Guantanamo Watch

One of Obama's first acts as president was to issue a request to halt all prosecutions by military tribunal of Guantanamo prisoners. It is not quite an order--it has to be submitted as a motion by prosecutors to the judges operating the courts--but given executive control over the military, it should mean an immediate halt to prosecutions.

Given all the revelations of torture at Guantanamo (video reports here and here), this is the only manner in which Obama can ethically proceed. But reviewing military commissions and slowly considering policy can only be a start. The detainees might be tried by civilian courts in the United States. Or they may be quietly forgotten and then moved to shadow prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Given the high likilihood that the American military is detaining a significant number of people who are neither enemies of America or a future threat (and, for that matter, not guilty of any wrongdoing that America could legally and morally seek to punish) this potential should shake lovers of constituional liberty and human rights.

It is somewhat disquieting that so much power remains in the hands of the executive in this matter. In that sense, at least, Obama's constitutional position is little changed from that of George W., who left office (seemingly) confident that he had done the right thing. For Obama to begin effecting true constitutional change, he will have to repudiate not merely the prison at Guantanamo, but the principles that allowed it.

Illinois and the Constitutional Crisis

After more than a one-month hiatus, I hope I can now resume steady blogging. Certainly the Blagojevich nightmare in Chicago is a black stain on democracy. More frighteningly, the oh-so-public release of the wiretap transcripts make us feel as if the skirt has been lifted and we have gotten a peak at the "real world" of bruising democratic politics. After all, it is only the brazenness of Blagojevich that surprises us.

The constitutional issue du jour is whether the Illinois Supreme Court can grant the state injunctive relief and prevent Blagojevich from carrying out his office's duties. In a motion filed with Illinois's highest court yesterday, the attorney general filed a request for a temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction. The people, through the attorney general, are claiming that Blagojevich is unable to serve "due to disability and should not rightfully continue to hold that office."

What a fascinating course of action! Of course, even the governor's critics are rather stunned at the idea of injunctive relief being sought against the highest executive officer in Illinois. The motion itself is quite weak, relying on Article V of Illinois's Constitution. Any fair reading of section 5 gives the power to the Illinois legislature. Of course, the supreme court is given exclusive and original jurisdiction in the event that no law is in place, but it is a stretch to consider this carte blanche for the Supreme Court to decide when the governor is fit or unfit to serve.

Commentators are already saying that the Illinois justices are traditionally cautious and most likely will not grant this motion. But then again, courts have done stranger things...

Obama, Security, and Sham History

We live in historic times. Certainly those who felt the power of the long polling lines, the nervous energy, and the spontaneous celebrations across the country on Nov. 4 will remember where they were, what they were doing, at that moment, for many years.

Some would rather these times weren't this historic. Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard has written a somewhat (less than) generous opinion piece lamenting that more of the country didn't see things his way. He is concerned that we, as a country, are now suddenly at a greater security risk than we would have had a septuagenarian and his girl-novice sidekick been elected.

I grant Kristol his opinion. But his justification comes from a bizarre historical narrative. He suggests that the American electorate has, since WWII, followed a consistent pattern in voting. Republican administrations make us strong and feared about the world, and then we feel happy enough to elect Democratic presidents who muck things up by being soft and squishy.

Consider:

Encouraging Americans' tendency to take hard-won national security successes for granted--once they are won--is the key to how Democrats, in modern times, win presidential elections. Dwight Eisenhower pursued a cautious but not ineffective foreign policy. Voters were unimpressed by the peace and stability of 1960 and chose John Kennedy. Partly as a result of Kennedy's initial weakness, the Berlin Wall went up and the Cuban Missile Crisis followed--and then, partly out of a felt need of Lyndon Johnson's to appear strong, we escalated in Vietnam.

Let us forget for a moment that Eisenhower was elected primarily to extricate America from an unpopular war started by a fist-pounding Democrat, and that Kennedy campaigned as a stanch cold-warrior to the more moderate Nixon. Let us forget that the Soviets did not need anyone's permission to build the Berlin Wall and weren't "waiting around" to do it. Let's keep our eye on the larger narrative. Kristol continues:

The voters elected Richard Nixon to extricate us from the quagmire in Vietnam with honor, which he did, and Gerald Ford attempted to prevent the Democratic Congress from walking away from our ally and our responsibility. Voters decided, however, to give the presidency back to the party of JFK and LBJ--by this time more the party of George McGovern--and we got the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

So Americans elected Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and--stunningly--they won the Cold War virtually without firing a shot. (Bush also drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.) Voters were able in 1992 to take peace for granted and to focus on domestic policy. "It's the economy, stupid" was stupid but successful just as its equivalents had been in 1976 and 1960.

Kristol is right that we elected Nixon to extricate ourselves from Vietnam, presumably with honor. He ended up bombing Cambodia. The bombing continued for years before he left with the same terms he could have gotten at the beginning of his tenure as president. Given the recent evidence that Kissenger may have sabotaged the peace talks under Johnson in order to prolong the war for an incoming Nixon administration, the idea of Nixon's failed Vietnam policy amounting to "peace with honor" is something of a joke. The Iranian Revolution occurred--if I read Kristol correctly--because we were not hard enough on Iran? As if the secret police we trained for the Shah and the support we gave him to keep Iran a client state was not enough. Would he prefer we had provided more weapons of repression to that regime? Does he really suppose that the Iranian revolutionaries cared who was president back in the United States? Nor did the election of Ronald Reagan do anything to convince the Soviets to leave Afghanistan. And the USSR's protracted presence in Afghanistan played its part in its own demise--a lesson we may want to take to heart before we jump into any more wars in the name of strength and national security.

What is most disheartening about Kristol's analysis are the assumptions that govern it. Events that occur during a presidency--carefully selected and pruned of any meaningful context--are attributed to the sitting president. One could just as easily construct a counter-narrative which is even more compelling.

Start with World War II, instead of avoiding it as Kristol does. Our Democratic president and his Democratic successor achieved the impossible: getting powerful, industrialized fascist countries to surrender unconditionally. Harry Truman, in his zeal to stop the totalitarian Soviet Union from expanding its reach, combatted communism in Korea. The American people, confident that we were powerful enough to stand some peace, elected Dwight D. Eisenhower. By the end of his term, the Soviet Union had achieved the H-Bomb, was more powerful than ever, and ready to move on Berlin and Cuba. Americans elected John F. Kennedy--a chest-thumping cold warrior--over the more moderate and level-headed Richard Nixon. Kennedy met the Russians face-to-face and took us to the brink of nuclear war in order to defend freedom, including engaging in a hot war in Vietnam. Nixon would be elected in 1968 to extricate us from the war, much as Eisenhower had before him. Nixon ended up pursuing a policy of appeasment with communist Russia and communist China. Reagan's administration fared no better than Carter's, given our meager victory in Grenada and the more substantial embarrassment that was Lebanon.

I could go on, but there is no point. The counter-narrative is just as empty and inspid as Kristol's narrative. I use it only as a heuristic device, and only to demonstrate that Barack Obama's election does not signal that a confident public believes it has been protected by the last administration and now is ready to "take a chance." Many Americans rightly believe that this last, failed presidency has seriously weakened us as a country, that we can no longer defend ourselves the way we might have eight years ago. Kristol's inability to acknowledge this simple truth is, on his part, both an intellectual and a moral failure.

Guantanamo, War, and the Rule of Law

A few reflections on a subject probably not on most people's minds on the eve of the Election: what to do with Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners we hold there. It is of great relief to me that both candidates have signaled their willingness to close Guantanamo and proceed in an honorable and legal fashion against the detainees, which includes releasing those who are not threats and who are held in error. The solution will require some practical policy decision-making as well as principled constitutional action. The most recent test of this is Kiyemba v. Bush, currently before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. I am proud to have joined in an amicus brief supporting the release of the petitioners who--by the administration's own admission--are not and were never enemies of the United States and ought to be released post haste.

Elections are constitutional moments, and 2008 is something special in this regard. But we should not lose sight of the fact that one of the most important constitutional issues of our day was decided in the months leading up to this election, when the Republican Party made John McCain and not Mitt Romney its candidate. Romney, we should recall, promised to "double" Guantanamo. He repeatedly invoked the stark language of "good" and "evil" in his foreign policy discussions. And despite these moral absolutisms, he was not willing to repudiate the use of torture.

One constitutional issue for the electorate to decide has, therefore, been decided already. It is up to all of us now--or at least those of us who wish to see our government restored to lawful, rational, and moral behavior--to hold the next president accountable. Guantanamo must be closed, and the prisoners there either released or charged with crimes.

See you all on the 5th.

Not an endorsement, really...

Students of constitutional history need to monitor the actions of the next president--whomever he may be--over his first six months in office. Both the candidates have signaled their desire to end the executive excesses of the Bush Administration and restore something like dignity to the notion of constitutional government. Given that warrantless wiretapping is still an open issue, Guantanamo Bay remains open, and unaccountable military actions seem the norm these days, it is an enormously important that our next president demonstrate self-restraint. At the same time, the Congress is going to have to grow a pair if it is ever to restore constituional balance to the system. Back when revelations of George W. Bush's mendacity concerning the war in Iraq were coming to light, only Arlen Specter (a republican from Pennsylvania) talked seriously and openly about the possibility of impeachment. It would be nice if Congress prepared to defend its constitutional prerogatives, especially the power to declare war.

Meanwhile, I still harbor tremendous doubts about the Republican choice for President. Sadly, much of this comes from McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, who has now been identified by some as the "hope" of the Republican Party. If this is true, then the Republican Party deserves the drubbing it will receive on November 4. It deserves to become a permanent minority party. As George Will--in something a little more than a statement of good will and a little less than an endorsement of Obama--put it:

Some polls show that Palin has become an even heavier weight in John McCain's saddle than his association with George W. Bush. Did McCain, who seems to think that Palin's never having attended a "Georgetown cocktail party" is sufficient qualification for the vice presidency, lift an eyebrow when she said that vice presidents "are in charge of the United States Senate"?

She may have been tailoring her narrative to her audience of third-graders, who do not know that vice presidents have no constitutional function in the Senate other than to cast tie-breaking votes. But does she know that when Lyndon Johnson, transformed by the 1960 election from Senate majority leader into vice president, ventured to the Capitol to attend the Democratic senators' weekly policy luncheon, the new majority leader, Montana's Mike Mansfield, supported by his caucus, barred him because his presence would be a derogation of the Senate's autonomy?

Perhaps Palin's confusion about the office for which she is auditioning comes from listening to its current occupant. Dick Cheney, the foremost practitioner of this administration's constitutional carelessness in aggrandizing executive power, regularly attends the Senate Republicans' Tuesday luncheons. He has said jocularly that he is "a product" of the Senate, which pays his salary, and that he has no "official duties" in the executive branch. His situational constitutionalism has, however, led him to assert, when claiming exemption from a particular executive order, that he is a member of the legislative branch and, when seeking to shield certain of his deliberations from legislative inquiry, to say that he is a member of the executive branch.

McCain has been careless in this campaign, and it does not bode well for America should he be elected. He seems to fly by the seat of his pants, makes decisions from the gut, and has abandoned his former virtues of moderation, independent thought, and coolness. The Economist opined the same sentiment when it endorsed Obama earlier this week--the editors clearly pined for the old McCain, but cannot see him leading in any real way as President.

As a constitutional scholar concerned about the preservation of rule of law in this republic and the advancement of human rights worldwide, it matters less to me who is president than what the next president does. Personally, I can't wait until this election is over. It has been exciting, but it is quickly approaching tedious. I'm looking forward to casting my ballot on Tuesday. I'm then looking forward to holding whoever is elected to account for his actions for the next four years. And I would like to see some constituitonal history in the making, reversing the trends begun by Bush, Cheney, and that lawless crew that has run the White House like it was a biker bar for the past eight years.

Election Fraud and the Justice Department

President Bush is now asking the Justice Department to do what the Ohio Republican Party could not get the Supreme Court to do--look into 200,000 new voter registrations that some have called fraudulent. Information on registration cards did not correspond with information in a database of voters and, as such, they look suspicious to some.

On its face, this appears to be reasonable. Except that we have three contextualizing factors:

1. George W. Bush's Justice Department has been the most notoriously partisan of any recent administration, and "voter fraud" was the entering wedge that U.S. attorneys were supposed to use to disenfranchise people who were predisposed to vote Democratic. In case anyone forgot, this brought down Attorney General Albert Gonzales and shamed the administration. It led James Bovard to call for Bush's impeachment.

2. It has been a long-time tactic of Republicans to set up as many roadblocks as possible to prevent registered Democrats from voting. The usual saying is that Democrats do a better job of registering voters and Republicans do a better job of getting those voters to the polls. Perhaps Democrats would be better about voting if they didn't find that their registrations had been "lost" or destroyed, as in Fulton County (my county of residence, by the way) where 70,000 new registrations were found in the trash.

3. We are eight days from an election. For Ohio Republicans to attempt to disenfranchise 200,000 new voters--and for the President to suggest an investigation at this point--smacks of a cynical last minute ploy to keep Democrats sitting next Tuesday. If nothing else, the President ought to maintain an air of impartiality in the execution of his official duties. But then again, this president has exhibited an unprincipled ignorance of our Constitution, when not treating it with outright contempt.

Your Highness, the President of the United States

George W. Bush--or whoever whispers in his ear--continues to issue signing statements declaring his ability to dispense with certain sections of laws. I have blogged about this in the past. What Bush has clearly done is create a precedent which, for better or worse, is now part of the official record.

The dispensing power in executive authority is not new. James II claimed it in 1685 when he became King of England. Parliament called him to account by ousting him from the throne. The resulting constitutional settlement--the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89--crimped executive royal power for good.

The president is, in many ways, an elected king. The president wields a powerful veto on legislation, commands the armed forces, and directs the execution of our nation's laws. We have seen the powers of this office grow in the twentieth century. The president now commands armies in peacetime as well as in war, and sets policy and often times the agenda for Congress. If the president can add to his list of powers the ability to dispense with parts of laws, we may have moved backward in time to the seventeenth century conception of a monarchy.

We are watching constitutional change in its incipient form. The signing statements have not the force of law unless courts begin accepting them as authoritative. The next president has not yet been elected, so we do not know if the practice will die away or continue unabated.

So, stay tuned.

Legal Theory and Cosmopolitanism: Identity and Its Discontents

“And when one day our human kind becomes full-grown, it will not define itself as the sum total of the whole world's inhabitants, but as the infinite unity of their mutual needs.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

The philosophy that led sociologist C. Wright Mills to his many insights of American life in the first half of the 20^th century was arguably his belief in the Sociological Imagination.—The practice of tying the individual experience with institutions and a focus on the relationship between biography and history to bring about a fuller understanding of the individual and/or the society which she is a part of. To be sure, this notion of attaching the concept of empathy to distant individuals to bring about organic understanding is not particularly new, though perhaps forgotten in our times of curious contradiction.

Historian Lynn Hunt argues that the epistolary advent of the novel in the 18^th century had physical effects (citing Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa and Rousseau’s Julie) which created new concepts on the organization of social and political life. It is with these broadening feelings of empathy that feelings or rights in our time have grown to become largely “self-evident.” Prior to the beginning of the epistolary novel, Dr. Hunt argues, attention hadn’t been focused on how individual minds understand and reshape social and cultural contexts.

Reaching further back still, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, last of the “five good emperors”, starts his Meditations (originally written as entries in a personal notebook) by listing all the people whom he learned something worthwhile from: “From my father I observed mildness of temper and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation….” Above all, perhaps, Aurelius’ Mediations are replete with the finite nature of human life and the infinite nature of the universe. When one realizes this cosmology, Aurelius argues that the proper course one should take is the labor to common interest and to value everything with just reference to the whole. Since his death in 180 AD, the Meditations have been read and have influenced millions of people including Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

I briefly cite these examples (with an admitted bias to Marcus Aurelius) to show that examining the relationship between the individual and society has brought tremendous insight and principles of advancement through human history—particularly in the rights and privileges we all know and experience on some level today. In many ways, our Arts and Humanities education is directed to studying or at least developing concepts which enable us to think about others. Our economy, as we are seeing, is inextricably tied to those of other countries as we share in the weal and woe of development, coexistence, and stability.

There is much to be said about this concept of empathy and the recognition of the dynamic biographical history of individuals in relation to the socio-cultural contexts in which they live—particularly if there have been instances overtime that have led to a leveling of society which benefits all. In attempts not to lineate the many facets and forms of empathy that exist, there are institutions such as the legal and its schools of thought that arguably, in their attempts to discern by ascribing a theoretical equality of all individuals, disregard or singularize the individual experience in relation to socio-cultural history. In order to further carry my position, I will be citing Eric A. Posner’s essay analyzing Boumediene v. Bush, “Boumediene and the Uncertain March of Judicial Cosmopolitanism.”

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens detained at Guantanamo Bay have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus and that the review procedures established by the Detainee Treatment Act do not provide a sufficient substitute for habeas corpus. Posner argues that Justice Kennedy’s opinion (which he wrote for the majority) is largely due to a commitment to protecting the interests of noncitizens overseas—a commitment he calls “judicial cosmopolitanism.” Posner’s conclusion and critique of Justice Kennedy rests on the idea of an American political community of which people outside are denied certain rights. This harkens back to a disagreement I have with many ideal theorists (mainly Rawls) whose conception of a political community rests on a closed state that one is born into and can never leave. Furthermore, he cites logistic difficulties in granting habeas corpus rights dealing with cost, difficulty, and a dangerous setting for the military to comply with requirements of a habeas hearing.

Posner argues that Justice Kennedy places all weight on the logistical concern and perhaps none on the political community concern. While the case against a logistics argument is admittedly weak as stated by Posner (since Guantanamo Bay is about 500 miles away from Florida), Justice Kennedy notes that the habeas court will give deference to the government where deference is justified and the argument that habeas hearings are logistically unreasonable is, until experience proves otherwise, foreclosed. Posner then further criticizes Kennedy for not taking the “natural” assumption that “nonresident aliens just don’t have the rights Americans have.” Which almost begs the question, just what is an “American right” and what makes it so exclusive that all should not possess them if our goal in the legal system is to distinguish truth and fairness from fallacy—particularly in a time where crimes are committed against America are coming from those all over the world?

His conclusion for Justice Kennedy’s reasoning?

…Justice Kennedy is a Cosmopolitan.

Here, by Posner, and taken in a similar route by Rawls and others, we have the curious avenues one can take to articulate theories of justice. By taking the identity of an individual and her place in society and either disregarding it and placing them in an either/or situation so long as rights are concerned, as Posner does, or singularizing them (as with Rawls) by limiting the individual to a closed society and only able to belong to that community, we have curious makings of a habit of unwillingness to deal with human complexity. If we are to uphold a just and fair legal system in a post 9/11 world where even our presidential candidates are being called terrorists by fellow citizens, while our government sends billions for oil to many people who would do us harm, and where labeling carries a certain disregard for and singularizes identity. It is becoming clear in more ways than one that our current conceptions of human ecology and identity may not serve us justly for the future.

An Open Letter to John McCain

Dear Senator McCain,

I understand in recent weeks that your campaign has come on hard times. I understand it must be frustrating to find a ten-year quest for the White House—what was clearly a lifelong ambition on your part—impeded by a relative newcomer with whom you have serious philosophical disagreements. As such, I understand why you have abandoned promises to make this election about ideas and policies and instead committed the kind of character assault that was used so successfully against you in 2000. Such turns are, however regrettable, to be expected in electoral politics. We can trace such history back to our first seriously contested presidential election in 1800. They are nothing new, and simply a part of democratic politics, however ugly.

I write this with a somewhat heavy heart. I have blogged in support of your kind of conservatism in the past—you are one of the last Republicans left in the party with whom I felt kinship. I was excited about campaign in 2000 and have deeply lamented in the last years that we have lived with a Bush rather than a McCain White House. I have even been willing to accept your genuflection to the radical right. I wrote this off as the kind of coalition building necessary to generate a majority rather than a compromise of your principles. I was elated when you won the Republican primary because I believed it a victory for the decency wing of the Republican Party.

Nonetheless, nothing can justify the behavior of some of the people in your rallies who have, in reference to Obama, shouted such things as “Traitor!” “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” Your campaign has now released several statements defending these incendiary words, rather than distancing you from them.

Character assaults, however petty, may be justified as political necessity. But to countenance calls for murder is unconscionable. We live in an age where the possibility of political violence in the form of terrorism exists everywhere in the world. It is, as many have suggested, our greatest challenge. We may not be able to extinguish political violence in our time—such thought is of course Pollyannaish—but we can at least take a principled stand on the matter. You should. I urge you to be uncompromising on this matter, to reject such comments from even your supporters. It would set the right tone in an uncertain age.

I don’t know if these suggestions are politically intelligent, or would resonate with voters, or help you in swing states. I am not a political strategist. But I believe the moral principle here more important for our future than the tactics you employ to win an election. After all, doesn’t country come first?

With respect,

H. Robert Baker

Palin, Biden and what does a constitutional office entail, anyway?

Palin and Biden did as expected. Both were feisty, Biden tried his best not to be condescending, Palin offered up lots of facts and figures to indicate she is fit for national office, and the two clashed on substantive issues. They also clashed on one constitutional issue: the position and role of the vice president.

The question came long into the debate, when both candidates appeared fatigued. Palin had just explained her understanding of the role of vice-president in relation to the president. McCain has already signaled, apparently, that she would head up energy policy and "reform of government over all" and working with families with special needs. Biden answered that he was a man of independent judgment, but that he was working for Barack Obama.

Gwen Ifill, the moderator, then asked a question which appeared to be something like a spontaneous follow up. (Here's the transcript I'm working with, by the way). "Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?"

This gets to the crux of the issue. And while both candidates have doubtlessly been boning up on policy subjects, this straying into a constitutional matter may have tested their substantive understanding of the Constitution. It is an important question, given that the officer we ultimately elect is not just a policy wonk, but someone charged with defending and protecting the Constitution. Here was Palin's answer:

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

Huh? I'm not sure which founding father deserves credit for imbuing the office of vice president with "flexibility," but I'm sure he would be surprised to find this out. Of course, invoking the "wisdom" of the founding fathers is always a more political than intellectual argument, and as such we should not take that so seriously. In truth, Palin did not answer the question. This is a dodge that has become typical of her when she is cornered--she meanders, then tries to say something about her experience as a mayor or a mother. In this case, she went with mayor/governor, to highlight "executive" experience.

Biden's response was emphatic. He rejected Vice President Cheney's interpretation of the Constitution as dangerous. He then gave a somewhat confusing answer about where the vice president's office is defined in the Constitution, citing "Article I" but saying it is an executive office. If I followed him correctly, he was saying that Article I only gives the VP one role when he presides over the Senate, and that is to cast a vote in the event of a tie.

At this point, I wish Biden had tried to pin down Palin. He studiously avoided doing anything that would come off as condescending (possibly to avoid cries of sexism). This may have been a good political move, but someone needed to get Palin to answer the question: do you believe, as does Cheney, that the office of Vice President is not under the sway of the executive? That it is an independent office that exists neither in the executive or legislative branches?

I have blogged in the past about my concern over McCain's selection of Palin. VPs are usuallly ciphers, but given McCain's advanced age and 100 plus pages of medical report, Palin has to demonstrate she is ready. She has given a series of shaky interviews in the past few weeks suggesting that she is out of her depth on the national stage. Now, in the only part of the debate that asked the candidates to display a substantive understanding of the Constitution, she has stumbled again. She is not yet "a heartbeat away from the presidency." But if she someday is, then my only advice: be afraid.