Obama Win Ends an Era

Obama won the election while carrying 43% of the white vote. Still, that’s 2% better than white man Kerry did in 2004. Democrats were wise to nominate one of their own—they are the party of minorities and women. Both Gore and Kerry turned out to be hard sells to their base, unexciting oddities who, in the end, failed to appeal to white men anyway. Why should Democrats nominate a white man? In the year that was supposed to be Hillary's, Democrats rejected white males, instead enjoying an exciting battle between the first woman and first black nominee.

I wrote earlier about the importance of holding the tribe by being loyal to it. Democrats have paid a heavy price for supporting the Negro struggle for civil rights since the 1960s—white tribe appeals helped carry Republicans Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush to five presidential wins, and built support for Republicans in congress as well. Over time, civil rights dulled as an issue, and Democrats gained from gathering women (who continue to perceive themselves as some kind of minority) under its wing.

The party of women and minorities now represents an American majority. 2008 is the first time a Democratic presidential candidate won more than 51% of the popular vote since that party passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Obama, a minority liberal, is the Democratic tribal collection’s triumphant leader. Finally, the “majority of minorities” strategy worked.

Obama’s historical turning point should bookend the civil rights era, marked most importantly by women’s advance to leadership over our nation. We are in a time where men are hurting—they don’t do well in school, and they don’t do well in life (male unemployment--at the same level as female unemployment in December 2007--is up to 7.2% now, while female unemployment is at only 5.9%).

But the answer’s not Democratic-type affirmative action for men. The answer’s going to be better education, better job creation through small business success, and greater recognition that men have to be present in families for boys to do better. These can and should be Republican issues, as Barack Obama’s inauguration closes a door on race-dominated American politics.

Gloomy Times, Happy Days

In the long run we are all dead.

-- John Maynard Keynes

Keynes said what can safely be said about the future. But it can be safer to project longer-term trends than what’s immediately around the corner, simply because time and distance bring perspective. Today, nothing seems more important than the financial crisis that's in our face. But just as a housing bubble must burst, so too must the current housing-based financial crisis end someday with the resumption of buying and selling.

French philosopher Andre Glucksmann [picture] is, by contrast, more focused on what went wrong yesterday. He writes:

• our age is the first to proclaim the power to reduce risk to zero simply by spreading it around. It is the smiling reign of "positive thinking"--with ultimately disastrous effects.

• capitalism involves at once prudent regulation and the imprudent transgression of old rules, the sharing of risks and the audacity to risk more successfully than others. Economic progress is always alternating between creation and destruction, as old productive forces are left behind and new sources of wealth explode.

• But after the end of the Cold War, the promise of a pacified world seemed to announce the blessing of a postmodern history without challenges, without conflict, without tragedy.

Glucksmann’s denunciation of postmodern optimism is hard to argue with today. But I argue. Capitalism’s creative destruction, even with its downside, is uplifting and empowering the world’s people as never before. In the long term, we will be comfortable before we die.

Republicans and the Hispanic Vote

Ron Brownstein in the National Journal makes the case for Republicans becoming a permanent minority. He breaks the electorate into six groups: whites with college degrees, non-degree whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and other minorities. Asians and other minorities make up 7% of the population and 4% of voters. That figure will grow to 11% of the population by 2040, and the black population will remain roughly at its current 13%.

Brownstein knows, but doesn’t say, that the Democrats’ share of the black vote hit its all-time high this past year. We won’t necessarily see the same percentage or turnout for a post-Obama Democrat. The same goes for Asians and other minorities—64% voted for the first ever non-white nominee for president, and will be less race-influenced in post-Obama elections.

Whites accounted for 74% of the 2008 vote. The 35% of the white vote that’s college educated went 53% for McCain; those without college degrees voted 58% for McCain. Naturally, the non-college section of the white population shrinks over time, while the white share with college degrees, though growing relative to the non-college share, only retains its percentage of the total population. Overall, whites are currently two-thirds of the entire population, but drop to 51% by 2040. So the GOP total vote share is demographically challenged.

Hispanics will grow more powerful with each subsequent election. By 2040, they will be 25% of the population. That’s bad news for Republicans, because in 2008, Hispanics went 67% for Obama. Roll Call’s Mort Kondracke believes congressional Republican opposition to immigration reform—many Republicans, following talk radio's lead, attacked Bush’s reform measure as amnesty—punctuated by the Bush administration’s toughened enforcement of existing immigration law and improved border controls, resulted in the Democratic share of the Hispanic vote growing by 11% between 2004 and 2008, and the total Latino vote jumping by 40%. Though Obama attacked Bush’s toughened enforcement, Democrats may have trouble in a down economy boosting pro-immigration measures that enlarge the number of people chasing ever scarcer jobs.

The Hispanic vote remains in play, with the only certainty its growing importance.

Rove: Blame Fannie and Fred, not George

MP to Churchill re Clement Attlee, Labor Prime Minister: “You know, Winston, Clement is a very humble man.” WC: “He has a lot to be humble about.”

People ask why most of my blog comes from other sources. I am humble, yes. But I also know I’m well separated from the events and ideas I cover, so defer to those who have better access.

Karl Rove was there when government made decisions leading to our current financial crisis. So let’s hear him out. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Rove makes these points about how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed to our current mess, and what Bush did to try and head it off:

• the housing meltdown shows what happens when government grants special privileges to favored private entities; Fannie and Freddie had implicit taxpayer backing and could borrow money at rates well below competitors.

• the Bush administration warned in its April 2001 budget that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged. Bush wanted to raise Fannie and Fred’s capital requirements, compelling preapproval of new activities, and sought to limit their portfolios.

• Fannie and Fred, not wanting a level playing field for their competitors, fought back, engaged in a lobbying frenzy, hired high-profile Democrats and Republicans, and spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade.

• When Republicans pushed for comprehensive reform in 2005, Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut successfully threatened a filibuster, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts defended Fannie and Freddie as "fundamentally sound" and labeled the president's proposals as "inane," and Charles Schumer of New York dismissed Bush's "safety and soundness concerns" as "a straw man."

• Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial [which gave highly favorable home mortgage loans to Dodd and other key Democrats], complained that "an overly cumbersome regulatory process" would "reduce, or even eliminate, the incentives for [Fannie and Fred]."

• Fannie and Freddie, which held $2.1 trillion in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities in 2000, held $4 trillion by 2005, and $5 trillion by 2008, almost half of all American mortgages.

• Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute and Charles Calomiris of the Columbia Business School suggest $1 trillion of this debt was subprime and "liar loans," almost all bought between 2005 and 2007.

• If Democrats had granted Bush the regulatory powers he sought, the housing crisis wouldn't have been nearly so severe.

Grim Economic News

Brad Kelly, writing in Investors Business Daily, passes on evidence from the Federal Reserve that we are headed for bad times:

• U.S. GDP will contract this year, with the risk of "uncomfortably low" inflation. That means we’re watching for deflation, which means depression.

• The Fed’s worried about the “yawning yield spreads” between Treasuries and mortgages plus corporate bonds. While lower rates are spurring a rush to refinance, they don't guarantee that consumers can get a loan or want to buy. Tracking of previously owned home purchases, begun in 2001, has just recorded its all-time low.

• Unemployment is jumping, with Friday's payrolls report predicted to drop 475,000 jobs.

Let’s hope the December unemployment report stays under 500,000, an already too-high figure.

Sticking it to Hamas.

So how does Gaza end? The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, whose first expertise is the Arab-Israeli conflict, says

America’s goal — has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision.

Friedman wants an end to the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, in exchange for Hamas’ ending its rocketing of southern Israel. Some NATO-type peace force will enforce the settlement.

As the West enforced peace with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006? Israel's unlikely to repeat that mistake.

O.K., something else. I like the proposal of Bret Stephens, a Wall Street Journal writer who edited the Jerusalem Post in 2002-04, when he was 28-30 years old. Stephens says

• Israel can prevent Hamas rockets smuggled in from the south from reaching their current launching places in the north.

• Israel can weaken Hamas over time by avoiding a frontal assault on Gaza's urban areas but killing or capturing Hamas's leaders, destroying arms caches and rocket factories, and cutting off supply and escape routes.

• Israel can indefinitely occupy Gaza (outside urban areas) by standing firm against the global hypocrisy aimed at it.

• Israel should match every single rocket launched against it with an Israeli missile sent to a carefully selected Gaza target.

Israel’s goal wouldn’t be Hamas’ destruction. It would be reducing Hamas to ineffectiveness, so that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority could replace it.

“Simple Arithmetic”

In Foreign Affairs, the magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, Council President Richard Haass [picture] gives his version of the 21st Century’s new global order:

The increasingly nonpolar world will have mostly negative consequences for the United States -- and for much of the rest of the world as well. It will make it more difficult for Washington to lead on those occasions when it seeks to promote collective responses to regional and global challenges. One reason has to do with simple arithmetic. With so many more actors possessing meaningful power and trying to assert influence, it will be more difficult to build collective responses and make institutions work. Herding dozens is harder than herding a few.

So why not work instead with a few countries, those with 70% of the world’s people, the countries of my “Top 15“? Or the G-20, modified to include the biggest nations along with the largest economies, as outlined here? Yes, the U.S. should work with others, but no, it shouldn’t be “dozens,” and doesn’t have to be “dozens” if we move to a group of the right countries, a Security Council-sized group that truly represents most of the world’s people.

Michael Crichton on Religion

facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
--Michael Crichton
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, 2003

Michael Crichton died on November 4, at the age of 66. He was brilliant, graduating summa cum laude from Harvard where he also obtained his M.D., then a post-doc at La Jolla’s Salk Institute. We know him as the successful author whose books sold over 150 million, and as the only person to have simultaneously the #1 book, movie, and television show (1994).

As “one of us” (see above quote), his comments on environmentalism as religion are particularly devastating. Crichton told his San Francisco audience in 2003:

we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You . . . have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and. . . [t]oday, . . . environmentalism. . . seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.

Crichton then proceeded to take apart the main tenants of environmentalism:

• We have to get back to Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature.

Crichton asked if we really want to go back to when infant mortality was 80%, when one woman in six died in childbirth, or when, as it was in America a century ago, the average lifespan was 40. He pointed out that “People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all," and asserted that “if you. . . {t]ake a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you'll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, [but] even in the jungles of Borneo you won't experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET.” Bluntly, he asserted nature “will demand that you adapt to it-and if you don't, you die.”

• If we don’t preserve the environment, we are doomed.

Crichton noted that while “the preachers of environmentalism” have for fifty years frightened us about population growth, fertility rates are falling almost everywhere, and predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (the UN estimate around 1990) to 9 billion. So “these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert.” Other mirages: a) running out of all natural resources, 2) Paul Ehrlich saying 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s, 3) half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000.

Here are some facts Crichton set against the religion of environmentalism:

• DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned, because the ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children.

• the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. The Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. A blue-ribbon panel in Science concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt carbon dioxide's growth in the 21st century.

To Crichton, “one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They . . . believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation.” He wanted environmentalism out of the sphere of religion; he wanted hard science instead. Religions, he believed,
tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed “somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s.” He even said, “The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won't.”

In a message seemingly aimed at Al Gore, Crichton proclaimed, “if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism.”

Can we abandon environmentalism as a religion? Probably not. Instead, we should recognize what Crichton said about religion elsewhere in his speech: “the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of [their] beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.”

Samuel Huntington

Samuel Huntington died the day before Christmas at 81. He was a Harvard intellectual who openly defended Western civilization, and America’s leading place in the West, against what by 1993 he saw as the greatest threat to civilization: the culture of Islam. Huntington felt that “globalists,” including transnational businesspeople, were undermining America’s and the West’s ability to defend its civilization because they had lost their national identities, believing only in the world market’s virtues.

Middle Eastern expert Fouad Ajami wrote a Wall Street Journal obituary bemoaning Huntington’s passing. Ajami noted that by 2004, Huntington saw three possible American futures: cosmopolitan, imperial and national. Huntington favored the national approach, in Huntington’s words, "devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America since its founding." He had no patience for the globalism of "Davos Man"(the global elite’s watering hole). But Huntington’s 2004 warning against imperialists was aimed at the American expedition to Iraq, and the American conservatives who had come to believe in an "imperial" American mission. He correctly predicted The American people would not sustain an effort to democratize others through military action.

Ajami marveled that Huntington, “with his typical precision,” had in 1993 written of a "youth bulge" unsettling Muslim societies, of young, radicalized Arabs, unhinged by modernity and unable to master it, emerging as the children of the upcoming radical age. Huntington had it right, but as Ajami wrote, “nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism that marked Samuel Huntington's life and work is derided, and the American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and simpletons.”

A Better 2009?

The terrible economy was 2008’s big story. It shaped the election outcome, as Iraq faded from the headlines. The U.S. is deflating a housing bubble, and this deflation means the rest of the U.S. economy and the world suffers. We are looking, looking for the housing market’s bottom. New housing construction has ground to a halt, having hit an all-time low in November, while increasing foreclosure sales continue to cut off normal market operations.

The stock market is a leading economic indicator. When we have a sustained market rally, probably only after the housing market hits bottom, that should be our signal recovery is underway. Right now, today, stocks are up. Prices are about half way back from where they stood on November 4, when Obama was elected, and where they were a month ago. Still, my FOX INDEX [chart], which measures the distance to a healthy market (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ), is at -4,201, a full 62% down from healthy toward its October 2002 bottom.

So the market remains bad, if hopeful Obama’s big spending will help.

Why the alliance between blacks and liberal Democrats works.

Star Parker is a conservative African-American who puzzles over what Caroline Kennedy has in common with black America besides the Democratic Party. After all, economic inequities are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one. Exit polls showed Barack Obama captured 52% of those with incomes over $200,000, and 60% of those under $30,000.

Church attendance correlates reliably over time with party affiliation. Those who attend church frequently vote Republican. Those who don't usually vote Democratic. Except blacks. They have the highest church attendance in the country, with 76% attending church regularly, along with 67% of Republicans. Only 50% of white Democrats do.

A Gallup poll shows blacks aligned with Republicans on social issues -- moral acceptability of homosexuality, abortion, and sexual promiscuity. On energy and environmental issues, blacks poll more closely with conservatives than with liberals. Working blacks have little interest in paying higher taxes to fight global warming, while blacks favor offshore drilling because it lowers energy costs. And Parker notes wealthy liberals, despite having their own kids in private schools, oppose school choice. By contrast, black families jump at the chance to pull their children out of failing public schools and send them elsewhere.

So what pulls wealthy liberals and blacks together? The answer: income redistribution. A Zogby poll found that 80% of Democrats, 90% of liberals, and 76% of blacks support taxing the wealthy to help low-income Americans. And you know, it makes sense. The people best able to afford income redistribution are those at the top; they really do have more money than they need, unlike the folks working hard below them.

Sparing Tony Blair from Eternal Damnation

Now comes New York magazine’s Jennifer Senior’s profile of Tony Blair, drawn from watching Blair teach a class at Yale. Senior seems to love Blair in spite of the ex-P.M.’s 1) support of the Iraq War; 2) continued loyalty to George Bush, and; 3) his openly professed Catholic faith. Senior attempts to overcome this disastrous trinity of errors by explaining how different Blair really is from Bush:

 While Blair believes “faith can become a means of self-identity [that] defines [one’s] culture [and] political attitude,” leading to wars with religious components (I’m Sunni, and you’re Shia; I’m Catholic, and you’re Protestant), faith can also represent a “spiritual awakening” that defines one’s values and beliefs, “not in a cultural sense but in a personal sense.” That’s Blair, according to Senior. “His faith is personally and deeply felt, something he’s studied and thought hard about.”

 Senior contrasts Blair’s faith with that of Bush. Bush’s faith “absolutely distinguishes him politically. Though he may never have said outright that he’s the leader of a Christian nation, he reportedly told Palestinian leaders that he believed God told him to end the tyranny in Iraq, and he has described, now infamously, the war on terror as ‘a crusade.’” Senior sees Bush’s faith as “thin,” a “cultural resource that provides a canopy over who we are, and it functions to legitimize, to sacralize, what we would have done in any case,” and “when you have a thinning out of religion, it’s more likely to promote violence.”

Senior believes Bush’s faith led us into an immoral war, but she strives to exempt Blair from the exact same decision. According to Senior,

Blair’s analysis [shows] how two very different kinds of politicians who call themselves Christians can get to the same place. Blair believes in just wars. It was he, ultimately, who convinced Bill Clinton to intervene in Kosovo and halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians. Says [Blair’s Yale co-teacher Miroslav] Volf, “Blair is standing at the center of faith, and he’s asking, ‘How can this faith and the good of that faith be socially promoted?’ Whereas Bush stands almost at the boundary of the faith, meaning, ‘How do I defend from incursion from the outside?’”

Senior agonizes, “if God is the ultimate judge, will He factor in good intentions, when so many lives were lost in Iraq?” The sentence gives away both Senior’s personal lack of faith (“if God is the ultimate judge”) and her view of Iraq (immoral war). Bush, she proclaims, “will vanish without a trace, and good riddance to him. But Blair will not. If he figures out how to make real amends—to contribute something to the world” he may yet justify his faith.

Thank you Ms. Senior. You are so noble to have found a way to have spared Blair, a Christian friend of George Bush who like Bush still supports the war that liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule, from the depths of the liberal hell and eternal damnation to which in your view Bush and his pals so richly deserve to be consigned.

Outliers: Cultural Determinism

David Brooks has reviewed Malcolm Gladwell (Turning Point, Blink)’s [picture] latest bestseller, Outliers. Brooks believes Gladwell has offered us kind of a cultural-deterministic version of history. As Brooks writes:

Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness. Many upper-middle-class American kids are raised in an atmosphere of “concerted cultivation,” which inculcates a fanatical devotion to meritocratic striving.

In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. As he told [New York's Jason] Zengerle, “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”

“Concerted cultivation”? According to Wikipedia, it

causes a transmission of differential advantages, meaning [the beneficiaries] end up having an advantage in life over children reared based on other methods. [Such] children . . . are set apart in academic environments and they also learn to have more confidence when confronted with social interactions.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan

We earlier identified Arne Duncan as one of the two leading reformist candidates to be Obama’s education secretary. So Duncan’s selection should be great news for those of us upset with the current state of U.S. public education (that should be all of us).

It actually helps that Duncan reportedly has backing from the teachers unions. He has worked with them in Chicago, managing reform in part by seeing schools get more resources, and by making teachers part of the reform process.

Still, we need to see more from Obama. It seems quite possible that the teachers unions’ favorite—Linda Darling-Hammond—will land a key role alongside Duncan, once Obama fleshes out his appointments list.

Power to Gen X

Michael Barone captures the sense to which the Obama presidency constitutes passing the torch to a new generation. Bush 43 and Clinton, both born in 1946—Baby Boomer Year One—governed for 16 years, and represent the two halves of that badly divided generation. Obama, Barone says, “born in 1961, is technically a baby boomer. But his early years were straight out of Generation X—abandoned by his father and, for a time, his mother; experimentation with drugs; a sense of drifting.”

Obama wants to move America beyond Boomer divisions. His goal has the younger generation’s strongest support. It's a fact. Barone has found that:

The constituency Obama assembled during his campaign has a decided new-generational tilt. The Edison-Mitofsky exit poll tells us that Obama carried voters under age 30 by a margin of 66% to 32%. On the flip side, by my calculation, he won voters 30 and over by just 50% to 49%. That means that he won by a larger percentage among young voters than any president, and that among [older] voters . . . he may or may not have carried . . . a majority of electoral votes.

Nixon and the FBI

Mark Felt [picture], associate director of the FBI during Watergate, died last Thursday. In its obituary to Felt, the man best known as “Deep Throat”—the source the Washington Post used to bring down the Nixon presidency—the Post wrote Felt “was, by all accounts, loyal to [FBI boss J. Edgar] Hoover. He was also suspicious of the Nixon White House effort to bring the FBI under its control.”

How could Nixon, a person who shared Hoover’s and the FBI’s perspective on who was loyal to America and who wasn’t, have been so unwise as to make an enemy of Felt, the country’s number #2 G Man? We know that after graduating from Duke law school, Nixon applied to become an FBI agent but was rejected. Did that scar him for life, and prevent the close working relationship with Hoover that might have held Felt’s loyalty? Possibly. More likely, though, Nixon knew Hoover loved power enough to blackmail presidents of any political persuasion, and determined that he, not Hoover, would be Washington’s chief dirty trickster. Nixon played rough, so in the end, lost to Felt and Hoover’s career G Men.

“All who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

Healthcare Reform is Coming

Last Thursday, Barack Obama announced he wanted “swift action“ on healthcare reform. "It's hard to overstate the urgency of this work," he said. He has Tom Daschle [picture] poised to drive the program through, working with the Democratic coalition from one end of the spectrum to the other (Daschle is the former Senate Democratic leader), and with key interest groups including the American Medical Association (unhappy with a current regime that often leaves doctors undercompensated).

But Daschle has also said he will use “the Senate's rules to prevent opponents from filibustering healthcare legislation", a move that one senior Republican staff member warned would make it "extremely difficult" to get any GOP support for major reform. One good way to drive reform through—have an enemy to build your movement around. On healthcare reform, that enemy would be Republicans.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has highlighted some of the difficulties with the Obama-Daschle anti-GOP approach to reform. Speaking on “Special Report with Brit Hume,” Krauthammer, an M.D. himself, noted Daschle explained he will cut costs:

in part by saying he will work on prevention. Now, I have been in the business for 30 years, and you hear it every year, and you want to weep when you hear it again and again. Prevention is a nice thing, but it doesn't save money.

HUME: Why?

KRAUTHAMMER: For example, the biggest preventative healthcare success in American history is the reduction in smoking. What happens instead of dying young if you smoke, you die older, spending years in a nursing home, and the costs end up higher. I'm not in favor of dying young, but it's more expensive if you live longer.

If you die of a heart attack at 50, that's awful, but it's cheap. If you live into your 80's, you will end up with Alzheimer's or cancer or a chronic disease that's expensive. . .

The way to save money in healthcare, the most immediate and effective, is to eliminate defensive medicine. I was a chief resident 30 years ago and a lot of our tests are entirely unnecessary and are a way to prevent lawsuits. The Democrats will never do that because of their dependence on the trial lawyers.

With a coalition built on excluding Republicans, you know trial lawyers will succeed in keeping medicine expensive for the rest of us.

Thirty Years On

China has now been longer in the Deng mode than it was in the Mao mode.

--Tom Grimmer, Toronto Globe and Mail

In December 1978, the Chinese Communist Party put Deng Xiaoping in control of the country, the U.S. recognized China, and Deng headed for America; TIME's Man of the Year [picture]. Tom Grimmer punctuates that historic turning point by writing:

Thirty years on, we know what Mr. Deng set in motion. By now, we can almost recite the gee-whiz statistics: the world's third-largest economy, 40 million new Internet users every year, 600 million cellphones, $2-trillion (U.S.) in foreign-exchange holdings and — my own favourite — the planet's biggest consumer of cement. This country has seen the greatest poverty-alleviation effort in history. Yes, yes, we've heard it all. But somehow, knowing this does not quite do this place justice.

I arrived in China seven years after Mr. Deng's triumph, in the fall of 1985. I was employed by a Chinese "work unit." My local colleagues lived in cold-water flats they didn't own, rode ancient bicycles and looked forward to the annual train ride to see their parents in another province. Getting a passport was next to impossible, and you needed permission to read certain papers containing foreign news. Now they own their apartments, many have cars, and they go online to book their holidays abroad. Most surprising, they don't seem to find this transition, in less than a generation, the least bit jarring.

It’s jarring, it’s wonderful. China’s success benefits us too.

The G-20; My “Top 15; ” A New G-20

The G-20 emerged as a big deal last month when its member-nation leaders gathered in Washington D.C. for an emergency summit to take on the world financial crisis. Actually, the G-8 (U.S., Japan, Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Canada, Russia) created the G-18 in 1999. The G-8 wanted to broaden their Euro-centric group to include other “systemically important countries” or “emerging markets”. So the G-8 invited finance ministers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey to join them in Berlin that year, and the enlarged finance minister grouping has met annually since. The G-18 later became the G-20 when it added Indonesia and the European Union.

In my discussion of the “Top 15” [see above chart] last year, I focused on countries that belong on some revised version of the Security Council, a political/economic/security power grouping, not the G-8, which groups economic powers. Still, it’s noteworthy that Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Indonesia are already in my “Top 15” along with the G-8’s U.S., Japan, Canada, Russia, and the E.U. (two slots for the West European nations).

In 2006, I also looked that the “next 25” nations, ranked in power just below the top 15. If we had used the “next 25” ranking to expand the "Top 15" from 15 to 20, we would have added Turkey and South Korea to a new “Top 20”. The remaining countries currently in the G-20—Argentina, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa—ranked lower on my “next 25” list.

The countries from my “Top 15” not part of the G-20 are Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. These four nations represent far more people than Argentina, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa (515 million to 131 million). Furthermore, Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Iran may soon have, and Iran and Nigeria, like Saudi Arabia, have oil.

Three of the G-20 nations not in my “Top 20”—Argentina, Australia, and South Africa—are among the top 20 economic powers; the basis for selecting the G-20. Saudi Arabia isn’t. It ranks 23rd in GDP measured by purchasing power parity (GDP/PPP). Iran, on the other hand, ranks 19th in GDP/PPP (19th if we are able to hold the EU to two G-20 representatives rather than its current five).

One can understand, I guess, why the big economic powers chose to include Saudi Arabia instead of Iran in their G-20. Still, I would make the G-20 our top big power grouping by reducing the EU from five to two representatives (whatever two they choose), replacing Saudi Arabia with Iran, and adding Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.

Checking on Election Predictions (II)

Polls get a bad rep. They called the 2008 election very well. In my election predictions item, I said that drawing from the “Real Clear Politics” and “Rothenberg Political Report” poll-based analyses, Obama-Biden would win by about 8%, with roughly 380 electoral votes. Obama-Biden won by 7%, with 365 electoral votes, but lost Missouri by only 3,632 votes. A Missouri win would have given Obama-Biden 376 electoral votes.

In the senate, I predicted Democrats would pick up 8 seats to reach 59, taking Saxby Chambliss’ Georgia’s seat—but not Coleman’s in Minnesota nor McConnell’s in Kentucky. I was wrong about Chambliss. He won, but only after a December runoff, and Coleman’s lead in Minnesota of less than 200 votes is the only thing preventing Democrats from in fact gaining 8 seats.

In the house, I guessed Democrats might gain 28 seats, for a margin of 90. They have gained 21 for a margin of 80, meaning I was off by 7. I also said, “It will be an historic victory for liberals, their greatest triumph since 1964.” That’s true. 1965 is the last time liberals totally controlled Washington. On many senate votes, liberals will have the 60 needed to cut off debate, pass legislation, and confirm liberal justices and judges.

Coming Obama Disappointment #1: Public Education

Terry Moe, educational specialist at the Hoover Institution, wrote the seminal study (with John E. Chubb), Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, when he was at the Brookings Institution in 1990. Moe argues that while Democrats genuinely want “to help disadvantaged kids stuck in bad schools,” the party:

is immobilized. Impotent. The explanation lies in its longstanding alliance with the teachers' unions -- which, with more than three million members, tons of money and legions of activists, are among the most powerful groups in American politics. The Democrats benefit enormously from all this firepower, and they know what they need to do to keep it. They need to stay inside the box.

Acceptable educational “change,” therefore, cannot “affect anyone's job, reallocate resources, or otherwise threaten the occupational interests of the adults running the system.” Moe says Democrats should instead get serious about 1) accountability, 2) school choice, and 3) the downside of collective bargaining—onerous rules, assignments based on solely on seniority, and absolute tenure. Moe hopes Obama will somehow make the changes Democrats should favor.

The New York Times’ David Brooks has identified a camp of educational reformers within the Obama network that is championing for education secretary either Joel Klein, the highly successful New York public school system head who Brooks says has been “blackballed” by the unions, or Arne Duncan, according to Brooks “the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial.”

Brooks worries the job will instead go to some uninvolved governor, with Linda Darling-Hammond [picture], a defender of the status quo who heads Obama’s education transition team, named deputy secretary. If it’s Darling-Hammond, she won’t be the Washington Post’s “ideal candidate ":

someone who is not afraid to break with orthodoxy, who is more concerned with results than with ideology, who has a proven ability to lead large systems toward change and is passionate about regaining America's place as the best-educated country on the planet[, someone focused] on the only interests that matter -- those of America's schoolchildren.

Anyone betting on this kind of Washington Post-type outcome had better demand long odds.

Checking on Election Predictions (I)

In my election predictions item, I said of the impact of Obama’s election on Wall Street, “I believe the stock market will within 30 days show real unhappiness with the result.” Today is 30 days since the market closed just before Obama’s election, and my FOX INDEX, which measures the distance to a healthy market (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ), is at -5,133, or -1,744 below the -3,389 it stood at on November 4 [see chart]. This represents an index decline of -66%. To be sure, since word leaked Obama would appoint Tim Geithner treasury secretary, the index is up 1,046, or 20%.

And that’s to the good. Still a ways to go, however, before the market reaches pre-Obama levels.

Obama Puts Foreign Policy in Perspective

Barack Obama seems relaxed about how his administration will handle foreign policy. Obama should be for these reasons:


1. He just won the first election since 9.11 not dominated by foreign policy. Republicans used national security to win victories in 2002 and 2004, successfully painting the Democrats as soft on terrorism. Democrats are interested in big government at home, and crises overseas get in the way.

2. The Obama/Democrat policy on Iraq proved to be win-win. Liberals think the Iraq war was a stupid distraction, and were pleased when in 2006 Iraq became a disaster that helped Democrats control congress. But Obama and company are at least as happy that Iraq has turned out OK, allowing the U.S. to leave and put resources into problems at home.

3. Democrats want domestic issues front and center. Democrats are a coalition of interests that believes government should run the economy, education, health care, and labor relations, and seeks new resources to pay for government programs. Because Democrats are happy with Obama’s priorities, Obama is free to run foreign policy as he chooses.

4. Bush already moved foreign policy toward realism. No wonder Obama keeps Gates as Defense Secretary. Foreign policy today is much different than was in 2006 before Rumsfeld left, different in ways Obama likes. Building peace between Israel and Palestine, helping shore up a moderate government in Pakistan, facing head-on the danger of a nuclearized Iran, working with China to contain North Korea—all these policies carry over well for Obama.

5. Clinton fits into Obama’s foreign policy. Once Clinton turned against the Iraq war, there was no real difference between the two. It was, however, still in Obama’s political interest to continue bashing Clinton over her vote for the war. That was then. Now both share the same pragmatic approach to foreign policy, Obama will shift resources and attention toward domestic issues, and Clinton will work with the professionals to keep foreign policy from boiling over into a crisis. When crises do come, Obama will run the show.

The blog entries below provide perspective on an Obama foreign policy. The commontariat may be disappointed to be working with Clinton after having sought to engage Obama directly. The commontariat believes Obama’s willingness to turn over foreign policy to Clinton proclaims national security’s diminished importance. It forgets the world usually forces itself on sitting presidents.

The earliest entries show me wrong in thinking foreign policy would help McCain against Obama. Of course, the economy took over.

Clinton as Secretary of State: Second Thoughts?

Wow. Clinton as Secretary of State

Obama’s Sandbox

More Support for Obama Softness

Obama and "Soft Power"

Obama’s Big Donors

The Obama organization claimed small donors ($200 or below) dominated Obama’s campaign fundraising. That’s not true, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute (CFI). The CFI reports 74% of Obama’s money came from those who gave over $200, and thus had to profile their identity. That’s almost exactly the same figure for Bush in 2004. Bush received 75% of his donations from those giving over $200.

Of course, Obama raised 57% ($200 million) more than Bush.

Wealth Swings to Hong Kong

As New York gained from Europe’s problems after World War I, so Hong Kong will capitalize from the current financial crisis slamming New York. Los Angeles Times correspondent Don Lee writes about how world finance is shifting to Hong Kong:

With the U.S. and Europe worse off than others, there's little doubt that more capital and talent will swing toward Asia. And few places look as well positioned as Hong Kong to take advantage of that. “[T]here are three great listening posts: London, New York and Hong Kong," says Donald Straszheim, former global chief economist at Merrill Lynch in New York, [and] "Hong Kong is increasingly becoming globally important.”

The latest financial crisis has Western governments promising tougher regulation of banks and trading houses. . . "People want government to do more, but not to the extreme of the U.S., where the government takes control of everything," says Man Cheuk Fei, chief editor of Hong Kong Economic Journal. "Hong Kong senior officials argue that this is a golden opportunity to build one or two investment banks. . . . They can compete with the U.S. in the future."

Thanks to China, Hong Kong has surpassed New York in the number of initial public offerings in recent years. As much as 70% of Hong Kong's economic growth now depends on the mainland, says Donald Lam, assistant general manager at Hang Seng Bank, one of this city's largest.

David Dodwell, a British native who has lived here 20 years, says Hong Kong should come out stronger from the global economic turmoil, which he believes "will be the tipping point marking the end of U.S. hegemonic power." China "is going to be an increasingly powerful locomotive for the global economy," he says.

The Ugly Chinese

James Fallows likes to pick a subject and follow it in depth for an extended period, often leading to a book. He has written about technology, national defense, Japan, the media, Iraq, flying, and now China, with a forthcoming book entitled Postcards from Tomorrow Square. So what does Fallows see in China?

 Chinese “are generally optimistic about what life will hold 20 years from now[, 86%] satisfied with the country’s overall direction—the highest of all the countries [the Pew project] surveyed. . .”

 “National-level democracy might come to China or it might not—ever. . . But from the national level down to villages, where local officials are now elected, the government is by all reports becoming accountable. . . The system prides itself on learning about problems as they arise and relieving social pressure before it erupts.”

But Fallows picks on China for its “ignorance” of the outside world. One example: most people in China considered their country very “trustworthy,” while most people outside China thought the country was not trustworthy at all. I guess we outsiders know China better than its populace does.

To make his point about how unready Chinese are to handle the outside world, Fallows compares China’s party school emphasis on “loyalty, predictability, and party-line conformity” to the Bush administration’s staffing “its Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone mainly with people who followed the party line in Washington.”

So let me get this. China might be as horrible abroad as the Bush administration, which has basically won its prolonged, difficult struggle to bring democracy to Iraq. That bad, huh?

Obama’s Good News: Geithner for Treasury

Yesterday, the S&P 500 dropped to 752, below its last bear market low of 769 hit in October 2002. The last time the S&P was this low was 1997, when the index was on the upswing. Overall, My FOX INDEX, which measures the distance to a healthy market (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ), hit a new bottom of -6,179 (index is 3 months old—we run the FOX INDEX whenever it hits new lows), 92% of the way from healthy to the October 2002 bottom. Yesterday was indeed a Black Thursday [see chart].

Today, the market moved up sharply on the leaked news Tim Geithner, the head of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will be named treasury secretary Monday. Obama has made the market nervous—traders worry about where he will take the economy. Geithner represents competence, he’s a known quantity, he’s been active working with Paulson on Paulson’s rescue plans, and Geithner’s appointment signals Obama wants a calm, steady hand guiding our economic future. Good news for the market and for America.

GM, Citicorp Troubles Cripple Market

Stocks fell to new 5-1/2 year lows today. People are losing faith in the survival of General Motors, the United Auto Workers, and Citicorp, as congressional Democrats talk about making cars greener. My FOX INDEX, which measures the distance to a healthy market (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ), dropped 577 points to its new bottom of -5,610 (index is 3 months old—we run the FOX INDEX whenever it hits new lows). It’s now 83% of the way from healthy to the bottom the market hit in October 2002, at the end of the last bust.

Clinton as Secretary of State: Second Thoughts?

Obama’s picking Clinton as Secretary of State seemed an astute move, bringing her inside the tent. But the Washington commentariat, the media’s elite, seems to think otherwise. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius says, “the idea of subcontracting foreign policy to Clinton -- a big, hungry, needy ego surrounded by a team that’s hungrier and needier still -- strikes me as a mistake of potentially enormous proportions.” His Washington Post colleague, guru-in-chief David Broder, believes Clinton is wrong for the job because Obama

does not need someone who will tell him how to approach the world or be his mentor in international relations. One of the principal reasons he was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war with Iraq was not in America's interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton.

And the most influential Washington commentator on foreign policy, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman, doubts Obama will have Clinton’s back (he really means Clinton will have Obama’s back), “given all that has gone down between them and their staffs. . . particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead” to a “run again for the presidency.”

Friedman specifically rejects the “team of rivals” argument for appointing Clinton, a rejection given fuller treatment by historian Matthew Pinsker, who writes that while Obama loves Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals book on the Lincoln presidency, in fact bringing all his rivals into his cabinet gave Lincoln serious problems.

Having Ignatius, Broder, and Friedman all diss the Clinton appointment is a sign that strong opposition is coming from the Obama camp, which is sharing its concerns with the commentariat. Clinton herself is getting ready for rejection by putting out the word she may not be interested in the post after all, though that “might simply reflect her need to create an alternative storyline if the deal falls apart.”

Anyway, the commentariat loves all this. With Democrats back in power after eight years in the wilderness, the media are once again players.

Wow. Clinton as Secretary of State.

I’m amazed by reports that Obama’s offered Secretary of State to Clinton. It would be an excellent selection, totally negating Obama’s error in overlooking Clinton for vice president. It pulls the party together, and should therefore give Obama enhanced power over congressional leaders.

And Obama avoids having any Clinton in the White House, something he would have had on his hands with Clinton as Veep. Clinton will be in another building, saddled with running a big bureaucracy, in constant conflict with the White House and Defense, and often on the road to less important spots (Obama will grab the best stuff).

Why would Clinton do it? She’s ready for something new, she will appreciate she has a better job than Biden’s (the job she wanted in August), and she gets to shape American foreign policy—probably the part of being president she most looked forward to. Meanwhile, Obama has her “inside the tent, (shooting) out.”

It’s About the Schools

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof writes that Obama is “sending signals that education may be on the back burner at the beginning of the new administration. He ranked it fifth among his priorities.” To Kristof, that’s a big mistake. Improved urban primary and secondary education is key to America’s economic future, Kristof believes.

How do we get to better schools? Kristof says,

A study by the Hamilton Project, a public policy group at the Brookings Institution, outlines several steps to boost weak schools: end rigid requirements for teacher certification that impede hiring, make tenure more difficult to get so that ineffective teachers can be weeded out after three years on the job and award hefty bonuses to good teachers willing to teach in low-income areas. If we want outstanding, inspiring teachers in difficult classrooms, we’re going to have to pay much more.

Pay teachers “much more.” OK. Obama will happily back that recommendation.

Liberals Frighten Market

In my “election predictions” item, I concluded with this statement, “I believe the stock market will within 30 days show real unhappiness with [the liberal sweep].”

Wow, 30 days! Much too long! In the first two days after Obama’s election and liberal gains in both houses, the market has recorded its biggest two-day drop since October 1987. Many factors are at play in a down economy. But one of those factors is the liberal threat to raise taxes and push anti-business, pro-union regulations. Wall Street is showing its fears about what liberals will do, and wants Obama to reassure American business.

. . . But Defeat is an Orphan

As journalist Monica Langley wrote,

Axelrod . . . set out "seven pillars" the campaign must do well: the vice-presidential choice, the convention, a European trip to meet with heads of state and the four debates.

We said Axelrod/Obama had trouble with the first three “pillars.” But didn’t Obama-Biden win the four debates (Axelrod’s “pillars” 4-7), displaying steadiness and calm?

Why not? Front-runners are always steady and clam. And America’s September-October financial meltdown provided Obama his best possible outside event, vaulting him to a significant lead. Wall Street’s panic brought the Bush administration back before the cameras. Bush as president had responsibility for the economy. McCain wanted to be talking about foreign policy, anything but Bush. Obama wanted attention on Bush’s economy. Democrats, before September 15, were struggling to make the economy an issue. Things seemed bad, there were potential housing and credit crises, but the country was still growing.

No wonder McCain misspoke on September 15 [picture]. He needed the economy working. He had no backup plan for the economy going bad in a big way, an event that always turns out the party in power. Additionally, the Great Depression, the Kennedy-Johnson years, and Clinton’s presidency (“It’s the economy, stupid”) all tell us Democrats help us get out of bad economic situations caused by Republicans. So McCain inexpertly tried to wish an economic crisis away (“fundamentals are strong”).

Obama and victory’s 1000 other fathers are chief beneficiaries of an economy gone very bad—bad at just the time to settle an election.

Victory Has a Thousand Fathers

It’s pretty obvious the financial tsunami did in McCain’s election prospects, though Obama may have won a closer race anyway. But the journalists who write “history’s first draft” are busy minimizing the financial meltdown that riveted the country’s attention for most of the campaign’s final six weeks, while maximizing McCain-Palin’s media-exposed errors and Obama’s strategic brilliance.

Of course, McCain did hurt himself with that one bad quote. As Monica Langley described it in the Wall Street Journal:

[On September 15], the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 500 points, with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in bankruptcy court and other financial firms, such as American International Group Inc., struggling. On the stump, Sen. McCain sought to reassure voters. "The fundamentals of the economy are strong," he said. Sen. Obama attacked: "Sen. McCain, what economy are you talking about?" he said.

But one bad statement is different from Langley and others saying Obama was steady in the face of crisis, McCain wasn’t. Or suggesting Obama adeptly at McCain’s expense played out a strategy set months earlier, as Langley did when she quoted Obama chief strategist David Axelrod [picture]:

"From the start [of the general election campaign], we defined [the] election as about change versus more of the same." At their Chicago headquarters, Axelrod . . . set out "seven pillars" the campaign must do well: the vice-presidential choice, the convention, a European trip to meet with heads of state and the four debates.

If I could rewrite this “first draft” history of Axelrod’s “seven pillars” (above--incidentally, why modestly leave out the “of wisdom”? T.E. Lawrence’s autobiography was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, not “Seven Pillars”), I would say Axelrod/Obama 1) blew the vice presidential choice, 2) overdid the European trip, allowing McCain to separate “celebrity” Obama from ordinary Americans, 3) responded to their Europe error by toning down Obama’s closing speech in front of 80,000 screaming people so Obama wouldn’t come off as Hitler at a Nuremberg rally, and 4) arrived at September 15 tied with McCain in the polls, because people weren’t buying the idea that McCain-Palin were, as Axelrod said, “more of the same.”

Then the economic tsunami hit.

Historic Victory

From Tom Bevan, who runs the website “Real Clear Politics:”

Obama captured more votes than any candidate in history; a higher percentage of the popular vote than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and a higher percentage of the white vote than John Kerry four years ago. . . make no mistake about it: last night voters handed Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats a mandate to take the country in a new direction.

Or an old direction, back to the New Deal and Great Society.

Election Predictions

“Real Clear Politics” and the “Rothenberg Political Report” are my best sources for how the election will come out. Extrapolating from their work, I’m expecting Obama-Biden to win by about 8%, with roughly 380 electoral votes, for Democrats to pick up 8 senate seats to reach 59, including Saxby Chambliss of Georgia’s seat—but not Coleman’s in Minnesota nor McConnell’s in Kentucky—and for Democrats to gain 28 more house seats, for a total of 263 and a margin of 90.

It will be an historic victory for liberals, their greatest triumph since 1964. I believe the stock market will within 30 days show real unhappiness with the result.

In Battle of Quotes, Obama Wins 6 to 1

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

--John Kerry, March 16, 2004

Newsweek’s inside coverage of how Bush won re-election in 2004 made much of Kerry’s statement on funding the Iraq war (above). The Bush people saw immediately how it captured Kerry’s flip-flop-flip position on Iraq and the war on terrorism, and used Kerry’s words mercilessly against him. You could not have invented a better quote, and Kerry said it himself! One quote. One election lost.

I remember thinking, “Sure that quote was important, but isn’t it risky to build elections around a single ill-considered statement?” After all, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” [Matthew 26:52]. And so it was. Democrats did the turnabout in 2008, using McCain's own words to defeat McCain. Here’s how:

1. Democrats used 3 phrases to define Bush and elect Democrats to Congress in 2006.

“my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

--Dick Chaney, March 16, 2003

"Mission Accomplished"

--Banner behind George W. Bush during speech on USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

-–George W. Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

2. With a single old quote, Obama then nailed McCain to Bush.

“I voted with the president over 90 percent of the time, higher than a lot of my even Republican colleagues."

--John McCain, May 22, 2003

I didn’t think Obama would get away with marrying McCain to Bush. They are so different. I overlooked the power of that one televised quote from 2003, which held up because McCain’s “agree with Bush” votes later continued to hover around 90%.

3. Obama used two quotes, one just as the meltdown began, to portray McCain as unqualified to deal with the economy.

"The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should.”

--John McCain, December 18, 2007

"Our economy, I think, is still -- the fundamentals of our economy are strong. . . “

--John McCain, September 15, 2008

These two McCain errors, tacked on to the reality of our economic meltdown, probably cost McCain any chance of winning.

Obama made a big mistake himself, and it hurt him for months afterwards, when he said:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them . . . And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

--Barack Obama, April 5, 2008

The Obama campaign, however, never repeated that mistake, and Obama did everything he could to remind voters that he came from a low income background, raised by a white single mother and white grandparents from Kansas.

Two weeks ago, McCain thought he had the quote that might sink Obama at the last minute, when the Democrat told “Joe the Plumber:”

“I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

--Barack Obama, October 12, 2008

McCain was right to jump on Obama's statement. The quote showed Obama more interested in income redistribution than wealth creation. The problem is that in a bad economy, voters don’t see a problem with income redistribution. So in the end, the quote hardly touched Obama.

More on Obama Changing Courts

In his article “Obama presidency could reshape courts,” Fred Barbash of “Politico” makes some of the same points as Northwestern’s Steven Calabresi. Like Calabresi, Barbish feels Obama,

through his appointments could have a profound impact on the judiciary for decades to come. In fact, Obama stands a greater chance than any Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson of making an impact on the both the appeals courts and the Supreme Court, especially if the Democrats get 60 seats in the Senate, which must confirm appointments.

And Barbish also spots that “Obama’s ideal appointee recognizes ‘who the weak are, and who the strong are in our society,’” setting the table for judges who place empathy ahead of justice.

Both Obama and ex-Judiciary Committee chair Joe Biden care greatly about the courts. Barbish quotes Harvard Law School’s Cass Sunstein, an Obama friend, advisor and former faculty colleague at the University of Chicago Law School saying, “The first thing to know about Obama, which hasn’t gotten sufficient attention, is that he is himself appointable to the Supreme Court. He is a constitutional specialist who has taught for many years,” and who “is obviously alert to the fact that there’s been a rightward drift on the court.” And as Biden put it, “the ideology of [the] judge makes a big difference.”

A big difference. Understatement.