Robert Strange McNamara

McNamara, the king-sized embodiment of Kennedy’s “best and brightest” [click picture to enlarge], is dead at 93. What did McNamara leave behind?

David Ignatius, the Washington Post’s leading columnist on foreign policy and the son of McNamara’s army secretary, says McNamara found:

Vietnam shattered the rationalist's faith: Here was a peasant enemy, fighting in what looked to us like pajamas and living off handfuls of rice, that somehow persisted against all of America's military might -- and all of McNamara's slide-rule calculations.

To Ignatius, the larger McNamara lesson is:

[B]e wary of the notion that smart people can solve any problem if they just try hard enough. . . -- and encourage us to consider, even when we feel most confident, the possibility that we could be wrong.

Liberals seemed to have taken at least part of that lesson to heart. Last January at the beginning of Obama’s administration, liberals worried that overseas, Obama would follow “the best and brightest” into the same misguided use of force Vietnam proved to be.

Yet McNamara has also become a bogeyman for conservatives afraid of what Obama’s “best and brightest” are doing to our economy. George Will writes:

Today, something unsettlingly similar to McNamara's eerie assuredness pervades the Washington in which he died. . . The apogee of McNamara's professional life, in the first half of the 1960s, coincided. . . with the apogee of the belief that behavioralism had finally made possible a science of politics. Behavioralism held . . . that the social and natural sciences are not so different, both being devoted to the discovery of law-like regularities that govern the behavior of atoms, hamsters, humans, whatever. . . [that t]hings that can be quantified can be controlled. And everything can be quantified.

And Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argues:

Obama's "New Foundation" [like Kennedy’s “New Frontier”] is an era of soaring rhetoric, big plans and boundless self-regard, issued by an administration convinced it can apply technocratic, top-down solutions to huge and unpredictable systems -- the banking, auto and health-care industries, for instance, or the climate. . . people deeply impressed by their own smarts, the ones for whom the phrase "the best and the brightest" has been scrubbed of its intended irony. . . the mentality of the planner remains alive and well in Washington today, along with the aura of cool intellectual certainty.

But those who looked closest at McNamara’s Vietnam tragedy seem to have reached more nuanced conclusions. Errol Morris, the filmmaker whose documentary “The Fog of War” focused on McNamara and Vietnam, wrote:

the taped conversations between President Lyndon Johnson and . . . Mr. McNamara [suggest] that the pressure for escalation did not come from Mr. McNamara, but from Johnson. Mr. McNamara was not an enthusiast for [Vietnam].

And Ignatius similarly writes:

McNamara was a reluctant warrior, half in and half out, increasingly convinced that our firepower wouldn't work in this asymmetrical war. For the military, that was his greatest sin -- that he sacrificed young American lives without fully believing in the possibility of victory.

My view about McNamara formed after reading ex-Vietnam correspondent Neil Sheehan’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book about the war, A Bright Shining Lie:

McNamara’s doubts about Vietnam show clearly throughout The Pentagon Papers. Beginning in mid-1966, McNamara used his first team, Alain Entoven’s Systems Analysis numbers crunchers, to document that Vietnam was unwinnable—Vietnamese forces had the initiative in 85% of clashes with Americans. While 1966 may seem late, most American deaths in Vietnam occurred after that date.

In fact, the mid-1966 U.S. death toll in Vietnam was around 5,000, a total that eventually reached 58,193.

Palin and the Ruling Class

the effective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it.

--Karl Rove

Rove was speaking of Sarah Palin’s resignation as Alaska governor. He means Palin’s “strategy” for pursuing the presidency after in mid-term suddenly vacating her office as a small state governor is anything but clear.

Here's some clarity: Obama showed how a relatively young, inexperienced author, one who is good-looking, telegenic, with an attractive family, can completely upset the political apple cart. It helps if the author makes money from the book and related speeches.

Palin needs a good book. Not there yet.

Here’s what Obama proved to be: the perfect candidate to bring America’s ruling class back to its rightful place at the top of the political mountain. Obama personified the Ivy League-based power structure’s long-held dream of an America run by the right people on behalf of all of us—black, brown, female, gay, and secular, as well as white, straight, Christian, male.

Here’s what Palin will seek to be: the perfect candidate for all who view the liberal elite as a privileged class whose emphasis on big government manipulation of American business truly threatens our prosperity; an elite shielded by a superior, mocking media and entertainment conglomerate that practices personal destruction of those who challenge it.

Political pundits, part of the media conglomerate themselves, may miss the clarity of Palin’s struggle.

Obama's Job Gap (updated)

President Obama promised his stimulus plan would create or retain 3-4 million jobs by 2010 (average 3.5 million). Thus far in 2009, employment has dropped 3.4 million. The resulting Obama job gap stands at 6.9 million jobs [chart]. We are following the Obama job gap in the same spirit as former “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert followed Bush’s job count throughout Bush 43’s first term, at least until Bush’s numbers turned positive (the term ended with Bush up 4.2 million jobs; Obama too is likely to be in positive territory by 2012). Credit to Karl Rove for inventing the “job gap” methodology.

Some hope for Republicans?

Gallup provides a lot of information about the two parties in its several polls. Some of it may lift Republican spirits. Gallup asked respondents to provide their “top of the mind” impression of each party, an exercise that again went badly for Republicans, with "favorable” and “for the people/working, middle, lower class” the words most associated with “Democrats” after the #1 word, “liberal.” By contrast, the top words for Republicans were “unfavorable,” followed by “conservative.”

But the details drew out a slight positive for the GOP. The following chart shows words associated with Republicans both in 2005 and today:


There’s a noteworthy drop in words tagging Republicans as a wealthy, uncaring business elite.

Of course, when a respondent simply dismisses the Republican Party with the world “unfavorable,” as happened in the Gallup poll, it’s quite possible that person if pressed would have supplied “rich” or “self-centered”. Yet I think we do have an indication of change between 2005 and 2009, and it's attributable only in part to the fact Republicans no longer seem so high and mighty.

It’s a fact that Democrats today are as much, if not more, the party of rich people. Gallup’s poll suggests that fact is seeping through to the broader electorate.

A final Gallup poll did turn up some unambiguous good news for Republicans:


Respondents during the early months of the Obama administration, therefore, are 7% more likely to consider Democrats “too liberal” than they were before the election. Republicans, by contrast, have seen no change in the share labeling them “too conservative.” As a consequence, Republicans are now 3% less likely to be labeled “too conservative” than Democrats are to be called “too liberal.”

This change, however, may largely be due to rising GOP alarm with Obama. Among independents, there is still greater concern about Republicans being “too conservative” (49%) than about Democrats being “too liberal” (45%).

GOP Hurting

No surprise the Republican Party, associated with scandal, Katrina and a difficult war during the 2006 elections, and with Bush and economic collapse in 2008, is in trouble. Gallup has run several polls documenting the GOP’s low state.

In one, Gallup found that those identified with the two parties, after independents are reclassified as leaning Democrat or Republican, have moved between 2001 and 2009 toward the Democrats as follows:


The gap between parties in 8 years has grown from 1% to 14% in favor of Democrats. That’s big.

Another poll went inside the heads of both groups and found Republicans much more unhappy with their party than Democrats:


That means Democrats, admittedly coming off two big victories, are less than 1/5th as likely as Republicans to have problems with their party.

Overall, 58% of the total sample viewed Democrats favorably, a big 19% more than the 34% who viewed Republicans favorably. And overall, 59% of those polled (including those 38% of unhappy Republicans) have an unfavorable view of the GOP, against only 34% with an unfavorable view of Democrats. That’s a whopping 25% difference.

Information from other Gallup surveys points to known Republican weaknesses among sub-groups. The respondents who are non-white (including Hispanic) and non-black make up the following shares of each voting group:


Republicans remain an overwhelmingly white party, though at least the largest share of any non-black minority grouping is independent, not Democrat, and thus more open to moving Republican.

And as we noted here, Democrats are the party of women. Gallup’s polling bears out that fact:


The possible “silver lining” Gallup notes for Republicans is that while men have moved away from the GOP since 2005, they identify as independent not Democrat, so may more readily shift in the future back to Republican. And though Gallup doesn’t say so, the women leaving the GOP also identify as independent, with the Democratic share of women at 42%, exactly where it was in mid-2004.

Tax Increases Coming Soon

I warned in March that Obama plans to raise taxes. Then in April, an ex-Clinton White House official said Obama would raise taxes, but not until after he’s re-elected. Now Roger Altman, Clinton’s deputy treasury secretary, has written that Obama will raise taxes as early as next year, “because it is no longer a matter of whether tax revenues must increase, but how”.

Yes, America

In his book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes (p. 204),

American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma and embarrassment. America’s specialty is to take these small risks for the rest of the world, which explains this country’s disproportionate share in innovations. Once established, an idea or a product is later “perfected” over there.

America historically has meant crude doers, nouveau riche, not old money, not culture, not refined thinking and manners. But the people who rule America today seem much more about being smart, doing things right, not screwing up, something that as Jeffrey Bell noted in Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality, never bothered Ronald Reagan, who would brush off bonehead mistakes, much to the distress of the elite figures around him.

Elites are about keeping others out as much as they are about keeping themselves in. Thus, the fear of failure, the fear of suddenly not belonging. Status, manners, credentials. Europe, not America.

The liberal elite belongs as part of America, but should they rule? One party thinks so. One party doesn’t.

Iran: What Went Wrong?

It’s now clear that Iran's election of 17 days ago isn’t producing the desired regime change, either via votes or street action. With some perspective, we ask again why did Les Gelb, a foreign policy insider who talks to everyone in the know, get it so wrong?

I already provided a reason, quoting Newsweek editor Evan Thomas’ saying, "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God." They thought “Obama god” could generate the right outcome in Iran, as they believed Obama did in the earlier June 7 Lebanon election, an election that followed Obama’s Cairo address to Muslims by 3 days. First Lebanon, then Iran.

I also think Obama and company got off on the wrong track during last year’s campaign, while defending Obama’s promise to meet “Iran’s leader” without preconditions during his first year in office. Obama’s pledge to meet Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proved a real problem because of Ahmadinejad’s raging anti-Semitism, his denial of the Holocaust, and his promise to wipe out Israel. So Obama’s people countered by advancing the argument that Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei [picture] is Iran’s supreme leader, and therefore Khamenei, not Ahmadinejad, would be Obama’s most appropriate interlocutor.

From there, Obama’s folks apparently reasoned that since Khamenei controlled Iran, and since Khamenei allowed a June election that featured Mir Hussein Mousavi openly campaigning against (Obama problem leader) Ahmadinejad, maybe Khamenei was orchestrating the very change that would ease Iran’s anti-U.S hostility: allowing Mousavi to replace Ahmadinejad.

It’s just that such wishful thinking is so remarkably removed from true understanding of how Iran works. Ahmadinejad is Khamenei’s man; he has been from the beginning.

Democrats the Party of Memories

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven -
All's right with the world!

--Robert Browning (1812-1889)
“Pippa Passes” (1841) pt. 1,l.221

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) said every polity tends to have a party of memory and a party of hope. Democrats are the party of memory. They don’t think so, of course. But look. They believe the natural order of things is Democrats running the country, the way America was before Vietnam and 1965, the liberal America of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson; of New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society; of ending depression, minimum wage, fair labor laws, social security, the G.I. Bill, FHA-backed home ownership, Medicare, Medicaid, immigration reform, civil rights legislation, equal rights for women, minorities, gays, environmental protection.

Good government in charge, making life better for common people. “God in his Heaven, A Democrat in the White House, All’s right with the world!”

“All’s right” when the national elite holds power, our philosopher-kings, working through government controlled by Democrats, ruling on behalf of the common people.

At one time, Democrats were the party of hope, Republicans the party of memory. But Democrats held power most of the time from 1933 to 1981, 48 years, and reshaped America so that Washington replaced dozens of small cities as the elite’s cradle of power. “Inside the beltway” describes the culture that gained control during the Democratic years.

Because of Democratic errors, Republicans made their presence felt in Washington in the years following 1980. But they never dominated the city on the Potomac, only occasionally sending power back to the provinces. Nevertheless, particularly under Reagan in 1981-86 and George W. Bush in 2001-06, with working Republican majorities in Congress, it felt as though the country had passed beyond the natural order of things—America’s liberal elite in control.

The elite has fought back hard. As we have said before (here and here), quoting Cornell economist and author of Luxury Fever Robert Frank, "Animals will fight viciously to protect territory that they hold, but they won't fight nearly as hard to extend their territory." Democrats fought hard to build America into a big government nation, and they work even harder to retain their elite, government-based status. But isn’t it old fashioned to think a relatively small group of us knows better than do the people, a mass of individuals each with their own brains and skills, how best to make and spend the nation’s resources?

“Hope” means wanting more democracy, more capitalism, more individual decisionmaking (linked to the right to fail, learn, succeed) for everyone. Everyone living here, in the greatest experiment in individual power the world has ever known—America.

Democrats live on their memories of a time when their own good elite replaced a bad elite and ran everything. But the world never stands still, and it never goes back. Republicans must now be the party of hope for the rest of us, helping move America beyond elite rule to true democracy.

FOX Continues to Dominate Cable News

According to the Hollywood Reporter,

Fox News is on track to have its most-watched year ever, showing significant ratings growth despite having just come off a highflying election year. . . Fox News averaged about the same number of viewers as the top three other cable news networks combined [emphasis added]. And while rivals including CNN (-22%) and MSNBC (-18%) took hits following last quarter's inauguration-fueled boost, Fox News (-3%) remained nearly steady.

Ratings of cable news channels typically rise during election years only to fall the following year, so this year’s Fox News gains are particularly striking.

Fox News is also outpacing the other news channels among the key demographic, adults aged 25-54 (see chart). This counts as a big Fox victory; Headline News has reshaped itself to appeal primarily to younger viewers.


Fox News now trails only USA and TNT among all ad-supported cable channels. Bill Shine, senior vice president for programming at Fox News, in fact says that at their network, “we're paying attention to the non-news networks because now we want to catch them."

“On earth, God’s work must truly be Obama’s.”

So why does Les Gelb suddenly think our major foreign policy problem—Iran’s militant Islam—is going to straighten itself our via an election in that authoritarian state? Is it because Obama defeated in America those bigoted Republicans who stole the 2000 election and perverted our constitution? Because Barack Hussein Obama flew to Cairo and told Muslims we are their friends? Because Lebanon managed to elect a non-Hezbollah parliamentary majority? Is it because all these things are evidence of the phenomenon this blog is on to (here and here), that as Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said, "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God"?

Obama, as god, has the power to right the world? Even an election in Iran? Is that it?

Les Gelb’s Chimera: Iran as Ally

I think of Les Gelb, the former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, as a sober-minded individual. Therefore, I’m curious how he could have lost his bearings when looking ahead to Iran’s presidential election, held today. Gelb strangely wrote:

➢ [Iran] could be on a path to becoming America’s most important partner in the region.

➢ the electioneering has probably been the freest ever in that part of the world, and . . . [opposition candidate] Mir Hussein Mousavi talks like a man the White House could work with

➢ It is widely believed that the higher the turnout the more likely Ahmadinejad will lose.

➢ Mousavi. . . has become a pragmatic politician who . . . has called for greater freedoms and civil-rights protections[, whose] platform stresses Iran’s need to get sanctions lifted, to become part of the global economy, and to end its international isolation.

➢ This emerging Tehran and President Obama’s Washington are bound to find a common bond in fighting extremism both in Iran and among its volatile neighbors.

How do realists like Gelb let their hearts so openly control their heads? We all want Ahmadinejad to go away. Well, all of us outside Iran, that is. The Iranians who vote turned out in massive numbers. And as predicted by most who understand how that police state works, re-elected Ahmadinejad.

Bête Noire

Democrats won their last three election election victories by demonizing individual Republicans—Newt Gingrich (1998 mid-term) and George Bush (2006 mid-term, 2008). Earlier this year, they began the same tactic, going this time after Rush Limbaugh, when polls showed how unpopular Rush was with independents. But Limbaugh may not be such a good fit. He’s a commentator, not an elected Republican, and anyway Dick Cheney, Bush’s unpopular vice president, seems to have forced himself back into the public eye, much to Democrats’ delight. Re-demonize Cheney, or Bush-Cheney. Forget about Rush.

While that might help Democrats in 2010, a sign of trouble with the strategy emerges from a recent Gallup Poll [see chart]. Cheney’s not very popular, that’s true, getting only a 37% favorable rating from independents. But the real bête noire showing up in Gallup’s results is Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has only a 25% favorable rating from independents, and whose 52% negative rating among independents is even higher than Cheney’s. Pelosi holds the same office now that Gingrich occupied in 1998, going into that year’s mid-term loss for the GOP.

16 months out, Pelosi seems the bête noire Republicans have hoped for, someone who could help turn the tables on Democrats.

Welcome Back, Friedman

In the summer of 2006, the darkest days of American involvement in Iraq when Sunni and Shiite were at each other’s throats, Rumsfeld was still in the Pentagon, and Petraeus’ surge was hardly a glimmer in his own eye, Tom Friedman jumped ship, famously writing about our Iraq venture, “Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives.”

Well, that was then. Now with George Bush gone and friendly Democrats everywhere, Friedman finds it safe to say,

I have never bought the argument that Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan the good war and Pakistan the necessary war. Folks, they’re all one war with different fronts. It’s a war within the Arab-Muslim world between progressive and anti-modernist forces over how this faith community is going to adapt to modernity — modern education, consensual politics, the balance between religion and state and the rights of women. Any decent outcome in Iraq would bolster all the progressive forces by creating an example of something that does not exist in the Middle East today — an independent, democratizing Arab-Muslim state.

“The reason there are no successful Arab democracies today is because there is no successful Arab democracy today,” said Stanford’s Larry Diamond, the author of The Spirit of Democracy. “When there is no model, it is hard for an idea to diffuse in a region.”

Hooray, Tom Friedman. Your heart was always with the liberation and democratization of Iraq, even if your head lost it for a bit.

Barack Hussein Globama

"[Obama] employed . . . the clever intermingling of his personal history and his office. He presented himself as a true global citizen; Barack Hussein Globama, living proof that apparent opposites can be united."

-- SPIEGEL ONLINE

Obama in Cairo: “time for [Israeli] settlements to stop”

David Ignatius and Charles Krauthammer are two Washington Post columnists. Both have a deep interest in the Middle East; both are qualified commentators. While they view the area from different perspectives, both yesterday fixed on a single, small part of Obama’s Cairo speech—his call for Israel to cease growing West Bank settlements. Ignatius wrote:

By traveling to the heart of the Arab world[, Obama] is raising expectations that America can coax Israel and the Arabs toward a comprehensive peace that has eluded them for more than 40 years. But can Obama deliver [on] Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank[?]

And Krauthammer similarly noted:

Obama . . . came to Cairo to [issue] but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

Ignatius backs up with facts his sympathy for Obama’s concern about settlements:

More than 120 settlements have been constructed over the past 42 years, and the Israeli population in the West Bank now totals 190,000 in the Jerusalem area and 289,000 elsewhere.

Yet Krauthammer has a point when in defense of Israel’s settlement policy, he tells us:

Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line [see map; hit to enlarge] is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians.

According to Krauthammer, Israel has already agreed to such a land swap.

Comment: I believe Obama is correct to push Israel to stop expanding settlements, a first step moderate Arabs can follow with recognition of Israel, paving the way for a more coordinated Israel-U.S.-Arab response to Iran’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons (see here).

I, Obama

Terry Jeffrey, writing at the conservative “Townhall” website, disclosed that in announcing Monday the federal take-over of General Motors via bankruptcy, Barack Obama used the word “I” 34 times, the word “Congress” once, and failed to mention “law” even a single time. Obama: “I decided . . . that if GM and their stakeholders were willing to sacrifice for their companies' survival ... then the United States government would stand behind them." To stand behind GM, Obama stands above Congress; he stands above the law.

Obama is above us all as no previous president has been. He stood on the shoulders of his race and education to reach Illinois. He stood on Illinois to reach the Democratic Party, then on the shoulders of his party to reach all America. And now, speaking to 1.4 billion Muslims in Cairo, Obama stands on the shoulders of his country to reach the world.

Talking to Tom Friedman before his historic Cairo address, Obama said,

there is a Kabuki dance going on constantly [in the Middle East]. That is what I would like to see broken down. I am going to be holding up a mirror and saying: "Here is the situation, and the U.S. is prepared to work with all of you to deal with these problems. But [y]ou are all going to have to make some tough decisions." Leaders have to lead, and, hopefully, they will get supported by their people.

Comment: Roosevelt and Reagan effectively governed America by going over the heads of the opinion makers and talking by radio or TV directly to the people. Obama is the first U.S. president with the audacity to attempt going over the heads of Muslim national leaders to speak directly to their subjects.

If you go right into peoples’ living rooms, don’t be afraid to hold up a mirror to everything they are doing, but also engage them in a way that says "I know and respect who you are." . . . if we are engaged in speaking directly to the Arab street, and they are persuaded that we are operating in a straightforward manner, then. . . they and their leadership are more inclined and able to work with us.

Comment: Obama is saying to Muslim leaders, “I’m talking to the street. Listen to me, work with me, or I will help overthrow you!”

the president said that if he is asking German or French leaders to help more in Afghanistan or Pakistan, “it doesn’t hurt if I have credibility with the German and French people.”

Translation: “Are you reading me loud and clear? I’m leader of the world because I relate to the world’s people. Not just 1.4 billion Muslims. Watch out European leaders, because I reach Germans, French, and other non-Muslims too.”

America’s “battle against terrorist extremists involves changing the hearts and minds of the people they recruit from. And if there are a bunch of 22- and 25-year-old men and women in Cairo or in Lahore who listen to a speech by me . . . and say: ‘I don’t agree with everything [he is] saying, but [he seems] to know who I am [and wants] to promote economic development or tolerance or inclusiveness,’ then they are maybe a little less . . . tempted by a terrorist recruiter.”

Comment: Friedman believes Obama will succeed in reaching the 1.4 billion Muslims on the street (or whatever they are), because “when young Arabs and Muslims see an American president who looks like them, has a name like theirs, has Muslims in his family and comes into their world and speaks the truth, it will be empowering.”

Tiananmen 20 Years After

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Who would have guessed the regime responsible for that slaughter would not only still be running China, but also would be more powerful than ever?

British historian Niall Ferguson has a look at Chinese power today. He’s writing not because of Tiananmen (Ferguson doesn’t mention it), but because his book The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World is out in paperback, and he wants you to read it. That Ferguson can publish a commentary devoted to China’s power two days before the massacre’s anniversary and leave it unmentioned heavily underlines how Tiananmen memories have faded, to the Communist regime’s benefit.

Ferguson wants us to understand how the current financial crisis, as with several in the past, is producing a tectonic power shift—this one with China supplanting the U.S. as the world’s leading economic power. His facts:

➢ the U.S. economy will contract by 2.8% this year—while China's is forecast to grow by 6%.

➢ The $787 billion U.S. stimulus package has had little impact, with housing prices falling around 20%, year over year. China's $585 billion stimulus is delivering far more, with April fixed investment surging by nearly 34%, net imports of iron ore up by a third, and oil imports rising almost 14%.

➢ In 2006, the U.S. had seven banks in the top 20, including the top two; today it has three, and the biggest, JP Morgan Chase, is 5th. In 2006, China did not have a single bank in the top 20, but today the top three are all Chinese.

Though Ferguson leaves Tiananmen unmentioned, he offers a reason why Chinese might be passive about the Tiananmen massacre, just as they are about China's current economic downturn:

China is imbued with a remarkable sense of patriotism that is not just a product of Communist Party propaganda. People are proud of their country's economic miracle over the past 30 years. After two wretched centuries, they believe China is on the way back. People whose grandparents survived the Great Leap Forward and whose parents endured the Cultural Revolution can surely cope with a decline in the growth rate from 11% to 6%.

China as #1.

Sotomayor’s Pandora Box

In a strange ironic twist, Obama nominated a Latina to further his well-honed mastery of special interest politics, and the nomination is coming back to bite him because it is so blatantly racial, even though Sotomayor is highly qualified and will be confirmed.

People, not just white males, are fed up with identity politics.

Here’s more. This from conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson:

the perpetuators of the present system--mostly elite whites--find some sort of psychological absolution in . . . a system that allows them to alleviate guilt without living among poorer people of color, or sending their own children to the "diverse" public schools--two concrete steps that might quickly indeed ensure better neighborhoods and better education for the "other." In any case, most white elites count on their own connections, wealth, and education, to find exemptions from the unfairness of racial identification. A Ted Kennedy, after all, had affirmative action well before it was based on race.

Unfortunately. . . President Obama has embraced identity politics in unprecedented fashion--and we are reaping what he has sown. In these first days of the Sotomayor nomination, we are not discussing Justice Sotomayor's judicial competence as much as her Latina identification--and the political ramifications of such tribalism.

“Time We Collect Our Reward”

Last June, I warned the media wanted credit for electing Obama, credit it could call in post-election to help arrest their declining influence. I wrote:

The media [will] falsely paint McCain as Bush. . . because given [the media’s] slipping power, they want to be seen as so biased in favor of Obama that they will be blamed for (actually credited with) Barack’s win.

Now the L.A. Times’ Tim Rutten is calling in the chips newspapers think they earned by electing Obama. Rutton says,

Unless . . . newspapers find a way to charge for the content they currently give away free on their websites . . . most papers won't survive . . . Over the last three years, American newspapers alone have lost 40% of their classified advertising -- $7 billion worth -- to free Internet sites such as Craigslist. Over that same period, display advertising sales have dropped by a quarter, which amounts to an additional $12 billion each year.

. . . newspapers can't begin charging for online content or licensing their journalism to search engines unless all . . . do it at once. . . newspaper proprietors ought to go to Congress and demand [an] exemption from the antitrust and price-fixing statutes. . . Nancy Pelosi has endorsed the idea. The law, she said recently, needs to . . . "reflect current market realities." The Justice Department's antitrust division, however, opposes the baseball-style exemption. The Obama administration . . . needs to change its mind.

My “Eureka!” Moment

Democrats rule through special interest groups, including the Hispanic minority that figures in the Sotomayor appointment. Organizing people into groups leads to gaining the votes of people as members of groups.

Above the groups sits the American national elite. Its members meet each other in college, and move from college to top positions in academia, the bureaucracy, knowledge-based business, the media, the “Third Sector,” and entertainment and the arts. They acquire and maintain power through the Democratic Party, the party of the new class. Their numbers are too few (hey, this is an elite!) to vote in leaders on their own. The votes come from the special interests. The Democrats act on behalf of the people the special interest groups represent, and pay lip service to democracy. But within the elite, they fully understand they are a minority controlling a majority, a contortion that requires continuous deception and propaganda.

America is the land of equal opportunity. It’s right that those who work hard rise to the top. Before Democrats gained full control of America in 1932, an unselfconscious elite based on wealth including inherited wealth ruled through the Republican Party. Republicans regained some power, never total domination, in the 1968-2008 period when Democrats and their government at various times failed to deliver peace or prosperity.

But now it seems (Eureka!) Democrats so dominate the elite [see chart] that Republicans have no choice. They must organize the people themselves to overcome elite rule. The people v. the elite. I think gaining popular support starts with understanding that a nearly united elite has coalesced to run the country, believing in some updated version of the “philosopher-king” rule Plato advocated in The Republic. Plato opposed democracy, just as he opposed rule by the wealthy. The new class believes wise people should rule, for the benefit of all.

How many Americans oppose elite rule, and want power devolved to individuals, not elite-run groups? People want power in their own hands; democracy. As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Reflections on elite America.

Michael Gerson makes some of the same points about Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination that I earlier made. But Gerson more skillfully links Sotomayor’s thinking to the American meritocracy she represents:

In elite academic settings [Obama’s University of Chicago, Sotomayor’s Princeton--picture], it is commonly asserted that impartiality is not only a myth, but also a fraud perpetuated by the privileged. Since all legal standards, in this view, are subjective and culturally determined, the defenders of objectivity are merely disguising their exercise of power. And so the scales of justice -- really the scales of power -- need to be weighted by judges to favor the "weak" and the "powerless."

Sotomayor's decision in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano is disturbing because it seems to affirm this judicial philosophy. . . Because [the New Haven, Conn., firefighters] were not part of a group deemed "powerless," they were rendered powerless as individuals. Empathy turns out to be selective empathy—not for human beings, but for social groups. Just imagine the frustration and anger of standing before a federal judge who is predisposed against your claims for racial reasons of any sort.

The danger of first making all ideas relative, and second, molding the relative mush into a progressive weapon with which to beat up mindless reactionaries, is one I spotted in a discussion of the late Ivy League philosopher Richard Rorty.

Hispanic America: Basic Facts

Do Republicans have to be careful in how they handle Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court? You bet.

In 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics made up 9% of the electorate. They voted Obama over McCain by 67%-31%. Bush had 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. A look at election results suggests Hispanics helped move Florida, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico from Republican in 2004 to Democratic in 2008.

The Hispanic vote’s importance grows rapidly in the future [chart]. For a graphic look at the location and strength of America’s Hispanic population, please go here.

Sotomayor and Identity Politics

Republicans "oppose her at their peril."

--Sen. Chuck Schumer, speaking on Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination

Identity politics is political action to advance the interests of members of a group whose members perceive themselves to be oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalized identity (such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation).

--Wikipedia entry

And "children of poverty" represent yet another oppressed group. Sonia Sotomayor is female, up from the projects, and the first-ever Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court. Since Democrats know she will be confirmed, it’s just the frosting on the cake when Republicans take her on, thereby alienating the fastest-growing and still fluid Hispanic voting bloc, as well as all the downscale, feeling-poor people watching our failing economy from the sidelines.

Here’s why Republicans have to oppose Sotomayor. It’s Ricci v. DeStefano, which concerns the blocked promotion of white (including one Hispanic) firefighters in New Haven. In the case, heard last year by a three-judge panel including Sotomayor, the city refused to certify promotion exams because none of the 19 promoted were black. The Sotomayor panel issued a brief opinion upholding the district court's decision, an outcome that infuriated Sotomayor colleague, Clinton appointee, and fellow HIspanic Jose Cabranes, who criticized Sotomayor’s slip-shod handling of the case.

The Sotomayor panel’s ruling, which the Supreme Court may overturn in June, identifies her with proponents of affirmative action, the identity politics centerpiece that pushes favored groups at the expense of other groups based on race. The Pew Research Center’s recent polling of Americans on affirmative action found the country opposed by a 65%-31% supermajority to preferential treatment for certain ethnic groups.

So while Sotomayor’s appointment honors those who rise from poverty, honors her Hispanic heritage, and helps Democrats gain Hispanic support, her affirmative action activism groups her and Democrats with a minority of Americans. Sotomayor's identity politics warrents a Republican challenge—Schumer or no Schumer.

Have you seen this?

Ouch!

In the U.S. today, only 3 of 5 babies have married parents.

Listen to Cathy Young:

[the] 40% of all babies born in the United States . . .born to single women [is] up from 34% in 2002. Some sociologists believe we have reached a tipping point: the link between marriage and parenthood is no longer the norm. Why is this happening. . .? [A] difficult question. . .we ignore at our peril.

The powerful economic, social and cultural pressures that once pushed . . . people into marriage are gone almost completely. All that remains is romantic love - and refusing to marry your child's other parent is often seen as more honorable than marrying someone you don't love . . .

large numbers of men are alienated from family life and from the next generation.

Listen as well to Ari Armstrong:

the dramatic rise in out-of-wedlock births points to deep cultural problems. . . Out-of-wedlock births are largely a phenomenon of lower-class America. . . "Only 4% of college graduates have children out of wedlock."

The "percent of births to unmarried women" for "all ages" breaks down as follows:

All Races: 38.5
White: 33.3
Black: 70.2
Hispanic: 49.9

And listen to Rob Stein and Donna St. George:

60% of those who had babies between 20 and 24 were single, up from 52% in 2002,

The rate of babies being born to unmarried women in the United States is starting to look more like [Europe]. . . the percentage of babies born to unmarried women is . . . about 55% in Sweden, about 50% in France and about 44% in the United Kingdom.

Stein and St. George do zero in on the major problem with single-parent families:

studies have shown that children generally fare better when they grow up in stable households with two parents. "We know that babies and children do best with committed, stable adult parents — preferably married," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

And Cathy Young as well points out:

there is abundant evidence that children generally fare better with two parents - and many children without fathers keenly feel their absence. . . a visiting dad is usually, even with best intentions, a pale substitute for day-to-day interaction with a father in the home. . .an intact marriage is still the most reliable way to protect the father-child bond. . . Giving up on the two-parent family as an ideal would be a sad defeat.

The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a joint project of institutes at Princeton and Columbia, has several authoritative articles and papers documenting the importance of having fathers around, whatever the continuing romantic involvement between parents. Marriage, of course, works best to keep fathers in the home.

There’s one mitigating factor that cuts against the high percentage of out-of-wedlock births: about 40% of those births occur in households where couples are cohabitating. Not marriage, but better by far than true single-parent childrearing.

It’s Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan

Want to simplify American foreign policy? Look at the three-country region above. Muslim. Non-Arab. Home to Islamic extremism. Going nuclear. Do we really worry about North Korea? Except as it may hook up with this region? If these three countries didn’t exist, would the Arab world be a major concern? The Arab region may be a battlefield, Israel may be Islam’s biggest political issue, but an effective strategy for dealing with Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is our surest path to peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu certainly believes Iran is his country’s biggest threat. He sought U.S. agreement on the importance of keeping Iran from going nuclear during his Monday visit with President Obama. In exchange for U.S. help with Iran, he’s willing to restart in some form peace talks with Palestinians.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius has Obama’s take on Netanyahu and Iran. Obama wants the Arab nations working with the U.S. to isolate Iran and pressure it to give up nuclear weapons. But to earn Arab world support, Obama needs progress on Palestine; Arabs expect the U.S. to deliver Israel. So to get Netanyahu to start talking with Palestine, Obama is holding out the promise of recognition of Israel by Arab League nations, or what Jordan's King Abdullah calls the "23-state solution."

American politics is very different, post-Iraq. Republicans stand with Israel against Islamic extremism, including Iran’s version, Hamas, and the Syrian-Iranian backed Hezbollah—the kind of terrorists we defeated in Iraq. Democrats weren’t into that fight, see Israel as somewhat like apartheid South Africa, and Palestinians as freedom fighters in the spirit of the Viet Cong. As a consequence, according to Ignatius,

Netanyahu faces the full force of the Obama political phenomenon—a president who feels politically secure enough to ignore the usual rules of the U.S.-Israel relationship and push hard for what he thinks is right.

And that’s very specifically ending Israel’s policy of expanding West Bank settlements.

Will Netanyahu and his coalition realize progress on Iran depends on Israel’s halting West Bank settlement construction? Netanyahu correctly focuses on Iran. Obama, though, understands that countering Iran and pacifying the Iranian-Afghan-Pakistani region’s 275 million relates to reducing the anger over Palestine that pours from the Arab world’s 350 million.

Newsweek cuts circulation by 50%.

Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post, which owns the magazine, has the details. Newsweek lost $20 million in January-March. Earlier, when Newsweek proclaimed the “fall of Christianity,” I wrote the story behind the story was Newsweek’s own fall. Newsweek plans to imitate the Economist by becoming smaller and more elite, but evidently seeks to pick up Economist readers by challenging the British magazine’s more positive view of religion.

Richard Haass: Misunderstanding Choice

Richard Haass can lay claim to being one of the current foreign policy wisemen. He’s head of the establishment Council on Foreign Relations after having served the last two Republican presidents, leaving in 2003 as Colin Powell’s policy planning chief.

Now he’s attempting to influence Obama’s foreign policy through a new book and a book-based Washington Post op-ed. He believes “We would have been better off without Bush’s war of choice” in Iraq, just as we shouldn’t have followed Gen. Douglas MacArthur into North Korea in 1950, we should avoid further escalation in that “ graveyard of empires” called Afghanistan, and that somehow (how, really?), we should allow Iran to enrich uranium, but not enrich enough to build a bomb (!).

Haass sees the world as “gray and nuanced.” In a recent interview, Haass defended his reasoning.

wars of choice are anything but straightforward - they pose some of the most fateful decisions for any president. [After 9.11,] the threat posed by Iraq and Saddam Hussein had in no way increased, [our] goals [weren’t] specific and limited. . . the idea was to transform Iraqi society, [but] it was never clearly stated how the U.S. would bring democracy to Iraq.

Iran’s strategic gain is . . . the principal strategic result of America’s Iraq policy. Iran is dominating in Lebanon through Hezbollah, they are dominating in Gaza through Hamas, and they are now closer to realizing their nuclear ambitions. . .The U.S. strategic position has worsened: Iran is much stronger, Iraq is weak and divided. . . We’re now in an era where Iran, various militias and terrorists now have a much larger share of power. We’re still the most important external actor in the region, but our position has clearly suffered. . . The [current] era of Middle Eastern history . . . will be worse for the United States. . . I think the prevailing view is that the Bush administration left things worse than they inherited.

(Why didn’t you resign?) I believed Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. Never once, in all my years in government, did some analyst take me aside and say otherwise.

Haass maintains the first Bush administration pursued a “Goldilocks outcome” in Iraq, wanting a weaker and more pliant Iraq, but not one so weak that it wouldn’t be able to balance Iran. But to me, this seems pretty far from where Bush 41 actually was. More accurately, 41 wanted Saddam out of power, but expected the Gulf War loser to fall of his own weight. Iran was a theocratic, anti-U.S. state in 1991 to be sure, but far from going nuclear and having barely fought Saddam to a standstill in 1980-88, Iran was less the problem than it was part of the anti-Saddam solution of that time. Iraq was the enemy.

Going back over 2002-07, after 9.11 we faced Islamic extremist threats from both al Qaeda and Iran. In Iraq, we took on and beat al Qaeda, leaving Iran the principal Middle East threat today. In my view, in the view of many others, we are safer today because Saddam no longer controls the world’s third-largest source of liquid petroleum, and because al Qaeda chose to take its stand in Iraq and lost.

The debate goes on. But given the danger Saddam posed to the world from 1990 on, including after 9.11, necessity (not choice) dictated we end his rule. Now we at least have the chance a democratic Iraq will help counter Iran’s extremism.

Climate Change as Religion

I’m not the only one who’s spotted the religious- like dogmatism associated with modern-day environmentalism. Here from political guru Michael Barone:

Over the past decade, [Gallup] has been asking Americans whether the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated or generally correct. From 1998 to 2007, except for the run-up to the 2004 election, they said it was generally serious by roughly a 2-1 margin -- 66 to 30% in 2006, for example. But in March 2009, that margin slipped to only 57 to 41%. [And] last month, pollster Scott Rasmussen found that only 34% believes that global warming is caused by human activity, while 48% said it is caused by long-term planetary trends. That's almost exactly the opposite of what he found 12 months before -- 47 to 34% the other way around. However, 48% of the . . . elite continues to believe global warming is man-made.

For liberal elites, belief in . . . global warming has taken on the character of religious faith [emphasis added]. We have sinned (by . . . driving SUVs); we must atone (by . . . recycling); we must repent (by supporting . . . cap and trade schemes). You may notice that the "we" in question is usually . . . ordinary American citizens. The liberal elite is less interested in giving up its luxuries (Al Gore purchases carbon offsets to compensate for his huge mansion and private jet travel) than in changing the lifestyle of the masses, who selfishly insist on living in suburbs . . . Ordinary Americans are seen not as responsible fellow citizens building stable communities but as greedy masses, who must be disciplined to live according to the elite's religious dogmas.

Obama’s Job Gap

President Obama promised his stimulus plan would create or retain 3-4 million jobs by 2010 (averages out to 3.5 million). Thus far, employment has dropped 1.1 million since Obama entered the White House. The resulting Obama job gap stands at 4.6 million jobs [chart]. We will follow the Obama job gap in the same spirit as former “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert followed Bush’s job count throughout Bush 43’s first term, or at least until Bush’s numbers turned positive (the term ended with Bush up 4.2 million jobs; Obama too is likely to be in positive territory by 2012). Credit to Karl Rove for inventing the “job gap” methodology.

No Longer Golden?

George Will predicts California voters May 19 will reject several California propositions designed to raise revenue by upping taxes, extending tax increases, and raiding the lottery fund. We’ll see. But Will seems right about how things have gone wrong in the Golden State:

➢ Since 2004, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. In the last decade, net out-migration of Americans—as opposed to immigrants—has been 1.4 million.

➢ California's business costs are over 20% higher than the average state's. California's business conditions among the worst, as measured by 16 variables directly influenced by the Legislature. California's income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest; in 2006, the top 1% of earners paid 48% of the income taxes. Unemployment, the nation's fourth highest, is 11.2%.

➢ If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit. Since 1990, the number of state employees has increased by more than a third. Under Schwarzenegger—since 2003—per capita government spending, adjusted for inflation, has increased nearly 20%.

➢ California teachers -- the nation's highest paid, with salaries about 25% above the national average -- are emblematic of the grip government employees unions have on the state, where 57% of government workers are unionized (the national average is 37%).

To Will, “California's perennial boast -- that it is the incubator of America's future -- now has an increasingly dark urgency.” He ironically concludes, “California has become liberalism's laboratory, in which the case for fiscal conservatism is being confirmed.”

A (not so) remarkable video.

Take a look here:

One word.

“I have a dream.”

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I have a gift.”

--Barack Obama

Blair Warns, Do We Listen?

"there can never be a friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi Power. We have sustained a defeat without a war. . . and do not suppose that this is the end. This is only of beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup . . . "
--Winston Churchill,
October 1938 Parliamentary Speech on Munich Agreement

Before he became Britain’s wartime prime minister, Churchill was making a name for himself prodding his country to rearm against Hitler’s rise. At 64, Churchill was so right. Now Tony Blair, a British senior statesman after having served as prime minister for a decade but who celebrates only his 56th birthday tomorrow, is warning the world about extremists within Islam.

Blair laid out his warning in a recent speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Blair said the extremist ideology, as a movement within Islam, “has to be defeated,” and is so deeply rooted, that “our strategy for victory has to be broader, more comprehensive but also more sharply defined. . . it is not going to be won except over a prolonged period. . . akin to fighting revolutionary Communism. . .”

How many people within the Obama administration, those who buried the words “war on terror,” preferring instead “man-caused disasters,” well, how many of these folks are focused on a “prolonged” struggle akin to that which we waged against Communism? Blair may be as much in the wilderness today as was Churchill in 1938.

Here’s more from Blair:

”Look there are people in this world who are crazy,” a friend said to me the other day, “leave them to be crazy.” Except the problem is that they won't leave us in the comfort of our lives. That's not the way the world works today.

Blair identifies six elements to a successful strategy against Islamic extremism:

1. Understand we have not caused this phenomenon but we can help beat it. Terror is the enemy of progress. The responsibility for terrorism lies with the terrorist and no-one else.

2. This battle can only be won within Islam itself and the fact is we have allies. The world of Islam includes large parts of Asia including Indonesia, the world’s largest predominantly Muslim country.

3. We need hard and soft power. We have to persuade where the battle is for hearts and minds. We have to fight where we are being fought against.

4. Where we are called upon to fight, we have to do it. If we are defeated anywhere, we are at risk of being defeated everywhere.

5. Reject the view that democracy is unattainable or unaccepted in the Islamic world. It will be hard to accomplish. But it is only by the embrace of greater democracy that this battle will be won.

6. Re-discover confidence and conviction in who we are, how far we've come and what we believe in. We are standing up for what is right. The body of ideas that allows us to vote in and vote out our rulers, that provides a rule of law on which we can rely, and a political space “more transparent than anything that went before isn't decaying. It is in the prime of life.”

Blair indirectly rejects the foreign policy “realists”--the Henry Kissinger school enjoying a post-Bush comeback under Obama--when he attacks the foreign policy

of the world weary, the supposedly sensible practitioners of caution and expediency, who think they see the world for what it is, without the illusions of the idealist who sees what it could be; those who regarded politics as a Bismarck or Machiavelli regarded it. . . all a power play; a matter, not of right or wrong, but of who's on our side, and our side defined by our interests, not our values. We should remember what such expediency led us to, what such caution produced.

The former Labour Party chief also cautions us against “abandoning the market or open economic system,” saying instead we should adjust the system that “has delivered amazing leaps forward in prosperity for our citizens and we shouldn't, amongst the gloom, forget it.”

Because Islamic extremism is cloaked in religion, Blair believes part of defeating it lies also in religion, “in a consistent and clear critique of its religious error by religious leaders within Islam; and in the burgeoning initiative for dialogue, understanding and action between the different faiths of the world.” He adds, “The more we reach out across the world of faith, the more the extremists and reactionaries within all faiths can be challenged.”

To Blair,

This war needs to be at the centre of policy, properly resourced, properly serviced. It needs to go down into the education systems, ours as well as theirs, into collaboration between institutions of learning, into arts and culture. Foreign policy needs to be completely re-shaped around such a strategy. And, of course, the Israel-Palestine question must be resolved.

Richard Rorty

The Hoover Institution’s Peter Berkowitz believes he has found the philosophical underpinning for Obama’s pragmatism. It’s based on the 1990s work of Richard Rorty (1931-2007)[picture], an Ivy League philosopher who revived the early 20th century school of thought launched by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Pragmatism stands for flexibility in solving problems as opposed to solutions based on religious dogma or rigid moral and political agendas. At its extreme, pragmatism denies the existence of objective truth, arguing that opinions we declare true are merely those that have proved useful to one interest or another.

Rorty’s work gives pragmatism a partisan meaning, earning him a place in philosophy departments, among political theorists, in law schools, and in the university world Obama inhabited. Rorty subordinated philosophical questions to political questions, and posited that the proper political question in America is how to promote progressive ends.

In Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Rorty maintained that "nobody knows what it would be like to try to be objective when attempting to decide what one's country really is, what its history really means." Nevertheless, Rorty seemed to believe the right in America is the party of the status quo, fighting to preserve inherited privilege. By contrast, the left that takes its cue from Walt Whitman and John Dewey--"prophets" of a "civic religion"--is the party of hope working to bring America into harmony with democracy's progressive promise.

Flatly rejecting biblical faith as childish nonsense, Rorty celebrated democracy's progressive promise as an alternative faith. Rorty wanted the pragmatist to make "shared utopian dreams" his guide to politics. Yet while purporting to focus on practical consequences and dismissing the distinction between true and false as a delusion, Rorty equated what works with actions that increase government's role in promoting social justice, and treated the progressive interpretation of America as, in effect, good and true. Thus under the guise of inclusiveness, Rorty denigrated and excluded rival moral and political opinions.

Pragmatism as a religion, the only true faith. Ironic, no?