"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Gates Retention

Reports are that President-Elect Obama has made the final decision to retain Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for at least the first year of his presidency. This is a commendable act and the President-Elect deserves the fullest praise. Secretary Gates has done a fine job in Defense, stabilizing that Pentagon after the tumult of the Rumsfeld years and overseeing and implementing the surge of forces in Iraq which has led to such a stunning turnaround and level of success there.

The fact is that the world is still a very dangerous place with an increasingly belligerent Russia, a nuclearizing Iran in collusion with Syria and Hezbollah, a still nuclear North Korea, and a myriad of other threats to American security. Keeping the seasoned and wise hands of Secretary Gates in the Pentagon in these circumstances will help provide the continuity and stability America needs to competently respond to its challenges.

Jennifer Rubin is entirely right. Well done, Mr. President-Elect.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Eric Holder Selection

From the perspective of the President-Elect I do not understand the putative selection of Eric Holder as Attorney General. His campaign was predicated on the aura of change and a new politics, yet Mr. Holder carries with him some odious baggage from his stint in the Clinton Justice Department. This is already being hashed out and will continue to be to a greater degree when his confirmation hearings arrive, serving as a distraction and detraction from the themes the new President will be trying to strike.

So then to what point and purpose does he select Mr. Holder? There is nothing evidently superlative in him and he doesn’t offer anything more than any number of other potential Democratic nominees could provide. What incentive is there to go through the extra heartache then?

It’s a curious choice.

Automaker Bailout

The risk assumed in enacting the $700 billion bailout was the creation of a precedent that would encourage the federal government to bailout other industries in the future. Manifestation of this is the bailout Democrats in Congress and the President-Elect – at least at one point – support and are trying to pass.

The legislation is a bad idea, for its sole accomplishment will be to lengthen the long, agonizing death Detroit is slouching towards on its current path. Through coercing excessive and unaffordable compensation packages from the big three automakers, the unions are responsible for this death march, strangling the companies with onerous labor costs that render them uncompetitive with other companies with less overhead. Throwing millions of borrowed dollars at the Detroit three will not alter this, just temporarily delay the inevitable.

This is the outrage. That we should incur further debt to effectively subsidize a failing business model – when doing so won’t actually fix the companies and resolve the circumstances which have brought them to this point – is a gross abuse of the public trust. It is a waste of money that we don’t have.

What the Detroit big three need is bankruptcy and a concurrent fundamental reorganization of their structures. The proposed bailout will only stave off this reckoning for a little while, bailing out some water without fixing the gaping hole in the bottom of the boat.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Steele for the RNC

A reassuring indication that the powers that be in the national Republican party have learned from the previous two elections and intend to genuinely play ball in the Obama Administration would be the election of Michael Steele as RNC Chair. Mr. Steele is a fresh voice, has an impressive life story and experience, and is an effective spokesman for conservative and Republican values. Further, he would help combat the creeping notion that the party is a shrinking group of angry, white, male southerners.

Unfortunately, most RNC committeemen (who are the electorate for the chairmanship) have anonymously snubbed their noses at the notion. They shouldn’t. Any concern that Mr. Steele is not a skilled political tactician really isn’t a concern, for the RNC can easily install one such person directly below Mr. Steele to take care of that sphere while Mr. Steele himself appears as a face and spokesperson for the party, traveling the country recruiting Republican candidates and raising money.

Michael Steele is the right choice to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. I can think of few national Republicans who would be as effective publicly responding to the positions and policies of the incoming Obama Administration.

Monday, November 17, 2008

To the President-Elect

Mr. President-Elect:

I am rapidly approaching the point at which I will become responsible for my own living and that of a family of my own, and at that threshold I will inherit the future I looked forward to and prepared for as a child and adolescent. For this I am quite excited and hopeful, but so too am I fearful. I am fearful because my future and the future of my generation is in jeopardy, and with all respect and humility, some of the policies you proposed and supported as a candidate will only increase that peril.

Our country is in a very dangerous moment economically, and as you prepare to assume the presidency in a few months you are no doubt aware of this. How you and the rest of our leaders act in this time (in all levels of government) will determine how America meets and answers these challenges, whether we tackle and solve them or whether we are consumed by them.

In regards to young Americans such as myself, the job market we are soon to enter will be severely harmed should you and the Congress agree to raise taxes on Americans anywhere on the income scale. Taking capital out of the economy at a time when it is already suffering from a lack thereof will reduce business and investment even further, leaving us with fewer jobs and opportunities and higher costs of living. Diminishing free trade with the global community will only aggravate this. As new entrants into the workforce, such a troubled state of affairs would burden young Americans immensely, highly reducing our chances for success and prosperity as we begin to build lives of our own.

Specifically, on the campaign trail you often derided loopholes in the tax code that gave breaks to large corporations such as oil companies. I think you and I can both agree that all taxpaying Americans should pay their fair share under our tax code, but I fervently urge you to refrain from raising taxes on corporations and businesses because, very simply, they do not pay them. An increased tax burden will cause business either to leave our shores for cheaper locales or they will pass their increased costs down to average Americans through job layoffs and/or higher costs for their goods and services. The little people and not big business will, for all intents and purposes, pay for the increases.

Our future is also threatened by the leviathan of debt accrued from years of extravagant spending. This constitutes a crippling obligation incurred by current and past generations that will have to be paid by ours. After decades of short-sighted and mindless appropriation it is time the government put its financial house in order.

The source of much of this debt are entitlement programs that are lavishly expensive and will soon lapse into insolvency if allowed to continue on their current path. If this were to occur Americans would face the unfathomable choice of massive tax increases and/or cuts in benefits. Either choice or a combination of both would be ruinous, and so federal entitlements are in dire need of comprehensive reform. However your programmatic proposals would do quite the opposite, adding more unaffordable entitlements on top of the ones we already cannot afford. This will only hasten the day we face the painful choices mentioned above and increase the severity of the pain on their arrival.

Mr. president-elect, I sincerely commend you for your historic victory and I wish you the very best as the next president of the country you and I love. Your success will be mine and every American’s success, so I will hope and pray for your good fortune as our republic’s chief executive.

But with this said the fact remains that there are many points in your agenda that I cannot in good conscience support, and I regretfully believe that their enactment would have a number of adverse effects on our economy and on our future. I fervently urge you to reconsider them and adopt measures that will grow our economy, reduce our debt, and reform entitlements for the 21st Century. Doing so will strengthen and secure the future for myself and for all Americans.


With the Sincerest Best Wishes,
Geoff Smock

Friday, November 14, 2008

Sec. of State Clinton?

Reports are that President-Elect Obama has offered Sen. Clinton the important post of secretary of state in his new administration. The punditry’s initial response to this is very positive, touting it as an act of political brilliance that will remove a potential rival out of the Senate and (possibly) out of the running for the 2012 Democratic nomination. This is one possibility, but another is that it could be a terrible mistake that will plague his presidency as long as she holds the position (assuming the reports are true).

It’s an incredibly open secret that the relationship between the two has been frigid, and the fact is and always shall remain that the Clintons have their own agenda. Period. We know the Clintonian penchant for vindictiveness and self-interest, so there is a very concrete reason to believe it possible that somewhere in the next four years we will be in receipt of leaks about disagreement and infighting between the President and his chief diplomat, if and when they occur. This specter might even be a probability if the Obama presidency goes through any real period of turbulence, specifically in the realm of foreign affairs. (Remember, it was the vice president-elect himself who predicted that his boss would be tested quickly once in office and that it wouldn’t be, to paraphrase, evident right away that his response would be the correct one.) I essentially agree with Peggy Noonan:

But the downside is equally obvious: To invite in the Clintons—and it's always the Clintons, never a Clinton—is to invite in, to summon, drama that will never end. Ever. This would seem to be at odds with the atmospherics of Obamaland. "Loose cannon," "vetting process," "financial entanglements," questions about which high-flying oligarch gave how much to Bill's presidential library, and what the implications of the gift are, including potential conflict of interest. More colorfully, and nostalgically: people screaming through the halls, being hired and fired, attacking the press, leaking, then too tightly controlling information, then leaking, and speaking in the special patois of the Clinton staff, with the famous dialogue evocative of David Mamet as rewritten by Joe Pesci.
If President-Elect Obama has made this offer to Sen. Clinton and she accepts, he could be removing a potential rival from causing him trouble outside of his administration...or he could be planting a cancer in the very center of his administration. I think the latter scenario is almost as likely as the former, but we shall see.