. However, his lack of specificity is worrying, perhaps indicating that for him, immigration is a “throw-away” issue.

4. Deportations of Illegals already here. Unless I missed something, he says nothing. That is a bad sign. Very bad.

5. Foreign military interventions. He comes out against most of them. Good. Sadly, one of his reasons is that they have made us “less energy independent”. Huh? Although I view the Iraq war as a mistake, how does placing permanent US military in a country with some of the world’s largest oil reserves make us less energy independent? One of the time-honored ways of supplementing dwindling domestic reserves is to conquer somebody else to take their reserves!. In fact, there is good evidence that the infamous (but whip-smart and oil-smart) Dick Cheney had this front of mind before the Iraq war. He held a famously secret energy conference with top oil and gas execs a few months into the administration; it is believed one of the subjects was the predicted “peaking” of US production in or about the year 2000 and what to do about it, along with a detailed mapping of the proven and hoped for reserves in and around – you guessed it – the fabled middle east.

In the words of one of our 50 million illegal Mexican aliens, with respect to Col. Macgregor’s analysis, “yo no comprendo”.

6. He complains about the federal debt. Good. But he blames this on the Federal Reserve. Huh? Typically Federal Reserve Chairmen are not big fans of budget deficits, but the deal with the hands they are dealt by a profligate Congress. His only solution is to “audit” the federal reserve, a bug-bear of Rand and Ron Paul. Although audits should be done – and done annually – does he really think this will “solve” a $33 Trillion federal debt? Really? Man, if I could get rid of my debt that quick, I’d subject myself to a Big-Four audit every week!

In a disturbing comment, he adds “higher taxes are not enough to eliminate the problem of the federal debt. The federal debt must be restructured.” WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT? Before the Fed sent interest rates up by 5 points, Trump had suggested – but per usual did not implement – the refinancing of all short and mid-term federal debt for super-long-term, e.g. 30+ year term – federal debt. Presumably so the Fed could then jack up rates and later buy in the debt at a massive discount to face. But, hey, Col, interest rates are already up. That window has shut. So, is Col Macgregor using a euphemism for defaulting on the debt? Huh? How does that work? So much for the dollar. That would make the negative effect of Biden’s foolish sanctions look like child’s-play. In the words of that nasty tennis player from Douglastown, Queens “YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS!!”

In an interview about a year ago, Macgregor noted that his grandfather had gone to Wharton and knew something about business and finance, but that he (Doug) had not and, therefore, did not. Nailed that one, Doug. You need some financial advisors, and pronto.

7. He complains about crime. Fine. But demographics = crime. Does he realize this? (This is a small quibble. Richard Nixon avoided this issue as well.)

8. “Reinvigorate American agriculture”. What does this mean? Right now, American agriculture is producing at close to record levels, (despite a year-on-year decline to the 2021 levels (itself a record), probably reflecting a one-time spike in 2022 due to the Ukraine war), see chart at USDA Forecasts Sharpest Decline in U.S. … | Senate Committee On Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, having followed since 1970 Earl Butz’s mandate to “get big or get out”. So what is there to “re” invigorate? Then Macgregor says “support the family farm”. Though I agree with this, does he realize that this will result in less efficient farming – as ol’ Earl Butz could have told him – and thus “less” invigorated – or at least vastly more expensive — U.S. farming operations? There is a price for everything, and re-invigorating family farming may be the right policy from a social point of view, but it will lead inexorably to less “efficiency” and thus higher food prices. Does he know this? Or does he mindlessly still get his grubs from the local KP at the nearest Army base dispensary?

9. He supports a one-time tax exemption to allow all US corporations to repatriate their capital. OK, but… Doesn’t he realize Trump already did this? In 2017, buddy. Does he know enough about financial markets and corporate governance to realize that all this capital probably cannot be deployed in the U.S. efficiently and thus will be returned to shareholders (many of them off-shore) in the form of stock buy-backs? I am not saying this is bad policy – nor do I have a problem with buybacks — but he seems to believe “a repatriated dollar is an invested-in-US-manufacturing” dollar. Not so, bro.

10. Jews. He states that “officials who put foreign interests above American interests must go.” Obviously, he is talking about Jews (plus the Cols Vindman – oh, wait, they are Jews too). How ya gonna do that, big boy? That is a major effort. The military equivalent is that you are Serbia – not Germany — and you initiate Operation Barbarossa. Good wishes, good luck, but to put this in as a trivial “add on” without giving any indication you understand the gravity of the fight you are taking on is a sign you do not understand how this country works.

Sadly, although I believe he is a man of good will, his simplistic, sound-bite views, combined with his deep voice and military bearing, make him come off much like a comic version of a movie character I am sure he despises – four-star General James Mattoon Scott, played by Burt Lancaster, in “Seven Days in May”, but without the associated firepower – the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marines plus a military coup de etat in planning – to make good on his solutions.

Not a good first appearance.

Teddy Kennedy said after disastrously losing the Iowa caucuses to Carter in early 1980, “Well, we coulda done a little better in Iowa”.

Time to do “a little better in Iowa”, Colonel. Get some advisors, go to some seminars, learn something about how this country works before pre-launching your next Presidential bid.

Notes

Quoting the immortal FDR from his first inaugural: “Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that i t is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis–broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

It should be noted, even FDR, in his first inaugural, refrained from promising food, energy, and housing. He promised policies that would provide jobs from which citizens themselves could provide food, energy, and housing. Even later on, in his “Four Freedoms” he was oblique: he promised “Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear” I guess “freedom from want” could be interpreted as freedom of “grub, central heating, and houses”, but, if so, the thought, nice as it may be, is disguised. The closest FDR came to providing freebies to folks was AFDC welfare, which he convinced Congress to enact just before World War II and may have regretted prior to his untimely demise.

See note 1, above.

Farmers have been in a “bad” part of the food supply chain for years. The fertilizer companies (the suppliers) earn 18% on equity; the cereal and food distribution companies (the customers) earn high returns on equity. But the man in the middle – the farmer – often runs losses. Perhaps Macgregor wants to change this fundamental situation. If so, it would imply a massive re-structuring of the current “fertilizer to table” food chain. Does he realize this?