The End of President Obama’s Transcendentalism

Jonathan Martin writes that President Obama couldn't earn a single House Republican vote for the stimulus bill this evening despite his personal visit with the caucus on the Hill yesterday. Thus does a central conceit of the President's (and of every new President's) flutter away into oblivion. He has persistently dismissed partisan disagreement as illegitimate or petty (most recently in his Inaugural) even though vibrant disagreement and debate are the symptoms of healthy democracies. In that same vain he has touted his post-partisanship and ability to bridge chasms between those who disagree. He was a transcendental figure, and would be a transcendental President.

This was a mirage. The President's meet-and-greet with House Republicans was a commendable gesture but it was just that, a gesture. Patting the heads of Republicans is not enough to get their support or basic acquiescence, especially when nothing is done to address their concerns in subsequence. The facts of the matter were the same after the meeting as they were before, and that was that the "stimulus" he was lobbying for is an opportunistic pretense through which Democrats are pushing through reckless spending for their own pet causes. There is nothing in it that any Republican – or any responsible, candid observer for that matter –can support.

President Obama cannot be blamed for trying get a little without giving anything. But neither can he realistically expect to get anything without giving something in return. That is the lesson of this evening's vote.

Of course he doesn't need any Republicans for ultimate passage, but if he wants shared responsibility for this abomination of appropriation he's going to have to make it a lot less abominable. Otherwise he won't be the transcendental figure he fashions himself as and he and Democrats will be all alone with responsibility for their actions. Such is real life. You can't be post-partisan and still be straight-partisan at the same time. Not even if you're Barack Obama.

Review: Shroud for a Nightingale

Shroud for a Nightingale P.D. James

P.D. James' typical sterling characters, plot, and finely-tuned setting are as present in this book as in her previous ones. What are especially present in Nightingale though are examples of perhaps her greatest literary talent, which is her ability to use and describe the subtle phenomena that are peppered in human existence. Take this excerpt from p. 70:

"The recently dead had their own mysterious charisma; not without reason did men talk in whispers in their presence."

On p. 143:

"This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?"

On p. 305:

"He was in that state of physical tiredness when the mind and body seem detached, the body, conditioned to reality, moving half consciously in the familiar physical world, while the liberated mind swings into uncontrolled orbit in which fantasy and fact show an equally ambiguous face."

No literary figure I've ever come across has done this as well as James. Whenever she drops one of these in her stories you know instantly the feeling or phenomenon she is describing. This only comes from a keen awareness of human nature and experience and it makes each one of her stories a pleasure to read, Shroud for a Nightingale included.

How Not to Stimulate the Economy

Lawrence Summers, President Obama's chief economic advisor, appeared on Meet the Press yesterday. Asked a question about the administration's plans for the Bush tax cuts, he all but declared that they would be repealed the minute the economy starts to make a recovery. "I don't think there's any question they have to be repealed. The country can't afford them for the long run…they can't be part of the long-run budget picture…they're not going to be with us for long…"

Dr. Summers is self-evidently a smart guy and knows a thing or two about economics, but there a couple of items wrong with these statements.

First, declarations from him and other Democrats that we can't "afford" the Bush tax cuts ring a bit hollow given all of the additional deficit spending they propose. The most immediate of these is the trillion dollar "stimulus," which is in fact not a stimulus but more like one big pork-barrel spending bill (unless you believe that spending taxpayer dollars on contraception and sod for the Jefferson Memorial isn't pork…). Beyond that there is the universal health care coverage they'd like to see enacted as well as other egregious forms of government expansion that young Americans and their children will involuntarily foot the bill for down the road.

Second, if the Obama Administration's ultimate aim is to boost confidence in the economy then promising to raise taxes at the first opportunity is counterproductive. In fact it will only shove the date of recovery further down the road as consumers and investors et al become dissuaded from investment and expenditure with the specter of looming tax hikes haunting them from straight ahead. When recovery does arrive, raising taxes will indicate that the administration has fallen into what Matthew Continetti has labeled the "stimulus trap," in which the government tries to recoup lost revenue from a recession by raising taxes; which then aggravates or creates anew another recession. Call it "double-dipping," as James Pethokoukis does.

Suffice to say, promising to raise taxes in the future is not the relief the American people need and is not the stimulus the economy requires. Given our current trajectory, it is unfortunately very likely that we're going to witness just how true this really is.

The Stimulus & the Congressional GOP

Congressional Republicans reportedly presented President Obama with several tax cuts they'd like to see included in the proposed "stimulus" package at the White House today. They should think long and hard about this. Are these cuts – if included – really a source of salvation for the bill? Do they actually countervail the fact that it will be an irresponsible creation of debt that will fail to fulfill its stated purpose, if for no other reason than because it's a stimulus in name only? (The Congressional Budget Office is reporting that less than forty percent of the funds will actually be spent anytime soon, and most of the money is simply being directed towards liberal pet causes and projects.)

The real stimulus the economy needs is federal cession, if you will. The Congress and the President ought to approve across the board, permanent tax cuts that will yield a greater portion of the economy to the private sector and give individuals, families, and businesses an increased income that they can depend on year in and year out. Only this will create the conditions required for economic growth, not further inflationary, deficit, and one-time spending. For this reason no Congressional Republican should deem it responsible to support the legislation in any form that will be acceptable to a Democratic Congress and President.

Politically, supporting the stimulus won't help improve the Republican brand either. If Democrats want to saddle future generations with more debt without accomplishing anything for that steep cost than they shouldn't be given any cover. If they want to jump off of a bridge then Republicans can't stop them, but neither do they have to join them.

The choice in this matter is easy. As the saying goes, good governance is good politics; so too is the opposite. Oppose this "stimulus."

Farewell, President Bush

The presidency of George Walker Bush was eight years in length, a quantity that hardly seems sufficient in conveying its actual span. His were two terms longer than their years, replete with one large crisis after another. No president since FDR encountered as much, and by the end all Americans were simply weary of him and the baggage.

His tenure was especially trying for his supporter, who now in the immediate aftermath is made to cope with a gamut of emotions that few other political figures could possibly induce. As a president and a man he was a figure of disparate polarities, endowed with faculties that would at different times cause one to love him and at others shake their head in confused demoralization.

The foundation of this was his feast or famine executive skills. More so than any modern President save for Reagan, he possessed in spades the "vision thing" his father had so struggled with during his presidency. This was a leader who envisioned big things, whether it was a new "ownership society" at home or a reinvigorated, democratic Middle East abroad. He refused to settle for a presidency that would simply bide its time in office or occupy some space in the history books as his predecessor had.

Following the attacks of 9/11 (the first crisis of his presidency) he decided against simply consoling a shocked, grieving nation and lobbing a few cruise missiles in retaliation, instead interpreting the acts as a de facto declaration of war, beginning what he believed to be a long, generational struggle against radical Islam. To prevail, he committed himself and the republic to the daunting task of remaking the Middle East into a land of freedom and democracy. The most complete expression of this was his second inaugural, a paean to the power of freedom and America's eternal mission to promote it.

To commence his second term he pushed hard to reform Social Security, the "third rail" of American politics and a program on the quick road to insolvency. He sought personal savings accounts which would have allowed young workers to invest their payroll tax dollars into the stock market instead of sending them to the treasury to be spent and replaced by IOUs. Few in government were politically willing to touch the issue, but President Bush persisted for months in advocacy of it nonetheless.

This effort was a symptom of another of his executive skills – incorrigible determination or, some might say, stubbornness. He would have his big vision and would push for it no matter what. Whether this was a virtue or vice depended upon the issue. With his Social Security campaign it was a vice, not giving it up until well after it was clear that it wasn't going to happen (and long after its failure had done irreparable harm to his own political strength). With Iraq it saved this country from a humiliating, strategically ruinous defeat. As the Editors of National Review pointed out, his decision to support the surge when nearly everyone else sought withdrawal demonstrated "far better judgment and character than a political establishment that largely approved the initial invasion of Iraq and then sought to abandon it to terrorists." His stubbornness on Iraq was the virtue of his presidency.

His weaknesses as an executive were often times debilitating though. His ability to construct an overall vision was a virtue, as was his courage of conviction in pursuit of them (usually), but at times he lost sight of more immediate imperatives and unfinished business. His understanding that the ultimate defeat of terror depended on the spread of democracy in the Arab world was correct, and that this first and foremost required succeeding in Iraq, the geographical and strategic center of the Middle East. Yet it took far too long for him to grasp the fact that success in Iraq depended upon securing and stabilizing the country first, an accomplishment only belatedly realized by the implementation of the surge policy of 2007.

This was part and parcel to the central failing of his presidency, which was, as Jeffrey Bell writes, a tendency to set a correct objective, pursue it successfully for a time, and then founder. On a host of issues he exhibited a pattern of "excellent initial judgment, strong will, fair to decent early execution, culminating in distraction and in an ultimate failure to finish." Such was the case with tax cuts, marriage, faith-based initiatives, etc.

Undoubtedly, this flaw was a symptom – at least partly – of his spotty record of personnel selection and his penchant, consistent with his stubbornness, to stick by poor selections for far too long. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld might have been the correct choice for a 1990's/post-Cold War military, but he certainly was not for the extended, nation-building reality of the War on Terror. In no way should he have lasted six years.

The incompetence of Michael Brown and FEMA post-Katrina was a calamity his presidency never recovered from, tainting them from then on with the label of incompetence (Alberto Gonzales at the Justice Department and others made their contributions to this as well).

Additionally, his freedom agenda was undercut by the promotion of Scowcroft protégé Condolezza Rice to State, who tacked his administration's foreign policy back to the conventional establishmentarian policy of dialogue and diplomacy for its own sake. The upshot has been a complete failure in efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program and to prevent Iran from developing one of their own, or to promote democracy in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

By the last year or so of his presidency matters had seemingly collapsed. His unpopularity was at historically high levels not seen since the Carter presidency and the only issue he seemed to direct his traditional spunk and feistiness towards was his Iraq policy, which had been under a visceral and execrable attack by the Democratic Congress since '07. With the last significant measure of his presidency he lamely released TARP funds to boost the Detroit automakers, saving them for a few months from the death they were unwilling to save themselves from permanently.

After all of this his faithful supporter was left disheartened and confused. He had always admired his vision, moral clarity, and moral courage but ultimately became frustrated with his poorly chosen cast of subordinates and excessive farsightedness, all of which left far too many of the ventures he and the President shared unaccomplished. He had charged ahead enthusiastically in his re-election fight of '04 only to discover somewhere in the second term that the President wasn't always there next to him, but instead had fallen quite a bit behind.

Now at the end the President's supporter is left to deal with a conflicting miasma of emotions in evaluating what he witnessed the previous eight years. There were many failures and about-faces to brood about: Democratic-style spending, immigration, North Korea, Iran, Harriet Miers, Katrina, etc. But so too did the President have his share of accomplishments in spheres foreign and domestic., many of which have been obscured by the controversies of a political atmosphere imbued with bitter partisanship (which President Bush's Texas bluntness and self-assurance helped to create).

He cut taxes at a time in 2001 when the economy was in a post-boom slowdown and did it again in 2003, both rounds of which helped lessen the length and severity of the recession he inherited from his predecessor. He appointed Samuel Alito as an associate justice of the Supreme Court and John Roberts as chief justice, "whose sterling qualifications appear to include a deep commitment to respect the broad play the Constitution gives to the operations of representative government," as Ed Whelan has written. His committed opposition to federal funding of stem cell research, rooted in a belief in the sanctity of life and the concurrent need to develop other means of research, was vindicated by the announcement in 2007 that scientists have developed a way to turn regular human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. Yuval Levin is right in stating that "he acted to demonstrate that science and ethics are not mutually exclusive, but could be championed together in a way that demonstrated our commitment to the value of every human life."

In the sphere of foreign affairs he withdrew the United States from the Kyoto protocol, which excluded the world's largest polluters from its obligations and would have been a sullen drag on the economy. He helped foster stronger relationships with East Asian democracies – specifically Japan – and helped to grow a bilateral relationship with India which could be instrumental in managing China's growth going into the future. Despite the incessant talk of America's broken image in the world, pro-American regimes are also in power in Germany, France, Italy, England, and other Eastern European countries. What's more, we have good relationships with Columbia (a fact imperiled by our inability to pass the Columbian Free Trade Agreement), Mexico, and Brazil. And for some reason the lines are as long as ever to get into this country, despite the fact that anti-Americanism is supposed to be higher than ever.

His record of strengthening presidential power and the federal government's capacity to combat the war on terror is mixed, but generally positive as well. Eleven times he vetoed congressional measures which would have weakened the power of the President, and he persisted in the practice of issuing signing statements – despite inane criticism – on the principle that the President is the chief executive officer and not "the legislature's errand boy," as Matthew J. Franck has written. His administration dismantled the al Qaeda network and detained and interrogated many of its operatives, setting up procedures for their continued detention and surveillance. So too did it devise means to monitor terrorists communications in an era of cell phones, e-mail, etc. He put in place an infrastructure to combat the War on Terror which had not existed prior to 9/11 and the country is safer as a result. His only folly was doing all of this unilaterally. He should have struck when the iron was hot, securing congressional implementation of these programs on a permanent basis. That way there wouldn't have been the confusion and controversy that enveloped him at the end of his administration. Further, codification would have established a permanent structure for future administrations to effectively wage the global war.

The results cannot be questioned though, and in what is without doubt the seminal achievement of his presidency there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. That is something no one would have predicted following that terrible day and it was due entirely to the decisive actions he implemented from that point forward. In fulfilling the President's main task of serving as commander-in-chief and defending the United States he consistently did right and did well, persisting regardless of the flak he got from critics, too many of whom were small men. As Congressman Peter Hoekstra writes, "President Bush demonstrated the character and patriotism that define a true American leader despite unrelenting partisan criticism over his decisions."

It was indeed a long eight years, and there were many mistakes the President made. But when the smoke and dust are gone history will remember that George Walker Bush did pretty well. He, like so many Americans, responded to the attacks of 9/11 with grace and determination, recognizing the monumental task before him. It will remember that he ordered the overthrow of two cruel regimes, leaving fifty-million Muslims safer and freer as a result. It will remember that when the chips were down in Iraq; when he could have given in to pressure and despair, he didn't fold but doubled his bet and America snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. It will remember that he lucidly did the hard things needed to be done and kept the American people safe. And finally, it will remember that despite his failings and weaknesses as a leader he never misrepresented who he was, he never lost his class or grace (even when so many of his detractors never demonstrated any themselves), and he never gave up.

And if history doesn't remember him for this, his supporter will.

I will.

Farewell and thank you, President Bush.

The President’s Guantanamo Pickle

After a campaign spent lambasting the Bush Administration for operations at Guantanamo Bay the new President has declared that the facility will be closed within the year. Unfortunately, more problems are created by this than by actually keeping it open.

For one, what is the administration going to do with the combatants being detained there? You know, the people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists who have committed their lives to incinerating the United States? They obviously can't release them without multiplying the folly of Gov. Dukakis' infamous furlough program by powers of a hundred. They could send them back to their countries of origin but that would seem a little hypocritical given the fact that President Obama waxed indignantly at his predecessor for such rendition (a policy the Clinton Administration practiced as well, incidentally).

Neither of these are an option obviously, so the detainees will have to be moved to a new facility, which entails even more problems. Trying to relocate them to domestic military installations, as has been suggested, will be met with fierce resistance from the communities they're located in, and understandably so. As the Wall Street Journal points out today, to have these men on American soil without the security the isolation of Guantanamo provides invites terrorist attack.

There's also that nagging little reality that all of this is farcically symbolic, as the Obama Administration will simply have to create another Guantanamo under another name to fulfill the very same purpose Guantanamo has fulfilled to date. The aforementioned problems seem a steep price to pay for such empty gestures, so wouldn't it be more pragmatic to simply reform the operations within Guantanamo that the President has objected too instead of enduring all of this heartburn? Sure he might look a little duplicitous after having promised to close the installment during the campaign, but there's been a number of positions and sentiments he held as a naïve candidate that he's since had to change when confronted with reality as President-Elect and President. This is just another one of those instances.

But as has become a pattern with this issue, there are even problems with that. He wishes to replace the system President Bush and the Congress set up in 2006 with a hypothetical process that will accord with the "basic principles of [the] Anglo-American legal system." Of course that is predicated upon the fallacy that the war we're in is a province for law-enforcement, which it most certainly is not. The detainees of Guantanamo aren't criminals but illegal combatants engaged in a type of war against the United States that we have not seen before and which, prior to 9/11, our institutions weren't constituted to respond to. Quoting the Journal again, "many of the Guantanamo prisoners haven't committed crimes per se but are dedicated American enemies and too dangerous to let go. Other cases involve evidence that is insufficient for trial but still sufficient to determine that release is an unacceptable security risk."

Unfortunately for the standing of President Obama's and the Left's previous sanctimony on the matter any responsible system that recognizes this fact while providing a fair legal process to deal with these terrorists is going to have to look like a lot like that which had been set up previously by Constitution shredder-in-chief George Bush. The President should just cut his losses, admit as much, and avoid making one of his first mistakes in office.

Lincoln & Obama

I was consumed in a convulsive shock when it was suggested a few weeks ago that President-Elect Obama is not a contemporary Lincoln. But now that I have gotten over it and my heart-rate has normalized I have been given pause to reflect. After due deliberation, I must accede that this may be the case. Maybe.

All sarcasm aside, of course the President-Elect does not drink at the same bar as Lincoln. One of their similarities – both took hold of the public spotlight in acclaimed speeches – illustrates this. Obama's keynote at the 2004 DNC and Lincoln's Cooper Union address reflect their disparate perspectives, temperaments, and depth of thought.

Then-St. Sen. Obama's keynote was short and platitudinous, uplifting but innocuous. He mostly avoided the specific issues relevant to the election and bemoaned the abstract problem of division and bitterness. He warned against unnamed, nefarious operators "who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.'" He declared that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America." The election wasn't about Iraq, the War on Terror, tax cuts, jobs, immigration or what have you, but whether "we participate in a politics of cynicism or…in a politics of hope."

Since complaining about partisanship is (ironically) about the only thing Americans can join hands in on a bi-partisan basis, the speech was an exercise in snatching the lowest-hanging fruit. Obama was able to endear himself to the base with uplifting vapor delivered in a sonorous voice without offending anyone else, which can always be accomplished when you never really say anything. Memorable was the presentation, not the content, such as there was.

Lincoln's at Cooper Union was a substantive and extended exposition on the Constitution's meaning on the dominant issue before his country – the expansion of slavery into the western territories. He prefaced his discourse with the perfectly scholarly question, "Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?" From that he entered a long examination discussing every instance in which the Congress had dealt with slavery in the territories. He cited the actions of the thirty-nine signers of the Constitution, twenty-three of which voted on the issue in the Confederacy and/or Constitutional Congresses. He concluded

that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one - a clear majority of the whole - certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding.

Quite distinct from Obama's tack, Lincoln did not speak of anonymous forces but addressed his critics by name – Southern Democrats – and exhorted them to take him and Republicans up in a reasoned debate. He mentioned each of their accusations and answered them; that Republicans were revolutionary, that they were enflaming the slavery issue, and that they promoted insurrection among the slaves. Then he used the historical evidence from the first half of his speech to make the case that it was his antagonists who were trying to bend the Constitution to their will, not the Republicans. Their "purpose…plainly stated, is that [they] will destroy the Government, unless [they are] allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as [they] please, on all points in dispute between [them] and us. [They] will rule or ruin in all events."

Lincoln certainly didn't waste time urging Northerners and Southerners – Republicans and Democrats – to put aside their differences and unify. Far from it:

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man.

Instead he exhorted his audience to "have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

At Cooper Union Lincoln used a deep understanding of history to answer a very specific question, demonstrating a profound degree of thought and awareness. He wasn't picking fruit from his knees but took on an issue that divided the country until it bled.

In the four years that elapsed between his keynote and election the President-Elect hasn't done the same. It is quite clear that he still does not know his own mind, either flipping positions or being conspicuously vague on the FISA bill, meeting with dictators, plans for Iraq, tax cuts, etc.

In the years before the White House Lincoln dedicated himself to considering and debating the issues of his age. President-Elect Obama used the same period to advance himself by focusing on himself, running a campaign based on personality, not issues or ideas.

Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln.

Myth Vaporizing

Gay rights activists' anger with President-Elect Obama's decision to have Rev. Rick Warren deliver the invocation at the Inaugural represents another instance of the Obama myth (held deeply in the hearts and minds of his most liberal supporters) vaporizing. Stung already by his moderate to conservative personnel appointments, the Left must now absorb another body blow to their deepest hopes and expectations.

That the President-Obama actually shares Rev. Warren's position on marriage (officially at least) is immaterial. As Byron York writes, "no matter what Obama says, a number of gay activists appear to believe the president-elect is, deep down, with them on the issue."

For their disappointment his more robotic supporters have no one to blame but themselves, falling prey to the Obama campaign's deliberate nebulosity, which encouraged them to project whatever views they wanted on him, all of which could fit under the umbrella of "change."

But now that he is in a position of action (the Presidency) and not one of talking (a candidate) he has to pull a reversal and project himself, whoever that may be. As Jennifer Rubin writes, "The essence of governing is doing and choosing. Rick Warren or Jesse Jackson? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates or Chuck Hagel? A tax increase or not? At some point your actions make clear your intentions. And inevitably one side or the other, both which thought he was with them, is disappointed."

The upshot is an inevitable conflict. A transition from diplomatic rhetoric to specific actions means that someone is left feeling hurt. You can be all things to all people when all you have to be is a blank canvas for other's disparate projections; you cannot be when you have to project something yourself. Quoting Rubin again,

All of the elevated expectations and conflicting promises might have helped get him elected, but they will make the governing more challenging. As President Obama is forced to choose on issue after issue, the ambiguities will become fewer and the complaints greater. It happens to all politicians, and even President Obama can't change that.

The unhappy truth for the Left is that the PE needs the support of a broad expanse of Americans to be successful, most of which don't share the values of the standard urban or campus liberal, his most robotic supporter. They should prepare themselves for more heartbreak.

The Fed Rate Cut

If the purpose is to raise confidence in an economy plagued by inertia and thereby loosen credit and cash flow, how does the Federal Reserve's rate abolition yesterday accomplish it? It is a tax on credulity to accept that confidence in the health of the economy increases in response to a desperate act by one of the economy's central entities. If the times can be so bleak as to justify such drastic measures then you'd be a fool to feel bully about releasing capital.

Accepting that the Wall Street Journal
is right – as I do – that the basic ailment of the economy is a surfeit of uncertainty, than this gambit hardly suffices as treatment. If anything, it looks like the kind of thing that put us in this mess, which was years of handing out credit like they hand out rosary beads in a Catholic Church.

As the Journal writes, "Banks, consumers and business are dug in their foxholes, conserving their cash until they believe the worst has passed. Meanwhile, investors around the world are deleveraging to reduce risk and cut their losses, a process that the Fed can do little about." Hail Mary's are not going to encourage anyone, and the groundhog will not be enticed from its hole until the mania above has stopped and the terrain has stabilized.

Automaker Bailout II

Edmund Burke wrote that an entity "without the means of change is without the means of its conservation." For such reason do the Detroit 3 and UAW whither.

The bailout package passed earlier by the House collapsed in the Senate last evening because of the Democratic leadership's and UAW's refusal to accept some of the stipulations set out in Sen. Bob Corker's (R-TN) restructuring plan, foremost of which was a requirement that Ford, GM, and Chrysler bring labor costs into line with their foreign-owned competitors by 2009 to receive federal money.

To give a dime to Detroit without such a mandate would negate the very point of the bailout, and would be the equivalent of throwing taxpayers dollars into a flushing toilet. The reason Detroit is here is because it is uncompetitive, and it is uncompetitive because of the exorbitant union-negotiated wages and capital structuring they have in place. An infusion of cash will not alter this dynamic, but only stave off the day of ultimate insolvency for a time. Continue to refuse to alter the wage and capital structure and it will fall into destitution again sooner or later; probably sooner.

The only condition under which it could remotely be appropriate to give taxpayer money to Detroit is in the form of a "bridge loan;" as an infusion of cash following a thorough restructuring as a means to making it through a perilous short-term. As Jim Geraghty points out, the need to reduce costs is all the more essential in a deep recession with low demand for new cars.

Detroit will not survive without changing its business model to reduce labor costs and overhead. Until it does so – and demonstrates a will to live – the stewards of taxpayer dollars shouldn't throw one dollar their way.

Voting ‘Present’

The President-Elect is receiving criticism today for his vague answers and response to questions about his own and his transition's knowledge and role in the Blagojevich Senate sale. Whether or not it's worthy of criticism, this ambiguity is characteristic of the man as a political figure and leader; he simply chafes at certitude and commitment.

In the late campaign his opponents criticized his penchant for voting "present" in the Illinois State Senate. At the Saddleback Presidential Forum in August all he would say about abortion was that "I'm absolutely convinced [there] is a moral and ethical element to this issue." As a candidate he was conspicuously vague about the economy as it crashed, and this has continued as President-Elect. He delayed announcing his selection for treasury secretary for weeks, ignoring the clamor from the markets. As a guest on Meet the Press last Sunday his common answer to questions about the economy was some variation of "my advisors are looking at this."

The person who ran on the empty bottles of "Hope" and "Change" simply does not like to commit himself on record; which entails taking a specific position, which means disappointing or even angering some group of people or another. As long as he floats in nebulosity he can be all things to all people. Should he be decisive he would actually have to descend into the squabbles of mortals, diminishing his transcendence.

If this were to happen, Barack Obama would not be Barack Obama.

An Iran Policy, Please

The latest from the IAEA reports that Iran is quickly approaching the point where it will have sufficient nuclear material to construct an atomic bomb. The very same regime that has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, in other words, will imminently have the means to do so.

Remarkably, the only audible response to this by the United States and the international community is that of crickets chirping in an ominously quiet night. Heretofore these parties have tried the much-hyped tack of diplomacy, with European powers meeting with the Iranian regime since 2005 to try to negotiate some settlement that will stop the Islamic Republic's nuclear mobilization. It very clearly hasn't worked though, and representatives of the regime have recently indicated that they have no intention of pursuing or agreeing to any carrots and sticks package the incoming Obama Administration may propose.

As a result the West is mired in a state of self-induced paralysis. Our treasured notions of soft power and diplomacy have failed, a failure that is shared by everyone. Bowing to criticism of its alleged unilateralism and international bullying (apparently), the Bush Administration decided to let Britain, France, and Germany have a go at negotiations with the mullahs that were doomed to failure from the start. To add injury to futility, no meaningful economic sanctions have been enacted or even pursued by the UN Security Council, which might have actually worked. In essence we pursued a doomed policy with no backup strategy for when it inevitably failed.

Now we are at a crossroads. As the leader of the West and the free world, the United States must make a decision on the fundamental question that we have refused to discuss: is it acceptable for the Islamic Republic of Iran to have a nuclear capacity? Consideration and decision of this question will permit us to do something; either prepare for the management of a state of affairs redefined by Iranian nuclear capacity or prepare a new strategy for preventing that. If not answered almost immediately the question will soon be immaterial, for the regime will have that capacity. Once arrived at this point we will find ourselves in a situation we are unprepared for and unequipped to advantageously respond to.

We need a policy; almost any policy. Whatever it is, it will be better than our present state of paralysis and denial.

The Arrest of Gov. Blagojevich

It is still very early to develop or offer any comprehensive opinion on the arrest this morning of Gov. Ron Blagojevich, Democrat of Illinois. But I can't help but sadly marvel at not only the laundry list of crimes he is alleged to have committed but also his base audacity in the perpetuation of them. For years now he has been under scrutiny for corruption, which a reasonable person might assume would deter him from further criminal commission.

On the contrary, his sewer Chicago politics has continued apace, with the governor wasting no opportunity to use his public trust for personal profit. Not only is this incredibly despicable, but incredibly stupid.

435 Caos

Angh "Joseph" Cao's victory in the Louisiana 2^nd Congressional District special election on Saturday was certainly welcome. It was a GOP pickup, of which there have not been many lately. It sent a virulently corrupt politician home, far away from the public trust he has abused for his own personal profit. And, adding to a year of barrier-breaking, it was the first instance of a Vietnamese-American winning election to the U.S. Congress.

Some grains of salt must be retained though. It was a special election with pathetic turnout. Had it occurred on Nov. 4 – with massive black turnout in a preponderantly black district – the result would have been different. And because it is such a Democratic district the national environment for Republicans is going to have to improve significantly for Cao to stand any chance of reelection in '10.

Nevertheless, I do agree with Patrick Ruffini. "In crafting our 435 district strategy, the lesson is that we don't need to run risk-averse politicians in longshot seats. We need to run everyday heroes like Cao. We need to identify people outside politics who've done things in the community and who can capitalize on the incumbents' mistakes."

The types of candidates Republicans should seek to run under our banner are local heroes. They're the people who didn't run for office once they were out of the cradle and haven't spent their entire adulthood working in government. They're regular folks. They've worked hard, overcome obstacles, and achieved in the private sector. Such individuals and candidates do not simply articulate conservative values and principles, they personify them. That is a verbatim description of Joseph Cao, and we should seek out more variations of him. As Ruffini points out, "Every district has a Joseph Cao."

The Executive to Be

As President-Elect Obama continues to announce the various officials he will be filling his administration with he gives an increasing indication of what type of executive he will be. His appointment of Congressman Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff is particularly noticeable given his reputation as a cutthroat (though not exceedingly ideological) partisan. This is a conspicuous difference from the image of trans-partisan healer the President-Elect has heretofore fashioned for himself.

Perhaps fitting in with a pattern of the man, some of the subordinates he surrounded himself with as a candidate and the underlying tone and behavior of his campaign didn't precisely fit in with his overall narrative either. His closest aide, David Axelrod, was "an expert at clandestine political attacks," Mark Hemingway writes. "According to BusinessWeek, he is the 'master of "Astro-turfing'" – the art of planting messages on the Internet and elsewhere to make it look like there's a grassroots movement supporting your position."

Further, when a Chicago radio station planned to interview NR writer Stanley Kurtz about the PE's ties to Bill Ayers the Obama campaign sent an action wire to Chicago supporters urging them to pressure the station into dropping the interview. The campaign also tried to use various government agencies to shut down organizations running ads critical of the PE.

While it may be a stretch to call these tactics the beginning of a thugocracy, they are something slightly less than savory. While the campaign and now the administration plays ball in the mud – slinging it around without inhibition – the executive himself conveniently remains disassociated, keeping his hands clean while others get theirs dirty. Call it a kind of good cop/bad cop dynamic, as the editors of National Review have.

Whatever it is, it is not befitting an American president and his administration (especially when the PE and so many of his supporters railed against shadows on the wall of Bush administration malfeasance).

Hopefully the early indicia never bear their poisoned fruit.

This Bailout Farce

If you were to select a word of the year for the nearly-concluded 2008 it would probably be "Change," the ever vacuous and open-ended term that was the byword of the Obama campaign and was used to encapsulate the desire of the American electorate. If you had to turn the dime though and predict the word of 2009 it would be a safe bet to go with "bailout." The term is ubiquitous in political discussions today as the Democratic majorities in Congress and the administration-to-be contemplate bailouts for all manner of entities in this declining economy – the auto industry, the deficit-ridden states, and the country as a whole in the form of a massive stimulus package.

The economy is in a state of extremity, or at least perceived to be, so it is no surprise that the powers that be, desperate to demonstrate they are doing something to solve the problem, are preparing to take extreme measures themselves. In this maelstrom of hysteria we are losing our senses though. The reasons that Detroit and most of the states are so deep in a fiscal quicksand is because they have put themselves there, awarding ridiculous labor compensation that makes them uncompetitive in the case of the former and spending ludicrous sums of their residents' money in the case of the latter.

Throwing federal dollars at them will do nothing but temporarily alleviate the symptoms of an underlying sickness. It will neither rework their business model to make them competitive nor cut their unsustainable and profligate expenditures to balance their budgets. This they need to do on their own, and they are the only ones that can. Ultimately the federal government cannot help them, but it can waste a lot of money trying, which is the added tragedy of this growing farce. Spending money it does not have to give to other entities so they can spend in a manner they couldn't otherwise afford is going to catch up with us sooner or later, and when that day comes whom will be the ones to bail us out? Who are we going to turn to when this country has to satisfy the exorbitant unfunded obligations our government has incurred over the decades?

The federal government is ignoring this nagging question, exacerbating our long-term financial problems for short-term band-aids and political gain. In so doing they are not only kicking the can down the road a little further but also shortening the road still left to kick it down.

Somebody needs to stand up and end this before we sink ourselves. Instead of wasteful bailouts that will not work, the entities demanding them need to get their own house in order and come to terms with the self-created problems that have brought them to pathetic supplication. The federal government needs to do the same, drastically reforming the institutions that we are slowly realizing we can't afford (and never could). And if we want to restore the long-term health of the economy we ought to take our medicine for the national pandemic of reckless lending and borrowing that brought us here and then foster the conditions requisite for economic recovery, which will not be defined by blind, arbitrary government adventurism deep into the wilderness of the economy.

This farce will be over when all of that happens.

RE: The Chambliss/Obama Victory

It is far, far too early to tell, but Sen. Chambliss' double digit victory last night also provides a little evidence that PE Obama's success and popularity is not only a result of his predecessor's deep unpopularity, but of his own unique personality as well, which might not necessarily transfer to Democrats in general when he is not at the top of the ballot in an environment looking to punish the incumbent of the other party. If true (an open if), this would belie the claim that the President-Elect's ascendance is a reformative moment in American politics which has or will secure the Democrats as the republic's dominant party. The groups that constituted a large part of his margin of victory and his competitiveness in Georgia (unusual for a Democrat) – young voters and blacks – scarcely showed up in the run-off after all.

For the reasons mentioned in the previous post not much should be read into that, but it does at least leave the question begging about whether President-Elect Obama has brought these new voters into the party and the electoral process permanently or just to himself when he is on the ballot.

Let's wait until he has been sworn in (at least) before we try and answer this question.

The Chambliss/Obama Victory

Charles Krauthammer posited an interesting theory during the "FOX All-Stars" segment of Special Report today. In his mind the real winner of last night's runoff election contest in Georgia was President-Elect Obama, the reason being that Jim Martin's deficit was three points in the general election when the PE was on top of the ballot but was fifteen points when he was not. This will allow the President-Elect to make the claim to Democrats in Congress, in Krauthammer's estimation, that his political star is carrying them and that they need to get behind him and insure his administration's success to insure their own.

It is an interesting idea, but not especially persuasive. For one, the next President will be able to make that argument anyway as any President eligible for re-election would. The success of the party who holds the White House is determined by how the public perceives its individual occupant. If they view him positively, it helps the party; if they view him negatively, it is a drag, to one degree or another.

Also, run-off elections are notorious for their low turnout because they come after a long campaign after which everyone is usually campaign-weary and not especially keen on voting again. As a result the vote usually goes to the default choice, i.e. to the incumbent or member of the predominant party in the voting area. This is exactly what happened in Georgia, a reliably Republican state where the Republican incumbent won convincingly.

If the result from yesterday tells us anything beyond that it is that President-Elect Obama's convincing victory was almost entirely predicated upon the extreme unpopularity of the outgoing Republican incumbent. For practical purposes now the PE is the President, and so the fuel for his and the Democrats' success is gone, at least for their recent success. Sen. Chambliss was able to run in the last month against a Democratic President and Congress, plausibly billing himself as a needed check against this liberal juggernaut. That's the recipe for success in a state reliably Republican.

MTP's New Moderator

David Gregory is to be the late Tim Russert’s successor as moderator of Meet the Press. A feckless choice really. His brand of pompous, partisan sniping as a means of questioning – too typical among the contemporary Washington media class – will stand as a stark departure from the tough but usually fair questioning Russert greeted his guests with each week.

Besides, Jonah Goldberg is right; MTP ought to live up to its name now and have a diverse panel of media figures moderating each week, which would actually distinguish the program from its Sunday morning brethren and make it a much more compelling watch. As Goldberg points out:

What's wrong with bringing three or four hard-hitting journalists to ask questions the way they used to? This is not only the best way to get a more diverse line of questioning (I would love to see Byron York or Steve Hayes on there asking questions no one else would ask), but it would help forestall some truly awful choices that seem to be in the hopper...David Gregory seems like a terrible choice for among other reasons, he's not very likable on TV (Russert's likeability was a huge asset).

The PE & Iraq

During the press conference announcing his national security team yesterday President-Elect Obama gave mixed signals on his plan for Iraq. At one point he asserted that he remains dedicated to his sixteen month plan while at another he said he’d be flexible and listen to his commanders on the ground, even commending the recent SOF passed by the Iraqi parliament. What’s more, though he initially predicated his entire campaign on his fervent opposition to the war and determination to bring it to a premature end he is retaining the Defense Secretary responsible for implementing the current President’s surge strategy, which the President-Elect never went on record removing his opposition to. As his national security advisor he has even selected an individual who appeared with his opponent during the course of the late campaign.

In reality the requirement on President-Elect Obama regarding Iraq is straight forward and simple: don’t screw it up. The Bush Administration has handed over an Iraq almost completely pacified of al Qaeda and sectarian violence and increasingly stable and functional. In fact, as Rich Lowry points out, "Perhaps never has someone owed so much to a policy he opposed so vehemently. First, the success of the surge diminished the Iraq War as an issue in the general election. Second, it makes it possible to contemplate a responsible drawdown in Iraq."

That is all the next President needs to do for American victory – allow the present policy to proceed and conclude the success it has achieved.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sen. Obama's Iraq Pretzel

The Obama Campaign announced today that their candidate will be delivering a “major” address on Iraq tomorrow in Washington. This comes on the heels of Sen. Obama’s op-ed in the New York Times on Iraq today, or more appropriately, on his new and improved Iraq Plan 2.0.

In this piece he conspicuously neglects a few little pieces of truth which are a bit inconvenient to him and his claims of heightened judgment. He opens:

The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

It is true that he has long called for a retreat – euphemistically labeled a “phased redeployment” – from Iraq, but that is not something he ought to go around pounding his chest over, for it demonstrates his poor judgment since – at least – January ‘07. That was the month when President Bush announced his surge of forces, a decision which – for the record – Sen McCain had been calling for since American forces set foot on Iraqi sand. Then, as now, Sen. Obama went on the record and boldly made the following black and white argument:

I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse. I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. So I am going to actively oppose the president’s proposal…. I think he is wrong, and I think the American people believe he’s wrong.

To his ultimate chagrin however, events (or what Machiavelli called fortuna) would not stand by Sen. Obama. The surge was and has been an unqualified success. That he did not have the judgment to see that this was possible and that he failed to either recognize or acknowledge the surge’s dramatic effect subsequently is something he would like us all to forget, and is something he neglects entirely in his piece. Specifically, in touting his long-held plan of “phased redeployment” he does not mention the policy – which he opposed and consistently preached would fail – that has made it even remotely possible for us to leave Iraq without it being an unmitigated disaster in every conceivable way to do so.

He will never admit it, but as Peter Wehner writes, “It is because President Bush endorsed a counterinsurgency plan which Senator Obama fiercely opposed that we are in a position to both withdraw additional combat troops and prevail in Iraq.” Nor will he admit that it was because Sen. McCain took such a personal and momentous role in seeing that Congress supported – or at least did not thwart – the successful implementation of that surge that Sen. Obama can claim the recalibrated position on Iraq he does today.

Sen. Obama continues in his NYT opinion that “I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.”

Even if we accept that going into Iraq initially distracted us from our fight against al-Qaeda, that still does not absolve the fact that Sen. Obama recklessly called for American retreat from Iraq after it became the central front in the war on terror. In other words, it may not have been so originally, but the fact is indisputable that Iraq is now the central front – as al Qaeda itself has said – and has been since the end of initial combat there.

Sen. Obama also declares that as president he will “give the military a new mission: ending this war.”

Of course, ending the war has been the goal of everyone on every side of this issue since it was an issue, the disagreement being over the prudent and most effective way of ending the war, not actually whether to end it.

Sen. Obama determined that we ought to get out yesterday, consequences be damned. He sought nothing but ending the war for that sake alone, either neglecting to consider the adverse ramifications that would come as certainly as gravity or callously disregarding them.

Sen. McCain took the opposite tact. He determined that anything less than ending the war in victory would entail costs far more than this country could bear. So he doubled the bet and lobbied for increased force levels which then secured the country and put a strong foot up the collective ass of al Qaeda. As a result, the United States is now courting victory and it is possible for Sen. Obama to advance the one half of his plan that never would have been made possible by the other.

*****

At this point Sen. Obama’s pretzel is complete. After all these months and even years of tearing Sen. McCain to shreds over his judgment on Iraq, he has slowly walked over and taken a position right next to him, secretly adopting the Republican’s positions while still criticizing him every bit as vociferously as before. He has begun to admit – or his surrogates have – that circumstances might render his plans inoperable and has even pledged to consult with commanders on the ground before making any definitive and ill-advised decisions. Ultimately, his “phased redeployment” – now that victory in Iraq is all but achieved – probably isn’t that much different from the process of redeployment currently in operation.

Essentially, Sen. Obama is now the beneficiary of Sen. McCain’s judgement and statesmanship. He scored his political points assaulting Sen. McCain on Iraq and can now enjoy the fruits of those very same policies as a candidate in the general.

Accordingly, I would submit that Sen. Obama ought to thank Sen. McCain, at least when no one is looking. If it weren’t for him he might have had to actually answer for the consequences of his proposals, or would at least have to spend time finding some other way to blame Sen. McCain for the mess in Iraq that in reality his own policies prescripted.

Don’t worry, Sen. Obama; words need not be spoken. On behalf of Sen. McCain and all those who opposed your reckless positions – you’re welcome. Enjoy the pretzel.

Preserve the Electoral College

The Electoral College has come under increasing siege in recent years, to the point now that there is an effort – touched upon in these pages a few days ago by Scott Lehigh – to undermine it through the national popular vote interstate agreement. The Washington State Senate has already passed a version of this accord once and it will undoubtedly come into consideration once again when the legislative session begins early next year. Washingtonians as well as all Americans should be on their guard, for a national popular vote will fail to yield the benefits its proponents promise.

In describing the Electoral College as "that most antiquated of arrangements," Mr. Lehigh blithely ignores the real benefits it confers upon our democracy. It compels candidates to adopt moderate approaches and to build truly national coalitions of voters, thereby discouraging political extremism from either the right or left.

Further, trading the Electoral College for a national popular vote would bring about a smaller – not broader – national campaign. Only required to get the most popular votes, the major candidates would need only to retreat to the major metropolitan areas and/or into their biggest bases of support to engage in dueling contests of running up the score. Without the allure of electoral votes, they would have no incentive to visit and address the concerns and interests of the middling to minimally populated states that do receive attention now, such as Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, New Hampshire and, yes, Washington.

The Electoral College also serves as a bulwark against corruption and electoral fraud. In a close presidential election decided by popular vote, fraud in one major metropolitan area could be enough to swing the election one way or another. That this is a real possibility only increases the incentive – and thus the likelihood – for someone to engage in such an effort in the right circumstances.

Under the current system though, voter fraud can be isolated to one state without it necessarily swinging the entire election. The threat of corruption is still real, but the Electoral College goes a long way in reducing it.

Mr. Lehigh also misses the point when he bemoans the fact that so many states are currently ignored to the benefit of a select few "battleground states." As Tara Ross has pointed out, the reason these states don’t receive the attention more closely-contested ones do is because they "already feel that one of the two presidential candidates represents their interests fairly well."

Ultimately, even though there is nothing technically illegal or unconstitutional about the national popular vote effort, it is a (borrowing Mr. Lehigh’s term) "clever" short-cut in changing the Constitution without actually going through the process of amending it and winning the national debate doing so would require. In other words, it has the same drawbacks as a national popular vote, which is reason enough for us to preserve a system that has always given us the benefit of truly national and moderate presidential elections and presidents.

Simply put, the Electoral College is good for American democracy and we should keep it.

Davis v. FEC

Follow and support the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform (McCain-Feingold) too much and you might begin to think we live in some strange vortex where the Constitution and its First Amendment do not really mean what they say. Disabusing this notion if and where it exists (in this case at least), the Court held in Davis v. FEC that §§319(a) and (b) violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Alito wrote that, "the unprecedented step of imposing different contribution and coordinated party expenditure limits on candidates vying for the same seat is antithetical to the First Amendment" and the "argument that a candidate’s speech may be restricted in order to ‘level electoral opportunities’ has ominous implications because it would permit Congress to arrogate the voters’ authority to evaluate the strengths of candidates competing for office."

Justice Alito and the Court are correct and their conclusion is the only one reconcilable with the text of the First Amendment, which mandates that "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech." The language is pretty explicit, and it certainly does not say (as it would have to for this provision to be Constitutionally permissible) that "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, except when Congress determines that doing so will help level the playing field between competing candidates for Congress."

Hoping to preserve its prerogative to regulate political speech, the government argued that the provision is justified "because it ameliorates the deleterious effects that result from the tight limits that federal election law places on individual campaign contributions and coordinated party expenditures." However that is neither here nor there. The First Amendment says without exception that Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech period, irrespective of the putative salutary effects and benefits of doing so. As Justice Alito pointed out, by penalizing an individual’s unfettered exercise of his right to free speech the government therebyn abridges it.

Noble intentions do not justify violating the text of the First Amendment. The Constitution does in fact actually mean what it says.

'Change' Defined

Those who have wondered what it was in specific that Sen. Obama meant in his oft-delivered promises of "change" should now have an answer. The "change" Sen. Obama promises and stands for is the prerogative to change his mind, memberships, mentors, commitments, etc. whenever it is expedient and convenient for him to do so. Previous manifestations of this include his relationship with Rev. Wright, his family’s membership at Trinity United, and his back-tracking on his previous promise to sit down with America’s enemies without condition, to name a few.

There is another case in point today. After promising to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election" Sen. Obama announced that he will forego public financing–with nary an attempt to work out an agreement with Sen. McCain—in the upcoming campaign. His only justification for his blatant duplicity is a lame argument that "John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs." That is rich coming from a man who refuses to break one step with liberal special interests and distorts his own pious refusal to accept money from lobbyists.

We’ve tread on this ground before. Is Barack Obama really a new kind of politician? Hardly. He is simply a typical politician with a conspicuous chasm between word and deed, between Barack Obama the man and Barack Obama the myth. Ironically the person most determined to prove this is Sen. Obama himself.

Stick to the Code, Sen. McCain

Republicans in the branches of Congress and throughout the Washington establishment are hiking enthusiasts, we can only conclude. How can we not? In the three and a half years that have elapsed since the election of 2004 we have demonstrated an incorrigible determination to delve deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the political wilderness. We were punished for this avant garde tendency in ‘06, decisively losing our governing majorities in Congress that we so uselessly squandered. A lesson was to be gleaned from this punishment, a lesson which has apparently fallen upon inattentive ears.

The establishment GOP for too long has been far too tolerant of corruption within its midst. Residing within government simply to gorge upon its trough is antithetical to every principle which defines the party, yet too few within the party’s apparatus are willing to undertake the dirty work of preserving the integrity of those principles and of the party in general. Thus we march deeper into the wilderness.

Pork-barrel spending—the nectar and sustenance, nay the seed of corruption—also flies antagonistic to our party’s principles, yet in the years since we have controlled Congress until this day it has grown exponentially among the caucuses in the House and Senate, even after our ass-whipping in November ‘06. A recent proposition by House Minority Leader John Boehner that House Republicans adhere to a moratorium on pork was easily defeated. What is more, some of the caucuses’ most disreputable appropriators maintain their positions of leadership within the caucus and on committees. Thus we march deeper into the wilderness.

Though many good, credible conservative solutions there be, Republicans in Congress still provide no compelling agenda to address the country’s problems and the concerns of the American people, such as health care, energy, the economy, Iran, North Korea, etc. Democrats have their own (big government, terrible) ideas, we appear to have none. Thus we march deeper into the wilderness.

The upshot is that Republicans face losses this year every bit as significant as those in ‘06, losses which will strengthen the Democrats’ grasp on the levers of power in Washington and their ability to inflict real harm through their disastrous prescriptions. It does not help Republicans that their own malfeasances have coincided with Democrats’ long-awaited realization that to win Congressional seats within generally conservative America you have to run candidates who are themselves conservative, specifically on social issues, immigration, spending, etc. Witness Travis Childers’ recent victory in a House special election in heretofore Republican Mississippi.

Without reformation, complacent Republicans will only watch their seats dwindle further and further year after year. This leaves Sen. McCain in the position of having to enforce the Pirate’s Code: Whoever falls behind, is left behind. He has to press ahead with his reform agenda, touching upon those issues of concern to the American voter that Congressional Republicans at least appear to be ignoring. Be prepared to go it alone; if Republicans in Congress want to follow great, they’ll be doing all of us a favor. If they do not, press forward regardless. I wouldn’t wait for them to return from their furlough into the wilderness.

It's Been Decided For Awhile, Folks

The political commentariat is now operating under the assumption that Sen. Obama has at long last clinched the Democratic nomination by his landslide victory in the North Carolina primary and his near upset of Sen. Clinton in Indiana. This is wrong from the standpoint that Sen. Obama was effectively assured of the nomination following his string of victories following Super Tuesday, long before this past Tuesday. Indiana and North Carolina did not change anything except convince many of what was already, for all intents and purposes, inevitable.

Sen. Clinton intends to carry on, of course, because she is Sen. Clinton. As David Kahane writes, “She’s not going to quit because she has nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do. She lives for this, and without it, she has no life. In fact, without it, she doesn’t exist at all.” Since her husband raised his right hand in ‘93 she has been preparing for the day that she could raise hers. Until Sen. Obama’s nomination is official, she is not going to let that go.

Though it is all but inevitable at this point, it is only all but inevitable. That is how she will view the situation at least. She will look forward to large victories in the upcoming Kentucky and West Virginia primaries, hoping significant margins there will stoke further discussion of Sen. Obama’s inability to win over white, blue-collar voters and give Democratic super-delegates further pause as they size up the strength of Sen. Obama as a general election candidate. She will also continue to push for the seating of Michigan’s and Florida’s delegates at the convention (she sent a letter to Sen. Obama today laughably urging him to support that effort), arguing–not without some semblance of a point–that to deny those delegates seats would be to disenfranchise Democratic voters in those respective states and harm Democrats politically in what will be two pivotal battlegrounds in the fall.

Ultimately, these efforts will fail and Sen. Obama, warts and all, will accept the nomination in Denver this August. All that is really left to be decided is whether Sen. Clinton can and even wants to muscle herself onto the ticket and how exactly such a ticket would play in the fall. The race for the Democratic nomination is essentially decided and has been decided for sometime, but the saga and theater shall continue hence.

Sen. McCain & the Judiciary

Second only to the role of commander-in-chief, a President’s most solemn and consequential function is to appoint judges to the federal judiciary. Once appointed these jurists serve for life, kept accountable only by the substance of their own jurisprudence and the dictates of their conscience. From behind their august bench it is entirely within their power to willfully manipulate the laws and the Constitution of the United States in all manner of ways which their textual import does not bear.

If privileged to serve as our 44th President, Sens. Clinton and Obama have made it all too clear that this is exactly the type of judge they will appoint to the bench and the Supreme Court. Assuming awesome powers they do not rightfully possess, these judges would continue the federal judiciary’s steady trespass into the provinces and functions of the elected branches of the federal, state, and municipal governments that has been problematic for the past half-century. These are judges who will interpret the Constitution as entirely malleable to the dictates, caprices, and “evolving standards of decency” of themselves and their colleagues.

This is not acceptable. The province of the federal judiciary is to interpret and apply the text of the laws and Constitution of the United States in accordance with the import they carried when they were originally adopted, not to refashion them in a manner they deem appropriate, which is always inappropriate. In a regime based upon popular consent, judicial adventures into the realm of the political branches are intolerable and an absolute anathema to democracy. As President Lincoln so ably put it in his first inaugural, “the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

In his speech on the federal judiciary today Sen. McCain recognized this, pledging to

"look for accomplished men and women with a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment to judicial restraint. I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist — jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference. My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power. They will be men and women of experience and wisdom, and the humility that comes with both. They will do their work with impartiality, honor, and humanity, with an alert conscience, immune to flattery and fashionable theory, and faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States."

Let this sentiment not be once uttered in today’s speech and never again in the campaign. I would urge the senator return to it again and again, creating a clear distinction and choice for the voter between his opponent and himself. He ought to reiterate that whether you are conservative or liberal, those issues of the greatest significance to the republic must be decided the correct way through the legal and Constitutional political processes that have served us as a people throughout our history, whether you agree with the ultimate results or not. The federal judiciary has its place in our Constitutional republic, it should remain within that. This is only achieved by appointing the right type of judges to the bench, the type of judges Sen. McCain now promises to appoint as President.

Sen. Obama's New Outrage

Sen. Obama has finally found himself in the position where anything less than an open and unconditional condemnation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright is politically untenable. This is primarily because his and other’s assertions that the multiple comments of the reverend that have surfaced before the public over previous weeks were taken out of context has been belied by Rev. Wright’s reiteration and extension of those viewpoints in his various public appearances this week.

In consequence, Sen. Obama has finally asserted his outrage publicly, which of course only raises the question, why now? It would strain credulity to accept that he was never aware of Rev. Wright’s deranged views for the past twenty years he sustained a close relationship with him, so then why is it now—only now—that Sen. Obama has become outraged? Why never in the two previous decades when he was sitting in the pews listening to this bile? You and I can be forgiven if we suspect that the answer to this question is very plain: he is now running for President of the United States and his prospects of being elected as such are being jeopardized by his intimate association with Rev. Wright.

As we go forward from this, Sen. Obama’s problem will be that Americans hold this suspicion too and that, beyond this, they begin think Sen. Obama’s only real objection to Rev. Wright’s views is their political inexpedience to his campaign, not their actual content and substance. This would be fatal, and Sen. Obama must now train his focus on doing all he can to prevent this suspicion from permeating the consciousness of the American voter. Doing this is all the more pressing because he is hemorrhaging in his race against Sen. Clinton. Good luck, Senator.

Some Clarification

It would probably be helpful to infuse a little clarity where it might be lacking regarding the objections towards Sen. Obama’s recent “bitter” comments, for those who may misunderstand the substance of those objections that is. We who do object–or at least myself–do not do so to Sen. Obama’s contention that many small-town Americans are “bitter” or upset at economic hardship and suffering. Where this hardship exists, there is obviously bitterness and angst and we nor anyone else would deny this.

What is objectionable and frankly offensive is Sen. Obama’s belief that small-town Americans simply “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” for any reason. This fully de-legitimizes those beliefs and practices and reduces them to mere childish and irrational reaction to and epiphenomena of adverse circumstances. As Rich Lowry points out, this is an irrefutable refusal to meet people on their own terms and reveals an “assumption…that only liberal attitudes are normal and well-adjusted: If only these small-town people could earn more income, get an advanced degree, and move to a major metropolitan area, then they could shed their chrysalis of social conservatism.”

That is what is objectionable.

Barack Obama, Teflon Man?

Phil Klein and Jim Geraghty considered yesterday whether Sen. Obama is Teflon Man, immune and impervious to any negative ramifications that would stand to be incurred by the politically erosive toll of controversies such as “Bittergate”, Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, etc. It is an open question well worth the discourse, and I submit that we will not be in a position to answer it anytime soon, not until this perpetual contest between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama is decided that is.

Much of the available polling data tends to inform us that the aforementioned controversies have not had any substantial negative effect on Sen. Obama among Democratic primary voters. But this is only half the story, as the dynamics of a primary race—for both political parties—and a general election campaign are two beasts in complete disparity. Democratic primary voters are, speaking generally, decidedly more liberal than the great swath of voters in the general electorate. Their principles, perceptions, ideologies, and priorities are of a different form. Accordingly, they would tend not to take much offense towards Sen. Obama’s close association with Rev. Wright, an anti-American bigot, or Sen. Obama’s de-legitimization of millions of blue-collar Americans’ religious views and practices, their lifestyles, and political principles.

This might not be the case among the general electorate, of which only a minority slice is distinctly liberal. The rest is comprised of centrist Democrats (Reagan Democrats), independents, and Republicans. In consequence, what was not an issue in the Democratic primary may very well be a big issue in the general and a burdensome yoke hampering Sen. Obama’s candidacy. We will not know this until Sen. Obama actually becomes the Democratic nominee and the dynamics of a general election campaign between himself and Sen. McCain reveal themselves.

Along this train of thought, Mr. Geraghty questions whether Sen. Obama’s “bitter” comments are or possibly can be a “killer gaffe”. I doubt they can be, but I also don’t think that is the point. Demeaning millions of Americans is not a gaffe that once uttered dooms his chances, but along with Rev. Wright, Rezko, and his previous political record they can serve to create a general impression about Sen. Obama among Americans that is deleterious to his prospects in November. It might be one component piece among a general corpus which fosters a suspicion and conviction among independents and others that Sen. Obama is one who looks down upon those who are deeply or actively religious, are hawks on immigration, and/or who own and use guns.

If this becomes the case among enough voters, Sen. Obama will be at pains to win what has been thought to be a shoe-in victory for Democrats this November. As Michael Goodwin writes, “Already facing a racial barrier made worse by the incendiary comments of his pastor, the Rev. Wright, the notion that Obama is also a liberal elitist could prove fatal in swing states.” Time will tell if this becomes so, or if Sen. Obama is a man of Teflon and in time the forty-fourth President of the United States.