Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The impeachment of President Donald Trump has blotted out lesser news stories. Journalistically, the impeachment circus has become the sun that, early in the morning, hides the stars behind a veil of bright light. But the stars twinkle, never-the-less. According to most polls, former Vice President Joe Biden will eventually become the White Knight facing the Republican’s Black Knight, Trump, whom Democrats, during their somber impeachment process, hope to remove from office before the 2020 elections. This fugitive “hope” is doomed to be crushed by the numbers. Democrats simply do not have the numbers in the U.S. Senate to boot Trump out of office before the national elections and, in politics, numbers rule.

The headline on the story was: “ Blumenthal, Murphy Issue Statements On Iraq .” But in fact, there is no more Iraq. The country, etched out by British colonialists in 1920 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, has been partitioned, somewhat like Ukraine, by principalities and powers that never were and never will be friendly to the United States. President Barack Obama some time ago, leaning into then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s air space, clasped him him robustly on the arm, and advised, unaware that his mike was hot, that following the election, he would have much more “flexibility” to decide, among other things, whether or not to place defensive  missiles in Eastern Europe .  It was a schmooze moment, and Mr. Medvedev promised to carry the message to Vladmir Putin, Czar of all the Russians.

Russia’s Doors, Putin’s Time There are, and always have been, three doors to Russia, every one of which has been jealously guarded first by Russian Czars and in the Communist era by Russian Czars posing as proletarian workers such as Josef Stalin. There is a Western point of access (Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states), a Middle Eastern point of access (Afghanistan, Iran) and a Southern point of access (China). Access doors open both ways and, depending upon one’s point of view, President of Russia Vladimir Putin has now either opened or shut all the doors. It would be paradoxical, though never-the-less true, to say he has shut the doors by opening them. Mr. Putin was featured as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2007. That year, China’s leader Hu Jintao was featured as a runner up.

Here is former President George Bush on Russian President Vladimir Putin's domestic centralization of power as quoted in a recent book, "Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House: "He thinks he'll be around forever. He asked me why I didn't change the Constitution so I could run again.” Mr. Bush, brutalized by then candidate for president Barack Obama, never looked back when he left office and has been silent as a tomb ever since. Still, one cannot help but wonder what Mr. Bush’s reaction was to the latest news out of Russia, as reported by Reuters: “ Putin dissolves state newsagency tightens grip on Russia media .”

The president’s office is time sensitive because of term limits. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has served more than two terms or eight years in office. Mr. Roosevelt was the only president elected to a third term; his supporters pointed to the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent. Mr. Roosevelt won a fourth term in 1944 during World War II but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in office the following year and died. After more than a dozen years in office, the bloom had fled the rose.