Confession to confusion: two references to personal attacks.

I personally attack Hillary Clinton for her corrupt politics? And in the very next post, in the process of explaining the “endowment effect,” I accuse Democrats of engaging in personal attacks? Self-examination seems in order.

One reason Ronald Reagan was a successful politician was that he could brush off personal attacks. He reasoned voters cared most about policies, whereas the Democrats who disliked him -- upper class liberals mostly -- viewed politics as about personalities, and could not believe voters would actually choose a dumb, former B-grade movie actor over qualified Democrats such as Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale. Living in the elite, you know your fellow leaders, and expect the best qualified to do the most important job.  

Hillary Clinton is smart, experienced, and qualified by background to be president. The 2016 election, in my view however, isn’t about her qualifications. It’s about her titanium-strength links to a corrupt political order built over decades that by 2016, exists primarily to sustain itself in power, and has showed under Barack Obama an inability to fix the economy, to manage foreign affairs, and even to run government competently (out-of-the-blocks failure to keep lobbyists out of government, a failed economic stimulus, corrupt subsidies to green energy firms, a “too big to fail” bank reform that coddles big banks at the expense of regional banks, failures in running the IRS and the Justice Department, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, corruption at the General Services Administration, a botched roll-out of Obamacare at DHS including “if you like the plan you have, you can keep it; if you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too,” false promises about zero middle-class tax increases, massive, embarrassing corruption at the Veterans Administration, corruption in the Drug Enforcement Administration and even in the Secret Service, botched handling of the ebola crisis at the Centers for Disease Control, the single most respected government agency, a corrupt TSA that passes through 95% of targeted contraband, federal workers getting away with owing $3.5 billion in taxes).

Corrupt describes the close working relationship between big money and the Democratic Party, first evident in Obama’s becoming the first president to reject (in 2008) the money and restrictions of publicly-financed presidential elections, followed by the blow-out money election of 2012 (Obama outspent Romney, even though Romney spent tons just to win the nomination), with Obama focused entirely on getting out his vote and defaming Romney as "Obama for America" blotted out economic failure and high unemployment.

Corrupt also explains the Democrats willingness to bypass the will of the people as expressed in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 congressional elections. These elections have turned Congress from overwhelmingly Democratic to Republican-controlled in just four years. Because our elected representatives in Congress are now Republican, Democrats rule by corrupt executive orders, contrary to a U.S. Constitution founded upon a separation of powers between legislative and executive branches. Corruption means a presidency defying the people’s rule as expressed through Congress, ignoring popular displeasure with the way Democrats run the economy, foreign policy, and government.

So to this observer, Hillary Clinton isn’t a personality. She’s the latest seeking to stand atop the rice pile, ruling a corrupt operation that no longer works. Democrats’ vicious focus on Republican personalities results from an unwillingness to discuss real issues -- the economy, foreign policy, government corruption -- while keeping in power the tired, status quo, decades-old “Blue Model.” So yesterday.