The NPR Politics Podcast - Listener Mail: Monday, April 10

Episode Date: April 10, 2017

Your questions, answered. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and editor and correspondent Ron Elving. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi. Hi. G'day. This is Mauritian Australia. Jasper from St. Paul, Minnesota. Eve from Apex, North Carolina. This podcast was recorded at... Uh, 12.05 on Monday, April 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org, on the NPR 1-Up or on your local public radio station. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here's the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here to answer some of your political questions. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, dying of cute overload. And I'm Ron Elving, still editor-correspondent. You guys looked so happy listening to that. Oh, that was... Come on.

That was the best. Beyond adorable. Is that the best one yet? Oh, yes, absolutely. All right, we gather together on a Monday morning after several busy days of news on the international front, fallout from that Syrian strike. A lot going on with questions about tension ramping up in North Korea. Rather than us punditizing on those facts, I would suggest you listen to Up First,

which is NPR's new morning news podcast out every day. This episode this morning got into both Syria and North Korea. So check that out. Wherever good podcasts are sold. Wherever good podcasts are sold. Wherever good podcasts are sold. A lot of listener mail questions, though. You guys ready to go? Yep. You ready, Ron? I am.

Let's do it. First question is from Sharday in Texas. Has to do with Syria. Hi, NPR Politics. This is Sharday calling from Houston, Texas. I thought the President of the United States could take military action or go to war on their own. I thought the president of the United States could take military action or go to war on their own. I thought that this was the power of the presidency. Now I'm hearing that they need congressional approval. Can you please clear this up for us? Thanks. Keep up the good work. Well, this is a good question because you could be forgiven after the last couple of decades, or I suppose the last 15 years or so, for thinking that the president can just, you know, declare war on their own. But they can't. I mean, the Constitution clearly says that Congress can declare war.

Now, here is where it is confusing. The president is still commander in chief of the armed forces. So there's still a little bit of weird tension there between, you know, who gets to do what. Because, of course, we've seen presidents, what, order airstrikes, order other kinds of military interventions. But that is not war in a lot of cases. Ron, when's the last time Congress declared war? 1941, which is pretty astonishing to people. But World War II was the last time Congress declared war. We did not do that for the Korean War or the Vietnam War or the Iraq War or the

first Persian Gulf War. The president made war. And in most of those cases, there was some form of authorization. There was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution at the early stages of the Vietnam escalation. And much more recently, Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973. Very nice formal structure. But what we have mostly seen since then is honoring in the breach. As long as what the president does is on a relatively small scale and temporary and low cost and successful, Congress would just as soon stay out of it. Right. And so the thing that we've had over the last reason I said about 15 years earlier is in 2001, after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Congress passed what is called the Authorization of the Use of Military Force. It's called the AUMF for short. And that granted very broad

powers to the president for fighting terrorism. It said, and here is the quote, you can hear my paper rustling, that the president could, quote, use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons. So that is a lot of potential people. It could be al-Qaeda or, you know, one of the reasons that military interventions have been able to happen after that is, is ISIS part of al-Qaeda? Is ISIS an outgrowth of al-Qaeda? Yeah, and generally the actions against ISIS have been done under that authorization.

And there's been push from a lot of people in Congress. Tim Kaine, Virginia senator, is one who raised this concern under both Obama and now Trump, saying, we really need a new one of these because this is nowhere near relevant to what we passed in 2001. Not to mention that going after Bashar al-Assad is not going after ISIS. It's not going after al-Qaeda. Those organizations are also opposed to the Syrian dictator. So for us to be going after a head of state, you can call him whatever you want. He is the head of the Syrian state. For us to be going after his forces, that's a little different from going after terrorist organizations. I might add that back in the days of the first AUMF back in 2001, in the wake of 9-11,

there was an original draft for it offered by the Bush administration, which was broader yet, and which was even more authorizing, essentially saying, do whatever you need to do to keep us all safe. And that was rejected at the time. But in practice, many people feel that both George W. Bush and President Obama were allowed to function under what was essentially that kind of a permissive rubric that was originally proposed by the Bush administration way back in 2001. Well, the one thing I do want to add here, recently on the Lawfare blog, which is a very reputable place to get your information on this sort of thing, there's a Harvard law professor named Jack Goldsmith, who laid out that the AUMF doesn't apply here, but that the president does have powers to take actions like this if they believe that there is sufficient national interest at stake. And also

they anticipate that the scope of what they're going to do is not going to be war, that it's going to be something short or small. So that's aside from this AUMF question. Rough rule of thumb. They're supposed to do something to get Congress on board within 90 days or cease such actions. Even more rough rule of thumb, as long as it's inexpensive, temporary, successful, and there are no U.S. casualties, Congress is going to be fine with it. Inexpensive being kind of a relative term when it comes to warfare. If you fire a couple of ships worth of missiles, you know, cruise missiles to go in, as we did in this case, that is obviously a blip. But if you kept up that kind of bombardment over days, weeks, months,

at that point, you would need to have some kind of justification or you would need to go to Congress for some kind of authorization. All right. Up next, we have a question from Noah, who writes, Hey, team, I'm curious if you guys have some insights into why the Republicans just admitted defeat on the health care bill. Do they feel they've tried everything or could it be that they didn't actually want to deal with it? And this was just a way for them to throw their hands in the air and say, well, at least we tried. Thanks, Noah. There is every indication that they will attempt to come back in this Congress, maybe even in the weeks and months ahead, with a modified version of the American Health Care Act, AHCA, also known as RyanCare, and that Paul Ryan will press to have

an amended version of the bill considered on the House floor, and they will have found some sort of magic key to minimize the number of House Freedom Caucus members who are against it without losing too many people on the moderate side. Does this get anywhere in the Senate? My guess is no. But at least it would look better if they could get something out of the House. But if the Freedom Caucus part of the world is not interested in anything other than a full fledged scale back of the guaranteed benefits, the guaranteed issue. Yeah. And the basic premises of Obamacare, which many Republicans, including Trump, have promised to keep in place. And the moderate wing of the party has no interest in going down that road. Where is that key? I mean, does that key exist? Probably not, unless you are the House and you are utterly convinced that it's not going to go anywhere in the Senate and you are finally convinced that it looks better dying there than dying in your lap, that would be the one psychology that I could imagine getting it passed out of the House. Doesn't do you any good in the Senate at

all. Right. Let's remember the AHCA was panned so widely by people on the left, which maybe Republicans don't care about, but also people on the right. All over the right. All the different gradations of right. It is very much in their interest to take the time to at least try to get this to be at least somewhat more agreeable than the AHCA was, which may be a low bar, you could argue, but still, and to get at least some semblance of broad-ish support behind it, because you certainly don't want to fail again on your second time around. It was in some respects the worst of both worlds from the standpoint of many conservative ideology people to have the Republicans taking ownership of Obamacare, in essence. To call it Obamacare lite might be a mischaracterization. But in some sense

or another, they were keeping enough of Obamacare, and yet they were undercutting what makes Obamacare work insofar as it does. That looked like the worst of both worlds. It looked like they were going to buy a failure out of something that could have been called at least a mixed success. And we saw a little bit of this the last few days before Congress left for a two-week break, where there were emergency meetings. Vice President Mike Pence was on the Hill. What did that bill look like? And again, was it anything other than a PR effort of, hey, we're trying here. This is still important to us. Yes, it was a PR effort to look like they were trying and it was still important to them. But what they were coming up with was high-risk

pools. High-risk pools can help give people access to insurance. If it's not going to be that, then it's going to have to be subsidized by taxpayers. And if you're going to subsidize it by taxpayers, but cut the taxes on the wealthiest people that are there in Obamacare, you're going to finance your health care insurance program by taxing middle class people and lower income people. And Danielle, as all this has been happening, is it fair to say that in public opinion polls, Obamacare, which was not that popular for years and years and years, has suddenly had a big comeback in terms of public opinion? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's certainly not overwhelmingly loved. It's never had it. You know, you could argue probably never will have like 80 percent approval. But yeah, more than half a majority of Americans do approve of Obamacare at this point. And that happened magically right around the time that Donald Trump took office or suppose a part of that could be that, you know, they started to think about, huh, maybe my 25-year-old daughter is going to lose her insurance once she turns 26. Then what happens? You know, so I think people start, I wonder if people started to worry about what they might be losing or worry about, okay, well, even if I don't love Obamacare, what happens next? What on earth could replace it?

And would it possibly be worse for me? There's also a funny phenomenon here with people on the left, or whatever you want to call them, just people who are to the left of average, who did not like Obamacare and told pollsters they did not like Obamacare because what they wanted was single payer, Medicare for all, Bernie Sanders plan. And those people have been down on Obamacare for a long time, right from the very beginning, even before it was passed into law. Recently, they have, I think, had, you know, something of a temptation to speak more flatteringly of it, just to contrast it with what the Republicans are proposing now. If they were, you know, if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, was trying to maintain an older version of Obamacare, they probably still wouldn't like it.

Or just a fickle group of voters, I guess. Yeah. Voting is one thing. Polling is another. And when you ask people whether they want something or they don't, and all they have to say is yes or no, and they don't have to actually vote or make a commitment, sometimes they say different things. Right. And this is, I mean, as good a time as any to point out that issue polling is, I mean, speaking of people being fickle, issue polling is, I don't know if fickle is the right word, is touchy. It is very susceptible to wording, to like, are you talking registered or likely or all adults?

I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that can mess with issue polling. And it's like, how are you describing the thing? Are you talking about the death tax or the estate tax? Or are you defining what the estate tax is? Are you talking about the death tax or the estate tax? Or are you defining what the estate tax is? Are you talking about any sort of thing? There's all those people, for example, who thought that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act were two different things. So if you're not explaining exactly what you're talking about to some Americans, the polling is going to be way off and it's going to tell you nothing. The best example of that that I always come to from when I covered energy for a couple of years, the basic question of should we do something about climate change?

You get off the wall, yes, we should. And then would you be willing to pay more for your electricity or gas, which of course is doing something about climate change? Oh, no, I would never want to do that. You know, and it's just the way you frame the question. Precisely. All right. Speaking of questions, here's a well-framed question from Caitlin who writes,

Hi, team. I love your podcast. Well, thank you. I've been donating to a lot more politicians lately and getting on mailing lists, and I've noticed I receive many emails about a midnight fundraising deadline today. What does this mean? Why is there a deadline? Why would they not accept a donation tomorrow?

Thanks, Caitlin. Great question. Oh, Caitlin, they'll accept your donation. Anytime. They want your money. So there are some real deadlines, but there are a lot of fake deadlines. It's bookkeeping. It's a deadline for bookkeeping. Right. They're reporting deadlines. So, I mean, it makes a bit more sense, I think, to talk about this in terms of the presidential race. So back up. It's the end of September 2016.

Right. It's the end of the third quarter. The presidential candidates are about to have to report what they took in in the third quarter. OK, so then they Hillary Clinton has a large lead in the polls at this point. Right. So so they send out these emails saying, hey, Trump supporters, hey, Clinton supporters, give us give us money right now before midnight, September 30th. So that way we can, you know, meet the deadline. Well, OK. But then the point of that is so that once that deadline comes and they report to the Federal Election Commission, then when the FEC puts those numbers out, Hillary Clinton could say, ha ha, see, we took in bajillions of dollars. Or Donald Trump could say, see, we have all this support. The polls aren't really showing just how strong we are. So it's it's another way of claiming strength.

It's another way of saying, hey, guys, listen, I'm going to win. But I've also seen very liberal, loose interpretations of these deadlines. It's the quarters of the year. But then it's a couple of weeks later until the report comes out. And I've seen campaigns the night before the report come out saying, the report's come out tomorrow. You've got to donate now. And, of course, that is no bearing. And I've seen campaigns the night before the report come out saying the reports come out tomorrow. You've got to donate now. And of course, that is no Barry. And I've seen totally fake deadlines.

So a lot of this is also just giving you a false sense of urgency to say, my God, there's a deadline. I have to give them 30 more dollars. And when you say liberal, by the way, you mean like loose, loose, not politically liberal. People are always saying, yeah, I think I'll send her some money. But then they don't do it. I'm Ron and I'm running for Senate in two years. Please give me money. Yeah, that really doesn't work. And by the way, this is, of course, not just presidential. This is, you know,

on the congressional level. And this is parties, too. I mean, the national parties, the RNC, DNC, all of the different party structures, you know, will also be raising money. And they like to have lots of money to show for themselves when they hit their deadlines as well. So it's not just individuals and it's certainly not just presidential candidates. All right. We're going to take a quick break here. When we come back, Ron Elving is going to drop some etymological knowledge on everyone. Support for this podcast and the following message come from 1-800-DENTIST. If you've had dental work done, you know it's important for your dentist to have the latest technology. Dentists with CEREC, that's C-E-R-E-C, can create a crown in just one appointment, making your dental experience easy, fast, and as comfortable as possible.

Over 9 million people have used 1-800-DENTIST. To find a dentist with CEREC, call 1-800-DENTIST. To find a dentist with CEREC, call 1-800-DENTIST and speak to an expert or book your appointment online at 1-800-DENTIST.COM slash politics. And we're back. Ron, you especially, I think, will love this next question.

It's from Hannah and it's about language. Hey guys, I often hear the words hack, pundit and wonk thrown around in political commentary and discussion. Can you clarify what each of these mean? Hannah? And I'll add flack to that. Ah, yes. Well, with the exception of flack, I think I could say that I had been called all of them with some justification. But really, when you're going to talk about these words, you have to turn to the guru William Sapphire. No longer with us, but the late William Sapphire of the New York Times produced several volumes of a dictionary of political language that are really worth reading. They're just fun reading. And hack comes from hackney, which was a horse originally, and then it was a reference to a horse-drawn cab in London. And these horses were basically run into the ground.

They were worked to death. And in the late stages of their lives, they were barely serviceable. And so it was an insult to Boplaia to a politician or to anybody else who did something routine like a writer who was not very good. And so a hack writer, a hack script writer, a hack journalist, you know, never been a compliment. Let's just put it that way. Pundit comes from the Hindi word for learned man. Is this true? This is true. Wow.

It is an Indian word. It was applied to a certain kind of spy that the imperialist Brits who were in India for a very long time, a couple of centuries, would use that term for people that they sent to spy on people outside their areas of control. So it has a couple of sort of contradictory sort of savory and unsavory term of honor and a term of not so great honor. But when it's applied to people in our business, it's usually meant to convey a sort of stuffed shirt self-importance, which is probably appropriate. And finally, wonk, which has really undergone a renaissance. It was pretty... Kind of a humblebrag use now.

It's like nerd. It's suddenly cool to be a nerd. It's suddenly cool to be a wonk. Now, there is a theory out there that the word wonk comes from K-N-O-W, no spelled backwards. I have no way of proving that. I never noticed that. I'm told that that is not true, that that is not where it comes from, that it comes from something else, possibly a little less pleasant, but that it was originally being applied to people as policy wonks. You know, we have data jocks and we have policy wonks. And then sort of the policy got dropped and wonk got increasingly embraced as sort of a thing it was okay to be in a certain context. For example, American University, where I teach, has these buses that say American University wonks know their stuff. And it's embracing the term as a completely positive term for the student body.

And like Paul Ryan, for example, has wholeheartedly embraced the term wonk. PowerPoints and all. I want to back up, though. Aren't there kind of two uses of hack? I mean, there's like the hack journalist thing, but aren't there political hacks as well? Oh, yes. In fact, it was applied to politicians, I believe, according to William Safire. It was applied to politicians before it was applied to journalists.

Huh. Huh. Anyone who's just been doing something too long and is kind of broken down and not very good at it anymore and probably never had been all that great at it in the first place is called a hack. What about a flack? Oh, a flack is a... That's a press person. For an organization or a politician, it's a press officer. Well, it started with Flack Catcher. Right. Because Flack was, of course, the anti-aircraft fire that was set up against airplanes in World War II and since.

Somebody who was a Flack Catcher was somebody who was like your, you know, take it from the press, your bulletproof vest, whatever, your stand-in. And so Flack Catcher got shortened to Flack. Although they don't just catch Flack, they, of course, feed you all sorts of stuff. They pitch as good as they get. There is a, at least at one point, I don't know if it still goes on, there is a happy hour here in D.C. called Hacks and Flacks, where the journalists and press people from around the city get together and have drinks and spew their lines at each other. It's really fascinating. That's perfect. Now, we should also start one for, you know,

pundits and wonks. There is also... Which are you? The White House press secretary, there is a flak jacket, a bulletproof vest that is passed down

from press secretary to press secretary that hangs in the office and I think apparently all the outgoing press secretaries leave a note for their future successors.

Ha! Had no idea. Okay, that's a wrap for this episode. You can catch more of our wonkery and punditry and hackiness at NPR One or on your local public radio station. And a reminder that you can record your questions and send them our way or write to us at nprpolitics at npr.org. We'll be back with our weekly roundup on Thursday. I'm Scott Detrow.

I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, nerd. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.