Politics-Obama

Not long ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney opined off-hand that Barack Obama would be a one-term wonder. Since then, I have heard a similar point made on occasion by other speakers. It just so happened that I was wondering the same not long before I read of Cheney’s remark.

Mr. Obama as a one-termer has been, of course, a hope of the more fevered denizens of the swamps of the conservative hinterland since November 5, 2008, the day after the election. I was scornful of the likelihood that their hope would be realized, and, on balance, I continue to believe that the President will be re-elected. But what shook my previous confidence in having to prepare myself for eight years of an Obama White House was the increasingly obvious combination of toxic ideology, incompetent administration, and personal detachment that emanates from Mr. Obama and his minions.

Looked at historically, it is very difficult to dislodge an incumbent who chooses to run for re-election. The task becomes almost impossible if that incumbent succeeded a President from the opposing party. In the twentieth century, only four incumbent Presidents were defeated for re-election. Three of those defeats, involving William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, and George H. W. Bush were cases where they had gained the White House after Presidents from their own party. Party fatigue had set in after twelve years or more of the same party in the White House. In both Taft’s and Bush’s defeats, there were strong third party challenges that affected the outcomes. In those races, the winner received substantially less than 50% of the vote. Of the three, only Herbert Hoover, running in the political gale of the Depression, lost decisively after one term.

There has been only one instance in well more than a century of an incumbent president losing a re-election bid when that incumbent had taken over the White House from the opposite party. That loser was Jimmy Carter in 1980. Leaving aside the odd sequence (and diversion of popular and electoral votes) of the Grover Cleveland-Benjamin Harrison contests in 1888 and 1892, there arguably has not been another case where an incumbent President of a major party lost re-election after succeeding someone from the opposing party. (President John Tyler lost his re-election bid in 1844, but he ran as a third-party candidate and abandoned his campaign before the election.)

The standard for losing as an incumbent, then, is set by the inept Jimmy Carter. Short of sinking to that level, Mr. Obama should be assured of re-election. How close to the Carter standard an incumbent can safely get depends also on the quality of the opposition. Carter was faced with Ronald Reagan, a powerful campaigner and Teflon candidate. There is no Republican of similar political potency on the scene. Sarah Palin comes close, and a comparison of the dismissive treatment she receives with that directed at Reagan yields remarkable similarities. However, Palin is on balance a more polarizing figure than Reagan, which would make it more difficult for her to make the same kind of pitch to close the deal with independents and Democrats that Reagan made in his debates against Carter. In addition, Obama is a much better campaigner and presents a more likable persona than Carter was able to do in a side-by-side comparison with Reagan.

That said, Mr. Obama is doing his remarkable best to imitate Jimmy Carter. The drip, drip, drip of news about botched anti-terror efforts (The ludicrous “The system worked” declaration by Janet Incompetano as a response to the Crotchbomber), missteps in trials for accused terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the cluelessness of reaction to the Honduran constitutional dispute, the continuing debacle of healthcare “reform” in which the administrations comes up with patently absurd claims, all undermine the public’s confidence in Obama’s administrative competence. His weakness in foreign relations, complete with bowing before sundry monarchs and dictators; his failure to constrain Iran; his apparent appeasement of Russia; his coziness with Latin American leftists; his nuclear disarmament and anti-missile technology decisions; his decisions of interrogations of terrorists; his (and Eric Holder’s) attempted or threatened moves against Bush administration officials and against CIA interrogators, and his 2009 Obama World Apology Tour all show a profound weakness, stemming from personality and ideology, in protecting American interests. If they have not hurt the President yet, and I think they have hurt in the public’s perception of him, they present catastrophic political danger to him, should there be an attack on the U.S.. They at least present persistent, if not catastrophic, political danger through their cumulative negative effect.

Every administration has periods of good luck and bad. So, timing means a lot. Assuming that Mr. Obama has had neither extraordinary good nor bad luck overall as measured by “events” so far, he is early on showing a lot of Carteresque tendencies. Assuming also that those tendencies continue in approximately similar manner, Mr. Obama could be in trouble in 2012, something that seemed to exist only in the realm of fantasy a year or even six months ago.

But being as bad as Carter will not defeat Obama. There is one thing that Obama has that Carter did not, and which will give him 10% of the vote that Carter could not get. That thing is Obama’s race. The additional turn-out among Blacks, along with an even more heavily pro-Democrat tilt than usual among that group, will account for some of the boost. Similar increases, though perhaps less significant, will manifest themselves among other racial minorities. But many Whites, too, will refuse to vote against the first, at least partially, African-ancestry President. Riddled with racial guilt, these liberals will not vote to confirm Obama’s political failure and their own failure to recognize their candidate’s lack of experience and qualification for the office that was so glaringly apparent to less partial observers. As already has been made clear by various journalists, well, by Chris Matthews, immediately after Obama’s inauguration, for them, Obama the “Black President” is too important and big to fail.

If I recognize this, Mr. Obama’s savvy political advisers will know it at least as well. They will make sure that the racial undercurrent remains in full flow in 2012. Opposition to, or criticism of, the President will once again be slammed as racist by Obama, his minions, and the newspapers, TV networks, and other parts of the media wing of the Democratic Party. This will serve to drive such doubting liberals and weak-kneed moderates back into the party line. In short, then, Mr. Obama can be as bad as Jimmy Carter, and not worry about re-election. To vote Mr. Obama out of office would require disasters far worse than the economic malaise and the national security weaknesses that characterized the Carter years. What might suffice as a big enough disaster is hard to say. But an unemployment rate even of 10%, a high inflation rate, an Iranian nuke, an Iranian attack on its neighbors, a new 9/11, or a Russian, North Korean, or Chinese invasion of their neighbors probably won’t pry loose enough Obama disciples to turn him out of office. Some of his former supporters will turn against him or not show up to vote, but, as the religious imagery associated with support of the “Black Jesus” demonstrates, for too many (including, perhaps, the President himself) Obama is not merely a politician, but a movement or cause.

For those reasons, primarily the reason of his race, I do not believe that Obama can be defeated in 2012. The Republicans will not be facing Jimmy Carter, but a Jimmy Carter simulacrum that benefits from affirmative action. That said, I think that there is a 10% chance that Mr. Obama will not be President in 2013. The reason is Mr. Obama himself. He may opt not to run again.

It has become abundantly clear already that he does not enjoy being President. For all the idle comparisons between Obama and FDR or John Kennedy, those others enjoyed the job itself, not just the perks. They brought a “vigah” (in Kennedy’s phrasing) to the position that the incumbent does not. Even before the election, Obama had a reputation of not wanting to work at the hard stuff. He produced no significant legislation in the Senate. His absenteeism was legendary. He made a habit of voting “present” in the Illinois legislature. Earlier in his life, he did not like the temporary jobs working in finance and law. On a more benign level, he appears to be genuinely committed to his family. He enjoys more leisurely intellectual contemplation.

That explains why he likes to get out of D.C. so much and why just two weeks into his term he explained his visits to local schools by confessing that he did not like being in the White House. That explains also his incessant campaign mode, his campaign-style political speeches with their hard edges and political platitudes and generalities (see, for example, the State of the Union address), and the meetings and “summits” where Obama presides like a professor in a seminar.

The there is the outward appearance of lack of passion to the job. His supporters initially saw this as a surfeit of “cool.” We more skeptical types considered it aloofness, even coldness, that was a reification of his psychological elitism. By now, I have read of even some of his supporters active in the media and in politics grousing about this detachment and “above the fray” approach and comparing Mr. Obama unfavorably in that regard to George W. Bush. In political whispers behind cupped hands, such people point with reluctant respect to Bush’s leadership, his emotional commitment to his work that allowed people to know where he stood, and, despite some notable failures, his ability to get things done even with a Democratic Congress. Mr. Obama, they say, lacks these qualities. His coolness has become a liability.

Being President is hard work, and Presidents age visibly. Pictures of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in the first and eighth years of their Presidencies show remarkable physical changes far greater than can be attributed merely to the lapse of seven years. Bush was battered politically and fanatically for eight years by his opponents and had to deal with serious challenges to the country’s national security. I am not sure that Obama has either the, shall one say, “flexible” personality and the ability to lose himself in personal “diversions” of Bill Clinton, or the orneriness and strong sense of self of W.

Obama has made his name in American history as the first “non-White” President. If he is faced with four more years of a sour economic mood, and if he has either completed his ideological agenda that will (negatively) transform the U.S. domestically and internationally, or he has found that the agenda cannot be completed, he may decide that there are better ways to spend his time. Given the likelihood that, after 2012, he will face a Republican Congress or at least a Congress composed of Republicans and enough unhappy Democrats that his political agenda is a dead letter, he may not want to continue. He does not have the political inclinations toward true compromise (”bipartisanship” not being the same as compromise) or the political skills of triangulation that Mr. Clinton possessed. Nor is it likely that his “A” team would continue with him into a second term; subsequent hirees often do not possess the personal loyalties to the President, the political skills, or the calibrated ideological commitment of the initial group.

Presidents almost universally get frustrated in their second term, for some combination of various reasons, such as public fatigue, their quasi-lame duck status, the accumulation of unfinished projects and the passage of time, the departure of trusted individuals, the inevitable scandals involving present or former associates or acquaintances, media feeding frenzy for stories, economic cycles, rivalries and conflicting interests with Congressional barons eager to share your successes and distance themselves from your failures, the constant baying from the opposing party, and on and on. Perhaps President Obama decides that the journey was more enjoyable and personally satisfying than the destination. A second term, then, would be an unnecessary punishment.

Would it not be much better, he might say, to seek an appointment to the Supreme Court rather than re-election to the White House? He could make history as only the second President to be a Supreme Court justice. He could enjoy a lifestyle much more suited to his temperament. He could seek to have his agenda of a transformed “positive” Constitution adopted just by persuading four other justices. That would allow him to seek to impose on the American people various elements of his vision of socialized health care, environmental restrictions, expanded constitutional protections for unlawful enemy combatants, and racial spoils systems that he might not be able to attain democratically. He would be, for the most part, among other academically-inclined intellectuals. He would rejoin, and interact with, for the rest of his life, members of the legal elites and adoring laws students. True, he could still do that after a second term as President. But why wait if, as appears, he really does not like his current job?

It is unlikely to happen. But if Barack Obama is not the President after January, 2013, it is more likely due to his decision not to seek re-election than to having suffered a defeat in an active campaign for the office.

There has been much talk of the Democrats using “reconciliation” to pass Obama/Reid/PelosiCare if they cannot get the 60 votes needed to “invoke cloture” (conclude debate) and end a filibuster. The problem arises from a tradition in the Senate as a deliberative body that allows relaxed rules of debate. Unlike the “democratic” House, where the leadership acting in conjunction with the Rules Committee strictly defines the terms of debate on a bill, the Senate is more of a club of equals where courtesy and independence dictate fewer restrictions on the opportunity for members to rise and speak.

Reconciliation has traditionally been used in very limited circumstances, usually to reconcile appropriations- and tax-related bills in the Senate to budget measures already passed by both houses. But that process is regarded as a distinct exception to the Senate tradition of debate. Therefore, there are many criteria and specifications for when, why, and how reconciliation may be used. The Senate parliamentarian, a scrupulously non-partisan individual, is often called on to make rulings to limit the scope of reconciliation. Those rulings themselves are binding on the Senate, though only by tradition. The parliamentarian’s rulings can be overridden by unanimous consent, not a likely option if the process is used for anything other than the routine and fairly innocuous matters for which reconciliation traditionally was used. Alternatively, the Vice President can overrule the parliamentarian absent unanimous consent, an option fraught with political danger, a figuratively nuclear political option.

This is an overview of the reconciliation process. Read it if you dare. If Congress and the President need to resort to anything that complicated to get a bill passed over opposition, there is something wrong with the bill. It’s worse than seeing sausage made. Here is an overview of reconciliation applied to Obama/Reid/PelosiCare.

Obviously, reconciliation in the Senate is far from a sure thing. Therefore, the result-oriented ideologues in the White House and Congress might decide that they will find a way to proceed without reconciliation. A bill already has passed the Senate. The House can vote on that bill, with promises that there will be changes through follow-up amendments in a reconciliation bill. But if the House passes the Senate bill, that one can go to the President’s desk, as it has met the Constitution’s bicameralism requirement, namely, that a bill must pass both houses in identical language before being presented to the President. Once Mr. Obama signs the bill, it becomes law. There is no legal compulsion for the Senate then to live up to its word and pass the amendments it promised. They might give it a try, and, finding that they don’t have the 51 votes to go forward, abandon the effort. That would be a tremendous breach of trust toward the House, but Pelosi and the leadership might go along with it, just so they can have some health care “reform” adopted. The real losers would be those House members in swing districts who were opposed to the earlier bill and who voted for something that can prove to be toxic for their re-election in November.

This is a risky procedure for the Congressional Democrats, and the possible use of such a tactic presumably is known to the Democratic fence-sitters. Thet do not trust either the House and Senate leadership or the administration and would push for another alternative. That alternative is to have the Senate pass amendments (which would require the cumbersome reconciliation described above) and the House to approve that amending bill before the House votes on the underlying health care bill. As long as the President then signs the health care bill before he signs the amending bill, everything is in proper order.

All of these procedural gyrations are done to get around the Senate tradition of the filibuster and to engineer an eventual government take-over of one-sixth of the economy against the wishes of a majority of the American people. But don’t hold your breath that this will happen. Reconciliation and adoption of the Senate bill are far from assured. Right now, the votes are not there, and the odds appear to be getting longer.

One sign of an administration running into political headwinds is the leaking of information critical of this or that insider. The higher the position of the target, the more significant the leak, as it is likely that people close to this person and of similar prominence are leaking the information to gain an advantage in the jockeying for political influence that occurs in the White House. That is the playground of major league political egos, after all. When those targets of criticism are high level associates of the President and, indeed, the President himself, and when the criticism occurs early in the second year of the administration, this is a sign of serious discord and of an administration stuck in a morass.

Therefore, when an article appears in The Washington Post that extols the virtues of President Obama’s chief of staff, the tiny, Tourette’s-tending terpsichorean Rahm Emanuel, eyebrows are raised. The skeptic’s interest is particularly piqued when that article appears in the middle of (leaked) rumors and increased demands from the moon-baying Left that the President must fire Emanuel because the latter is responsible for the political stalemate of the Obama agenda despite overwhelming Democratic Party advantages in the Congress. According to this article, the President’s other advisers are responsible for this debacle, a result that would not have occurred, had the President only listened to “Rahmbo.” Sample graph that conveys the tone:

“Obama’s problem is that his other confidants — particularly Valerie Jarrett and Robert Gibbs, and, to a lesser extent, David Axelrod — are part of the Cult of Obama. In love with the president, they believe he is a transformational figure who needn’t dirty his hands in politics.

The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel’s counsel. For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn’t politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn’t met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

“Obama’s greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults, that could win some Republican support. He opposed the public option as a needless distraction.”

This protrayal of Emanuel as the omniscient sage lays it on so thick that the inevitable suspicion is that Emanuel himself is the source of these leaks against his own President. As expected, Emanuel denies any complicity, and the very ham-handedness of the leaks ironically gives credence to his denials. Emanuel, after all, is known for his skill at political infighting and his (fiercely partisan) pragmatism. But then, if one were truly Macchiavellian, one might suggest that this apparent overkill is exactly what Rahm needs to hide his fingerprints.

The episode is also useful to try to insulate Obama from political fall-out if his health care take-over collapses. He (through Rahm and these leaks) can lay the blame at the feet of the left-liberal Congressional leadership and the besotted Obama lovers Gibbs, Axelrod, and Jarrett. Of course, that still exposes some political flaws in the President for having had the lack of political acumen and the inexperience not to listen to Emanuel but to defer to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and his own sycophants. The article also concedes what those of us who have declined to become The One’s disciples have long known, namely, that those on the other side too often are the O-bots we’ve characterized them as being.

Needless to say, this hagiography of Emanuel has not gone unnoticed and uncriticized by his (many) enemies in and out of the administration.  At the Huffington Post, one particularly huffy Huffster huffed, “The fact is that after a campaign that appealed so successfully to idealism, Obama hired a bunch of saboteurs of hope and change. Rahm was simply their chief of staff. And now, this hypercompetitive bantam rooster is attempting to blame others for what went wrong. That’s evidently so important to him that he’s trying to take a victory lap around the wreckage of what was once such a promising presidency.

President Obama has declared the time for talking about health care reform to be over. He is, however, still calling on those who support his program to make their voices heard, an endeavor for which his advocacy group’s website has prepared a handy-dandy list to guide “seminar callers” to talk shows. Those who oppose his program, the majority of those responding in many different polls, should sit down and be quiet, presumably.

Once upon a time, i.e., in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, then-Senator Obama was not only against reconciliation, but rejected the idea that something as huge as health care reform could be done by a bare majority:

“[Health care reform] is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-one majority.”

It is becoming more and more obvious that President Obama and the Congressional Democrats are going to pass something, anything, concerning health care. Bad as passing something that the American people reject is better for them politically than passing nothing at all. Their political calculus is that they are going to lose seats in November, no matter what, but that they will lose more if they are perceived to be political failures than if they can point to something that they have done and declare victory. Moreover, they are not going to walk away from an issue that their President has made his signature policy since he began running for the office.

Towards that end, their strategy is to do the most radical that they can persuade enough of their waivering members to accept, and, at the same time, bring in as many Republican-connected ideas to put forth an image of bipartisanship. The latter is doubly beneficial in that it might get some Republicans to sign on, depending on how radical the rest of the proposal is. But even if no Republican signs on, the calculus is that the Democrats can portray the result as a “bipartisan” bill. As Nancy Pelosi proclaimed, a bill can be bipartisan if it includes Republican ideas, even if no Republican ends up voting for it. That also allows the Democrats to portray the GOP as simply obstructionist, with the upshot that it buys the Democrats come political cover and may reduce their losses in November. So, while the Pelosi approach is conceptual nonsense, it makes political sense.

Another advantage to the Democrats of adopting some bill, is that, whatever the bill contains, they can declare victory and then claim to be focusing on other issues. It moves the discussion, at least temporarily, to other matters and allows the Democrats to claim that they are addressing “jobs” and other economic issues. Moreover, there will be a cushion of time, perhaps seven months, before the election, including the three months of summer during which political issues normally recede into the background of voters’ minds. Come fall, the Democrats can try to blunt Republican efforts to raise the health care issue by accusing the GOP of bringing up issues that have been decided rather than addressing ongoing issues.

The bill that will emerge will be sufficiently ambiguous that the Congressional Budget Office will not be able to have enough specific figures to challenge whatever absurd claims of low costs the White House produces. Moreover, the bill can be rather small, as long as it contains the seeds for the eventual government take-over of health care. Then, there can be incremental increases over time, as this feature is added or that program is expanded. The same pattern has occurred historically with all taxpayer-funded entitlement programs. This has always been the advice of Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, regarding this issue. The Democrats understand that the Republicans, even if they retake Congress and the White House, will be too weak-willed to undo sush entitlements, as the issue will be demagogued effectively by the Democratic opposition.

Moreover, all the talk about the difficulty of getting a majority of Congress to vote for the bill is hot air. Even when the earlier version passed by only 220-215, I pointed out that the Democratic leadership had enough possible votes in reserve. They simply allowed as many endangered Democrats as possible to vote against the bill, so as to give them political cover with their constituents. Even if some anti-abortion Democrats who previously voted “yes” now balk, there will be some former “nay” votes who will switch. As I said, they will tweak the language until they get enough votes.

The Senate will, if necessary, avoid the likely filibuster by invoking the “reconciliation” process. That only requires a majority vote as there is no unlimited debate (absent a 60-vote cloture motion) permitted. Reconciliation has been used for budgetary matters and never for such a broad substantive issue. As such, the Democrats’ moves would be subject to being rules out of order by the Senate parliamentarian, a historically scrupulously non-partisan officer. However, the Democrats have already whispered that, is necessary, they will vote to overrule any decisions of the parliamentarian that would frustrate their political goals. Though it would normally take unanimous consent for such overruling, the Democrats have threatened to jettison even that rule. It is clear that any such moves would destroy the Senate’s rules for the future, once the GOP regains control of that body. But the Democrats figure that the ends justify the means, and that there will always be time in the future to engage in hypocrisy about the sanctity of the Senate’s rules that foster deliberation and give voice to the minority. After all, as I have written before, the Democrats were very much in favor of the inviolability of the filibuster (in 2005) before they were against it now.

While that is the Democratic calculus, and probably is the best of bad alternatives for them, it is not without costs. By the time the process is finished, it will be some time in April. That is only six months before the election. Any “reform” that emerges over Republican opposition will not be seen as bipartisan, regardless of Madame Speaker’s pronouncements. The issue has been such a hot topic for too long. It is too indelibly etched into the political consciousness of the voters. The process has been too messy, with too much back room dealing. The eventual bill will do nothing to change the concerns about costs that have been raised successfully, as well as the taint that the government will make these health care decisions. Six months, especially with the issue coming front and center for a large and motivated portion of the voters, is not long, given the fact that the issue has been on the front burner for over a year. The public has simply got too engaged on the issue for the usual stupor to return in time to save the Democrats this November. This is not an obscure bill or a matter of only marginal concern for voters.

Moreover, the health care issue cannot be divorced from the rest of the Democratic agenda. The deficit, cap-and-trade (coming as it does during a time when the global warmongers have seen their arguments suffer grievous erosion of public support), tax increases, and unemployment all will continue to be issues that hurt the Democrats for various, though interrelated reasons. In the end, passing a health care bill may save a few Democratic House seats, but it will not avert the political tide that is threatening to overtake them. There are simply too many causes for that tide. But saving even a few seats may preserve Democratic control of the House, and that is enough to cause the leadership to urge the politically-vulnerable members of its caucus to commit political suicide by voting for a bill that the majority of the American public does not want.

September, 2008: Candidate Barack Obama ridicules John McCain’s proposal for a commission to study the  country’s economic problems in the recession. Says Mr. Obama, “Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing – this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for the American people in this election.”

Here’s another version, extolling the need for presidential leadership rather than commissions. Starts at about 0:40: 

February, 2010: President Obama signs an executive order to form a commission to suggest steps to solve the debt and deficit problems.

Whatever happened to presidential leadership? I agree with candidate Obama’s assessment that these issues ultimately depend on political will and leadership, qualities in scarce supply in this administration. I also agree with his self-indictment that commissions are old Washington stunts to “pass the buck.”

This commission is just showboating. The commission’s recommendations aren’t due until December, after the election. That way, the inevitable tax increases (including on the middle class) needed to fund the massive spending increases the administration’s programs envision, won’t be a hot topic during the election. The Democrats can try to fool the American people about how serious they are about the deficit and cut their electoral losses. They can talk “responsibility” and “deficit reduction,” when everyone knows they won’t act that way, except to raise taxes.

The tax increases won’t be voted on until 2011, the maximum possible time before the 2012 election. Moreover, the Obama and the rest of the Democrats can hide behind the “bipartisan” nature of the commission to blunt the Republicans’ message in 2012. If the Democrats raise taxes and the Republicans balk, Obama can say that the GOP is irresponsible because the (Democrat-dominated) commission found such tax increases necessary. If some members of the Congressional GOP go along, Obama again can portray the tax increases as “bipartisan” and ridicule any GOP dissenters. Either way, he and the Democrats can shun responsibility. That’s not leadership. Why not just elect functionaries in the form of commissions to decide issues?

Meanwhile, there won’t be spending cuts. Quite the opposite. The matter will take on catastrophic shape if the government increases its meddling in health care, its regulation of business, and its environmentalist cap-and-trade and anti-energy policies. The charade is illustrated by the President’s statement that he has ordered a freeze on discretionary spending. That amount is a very small portion of federal expenditures. It won’t start until next year. And it has recently been raised substantially.

The “PayGo” legislation that Obama mentions towards the end is more such empty symbolism. Within days of Obama’s announcement that any new programs would have to show how they will be financed, the Congressional Democrats were funding programs under an “emergency exception” and trying to find other ways around the PayGo law.

Once again, this decision demonstrates the utter lack of seriousness of the President and his cohorts. Moreover, it is yet another campaign promise with an expiration date. See also, no middle class tax increase (”No one making under $250,000 will have to pay a dime in additional taxes”). “Guantanamo will be closed within a year.” “Unemployment will not go above 8% with the stimulus law.” “We have a plan.”

The President has been making the rounds preaching the virtues of spending within one’s income and saving for the future. If that sounds schizophrenic, it is, coming on the heels of his reckless budget. In making his point, Mr. Obama in effect dismissively refers to Las Vegas as a frivolous and wasteful use of money. This being his second such dismissive remark about Sin City, the reaction came forcefully. Even Harry Reid told Obama to knock it off. But it was Las Vegas mayor, Oscar Goodman, who was most forceful. Accusing Obama of having a psychological problem and being a slow learner, Goodman told Obama that he was not welcome in Las Vegas unless he straightened this matter put quickly. Ouch! And Goodman is not a Republican. Republicans don’t win political races in Vegas. The President caved quickly.

As the furor around the President’s nigh-on $4 trillion FY 2011 federal budget with its $1.5+ trillion deficit continues, it is important to keep in mind what is Mr. Obama’s fault and what is not. It is not Mr. Obama’s fault that the country is in a recession. Nor is it Mr. Obama’s fault that unemployment has gone up, or even that it has reached 10%, according to one measure (17%, according to another), different numbers according to yet others. Nor is it Mr. Obama’s fault that there is a broad asset devaluation that is eliminating froth, a devaluation that has both a short-term and a long-term component. Nor is this year’s (FY 2010) or next year’s (FY 2011) deficit entirely, or even mainly, the fault of Mr. Obama. Nor was last year’s (FY 2009).

With the disclaimers in favor of the President out of the way, let me be clear (to borrow a phrase from the press-anointed great orator) that I am not joining him in saying that those conditions therefore are the fault of his predecessor. Indeed, one aspect of Mr. Obama’s responsibility for the degree of current economic problems is his habit of blaming his predecessor rather than getting on with it. More about that later.

Still, Mr. Bush is to blame for some of the current misery. The increased federal funding for education and the drug prescription programs, along with other non-defense and non-national security items, enlarged the size of the federal budget significantly during his tenure. The tax cuts were not the problem, as they, predictably, increased federal revenue. Federal revenue, adjusted for inflation, did not go down; federal expenditures went up. Even the wars were essentially funded, with the FY 2007 deficit (pre-recession) dropping to around $160 billion. Many of us on the Right opposed Bush’s spending programs (even though the prescription plan ended up costing less than we had feared). As an aside, it is entirely unconvincing for Mr. Obama to rail about the fiscal irresponsibility of Bush’s prescription drug benefit when his own proposal is to expand it and to pay for that expansion in some undisclosed fashion. Adding to the budgetary strain of Bush’s compassionate conservatism was Congress’s profligate spending, including during 6 years of Republican hands on the spigot. Bush’s unwillingness, as a bargain for Congress’s support of his foreign and national security policies, to exercise his veto until the Democrats took over Congress in 2006 exacerbated the fiscal irresponsibility.

With the recession swinging into full force in 2008, deficits went up towards the end of FY 2008. Revenues dropped due to the slow down in economic activity and the financial panic, while federal spending increased, including the first portion of TARP loans to the banks. Still, the deficit at the end of FY 2008 was under $500 billion. With the economic inertia moving in the direction of recession, those deficits clearly would have increased, no matter whether Bush or McCain had been President in 2009, rather than Obama.

Looking at the recession itself, rather than the deficit, to the extent we are seeing the result of an unsustainable asset bubble, Bush is also partly to blame. So are Greenspan, Clinton, both Congressional delegations, and various bureaucracies, such as the SEC. On the deficit front once more, Bush, to his credit, tried to reform Social Security to bring its future costs under control, only to be demagogued by the Democrats and the media to the point where these people plus enough politically spineless Republicans (who typically lost their seats in 2006 and 2008 anyway—Chris Shays, are you listening?) derailed his proposals.

On the asset front, Bush and members of his administration many times warned about the problem of sub-prime loans, especially those under laws to pressure banks into lending to increase home ownership among poor and certain racial minority home buyers to purchase houses. His administration also warned about murky derivatives and the banks’ purchases of such investments. His proposal to curb these practices did not make it out of committee in the Senate due to loud wailing by Congressman Barney Frank (who, contrary to more recent posturing, was oblivious at the time to the dangers of over-leveraging) and officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (including well-paid Democrats). Then there was the filibuster threat from the Democrats (who controlled well more than 40 votes) against legislation to curb these practices that Frank and others described as “not broken.” Perhaps Bush should have used more political capital to push this matter along, but his eyes were on national security and the obstructions and attacks from the Democrats and the media on that front. Still, he does bear some responsibility for the failure to address these excesses more resolutely and successfully.

Greenspan’s role in artificially keeping interest rates too low, opening the spigots, cheapening the dollar, and driving investors to more and more speculative risk-taking (fueled by government participation through programs that reduced the risk of failure) is well-known. Plentiful dollars were looking for safety in commodities, starting with real estate, including investments in riskier and riskier loans. The bundling and securitization of these loans, together with the opacity of these bundles that might contain mixes of solid and risky loans in unknown ratios, contributed to the uncertainty about bank holdings that helped trigger and sustain the panic of 2007-2009. Eventually the limits of plausible real estate investments were passed and capital looked for other commodity havens, from gold to oil to rice. Commodity prices soared, with speculation in oil contracts fueling a huge spike in energy costs. That asset bubble, too, contributed both to the dollar inflation and the self-reinforcing cycle of commodity fever, and eventually helped cause the economic bust as many of those speculative positions had to be liquidated and the froth wrung out.

These economic trends are well beyond the power of any President to control and direct. To blame Bush or Obama is ridiculous. If any single institution were blameworthy, it would be the Congress, which, after all, is constitutionally and politically responsible for taxing and spending decisions. But even Congress by itself did not cause these conditions. Nor can Congress control them.

However, the President and the Congress can mitigate or exacerbate these conditions. For that, Mr. Obama and the current Congress bear much blame. Although I was inclined against the TARP law, I could see the argument for it. Obama likes to portray the cost of TARP as a Bush-caused deficit issue. But, first, the TARP was a loan program, much of which has been repaid during Obama’s administration. So, this should help his current deficit numbers. The problem is that Obama wants to spend these funds on other programs, so they contribute to the deficit once more. Second, Bush only signed off on the first half of the authorized TARP funds; Obama signed off on the second half. He did not have to do this. That decision is his responsibility and, to the extent that he argues the entire FY 2009 deficit should be assigned to Bush, this is deceptive.

Moreover, the “stimulus” that supposedly has saved and created so many jobs (but in fact has done so mainly for government jobs) was an Obama decision. As were the 2009 bail-outs of automakers. These aspects of the deficit clearly belong to Obama. Since the government no longer tries to figure out the impossible task of computing the number of jobs saved/created by the stimulus, but says that any jobs for which such money went automatically were saved/created, it is difficult to say what real impact the stimulus had on joblessness. The broader consensus outside the White House is that it has had little or no impact. As well, there is a negative effect of the stimulus on jobs. The need to borrow the funds for the stimulus crowds out private access to credit that might have saved those jobs. If the government is simply monetizing these costs, the bill will come due through inflation or taxes, the latter of which especially are job killers.

That brings me to the crux of the blame Obama must take. His radical programs reduce incentive for private capital to come in and take risks for job-creating expansion rather than sit on the sideline and invest in safety (gold prices have shot up) or by bidding up stocks to dubious price-earnings levels. His class-warfare tax rhetoric, the massive and radical collection of entitlement spending proposals (health care, student loans), the looming cap-and-tax regulations, the radical bureaucrats he has appointed (such the head of the off-the-rails EPA), the take-over of—and meddling in—car companies, the faux-populist attacks on banks and Wall Street, all spook investors and discourage risk-taking.

If I am a truly wealthy person, and I am threatened with higher taxes, I park my wealth in low- or no-tax investments (e.g., municipal bonds) or figure out tax avoidance devices. If I have to work because I own a business, I will squeeze my employees for at least some of the additional cost, by lowering their compensation/benefits, by firing some and having the others work more, or by moving more of my business out of the U.S. If the workers don’t like it, they can quit, and I will replace them with unemployed workers at the lower price. None of these things will increase jobs or, in the aggregate, help the economy. People are not passive, and history shows this to be the expected reaction. It happened in the late-1930s in response to FDR’s class warfare rhetoric and his tax and regulatory policies. Unemployment actually increased and did not come down significantly until the labor shortages created by WW II took care of it.

With lower economic activity induced by Mr. Obama’s rhetoric and proposals, and with the cost of these programs, no wonder that the deficits stretch out as far as projections are made. His spending proposals, unlike the temporary expenditures on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that Mr. Obama likes to blame, create structural deficits. They impose continuing and increasing costs. Worse, those expenditures, and his regulatory proposals, suppress economic growth, the very thing that might allow him to finance at least some of the anticipated growth in the cost of existing programs, such as Medicare. They do that by requiring government either to raise taxes, thereby reducing investment, if taxes are targeted at the rich, or depressing consumption, if taxes are targeted at the middle class. Alternatively, the government can borrow, thereby raising the cost of credit for private institutions competing with the government for loans and again reducing investment. Finally, the government can print money and create inflation, thereby creating great uncertainty about the value and stability of investments made now and also raising the cost of credit.

So, while Mr. Obama cannot be blamed for the recession and for all of the deficit, he (and the equally radical leadership in Congress) can be held accountable for the lingering joblessness and for increasing proportions of the deficits. Those are, even now, exacerbated by the economic fear and uncertainty created by his own radical agenda and his destructive and partisan class warfare rhetoric and tax proposals. It is ridiculous to blame his predecessor when his own projected deficits, in its best years, exceed his predecessor’s deficits in his worst year. With each passing month, his excuses become more laughable. Voters are getting that message better than, apparently, he is. His whining and attempts to deflect from his responsibility arising from his own proposals are backfiring.

Mr. Obama did inherit a recession; he did inherit a deficit, just as Mr. Bush inherited the collapsing NASDAQ and, to a lesser extent, Dow Jones, with the economic slow-down of 2001. Obama’s advisers and supporters are right in saying that the deficits and the recession would have been here no matter who was President. But they are wrong in not accepting that it is Mr. Obama who is prolonging and exacerbating the condition.

From Investor’s Business Daily comes Michael Ramirez’s impression of Mr. Obama:

I realize that federal hiring is booming. I also realize that the new administration has to replace lots of Bush administration officials with hires who reflect the composition of the Obama administration’s political coalition. Still, it is at least a bit odd that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division would be making special efforts to hire these previously underrepresented groups: “The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine.”

“Mental retardation?” “Mental illness?” That does explain many of the recent decisions of Attorney General Holder regarding national security issues. Why is the Civil Rights Division allowed to use the “r”-word, while Rahm Emanuel is not?

In the SOTU speech, President Obama touted the wonders that the stimulus package has done to create or save jobs. Never mind that such estimates, especially of jobs “saved,” are difficult to make. Never mind also that the great majority of such jobs went to public employees with powerful unions that contribute to Democrats, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters. Never mind also that, once the stimulus ends, such jobs presumably will disappear, as well, unless the government plans on many years of subsidized jobs. Never mind also that each such artificially maintained job has to be paid for by taxes (thereby reducing investment and capital formation and, ultimately, inhibiting job creation) or by borrowing (thereby crowding out private borrowers and inhibiting job creation).

Focus instead on the sheer waste of funds for the number of private jobs supposedly created. Focus also on the political corruption and cronyism that attends government hand-outs. Gateway Pundit links to a story about the company to which Obama was referring. According to the story, based on publicly available information, they created 15 jobs in 2009 and plan to create 27 more in 2010. For a price tag of “only” $100 million. The money may not all be for this company’s jobs; the story is a bit hazy on that point. But even if the company only gets some of the money and its subsidiaries get the rest, 42 jobs even for a small fraction of $100 million is ridiculous. But the reason for this extravagance is easy to uncover. The company’s owner is a heavy contributor to Democrats and sat with Michelle Obama at the SOTU. Just another average Joe trying to make a living and having his failing business and despondent workers rescued by the taxpayers beneficent federal government.

This is Sarah Palin’s tremendous response to the SOTU speech. Again and again she lays bare the empty rhetoric and the generally meaningless content of the speech. The GOP should have let her give the response. An excerpt:

“Everything seems to be ‘unexpected’ to this administration: unexpected job losses; unexpected housing numbers; unexpected political losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. True leaders lead best when confronted with the unexpected. But instead of leading us, the president lectured us. He lectured Wall Street; he lectured Main Street; he lectured Congress; he even lectured our Supreme Court Justices.
“He criticized politicians who ‘wage a perpetual campaign,’ but he gave a campaign speech instead of a state of the union address. The campaign is over, and President Obama now has something that candidate Obama never had: an actual track record in office. We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.”

Via Gateway Pundit comes Rush Limbaugh’s speech to Mr. Obama.

Here is the Republican response by Virginia governor Bob McDonnell. On health care:
“All Americans agree, we need a health care system that is affordable, accessible, and high quality. But most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical care system in the world to the federal government. Republicans in Congress have offered legislation to reform healthcare, without shifting Medicaid costs to the states, without cutting Medicare, and without raising your taxes. We will do that by implementing common sense reforms, like letting families and businesses buy health insurance policies across state lines, and ending frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals that drive up the cost of your healthcare. And our solutions aren’t thousand-page bills that no one has fully read, after being crafted behind closed doors with special interests.”

On the role of government:
“Many Americans are concerned about this Administration’s efforts to exert greater control over car companies, banks, energy and health care. Over-regulating employers won’t create more employment; overtaxing investors won’t foster more investment. Top-down one-size fits all decision making should not replace the personal choices of free people in a free market, nor undermine the proper role of state and local governments in our system of federalism. As our Founders clearly stated, and we Governors understand, government closest to the people governs best.”

Re: the SOTU speech, here is Victor Davis Hanson with a spot-on dissection of this trite and infuriating performance.

Alex Castellanos on the lack of substance beyond the platitudes.

Former intelligence agent and speech writer Marc Thiessen goes beyond the same criticisms others have made. Excerpt:

“He scolded Scott Brown (without mentioning his name) and all those who have criticized his handling of the Christmas Day bomber, declaring that ‘all of us love this country’ and warning critics to ‘put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough.’ If you disagree with Obama’s policies, you are questioning his patriotism. Imagine what the reaction would have been if Bush had tried that in a State of the Union with those who criticized the surge in Iraq. The howls of the liberal media would have been deafening.
“His one moment of ‘humility’ came when he acknowledged his biggest mistake of the past year: his failure to adequately explain his policies to all of us. This was a State of the Union for the slow learners. His message to all of us was: ‘Let me speak slowly for you.’”

I must say that I am taken aback by Obama’s State of the Union speech. With rare exceptions, this has to be the most classless, arrogant, petulant, nasty, partisan, hypocritical, defensive, unpresidential pile of, ahem, words ever uttered in this context. When combined with the trademark aloofness and upturned chin, its arrogance is at once more pronounced and more chilling. Leaving aside the substance of proposals, there is no way that any of his four predecessors would have delivered that kind of speech. There were, as expected, the more than 100 self-reverential references to “I,” “me,” or “my.” Fine. There were the usual repeated castings of blame on the Bush administration, with only one brief and unconvincing admission of any responsibility of his own. Some of these came just about the time he was declaring that he was uninterested in relitigating the past. We’ve come to expect that kind of buck-passing, as well, and it is less and less politically effective.

But then there were the more outrageous aspects of the speech, spoken by someone who seemed quite annoyed that his wishes had not been heeded. There were the false appeals to bi-partisanship, as he vigorously attacked the previous administration and conservatives, and as he told Democrats to stay the course and follow him, while Republicans should join them or, with their Congressional minorities, present their own proposals (which, of course, they have and plan to do again soon, according to Senator Tom Coburn and Representative Paul Ryan).

Then there were the lies and deceptions about spending and the deficit, as the CBO reports make clear. The bald-faced deceptions about the administration’s so-called transparency and restrictions on lobbyists. The calls for more government spending. The tax incentives for college students to do “public interest” work, i.e., community organizing and such, rather than productive work that really provides a public service (such as providing someone a job). The deceptive tax proposals that will continue to stifle economic growth.

Then there was the unprecedented and gratuitous rhetorical drive-by attack on the Supreme Court, while six of the justices were sitting there, an attack applauded by the Democratic legislators and bureaucratic hacks sitting nearby. Obama attacked the justices over the campaign finance decision, and managed to make two misstatements in just one sentence. He was wrong about the age of the precedent (20 years, not 100) and about the foreign corporations campaign contributions (though Obama got a lot of eyebrow-raising contributions from Nigerians in 2008). Since he was touted as a constitutional law expert, he must know these accusations to be false. Ergo, he lied. Justice Alito mouthed that Obama’s statements weren’t true. Good for him. I suspect there will be far fewer, if any, Supreme Court Justices at the next SOTU speech. BTW, Obama ignored the McCain-Feingold public funding/campaign spending limits in his run for the Presidency.

His discussion of national security issues was by turns off-base (Iraq), perfunctory (domestic security), deceptive (”torture”), non-existent (KSM, interrogations), insulting (moral equivalency of U.S. and Iran re: possession of nuclear weapons), and delusional (isolation of North Korea and Iran).

His condescension at times was palpable, as when he chided himself for not having explained his programs adequately (and slowly enough) for the American people. This after an unprecedented number of televised speeches, speeches before Congress, speeches around the country, and media interviews. We’re just too dumb to get it.

The only redeeming moments were his surprising calls for nuclear energy and offshore drilling and his uplifting closing. The former was probably made under the safe assumption that Pelosi and Co. are in the back pockets of the enviros and will never accede to that. The latter is diminished by the rest of the speech.

Here is a text of the speech released by the White House.

The speech went in excess of an hour. Why do Democrats talk so much?

Via Rich Lowry at National Review Online’s “The Corner” comes this bit of Obama nostalgia from a year ago: “Obama hopes to avoid Clinton health care missteps.” Hah!

Some excellent parts that sound like parodies: “The strategy begins with giving people the chance to highlight their concerns and experiences….By asking anybody and everybody to share their health care experiences, Daschle is confronting one of the major criticisms of 15 years ago: that the effort to craft former President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal coverage was too secretive. ‘We have to make this as inclusive a process as possible,’ Daschle…said in a speech in Denver.”

“He cited other lessons, too. This time around, lawmakers cannot try to address every detail when it comes to legislation. ‘Details kill,’ Daschle said. ‘If we get too far into the weeds, if we produce a 1,500- or 1,600-page bill, we’re going to get hung up on all the details and we’re never going to get to the principles.’ [Note: They listened to Daschle; they didn’t produce a 1500-page bill; it was a 2000-page bill.] Once Congress does take up a health plan, it also can’t divert attention to other subjects, he said.”

“But the insurers want to require that people buy insurance, while Obama only supports a coverage mandate for children.”

Does it seem to anyone else that they did not follow that plan?

Meanwhile, from Nancy Pelosi: “I don’t have the votes for it at this time.”

President Obama’s speech today at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, was a pleasant surprise. There was still far too much self-reverence, judged by the number of “I”s. There was too much meandering sermonizing, and the speech was too long. And there was this unforgivable descent into megalomaniacal self-glory: “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” As well, the history of war was too simplistic and at times too close to historical fiction (the reference to the Crusades was unnecessary and distorted). There was no need for, yet again, the old Obama bad war (Iraq)/good war (Afghanistan) false dichotomy and implied criticism of his predecessor.

Still, the tone was a much needed corrective to the Nobel Peace Committee’s self-delusional decision to grant him the prize based on a nomination that had to be made when he was less than two weeks in office. I believe that the speech is entirely motivated by political self-calculation, as the President had taken much criticism and ridicule for the choice. He clearly believed, judging from the content such as the declared humility, that there had to be a figurative rebuke to the Nobel Prize committee for popular consumption by voters back home.

That said, by comparison to his prior efforts, the speech was powerful and appears to have taken aback the Euro elites that came to hear it. Little applause interrupted the speech except when he promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, albeit without a time commitment. The President generally avoided his past habit of bowing to foreigners either physically or figuratively through apologies for this or that real or imagined American failing, though he could not escape it entirely. He emphasized the need to use power, even military power, rather than “sitting down and talking without preconditions.” Better yet, he did so without the usual degree of equivocations and rhetorical bobbing and weaving that signified his preference for moral equivalence between the U.S. and various oppressive enemy regimes. There wasn’t to the same extent the mostly flat delivery and internal contradictions that characterized his Afghanistan War speech at West Point recently.

Now it remains to be seen whether the President will follow up this speech with actual resolve in dealing with other countries, both in military confrontation and diplomatic engagement. Or will it just be business as usual, which will define the speech as pure political opportunism that other countries can ignore? There is much evidence from the President’s past, his circle of advisers, and his conduct of foreign affairs and national security matters so far that gives cause for alarm. But for now, the President struck the right notes.

Some other reactions: Judith Miller of the Manhattan Institute agrees. As does Sarah Palin. Mark Steyn casts a “nay” vote.

President Obama has been plagued by falling poll numbers. This first appeared in regards to particular issues, such as national security. There, as early as last spring, his proposals regarding the closing of Guantanamo Bay, restrictions on interrogations of terrorists, investigation and prosecution of Bush officials and/or CIA agents, publication of records of interrogations, etc., were decidedly unpopular. More people sided with Dick Cheney’s views than with Obama’s. By summer, his health care proposals were taking a beating. Indeed, the more he pushed for them, the more public support declined. His handling of the economy and the looming deficits hurt him next. Support for Obama/Reid/PelosiCare is now below 40%. There are now polls showing that Republicans are trusted more on health care than Democrats. On the generic party preference ballot, Republicans are now up by 9% in one poll.

The erosion of Democratic support is also occurring on the state level, which is an important matter, as the states will reapportion their state and Congressional districts after the 2010 census. Republicans have won 33 of 50 special elections for state legislative districts since November, 2008. Three Congressional Democrats who represent Republican-majority or competitive districts (won by W in 2000 and/or 2004 and by Obama in 2008) already have announced their retirement before the 2010 election.

While his standing with the public on particular issues has cratered, people still tended to give him majority support on his overall job performance. This is due to his personal standing, as there is no way that people can disapprove of his position on issue after issue, believe that the country is on the wrong track, yet still approve of his overall job performance. Recently, however, poll after poll has begun to show his overall job approval sinking below 50% into a statistical tie between those who approve and those who don’t.

Now comes the killer. In a Public Policy Polling survey of whom they preferred to see as President, Mr. Obama or George W. Bush, Mr. Obama won. By 6%. Six percent separates the supposedly worst President ever from The One who would cause the world’s sea levels to lower and the planet to heal. And this is in a poll by a liberal, but credible polling firm. Those numbers are likely to improve for W and decline for O the longer the latter is in office. Indeed, among Whites Obama is already significantly in the negative against Bush, while Blacks and, to a lesser extent Hispanics, still strongly support Obama. There is a gender gap, in that men now prefer Bush while women support Obama. There is an age gap, with Obama being preferred by those under 45, and Bush and Obama tied among those over 45. The Northeast and the West, with its bicoastal elites in large urban centers, strongly favors Obama, while flyover country in the Midwest and South strongly supports Bush.

At the very least, this shows two things. One, nothing cures popular dissatisfaction with a President more than do the follies of his successor. Two, while Democrats will try to use the Bush card for the foreseeable future, and President Obama will continue to blame his predecessor for his own failings, this will be an increasingly feeble and, indeed, risky strategy.

On a side note, I do not agree with the 20% of respondents who want to see Obama impeached. There are no bases for such a move right now, and this would just be a distraction from dealing with the more pressing issues of defeating Obamaism politically. A move towards impeachment right now would simply give the Democrats political cover and hurt conservatives politically with the great majority of the people. Political disagreement is not ground for impeachment, and Obama’s political decisions do not evidence criminality or the degree of craven corruption that impeachment requires.

Obama’s flailing internationally and his radicalism domestically, combined with his penchant for fingerpointing and blame-shifting, have produced vigorous blow-back from Dick Cheney. Ol’ Vice has emerged as the principal defender of the Bush administration and point man in the attack on Obama’s mischaracterizations and ideological demonization of Bush’s national security policies on which Cheney had a not inconsiderable influence. Some Republicans, such as the former leader of the Log Cabin Republicans, want Cheney to assume a more prominent political role. This has led to the start of a “Draft Cheney” movement to get him to challenge Obama for the Presidency in 2012. Cheney would be the anti-Obama candidate temperamentally, politically, intellectually, and ideologically. That might be a potent combination by 2012. I’d certainly vote for Darth. But I do not see it happening, due to Cheney’s health and age and his own emphatic rejection of the idea,

Via Allahpundit at Hot Air comes definitive evidence, courtesy of the liberal Pew polling organization, that former Vice President Dick Cheney has won the debate against President Obama over enhanced interrogation. For the first time since Pew began such polling, a majority of the American public believes that torture is often or sometimes justified. Only 25% of Americans believe it is never justified, which would be those who identify themselves as liberal in other polls (21%) plus a small fraction of independents. These folks are usually called professors. Since carefully controlled and circumscribed enhanced interrogations of the type conducted by the CIA are not torture by definition or in practice, public support for those procedures likely is even higher. This distinction between waterboarding or rude interrogations and real torture is not lost on the American people (or al Qaeda), though it seems not to register with members of, especially, the legal academy.

Support for torture is up by 9% since Obama took office, most of that since he and his administration began the publicized debate with ol’ Vice. All one has to do is watch the two and hear their arguments. In matters of national security, whom would one rather see in charge, Barack Obama or Dick Cheney? For most Americans the choice is clear. It’s one thing to listen to Obama’s feel-good rhetoric when the serious adults are still in charge. It’s quite another when the Candyman is actually in charge. Obama is an inspiring head of state figure. A war chief? Not at all.

More interesting is that support for torture has risen most dramatically among Democrats (+18%) and independents (+9%). This change in attitude parallels an increased public perception that Mr. Obama is not tough enough in foreign relations. Again, most of that change is due to Democrats and Independents souring on the President. Mr. Obama’s apology tours, his softness towards Iran, and his delay in formulating an Afghanistan policy are beginning to cement an impression of the President in the mind of the public.

Perhaps the President’s deflationary polling and the perception of weakness is related to his Afghanistan policy. The timetable for withdrawal of forces announced by the President is seen overwhelmingly negatively by the American public.

As predicted, President Obama managed to disparage and blame his predecessor for the situation in Afghanistan, just as he had blamed Mr. Bush for the problems in Iraq while he was still a Senator, all while opposing the change in military strategy and tactics that defeated the al Qaeda-sponsored terrorists in that country. In his latest speech, Mr. Obama then adopted a version of the Bush policies to address the military situation in Afghanistan. But his heart was not in it. As I’ve noted before, O is not W. The latter loved and respected the military. The former does not.

The line by the television reporter at the end is priceless, talking about the tepid reception given to Mr. Obama by the Marines.

Last night, President Obama delivered further proof of his leadership style. His speech about Afghanistan was 4,582 words long. He mentioned himself 44 times. He mentioned “victory”—well, not at all. This is hardly the kind of speech that will rouse the spirit of sacrifice among the troops, inspire the American people, frighten the Taliban, or reassure the increasingly skeptical Afghanis and Pakistanis about the American commitment. I’ll have more to say later, after some more reflection. Would Bush or Cheney have given this kind of speech?

In anticipation of President Obama’s loooong-awaited decision about troops in Afghanistan, I have some thoughts. As noted before, Mr. Obama has tried to sell his delay as intellectual reflection and cautious pragmatism. It is neither. One must recall that Mr. Obama during his campaign pronounced Afghanistan the “necessary war” to contrast it for himself and his base from the “optional war” in Iraq. He pledged to pursue that war vigorously and consequentially, even threatening to expand operations into Pakistan unilaterally, if necessary, to destroy the Taliban and capture bin Laden. Any number of liberals liked to taunt the Bush administration and conservatives with the fact that bin Laden was not captured as a way to demonstrate the incompetence of the administration. When those liberals were not fretting that Bush was hiding bin Laden somewhere to spring him as an October surprise before the election of 2004. And then 2006. And then 2008.

Mr. Obama also crowed during the campaign that Afghanistan was so important that his team had been working on an Afghanistan strategy. Later, he and his media supporters confidently asserted that they were the best-prepared transition team ever and were ready to hit the ground running. Though that wasn’t the case, and only an expanded use of drones to attack suspects in Pakistan resulted, the President in March reemphasized the importance of Afghanistan and declared that, in accordance with his view that failure was not an option, a thorough strategy had been developed that would be in place shortly. Later that spring, he fired the commander in Afghanistan and placed his own choice, General Stanley McChrystal, in charge of operations there.

McChrystal was given the task of developing a new strategy, in light of supposedly suddenly changed circumstances on which no one elaborated. When the general came up with a new plan within a few weeks, he found himself unable to get the President’s attention to discuss it. Only once that state of affairs leaked out to the public did Mr. Obama find the time in late summer/early fall for some well-publicized brief encounters with his general. Now, finally, a decision has been made, one-and-a-half years after candidate Obama’s revelation about his preparations for a plan for Afghanistan, more than 10 months since the inauguration, more than eight months since Mr. Obama’s grand speech on Afghanistan in March, more than six months since General McChrystal was appointed, four months since the general completed his assessment, and nearly three months since the report was submitted.

And to do what? To build on the existing presence and increase the American commitment there by 30,000 or so troops. Not to initiate a military offensive. Now, for one thing General McChrystal requested up to 80,000 troops (and a minimum compromise strategy number of 40,000) and warned that the lower the number, the higher the likelihood of failure. Thus, 30,000 or so is below that minimum threshold. The President is apparently hoping that the allies will make up the difference, a hope that is not based on anything the allies have said and done. Indeed, all indications from the allies are just the opposite.

The greater problem here, though, is the psychological one, something that will inevitably affect the morale of American troops and the American people negatively and the Taliban and other terrorist elements around the world positively. That problem comes from the dithering that has accompanied the decision. Dress it up as he might, this no longer comes across as a careful and deliberative process. It might have done so in February, March, April.Perhaps even May and June. But not now. It reeks of indecision and of being driven purely by political calibration and stands as a stark contrast to the stubborn politics-be-damned defense of American interests by George W. Bush.

Combined with the second manifestation, the much-heralded “exit strategy,” complete with benchmarks and, soon to come, timetables, this also looks like defeatism. It is a biding of time, like someone who cannot wait to leave a gathering but will stay the shortest time possible to meet social obligations. That atmosphere of defeatism, of looking for a way out, and the perception of a war based only on domestic political calculations rather than on an existential need cannot but corrode the effort. Everything the administration has done here, both in the delayed process and in the unsatisfactory substance, underscores that. Better then to bring the troops home than to let them get bogged down in a Vietnam-style struggle for stalemate and defeat.

Turning back to the still-hot topic of Obama/Reid/PelosiCare, via Hot Air come some enlightening, but entirely unsurprising updates. Liberals have been fond of saying that the government option will leave you with the same choices and not increase your cost. In fact, they’ve claimed that the government option will likely cause people’s premiums to go down, through increased competition as insurance companies cut into their “massive” 3% profits and through generous initial government subsidies. Of course, they’ve also said that they will have a sizable excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” plans to help keep everything “revenue-neutral.” As an aside, that’s a truly ironic name, given that Cadillac is made by G(overnment) M(otors). Since there is no indexing for inflation for that tax, it won’t be long before even Subaru plans will be considered Cadillacs.

I have always agreed with the contrary position that increased mandates to insurance companies to insure the uninsured and uninsurable combined with increased insurance company administration of medical choices determined by government directives will increase costs. Now comes word that insurance premiums will go up for the great majority of Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. Moreover, taxpayers will have to pay for the subsidies to those whose premiums will decrease. Either that, or the deficit will go up. Worse for the plan, but as expected, most taxpayers will try to avoid the Cadillac tax by opting for less expensive policies. That, in turn, will lessen receipts from the excise tax on which the administration is counting to fund its program. The resulting funding gap has to be plugged by further taxes or by deficit spending. People are rational and act dynamically, whereas government planners are fixed on the concept that people are robots and act statically.

Entirely unsurprising, too, at least to conservatives, is the Washington Post’s astonished recognition that the plan will do nothing for the deficit. Even the Senate bill claims to reduce the deficit only by a rounding error in a deficit projected to reach 14% of GDP by 2035. Those numbers won’t happen of course, because they are unsustainable and the country will be bankrupt long before then. But the point remains. Obama/Reid/PelosiCare won’t “bend the cost-curve downward” and help solve the deficit. Significantly, the government’s calculations assume that the massive cuts in Medicare benefit and doctor compensation come to pass along with significant planned tax increases. In reality, those are already being modified or jettisoned. Medicare cuts promised in the past have never materialized, as Congress lacks the political will to do so. Rather, benefits have always been expanded. The House is also planning to change doctor compensation for Medicare services, but change it upward. The Senate will surely follow suit.

In a further display of their ingrained elitism on display during summer’s townhall meetings, Democrats plan to push this health care “reform” law through soon anyway, even though these government health plans are more unpopular than ever, with a 10% overall negative rating that threatens Democratic majorities in 2010. They are hoping to put this political hot potato behind them well before the 2010 election and hope for a rebound of the President’s political fortunes. That threat won’t be avoided by rushed passage of a huge bill like the nearly 2100-page Senate version or the nearly 2000-page House version, according to this analysis of the impact that the passage of high-profile pet legislation has had on the public approval ratings of prior Presidents.

I am perfectly happy to have the Democrats throw themselves onto the shoals of political ruin. But the long-term cost to the country if the government takes over a huge swath of the economy and proceeds to mandate and administer in the usual excessive command-and-control mode of liberals, is simply too high. I would rather see a failure of Obama/Reid/PelosiCare and have a weakened Democratic majority retain control of Congress than to see passage of such a law and have the Republicans take over Congress in 2010.

Columnist Mark Steyn reaches into his archives to unearth a column he wrote several years ago about one of the economic and personal costs of the socialized Canadian health care system, the cost of waiting. The time wasted waiting for medical services under such an inefficient system lowers economic productivity in the aggregate and imposes suffering and death on the ill and afflicted. These costs are never figured into the equation when liberals complain about the costs of American health care. But one of Steyn’s sources has it right. In the U.S., doctors want to provide necessary services as quickly as possible. The insurance may not want to pay for the service as readily as the doctor wants to provide it or you want it done, but, among the parties a rough efficiency and judgment of necessity of treatment are worked out. The procedure, done quickly, puts money into the doctor’s pocket quickly, as well. In a socialized system, there is no such profit motive. There is no incentive on the part of doctors to provide the service quickly and efficiently. Yet, the government (the ultimate insurance company) wants to save money, which it can do best by denying service. The rough efficiency and judgment of necessity of treatment do not materialize. And the cost of waiting, once the expectation of delay insinuates itself into all aspects of the system, manifests itself in other repulsive ways, judging by Canadian experience.

In his first State of the Union speech, President Bill Clinton outlined his domestic agenda. A part of that agenda a call for fundamental change in the health care system. That plan was later dubbed HillaryCare, as Hillary Clinton was put in charge of a task force to develop a reform proposal. One interesting aspect of the Clinton speech is how he emphasized that the economy would suffer severely if his proposals for health care “reform” were not adopted. As history has shown, the economy did not collapse from the rejection of HillaryCare. In fact, it grew tremendously, assisted no doubt by the unfolding of the computer tech revolution, the peace dividend, and fiscal discipline imposed by the partisan self-interest of the post-1994 Republican-controlled Congress. It grew despite the 1993 tax increases that temporarily stifled growth and underscored for the public the reflexive tax-and-spend orientation of the Democratic Party. The voters’ perception of the Democrats’ overreaching from the HillaryCare threat and from the middle class-targeted tax increases, combined with Newt Gingrich’s and Dick Armey’s dynamic leadership that produced the GOP “Contract With America” led to the Republican take-over of the House after 40 years of Democratic control.

According to the historically very accurate Rasmussen poll, support for Obama/Reid/PelosiCare has dropped to its lowest level yet, with only 38% approving while 56% oppose the plan. Among those whose views are most intense and who therefore are likely to be the most committed voters, twice as many strongly oppose as strongly approve (43% to 21%). An interesting warning to Obama and the Democrats is that at this time in the electoral cycle before the political earthquake of the 1994 election, more people supported HillaryCare than now support the administration on health insurance/care.

Another warning from Rasmussen concerns Obama’s own job approval rating, which has dropped to its lowest number in the poll, 45%. Again significant is the strong approval/strong disapproval rating, which has a significant difference between those most likely to vote, with a 27%/42% split. Among independents, only 16% strongly approve, while 51% strongly disapprove. The generic party preference poll also continues to favor the Republicans, considerably more so than it did before the Republican mid-term election success in 1994.

The President has done a trifecta, bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, the Emperor of Japan, and, now, the head of Communist China. There’s something special about authority figures that makes our leader swoon.

During his trip to China, Obama was pressured on the American deficits and the decline of the American dollar. Very specifically, he was quizzed about Obama/Reid/PelosiCare and its cost. Obviously, the Chinese are not too impressed by the bogus figures the administration has put out there to make it seem as if a government take-over of health insurance/care will actually lessen the deficit. When the tea party attendees questioned the government’s numbers and protested the plan, they were branded racist. Are the Chinese racist, too?

Once upon a time, a Senator lauded military trials as designed under American law as giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a fair trial “with all the bells and whistles.” That Senator was Barack Obama, now attempting to distance himself from the removal of KSM to the ordinary federal court. The video of Senator Obama’s comments demonstrates again that the current civilian trial strategy is a solution in search of a problem. Relevant segment at about 1:30.

The national debt reached $11 trillion about eight months ago. It has just reached $12 trillion. Given the projected deficit over this fiscal year, it is possible that the deficit will reach $14 trillion within a year. Under Obama’s spending plans, it is expected to reach $24.5 trillion by the end of the coming decade, more than the annual GDP. That puts the country in failed economy league. And, of course, this does not include government spending from Obama/PelosiCare.

I’m not sure deficits actually will be that high. The projections are based on projections from current expenditures. But some of those, like the Iraq war spending, are likely to decrease, as are various “stimulus” payments. Still, the danger is that Obama’s proposed programs are going to be permanent federal commitments and, therefore, contribute structurally to the deficit. Annual $800 billion deficits, far more than anything George W. Bush had in even one year, are simply unsustainable.

One tactic that appears superficially to be a solution. Let all the Bush tax cuts expire. Some commentators already perceive the administration to be floating trial balloons of this type for a $3 trillion tax hike over ten years. I have been wondering about this for some time. But I think that the timing would be politically risky for Obama. The tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, which would precipitate considerable discussion about the matter shortly before the midterm elections. The Democrats could vote a one-year extension to put the matter over until 2011, but that still would not avoid the acrimony in 2010 entirely. It would also threaten Obama’s 2012 campaign. More likely, the matter would be extended through 2013, although they might be permitted to expire on schedule as to certain higher-income earners. After that, all bets are off, and everyone will be hit hard of the cuts expire, especially if they are not phased in.

Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are also looking to impose a huge European-style value-added tax that is hidden in the price of goods. That will make goods much more expensive for Americans even as their wallets are emptied by other higher taxes. Moreover, tax collections never meet government projections, because people change their economic behavior in response to changes in tax laws. Taxes on income and on capital formation (e.g., through taxes on dividends and capital gains) reduce job formation, thereby depressing GDP growth. Economic growth is the only way to provide effectively for tax revenues because rates can be kept low while still producing significant amounts.

Another alternative, actually to reduce government spending, seems not to be on the table.

My prediction: A weak currency, weak job growth, and high taxes. A lost decade or more of growth, with stagflation eroding people’s living standards and depressing American initiative and creativity.

Odd tales from the Porkulus. Apparently, the government has published numbers of “jobs saved or created” by the stimulus—in New Hampshire Congressional districts that do not exist. Stranger still, the same thing happened to the tune of $750,000 in a fictional Arizona Congressional district. When the administration spins about the millions of jobs saved or created by the Porkulus, they may be counting those jobs in non-existent jurisdictions. In real jurisdictions, the jobs tend to be measured by the thousands and, if one excludes public sector jobs such as teachers, the numbers are measured in the single digits.

As expected, liberals are jumping in to defend President Obama’s goofy bow to Japan’s Emperor Akihito. The defense, predictably, is “cultural sensitivity.” Ed Morrissey at Hot Air dismantles that excuse in light of the tradition, unbroken for more than two centuries of American leaders not bowing to foreign leaders. Moreover, as I pointed out yesterday, bowing to other heads of state definitely is not a tradition of international relations. Morrissey embeds this video by the University of Connecticut’s College Republicans that juxtaposes Mr. Obama’s greeting with that of many other dignitaries.

Morrissey also points out that, when President Clinton in 1994 almost bowed to Akihito, the New York Times lambasted him for almost doing something “unthinkable” and looking “obsequent.” So far, the Timeshas kept its counsel about Obama, who is after all, more than “Bubba” Clinton, one of their own class. If Obama does it, one certainly must not chide him on etiquette.

The President raised lots of eyebrows earlier this year when he bowed deeply and unexpectedly to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G20 London economic gathering before kissing his hand. I wrote about the matter at the time. While the legacy media generally ignored the spectacle, conservatives had some fun at the President’s expense. Now come photos and videotape of Mr. Obama bowing deeply to the Emperor of Japan.

The gesture was so stark that even the Los Angeles Times, well, at least its blog, courtesy of Andrew Malcolm, took notice. Obama bending himself in half might be seen as just meeting the custom of the place where he is or the person whom he is greeting. George W. Bush, after all, was photographed walking with King Abdullah at the Texas ranch holding the monarch’s hand. That elicited lots of comments and mirth among journalists.

But any comparison between the two based on custom only redounds to Mr. Obama’s disadvantage. While the sight of two leaders walking hand-in-hand may seem odd to modern American eyes, much as the French bi-cheeky air kiss, or the Russian hug-and-smooch do, in many parts of the world, and in the West in the past, this is seen as a sign of a relationship of friendship and equality. Bowing deeply, on the other hand, and kissing another leader’s hand is everywhere an expression of deference. Indeed, in regards to Japanese custom, the deeper the bow, the greater the submission. Obama’s bow so reeked of an inferior’s homage to his superior, it is what used to be called “bowing and scraping.”

The Emperor did not reciprocate the bow. Neither did King Abdullah in the earlier scenario. As the pictures show, when Dick Cheney met the Emperor of Japan, he shook the latter’s hand. No bowing for Darth Cheney. It may be that this is yet another faux-pas by an inexperienced and unqualified naif, as many conservatives saw Obama during the campaign. Perhaps, especially when this happens more than once, it has a more sinister meaning for the U.S. Foreign leaders of whatever stripe pay attention to these matters of etiquette. To them, such expressions of submission are of a kind with Obama’s World Apology Tour 2009 and project an air of weakness and docility that may, no, will cause the U.S. much trouble in the future to correct. At the very least, these signals can cause the kind of miscalculation that lets a foe take a bellicose position that draws the U.S. into unwanted confrontation. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait is said to have been such a misstep based on miscues from words to the dictator by President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador in Iraq.

Given the White House’s current occupant’s penchant for gestures of supplication to foreign leaders, especially ones not popularly elected, one wonders what to expect from him when he meets the Chinese leadership. After all, their importance in helping Obama finance his record deficits far outweighs that of either King Abdullah or Emperor Akihito.

* Mark Steyn’s phrase

While the President managed an increasingly criticized “shout-out” and some rambling remarks about a conference held by an ethnic identity group before delivering himself of a rather bloodless and detached brief statement about the Fort Hood attack by the would-be suicide shooter, former President Bush and his wife went to the base to meet with soldiers and their families. And he did it in secret and unannounced, a trip not known until FOX News broke the story the next day. Oh, Mr. Obama will appear later this coming week at a major press-saturated ceremony.

Lest some say that this was an aberration, or that Bush was able to do this in secret because he is now just a private citizen whose movements no one follows, there are a few responses. For one, the press is able to cover the former President’s movements just fine when he goes to make a speech or two in Canada. More important, Mr. Bush is just continuing what he and former Vice President Dick Cheney did with thousands of troops while they were in office, secretly and without fanfare visiting with them and/or their families or writing personal letters.

The majority of American voters who elected Mr. Obama fancied his detached cool, yet one more aspect of the voters’ tendency to elect the opposite of the outgoing incumbent. They got what they wanted, and then some. The telepromptered Mr. Obama can speak the words, but he has yet to master the tune. With his emotional tonedeafness, I doubt that he ever will. He is no Ronald Reagan. Nor is he a Bill Clinton. Or, obviously, a George W. Bush.

An allegory of government health care, put in a quick tale that most Americans can understand.

HT: Matthew Cohen

Karl Rove has put together a summary of the Republican proposals for health care/insurance reform. While this is long on platitudes and short on specifics (which have been presented by various Republican Congressmen), it does set forth several good ideas. I have my doubts about some of them (the proposal to allow employers, or anyone else, to promote employees’ healthy lifestyles is particularly suspicious). Overall, though, to the extent they actually are substantive, these proposals are sound. They rely on private markets and more individual choice, rather than on the notoriously incompetent public servants, to make medical decisions.

Over the past several weeks there has been a lot of back-and-forth over the Obama administration’s attacks on FOX News. There has been much speculation about the reasons for the actions by the President and his advisers. One must look at this on several levels to gain a proper appreciation for this puzzling behavior.

Most obvious, and clearly significant, is the distaste, if not outright enmity that Obama and his minions have for FOX News. Unlike the purring and obsequious “journalists” at CNN, NBC, and MSNBC, FOX actually challenges the administration’s claims. Those claims often are risible and violate fundamental perceptions of common sense, but the non-FOX media willingly suspend the disbelief they so profusely lavished on every word George W. Bush uttered. On the other hand, while FOX fact-checks Obama’s health care claims, CNN does fact-check an SNL skit that is a mild parody of Obama’s lack of accomplishments.

That, what is it called? Oh yes, journalism. That journalism is foreign to the President’s experience of receiving, with few mild exceptions, adulation and uncritical acceptance. And to matters foreign to one’s experience, one is likely to react with suspicion.

The President’s campaign seems quixotic, in that FOX News not only has a huge following among Democrats and Independents, as well as among Republicans, and is actually gaining readership and sympathy from this contest. The President is seen as unsympathetic towards free speech and as a vindictive whiner.

Another partial explanation is that Obama simply has certain personal shortcomings. He is a small man, psychologically, one who, despite his carefully-staged public persona, is not comfortable in his own skin. He is the opposite of George W. Bush, who, in that regard, always gave off a “don’t give a damn” vibe through that smirk that drove liberals crazy. Obama shows all the characteristics of someone with an inferiority complex and a fear that, at any moment, someone is going to draw back the curtain and discover the charade. It is the uncertainty about his lack of accomplishments and qualification for the Presidency that lurks within him.

The upwards-tilted gaze and projecting jaw that Obama likes to present, the messianic speeches and images, the snide attacks on critics when the mask slips, the bullying attacks on Americans who oppose his policies while figuratively prostrating himself before America’s enemies abroad who push back, his attacks on Rush Limbaugh, his minions’ proposals to curtail free speech through the “fairness doctrine,” “hate speech” laws, “diversity mandates,” and threats of criminal action during the 2008 campaign, all present someone who is not comfortable with notions of dissent. His followers often are similarly afflicted, as the frequent references by Democratic polticians and administration spokesmen and supporters to the protests by “tea party” attendees and the questions from town hall participants as “unpatriotic” and “un-American” vividly illustrate. Dissent suddenly is no longer the highest form of patriotism, but an attack on Obama and, thereby, on the U.S. itself. One recalls in vain George W. Bush attacking or seeking to marginalize the media and liberal commentators who savaged him for eight years. Obama has far more profoundly legitimized undermining of constitutionally-protected free speech rights of dissenters than anything that Bush can be accused of with any conceivable basis in fact.

Why is Obama pursuing what appears to be a rather stupid tactic? Part of the explanation lies in his vanity. He is accustomed to surrounding himself with political acolytes. In his earlier elected positions, no one criticized him, as he operated within thoroughly liberal environments. Those that opposed him, such as other primary or general election candidates had a habit of suddenly withdrawing from races as pressure was brought through revived old news, suddenly leaked “sealed” records, and such. It was the election equivalent of turning up floating lifelessly in the Hudson, or Chicago, River. Obama had a remarkable run of lucky political coincidences at critical junctures.

With FOX challenging his exaggerations, attacks on political opponents, prevarications, and ideology, he strikes back. Rather than ignoring these people that dare to oppose him, he is only too eager to put them in their place. Even if he is “lowering” himself to the level of mere scribblers.

But that isn’t the only explanation. After all, FOX only benefits from the controversy by having its ratings go up. Moreover, Obama is insulting the many viewers of FOX when it insults the network. Those viewers know that FOX in fact does provide the most balanced of news among all networks. That’s why almost a third of FOX’s viewers are Democrats.

But Obama really doesn’t care about FOX ratings or the FOX viewers. He is trying to do three things. First, he is trying to influence other media outlets by preemptively deligitimizing stories picked up by FOX, such as the Van Jones exposure. Tarring FOX as being a mere opinion or entertainment network will, he hopes, make other reporters less willing to go quickly with stories that originate there and that are embarrassing to the administration.

Second, he is trying to give other media outlets cover for their fawning coverage of him. After all, if FOX is critical of him and can be made to appear to be unfair, this allows the other networks to shill for him and dismiss any criticism by others by claiming that they are providing the true “news” aspect of the story.

Third, he is hoping to use such attacks on FOX and on conservative commentators to distract the public’s (and FOX’s) attention from some political topic. It’s a classic feint to change the subject when the topic gets embarrassing. The media (including FOX) quickly take the bait and run after this new topic that is more superficial but also captures the public’s attention more than yet another dry exchange over health care.

Fourth, he is trying to distract his political base. He has not delivered significantly on the substantive programs that his supporters think he promised them during the campaign. Judging from Kos and other Leftie bloggers and media types, there is mounting frustration with the lack of progress in achieving the earthly utopia of secular progressivism. By feeding them the story of the alleged sinister misdeeds of FOX, he can play into the Left’s prejudices, as well as lead them off the scent of his lack of substantive accomplishments regarding the environment, health care, the economy, taxes, Guantanamo, the war in Afghanistan, and so forth.

Even if this latest effort at demonizing his opponents peters out, one can look for similar such tactics to reappear. That would hold true, even if the President wins some successes in promoting his domestic agenda. They are simply too good a fit for the President’s political style and personal character traits to be jettisoned.

President Obama has insisted that a “public option” merely provides some more choice for consumers of health insurance. Conservative critics allege (and I certainly agree) that the option is a Trojan Horse intended to drive private health insurance (except perhaps some boutique policies) out of the market and bring about a single payer system. Candidate Obama in his early incarnations certainly supported such an outcome.

This post at Verum Serum documents some of the deceptions of Democratic politicians and liberal journalists and other supporters of the public option as a strategy to reach the objective of single payer. Here’s the video, where the mask slips and the truth comes out.

Robert Samuelson, writing in The Washington Post, succinctly lays out the fallacies of the “public option.” From affordability to cost control to improved quality of care to competition and choice, the government option as sold by the politicians is a mirage. Many Americans have the common sense to understand that government cannot repeal the laws of economics and create something out of nothing. But the politicians hope that a fantasy repeated often enough will convince a sufficient number of people who believe in bumper sticker policy to get the public option through Congress.

A point not mentioned by Samuelson is the fiction of the “state opt-out” that is being touted as a way for states to avoid the public option if their voters don’t want it. The problem, as my students know from studying Congress’s use of the spending power to “persuade” states to comply with federal policies, is that political reality cannot conform to theory. Under the plan, the residents of the United States will be taxed to pay for the government plan’s costs. Those costs, as Samuelson demonstrates, will inevitably rise through a number of predictable developments (such as the withering away of private plans and increased number of participants in the government plan). Whatever private plans remain will provide more limited coverage and will become more expensive as the pool of participants drops. It will become politically untenable for a state to have its citizens pay taxes for a plan that will offer lower, taxpayer-subsidized costs to people in other states, yet make such an option unavailable locally.

A real state choice plan would be to have no national public option, but allow the states to develop their own. The increasingly desperate financial state of RomneyCare in Massachusetts and the problems with the limited child-oriented LingleCare in Hawaii would put brakes on any careless state forays into government-funded health care for the general population.

President Obama’s supporters bristle at the characterization of their man as a socialist by his detractors. But those remarks do not come from nothing. There has been a strong undercurrent about the evils of capitalism in the administration’s demonizing of the health insurance industry. From the President down, therehas been a constant drumbeat about the allegedly obscene and undeserved profits of health insurance companies. When Nancy Pelosi attacks these companies’ profits as obscene and immoral, one assumes she knows of which she speaks, given her history of questionable steering of government funds and projects to family and friends. I have seen many defenders of socialized health insurance/care attack the profits of insurance companies the elimination of which, they say, will allow the government to provide better care to more people at a lower price. Of course, the hostility to the concept of profit among these people presumably does not extend to their own livelihoods, including the profit they make from the sale of their labor at a cost higher than what is necessary to sustain them at a minimal level of physical survival.

Leave aside that most Americans by far who are covered by private insurance plans are participants in non-profit entities such as Kaiser Permanente and (in most states) Blue Cross-Blue Shield. As this article explains, the health insurance industry’s profits are comparatively anemic compared to other enterprises, a number of which, such as the railroads, are heavily subsidized. Though at times somewhat higher, recent profits have been about 2%, with the highest at 5%. Somehow I doubt that these facts will get in the way of a good hate campaign. But there should be no doubt then that these arguments are driven by an ideology and by a view of profits and of private initiative and enterprise that is, well, socialist.

Every political alignment has its more ideologically extreme members. They, presumably, consider themselves ideologically principled. On the Right, they often rap themselves in the Constitution and the Flag. Fair enough. These folks serve a purpose because often they push the debate on policy and give a voice to issues that turns out later to be prescient. But too often they come across as strident and even demented. This effort to launch a movement to impeach President Obama is one of those moonbattery moments among the Right.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air thoroughly explains the political and constitutional foolishness of such an effort at this time. I fully agree with the message of his posting. Obama’s actions so far do not meet the constitutional understanding of “high crimes and misdemeanors” under even the most generous reading. Democrats will not launch impeachment proceedings even if the evidence of qualifying wrongdoing by Obama were orders of magnitude clearer. If anything, the Congressional leadership considers Obama insufficiently committed to the radical cause. For the Republican minority to press such an issue would not only be fruitless, it would be politically suicidal. It would allow the Democrats to shift attention from their disastrous policies onto comparisons of personality. And, whatever their political skills, House Minority Leader Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell cannot match the President’s propaganda machine or his on-camera telepromptered charisma.

The American public punished the Republicans politically for the dubious impeachment efforts directed at President Clinton. Those Republicans at least had perjury and obstruction of justice as predicate offenses by the President. Any attempt to replicate such efforts against Obama would tar the Republicans and invite a political backlash that the GOP cannot afford. It would waste an increasingly promising opportunity to expose the Democrats on their substantive radicalism to slow them down in 2010 and beyond. The American people are not forgiving of contrived impeachment efforts or other tactics that are unnecessarily divisive and alter political issues into legal or quasi-legal ones.

That is one reason why I have not been unduly concerned about efforts by the extreme Left, as represented among a number of the faculty at my school, to prosecute Bush-era officials. The Democrats would pay dearly politically for such a course, and I do not see Obama pursuing it unless he felt supremely confident of his political position. Given his eroding approval ratings, that is unlikely. Or, Obama feels driven into a political corner with nothing to lose. He is nowhere near that, given the difficult struggle for his ambitious and radical domestic agenda.

I, along with Ed Morrissey, am also sick and tired of the Nazi-comparisons coming from both sides. This is done far less often by the Right than by the Left (during the Reagan and Bush administrations, and now against anyone who dares to express disapproval of Obama policies at town hall meetings). But when the Right does it, it is equally despicable and over-the-top, unless there is a direct and relevant factual comparison. Here, there is not.

There are plenty of troubling policy initiatives that threaten disastrous economic and social consequences, but neither Obama nor the Democrats are carting peaceful American dissenters off to camps any more than Bush and Cheney were doing through the Patriot Act. There are plenty of personality cult stirrings in the administration and its supporters. It is perfectly legitimate to point out the similarities of both the President and his supporters in this regard to the natural dynamic between the totalitarian leader in history and his followers. But it is not legitimate to call him Hitler until he, well, starts to act like Hitler in his policies.

I disagree with Morrissey’s column on one minor point. He accepts that a reading of Federalist 65 (though not the Constitution’s text) supports the claim that impeachment can be done for political reasons. Not exactly. Hamilton agreed that impeachment was not simply a criminal process. Hence, someone could be tried in the courts for conduct that led to his impeachment, without violating double jeopardy or due process. But to assert that the process was, at some level, “quasi-political,” not “legal,” does not validate the use of the procedure for purely political differences.

Hamilton is clear about that distinction between process and substance. The process could only be used for misconduct that, even if it did not amount to criminal bahavior, showed unfitness for office by undermining the constitutional order. English practice that, in the 17th century, had allowed impeachment for purely political differences during the Long Parliament of Charles I, by the latter part of the 17th century already required more solid, non-political cause. Early American state constitutional practice that had flirted with the purely political model of impeachment, had moved to the language and custom reflected in the U.S. Constitution, as well. Hamilton recognized those roots, affirmatively citing the English precedent. Impeachments, therefore, are never pursued on the formal grounds of even severe political differences, though such political squabbles may fuel the decision to pursue impeachment for conduct that otherwise would be ignored.

I have not written about my fellow constitutional law professor Doug Kmiec in a while. Professor Kmiec, teaching at Pepperdine University Law School, was a staunch Catholic Republican pro-lifer who served in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan administration. During the most recent election, after supporting the doomed primary candidacy of Mitt Romney, he parlayed his distaste for the more openly pro-life John McCain into an increasingly full-throated support of—Barack Obama. Not only did Professor Kmiec support Obama, he came to view the latter as the true pro-life candidate and one of the most pro-life Presidents ever.

The tenor of Kmiec’s increasingly militant pieces on the topic caused much derision among his former political associates and ideological fellows, about which I have posted before. Academics, such as Princeton philosophy professor Robert George lined up to dismantle Kmiec’s philosophic arguments. Members of the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy began to question Kmiec’s religious assertions. Columnists have dismissed Kmiec’s political rationalizations. I met Doug Kmiec a few years ago and was quite impressed by his philosophic rigor about the application of natural law thinking to current issues of rights. I barely recognized the new Doug Kmiec. 

As the Obama administration faced questions about its domestic policies, Kmiec vigorously defended it. When Notre Dame was criticized for extending an invitation to the President to speak at the graduation ceremony and to receive an honorary degree, Kmiec was right there to defend the university and to laud the President in a gush of fawning verbiage. When Justice Souter retired and even before Sonia Sotomayor was nominated, Kmiec immediately (and unconvincingly to me) jumped on the Obama ”empathy” bandwagon.

Kmiec even reversed himself clumsily on the D.C. v. Heller decision. In 2007, he had supported an amicus curiae (”friend of the court”) brief in support of the constitutional argument for an individual right to bear arms for self-defense and against the D.C. ban on private possession of handguns. In 2008, the Supreme Court had adopted the position that brief advanced. In 2009, Kmiec criticized that same ruling as unconstitutionally ignoring the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment. He also opposes extension of that right to protect against state and local gun possession bans like the one in Chicago that is currently on review before the Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago. Apparently, that natural law/natural rights approach that Professor Kmiec so favors in his constitutional law casebook does not apply to the right of self-defense that is crucial to protection of the right to life. Once more, he abandons his former straightforward pro-life position for one to match the nuances, not to mention bald-faced contradictions, on the topic coming from his idol in the White House.

That flip-flop was in accord with Kmiec’s reversal of his position on California’s Proposition 8, the pro-opposite sex marriage vote, something he also was for, before he was against it. In what has become drearily predictable, Kmiec has also reversed himself on the jurisprudential issue of constitutional interpretation. He now ridicules the “conservative” position that courts should interpret constitutional clauses in light of the original understanding of the language when it was adopted. This is in sharp contrast to his long-held and published previous views, voiced as recently as two years ago, when he was still working for the Romney campaign, about the essential nature of original understanding constitutional interpretation. His embrace of the jurisprudence of original understanding has disappeared along with his philosophic attachment to natural law.

Many have wondered what is producing this conversion. While not happening with the speed of Paul’s epiphany, it is nevertheless producing an equally complete Road-to-Damascus reversal of deeply-held beliefs, albeit in the opposite direction. I have previously speculated that Kmiec was angling for a federal judgeship. Others thought it was an ambassadorship to the Vatican. But the Vatican apparently let it be known behind the scenes that Kmiec was too blatant in his dubious assertions of the pro-life qualities of the President and unconvincing in his protestations of his own continuing pro-life stance. His increasingly accommodating views about abortion that essentially measured compromise as surrender to the pro-abortion rights side were unacceptable to the Vatican. Of course, the reality of Kmiec’s new-found acceptance of common ground mimicked that of the President himself, the most radically pro-abortion President ever and someone whose position on partial-birth abortion and whose hostility towards protecting babies born alive after abortion was more radical than even Senator Boxer’s.

So the question remained exactly what Kmiec was after. Now we know. It is indeed an ambassadorship. To Malta. For that, one surrenders life-long positions that, presumably, were deeply held and carefully thought-through philosophic and religious tenets? I am again reminded of something I have posted before, a remark from Sir Thomas More (”A Man For All Seasons”) to Richard Rich, the snivelling opportunist who acts as the King’s tool to bring down More in return for becoming Attorney General of Wales: “For Wales? Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world…But for Wales!”

For Malta, Doug? For Malta?

David Kahane styles the life story of one Barack Hussein Obama as a proposed comedy getting the plot development treatment in a fictional Hollywood setting. Who’d believe it, right?

Another Krauthammer masterpiece. His speech begins about 6 minutes in with some jokes. The main part begins about 8 minutes in. For those who don’t know anything about Krauthammer, he is paralyzed as a result of a diving accident his first year of medical school. Krauthammer is a noted psychiatrist who has published some important papers in the field. On a less professionally lofty level, but playing off his training, he coined the concept BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) to characterize liberals’ visceral dislike of anything connected with George W. Bush. Liberals since then have tried to appropriate the “derangement syndrome” concept for their own use.

This is the transcript of the speech. The speech is a classic, and there is no justice that I can do to it by quoting passages. The whole thing has to be read and studied. That said, I cannot resist a couple of quotes to give a taste of a wonderful repast. Describing the difference between the center-left liberal internationalism of the Clinton administration and the left-liberalism of the Obama administration, Krauthammer observes:

“For what might be called the New Liberalism, the renunciation of power is rooted not in the fear that we are essentially good but subject to the corruptions of power–the old Clintonian view–but rooted in the conviction that America is so intrinsically flawed, so inherently and congenitally sinful that it cannot be trusted with, and does not merit, the possession of overarching world power.
“For the New Liberalism, it is not just that power corrupts. It is that America itself is corrupt–in the sense of being deeply flawed, and with the history to prove it. An imperfect union, the theme of Obama’s famous Philadelphia race speech, has been carried to and amplified in his every major foreign-policy address, particularly those delivered on foreign soil. (Not surprisingly, since it earns greater applause over there.)”

America as deeply flawed is a theme that is taught over and over in our schools. I see it in the multiculti relativism and the transnationalism embedded in our law school faculty and in the burning desire to see those, such as Bush administration officials who sought to protect Americans from terrorist attacks after 9/11, punished here or abroad. It is a poison that flows through our elite institutions and ultimately threatens our political existence.

And there are other poisons that come from the administration’s left-liberalism. The signs are everywhere and obvious to all who will look. The effects are beginning to be felt and will be felt more and more, as the wind Obama has sown will be reaped as a whirlwind of national decline. Obama’s focus on the need for a moral rebirth of the United States before it can tell other nations what to do leads him to apology tours and other harebrained schemes that will backfire on the U.S., politically at best, militarily at worst. They do nothing to help the U.S. and seem designed more to sate Obama’s hunger to be recognized as a transformative figure, the secular messiah of his acolytes’ imaginations and the media’s hagiographic portrayals.

Peter Wehner agrees that Krauthammer hits the nail on the head in this speech and reads it as distilling the reason that Mr. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize:

“In his address, Krauthammer says,

as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional — exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

“That, in two sentences, explains why Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. Now the Nobel Committee couldn’t quite come out and say that directly; it decided to couch the award in this language, taken from the citation: ‘[Obama’s] diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.’
“There you have it: Barack Obama has given voice to what many of the world think about America — and it’s not flattering. That much of the world — composed as it is of autocrats and dictators and weak and wobbly defenders of human rights and human dignity — isn’t happy with the United States is not news. What is news is that an American president would validate many of those charges. I find that deeply disquieting. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not surprisingly, considers it worthy of its highest honor.”

James Capretta at National Review Online describes the “Baucus death spiral” that happens to insurance plans when regulators force insurers to offer coverage (“guaranteed issue”) at premiums below the known risk of those they are insuring, without any assurance that the shortfall can be made up elsewhere. The way out was the mandate that young, healthy people join the insurance pool or pay a hefty excise tax. But, as Capretta points out, that mandate is politically unpalatable so it has been reduced and delayed, but without a way for the insurance companies to avoid the increased costs. The industry is trying to get the mandate back in, which Capretta calls the wrong approach. I agree in that an approach that removes impediments to market forces and consumer choice is the far better and more sustainable solution.

But the real problem is not economic. Most understand the questions and the answers. The real hang-up is political. As Capretta notes, Democrats “are desperate to enact something they can call ‘universal coverage’ without any coherent plan to slow the pace of rising costs. In that context, a new entitlement for subsidized insurance is exceedingly expensive, which is why the sponsors try to hide some of the costs behind mandates, hidden taxes, compulsion, and insurance regulation. However, as they are now finding out, there’s no free lunch here. Someone has to pay for it all. It’s just a question of who and how much.”

Capretta links to this blog post on the Baucus bill, by an expert in health insurance/health care issues. He declares that the Baucus bill would explode the health insurance market. He gives some examples how families would be affected by the new premium structure and why they would avoid paying for health insurance until they became sick.

Many people understand about the fundamental folly of the whole government health insurance/health care debacle, the problem of lack of sufficient information and the inefficiency in evaluating information and making decisions that is the ruin of central planning. The British National Health Service is the world’s third-largest employer, after the Chinese People’s Army and the Indian National Railways. And they make decisions for a population less than 20% that of the U.S. “Successful” programs in the Scandinavian countries or in the Netherlands (actually, the Dutch are trying to privatize their system more) are in countries with a small fraction of the population of the U.S. What could go wrong?

From Slate, of all places, an insightful evaluation of why the political and economic realities dictate that the costs for ObamaCare proposals such as the one in Senator Baucus’s bill inevitably will exceed those advertised.

There has been speculation that President Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize is only a prelude to future such awards to him. The current award has been characterized by the head of the prize committee as an encouragement to the President to continue to move the U.S. in a direction of subjecting American action to restraint by transnational organizations and foreign regimes. The President himself has often stressed the need for the U.S. to change the (imagined) unilateralism of the Bush administration. He has paid obeisance to the United Nations’ “importance,” made the need to talk to the U.S.’s enemies without preconditions (from the American side only) a prime foreign policy plank, and embarked on major tours to apologize unilaterally for various sins of the United States. His pronouncements pander to the most baseless grievances of thuggish regimes that gives those regimes legitimacy to suppress domestic dissent and violate human rights with impunity, while demoralizing movements towards democracy and liberty that traditionally could have counted on American support. He supports a program of weakened national defense and strengthened domestic social collectivism. The Obama administration’s path reminds me of a dream I had.

From Tehran, President-for-life Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad congratulates President Obama for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. The American president received the prize for his contribution to world peace through the executive agreement that he made with Ahmadi-Nejad to remove American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq in 2011 and to recognize Iranian suzerainty over the Persian Gulf region, and for his willingness to talk with Iran without preconditions for the 18 months that it took for Iran to complete construction of its first six atomic bombs. Ahmadi-Nejad notes his gratitude to Obama for these steps, without which it would not have been possible for Iran successfully to invade the Arabian peninsula and Jordan and to develop a direct land connection to its allies Hamas and Lebanese Hizb’Ullah.

From Pyongyang, North Korea, Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il congratulates President Obama for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Obama received the prize for his contribution to world peace by withdrawing American armed forces from South Korea, the Philippines, and the rest of the Western Pacific as part of his massive reductions of American armed forces to help pay for the far-greater than publicized costs of the new American health care public-only option modeled after the Cuban system. Bringing the troops home on the model of what the President did in Iraq and Afghanistan, as so many of Obama’s left-wing supporters demanded, allowed North Korea to launch an attack on South Korea using the nuclear-tipped missiles it had been developing while dragging out long-running talks demanded by the American Left and by the North Koreans. While the South Korean military resisted valiantly, the North Koreans, supplied and reinforced by the Chinese who were glad to find a solution to the internal economic weakness of the North Korean system that had threatened to destabilize it and send refugees into China, eventually overwhelmed the defenders.

From Kabul, Afghanistan, Russian President-for-life Vladimir Putin and his Afghani counterpart, Mullah Omar, congratulate President Obama for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. As a result of Obama’s decision in 2009 to scrap the American agreement with Poland to place a defensive missile shield there, and of the treaty in 2010 to eliminate 2200 nuclear warheads from the U.S. and Russian arsenals (leaving the U.S. with none and Russia with 600), Russia was able to reestablish the boundaries of the old Warsaw Pact. With Obama’s de facto unilateral nuclear disarmament of the U.S., the formerly free nations of Eastern Europe chose to obtain the best bargain they could from the increasingly assertive Russians. The Russian economy was in a near-meltdown when Putin introduced rigorously capitalist measures in 2011, even as the U.S. was heading down a strongly socialist path against which Putin warned Obama. Those reforms, combined with a massive capital inflow due to the replacement of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency after the disastrous inflation and subsequent economic depression caused by the Obama administration’s massive deficits and takeovers of large portions of the American economy, have revitalized the Russian economy. Putin is in Kabul to commemorate the Pact’s latest victory, conquering the Caucasus nations of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and to sign a friendship treaty with the Taliban government of Afghanistan and their allies, the Taliban government of Pakistan. It is peace in our time, as the Russians even put the Czech Republic and Slovakia back together with Obama’s help and an armored division of Soviet Russian troops sent to Prague. With NATO now disbanded after its humiliating 2011 defeat in Afghanistan, once the Biden program of minimizing the American presence there and relying of Special Forces raids proved to be the massive failure that former Generals McChrystal and Petraeus had predicted, the European Union has declared a Finnish-model neutrality of cooperation with Russia and proclaimed itself a demilitarized region. Putin is also pleased that Obama has rejected the overtures of a suddenly-concerned China for a military alliance against the Russians. He has publicly thanked Obama for “correcting another American mistake” by returning Alaska to Russia for the $6 million that the U.S. paid for that purchase in 1867. Of course, after the inflation of 2010-12, that sum is now worth only 6,000 Bush-era dollars.

From Ramallah, the leadership of Hamas congratulates President Obama for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Obama received the prize for his contribution to world peace through the decision to sever ties with Israel and to vote for a complete U.N. embargo against the small nation enforced by U.S. warships. That made it possible for a joint Iranian-Syrian-Egyptian-Hamas-Hizb’Ullah invasion to destroy Israel, after Iran used its nuclear stockpile, four of which found their targets. True, Iran lost a dozen cities in the Israeli desperation counterattack, but, as the Iranians pointed out before, they could afford to lose millions of people and still win a war with Israel. Moreover, with the demise of the Zionist entity, the Middle East peace envisioned by the administration and its electoral base has been attained, though it is a peace of the grave.

From Caracas, the capital of the new Bolivarian Federation, President-for-life Hugo Chavez congratulates President Obama for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Chavez, whose Bolivarian Federation includes Central America below Mexico, the northern portion of South America (including the former countries of Colombia, Peru, and Equador), various Caribbean domains such as Cuba, and the former U.S. state of Florida, acknowledges Mr. Obama’s contribution to his successful war of liberation. It was Obama who agreed to remove U.S. forces and military protection from those countries, which allowed Chavez to use his newly-acquired Russian military equipment and the assistance of Russian military forces on bases in the former Venezuela to overthrow the bourgeois capitalist democracies in many of those countries and to advance his vision of socialism. Once he used one of his Iranian nuclear weapons to bomb the Colombian capital, Bogota, Chavez’s threats to nuke other cities made his task much easier. Not to be outdone by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Chavez has awarded Obama the Simon Bolivar Medal for Obama’s contribution to the advance of socialism and for Obama’s agreement, after duly apologizing for American aggression, to return Florida to control by Spanish-speakers from whom the area was “stolen” almost two centuries ago. Obama’s new Secretary of the Treasury, Michael Moore, and the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, George Soros, accept the award on President Obama’s behalf.

From Sacramento, Nuevo California, Mexican President (and former drug cartel boss) Miguel Duran congratulates President Obama for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Obama received the prize for his contribution to world peace for the treaty made by him and approved by the Senate elected in 2016. The treaty was made after Mr. Obama suspended parts of the Constitution in 2016 to allow him to run for as many terms as he wants and after opposition parties were declared “enemies of hope and change” and were prohibited. The treaty returns to Mexico all land acquired by the United States through the annexation of Texas, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican War, and the Gadsden Purchase.

From Brussels, the president of the newly-restructured demilitarized European Union congratulates President Barack Obama for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for Mr. Obama’s continuing efforts to reduce the influence of the U.S. in world affairs. The latest effort towards that end is the treaty with the EU that returns to France the territory acquired by the U.S. as a result of Thomas Jefferson’s 1803 treaty with Napoleon Bonaparte and called the Louisiana Purchase. Under this recent treaty, all American inhabitants not of Cajun or American-Indian ancestry (proper blood-lines to be shown to a “Race and Ethnicity Commission” established under UN auspices) are to be removed from that area within five years.

From London, the president of the newly-established Islamic Republic of Londonistan congratulates President Barack Obama for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Obama received the prize for his contribution to world peace for the treaty he made with the Islamic Republic to return all lands gained by the United States as a result of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that ended the American war for independence from then-Great Britain. The new treaty stipulates that the territory within 250 miles of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the city of Chicago shall remain under U.S. control until the death of President Obama. At that point all shall revert to the Islamic Republic of Londonistan. All people of non-American Indian descent shall be repatriated to their continents of origin within twenty years after the return of the land. There will be an exception made for a twenty square-mile area around the site of the Jamestown, Virginia, settlement and the town of Williamsburg, Virginia, and another four square-mile site in the District Columbia, both of which shall be preserved as sites to commemorate the entity that was once the United States of America. The sites will serve as a warning to those who would seek to establish a society formed on outdated notions that individuals are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and that governments are established only to secure these rights.

I then woke up, bathed in sweat, relieved that it was only a nightmare. I turned on the news. The President had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Michael Lewis, writing in Commentary, discusses the Art of Obama Worship. He addresses how current artists are disregarding the prior American norm of separating art from politics. That reflected a healthy separation of the private intellectual domain from the corrosive influence of politics. Using art for political indoctrination and for, by turns, idolizing the ruling clique and demonizing its opponents, is an attribute of totalitarian systems. To the extent that American art was politicized, beginning in the 1960s, it took a skeptical, indeed cynical, position against American institutions. Art was not just politically progressive. Itoften revelled in its transgressiveness, as anti-Christian and anti-Republican (especially that featuring George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld) art showed. Artists prided themselves on “speaking truth to power.” Even when their “speech” had the reasoned content and controlled delivery of a Tourette’s sufferer:

“This is not to say that 9/11 did not call forth a volcano of moral rage among artists—only that this rage found no outlet until 2003, when it came to be directed at George W. Bush. Among all the scatological, puerile, and corrosive caricatures of Bush that began to be shown at that time, one looks in vain for even one corresponding image of Osama bin Laden or Mohamed Atta. For example, In the Shadow of No Towers, Art Spiegelman’s intensely personal graphic memoir of the 9/11 attacks, contains not a single depiction of bin Laden, while we are treated to scurrilous images of President Bush toppling the Statue of Liberty and a gleeful Dick Cheney slitting the throat of the American eagle on whose back he is riding.”

This sometimes self-consciously hostile art was a worrisome shift towards a mutual interaction between art and politics, especially as government funding of art expanded, a funding that began with the New Deal art that at times seemed to be a less virulent form of “socialist realism.” But, at least for a generation, this oppositional art (while clearly selective and ideologically biased in its targets) still maintained a semblance of opposition to the status quo. All of that has changed with the ascension of Barack Obama (and his political support for Artists Corps, a new federal program to support artists). And, unlike the sometimes hagiographic art that grew around other Presidents (Washington, Lincoln), Obama worship, like the Nobel Peace Prize, has erupted before the man has done anything of sufficient consequence to merit the worship. Much of that art, as I have written before, smacks of religious-type adulation:

“In one three-month period, 787 Obama paintings were auctioned on eBay, showing the new president in every possible pose, and a few impossible ones: standing commandingly before the White House, cradling a basketball and wearing a Washington Wizards uniform, gamely wrestling a bear on Wall Street, even flying naked on the back of a unicorn.
What is striking about these paintings is not their quality, about which the less said the better, but their consistent tone. They belong to that class of objects known as ‘devotional art.’ Such objects are not only intended as votive offerings, to serve as the focus of veneration; the actual process of making them is itself an act of piety, a consideration that all but places them outside the realm of aesthetic judgment.”

A leader in the Obama worship genre of current art is Shepard Fairey, the artist with the irresistibly effete name, whose Hope (and other captioned) graphic poster presentation of Obama adorns in miniaturized form many an automobile. The poster has become so paradigmatic that enterprising conservatives have made their own version. I have the “Nope” version, preferring it to the less respectful one that shows the Obama profile with the caption “Dope.” Fairey more than the others inadvertently has exposed the flackery and the lack of legitimacy of American artists when they claim to be cutting-edge critics. The true dissenters among the highly conformist artist class have been conservatives, that is, those who would expose the above-mentioned flackery and the ideological conformity and rigidity of the “arts community,” a term used loosely, as one must to include the low-brow art of these political propagandists. Such a term would also extend to the large class of musicians, singers, and actors, and accurately describe their ideological herd mentality.

If Richard Cohen of The Washington Post is not careful, he will get banned from the reading list of the typical liberal Post customer. Especially when Sarah Palin agrees with his analysis. Writing perceptive and balanced columns about the choices facing the administration in Afghanistan won’t get subscriptions renewed. But Cohen is correct in all parts of this analysis. His impression of the President:

“This is the president we now have: He inspires lots of affection but not a lot of awe. It is the latter, though, that matters most in international affairs, where the greatest and most gut-wrenching tests await Obama.”

Indeed. Cohen might have added that Obama is flunking the awe test in the shock-and-awe sense that matters in foreign affairs. In Afghanistan, the worst that the President can do is to split the difference on General McChrystal’s troop request. Cohen understands the stakes of keeping the Taliban out of power, the connection between al Qaeda and the Taliban, between the success of those two groups and the stability of Pakistan, and the connection between a stable Pakistan and peace on the Indian subcontinent and points closer to home. Those were points that the President himself made a few weeks ago, as well as during his campaign when he repeatedly pronounced Afghanistan as the good war that he made his own once he was inaugurated. The President’s more recent waffling and outwardly coy pseudo-noncommittal are not good signs. Is this another Obama promise that has reached its expiration date? Cohen correctly dismisses automatic comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam. True enough, but Vietnam was not predestined, either. And Afghanistan can easily be turned into Vietnam by political paralysis and military half-measures.

As I wrote last week, and as so many others have opined, the President was remiss in going to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympics. Making such a high-profile appeal made the exercise highly political and forced opponents and supporters of both the President and of bringing the games to Chicago to approach this as having more at stake than would have been the case had the President not broken new ground here. No previous American president has taken such a personal approach, though this is not unheard of from the heads of lesser countries. In normal diplomatic matters, the President does not meet his foreign counterpart until the lower-level contacts have produced an agreement that the heads of state merely ratify. That’s why Obama’s campaign promise to sit down without preconditions to talk with the axis of anti-American tyrants raised so many eyebrows and signaled to all the candidate’s naivete or hubris.

Chicago’s bid might have failed, regardless of the President’s efforts. But by going all in, Obama insured that the Olympic Committee’s rebuff rubs off on him, as the writers at The New York Times recognize, to their credit. I do not believe that Obama helped or hurt the city’s efforts. These matters are not decided by having the Obamas appear, Oprah Winfrey in tow, to make a rather emotional and predictably self-centered appeal (on that last point, listen to the George Will snippet in a link, below). But that is precisely why this was such a fool’s errand. The office of the President has been diminished by his having paid attention to matters not suited to the position. He himself has been diminished by the snub to Chicago of losing big in the first round, a result that appears to have taken them by surprise.

At the very least, Obama’s and the administration’s overconfidence before the vote shows political incompetence of the sort that led him to make projections about the economy and his ability to implement policies that have fallen far short of his promises. At worst, it shows an arrogance about his abilities to show up and, through emotional speeches, change the course of nature, as well as human nature. He and David Axelrod may have thought that the Byzantine politics and Olympian corruption of the IOC would be manageable given their background in Cook County politics, but Obama’s excessive self-regard in that matter reminds one of the campaign speeches in which he messianically presented himself to the world as the one during whose reign the world would finally begin to heal itself and the oceans begin to subside. One next expected him to promise a new covenant between himself and the world.

After an initial burst of honest disappointment at their failure, Obama’s acolytes in the media have quickly begun to spin the story in multiple new directions. All done to avoid the personal political cost that comes from such an overt injection of personal politics into the process. Had Chicago been awarded the games, as many in the administration apparently believed, Obama and his supporters would have trumpeted his personal powers of persuasion as the single most important factor. In a strange turn-about, success would have had one father; now, failure has many potential fathers, all but The One. Among the weirdest assertions has been that the Copenhagen fiasco must be blamed on George W. Bush, because hostility to him is still causing other countries to shun the U.S. This smear conveniently forgets, of course, that Chicago was chosen as a finalist when the despised Bush was still President. As a link within the above link shows, at least some of the IOC members were put off by what they saw as Obama’s arrogance, though that also seems to be due to an affliction of an oversized ego from which these Olympicrats suffer.

Another tactic among Obama defenders is to accuse the Republicans as being, what else, un-American and unpatriotic for being glad that Obama failed. As if the point here is to be glad that he failed, rather than that he was warned against foolishly meddling in the matter. The media and other Obama defenders choose to forget that these were the same criticisms that Obama and his campaign made against John McCain last fall when McCain suspended his campaign to return to Washington to participate in the TARP debate.And that was a considerably more deserving matter than the Olympic Games of having Obama (who stayed away from the Senate yet again) participate directly. One might almost think that the financial benefit to Axelrod’s firm and to other Obama contributors and supporters was motivating the White House’s futile full-court press in favor of the Chicago bid.

If Obama cannot succeed on such a comparatively minor matter when he puts the presidency’s prestige on the line, will this tell him something about the likely reception he is going to get in Tehran or Pyongyang? Contrary to Obama’s sports analogy, any do-overs you get are going to be much more difficult. International diplomacy is a game of perceptions, and one perceives that the perceptive foreign perceiver’s perceptions of American diplomatic prowess are not going to be enhanced.

You know that a liberal politician is in serious political trouble when the folks at Saturday Night Live lampoon him rather mercilessly. That is something normally reserved for Republicans. Criticism of the entertainment industry’s favorite liberal is usually muted, at least until a more favorite liberal comes along. See, the treatment of Hillary until Obama appeared. But this skit takes direct aim at the administration’s lack of accomplishments. Again, George W. Bush did not have any greater accomplishments as of, say, September 10, 2001, than does Obama at a similar point of his presidency. But Bush had a much more modest view of the President’s role in constitutional government and of the government in people’s lives than does the incumbent. Bush also did not come into office with the same fanfares of change and the boundless belief that he could just remake the United States, no, the world, by his ascension, as has been the relentless message of Obama and his supporters. 

Is this a role for the federal government? Regulating texting while driving? I have no problem with the states regulating texting while driving, but the division of the American polity into dual sovereignties of the several states and the Union in the Constitution contemplates a different role for the federal government than micromanaging driving habits. Deal with international matters, issues of war and peace, interstate squabbles, and national problems that, due to their extent and complexity, are beyond the ability of the states to control.

Moreover, if this is such an important matter that it demands federal control, why is this done by executive order? This goes well beyond internal White House office control, mere procedural clarification of some matter entrusted to the President by Congressional delegation, or an operational aspect of some core executive power, such as battlefield conduct by American soldiers.

It is certainly within the President’s formal power to do this under currently accepted constitutional law that only requires that the letter of the Constitution be followed in meeting the formalities of federal power. Chief Justice Marshall in 1819 in the foundational case McCulloch v. Maryland declared that the Court would strike down attempted exercise of power by the federal government that, while it might meet the letter of the Constitution, violated its spirit of federalism. In a later newspaper editorial defending that decision, Marshall strenuously rejected the arrogation of power by the federal government through pretextual use of the proper constitutional formalities. But Marshall’s concern about the improper use of federal power has long since given way to an acceptance of pretext and clever manipulation to increase the federal government’s reach into people’s daily lives. The President, the Congress, and the Court all participate in this charade.

I find the application of this restriction to private persons who do business with the feds particularly instructive:

“Extending this policy to cover Federal contractors is designed to promote economy and efficiency in Federal procurement. Federal contractors and contractor employees who refrain from the unsafe practice of text messaging while driving in connection with Government business are less likely to experience disruptions to their operations that would adversely impact Federal procurement.”

While the actual order merely tells the federal agencies to “encourage” such private behavior, the precise means of encouragement are left unsaid and up to the bureaucratic mindset of the relevant paper-shufflers. Hardly an encouraging sign. Is there anyone who doubts that a similarly controlling and nannying approach will be used against private citizens in their personal lives, once government controls health care? It is in the very essence of the President himself and in his coterie of ideological fellow travelers. It grips them with such force they simply cannot help themselves.

One of the concerns of an actor is overexposure. You don’t want to be seen so frequently in so many roles that the brand becomes tarnished. That goes even more for the President who, in addition to being a politician, is also the head of state. Frequent public appearances, press conferences, grand formal speeches, televised productions, along with a deluge of discussions on more minor broadcast venues are fine during a political campaign. But once the campaigning stops and you assume the office, different rules apply. As the head of state you have to be seen as above politics to a significant degree. The number and style of your public appearances must change. Otherwise you risk being seen as nothing more than the ordinary politician, and you will be judged accordingly.

The styles of President George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama are quite different. Bush left himself open to the criticism from the Right that he was not active enough. When he defended his programs vigorously, both his and those programs’ public popularity rose. Bush was seen by many as too willing to stay above the fray rather than hit back, convinced as he was of the ultimate wisdom of his cause.

Obama has the opposite tendency. Conservatives have contended that Obama is overexposed and is cheapening his brand. One cannot deny, though, that they probably have secretly cheered Obama on. Polls have shown that, since late spring, the more Obama talks about policy and the more actively he campaigns, the less popular the policies—and Obama—have become. ObamaCare is the prime piece of evidence.

Obama’s constant presence in the public eye and his grand spectaculars are at best losing him audience and, more likely, causing him to become a diminished figure as people resent his hectoring. He is like the guy who follows you everywhere to comment how you should be doing things differently. Worse, he begins to reinforce in the minds of many those cult-of-personality traits that have dogged him, his supporters, and his administration since the campaign (remember the singing kids, the fainting women, and the theatricality of “Greek columns” in the stadium for his acceptance speech).

Obama holds a speech to a joint session of Congress for health care. Though not unprecedented, that is not a venue normally chosen for a presidential address unless it’s the State of the Union address or a war message. Worse, he says nothing that he hasn’t said in a couple of prime-time press television addresses (another means of communication that he has overused in his few months in office), some televised press conferences, and various televised “townhall meetings.” Worse, still, his speeches are long on generalities, imprecise on the truth of the claims, and short on specific explanations. They look and sound, in other words, like campaign speeches, repeated again and again.

Then, Obama makes a speech before the UN. That is to be expected in his first year in office. However, he also chairs a meeting of the Security Council (televised, of course), a task usually left to some diplomatic underling. No U.S. President has ever done that, and I wonder if any other of the leaders of the Big Five has. Then he hosts the G20 (formerly the more realistic G8, but increased so that US influence decreases), which, again, is fine. But from there he flies to Copenhagen to get the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. I don’t know that any U.S. President has involved himself in that effort before. Add to that his world tours in just his first few months, and one gets the impression that he likes the campaigning for the office, the public adulation, and the perks of the office much more than the work and that needs to be done. After only a couple of weeks in office, he already complained how he had to get out of the White House, so he visited a school.

Now, one might think that this is just another criticism of the President coming from a blogger who is unsympathetic to Obama’s program. I must confess, however, that I am warming to Obama’s constant lecturing and alarm-mongering, though, admittedly, for selfish reasons. Initially, he got traction for his programs. But the more he talks now, the less his words matter. Given the time, he has exposed himself for what he is.

But it isn’t just conservatives who recognize this. It is broken clock time. There are now liberals who are concerned that Obama is wasting the prestige of the office, and that his amateurishness and infatuation with himself are harming U.S. interests. More precisely, Richard Cohen, frequently of The New York Times, castigates the President for his electioneering and empty posturing:

“The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.
“Take last week’s G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. There, the candidate-in-full commandeered the television networks and the leaders of Britain and France to give the Iranians a dramatic warning. Yet another of their secret nuclear facilities had been revealed and Obama, as anyone could see, was determined to do something about it — just don’t ask what.
“The entire episode had a faux Cuban missile crisis quality to it.”

It gets worse, as Cohen correctly judges Obama to be losing credibility:

“The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a ‘war of necessity’ — and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health care plan — and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees — and then again maybe he would.
“Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health care legislation — ‘Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town … ’ — and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.
“Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran….”
“Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama’s the president. Time he understood that.”

I couldn’t have said that better myself, even as to the (for Cohen non-parodic) reference to Obama as a Supreme Leader.

UPDATE: When it rains, it pours. Another liberal, none other than Representative Charlie Rangel, fresh from amending his income tax returns, has weighed in with his assessment that Obama’s meddling in local matters is not presidential. By the way, is Rangel racist, too, when he criticizes the President?

Expect government regulation of diet to become more insistent if ObamaCare passes. After all, we already see this with motorcycle helmet laws and other paternalistic laws premised on the notion that we can regulate these people because we pay for the medical care for some of them. It is already starting, but taxes of “junk food” and subsidies of Sesame Street-endorsed fruits and veggies (preferably that wonderful fresh arugula and those organic strawberries) will not change habits enough to suit the emerging diet police. Moreover, such taxes are extremely regressive because poorer people are more likely to consume the food targeted as junk food. Unless they propose to raise taxes sky-high, these New Puritans (to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, a puritan is someone who has the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy) will have to resort to more direct regulation. After all, as the Secretary of Energy has declared, Americans are like unruly teenagers who have to be disciplined and guided by the government. And as Bill Clinton declared in his opposition to tax cuts when he was President, Americans would just spend that money unwisely. Ahh, yes, the tolerant liberal mindset that the “masses are asses” (a sentiment expressed to me many years ago by a very well-educated liberal woman I was dating) and need the helping hand of the government to avoid the folly of their stupidity and ignorance as to even the most basic decisions in life.

Mark Steyn is a journalist. Canadian by birth, he now lives in New Hampshire. On his website, he has allowed his readers to tell of their experiences or about news reports of others’ experiences with the storied Canadian health care system. The collection of reader responses tells a different story about the Canadian system than what the Left in the U.S. will tell you. And its so predictable: Lack of beds; lack of doctors; lack of care. The most interesting ones were the links to newspaper articles about Canadian and European health care rationing (the preemie who was two days too young to save, per NHS regulations; the Irish guy who was dying but couldn’t get a liver transplant because he hadn’t been 6 month alcohol-free) and lack of beds and doctors, but there are also others that describe Medicare appeals panels judging the medical necessity of procedures.

Meanwhile, the administration resorts to scare tactics as to what happens if ObamaCare in some version is not adopted. One of the often-heard points is the supposed plight of the millions of uninsured. Another likely to be launched soon comes from a convenient study that “finds” that 45,000 Americans die annually from lack of health insurance, and that a person without health insurance has a 40% higher chance of death than someone with health insurance. (So, private health insurance has been a good thing, then?) I have already seen a Reuters piece that trumpets the study’s result. But a junk science expert has taken apart the study’s methodology and debunked the results. It’s unlikely we will hear that. The Congressional Budget Office which, though it tends to lean Democratic in its analyses, is becoming the administration’s worst enemy regarding Obama’s economic projections and fiscal policies, comes up with a quite different analysis. They project that low income people without insurance have a 3% higher risk of death than insured people (reasons not clear), while higher income uninsured have no statistically different risk of death.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air explains one of the misrepresentations by President Obama in his health insurance proposals, the impact of the large number of self-insured employers who use insurance companies only to administer their plans. Some employers partially self-insure for minor expenses, though they may buy a catastrophic-type policy from insurance companies. I believe that’s what my employer does. Participation by employers increases the competitive nature of health insurance/care coverage, as the link to John Lott demonstrates.

Most employees don’t realize this aspect of their health care. Morrissey is right that ObamaCare would only make the whole process even more opaque. The way to restore transparency and to maximize competition is to promote policies that make the payment for medical services akin to that for automobile services and to increase the direct contact (and bargaining) between customers and, on the other sides, doctors and insurance companies.

An entertaining summary, complete with pictures, of the D.C. rally this weekend by opponents of the administration’s programs, especially ObamaCare. Those would be the types of folks dismissed by mindless reporters, columnists, (Maureen Dowd, I’m writing about you) and other media types in sweeping terms as racists for opposing the President’s policies.

Apparently, some on the Left believe that this is a winner and have poured $1 million into the campaign of the guy who is challenging Joe Wilson. First, that shows how obsessed liberals are with their messiah. They put lots of money into the collection box when The One is disrespected. Unfortunately, once this news got out, conservatives responded with an equal outpouring to Wilson. The liberals are just wasting their money. As I’ve written before, the Joe Wilson controversy is not a political winner for Democrats. Wilson beat that same challenger in 2008 by 54%-46%, in a year when Republicans had a disastrous showing. It is highly unlikely that 2010 will be similarly bad for the GOP. Though it is still a long time until election day, current trends suggest a rather serious drubbing in the works for Democrats. Wilson’s district has gone Republican in each election in the last 44 years. So knock yourselves out and waste your money.

Moreover, every rehashing of the situation brings up once again the, shall we say, incongruity of the health care plan’s treatment of illegal aliens and of Obama’s handling of that matter. It again stirs up the seething opposition to ObamaCare. It brings up Obama’s own characterization of Palin. It causes people to rehash the many whoppers and distortions Obama came up with in the speech. These things are not helping the Democrats, but are hurting their credibility. Joe Wilson is becoming a new popular hero to a lot of people, as a catalyst for the popular opposition to the administration’s blatant statism. He is this year’s “Joe the Plumber.” So, as far as I am concerned, the Democrats should keep this front and center.

Historians have often pointed to American protectionism in the 1930s, such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and European trade retaliation as exacerbating the economic downturn that became the Great Depression. Economists have been warning some time now that the U.S. should reject any similar moves, as they likely would trigger trade retaliation that would threaten economic recovery. There has been considerable concern that President Obama would resort to protectionist actions, as he and his advisers had often expressed hostility to free trade while he was a Senator and during the presidential campaign.

However, he also let it be known, to the Canadians, for example, that he did not really mean his protectionist rhetoric and, instead, was a closet free trader. Once elected President, the Europeans and the Chinese warned Obama against protectionist actions. Obama kept a low profile and stayed away from protectionist moves, except to the extent that driving down the dollar and making American exports cheaper overseas might be seen as economic warfare. No more. The President has slapped duties on cheap Chinese tires.

The result of this will be several-fold. First, these tires (which are preferred by lower-income buyers) will cost consumers more. American sellers purchase these tires for resale. Domestic manufacturers opposed the duties, as they cannot manufacture such tires profitably due to higher labor costs. Moreover, American manufacturers are not equipped to pick up the slack, even if they wanted to, because of the different processes involved. That’s why those domestic producers purchased those tires from China and rebranded them.

The real supporters of this action were the manufacturers of other goods who want the President to impose similar tariffs to protect their industries and, of course, the United Steelworkers Union, whose bidding Obama is doing. Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government is a combination sure to bode ill for the American consumer. This protectionism, extended to other industries, too, will raise prices and throttle competition, as was shown by the experience of the American car industry when they received protection from competition from Japanese car makers years ago. American cars were of poor quality and comparatively expensive, a reputation from which the car industry still has not fully recovered.

Then there is the inevitable Chinese retaliation against American producers. Predictably, the Chinese launched investigations into charges of “dumping” by the U.S. of chicken and automobile products. If the Chinese penalize those American products, it would roughly equal the amount the Americans are imposing on Chinese tires. Purely by coincidence, I’m sure. Predictably also, the Obama administration is loudly proclaiming the unfairness of the Chinese protectionism, while confidently defending their own. Agricultural producers had asked the administration not to apply the tariffs because they feared the likely Chinese reaction against such important American exports.

There is real danger from such protectionist tit-for-tat. A trade war would be very harmful to economic recovery, especially as the U.S. needs exports (which were a true jobs stimulus over the past year) to fuel employment. However, most experts believe that, after this initial spitting contest, China and the U.S. will work to keep the trade friction within manageable bounds.

I had to shake my head over this one. An acquaintance of mine and former colleague, whom I respect as an intellectual type with great insight and analytical talent, wrote about his negative reaction to the anti-Obama marchers in D.C. Granted, he is a standard-issue academic liberal and reflexive supporter of Obama and his domestic policies. So it is predictable that he would oppose the protests. Fair enough. One would predict that he did not oppose the anti-Bush protests between 2001 and 2008, or the protests by leftist groups at the political conventions last year. Or any other left-leaning protest or rally. Again, fair enough; he doesn’t have to be ideologically unbiased in his approach to political rallies. I’m not, either.

But what struck me, apart from some odd historical references, was the, well, patent lack of seriousness of his criticism. It boiled down to mocking the anti-government message of the protesters because those protesters travelled on federal highways on buses certified by federal safety inspectors or in cars subject to federal safety regulations. Moreover, one of the protesters quoted in the New York Times was a teacher, perhaps in a government school (possible, but based on my experience with the politics of government school teachers, the odds are against that). Even more scandalous judging by my acquaintance’s tone, they make use (at some time presumably) of fire departments and police departments. Well, at least they live their lives confident that, if necessary, they can call on the assistance of such government departments. Or something like that. And the sarcastic tone he used to describe the protesters’ goals belie any claim that he was writing with bemusement at the irony of the protesters’ opposition to government take-over of health care.

Many of those protesters probably would oppose the substantial intrusion by government in some of the same matters that he described. As to others, even libertarians believe in a proper, albeit quite limited, role for government. But, as always, the difficulty is one of line-drawing. Just because I buy groceries with the assistance of the produce manager at the local Von’s doesn’t mean I agree to have him sleep at my house whenever he wants. It seems to me that the administration’s policies of huge government take-overs of private businesses, the nationalization of banking, economically ruinous fiscal and monetary policies, and the relentless entry of government into more and more personal matters, capped by an attempt to seize health care (with the inevitable intrusion of government into matters of diet, beverages, exercise, medications, and leisure activities) are more significant invasions of personal liberty and threats to human thriving than is setting up a police department or building a road. Or, at least, perfectly reasonable people might suppose so.

But, let us engage my acquaintance on his turf. Most of Obamanomics simply amounts to transfers from productive individuals to the rent-seeking political classes (I believe the term among some for the latter is “drones”) and to the shiftless permanent underclasses created by decades of dependence-inducing dysfunctional government welfare policies based on moralizing leftism that suddenly has no problem with laws that intrude on personal autonomy. If the operative principle is simply that opposition to such “soft totalitarianism,” particularly as it affects highly personal matters, is illegitimate because of the existence of other government intrusions, or indeed because of the very existence of government, then opposition to any government program is similarly illegitimate. Certainly the intrusion into the privacy of a relatively few from government wiretapping to detect terrorist conspiracies is far less prominent and far less promiscuous than government intrusion into the health care decisions of many.

But I suspect that liberals won’t take the same devil-may-care approach to such national security protections just because government already taxes them for the support of an army from which they benefit. Indeed, if my acquaintance is right as a matter of principle, no matter how outrageous and oppressive the government’s action, you cannot complain. Government abolishes private property, prohibits dissent, takes your first-born? You cannot complain because you use a government-maintained road to get a Slurpee at the local 7-11. Something tells me, though, that liberals would sing a different tune if government ever restricted how or with what or whom someone could have sex because you live in a house built through a government permit process. But the worst for liberals would be government restriction of their most sacrosanct liberty of all, abortion, justified because the deed is done by a doctor who got a degree under a government licensing process and the woman used a car to get to his office.

Those who wrote in support of my acquaintance’s ruminations were, well, let’s just say “naive.” One of them uses the old tried-and-true liberal appeal of last resort, to accuse everyone who opposes Obama’s policies of racism. Talk about bigoted generalities. I don’t see the protesters playing the race card over and over and over as do liberals. But it’s to be expected from the self-proclaimed and inaptly-named “reality-based” community. Can’t respond on the merits? Use the old ad hominem, even one that is suffering from overuse and losing its potency.

The other supporter who wrote in was even more “naive.” She claims that private insurance companies, not the government, have more interest in cutting health care costs and hastening death. Leave aside the facts about government rationing that Obama has admitted in the past, and leave aside her own apparent concession that government doesn’t care about costs and thereby dooms government health care to exactly the same kind of fiscal lunacy to which every other government program is prone. She then proclaims that people do not elect insurance companies and therefore cannot rid themselves of private insurance companies the way they can vote out politicians.

No, I am not making this up. This person has not the slightest clue about economics or politics. Unfortunately, I have heard this type of comment before, even from a supposedly educated law professor on another occasion. She obviously has not the slightest notion of the essential difference between voluntary private organizations and the involuntary nature of the political state. She doesn’t realize that, if you don’t like the insurance company, you are not bound to it, in theory or in practice. The state is another matter. To paraphrase Trotsky on war, “you may not be interested in government, but government is interested in you.”

Moreover, you can always pay for the medical procedure yourself. You cannot nearly as readily withdraw from the state. Again, let’s leave aside that health care decisions will be made by faceless and unelected bureaucrats. The DMV comes to mind. Or, to use Obama’s example, the Post Office with its monopoly on certain services. The problem is more fundamental. Given the nature of collective decision-making in a democracy, the hopeless gerrymandering of political districts, and the judicial interference in democratic decision-making, political responsiveness to social discontent is far more inflexible and difficult to obtain than is change in one’s relationship to private business. The notion that you as an individual can readily rid yourself of a government imposed health care system is ludicrous. And the “option” claim for government insurance has been shown to displace private insurance and result in anything but a mere option.

I really had hoped for better arguments.

Once again, I find myself ahead of the public policy curve. I resolved long ago to stop voting in favor of increased subsidies for the government schools. I already pay significant taxes to support them, and I have witnessed the incompetency, bureaucratic intransigence, and inefficiency. That’s before I get into the curricular substance of some of the social “science” indoctrination. That said, I would be happy to have more reward go to the very excellent and dedicated teachers among the herd, who instruct in classes that actually teach something worthwhile. If there were an effective voucher system in place that forced academic competition on these schools; if the damaging political power of the teachers’ unions were broken; and if the schools were released from some of the layers of social engineering mandates that are piled on by the state and federal governments, I would be much more inclined to support the resulting institution. The one potential glimmer is the increased use of charter schools and the gradual reliance by the government schools on more private models. The U.S. pays more for education per pupil than just about every country in the world (I believe Switzerland is the exception), but delivers less. Funny how I hear no Obama talk about ridding us of this costly, inefficient, and unpopular system when we pay more and get less than other Western countries.

The public is similarly disenchanted. But little will get done as long as there is this quasi-monopolistic union-bureaucracy tandem looking out for its interest instead of that of parents and children. Another problem is that many parents recall this or that friendly teacher and maybe even the occasional dedicated and skilled pedagogue, with the result that they believe that their children’s teachers and schools are fine, but that everyone else’s are bad. Then they don’t want to push for actual change that they hear those teachers as claiming might negatively affect their schools. The votes on vouchers are such examples. Instead, they just complain about the schools generally in public opinion surveys such as this one.

From City Journal comes this explanation of the costs of that marvelous “free” French health care that is consuming ever larger portions of the French budget and the French GDP, now to the point that it is becoming politically unsustainable as well as economically chronically debilitating. There is a reason why even Europe’s “wealthy” countries have the standard of living of Mississippi, and it has nothing to do with the problems that plague Mississippi. The point here isn’t that American health care is free. To the individual they may cost roughly the same in direct taxes. But it is in indirect or less visible taxes, that the French pay more. The higher unemployment rate that is a drag on overall productivity is another social and economic cost. Finally, the more systems rely on government mandates and control (ours included) the less choice there is. So there is more choice if you pay your doctor directly or if there were a more competitive insurance industry with interstate competition and fewer government mandates on coverage; less choice (due to cost and benefit structure) if you have an insurance PPO plan; less choice than that if you have an HMO plan; less choice than that (due to doctor scarcity and cost structure) if you have Medicare; less choice than that if you use the VA; less choice for more people at higher cost if you get ObamaCare.

HT: Misunderstood Finance Blogspot

If you wonder why Democrats and their media wing are still going into full defensive mode every time Sarah Palin speaks, writes, emails, or uses Facebook, you only need to look at the ObamaCare debate. While other Republican politicos have ranged from worthless to slightly better than worthless (Senator Jim DeMint excepted—he’s been good), Palin has been fighting back. From the “death panels” remark (after which the bill’s provisions were rewritten to meet her objections) to her analyses of ObamaCare and her attacks and responses to the Obama administration’s feints and falsehoods, she has taken a leading role in rallying popular opposition. Hence, Obama believed it necessary in his latest ObamaCare speech to refer to her, albeit without mentioning her name, as allegedly peddling lies.

It has become known that the administration was peeved about this op-ed piece by Palin in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, in which she challenged rather the whole of Obama’s proposals. She attacked the costs, rationing, and government restrictions on choice inherent in the plan. She backed the free-market, pro-competition proposal by Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, a blueprint for reform that I also generally like:

“As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let’s give Americans control over their own health care. ”

Obama managed to turn the line about vouchers into another scare tactic in his speech tonight, in an attempt to bamboozle people into supporting his plan. That was right after he denounced the alleged use of scare tactics by opponents.

Then there is this Facebook posting, in which she (correctly) points out that the White House’s attempts to distract from their problems by attacking her Medicare voucher proposal do not refute her other pro-market proposals. Moreover, she wonderfully taunts the ObaMedia: “One last thing: after President Obama’s speech tonight, listen for which pundits use the words ‘false’, ’scary’, and ‘risky’ in describing the proposals I put forward. That’s how you’ll be able to tell who the White House counted as ‘allies’ worthy of receiving its talking points.”

Then there is this rebuttal to the President’s speech, in which she correctly summarizes the plan as being the usual penchant for Democrats to turn over everything to the government. Moreover, she skewers the President’s double-talk and hypocrisy. Three excerpts:

“And it’s hard to listen to the President lecture us not to use “scare tactics” when in the next breath he says that ‘more will die’ if his proposals do not pass.”

“In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns ‘bogus,’ ‘irresponsible,’ and ‘a lie’ — so much for civility.”

“In fact, after promising to ‘make sure that no government bureaucrat …. gets between you and the health care you need,’ the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council — an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of ‘normal political channels,’ should guide decisions regarding that ‘huge driver of cost … the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives….’ He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too.”

Go get ‘im, Sarah.

President Obama prepares for yet another campaign appearance speech, this time before an audience whose members have difficulty controlling themselves, have short attention spans, don’t do their reading homework, and have no sense of the value of money. Congress, in other words. The President, whose failure to appear before the television cameras for what must be at least thirty hours, is expected to be accompanied by his faithful teleprompter in an effort to rouse the Congress from its torpor and the public away from its pesky insistence that radically transforming the government and economy is not a path trod lightly. Or, better, not trod at all.

Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal has a copy of a speech that the President should give, were he honest about the health insurance/care policies. It is a clever satire that one can appreciate for both its honesty and its humor:

“To the American people I promise tonight, whatever compromises lay ahead, whatever the arduous negotiations, Democrats and Republicans will work together to continue to drive the current system off a cliff. (Applause from Democrats in the audience; Nancy Pelosi beams.)

“Even if we cannot enact my administration’s ‘public option,’ we will extend the great work of previous generations, making sure private health care continues to be unaffordable to more and more Americans, and piling up fresh mandates on employers so fewer and fewer of our citizens will have either jobs or health insurance.”

Andrew Malcolm of Top of the Ticket blog at the L.A. Times gives good advice to the President and the Republicans, providing handy ten-step lists to make sure the speech is a success or, if you’re a Republican, that it’s not. Malcolm has the substance down exactly right:

“As a real good talker, the president’s MO has been to leave the legislative details to the Hill, be perfectly clear about the need for a government option but hedge about its necessity and drive home instead why America can no longer go down this or that road because bad things are sure to happen if we don’t change to his course, which he hasn’t really spelled out but we should trust that, although unknown, it would be better than the other bad things he says are surely en route.”

Powerful article about the British dental care system. And this is the supposedly new, improved version. What is noteworthy is not just the personal tragedy that comes from a basic policy of delay treatment, then pull the teeth. It is the manner in which the system is organized. All the problems of government care are there: Low compensation. People in unnecessary pain (a cost that is not measured by the defenders of government care). Loss of worktime (another cost that is not measured by the defenders of government care). Shortage of available government dentists, which exacerbates waiting time. So the government increases compensation (which still looks ridiculously low), but it does so by micromanaging procedures in a way that actually further distorts the delivery of services. The structure of compensation is typical bureaucratic regulation that has nothing to do with reality and causes dentists to try to make money by avoiding both the needed preventive care and the complex reconstructive remedy. Result? Pull teeth, make more money. Patients even have to contribute to the costs of this dentistry.

I suppose that, at some point, there’ll be no more teeth to pull, but, then, that’s probably past the retirement age for both the bureaucrats and the dentists. The fiascos the article describes are exactly what concerns people who oppose government control of health care/insurance. But we want to copy the “wonderful” NHS where everyone gets such superb care at a fraction of the cost in the U.S., and with no impact on personal choice or convenience, the laws of economics be damned.

Back during the dark days of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration, righteous liberals were very concerned about the separation of powers problems posed by unilateral executive action against terrorists and suspected terrorists. Such concerned constitutionalists went to court again and again to contest such executive usurpation over military commissions, detention of unlawful enemy combatants, and warrantless wiretapping for intelligence gathering to detect incipient terrorist plots. Such national security concerns were quite beyond the President’s power, judicial precedents to the contrary notwithstanding. The courts did uphold a few of these critics’ constitutional claims, having to discard common sense and to overrule decades-old precedents in the process and injecting themselves into an area (national security and military needs) in which the courts institutionally and the judges personally are woefully incompetent to decide.

Such liberal ultra-strict sticklers for collaborative action between the President and Congress also killed many trees publishing articles editorials, law review pieces, and other pronouncements that purported to demonstrate the nefariousness of the executive’s unilateral actions in any field, but especially in the national security matters at hand. Of course, they were no more pleased when Congress approved the President’s handiwork in some of these areas. In a couple of cases, the Supreme Court, apparently insulted that the Congress and President had done what the learned jurists had prescribed in the earlier adjudications, now found the combined collaborative effort unconstitutional, as well.

This battle on the executive power front has fallen eerily quiet since the election of Barack Obama. Indeed, Mr. Obama has made unprecedented use of unilateral executive power through the appointment of policy-making “czars” that bypass the constitutionally-prescribed Senatorial confirmation process for officers of the United States. Rather, these independent commissars report directly to the White House as Presidential functionaries though their range of discretion may supplant or even replace authority normally given to officers (such as Cabinet secretaries) subject to the traditional constitutional processes.

One would think that, based on traditional understanding and Supreme Court precedent (Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Dames & Moore, Curtiss-Wright Export), the President’s power to act unilaterally under his own constitutional authority would be greater in foreign affairs, military command, and national security matters than in the ordinary domestic policy tussles for which these “czars” are responsible. But the liberals act exactly opposite. To the extent that there is any grumbling, it remains over the executive branch’s treatment of foreign terrorists (detention, interrogation) and Americans or foreigners suspected of collaborating with such foreign terrorists. But there is no similar concern about ordinary Americans’ lives being affected by the actions of such an imperial presidency. I suppose it is hard for those critics to get worked up over uncontrolled executive action against an unwieldy mass of common Americans trying to live their lives when there is so much more romance in feeling compassion for the exotic foreign terror dealers. The frisson of danger in talking to someone sworn to kill you and as many of your kind must meet some greater psychological need than worrying about your boring gun and Bible-clinging compatriots.

One of these “czars” is a typical example of the person liberals would consider it ridiculous and rather laughable to worry about. He is Van Jones, the President’s “green jobs” czar. According to sources cited by Gateway Pundit, Jones is a founder of the radical group Color of Change and a self-avowed “rowdy black nationalist.” According to cited sources in Wikipedia, Jones described himself as a communist in 1992.

Now it appears that Mr. Green Jobs is a 9-11 Truther. I have previously posted about the devoid-of-fact conspiracy mongering of the Obama birth certificate sleuths. Their antics and theorizing was a staple of cable news shows (well, CNN) and cable talk shows (well, CNN and MSNBC) for weeks. The White House took the opportunity to bemoan their kookiness.

But this group of Truthers, led by structural engineer Rosie O’Donnell and materials physicist Jeannine Garofalo, rejects the notion that plain old jets hijacked by Islamic terrorists brought down the World Trade Center. They claim that steel cannot be brought down by jet fuel explosions, and that the planes had their passengers removed (who remain hidden by the government) and were filled with explosives. The alternative theory is that the real jets were shot down by North Dakota Air National fighter planes, and other explosives-laden planes were crashed into the buildings. Most significant, the government planned or (under the version that this was the Mossad’s doing) at least knew about it. They’re a bit hazy about whether the mastermind was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or the usual neocon cabal, i.e., the worldwide Zionist conspiracy. (I’d pick Cheney for sheer audacity and scope of the project.)

There has not as of yet been the same media feeding-frenzy about the lunacy of these Truthers, some of whom also populate the Birther ranks. Keith Olbermann has not yet leveled his keen analytic and dispassionate reason at them for the elegant fisking they deserve. Actually, there are crickets chirping all around, with the media hoping that this guy is gone within the next couple of days so they won’t be forced to defend him and Obama. Mark Steyn recalls Bill Clinton’s succinct assessment of the Truthers, “You’re nuts.”

Oh, and he’s also a supporter of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal.

And then there’s his part in the God’less America “peace rally.”

Allahpundit thinks that this is a practical joke by Obama on the media: “Hey Rahm — bet you 20 bucks I can get a Truther communist appointed to an environmental oversight position.” I disagree. That would require too much introspection and self-analysis by Obama and his minions to see who and what they are. And Obama doesn’t do humor. Messiahs are not known for funny gags.

Can one even contemplate what the Congressional, Democratic, and media response would have been if Bush had appointed someone of Jones’s temperament, background, and degree of ideological radicalism (on the other side, of course)? Rowdy White supremacist, Aryan Nation follower? BTW, I am not convinced that this guy really believes all this stuff. I think that it is not beyond contemplation that these speeches, groups, petitions, etc., are just ways for him to talk the talk and pretend to walk the walk of the left-wing academic and social groups with which he associated. I think he was just trying to find a way to money and influence, and this seemed to him the most plausible in light of his academic background and his race (plus, I agree, some core leftist beliefs).

Leaving aside his general past looniness, he believes his current job description to be to transform society by getting rid of capitalism. That would indeed be an expensive proposition, if this Spanish study is correct. At a cost of more than $100,000 per year per job, and a destruction of 2.2 other jobs per green job created, the greening of the world would seem to be due more to the reduction of the standard of living of the large numbers of people who would be out of work.

UPDATE: The czar has been deposed, er, abdicated. It was not unexpected that this would occur in the middle of the night during the end-of-summer Labor Day weekend in this “most transparent of all administrations.”

In a speech on government insurance/health care that is eerily reminiscent of the issues raised by ObamaCare, Ronald Reagan dissects the arguments and tactics of supporters of government care. He correctly notes the relationship that exists between government single-payer insurance and socialized medicine. He warns of the dangers of the “foot-in-the-door” strategy of supporters of state power. That again plays itself out today, as one listens to the declarations of people such as Representatives Betsy Markey and Barney Frank and President Obama himself. If they can get the basic idea accepted, they can expand the program dangerously later. That happened with Social Security. It also happened with Medicare, the program against which Reagan is speaking. The program was expanded considerably since its inception. Initial prohibitions in the law against government interference with medical decisions were eroded by subsequent funding restrictions as the government began to try to control the spiralling costs as the number of enrollees expanded significantly. Other costs were borne by privately insured patients, resulting in a heavy subsidy to Medicare. Even so, the program has been pronounced unsustainable by President Obama. Things have turned out as Ronald Reagan predicted, and the path that got us here is being retrod by way of the same appeals to unrestrained emotionalism that characterized the liberals’ approach last time around.

During the Bush administration the Democrats and their media allies turned the dismissal of a couple of fewer than a dozen U.S. Attorneys into a cause celebre. Charges of corruption and of politicization of the Justice Department were levelled with abandon. There were calls for special prosecutors to be appointed. Congressional investigations continue into peripheral matters said to prove that politicization of Justice.

Never mind that the President has the full plenary power under the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent to fire U.S. Attorneys. Never mind that many of these were holdovers from the Clinton administration. Never mind that, unlike Bush, who retained many Clinton appointees, Clinton himself demanded the resignations of all U.S. Attorneys from the George H.W. Bush administration. Never mind that Janet Reno as Bill Clinton’s tool ran the most politicized Justice Department since the Nixon-Mitchell duo.

Those same Democratic spokesmen for prosecutorial independence and executive rectitude, along with their media allies, have become eerily quiet. To the extent they make any noise, it is to pronounce the Holder Justice Department as truly professional and apolitical. Never mind Holder’s role as an enabler of the notorious and corrupt Marc Rich pardon by Bill Clinton, acting within the Reno Justice Department. Never mind Holder’s department’s abandonment of a solid voter intimidation case against the pro-Democratic New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia.

Even the obviously politically-timed Justice Department investigations of the CIA are paraded as examples of prosecutorial independence. Never mind that there has already been an investigation of these matters by Justice Department career lawyers who have found that no criminal cases should be filed, except for one brought against a CIA “contractor.” Never mind that the CIA’s Inspector General has already completed an investigation and that some agents were disciplined. Other than political red meat to the left-wingers in the Democratic Party, why open up old wounds through another investigation, and appoint a special prosecutor whom his supporters tout as “relentless”? If the prosecutor agrees that prosecutions are not warranted, it simply confirms what has already been done. If he concludes such prosecutions are warranted, the difficulties of proof that the earlier career prosecutors saw make success unlikely. Either way, the CIA gets dragged through the dirt, with clear impact on future effectiveness. Moreover, Americans are getting tired of the drumbeat of left-wing propaganda and actions against people trying to protect the U.S. from terrorists after 9/11, while the same left-wingers do everything in their power to protect and coddle the self-same terrorists. So this is not an electoral winner on its own and must be a political attempt to gain cover on Obama’s left flank.

So now comes the termination of an investigation by the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office of pay-for-play allegations against Governor Bill Richardson. That investigation forced the Obama administration to forego Richardson’s services as Commerce Secretary. Richardson is a close Obama ally and has been used for quasi-official diplomatic feelers by the North Koreans, continuing a recent pattern of N.K.-U.S. talks through such channels. (It keeps Obama from having to follow through with his promise to sit down for talks with any dictator without preconditions.)

The letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office to the targets announcing the dismissals is unusual. Normally (and properly), if there are no grounds to proceed, that is the end. No further statements are necessary or, one can argue, ethically appropriate. If you have something, indict. If not, close the case and make your statement brief and to the point.

The tone of this letter shows the U.S. Attorney’s displeasure that the investigation was aborted. It pointedly declares that improper conduct went on and that the dismissal “is not to be interpreted as an exoneration of any party’s conduct.” The tone of the letter corroborates the AP story that the U.S. Attorney was directed by higher-ups to drop the case. None too surprising, the legacy media have declined to follow the story. Perhaps they will discover it when, during the next Republican administration or Congress, there will be investigations of Eric Holder.

Jonah Goldberg succinctly dismantles the President’s argument that his health care proposals will maintain or expand current quality of care, expand coverage, and avoid cost increases.

“Imagine you’re in charge of bringing pie to a company picnic. You’re planning to provide dessert for 100 people. Then, your boss says you need to hand out pie to 150. Fine, you say, I’ll make more pies. But — oh no! — you can’t, because you’ve also been told costs must go down. Okay, then you can cut slices of the existing pies smaller so everyone can have a piece. Wait! You can’t do that either, because you’re not allowed to ration (i.e., give less to more).

“According to Obama, the health-care pie will be sliced into more pieces, of equal or greater size than available now, for less money — all because government is so much better than the private sector at managing large projects.”

Sure. But who knows? Jesus fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes. The One’s followers have invested similar faith in their secular messiah. No wonder Obama’s claims sound true to his supporters.

Goldberg writes a follow-up post that points out another obvious problem with government involvement in health care decisions. Much as heavy use of alcohol or light drugs are often gateways for more serious and destructive drug use, government control of health care issues will inevitably lead to further control of one’s life. Gun violence, car accidents, and diet are significant contributors to mortality and morbidity, so they present almost irresistible targets for government control. That’s especially true in light of past efforts by liberals to control those very things. As Goldberg points out, health care presents another wedge, besides global wrming fear-mongering and appeals that some restriction of liberty is ”for the children,” to allow wholesale government control over our lives.

Now that the Washington Post is calling for pulling the plug on ObamaCare, or ObamaInsurance, one awaits the decisions of the last hold-outs among the legacy media, such as The New York Times. Will they continue to live in the fantasy land of the administration or will the (inevitably) conservative facts of life return them to earth, however reluctantly? For the Post it was the more than 20% upward revision of the federal debt over the next ten years. Even those numbers of $9 trillion deficits, coming as they are from the White House OMB, are suspect. The OMB and its director, Peter Orszag, have consistently prettified Obama economic statistics, and there are already calls that even this number is too optimistic by another trillion or two.

I disagree with one thing in the Post editorial. While the Bush administration indeed contributed to the deficit problem with various social programs like the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and while the Bush administration moved to get the bank bailout rolling, to give the Bush administration more than a small fraction of the blame for this year’s deficit and for current domestic proposals is covering for Obama. It was Obama’s choice to proceed with half of the proposed TARP funds. Moreover, as the column agrees, the stimulus was Obama’s. I disagree about the positive effect and the need for the stimulus that the column envisions. All of that should go into Obama’s column. One may disagree about the need for that spending, but putting the responsibility where it belongs makes Obama’s plans for additional deficits more clearly reckless.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO’s The Corner has a pithy post about the transformative effect of the Obama administration on the United States. But it isn’t the transformation advertised by candidate Obama last year, or that envisioned by his disciples:

“For years to come, this moment will resonate. Columnists will talk about how the deficit spiraled (even further) out of control in the summer of 2009 and the emasculation of the dollar became irreversible. Hawks will blame the castration of the CIA as the fons et origo of the next terror attack or the cause of the bureaucratic calcification of the CIA that led to some other intelligence catastrophe.”

The U.S. is being transformed, and as Goldberg explains, this transformation will be analyzed for years to come. We are in for a rough ride. Goldberg’s comment is that bracing daily splash of pessimism that many pragmatists crave. He is also right.

Herewith a collection of recent articles I have found enlightening about health care proposals.

The Weekly Standard provides insight into the Dutch effort since the 1980s to move away from nationalized health insurance, first to a kind of public option/non-profit cooperatives/private mix and when that didn’t alleviate the problems sufficiently, to a more openly private insurance system. This is noteworthy for several reasons. The Dutch economy is among the most heavily socialized. The Dutch system, like other European systems began from the position that health care was a right for everyone. The country experienced the predictable inefficiencies of the system with its lack of incentives through competition.

Contrary to the desires of American liberals, the watchword has become to overcome managed competition. People now have to buy private insurance that the top one-third of the population already bought to escape the public system.

The article also reviews the many ways that government systems fail and how they try to control the inevitable costs. Government health care may not deny you the care altogether. But, “[one] way for a government to ration care is to simply delay it. You probably will get the care eventually but a long wait time means that there are fewer resources, facilities, and equipment needed in a health care system.” Or, “[another] approach to rationing is to limit availability of technology.” Examples would be the few MRI machines available in Canada, so that people have to go to the U.S. or, once again, wait. Or, “[rationing] may also take the form of limits on payments for medications.” That results in underfunded budgets for medications, which cannot be exceeded on pain of fines. Thus, needed drugs are underprescribed.

The solution in countries that ration health care? “For those who want to avoid these waits, supplemental private insurance and access to a discrete private system is one solution. While some countries have expanded access in the public system because wait times became intolerable, this has led to costs rising at rates that have themselves become a major issue.” An example of that is the German system, with which my family has some familiarity. The French system is often lauded as being a particularly responsive public system. France is one of the countries that has consciously expanded access to health care to reduce wait times. But France, combining expansive care with bureaucratic inefficiency, now has a budgetary albatross whose costs have so spiralled out of control that they threaten the government’s fiscal stability. This has become a major political and economic problem.

Economist Robert Samuelson discusses the inevitable cost explosion that will come under any government health insurance coverage. Extending Medicare to all will suffer from the defects of the current version of the program, but on a grander scale. Samuelson does not believe that rationing will be the result. Instead, as all the liberal talk of health care as a “right” shows, and as has already occurred with mandates imposed on private insurance coverage, Congress will expand the program but only talk about constraining costs. The best that can be expected from Congress is to try to squeeze doctors, hospitals, and drug companies. The rest will be increased taxes and/or deficits. And the President? “He simply claims that his plan will do things it won’t. What he’s offering is an enlarged version of the status quo that, as he says, is already unsustainable.”

Public systems are clearly prone to odd examples of expansion of “necessary” health care.

Once more about those uninsured: General estimates place the number of uninsured Americans who make less than $50,000 (roughly the median earnings of a family of four) and who don’t qualify for government programs at 8 to 14 million. The lower figure are the chronically uninsured, the higher figure those who are temporarily uninsured at some point when the survey is taken. Not 46 to 50 million, a figure thrown around that has been debunked for a long time. Even in that category, a lot are young single people in excellent health who probably could afford to pay relatively cheap premiums if they were not subsidizing costly insurance mandates, but opt not to do so. The Census date used there are from 2007, but there has been little change in the percentages of uninsured over many years.

Then there is the usual collection of stories of Canadians being sent to, or escaping, the wonderful Canadian health care system that liberals seek to emulate. There is the agreement between Ontario and the city of Detroit and other municipalities to provide services to Canadians they cannot get there as readily. Detroit!?! Even defenders of the arrangement agree that such safety valves allow Canada to have a smaller health care budget. That should answer the argument why Canadians pay less for health care. As with so much of their national existence, they depend on the U.S. On whom will they be able to free-ride if the U.S. follows their lead?

Another, though older, example of that vaunted Canadian care. Via Mark Steyn at The Corner, some incidents from EuroCare, including the sad tale of Irish mothers who have to wait months before getting a first obstetrician appointment. Again, via Mark Steyn, the tale of 4000 mothers who had to give birth in unusual circumstances due to a lack of maternity beds in Britain. Also note the links in the middle of the Daily Mail article for further examples.

A zestier discussion, courtesy of Ann Coulter, who argues (correctly, in my mind) for more competition among insurance companies and fewer government mandates.

The legacy media enjoy writing about the “angry White male” whose periodic mass appearance in American voting booths swings elections in, for the liberal mindset, unnatural directions. The 1994 election that ended a half-century of one-party Democrat control of the House of Representative that rivalled in length Castro’s Cuba and the Kim dynasty’s rule in North Korea is frequently mentioned as a case on point. Then there is a slightly different version, the “angry Conservative,” about whom liberal journalists (I know, redundancy alert), politicians, and editorialists vent much verbiage, often condescending or derogatory, sometimes bemused or sorrowful.

Now comes a different take. Since 2006, liberals have enjoyed considerable political success. They control the White House with the most leftist occupant ever. They have a supermajority in the Senate and control the House with a contingent of hard-leftists from places such as San Francisco. They control the vast majority of newspapers and television networks, and the wire services. Still, they are angry. As the response from Democrat politicians, union thugs, and commentators make clear, they despise any sort of dissent from their program, frequently labelling that as unpatriotic, un-American, treasonous or racist. When they are not ganging up to assault middle-aged protesters, that is. They flail rhetorically at opponents, seen and unseen, with baseless vituperation. They make allegations that, when investigated, figuratively blow up in their faces. Remember when Contessa Brewer, a supposed reporter at (naturally) MSNBC beclowned herself with the claim that it is a sign of the racialist danger posed by disgruntled White militia types when someone showed up with a gun at an Obama health care event in Arizona. Except that he was carrying a legal semiautomatic rifle near, not at, the event. And he was, umm, Black. (Picture) Eventually, as happens in any leftist “revolution” they turn on each other, as Glenn Greenwald and others show with their increasingly vocal impatience with President Obama. The Revolution inevitably devours its children.

The obvious question is, “Why?” One response is that there is an inherent intolerance among leftists, especially for those who commit the thought crime of opposing leftist ideology and programs. Another is that the left is frustrated by the inability of their champions in Washington to remake American society in the destructive image of socialist/fascist-inspired state corporatism. A third is that the left is generally a collection of anti-democratic elitists who have only disdain for the intellectually-unwashed, Bible-and-gun-clinging, middle-class, heterosexual,  American Babbitts and Bubbas they see when they envision the population between Manhattan and San Francisco, and between Georgetown and L.A.’s Westside.

All of these are attractive to conservatives whose political impotence leaves them only the satisfaction of watching the left form circular firing squads of political recrimination. Matthew Continetti at the Weekly Standard provides more evidence and insight into this phenomenon of the Angry White Liberal, from Nancy Pelosi and Eric Massa to the king of the AWLs, N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman, and Jon Stewart. Not to be overlooked are recovering sportscaster Keith Olbermann and pretty much everyone at Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. And then there is always the tired “racism” charge, which is, to borrow from Samuel Johnson, the last refuge of a liberal in any argument. Continetti’s article helps us conservative ignoramuses get an insight into the emotional trauma currently suffered by liberals from the actions of those of us whose dissent, according to conventional liberal wisdom, most certainly is not patriotic.

During the Bush administration, liberals bemoaned the use of unilateral executive power, such as in dealing with terrorists. Well, they also bemoaned the use of executive power under grants from Congress, such as in dealing with terrorists. There were the usual concerns about lack of accountability, undermining of formal constitutional separation of powers, and threat to individual freedoms.

Now, however, the moaning has stopped. Unilateral executive power, or executive power based on legislative delegation that is breathtakingly unconstrained, is evidence of good and efficient government. In fact, to emphasize the lack of accountability that is now presented as a badge of honor, presidential appointees that report to the President and operate outside the usual bureaucratic and statutory political structures are called “czars.”

That reference to the Russian version of Caesar denotes an absolute ruler, unaccountable to democratic institutions or to his people subjects. It is not a designation associated with concern for the finer points of civil liberties. Or the broader ones, for that matter. Certainly, the breezy use of that name, without any sense of outrage or even irony, does not befit a free republic. But the casualness of that use is an indictment of the health of our system. Only reactionaries now fret about such things as health care czars and climate czars. To the elite, this is evidence of the welcome growth of a dirigiste regime. After all, we’re not dealing with the delicate personages of a few hundred accused foreign terrorists and other unlawful enemy combatants. We’re just interfering with the personal and economic well-being and the freedom of many millions of Americans. And those people deserve whatever government is coming to them. After all, they elected the administration. Right?

Here, Professor Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, presents an overview of the American Czars.

It has become commonplace to hear from the President’s backers in and out of the media wing of the Democratic Party that criticism of the President, or even of his policies, is the result of racism, even if only subconscious. It is the race card that has been played over and over again and which, while it appeals shamelessly to white guilt, is increasingly ineffective with the public at large. It does still resonate, however, in the halls and gatherings of the elite, the great majority of whom are liberals. At least it resonates there publicly, while those same people may express opinions privately that are at sharp odds with their public personas. Such racial guilt played no small part in the election of Mr. Obama, the otherwise least qualified person to run for the Presidency from any major party in the history of the United States.

Since this tactic has worked so well to shut down criticism during the campaign last year though somewhat less well over the administration’s fiascos this year, one cannot fault Black politicians for copying the example of Mr. Obama and his surrogates. Thus, New York governor David Paterson, plumbing ever new lows of popularity, blames the media’s racism for his troubles, claiming that they report negatively about him due to the color of his skin. Paterson (who is Black) adds to his evidence the fact that Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick (who also is Black) is receiving the same treatment and losing popular support for the same reason. For good measure, he then adds to his list of victims of a racist media President Obama, who is targeted because he is trying to change things. (No, I don’t follow the reasoning, either.)

Worse, according to the good governor, complicit in the racist campaign of the White media to bring him down is the (racist?) Black media that won’t come to his defense. Governor, I would suggest a serious bout of introspection about the self-inflicted political wounds and the political incompetence of your administration. It wasn’t your fault that people voted for you for Lieutenant Governor during better times when your sympathetic life story could overshadow your lack of political skills. It wasn’t your fault that then-Governor Eliot Spitzer couldn’t have affairs like ordinary politicians (Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, John Ensign) and had to pay for sex, instead. Then he had to resign, and suddenly you actually had to do something. And you are in way over your paygrade. It isn’t racism. But continue to spout such nonsense. The more often and more ridiculous such accusations, the sooner we become immune to them and can rid political discourse of such foul tactics.

Via Jonah Goldberg @ The Corner

UPDATE: One of President Obama’s dependable friends, Fidel Castro, agrees that Obama’s opponents are racists trying to undo him. This from a dictator whose white-skinned regime imprisons a population that has a significant Black population.

Penn and Teller explain Obamanomics. HT: Melonie Johnson

There has been a developing political mystery, the whereabouts of Joe Biden. Disappearing vice-presidents are certainly nothing new. In most administrations, the vice-president has been a non-entity with little to do. Biden’s predecessor, Dick Cheney, also often disappeared from view, and was usually rumored to be at some “undisclosed location.” The more imaginative among the liberals were certain that Cheney was plotting with the Emperor Palpatine over some diabolical matter or another.

The notion of Joe Biden in a Cheneyesque role does not seem plausible, however. The previously ubiquitous vice-president has disappeared since proclaiming that the stimulus would be creating 600,000 new jobs in short order. No doubt President Obama does not want to handicap his shrinking chances for Obamacare further, by having Joe accidentally tell the truth a gaffe. As has been said many times, a political gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. But there is probably no truth to the rumor that Joe is gagged and bound to a chair in the basement of the vice-president’s official residence under heavy guard.

I have written so many times about ”diversity” in the academy that I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. But as long as things aren’t changing, the beat must go on. Diversity in a university setting means anything but intellectual diversity. In the latter, it often means a suffocating uniformity of liberal cant that drowns out dissenting voices, unintentionally usually, but intentionally if dissent becomes too prominent.

In the real world, on the other hand, liberals are at a disadvantage. People by inclination are conservative, due significantly to the fact that, as Margaret Thatcher famously pronounced, “The facts of life are conservative.” Sure, liberals have the media outlets deemed “elite,” such as the New York Times and most of the rest of the dwindling-circulation legacy media, the “news gathering” groups such as the AP, and the television networks except FOX News. However, conservatives “own” talk radio with its mass listening base.

In the free market, then, liberal talk radio has been crowded out. Al Franken and Rachel Maddow simply could not compete with Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham. However, the liberal message easily has a voice through the other media channels. So, all would seem well. Fair and balanced. But, no. Liberals cannot handle the idea that there is a forum that they do not dominate. So they periodically threaten to resurrect the “Fairness Doctrine,” which, as the name discloses is the antithesis of the “freedom doctrine.” Just as “fair trade” is the opposite of “free trade,” the Fairness Doctrine is government management of broadcasting to produce a predetermined result that distorts the verdict of the market. It does so by, in effect, forcing broadcasters, as a condition of their license, to present programming that reflects a broad spectrum of views. Although one doubts that includes the duty to allow the KKK to get its message on the air, the doctrine seems harmless enough, even though, like other government programs, it foists on consumers things they do not want.

But, by some happy “coincidence” the doctrine doesn’t apply to newspapers, dominated by liberals. While it does apply to over-the-air TV broadcasters on the basis of bandwidth scarcity (an increasingly ludicrous concept, given the availability of cable and computers), it doesn’t apply to the editorials on, say, CBS, that masquerade as news reports. Those reports, studies have shown, lean in a decidedly leftward direction. As to such networks’ editorial programs, the format is unlike talk radio. They are usually panels, with three leftists of various stripes who advocate the liberal position and a “respectable” house conservative, such as the New York Times’s David Brooks, who splits his time between advocating and criticizing conservative views. So the forum for information that is most likely to be affected is the one controlled by more vocal and effective conservatives.

While some, such as Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have openly called for a return of the Fairness Doctrine, other Democrats have been cool to the idea. The Obama administration has been inscrutable on the matter, sending signals from both sides. But the whole idea may become a non-issue, if the FCC’s Obama-appointed “diversity czar” gets to implement the ideas that he has advanced in his policy scribblings. As so many of the Obama non-union appointees, this is another cancer product from the non-reality based community, this time from the academy and its leftist fellow-traveler, the Center for American Progress.

A rebirth of the Fairness Doctrine likely would require Congressional approval and, thereby, some degree of political accountability. But an administrative policy imposed by this unelected bureaucrat would avoid such annoyances of a democratic system. The plan would impose licensing fees equal to a station’s entire operating budget, a huge cost increase that would make radio broadcasting hugely expensive. Those fees would then be funneled to “public broadcasting outlets,” to give them funds equal to what the private market has. In other words, this would be like Medicare today, where the many private providers end up subsidizing the uneconomic and fraud-ridden government program. Since there are few public outlets and many private ones (well, at least until such a program raises their costs), this will be manna from heaven for the former. Experience tells us that such programs, other than broadcasting the scintillating government meetings that 47 people watch, will be dominated by liberal programming and revisionist politics. Expect the usual White males/conservatives/Christians/businesspeople “bad,” others “good” form of historical and political commentary that is currently inflicted on inmates in the K-Graduate level government schools.

Forcing private companies to broadcast the liberal worldview won’t make such ideas more palatable to the public or better reflections of reality. But it can make conservative programs less accessible. Lest one think that, well, there are still conservative websites and blogs, liberals are already setting their sights on ways to control content on those sites to assure they are presenting a breadth of political coverage.

With lots of claims and counterclaims about Obamacare, from CNN comes is a detailed analysis of the loss of five freedoms of health care: The freedom to choose what’s in your plan; freedom from having the young subsidize the old; freedom to set up your own Health Savings Account and buy limited insurance; freedom to keep your existing plan for more than another year; and freedom to choose your own doctor without clearance from a government-run HMO system.

This article is also detailed and presents a collection of corrections to Obama misstatements about his health care/insurance initiatives, addressing costs, doctor-patient relations, a government take-over of health care, abortions, illegal immigrants, and Medicaid cuts.

I’m confused. Why is the President, trying to sell Obamacare to a skeptical public, saying that there’s nought to worry about because when government agencies like the U.S. Post Office compete against private entities like UPS or FedEx, it is the Post Office that is always in trouble? This is so delicious, I’m going to drag out the D’Oh-bama concept for a special appearance. So, the strategy is to try to sell the wondrous efficiencies of the government proposal by comparing it to the Post Office and characterizing the latter as a failure. Obviously, he was off the teleprompter. As Allahpundit suggests, if this strategy shows promise at convincing the public, Obama can really get the people on board by likening the operation of Obamacare to the DMV.

Remember the “Dissent Is Patriotic” that appeared during the Bush administration years on so many Subarus, Priuses, and similar vehicles of choice of the pompously righteous, smugly moralistic Left? Those bumper stickers have magically disappeared with the election of The One from whose program no dissent is rationally possible and, therefore, tolerable. I just received some bumper stickers I designed, ‘NOW, Dissent Really Is Patriotic.” I am getting them just in time, as the Obama supporters in the media, the unions, and the politicians begin to clamp down on dissent. As Rich Lowry of National Review notes, with Obamacare’s overall unpopularity, the administration wants a truly silent Silent Majority.

Just as Joe Biden has impugned the patriotism of those who are opposed to the administration’s high-tax policy; just as Nancy Pelosi has questioned the patriotism of those who opposed the “stimulus”; now appear the usual Democrat challenges to the patriotism of those who oppose Obamacare. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) called the protests “un-American”, a charge her handlers have since caused her to recant. Funny, but I do not recall Republican politicians (bloggers are another matter) challenging the patriotism of Democrat opponents of the Bush administration. Not even opposition to the Iraq War. Instead, George Bush consistently ignored the ignoble personal attacks directed at him by Democratic politicians, never mind the fringe elements of Democrats among the Hollywood types, bloggers, “journalists,” students, etc. Instead, he pointed out that freedom of dissent is one of the reasons to resist aggression by totalitarian foreign forces. As this “study in contrast” reminds us, administration officials, too, avoided such incendiary rhetoric. Indeed, I remember that, to the extent the issue of challenging patriotism was raised during those years, it came from Democratic politicians pre-emptively attacking Republicans over the issue, with no presentation of actual evidence that Republican politicians ever did what Democrats decried.

While these allegations by Democrats are scurrilous, one Democrat stands out through the inanity of her accusation about how she knows that these are not grass-roots opponents of Obamacare: “I saw some of the clips of people storming these town hall meetings. The last time I saw well-dressed people doing this was when Al Gore asked me to go down to Florida when they were recounting the ballots, and I was confronted with the same type of people.” So, people opposed to Obamacare can’t be well-dressed? Presumably, they have to look like the ACORN types and the aging hippies and dreadlock-sporting trust-fund activists from various anarchist, communist, anti-war and other Leftie groups to be genuine protesters that Democratic Senators recognize. Though one can easily guess who spouted this inanity, let me make it clear. It was California’s very own Babs Boxer, Senator sub-ordinaire.

Democrats also profess themselves “shocked” at the signs some of the Obamacare protesters have brought. Some of those signs apparently sported swastikas in opposition to the program. It is not clear that the swastikas were direct references to Obama himself, or simply (correctly) identifying the nanny state imperatives of the Obama agenda as a kind of (kinder and gentler) totalitarian take-over by the state of the individual’s most intimate decisions. But Nancy Pelosi saw this as way beyond the pale. Do they believe that we have forgot the constant references of Bush=Hitler coming from Democratic politicians and supporters? The Bushitler bumper stickers?

Not surprisingly, it has been the Democrats who, while loudly decrying the rudeness of the Obamacare protesters, accuse them of being racists, Nazis, and political terrorists.

I am not a fan of reducing every particular political difference to accusations of Nazism. When, however, an ideological movement emerges and attempts to impose an agenda that reeks of fascist principles and ideas, and then proceeds to exhibit fascist characteristics in its tactics, it is certainly appropriate to point out that similarity. Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism becomes an ideological tour book for such movements. Obamaism has an alarming confluence with fascism in its ideas and, increasingly, in its method. Note that I wrote “fascism” (and a gentle one, at that), not Nazism.

Tomorrow, more to come on Nancy Pelosi’s umpteenth attack on her opponents’ patriotism.

Nothing says gov’t control better than our new good friend, the Castro regime. And—they’re running out of toilet paper. The good news? They hope to have ”a shipment” by the end of the year. That’s even worse than Sheryl Crow’s “I use just one sheet per bathroom visit” from 2007. Charmin’. If you’re a fan of Cuban cigars, you better hope they don’t run out of the gloves they wear when making them. Otherwise, who knows what kind of, ahh, stuff you’re smoking. If Obama meets the Castros, will he shake their hands?

So, in typical Democratic socialist economics/politics, despite shortages, prices get lowered. That should take care of the problem. But, wait. What products are getting lower prices to help the masses? Why, it’s canned squid and mayonnaise. Those must be sought-after dietary staples in planned economies.

Say, who runs the retail stores? The military. Nothing fascist about that. Just because that also happens in the People’s Republic of China and in Venezuela doesn’t suggest a pattern. Does it?

One more gem: “Castro, who replaced his ailing older brother Fidel Castro as president last year, also has complained that Cuba’s productivity is too low. He has taken various steps to boost output, including putting more state-owned land in private hands and pushing for salaries to be based on productivity.”

Productivity in a state-run prison economy is too low? Who’d have thought that! What’s the remedy? Why, it’s to privatize. Maybe then an agricultural country can finally import less than 60% of its food. Note that the remedy is not to expand the “government option.”

I have just signed the online petition against Obamacare. And I have said many things against Obamacare over the past several months. So it is incumbent on people to report me to Herr Obama’s website for anti-Obamacare propagandists, flag@whitehouse.gov. The whole episode reminds me of President Nixon’s enemies list. But, as columnist and fellow-constitutional law professor Hugh Hewitt points out, it took Nixon a lifetime of trench warfare with Democratic Party politicians and campaign activists to reach that point of paranoia and political thuggery. It has taken the Obama administration just six months and the emergence of some political opposition.

Through this and other signs, Obama has revealed himself what many of us thought him to be, the Chicago-politics-schooled political thug with a thin skin, a massive ego, an intolerance for dissent, and a deeply-leftist agenda tempered only by his driving ambition to get re-elected. I was asked, soon after the inauguration, what I thought of Obama. At the time, he was still pursuing a calculated and staged “bi-partisanship.” I responded that appearances at the time gave many cause for cautious optimism, but that I was withholding judgment until I saw his reaction when, as was inevitable, opposition to his programs would rise, or when, as also is inevitable, the first team leaves and others are appointed in their steads. I also pointed out that, copying Hillary Clinton’s use of real or imagined African proverbs to enlighten us Westerners, a “leopard does not change his spots.”

Obama, it has become clear, has not. At the time, based on his social and cultural background and his past rhetoric, political positions, and “employment,” it was rather clear to me what kind of “cat” Obama was. Where a significant portion of Americans saw him as a “cool cat” with transcendent, meta-political appeal, many conservatives saw him as an ideological “catastrophe,” the most ideological Leftist and politically inexperienced (and therefore dangerously programmatically idealistic) President ever.

It is always a problem when one takes one’s own publicity as gospel. For Obama, this has been easy. The Nuremberg-style rallies, with their stages and sets, the fawning and sycophantic press, and the ecstatic crowds complete with “fainting” women (remember those?) play into his notoriously thin skin and massive ego. Obama is simply not comfortable in his own skin. He tries to deal with this through personal distance and aloofness that easily crosses the line to condescension and dismissiveness.

Ultimately, he senses that he is not prepared for the job, so that he has to win every political bout. Compromise becomes difficult the more it becomes, for whatever reason, personal. Those that oppose him are not people to be dealt with as participants in a process, but as heretics to a cause. Worse, of course, is if they are members of your own party, in which case the political crime is not heresy, but apostasy. Hence, the vitriol that has been directed at the Democratic “Blue Dogs” at various times by Obama’s surrogates in the Congress.

Once one understands the basic psychology and the ideological fervor of Obama and his supporters, the reaction to the opposition to his program (”How Dare They?”) becomes easily understood. Opponents are political agitators who are “astroturfers,” not representatives of legitimate grass-roots opposition, as here. This is rich in a number of ways. It’s coming from an administration and a President schooled in the ways of the deity of agitators, Saul Alinsky. From a President whose big qualification for political office were his activities as a “community organizer.” From staff, such as David Axelrod, who prides himself on having developed and practiced the “art of astroturfing” his candidate’s opponents as a political tactic. From an administration that has worked hard to steer a billion dollars here and a billion there to “community organizing” groups such as the criminal ACORN (under investigation for vote and other fraud in many states). From an administration that politicized the Justice Department by dropping the clearest case of voter intimidation in recent memory, against the nightstick-toting New Black Panther Party—a default case they had already won and a decision that brought protest from their own career staff and the Civil Rights Commission chairman. From a side that has made it their political signature to send rent-a-mobs to opponents’ political rallies as long as I can remember. From a side that, by its definition, astroturfs, and that even now organizes union members to invade the townhall meetings to drown out (or beat up) the unexpected grass-roots opposition that got the jump on them. And from a President who, while campaigning,  urged his supporters to “get in [opponents’] faces.”

With the spurt of coverage of the Obama birth certificate tempest in the teapot, let me put in my two cents. As I’ve written on other occasions, I am suspicious of grand conspiracy theories. Not that conspiracies don’t exist, or that the speculations about coordinated nefarious activities, usually by government officials, cannot be correct. But, if one explanation of an event is a rather simple and straightforward one, and the other resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption-like sequence of events, all wrapped in a blanket of secrecy among a large number of persons, I’ll go with the straightforward explanation, unless the other one has more evidence than, “Well, it could have happened this way, and no one has disproved that.” You have a theory, you have the burden of persuasion.

Thus it is with the insane conspiracy-mongering by the “9/11 Truthers” that the World Trade Center bombing was not the work of the 19 al-Qaeda-connected radical Islamist terrorists, but of Bush, Cheney, the military, the CIA, the Mossad, the passengers on flight 93 (who are said to be in hiding somewhere, held by the government), and so on. If polls are correct, a sizable minority of Democrats (about one-third) hold this view of an “inside job” by the Bush administration, the Israelis, or both. Never mind the evidence of the 19 terrorists, never mind the claims of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, never mind the statements of Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker.” The main supporters of that view are, as expected, the BDS-driven Left. However, prominent among these “Truthers” also are supporters of Ron Paul for President. Though he has not endorsed such conspiracy-mongering expressly, the Congressman himself has recently made a vague remark that has been interpreted as supportive of this theory.

One of the grand conspiracy-mongers around is Andrew Sullivan. If one has time, it makes for fascinating reading to see the descent into irrationality of someone who, I guess needs to post something, anything. Just follow the links and sub-links and sub-sub-links.

Now comes a similar conspiracy theory, this time primarily supported by right wingers, though, again there is a surprising number of lefties (the rumor was started by a Hillary Clinton supporter) and many of the same Ron Paul supporters. Interesting, too, that Fox News and National Review, among others, are hammering this conspiracy, while CNN has programs that give these people the oxygen of publicity.

The argument is that President Obama is not eligible to be President, in that he is not a natural-born citizen. Rather than having been born in Hawaii, they say, he was born in Kenya. Though his mother was an American, under the law of the time, having the mother be American did not automatically make someone an American citizen, especially given her young age. Traditionally, nations looked to the father’s nationality for citizenship. And, of course, he was not born (according to this theory) in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., as provided in the 14th Amendment.

This editorial in National Review Online provides a good background. It is inconceivable that Obama’s mother would have given birth in Kenya and then, mindful that Obama would become President a half-century later, quickly flown from Kenya to Hawaii, colluded with the authorities (or the authorities are now conspiring with the White House fraudulently and feloniously to make up this official record of a Certification of Live Birth) to issue a certificate of live birth, and sent birth announcements to two newspapers. This is insane. If there were any credibility to these matter, the Clintons and their operatives would have found evidence during the primary last year. After all, it was a Clinton supporter who got the ball rolling on these speculations.

That said, one reason for these rumors is that this administration, which trumpets its supposed transparency, has been exceedingly secretive about Mr. Obama’s history. Mr. Obama himself has changed positions frequently about the “facts” about him that could be mentioned, or not, during the campaign, versus those he mentioned after being elected. Andrew McCarthy has a thorough round-up of the prevarications, obfuscations, flip-flops, and gaps that run through the story of Obama’s past. McCarthy clears up the distinction between a Certification of Live Birth (which Hawaii has released and which Hawaii officials, who state that they have seen the official document, say contains the evidence on the long-form) and the official Certificate of Birth (which has not been released).

While those who challenge his citizenship have the burden of coming forth with evidence for their various claims that he was naturalized or that he was adopted by his Indonesian step-father when the latter married Obama’s mother, these are among gaps and ambiguities that the President has let linger. What kind of passport did he travel on when he went to Pakistan years ago? Where did he go there? How was his education financed? If it was financed by a Saudi, as rumored, why? Exactly what were his connections to shady characters and illegal drugs on which he touched in his autobiography? Why didn’t he (or Bill Clinton) release the detailed health records that the press demands every Republican release?

There is even as simple a matter as his academic record, when he is trumpeted as the most intellectual president ever, a claim that is undermined repeatedly by his very elementary misstatements and gaffes about matters historical and economic. George W. Bush released his transcripts with its mediocre grades that elicited such laughter and condescension from his critics. Until, that is, it turned out that the imbecile Bush had better grades and higher military I.Q. test scores than the brilliant and erudite John Kerry and Al Gore. Why the pattern of secrecy? Do his records reveal him to be far less the brilliant man his supporters make him out to be? Is his success due to favoritism? A significant part of this problem is that the media has spent so little time and shown so little taste for vetting him as a candidate. We knew more information in a few days about Sarah Palin’s and Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher’s past, minor infractions, personal history, and associations than we yet know about Obama. The only thing we do know about Obama is that he undertook great effort to hide his past associations by initially denying their existence (Ayers, Dohrn) or minimizing their extent (Wright, Ayers, Dohrn, Rezko, etc.).

It is those gaps that we should focus on closing, and those ambiguities we should clear up. And, of course, conservatives should not get distracted by these matters from vigorously fighting the real problems that Obama’s policy initiatives represent. But, come on, unless you’ve got a lot more evidence, drop the conspiracy mongering. He may be a political disaster, but the President is a natural-born citizen.

A couple of columns re: Obamacare. The first is the usual excellent analysis by Charles Krauthammer, who describes a process of devolution that I have posted about, as well. I agree with Krauthammer that there will be something that Obama can call health reform that will be passed by Congress this fall. The Democrats are not going to throw Obama’s administration under the bus by denying him his signature political issue. The caving of the “Blue Dogs” because they were given $100 billion in cuts to the program (money that can easily and stealthily be added later) is a symptom of that ultimate party loyalty.

That said, what ultimately emerges as “health reform” likely will  be far different from what the administration in its heady early days envisioned. The goal of Obama health care reform has been downsized to Obama health insurance reform. And even that is being diluted: Talk in the Senate now is to switch from “government option” (which several Democrats have now conceded is a way to drive private plans out of business and create “single payer”) to “non-profit cooperative” of “affordable” plans. BTW, as to that last, I see that as only marginally less likely than a government option as being unfair competition to regular private insurance. Even that program is likely to suffer further alterations as the reality of what is being peddled more and more sinks in for the public and members of Congress hear from their constituents, by far most of whom (according to surveys) are happy with their plans.

Krauthammer concludes that the final bill likely will contain further restrictions on insurance companies to promote portability (a good idea, if one is going to have regulations) and a ban on pre-existing conditions exclusions (probably a good idea, depending on the details). I would be in favor of a more thorough revamping of the system in favor of private choice, but, from the point of government regulation, these seem the least bad.

But, what about the cost? Who pays? As so often, it will be a wealth transfer from the politically less-involved, more naive, and poorer (the young) to the politically-active, numerous, and comparatively wealthier (the aging baby-boomers). After all, as the CBO and others have conclusively demonstrated, the rising cost of health care is a function of an aging population:

“But wouldn’t this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks.

Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the U.S.; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.”

This sounds like other government programs (Social Security) where the relatively shrinking number of productive younger workers subsidize the no longer productive older retirees. It has the same dynamic as the welfare state, though, as a private enterprise (heavily regulated) it will be operated more efficiently.

The second article is light-hearted, but practical advice from Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times blog, on how to deal with the Obamacare salesman coming to your house.

For a really bracing dose of pessimism, one can always rely on the Asia Times’s Spengler (David Goldman, who also blogs at the Catholic website First Things). Spengler makes John Derbyshire at National Review and the Washington Post’sCharles Krauthammer sound pollyannaish. I had not looked at his articles in some time, but he does not disappoint.

His article addresses the really profound disaster that is the Obama foreign policy. One small sample:

“In Obama’s imagination, a Sunni Arab coalition - empowered by Washington’s turn against Israel - would encircle Iran and dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, while an entirely separate Shi’ite coalition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would suppress the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama’s face.”

I have always scoffed at doom-mongering skeptics who insist that the 21st century will not be he American century, and that the U.S.’s greatest days are past. The first six months of the Obama administration’s policies have sorely tested my optimism about continued American greatness. And there are years of this to go. Given the current lack of competitors with equal material resources (China is still basically a third world country, and still needs to mind its historic preoccupation with governing its teeming masses; Russia’s economy is, to put it mildly, profoundly weak; Germany and Japan are suicidally pacifist, childless, and risk-averse), I believe the U.S. is likely to retain its position for the next generation or two, at least. However, I am concerned about the non-material dimension, that is, the will to act, and the perception in the world of the U.S. as irresolute. That will only increase the challenges to the U.S., and I worry what price will have to be paid, post-Obama, to re-establish respect for the U.S. among the international collection of assorted thugs in charge of most countries and not well-inclined toward peaceful co-existence with their neighbors or the U.S.

A generous serving of red meat for the right: Andrew Klavan of Pajamas Media gives an overview of President Barack Obama’s “craptalk.” According to Klavan, the faux-intellectual Obama in at least this matter is The One. [Caution: Heavy use of the word “crap.”]

If Klavan is not sufficiently robust, one can always turn to a (partial) collection of Obama gaffes, some of which I covered in my D’Oh-bama posts during the campaign. Note: I am not endorsing the sometimes crude asides of the videos’ producer. The President is entitled to a modicum of respect. But the gaffe collection, which is not complete, is rather impressive for someone who has been declared by some of his media and academic acolytes the smartest and most intellectual president ever (though, unlike Bush, Kerry, and Gore, all of whom released their rather unimpressive academic records, Obama has failed to do even that).

Obama gaffe video number 1; Obama gaffe video number 2; Obama gaffe video number 3

During the campaign, I had a series of posts on gaffes by The One. On the whole, I discontinued that practice after the inauguration out of respect to the President. Besides, our Vice-President presented so many bracing examples of Gaffeinated Joe, making light of Mr. Obama was comparatively weak tea.

But every once in a while, when the President decides to show off his expansive knowledge in a manner that almost inevitably runs aground on the shoals of facts, I cannot resist. I didn’t say anything further about the medical stunner he delivered about taking painkillers to deal with cardiac arrhythmia. I didn’t say anything about his gaffes on his Europe/Africa jaunt. I haven’t commented on his comments about the Cambridge Police Dep’t that figuratively left him with egg all over his face.

Explaining his Afghanistan policy, Mr. Obama declares that he is not looking for “victory.”

Leave aside the political aspects of that point. Mr. Obama allows how “victory” “invokes the notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” There is one problem: Of course, Hirohito did not surrender to MacArthur.

Hirohito read the surrender over radio to the Japanese after it was signed by others. He also avoided using the word surrender.

We are frequently told by his supporters among the commentariat and by his dedicated O-bots that he is the most intellectual President ever and so vastly superior to that moron George W. Bush. But even I, a humble token conservative constitutional law professor know this historical fact. I can just imagine what the press would have done had George W. Bush delivered himself of such a mistake.

I have been asked why I thought that President Obama’s health care press conference was a rambling, bumbling, and dissembling affair full of prevarications, obfuscations, and distortions. First off, my criticism is not mine alone. Conservative commentators have roundly panned his performance. But, with the predictable exception of some of the usual suspects from the N.Y. Times, Washington Post, and Slate, so have liberals. First, he filibustered. His answer were long-winded, as if he wanted to reduce the number of questions that could be asked. In fact, his answer seemed flat. The obligatory “let me be clear” riffs seemed rote, and the whole thing came off as if he really didn’t want to be there. Perhaps he is reading the political tea leaves and recognizes that, despite his pro forma insistence that the matter was of the highest urgency and had to get done before Congress left town, momentum is building against him and he will not get anything until much later. Perhaps that is why, when Harry Reid sunk the idea of an August bill, the President reacted with equanimity.

Second, he came up with nothing new. When the President calls a press conference, it is either because he hasn’t had one in a long time or because a pressing need exists to get information to the public. President Obama’s frequent press conferences are losing his audience, He has the opposite problem of President Bush who did not personally fight enough for his programs. Mr. Obama presented only arguments already hashed out. While some say he became too wonkish, I heard the opposite. He was vague and spoke in soundbites. It sounded like a campaign speech, not a persuasive and carefully-reasoned push for a significant policy initiative. Having too many press conferences with too little substance creates the danger of overexposure to the public and boredom for the press. The President’s bully pulpit becomes seen as a forum for something else connected to bull.

Third, he was dissembling. He did not answer the questions of several reporters. Jake Tapper and one guy toward the end were particular examples. Obama just ran the answer into the weeds. Too often, he produced the tiresome “I inherited this” meme, as if the health care program were not his, and as if the deficit were the reason for Obamacare. I’m also seriously tired of his “This is not about me” declarations, as he, in the next sentence, complains about how he is the victim of this or that Republican attack or policy. Grow up. W did not whine and complain constantly about what the Democrats were doing to him or the messes he inherited from Clinton with the .com bubble burst and the declining stock market.

Fourth, he prevaricated about the number of uninsured (that concocted 47 million figure has been disproved multiple times); the effects of his plan on holders of private insurance (the independent Lewin Group has studied this and concluded that 80 million will be shunted by their employers onto the government option); the revenue-neutrality of the program (the CBO, for example, has let the cat out of the bag about the significant federal budget increases—unpaid for—that Obamacare represents), among other falsities.

Fifth, he has obfuscated. Remember his campaign promises that the middle class would not have to pay one dime in extra taxes? Now he has changed this to saying that he “would be opposed” to having the additional cost of his health program be “completely shouldered” by the middle class or “primarily” funded by taxes on the middle class. Following Press Secretary Gibbs’s and adviser David Axelrod’s retreat from the campaign pledge of no tax Increase, but a decrease, for the middle class, this should be a wake-up call.

Sixth, he distorted. If Medicare (subsidized by private insurance) is the major problem for the deficit and the bad economy, how will replicating such a dysfunctional system for the whole population solve the deficit? Also, his attempt to demonize doctors who apparently perform huge numbers of unnecessary tonsillectomies, has backfired. From taking aim at the alleged greed of bankers and securities traders, he has moved to attacking doctors (that, and cops in his ignorant insertion of himself into the Cambridge arrest of trouble-making obnoxious Harvard professor Gates). In fact, insurance companies are reluctant to authorize tonsillectomies because of some questioned study years ago that most were unnecessary.

Then there is his promise to fund Obamacare from preventing Medicare fraud and increasing operational efficiencies. If it were that easy to prevent fraud in government programs, that likely would have been done already. Government programs are notoriously fraud-ridden and bloated with inefficient bureaucracies.

The claim that the only sacrifice will be that people won’t get treatments that won’t make them healthier and that they wil have to take the cheaper, but equally good pill. As to the latter, people already do that, without Obama’s advice, unless the cheaper one, for whatever reason, doesn’t work. As to the former, leaving aside whether that reflects Obama’s earlier misinformed statement that older people with cardiac arrhythmia should “take painkillers” instead of getting a pacemaker, i.e., deal with the pain, granny, the statement is false. Taxes, lines, lack of choice, inferior treatment, all are the time-proven and inevitable result of government care.

And people know it. In this poll, as well.

I believe that the health care proposal is in deep political trouble. But it is far from dead. The delay until after August could cause Congress to shrink from proceeding if they get earfuls from their constituents. Or, it might give Obama time to increase pressure on wavering Democrats. Likely, some bill will emerge in the fall. It probably won’t be the current proposals most prominently discussed in the House and Senate and pushed by Obama in the press conference. It may contain a “public option.” That would be bad in that it would provide the foot in the door for future expansion of government control. Due to their increasing disfavor in the debate, the words “government option” might be erased from the health reform lexicon in a stealth manuever.

Or, it could be some weak version that has no government option, but heavily regulates the insurance industry. Despite his protestations, Obama would accept such a bill, dressed up as health care “reform,” so he can claim some nominal victory. He has to get something at some point. He has invested too much political capital. The Democrats ultimately will assist him in some manner, as they are not going to throw a President of their own party under the bus on his signature issue.

But with any luck, and with continued political pressure and public recognition of the economic and medical problems with Obamacare, the worst can be avoided. With even more luck, maybe some real reform will be achieved to allow the markets to undo the distortions in the delivery of medical services created by previous government action of putting insurance companies in the driver’s seat in regulating the doctor-patient relationship through tax-favored employer-provided health insurance.

There has been a recent surge in chatter from Obama officials about investigations of the Bush administration, in contrast to the direction things were headed in March, with the then-expressed desire to “look to the future, not to the past.” I had told a colleague who asked me shortly after Obama’s inauguration what I thought of Obama’s then apparent moderation. I told him I would reserve judgment until I saw how Obama acted when things were not going well politically. With Obama’s political agenda running into increasingly stiff political head winds, we may be getting a taste of things to come, Chicago-style.

James Delingpole at the U.K. Telegraph has noticed something similar in the particular instance of an announced investigation into the death of Taliban soldiers at the hands of an Afghan warlord in the time following 9/11. He asks why the U.S. is even investigating this, and, more particularly, why now. He voices the suspicion that hangs in the air:

“So where’s all this nonsense suddenly coming from that the US’s most urgent priority there is to investigate the killing of Taliban  by a non-American in the chaos and mayhem immediately following 9/11? (And incidentally if killing Taliban - plus sundry innocent civilians - is really such a problem, oughtn’t Obama to be investigating himself?)

“Surely it can have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Obama’s poll ratings are falling, his economic policy is failing, unemployment is rising, his universal healthcare plan stalling, his cap n trade running into serious opposition, and his Afghan adventure looking more and more likely to turn into his Vietnam?

“Surely a man as palpably noble and decent as Obama would never be so unprincipled as to try - for a second time in three months - to court cheap popularity with his nation’s enemies by undermining his own intelligence services and blaming everything on the CIA and George W Bush?”

Surely not.

After President Obama met with the understudy “President” Medvedev, he got down to business with the real power. He was going to show Putin some of that Obama “cool” and charm that has wowed them in capitals around the world (such as giving the British P.M. a collection of DVDs of greatest movie hits—in a format not played in Europe, or the iPod to the Queen with, among other things, a collection of Obama speeches).

But then news got out that Putin sent birthday wishes to his good friend George W. Bush, you know, the guy everyone hates. And they were rather warm greetings, perhaps a remnant of their soul-baring eye gaze in 2001. (BTW, note the good meeting they had at the time, as reported by the BBC(!).)

W: “I looked the man in the eye….I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

McCain: “I look into Putin’s eyes and I see three letters, a K, a G and a B.”

O: “I look into President Putin’s eyes and I see myself. Damn, do I look good.”

Like the British media, the Russians are not overwhelmed by all that is The One. Only our media apparently are, though even that may be ending, when Helen Thomas compares his administration unfavorably with Nixon’s.

Maybe all that global cooling about Obama’s persona made him bring up the Russians’ sale of Alaska to the U.S. in 1867, a topic that apparently still rankles with the Russians. (As an aside, they really need to get over that.) WIth diplomatic skills like that, Obama should let Biden handle these speeches. If you’re going to commit gaffes and insult your hosts, call on the professional. But, for once, Obama was using a speech in a foreign country to insult people other than Americans.

John Ziegler is a talk radio show host in L.A. He has filmed a documentary about the media’s treament of Sarah Palin and has probably spent more time with Palin than any other media type from the Lower 48. This is a radio interview he did with Palin’s spokeswoman about the resignation. Ziegler also did an interview with Palin on his talk show not long ago and was astonished at her response to his question whether she ever thought about giving it all up. She seemed, to him, surprisingly ambiguous rather than rejecting it out of hand. About Ziegler, he has an extremely grating voice and would serve his cause better if he yelled less. 

With the push for ObamaCare in full swing, we get regaled by the President, the Vice-President, the media and by Obama supporters (often one-and-the-same) with health care disasters allegedly from private industry and focusing on treatment supposedly unjustly denied to the protagonists in these tales of woe. Conservative blogs collect these stories, and the comments typically fill with observations about matters that are murky about these stories. For example, they involve emergency needs of people without insurance (not clear just why they don’t have insurance), though they can find such emergency services, without charge if they cannot afford them, as well as an assortment of government programs, from Medicare to Medicaid and on. There are the tales of veterans, though they should be able to get care in Veteran’s Administration facilities (though perhaps not of the highest quality, but that will be the case under ObamaCare, anyway). Then there are the tales of woe of unserved children, never mind that there is an extensive SCHIP program that serves “children” up to age 30.

But Obama, Biden, Axelrod, and the rest are unlikely to tell of the benefits of the private system and the disastrous aspects of government-directed care. The hospital parking lots in American cities with their cars bearing Canadian license plates must be avoided. Canadians fleeing their system would only point out inconvenient truths. Mark Steyn links to yet another such instance, this time of the absence in Canada of a place for a premature baby that needed emergency help. (U.S. immigration authorities don’t come off too well in this matter, either.)

Steyn sarcastically describes the situation:

“Well, it would be unreasonable to expect Hamilton, a city of half-a-million people just down the road from Canada’s largest city (Greater Toronto Area, five-and-a-half million) in the most densely populated part of Canada’s most populous province (Ontario, 13 million people) to be able to offer the same level of neonatal care as Buffalo, a post-industrial ruin in steep population decline for half-a-century.”

Also click the links in Steyn’s post. The other one describes another instance of the Canadian health care system being overwhelmed by births. And Canada is not even reproducing at replacement rates. One can imagine how well rationed care would work in Canada if they were having children at normal rates.

Remember the famous Obama pledge that he was not going to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 a year, a pledge repeated over and over and touted by the media as evidence of Obama’s compassion and concern for the middle class? Only the “rich,” as if those making over $250,000 are rich, would be hit, and, as that great patriot Joe Biden informed us, those people have a patriotic duty to pay the taxes. This, of course, suggests that the people appointed to Cabinet and sub-Cabinet positions in the Obama administration, especially the Treasury Secretary, are not patriots.

Those not mesmerized by The One’s eloquence and intellectual brilliance pointed out that the cost of his programs compared to the scarcity of “rich,” as well as the history of such pledges, meant that tax increases would be coming for others. Even yours truly understood that basic truth. Yet anyone who dared to criticize Obama was a racist (during the campaign) and someone who just wanted Obama to fail (after the election).

Well, the predictable is happening. Functionaries like Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod are giving up the pretense, and even the press joins the ridicule.

Just finished another wonderfully written and thoughtful essay by Professor Victor Davis Hanson about the incompatibility of Obamaism and reality. Using examples from his own life, Professor Hanson demonstrates the dismaying lack of experience of Obama with the ways of the real world. That inexperience has shaped the contours of the administration’s dangerous foreign policy and feckless domestic policy. On the matter of the deficit and “stimulus” programs, Hanson declares:

“So we all know the old rules, because the universe works according to time-honored precepts: we either must tax all of us (there are not enough of those evil “they” who make between $200-500K or even enough of the noble generous rich who make over $10 million a year and think Obama should increase inheritance taxes so that their children get only $1 billion instead of $2, while the hardware store owner’s kids sell the business) in insidious ways; OR simply cut government expenditures elsewhere to pay the annual interest payments, OR print money and screw the Chinese, European, etc. , debtors, inflating our way out via the late 1970s.

“Sorry, there are no other real alternatives.

“The only mystery? How the choice of payment is rhetoricized in the hope and change mode.”

On foreign policy, the Obama World Apology Tours (Hanson dryly notes, “My favorite Cairo line was the apology on Gitmo where inmates have laptops and Mediterranean food, spoken to millions whose societies kill and maim tens of thousands in Gulags on a yearly  basis.”), and the emphasis on talk–rhetoric, negotiations, listening:

“Only someone who has not been in the real world, but only marketed rhetoric without consequences (e.g., if Obama had a bad day organizing, or legislating, was he fired?) could believe such things.”

Hanson then uses an allegory of farm life to demonstrate the folly of Obama’s approach—and the irrelevancies of a purely academic life. I totally understand Hanson’s point as I deal with people whose stay in the cocoon of academia has made them incapable of understanding the realities of a world that does not respond to attempts to force it into the latest fashionable academic “paradigm” constructed (or deconstructed) with theories that spin into cloud cuckooland of leftist longing.

“Obama will come to his senses with his ‘Bush did it’, reset button, moral equivalency, soaring hope and change, with these apologies to Europeans, his Arab world Sermons on the Mount to Al Arabiya, in Turkey, in Cairo, etc., his touchy-feely videos to Iran, his “we are all victims of racism” sops to Ortega, Chavez, and Morales. It is only a matter of when, under what conditions, how high the price we must pay, and whether we lose the farm before he gains wisdom about the tragic universe in which we live.

“A sojourn at an elite university, you see, can sometimes become a very dangerous thing indeed.”

Amen.

Reaction to President Obama’s speech has been predictable. The press is generally laudatory, though a few media outlets admitted that it was generally less than a big hit with the audience. My reaction is less to the speech as a whole, which, despite euphoric comparisons of its importance to Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech, ultimately will prove to be meaningless. After all, it would take a person exceptionally deluded with his own historical magnificence, moral authority, and charisma to believe that after one speech the Israelis will break bread with a purified and pacific Hamas and Hizb’Ulllah; Ahmadi-Nejad will renounce Iran’s quest for nuclear weaponry and break off military and intelligence connections with North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba; Assad will resign in Syria after presiding over open and free elections; etc. Perhaps Obama, the uncritical reporters in the U.S. media, and the O-bots still in sensory overload from the election think so. But rational and clear-thinking people don’t.

My concerns are three-fold, and they relate to the speech’s alarming particulars. There is first the “coddling” of Islamic history and of Islam’s wonderful contributions to civilization and its vaunted tolerance. Perhaps Obama was merely being a good guest and trying out some sweet talk. But as a number of folks (Rush Limbaugh, Ed Morrissey, and others) using Wikipedia and other sources have pointed out, there are gross exaggerations in the speech. I have previously posted about the fantasy of tolerance of historical Islam towards other religions, such as Christianity. Sure, if you paid the heavy and discriminatory head tax; didn’t mind that, with few exceptions, you were not permitted to participate in the political system and had to live in certain designated areas; and accepted that you would be subject to periodic pogroms, the system was tolerant as could be. And that was in the “enlightened areas” governed by the Turks and, earlier, by the relatively benign rulers of the Iberian peninsula. Moreover, in this religion dressed up as renowned for its tolerance (unlike the terrible Christians who are just known for the Inquisition, which, by the way, claimed only a minute fraction of the lives claimed by the secular wars of the 20th century), conversion from Islam to Christianity was punishable by death and such brave souls had to practice their religion in secrecy even more than in Roman times. This isn’t just a failing of Obama, but one that George W. Bush practiced repeatedly for public consumption. Obama’s is worse, because he claims to make these observations as a “student of history.” I don’t recall W making such a claim and putting himself in the limelight, as The One is wont to do.

This article puts Al Azhar in a different light. BTW, the Europeans were not quite as dependent on Al Azhar as Obama suggests. The University of Bologna was the first of a number of European universities that were founded through the patronage of the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike Al Azhar, their mission was broader than primarily religious exploration and indoctrination. Moreover, although these universities were founded after Al Azhar, they were based on a number of imperial schools founded by Charlemagne to train teachers and keep alive classical knowledge. Those schools were founded almost two centuries before Al Azhar. Moreover, the curriculum at the European universities (and the court schools) was based on classicalGreek and Roman understandings of what constituted proper education (today loosely called the “liberal arts”) that predated the founding of Islam by centuries. By the time Al Azhar could have begun to exert influence on Europe, given the political realities and the methods of communication at the time, European learning was picking up through internal developments, as well as exposure to Byzantium. If Obama wants to look to influence on the Western Renaissance, better he should make that speech in the former Christian quarter of Istanbul.

If Obama really wants to explore the effects of Islam on European civilization, he might have discussed the constant raiding and slave expeditions of Islamic forces against “Italian” territory, which created generations of instability in the Mediterranean regions. The Muslim raiders even sacked the Vatican in the 9th century; one can imagine the outrage were a Christian force to sack Mecca. The late Oriana Fallaci wrote passionately about those depredations and the effect on European civilization in The Force of Reason. Those raids continued for centuries, and extended far and wide, even reaching Iceland, and ending only when the European powers grew strong enough, and the Muslims weak enough, at the beginning of the 19th century. Muslims considered these raids authorized by Islam. In one famous exchange on the topic, in 1786, “Thomas Jefferson, then the ambassador to France, and John Adams, ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, a visiting ambassador from Tripoli. The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. They reported to the Continental Congress that the ambassador had told them ‘it was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.’” This is a sentiment that was echoed by Saudi Arabia’s foremost religious authority just a few years ago. See this article on slavery and Islam.

I don’t even want to get into Obama’s mischaracterization of Islam’s contribution to printing (compared to the Chinese and Europeans), medicine (compared to the Greeks and Romans whose studies they used), poetry (as a commenter pointed out, the famous writer wasn’t named Sheik al-Spear) and music (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, et al. were not relying on Islamic music, except maybe Escape from the Seraglio).

And, please, religious tolerance and racial equality a hallmark of Islamic history? Who does Obama think was in charge of the slaving in most of Africa, such as in Kenya, the land of O’s father? It wasn’t the Jews. Muslim slavers for centuries preyed on Africans in the slave trade in orders of magnitude larger than anything the Europeans did. While the Europeans eventually ended their own involvement in the slave trade, they literally had to fight the Muslims to end theirs. There are many reports that the slave trade, by Muslims, in the Sudan and parts of North Africa is still ongoing. Muslims also enslaved millions of White Christians, well over a million estimated through the depredations of the NorthAfricans on European shipping in the Mediterranean that eventually led to the American expedition to clean out the Barbary Pirates. Perhaps that is what Obama meant by racial equality.

Leaving those exaggerations aside, how is what Islam may or may not have done or been a thousand years ago as relevant as how it is practiced today? What is the contribution of Al Azhar and its head today? The link above certainly puts it in a different light. Moreover, where are the Islamic contributions to medicine today? Technology? What is it that these societies produce that is not based on the inventions and creativity of others?

Another problem with the speech is its theme of moral equivalence for which Obama is notorious. I don’t know whether that’s just the modern Western timidity and refusal to commit to a judgment lest the gods of multiculturalism be angered, or whether Obama really sees everything as equally valid in, again, a culturally relativistic way, or whether he really believes that what he says is true. But I am at a loss to explain his equating millions of Jews killed by the Nazis with the failure of Israel to return to the Palestinians 100% of the land (they offered something like 98% a decade ago, but Arafat rejected it) that Israel won after the Arabs (including the Palestinians) launched a war of extermination against Israel. It goes beyond my ethical compass (not the magnetic one whose invention Obama attributes to Islam).

But worst of all is this line: “Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” At best, that means Obama believes in an eventual U.N. world government. It certainly means that he has rejected the idea of American exceptionalism (as he already has indicated in many previous speeches, as well as in his personal associations) and predominance. At worst, he believes that steps must be taken to cut the U.S. down to size (again, there are previous speeches that suggest this, such as his Americans need to make do with less because the world isn’t going to let us get by with what we’ve been doing).

The problem is that nothing has yetreplaced the nation-state. One-world transnational government is just not feasible. Even large nation-states that seek to centralize power have trouble sustaining their organization. The U.N., or something like it, cannot become a true government. It has no effective means of compulsion other than through strong nation-states. And even those efforts are lagging, as dealing with Somali pirates, Darfur, the Mideast, and thuggish regimes hither and yon, shows.

If the pax Americana that has allowed Western civilization to flourish and portions of the world (including the U.S.) to attain historically unimaginable levels of comfort, wealth, and health is allowed to dissolve, one of two results is likely. A chaotic world of competing regional powers, and some regions with no predominant power, will emerge. This will create political instability, disruption of trade, personal insecurity, and a drop in the standard of living. Think of the Western world after the collapse of the pax Romana. Think of a world without the U.S. after World War II, as the pax Britannica fully unravelled.

Alternatively, and more likely, a new nation will emerge as a, or the, world power. While the betting is that this would be the case and that China would be the power, others are more skeptical at least about the identity of the power. They argue that China is getting too old too fast and is still too mired in Third World status for the great majority of its population, for it to gain the military might needed to make the transition to dominant power.

In either case, if these words mean what they suggest, coming from an American President, the speech is one more installment in the Obama message to the world, a message of a post-American world, one in which the U.S. will apologize for its sins—real or imagined in the minds of left-wing political and legal elites—but receive no credit for the benefit to the world achieved at the cost of American blood and treasure. It is a message, too, that asks little or nothing of America’s enemies, certainly not apologies or even introspection about their own massive sins and shortcomings. A position of influence and power so fully rejected is not easily regained should the American electorate vote their attitudes rather than their idealized image in 2012 or 2016.

This is the text of President Obama’s speech on national security matters. Below is the video:

The speech reads more like a campaign speech than a policy speech, and a rather obnoxious one, at that. There is a defensiveness and an eagerness to tear down his predecessor that is anything but presidential. It is that eagerness, demonstrated over the past several months, that has led Dick Cheney to say “enough is enough.” So, naturally, when Cheney has a speech scheduled to dig further into this debate, Obama responds by quickly scheduling his own speech half an hour earlier. Once again, Obama reacting defensively to Cheney, as Maureen Dowd lampooned recently. I do not recall George W. Bush reacting in this petulant way towards his predecessor. Bush always seemed more comfortable in his skin than Obama does in his. Despite the facade of cool, Obama is a very small and insecure man. Despite his call for transparency and cooperation, he is someone unaccepting of being challenged.

There is too much in the speech to be able to respond in this post. Let me just address a couple and leave the rest for another post.

“We have re-energized a global non-proliferation regime to deny the world’s most dangerous people access to the world’s deadliest weapons, and launched an effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within four years.” Meanwhile, North Korea and Iran work on more powerful missiles and nuclear weapons; Pakistan increases its nukes.

He says that adherence to American values (presumably contrary to the Bush administration’s values and the anti-terrorism policies he excoriates) made the country grow. Those values, he says, were disregarded in the last eight years. He obviously is ignorant of the steps taken during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II that included detentions, surveillance, trials by military commissions, and serious restrictions of civil liberties of Americans far beyond anything imposed on radical Muslim terrorists and other unlawful enemy combatants by the evil Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal. Those actions, too, reflected our values, namely, that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

There are some thoughtful reactions at The Corner at National Review. Here’s one:

From Jay Nordlinger: “Obama said the following about what he called America’s ‘brutal methods’ of interrogation: ‘They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured.’

“In my view, the first part of that statement is arguable — ‘They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle.’ But the second part is flat-out false. Qaedists determine how they treat Americans by how Americans treat Qaeda detainees? Ridiculous. There is no reciprocity in the Qaeda playbook or mindset. They simply chainsaw away. 

“I regard this as an embarrassingly naive comment from the president of the United States. I wonder who fed him the notion — or whether he made it up himself or what.”

Here is Jim Geraghty. And here is Pete Hegseth.

Now he tells us. President Obama warns against unsustainable budget deficits. He correctly points out the problem of looming inflation and/or significantly higher interest rates. If the choice is “and,” it will be stagflation. Since Obama’s plans don’t call for spending reductions, I smell more taxes. And they can’t come from the top 1%. There aren’t enough top 1%. Note that the article says that the Medicare trust fund will run dry, according to the latest time-shortened estimate, by 2017. Problem? Rising cost of health care. Which, of course, won’t happen when the government is in control and everyone is entitled to the highest caliber care at the expense of the minority who will be paying taxes, right? Government health care. What could go wrong?

I have previously posted Abraham Lincoln’s call for a National Day of Prayer in 1865. Since then, per federal law, each President has issued such a proclamation. George Bush did so and also met with members of the clergy on the appointed day. Now, note the contrast in tone and substance between Lincoln’s proclamation and the one by the Lincoln persona impersonator, Barack Obama. Take the original, diminish the importance of God, change the focus of reflection, drastically reduce the references to God, and increase the secular tone, including a reference to atheists as equal to those who are religious, as well as eliminating references to the Scriptures and the Divine teachings and referring ambiguously to the Golden Rule, instead.

My point is not to discuss the merit and morality of atheism (or atheism’s deficiencies in those regards) or even to debate the wisdom of a day of prayer. However, Obama’s thematically castrated version seems a bit too theologically jejune for a National Day of Prayer. His distaste for the whole project is obvious, both from the tone and the almost secretive manner in which the proclamation was made. The break from traditional substance and manner is starkly revealing of the man and his beliefs. Expect a proposal to repeal the authorizing law before he leaves office.

The other point that should be put to rest once and for all is that there is any philosophical connection between Lincoln and Obama. The only connection exists in Obama’s mind and in the minds of the sycophantic press and some members of other elites. Neither on actual substance nor in personal graciousness, or in leadership, or in intellectual depth is Obama anywhere near Lincoln’s league.

I previously applauded President Obama’s order to allow SEAL snipers to take out the Somali pirates holding the American sea captain. I wondered why this was taking so long, but assumed that there was no earlier opportunity to act. This story makes considerable sense, in that it explains the delay in the resolution and in that it fits Obama’s character and inability to make a decision, especially one that poses a political risk. He is not a leader.

The recent controversy about the CIA interrogation program and the release of various Office of Legal Counsel memoranda about that program continue the Obama administration’s collective American national guilt tour. I will have more to say about those memos and the interrogations, now that I have read all of those that have been released. What I find extremely disturbing is the dangerous assumption of the President that figuratively and, perhaps literally, prostrating himself (which the White House initially tried to lie about) before assorted international thugs, will buy the United States goodwill and, by extension, security. Even were that a plausible strategy, he has rather thoroughly defeated the goal of security by disclosing national security secrets that make other intelligence services even warier than they already are to co-operate with the Americans.

After his first 100 days in office, it is becoming easier to get a complete picture of the man as President of the United States. And it is not reassuring. Never has any President so fully and thoroughly presented a negative image of his country. He has travelled abroad to peddle the message that he fundamentally disagrees with his predecessor’s belief in American exceptionalism. One suspects that the closest that Mr. and Mrs. Obama come to a belief in American exceptionalism is in the destructive sense that he has imbibed in deep draughts from the fountain of the Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads in the church the Obamas attended for twenty years.

Instead, Obama sees the U.S. as just another country that has unfairly disregarded the wishes of other countries and that, at most, can now ask for their collaboration and approvalbefore doing anything that might benefit the U.S. Obama’s foreign policy naivete (at best) is showing. Other countries will take notice and accommodate themselves to the new realities. There will be no vacuum in international affairs. If Obama intends for the U.S. to play the Western Atlantic extension of the EUnuchs, someone else will step up to take the leading role. China is taking impressive steps in that direction, but more immediately, this will result in regional instability, as well as the continued growth of non-state actors, such as terrorists and pirates. Stability is provided when a political entity is willing and able to establish an order that is stable but acceptable to its component parts, a pax Romana, pax Britannica, or, until January 20, 2009, a pax Americana.

As Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal opines,

“He had gone to Europe not as the voice of his nation, but as a missionary with a message of atonement for its errors. Which were, as he perceived them — arrogance, dismissiveness, Guantanamo, deficiencies in its attitudes toward the Muslim world, and the presidency of Harry Truman and his decision to drop the atomic bomb, which ended World War II.

“No sitting American president had ever delivered indictments of this kind while abroad, or for that matter at home, or been so ostentatiously modest about the character and accomplishment of the nation he led. He was mediator, an agent of change, a judge, apportioning blame — and he was above the battle.”

When put in that context of abject apologies, even the more reasonable, though overdone, concession that the reprehensible American appetite for illegal drugs contributes to the Mexican government’s difficulties with the narco-gangster cartels, triggers responses among many from eye-rolling to revulsion.

Here are some links to other articles that comment on what appears to be the answer if Charlie Gibson ever asks someone to define the “Obama Doctrine”:

Thoughtful article by Jonah Goldberg about how Obama in a few weeks is giving back decades of hard-won American gain of influence to undermine Left-wing relics (Castro, Chavez, Ortega) in various countries.

Obama sat by while Sandinista thug Daniel Ortega, among several others, hectored the President and denounced the U.S., and all Obama could reply was that he was glad that Ortega didn’t blame him for things that occurred when he was young. As if the issue is about Obama, the person, rather than his job as President of the U.S. Ortega is the thug who came to power after the overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. After planning to set himself up for life in the model of his mentor, Fidel Castro, he eventually was ousted in an election made possible by the Reagan administration’s determination to undermine his regime and pressure him into permitting such elections (over the protests and efforts of the Democratic Party in Congress and of Jimmy Carter, all of whom had the same affection for left-wing thugs then that they have now). He was re-elected recently. We shall see if this becomes one of those replays of a one person-one vote-one time elections. If I were Ortega, I’d feel pretty good about my chances at a lifetime sinecure like my friends Fidel and Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez, now that Obama is in. Note that other leaders didn’t speak that way with Bush. We’ll see how much further American meekness goes in dealing with leaders who respect strength and self-confidence.

At the same conference, literary critic and history buff Hugo Chavez gave Obama a “classic” book of leftist nonsense that blamed all of Latin America’s troubles on centuries of European and American exploitation. The book was in Spanish (another language that Obama, a critic of American children’s failure to learn many foreign languages, doesn’t speak), so Chavez didn’t expect Obama actually to read it. Rather, it was an opportunity for the Venezuelan thug to gain domestic legitimacy by hob-nobbing with the U.S. leader. The book is so bad that the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and others labeled The Manual of the Perfect Latin American Idiot.

Charles Krauthammer delivers an acid response to Obama’s American arrogance theme.

A more light-hearted bit of sarcasm, with Obama as mom’s new boyfriend trying to charm her suspicious offspring.

With the renaming of Bush administration policies in full swing, writer Joe Queenan imagines the worldwide spread of the Obama euphemism initiative.

This article closely reflects how I see the current administration. Though I am not as convinced about this point as this writer is, the President himself may be quite sincere in his self-perception that he is not a leftist ideologue but reflects the views of most Americans. But he also sees his programs through a prism of politics that he has carried with him for years. As the writer notes, and as his opponents during the election pointed out with frequency and gusto, Mr. Obama is so evidently the least qualified person, by way of background, to be elected President. His politics are the politics of liberal elites as disconnected from the reality of Middle America as he is. And, since he has never had to run a private business, and has had no executive experience (not even mayor of a 6,000-resident town, much less governor of a 600,000-inhabitant state), he has not had the opportunity to develop a sense of Americans’ views and values. To him, they are those bitter, gun-owning, and Bible-clinging yahoos he so infelicitously belittled at a San Francisco cocktail party. Can one shout out-of-touch liberal elitists more loudly than that?

Obama himself is still personally popular. But the growing unease of the public about his policies (shown in the gains that Republicans recently have made in the generic Congressional election polls) will make his political position more precarious and undercut his ambitious program. If the new happy talk about the economy’s recovery later this year is correct, that lessens the need for a massive government take-over of the economy masquerading as a ”stimulus.” That sense of unease must be felt in the White House, too. That certainly explains them going into full-on campaign mode yet again when Presidents normally settle into governing mode.

The Democrats have launched attacks on Rush Limbaugh for saying something about wanting Obama to fail, which Limbaugh claims was a judgment of Obama’s political agenda of government commandeering of the economy. The Democrats are implying that somehow this is un-American and un-patriotic to want a president’s policies to fail. The Obama-driven media of course are giving non-stop coverage to this. Bill Sammon of Fox News went back a few years and discovered some interesting bits that, for whatever reason (ahem), the media has not spent time and effort to disseminate, either then or now.

The first is that, on the morning of September 11, 2001, Democratic top strategist James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg (the same individuals who are now “polling” Americans and finding how unpopular Limbaugh supposedly is) told Washington reporters that he did not want Bush to succeed. News of the 9/11 attacks made the statements radioactive, and Carville and Greenberg asked the reporters to disregard what the two had just said. The reporters never came back to the story.

The second is that, in 2006, 51% of Democrats polled wanted Bush to fail.

But don’t ever question their patriotism. This is different after all. One must not question The One.

I am reminded of some advice: Never wrestle with a pig; you get dirty, and the pig likes it. So I am baffled by the Obama administration’s campaign against Rush Limbaugh. (Note: I am not calling Rush—or the President—a “pig.” I’m writing metaphorically here.) The whole matter has been described as being a project of Democratic operatives. Right. The brains behind this gambit are Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, and a couple of Clinton-era headbangers, James Carville and Paul Begala. A chief of staff does not do anything fraught with this kind of risk (and it is) without permission from the President, not even an enforcer like Emanuel. The only question is how clear that permission was. Was it Nixon’s “plausible deniability” or something more concrete and coordinated with the President?

In the case of Obama, there is reason to believe that the orders come directly and clearly from the top. Obama has previously targeted Limbaugh and seemed fixated on Sean Hannity during the campaign. Obama has an extremely thin skin, and both Limbaugh and Hannity have skewered Obama.

For some reason, the Democrats have decided that, despite their apparent overwhelming political advantage, they need to act in typical authoritarian fashion and try to destroy the Republican Party and to silence critics of their own policies. Whatever short-term bump they will get, it won’t work in the long run. By the time of the 2010 elections, not only will this be shopworn, but political and economic conditions on the ground will be driving the vote. Besides, it will be difficult to put a national face to an election whose personalities other than Obama will be local. By 2012, the whole thing will be irrelevant as the Republicans will have a different face that the Democrats and their media allies will try to destroy. But Republican politicians and ideologically-committed activists will remember.

I find it more fascinating on two levels. First, it betrays a huge lack of confidence of Democrats in their political and economic program. If they were persuaded of the success of their massive increase in the structural deficit and their planned tax increases, they would not need to resort to specific character assassination. They could let their actions do the talking. Perhaps Democrats are spooked by polls that show that Americans are far more concerned that the feds will spend too much money than that they will spend too little. Perhaps they worry about polls that show a 20-point majority of Americans that would rather have less government and lower taxes than the other way around. But I have found that whenever a person resorts to ad hominem attacks, it is because he has run out of good substantive arguments.

Second, this attack displays a fascinating glimpse deep into the bowels (word used on purpose) of the Obama team. Or, to change terminology, deep into the recesses of Obamaism. They seek and destroy political enemies, real or suspected. Anyone who sharply challenges the Obama Way will be targeted. I used to think that Obama would not spend political capital on resurrecting the “Fairness Doctrine” of censorship. I am beginning to think otherwise. It may not be politically wise for Obama to seek to silence his critics because of the price he would pay even despite the media’s willingness to go along with such efforts. But I think that Obama would disregard that cost in his blind obsessiveness about Limbaugh and Hannity. Truly Nixonian. Can an Obama enemies list be far off? Followed, perhaps, by a “Plumbers” unit akin to what operated out of the Nixon White House. If the above reports are correct, that appears to be happening already. But there’s a difference. Unlike with Nixon, the media mostly will roll over, for what happened to Nixon must never happen to Obama. For the media, he is just too big to fail.

UPDATE from Sean Hannity:

“Democrats have recently criticized Rush Limbaugh’s comments in which he said he hopes some of the Obama administration’s policies fail. Well, we are turning back the clock all the way to the year 2006. In a FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll from August of that year, Republicans, Democrats and Independents were asked whether or not they wanted President Bush to succeed. Fifty-one percent of Democrats said that they want President Bush to fail. Keep in mind this poll was conducted in the summer of 2006 as violence in Iraq intensified and many of our young men and women were giving their lives, and yet, a majority of Democrats were hoping for failure.

“Apparently Mr. Obama did bring change to Washington. Back in 2006, dissent was welcomed and flew under the radar of the mainstream media. Now in 2009, people like Rush are finding out you criticize the president, you do so at your own peril.”

UPDATE #2: Karl Rove essentially agrees with this analysis about the risk of the White House’s anti-Limbaugh campaign, and the political reasons therefor. He also provides some interesting economic statistics about the pie-in-the-sky assumptions of the Obama budget plans.

The reactions to Obama’s odd gift to Gordon Brown continue. The article itself has more links for further reactions.

Peter Robinson of National Review and the Hoover Institution interviews Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard and Rob Long about Lincoln and Obama. Ferguson is an author who has written about Lincoln. Long is a Hollywood writer and director. Obama likes to compare himself to Lincoln and consciously invokes the Lincoln Presidency. To the extent he doesn’t, his acolytes in the media do, at least when they are not comparing Obama to FDR or Kennedy.

In Part 1, they discuss Lincoln and Obama the theatrical speechmakers.

In Part 2, they address character and determination and compare Obama and Lincoln.

In Part 3, they discuss the comparison of George W. Bush and Harry Truman.

In Part 4, they contrast Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, in style and substance.

In Part 5, they comment on a number of quotes about expectations for the Obama presidency.

To his supporters, the media, and, perhaps, himself, President Obama is the greatest orator since Reagan FDR Lincoln Cicero Pericles. But there seems to be something of the Wizard of Oz about his oratory. Trying to compete with the great orators of the ages, it appears that Mr. Obama may be getting a technological assist unavailable to the others—the Teleprompter. That smooth delivery, that soaring rhetoric, that well-rounded thematic content may be the oratorical relative of the smooth, soaring, and well-rounded bosoms at a Playboy Mansion party. Artificial enhancement of natural limitations.

Even the media are beginning to notice and snipe at the President’s excessive reliance on teleprompters. Several times when the teleprompters were unavailable or failed to perform adequately, the modern-day Pericles stumbled and gave performances whose technical dexterity reminded one of his predecessor in office. But Obama’s inability to work without a prepared text on a teleprompter was painfully evident in interviews and press conferences where he was thrown off his stride.

I like the “damning-with-faint-praise” tone of the article, that Obama was being careful, since he was only a first-term Senator and his words now carry far greater influence than anything he’s said before. So it is finally admitted that there is a potential problem with Obama’s political inexperience.

President Obama is getting thumbs-down reviews for his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It has become a tradition for American Presidents to underscore the special trans-Atlantic relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. by giving the British Prime Minister the “royal” treatment.

One manifestation of that special relationship may be a weekend stay at Camp David. Didn’t happen.

Another tradition is a joint press conference of the leaders with members of the press from both countries. Didn’t happen.

Then there is the traditional exchange of gifts. Here is what Brown gave Obama, much of which had historical significance:

“Mr Brown’s gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.

Mr Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet’s sister ship, HMS Resolute.

Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.

Finally, Mr Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.”

Here is what Obama gave Brown:

A gift of 25 DVDs of classic American films.

It isn’t clear if those DVDs came through Blockbuster or Netflix. Obama already disrespected the British by returning a bust of Winston Churchill that had been given to the American people after 9/11 by Tony Blair and placed in the Oval Office by George Bush. Now this.

Mark Steyn concludes that this whole embarrassing affair is the result of Obama’s personal narcissism. Many Englishmen and, apparently, the Brown government see the matter as a diplomatic slight. Even some of Brown’s political opponents are annoyed by the treatment he received. Brown prefers to remain tight-lipped.

The British press sees the lack of the joint press conference as an example, alternately, of Obama’s high-handedness towards the press and of his cowardice in refusing to facequestioning by reporters much less inclined to fawn over Obama than their American counterparts do. British reporters are even said to have reminisced about how George W. Bush acted at such events. And this comes from a President who is so beloved overseas and here that he will single-handed and immediately heal the rift in the relationship between the U.S. and other countries caused by the evil Bush and restore American leadership. One English columnist even sees the conspiratorial and malign influence of “Lady Macbeth,” Michelle Obama.

I see it as a combination of Obama’s bumbling and inexperience and of his self-important personality that is more interested in the grand campaign-style speechifying than in the minutiae of governing and the arcane protocols of diplomatic etiquette.

Another Democratic official with tax problems. Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, Obama’s nominee for trade representative, has failed to pay about $10,000 in taxes for 2005-2007. The Obama administration’s vetting process sure works well. About as well as government health care. That, or the administration is utterly cynical as it lambastes the “wealthy” for not paying enough taxes. Or both.

But, in a classic “Do as I say, not as I do,” there is this. Scrappleface has the inside information about the Treasury Secretary’s plan to catch tax cheats (outside the administration, that is).

Ralph Peters takes issue with President Obama’s Iraq and Afghanistan plans. He judges Obama’s declaration that all combat brigades will be out of Iraq by 2010 as obfuscation. Since Obama plans to have 50,000 troops there past that date, whatever their role may be, if they are attacked, there will be combat. As Peters points out, it is the facts on the ground (which include the enemy’s decisions) that determine whether there is combat. But Obama knows the reality of the situation that politically he can’t “lose” Iraq. But he also can’t get credit for “winning” Iraq. Therefore, he has vociferously made Afghanistan “his” war, which Peters attributes to him being a strategic novice.

Speaking of the role the enemy necessarily plays in the fruition of these plans, at Counterterrorismblog, Dr. Walid Phares asks the same questions in response to Obama’s move. All eyes are on Iran to see how it takes Obama’s measure. If they see him as merely weak, they will talk to him as long as it suits them and then, together with Syria and Hizb’Ullah, destabilize the Iraqi government. Phares, like Peters, expresses some skepticism about the administration’s ability to respond to reality on the ground.

With a $2 trillion deficit and a $4 trillion budget, the federal government is continuing its takeover of the economy and its destruction of American capitalism. The leftward tilt of the administration ought to be apparent to everyone by now. Previously, when people at school asked me what I thought of Obama, and whether I was pleased that he was so conservative, I took a “let’s wait and see” attitude. I thought that matters would become clearer once he was backed into a corner or members of his first tem left. I was wrong. No need to wait that long. The mask has dropped, and the ideological gloves are off.

This has nothing to do with an “economic emergency” that, while significant, is not even at the level of the late ’70s/early ’80s in economic misery, much less the late ’20s and ’30s. The recession is a once-in-a-generation event that the administration is using as a front to reshape American culture and economics in a permanent (and damaging) manner. We are embarking on European welfare state-stagnation, and can kiss our long reputation for innovation and economic pre-eminence good-bye. Unfortunately, Obama’s intentional destruction of the system that has brought the U.S. an unparalleled standard of living will become obvious only gradually, as there is an inertia built into a system that does not change immediately. So it is likely that Obama will be gone when these effects will onfold fully and be able to escape responsibility for them.

Europe was able to survive with its welfare state only because it operated within the Pax Americana, with its defense obligations essentially paid for by the American taxpayer. We have no such luxury, and if we expect to support our welfare state the same way, doubtless our enemies will notice and become emboldened. Obama’s pledge to cut defense programs and to court every dictator and thug around signals the weakness on which enemies thrive. The administration is courting disaster. We are dealing with a bunch whose ideology has failed again and again economically and which is clearly out of its league in military matters. No wonder Obama styled himself a citizen of the world more than an American in his European campaign trip.

The administration proposes tax cuts and tax increases. The tax cuts of $800 in social security taxes will give people about $15 more per week. In addition, more people will get various income tax benefits that will bring the non-income tax paying portion to about 50% of the population. The other 50% will pay more, and those at the top will pay an increasingly disproportionate share. This is politically very dangerous, as it creates even less of a culture of shared claims and responsibilities. Those who pay nothing will find it increasingly easy to vote themselves more things for which others must pay. Those others will increasingly resent paying for others’ life-style choices. The politics of envy are about as likely to produce a healthy body politic as huge deficit spending is to eliminate the problem of debt.

Moreover, that little tax savings is likely to be outweighed by increases in state taxes (as here in California) and the Obama plan’s increase in taxes on drug and oil companies, more villains in the liberal playbook that must be brought to heal. Unless the government plans to nationalize those companies (which can no longer be considered to be in the realm of fantasy), the companies are going to pass those costs along to the consumers. They will pay more in gas and drug prices. If the government nationalizes those companies or subsidizes their prices (such as drugs), the taxpayers will foot the bill. But the more money is taken from the wealthier portions of the community, the less disposable private income there will be for investment and job-production. Employment decreases qualitatively and quantitatively, hurting the middle class the most and forcing more to turn to government relief.

Consider, too, that the tax increases will not really affect the very wealthy. They will base their compensation as they always have, on after-tax calculations. It will, however, hit the upper layers of the middle class. Many of them are small business owners, whose first goal is going to have to be to keep their families at a level of wealth commensurate with the efforts they are expending. So, those people will find ways around the tax system which, as usual, causes the fiscal gains from tax hikes to be less than expected. Alternativelt, they are less likely to hire others or to hire them at prior wages. This, too, will hurt job-seekers. The administration and its supporters among the public seem to think that they are immune from the realities of human nature and from the forces of the market. To many, Mr. Obama is more admirable than Jesus Christ. They will learn.

Don’t believe the administration’s claims about halving the deficit even in five years. Given the magnitude of the government takeover of the economy, this would require a private economy performing at an unlikely level of productivity. But even if they did, it would still leave a yawning deficit that would exceed considerably the average of all deficits while George W. Bush was in office. And it would take an impressive amount of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) for W to be blamed for the fiscal effect of Obama’s new policies five years after W left office.

A large chunk of the payment for his health plan would come from smaller federal government payments to insurance companies for Medicare. Does anyone think that this won’t influence service? Even if the companies continue in that market, they will pay less to health care providers, who, in turn, will either cut services or multiply treatments and lab tests to affiliated clinics in an effort to cover costs. The government’s announcement that they will lend directly to students not only puts the taxpayer on the bill and likely subsidizes unnecessary college attendance (and higher tuition), but it harms private lenders. Their stocks took a hit recently, as always happens when the government’s taxpayer subsidized unfair competition displaces private actors.

In a must-read article, the Wall Street Journal takes a hard look at the numbers of a budget that will increase the federal government’s share of the Gross Domestic Product to record peacetime levels. Even under the rosiest projections by the administration, the government’s new programs will crowd out private activity well beyond the Bush years and the post-WW II average. The record-breaking deficits run a parallel course. Something has to give, be it interest rates, inflation, growth.

Yet another step in the direction of liberal conformity. Although one must reserve final judgment about whether the administration ultimately will prohibit all freedom of choice for medical personnel to refuse to provide abortions, the signs are ominous. Note that the article points out that these changes are being made quietly and without publicity, while people are distracted by economic news and by the government’s takeover of the economic system. But, as with so many other bad ideas, California represents the lode star. Here, the courts have already held that freedom of choice of the medical profession doesn’t extend to refusing to provide in vitro fertilization to a lesbian, even if others were available to provide that service. Another leader is Canada, where a doctor is being sued before a “human rights commission” for refusing to provide a labiaplasty for a post-operative transsexual.

I have found that for liberals, the word “choice” is intertwined with abortion and, increasingly, with sexual matters. Beyond that, such as in regulation of jobs, business, and property ownership, the concept seems alien to them. The more laws, the merrier. It will be interesting to see what happens when the government takes over health care sectors where private choice is reduced (the old “Hillarycare”). That will be just fine, I suppose, as long as the government doesn’t step on abortion “choice.”

The Wall Street Journal’sDaniel Henninger delivers a scathing analysis of the depth and breadth of the radical program by the current administration to alter the relationship between government and free individuals. We can look forward to higher taxes (that inevitably have to fall on all tax-paying Americans), more welfare to support the life-style choices of the unproductive, indolent, and irresponsible, and more regulations from energy to industrial policy to health care that will reduce private choice and increase costs. It’s the “citizen-of-the-world” European model of state dominance over private enterprise, and of the rent-seeking political class over productive and creative individuals. Better be prepared for Euro-style structural unemployment and underemployment figures, as well. How long is it before the intelligent and productive depart for greener pastures, and we begin to suffer the brain drain to other countries (China and India, anyone) that, do to our greater freedom and willingness to reward individual incentive) we have used to our advantage for decades.

President Obama is eagerly advancing a cult of Lincoln for his own purposes. Just as the powerful light of the sun reflects off the moon to the latter’s visual enhancement, Obama appears to be hoping to enhance his own undeveloped presidential stature by basking in the glow of Lincoln’s legacy. Today is the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, so this makes for fortuitous timing. The President may be forgiven for “seizing the day,” so to speak, at least until his other persona, that of the new FDR, becomes more useful and timely. Some among the elites, of course, will feel much more comfortable celebrating today’s bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birthday than that of Lincoln’s—especially after they finish reading this post.

Obama lauded Lincoln’s lack of partisanship. I don’t understand that. Lincoln was a pragmatic politician, so he pleaded for leniency towards the defeated Confederates so as not to prolong the rift caused by the Civil War. He also tolerated the politically-connected Democrat general McClellan as leader of Union forces until the latter’s shortcomings endangered the war effort. In shrewdly calculated and timed manner, he emancipated the slaves to further the Union’s war ends. He balanced factions within his party. Pre-war, he had a vision of a possible compromise on the existing institution of slavery.

But in many ways Lincoln was strongly partisan. His political stance as a Whig Congressman against the Democrats’ James Polk’s engaging in war with Mexico, his insistence that the slavery issue be settled according to his anti-slavery “compromise” platform, and his muscular use of executive power against political opponents during the Civil War, show a strongly, but shrewdly, partisan man. But, to borrow from Machiavelli, to be successful in a democratic system nourished by peaceful partisan contests, it may behoove the successful President to appear to be bi-partisan, ecumenical, and tolerant of dissent, as long as in fact he is not so. Obama has let the mask of bi-partisanship slip occasionally, as he openly declared the obvious and unobjectionable position that he got to call the shots because he won the election.

If Obama indeed intends to model himself after Lincoln, this bodes well for America’s national security because Obama will act vigorously to extend and expand the Bush administration’s war effort, foreign intelligence gathering, domestic surveillance, terrorist detention without habeas corpus, and trials by military commissions for committing various ambiguously and flexibly-defined criminal acts. While Obama has taken a step in the right direction by allowing CIA extraordinary renditions and CIA prisons for temporary detention of terrorists, he has a lot to learn form the ol’ Railsplitter, Honest Abe.

I am attaching this Lincoln classic, the Letter to Erastus Corning and Others, in which Lincoln vigorously justifies his executive actions taken in defense of the country. He is responding to criticisms by a Democratic political organization that took a dim view of what it saw as Lincoln’s violations and shortcuts of constitutional law. He slyly chastises the Democrats for their partisan identification, but mostly he delivers a powerful defense of executive action and dominance in time of war.

In similar vein, this is Lincoln’s message to Congress on July 4, 1861, in which he defends executive power to act in an emergency to protect Americans in the absence of Congressional authorization, or perhaps even in violation of it. The message contains the famous rhetorical question, “To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one law be violated?” It is Lincoln’s response to his constitutional critics’ feckless insistence on “fiat iustitia, ruat coelum,” “let justice be done, though heaven should fall.”

One cannot imagine Obama taking that kind of leadership role in an emergency and the responsibilities that brings, especially given his uninspiring performance so far. Placating hordes of interest groups for political gain by giving them hundreds of billions of dollars while holding the country’s economic future hostage is not leadership and just does not remind one of Lincoln. In terms of assuming burdens of leadership and making unpopular political decisions in defense of the people of the U.S., at least, George Bush comes to mind as Lincoln’s heir much more readily than does Barack Obama.

While Obama has “closed” the secret CIA prisons, he has not prohibited the use of “temporary” secret detention sites under certain circumstances:

“One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites ‘do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.’” What is the over/under that “short-term, transitory” will soon take on a very flexible meaning?

Now it also comes out that renditions will continue. Along with the “all deliberate speed” message of the Obama order regarding the closing of the Guantanamo detention center, there seems to be a morphing of Obama into George W. Bush (who also wanted to close Guantanamo as soon as possible).

Indeed, with Gitmo closed and other CIA “secret prisons” closed at least for now, renditions are likely to increase: “Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.”

Predictably, human rights groups changed their tune from what they were singing when the Bush administration engaged in renditions: “‘Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place’ for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.”

Ironically, the CIA is not particularly thrilled about renditions, and appear to prefer to keep these suspects under American control in Gitmo or abroad. They see renditions as a less effective way of gaining information because they do not control the process.

For now, at least, the Obama administration is following the Bush administration in opposing money damages actions by terrorism suspects subjected to extraordinary rendition. It is even using the state secrets doctrine in its attempt to block the suits.

That wooshing noise you hear is the (hot) air escaping from the Obama balloon. I already posted about the public’s failure to be impressed by the President’s executive orders regarding aid to foreign abortion providers and closing Gitmo. Now Gateway Pundit tracks other indicia of erosion of the President’s support. His numbers are now around levels that George W. Bush had at about this time in his first term, despite the acrimony of the 2000 election that had liberals frothing. It’s one thing to be a secular messiah preaching the political equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s quite another to have to produce results. And in that regard the secular messiah is not as well equipped as the real One.

And there goes the support for the “stimulus” bill. Obama has said that if he does not get the stimulus passed, he will be out of office after four years (which I don’t believe for a minute).

Sic transit gloria mundi.

These polls, showing public opposition to Obama’s orders closing Guantanamo and permitting taxpayer funds to be spent for overseas abortions, are quite telling. Those orders are the ones that most explicitly reflect Obama’s liberal roots and were pay-offs for the ideological Left’s support of his candidacy. Yet the public rejects them, which should be a warning to Obama that he was not elected because people are eager for a radical political lurch leftward. That conclusion is bolstered by the growing unhappiness with the increasingly-obvious left tilt and the unconscionable size of the “stimulus” package. The result should, for the same reason, cheer economic, social, and national security conservatives that their principles still resonate with the public.

The public may well share this author’s view that, contrary to liberal elite opinion, Guantanamo is not a blot on American honor.  As to the Gitmo closure, at least, the public may even share Professor John Yoo’s more muscular opinion about the folly of that decision. Yoo spent two years deeply immersed in national security matters, which is two years less two days more than Obama had when he ordered the detention center closed.

From Gay Patriot and Michelle Malkin comes the question why there are no panting reporters and sensationalism-mongering networks in Kentucky to cover the vast damage from the recent massive ice storm. After all, there are power outages that will extend for weeks and destruction of utility services far worse than that caused by Hurricane Katrina. Could it be, they ask, that the media are less interested in posturing when the President is not named Bush and the population affected is mainly rural poor white “hicks”? By the way, where is the President? He hasn’t yet visited the area. Oh, wait, he’s busy reading books to school children. Now, where have I seen that before? And didn’t liberals have a grand time laughing at the last President who took time away from dealing with emergencies to read books to children?

Former Senate majority leader and Health & Human Services nominee Tom Daschle filed amended tax returns for 2005-2007 for income taxes plus interest of $140,000 for consulting income he “forgot” to report. When did he file it? When he suddenly remembered? No, when the Obama campaign began to vet him for an appointment.

One tool sometimes used by U.S. law enforcement and by the CIA is “rendition.” In essence, this involves having American agents kidnap a wanted person while that person is outside the U.S. In “ordinary rendition,” the person is then brought to the U.S., while in “extraordinary rendition” the person finds himself in the, ahh, “embrace” of foreign agents acting pursuant to an understanding with the U.S. The public image of renditions fostered by the media, Hollywood, interest groups, and defense attorneys is that such actions are the creation of the evil Bush administration violating the constitutional rights of innocents.

Well, no. Renditions of both types have been going on for a long time. While the pace particularly of extraordinary renditions has picked up since 9/11, the practice has been in place since before the Reagan administration. I have seen reports that the first Bush administration had between 10 and 20 such cases, while the Clinton administration had dozens. The Supreme Court has no problem with ordinary renditions, though it has not yet addressed extraordinary renditions. Lower courts, however, have addressed them and refused to find officials who engage in them liable for damages, though the cases do not have to face the issue of the constitutionality of the practice squarely.

Listening to their early campaign rhetoric, one would expect the Obama administration to abandon at least extraordinary renditions. His decision to close Guantanamo and “other secret CIA bases,” to limit CIA interrogation techniques, and to appoint Leon Panetta, an outsider, to head the CIA were also described as pointing in that direction.

But, what do you know? First, closing the secret bases and changing interrogation methods is more light than heat. Bush already emptied the prisons and ordered the inmates released or sent to Guantanamo, but he refused to close the prisons. Obama is formally closing the prisons:

“But the orders leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantánamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured.

The new White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other than the 19 techniques allowed for the military.”

So the secret prisons may return as needed, as may the interrogation methods. Then it turns out that Panetta is the guy who was in charge of extraordinary renditions for the Clinton administration! More “hope” and “change” out the window.

Michael Ramirez gives Panetta a dressing down.

As I sat down with a nice big pot of coffee to peruse the news of the day, my eyes might have seen this item. A bonus to the fun to be had watching the Obama administration in action is the presence of Joe Biden. Joe’s favorite topic for discourse is, predictably, Joe Biden. So it comes as no surprise that Joe has proclaimed himself more knowledgeable than Dick Cheney and “the most experienced vice-president since anybody.” Let’s see, now. Who were some of these vice-presidents who pale in comparison to our Joe? There was John Adams (Washington’s V.P.), Thomas Jefferson (Adams’s), George Clinton (Jefferson’s and Madison’s), Elbridge Gerry (Madison’s), John C. Calhoun (J.Q. Adams’s and Jackson’s), Martin van Buren (Jackson’s). In the 20th century, there was John Nance Garner (FDR’s), Alben Barkley (Harry Truman’s), Lyndon Johnson (Kennedy’s), Nelson Rockefeller (Ford’s), George H. W. Bush (Reagan’s), Dick Cheney (G.W. Bush’s). I won’t get into detail on the many other experienced vice-presidents, from Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Dawes to Charles Curtis and Hubert Humphrey. They leave Biden in the dust. Thirty-four years as a buffoonish Senator don’t mean qualitative experience. This is likely to be the first guy since the FDR years to be returned to the pasture of irrelevance where many earlier vice-presidents, more qualified than Joe, grazed away the years. Anyway, Joe, unless you admit to being a “nobody,” in the new liberal age of equality, nobody is more qualified than anybody.

One of the most annoying themes heard repeatedly in the media and public disourse is that conservatives in general, and Republicans in particular, are the one who judge people on account of their race. Since I spend a lot of my time among liberal Democrats, I have experienced the utter nonsense of that characterization. There are no people, not even the most bigoted White Power morons, who pay more attention and fret more obsessively about matters of race when judging individuals or devising rules for decisions than do such liberals. All for the “right” reasons, don’t you know. If everyone in the world suddenly were of the same race, these people would be so disoriented in their world view they’d have to curl up in a corner for months to reclaim their bearings. By contrast, most conservatives are totally opposed to considerations of race and tend to follow that good inclination in evaluating people and policies. People of other races are entitled to respect as individuals, but not to gains or losses from their skin color. I have often said that people of all races must be permitted to succeed—and to fail.

But failure by individuals of preferred and unwisely lionized “victim” groups is anathema to the liberal mindset. This has become abundantly clear in the fanatical investment by liberals in the success of the Obama administration. The media and other liberal elites, the impressionable and ecstatic Obama Youth, and, by propaganda, large swaths of public opinion, cannot permit Obama to be less than great. We know about the proposals for a national holiday for his birthday, for his visage to grace Mount Rushmore, and to repeal term limits for presidents in the 22nd Amendment. This also means, naturally, that criticism of Obama is seen as somehow unpatriotic, never mind the denunciations and vitriol that deranged liberals spewed for eight years regarding anything connected to the Bush administration. But enough about Al Gore, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Harkin, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, CNN, MSNBC, and so on, ad nauseum.

Here is a very good piece by Juan Williams about treating Obama not as a Black man, but as a person, who occupies the White House. Williams argues that Obama should be criticized just as any other President. He excoriates the media and others who compared Obama’s pedestrian speech on race last March to the Gettysburg Address. I never grasped that comparison, either. He defends Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton. Very significantly, he recognizes that Obama, like any President or indeed any human being, will make mistakes. When the media then roll over and give Obama a pass because of his race, Williams opines, “This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.” Amen, and kudos to Williams for saying what many of his racial fellows and his colleagues in the media will adamantly reject.

Here is the text of President Obama’s inaugural address. I listened to parts of it as I was grading the last final exams. It was enough to get a sense of the delivery, which was standard Obama. After some nervousness (to be expected, given the occasion), he found his stride. But there were parts that didn’t seem to fit his usual speech cadences and modalities. Nevertheless, he gives a darn good teleprompter speech, hence the importance of actually reading the text.

As an address, it struck me as a good speech, but nothing spectacular. It was a speech that could have been, and in various ways, has been, given by a number of his predecessors. It sounds better than it reads. There were appropriate and well-done historical references (which I like) without overdoing the by-now tired “I am the new Lincoln, when I’m not the new FDR” trope. There was an all-too-brief uplifting passage at the end. I say all too brief because the speech overall was not particularly so, especially when compared to the almost preternatural optimism that emerges from the typical FDR or Reagan speech. But I don’t see Obama as having the same personality as either of those; in that way he really is like the more morose Lincoln.

There were good lines that unite; others that raise the flag of intrusive government; others that were petty and divisive; and others—too many—that were just plain ridiculous bombast (”We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”). So, again, overall a good speech, well-delivered, but not spectacular.

Here is a reaction, typical of most from the folks at National Review’s The Corner, which I find to be quite insightful.

Heh, heh, heh. Apparently the people who hated the U.S. because of George W. Bush will continue to hate the U.S. with Obama. The election seems not to have been the miracle cure to get the world to love us, which must be a disappointment to those who care about such things. Those people are called liberals.

Mark Steyn poses a reasonable question: Why isn’t the left happy about the economic slowdown? Why aren’t Obama and the Democrats rejecting economic stimulus (if they think that printing money will work)?

“After all, everyone knows Americans consume too much. What was it that then Sen. Obama said on the subject? “We can’t just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources with just 4 percent of the world’s population, and expect the rest of the world to say, ‘You just go ahead, we’ll be fine.’”

And boy, we took the great man’s words to heart. SUV sales have nose-dived, and 72 is no longer your home’s thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Sen. Obama’s logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume 4 percent of the world’s resources. And in these past few months we’ve made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.

And yet, strangely, President-elect Barack Obama doesn’t seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the U.S. economy. He’s proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar “stimulus” package or whatever it is now to “stimulate” it back into its bad old ways.”

Even more deliciously, as Steyn points out is the response of those foreigners who don’t like us spending so much of the world’s resources:

“The message from the European political class couldn’t be more straightforward: If you crass, vulgar Americans don’t ramp up the demand, we’re kaput. Unless you get back to previous levels of planet-devastating consumption, the planet is screwed.

“Much of the load will fall on the U.S.,” wrote Martin Wolf in The Financial Times, “largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak.” The European Union has 500 million people, compared with America’s 300 million. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are advanced economies whose combined population adds up to that of the United States. Many EU members have enjoyed for decades the enlightened progressive policies that Americans won’t be getting until Jan. 20. Why then are they so “inert” that their economic fortunes depend on the despised, moronic Yanks?”

Steyn provides the answer. So far, without Obamanomics, the U.S. has a dynamic economy, based on residual freedom and initiative. It also has a steady population that is replenishing itself in a way Europeans are not.

One of the advantages of being a Black conservative is that one can say things about racial matters that White conservatives cannot say without the jackasses in the media braying about what a racist the speaker is. On the other hand, Black conservatives do set themselves up for even greater liberal fury than a White conservative would for simply hewing to conservative positions. Call this the Clarence Thomas syndrome. A similar fate awaits vocal females who do not conform to feminist dogma. Call this the Sarah Palin syndrome. Black conservatives are immediately seen as race traitors to be destroyed as public intellectuals or pundits for daring to hold “inauthentic” views that do not conform to the orthodox story line for Blacks written by the liberal elite. Heterodoxy is the privilege of Whites.

There are intrepid Black intellectuals, politicans, and pundits who have thrown off the shackles of liberal intellectual bondage. That is a Herculean task, in light of the demands made to conform to preexisting notions of racial identity. Among those intellectuals are Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Shelby Steele. The last of these has written and spoken many times about the role of race in defining American character and politics. There are the problems of Black racial identity and White racial guilt. Steele has written about the difficulty of breaking away from the limitations imposed by racial group identity on individual development. Regarding Obama in particular, Steele has written,

“There is a price to be paid even for fellow-traveling with a racial identity as politicized and demanding as today’s black identity. This identity wants to take over a greater proportion of the self than other racial identities do. It wants to have its collective truth-its defining ideas of grievance and protest-become personal truth…. These are the identity pressures that Barack Obama lives within. He is vulnerable to them because he has hungered for a transparent black identity much of his life. He needs to ‘be black.’ And this hunger—no matter how understandable it may be—means that he is not in a position to reject the political liberalism inherent in his racial identity. For Obama liberalism is blackness.”

Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, sat down for an interview with National Review’s Peter Robinson. There are five parts, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Discussing the 2008 election, Steele dismisses the idea that Obama voters, especially younger voters, have “moved beyond race,” as they like to imagine. One wishes that were true. Rather, both Blacks and Whites are consumed by race. That applies to younger voters as well, who supported Obama without knowing anything about his policies:

Everywhere I went on my book tour, young people would come up.  “We’re beyond your generation,” they would tell me.  “We grew up differently than you did.”  No, I tell them, you didn’t.  You did not.  You are now obsessed with race.  Race is the only thing that’s driving your interest in Barack Obama.  You couldn’t even tell me what his policies are.  You’re never critical of him in any way.  If you were free of race you would not judge him culturally.  You would judge him politically.  You just—you are consumed by race.

I fully agree with that assessment. Perhaps it is my European origin coming through here, but I simply do not understand, and indeed am repelled by, the all-consuming focus on race in this country that judges individuals on belonging to a class identity rather than on their own merits. I see this at school in the hiring of faculty (not limited to considerations of race, to be sure) and in the admission and retention of students. I do not suffer from that White guilt that stunts Whites’ (especially liberals’) ability to accord to minorities the respect to succeed and, yes, fail, on their individual merit, and that, too often, causes Blacks to fall into self-defeating victimology and finger-pointing at all but themselves.

An eye-opening interview.

If you thought that this presidential campaign began when the incumbent was barely halfway through his second term, you are right. This is insanity. Obama had to start running so early, he could only spend 143 days in the Senate to prepare himself for the Oval Office. Think of all the work he would (still not) have got accomplished had the campaign started later. It seems that the process starts earlier each time, as states leapfrog each other to have the first caucuses and primaries. If this pace accelerates but slightly, the 2020 campaign will begin in the summer of 2016, about the time the conventions are held to crown officially the nominees for 2016.

This highly informative article by James Ceaser in the Claremont Review of Books, written before the election result was known, dissects the electoral process. In my constitutional law class, I discuss the history and role of the Electoral College and the effect on presidential election caused by the evolution of modern political parties. This article covers much the same ground about the original purpose (nominating men of virtue) of the Electoral College that eventually went to the parties acting in convention and then to the public through primaries and open caucuses. Speaking of the Electoral College,

“The principal objective was to choose a sound statesman, someone ‘pre-eminent for ability and virtue,’ in the words of The Federalist, by a method that satisfied republican standards of legitimacy. (The system, with electors to be chosen by the state legislatures or the public, was a remarkably democratic arrangement for its day.) How to identify a person of ‘virtue’ was the crux of the issue. The best way would be a judgment based largely on the individual’s record of public service, as determined finally by the electors. The founders’ intent was above all to prevent having the decision turn on a demonstration of skill in the ‘popular arts’ as displayed in a campaign. They were deeply fearful of leaders deploying popular oratory as the means of winning distinction; this would open the door to demagoguery, which, as the ancients had shown, was the greatest threat to the maintenance of moderate popular government. By demagoguery, the founders did not mean merely the fomenting of class envy, or harsh, angry appeals to regressive forces; they also had in mind the softer, more artful designs of a Pericles or a Caesar, who appealed to hopeful expectations, ‘those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle’ (Federalist 68). The greatest demagogues would be those who escaped the label altogether.

The selection system was also designed to promote the more elusive goal of shaping the tone of the nation’s political class. By sending a clear signal of how and how not to be considered for the presidency, the system was intended to structure the careers of the most spirited leaders, discouraging them from cultivating the popular arts and encouraging them to establish strong records of public service.”

On the other hand, the current primary system does just the opposite. As the primary system’s founders, the early-20th century “Progressives” had hoped, the current approach favors popular appeal over experience and a record of public service:

“Any selection system that permits choice—unlike, for example, selection by seniority or primogeniture—by definition does not determine the outcome; it only influences it. This makes it impossible to attribute a particular result to the system’s formal properties alone. But two nominees now seem to be clear ‘products’ of the new system: Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Neither won on the basis of a substantial record of public service or high previous standing in his party. Their victories were due to their performance as popular leaders. Carter was a Jimmy one-note, repeating a mantra of promising never to tell a lie that resonated perfectly with the electorate’s mood in 1976. Obama, more the maestro than fiddler, has composed his work using a more complex register, alternating motifs of change and hope.

Indeed, Obama’s campaign has forged what for many Democrats is an almost spiritual bond between the leader and his followers. The strength and depth of this personal appeal became so apparent and so alarming to others that the candidate felt compelled to declare, ‘It’s not about me’—this, in the extraordinary context of a party acceptance speech he delivered in a football stadium before more than 80,000 in attendance. Obama has also made a conspicuous point of rejecting the low ‘popular arts’ in favor of a more high-minded rhetoric, which many critics nevertheless suspect to be a cleverer form of artful popular leadership.”

The whole thing reminds me of a statement attributed to the historian Henry Adams (grandson of Pres. John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of Pres. John Adams): “The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.” The evolution of the electoral system described by Professor Ceaser and the result it has produced in 2008 proves the continuing perspicacity of Adams’s remark.