Election 2009 (IV): The Lower Depths

Once, when a pollster made him angry, Emanuel sent him a dead fish.

--TIME bio of Rahm Emanuel

Here are two reasons why Democrats feel they can rule as liberals in a moderate-conservative country. The first is that they are America’s natural leadership class—better educated, wealthy, and correct on the big issues our nation faced over the last century. The second is that, with the help of a protective media, they feel able to fool “some of the people”—the non-liberal 30% they need for a majority—“all of the time.”

One key part of “fooling” people is Democrats’ willingness to play hardball (we won’t say “dirty”) politics. Lee Atwater, as George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager running Bush’s 1988 campaign for president, became the prototypical hardball campaigner. Democrat Michael Dukakis led Bush by 17% in early polls, but Bush carried 40 states in a November 1988 landslide.

To win, Atwater redefined Dukakis as a “Massachusetts liberal,” most infamously making a household name out of Willie Horton, a black murderer who raped a woman while on a furlough program Massachusetts Governor Dukakis oversaw. Democrats keyed in on the Willie Horton ad as blatantly racist, even though Atwater never used Horton’s picture, and his successful campaign to redefine Dukakis had several other pieces to it. (Incidentally, Donna Brazile, later Al Gore’s campaign manager, unsuccessfully attempted to savage Bush in that same 1988 campaign for an affair she said he had in the 1970s.)

After 1988, Democrats and their media friends determined not to be out-Atwatered in the future. The Democrats’ current Atwater is Rahm Emanuel, who orchestrated the Democrats’ 2006 take-back of the U.S. House, and today is the Obama chief of staff who runs most everything. As this blog noted in 2006, the media largely ignored the story Emanuel knew about the Mark Foley scandal a year in advance, but sat on it until he could use it to blow up Republicans during the campaign’s final six weeks.

Emanuel plays real hardball, for as a sitting House member, Emanuel had an obligation to bring Foley’s actions to leadership’s attention much earlier. Emanuel wanted an election issue more, and the delay worked, with voters in exit polls giving corruption—highlighted by the Foley scandal—as a reason just behind the Iraq war for turning Republicans out of office.

Dishonesty marked the 2008 Obama campaign. Obama promised to take public financing and limit campaign expenditures accordingly, promised not to hire lobbyists, promised to publish legislation on the internet so everyone could read it 5 days before signing, promised to be bi-partisan and post-partisan in governing, promised health care wouldn't increase the deficit, promised to put health care negotiations on C-SPAN, promised not to force people to purchase health care, promised not to raise middle class taxes, indicated we were in Afghanistan to win a “necessary” war, and promised to bring down the Bush budget deficits. Was any of this serious, and does it build trust to ignore promises so quickly and often? Beyond this, there is the illegal overlap between the Obama campaign and ACORN.

So in 2009, it’s no surprise that Democrats and media friends played hardball in the key New Jersey and Virgnia gubernatorial campaigns. In New Jersey, Jon Corzine was desperate to stave off defeat by Chris Christie, the Republican. It helped immensely to have independent conservative Christopher Daggett in the race, taking votes away from Christie. But it’s beyond hardball to, as Democrats did, pay for phone calls to voters advocating they vote for Daggett over Christie. And never mind that marathon runner Corzine also ran ads talking about the corpulent Christie “throwing his weight around” (the ads may have backfired; few New Jerseyites run marathons).

The Virginia gubernatorial campaign featured a series of Washington Post articles attacking Republican Bob McDonnell for views expressed in his 1989 masters' thesis, a document the Post proudly surfaced as relevant to 2009. Thesis in hand, the Post repeatedly hit at McDonnell for writing 20 years ago that working women were detrimental to families. Post coverage blankets northern Virginia; the attacks drew blood, dropping McDonnell’s lead to near zero. But McDonnell's opponent Creigh Deeds kept harping on the same point. McDonnell, who rallied support from his wife, daughters, and women who had worked for him, eventually found the public tiring of articles and ads based on an old academic paper.

The Post attack failed. McDonnell whipped Deeds by 18%, in contrast to the Post’s successful 2006 effort to end Republican Virginia Senator George Allen’s career by finding and repeating the story that Allen had called an ethnic Indian volunteer working for Allen’s Democratic opponent James Webb a “macaca,” and had welcomed the U.S.-born volunteer “to America.” Thanks to the Post, Webb won a squeaker.

Score after two big Virginia elections: Post & Democrats 1, Virginia Republicans 1. All’s fair in war and politics at the lower depths, so the Post will likely be back helping Democrats and Emanuel (also known as Rahm-bo) again next election.

Why is Obama Not in Berlin?

Rich Lowry of National Review is asking that question for all of us. In his first year, Clinton visited 3 countries, Bush 11. Obama’s visited 16, but not Berlin with our allies on the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall—the event that effectively marked the Cold War’s end.

Lowry notes Obama was in Berlin last year, where he said, "a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Obama used the passive voice to obscure one big fact—“a wall came down” because we won, they lost.

Ronald Reagan went to Berlin in 1987 and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Two years later, thanks to the West’s strength and the East’s increasing weakness, oppression lost, freedom triumphed.

Obama lives a politically correct life. White men didn’t make history. They ruined history for the world’s oppressed masses. Obama gets it. He will bring the world together, as he brought white and black together organizing Chicago’s south side, winning the Iowa caucuses, then winning the world’s most powerful office.

Berlin? Cold War? So yesterday. So all white, a tiny white part of a big, mostly colored world.

Election 2009 (III): Halo Effect

Democrats believe they hold the moral high ground. They talk among themselves. They have a tough time accepting the legitimacy of any other perspective.

U.S. adults are 20% liberal, and 28% college graduates. College graduates are the people most likely to follow politics, to read and pay attention to news, to contribute money, to vote Democratic, and to do so because liberal Democrats are the “good guys.”

Democrats wear the halo for three big reasons:

1. After capitalism collapsed in 1929-32, Democrats used government power to help “the little guy,” “the common man,” those thrown out of work by failed businesses. Republicans argue, “government is the problem, not the solution,” and insist only private enterprise creates jobs. But liberals, college graduates, don’t fear government. After all, the people in government are much like them. Liberals want good government that helps those left behind. That means Democrats; the good guys.

2. Democrats delivered during the 1960s on America’s most important moral crusade, equality for African-Americans. Democrats led the fight for civil rights, unlike Republicans who gained from the white backlash in its Southern (“redneck”) and Northern ethnic (“Archie Bunker”) neighborhood base. Republicans used code words like “crime in the streets,” “welfare queens,” and “Willie Horton,” but their campaigns were about race. Race helped Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush win five of six times between 1968 and 1992. As Lyndon Johnson supposedly said, when signing the 1964 civil rights act, "We have lost the South for a generation." True, and a truly disgusting reality for most of America’s best educated.

The Democratic commitment to equality gained a bigger, more instant payoff when it expanded to include Hispanics and especially women. The party’s strong commitment to a woman’s right to choose locked in the support of America’s more educated and independent females. The Democrats’ subsequent battle for gay rights is proving more controversial, but partly because helping gays isn’t good politics, it solidifies the halo effect Democrats earn from pursuing female and minority equality.

3. Democrats oppose war. Vietnam tore our nation apart, but it also united much of the college-educated elite behind Democrats’ anti-war banner. So while Democrats lost millions of votes when they turned away from the anti-Communist foreign policy of Democrats Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson, other millions of Americans, mostly better educated, favored Democrats who put domestic reform before fighting tyranny abroad (thinking “Where’s the real tyranny anyway, if not inside the Republican Party?”). The Iraq “war of choice”, including the very “nation building” George W. Bush denounced as a candidate, has helped fix the halo even more firmly on the Democratic Party’s head.

Democrats won over America’s elite by being right on the three great battles that divided us since 1929. The moral sanctity Democrats feel supporting (good) government, pursuing equality, and opposing war leads to advocacy journalism from a self-righteous media and blogosphere, intolerant screams from entertainment and the arts, arrogant put-downs from intellectuals in universities, the government, and the non-profit sector, even pro-government posturing by business giants like Google’s Eric Schmidt. Democrats believe they are right not only because they are bright, but also because their cause is just.

And right makes might.

Election 2009 (II): Bye Bye, W.

In July, “Politico’s” Jonathan Martin told us that Democrats running for governor in both New Jersey and Virginia were trying to plant George Bush on the backs of their Republican opponents. I said, “November elections in New Jersey and Virginia will show how well it works to continue running against Bush, months after he has left office.”

Well, the results are in. It doesn’t work. Obama, you are president now, for better or worse, and you now own the economy.

Election 2009 (I): Thumpin’ 4 years on

Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.

--Vince Lombardi, Green Bay Packers Coach

The 2005 off-year Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia helped Rahm Emanuel recruit the candidates needed to take back the House in 2006. The double win showed potential challengers Democrats had a bright future (Emanuel’s efforts are covered in the book The Thumpin’). The year 2005 was a tough one for Republicans—an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, and disastrous White House handling of Hurricane Katrina, the largest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Emanuel’s successful recruiting led to a Democratic take-over of the House—indeed Washington—in 2006 (the Senate also went Democratic that year).

After 2006, it was on to the White House. Emanuel and Democrats viewed their 2006 victory as a stepping-stone to winning the presidency in 2008. Though Emanuel was a staffer in Clinton’s White House, he used his Chicago ties to get close to Hillary Clinton’s chief rival, Barack Obama. The 2008 campaign ended in the Democrats’ sweeping victory.

By year 4, Emanuel had become Obama’s chief of staff, committed to a permanent campaign to keep Obama in power. Both know the White House is the best place from which to run for president in 2012. But first, the president has to do what Clinton failed to do in 1994 and Bush failed to do in 2006—win the upcoming mid-term election. You gain power by winning. You keep power by winning. Win, win, win. Obama will be the source of Democratic victories in 2010 or Emanuel will fail.

The need to win in 2010 brings us to the 2009 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, two states Obama carried in 2008. If either state went Republican, no big deal. But if both went Republican, Democrats in Congress facing mid-terms less than a year later would become nervous. So for Emanuel, it became vital that Democrats hold at least one of the two governorships.

With New Jersey's Jon Corzine confronting terrible favorability ratings, stuck with a bad economy, with personal ties to a highly unpopular Wall Street, having failed on a promise to fix high property taxes, and with Democratic corruption too much for even highly-tolerant New Jerseyites, Emanuel viewed Virginia as the state Democrats must hold. He went to work holding Virginia by:

➢ making incumbent Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (Obama’s almost-vice president and ineligible to run for re-election) head of the Democratic National Committee with one major job—keep Virginia Democratic;

➢ attempting to wrap up the contentious Congressional health care debate by November, so it wouldn’t become an issue that told wobbly Democrats they risked re-election in 2010 if they backed Obama’s bill;

But Virginia went very wrong for Virginia Governor Kaine and the Democrats. The GOP had the better candidate and in polls he surged to a big lead. And Congress ignored Emanuel’s timetable; health care was becoming a big issue. Emanuel made the best of the situation by:

➢ shifting the 2009 focus from Virginia to New Jersey, throwing everything into an effort to pull Corzine through;

➢ delaying until after the election the White House decision on sending troops to Afghanistan, so that troop increases wouldn’t drive liberal votes away from Corzine.

But as we saw yesterday, nothing worked. After two big wins, Congress in 2006, Congress and the White House in 2008, Emanuel suffered his first defeat. Virginia and New Jersey both went Republican—the one unacceptable outcome. Emanuel is therefore no longer a winner. House members worried about 2010 won’t have to listen to him. In hardball, everything depends on winning the last one. And Emanuel’s big four years ended in defeat.

Of course, the White House has a different four-year cycle, one that has three years yet to run. Still, a significant 1/4th of that precious time is gone, a year that went badly. The next election, next year's mid-terms less than a year away, look a little harder today than they did Tuesday.

Noblesse oblige 2009

Tom Friedman’s latest column provides real evidence our national elite’s in a different place than the rest of us.

According to Friedman, many Americans are “Warren Buffett centrists.” We agree with Buffett that whatever we achieve in life is because we were born in America at this time, with all of its advantages and opportunities.

I think Friedman means we are well positioned to “give back.” I think this, because Friedman also writes America’s “becoming a declining great power” in need of “nation-building at home,” something in turn requiring “a spirit of shared sacrifice.”

Friedman underlines our need for nation-building through sacrifice by quoting Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel, author of the new best seller — Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?:

Obama’s election marked a shift — from a politics that celebrated privatized concerns to a politics that recognized the need for effective government and larger public purposes. You can’t get nation-building without shared sacrifice. [emphases added]

Here’s the problem with Friedman’s thinking. Most of us aren’t wealthy like Buffett or like Friedman, who married the daughter of shopping mall king Matthew Bucksbaum (General Growth Properties). These aren’t the folks, even including Harvard’s Sandel, to be inviting us to a “shared sacrifice.” Nor are Obama and most of the people around him.

Noblesse oblige, maybe. “Shared sacrifice,” no.

I think the elite don’t get it. So they take a shot at people focused on “privatized concerns,” which to me is kitchen-table talk about holding onto a job or a home, or managing disappearing savings. By trashing “privatized concerns,” the elite again fail to notice the rising populist anger against America’s government and business privileged.

Or perhaps you don’t buy this, and instead accept Friedman’s reason for people not joining Obama’s “shared sacrifice”?:

independents and conservatives who voted for Mr. Obama [note Friedman’s only interested in holding Obama’s 2008 majority; forget about the other 47%] have been so easily swayed against him by Fox News . . . because [Obama] has not given voice to the truly patriotic nation-building endeavor in which he is engaged.

Whoa! FOX News again!

What’s the deal on cutting carbon emissions?

Bjørn Lomborg is a controversial environmental figure. A Danish professor (Ph.D. in political science) who heads the Copenhagen Consensus Institute, Lomborg has attacked the “consensus” view that the way to combat global warming (now called “climate change”) is to reduce carbon emissions. According to Lomborg, “If we spent $800 billion over the next 90 years solely on the Gore solution of mitigating carbon emissions, we would rein in temperature increases by just 0.3 degrees by the end of this century.”

Lomborg even has the nerve to say wind, solar, geothermal, and wave are “incredibly inefficient.” He instead favors a targeted use of money on developing second-generation biofuel from biomass, investing in energy efficiency, fission and fusion, and carbon capture and storage (for coal, presumably).

It’s hard just to dismiss Lomborg. He believes climate change represents a serious threat to the planet. He believes climate change is a human-caused problem. He’s Danish, he is gay (maybe, maybe not, making him more sincerely leftist), he’s writing in Esquire, a decidedly liberal publication. So we should pay attention, when Lomborg says:

When we calculate the costs and benefits of [my] alternative solution, we discover that each time we invest a dollar, we create benefits worth $16 — at least 18 times and possibly 400 times better than the Gore approach. This is because the money spent on research and development will make alternatives to fossil fuels cheaper sooner, and make for a genuine transition to a low-carbon future, with all its benefits accruing sooner and at lower costs.

Democrats Old Hat

Quoting the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger without comment:

In a world defined by nearly 100,000 iPhone apps, a world of seemingly limitless, self-defined choice, the Democrats are pushing the biggest, fattest, one-size-fits all legislation since 1965. And they brag this will complete the dream Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1939.

If we were really living in the world of leading-edge politics that many people thought they were getting with Barack Obama, he would have proposed an iPhone for health care--a flexible system for which all sorts of users could create or choose health-care apps that suited their needs. Over time, with trial and error, a better system would emerge.

No chance of that.

People thought something small, agile and smart was coming to government, but so far it's turning out to be just big-box politics.

So long as the Democratic Party is the party of the Old Hat People, dependent on public-sector unions with Orwellian names like the Service Employees International Union, it will remain yoked to a pre-iPhone political model that will increasingly strike average everyday American voters as weird and alien to their world.

Gallup: America leans conservative.

In July, Gallup found that Americans identify Democrat over Republican by 34% to 28%. By pushing independents to lean one way or the other, Gallup increased the margin for Democrats to 49% over 40%. Good news for Democrats, though down from April’s 52% to 39% margin.

Gallup just released findings that paint a less favorable picture for the liberal President Obama’s supporters. After 16 separate surveys involving over 5,000 people a quarter, Gallup concludes Americans are conservative over liberal by 40% to 20%. The last time conservatives polled this high was 2002-04. Liberals are lower than they’ve been since 2005. Also, Gallup’s findings are consistent with an earlier Pew survey that reported a 2:1 conservative:liberal ratio.

Obama’s liberal agenda is up against the reality America remains a moderate-conservative nation.

Zingales Tells GOP to Go Populist

In an earlier post, I summarized Luigi Zingales’ analysis of why the big business pursuit of security differs from market capitalism’s desire for competition. At the end of my summary, I said

Zingales suggests where Republicans should be—leaving the corporate elite to the Democrats, and channeling populist rage into political support for genuinely pro-market reforms.

Now Zigales has his own Investor’s Business Daily article directly stating the GOP must go populist, and “take on the financial industry on behalf of everyone else.”

Obama Attacks, FOX News Thrives

Last week, FOX News programs topped the combined audience of CNN + MSNBC every day, every hour, between 5 pm and midnight. In fact, CNN, MSNBC, plus HLN (the old “Headline News”) combined beat FOX in only 5 of the 35 measured time slots, 3 of those during Greta Van Susteren’s “On the Record” hour. Understand, Greta beat everyone handily, but she did fall short of topping the other three’s combined audience on 3 of 5 nights.

Bill O’Reilly’s 11 pm re-run of his earlier, 8 pm show beat the other three networks combined every night.

I believe the White House knew it would drive FOX’s ratings even higher with its attacks. The White House’s objective isn’t to knock down FOX’s numbers. Rather, it’s to stop news stories jumping from FOX to the other networks.

Why Moderate Republicans Are Worried

Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen of “Politico” have an article entitled “Conservatives roar; Republicans tremble” that is generating attention. GOP Congressman Mike Pence took strong exception to the piece, calling it “hogwash” (see here). I’m less inclined to dismiss the article’s analysis.

Vandehei and Allen quote several Republicans concerned that the loud, belligerent roars coming from anti-Obamaists like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck alienate the very independents that Republicans need to win in 2010. The concerned Republicans or conservatives include Minnesota Governor Tom Pawlenty, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Bush White House staffer Ed Gillespie, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the New York Times’ David Brooks, and some people close to John McCain.

Vandehei and Allen damage their case a bit by quoting Bob Michel, the ex-House minority leader the conservative Newt Gingrich pushed aside before in 1994 leading the party to its first House majority in 40 years. Conservatives point to Michel-style Republicanism as the kind of ill-defined mush the GOP must discard, if it hopes to return to power.

I think where Canter, Graham, Brooks, etc. are right is that Republicans need moderate/independent support to win. Barry Goldwater may have excited the Republican base in 1964, but he also delivered the GOP its worst election disaster between the Depression and today. Conservatives can’t win by themselves.

Nevertheless, it should be obvious even to those folks who live in the BosWash media corridor so disconnected from Limbaugh and Beck that the Republican Party begins with conservatives, secular and religious, just as the Democrats’ soul is MoveOn.org liberal. Goldwater paved the way for Reagan, the GOP version of Obama, a person who transparently projected his basic values in a non-threatening way that gathered a majority.

Republicans need a modern Reagan, a GOP Obama.

Polls Favor Health Care Public Option

The Washington Post/ABC News poll says so. When asked, “Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?”, 57% answered, “support.” Other similarly-worded polls found even higher numbers in favor.

But according to Gallup:

With respect to one of the more contentious issues being debated -- whether the plan should include a government-run insurance plan to compete with private providers (a so-called public option) -- Americans are about evenly split, with 50% in favor and 46% opposed.

Jay Cost, who is skeptical of poll results favoring a public option, goes through the kind of long-winded explanation that usually indicates one’s holding the stick’s short end. Yet Cost makes a valid point. Gallup added the damning words “government-run” to its question, and support dropped to 50%.

Still, most polls supporting means the public option will be part of the bill that passes.

White House Communications Director looks to Mao for political advice.

Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, calls Mao Zedong a “favorite political philosopher.” Dunn also said this in June to an audience of high school students:

Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is: You're going to make choices. ... But here's the deal: These are your choices; they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Tse Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. … They had everything on their side. And people said “How can you win? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Tse Tung says, “You fight your war, and I'll fight mine.” … You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.

Mao had a small red book full of pithy sayings. He also twice tore his country apart after liberating it from Chiang Kai-shek (and by the way, Mao in 1947 led a peasant-backed party unified in its struggle against Chiang's U.S.-supplied army; better to have the countryside than the cities, contrary to what Dunn suggests). After liberation, Mao killed more people than Stalin or Hitler, #1 in the 20th century. China is still working to live past the damage Mao wrought.

Why would Anita Dunn—the person who from the White House launched the Obama administration’s initial attack on FOX News—turn to Mao for political advice? Why? Why?

White House employs “Chicago way” against FOX News.

In 1972, I knew the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times—courageously pursuing the Watergate story—were right about Nixon being a gangster-president. But I worried about the power Nixon had, and about his intense hatred of his enemies. Could Nixon prevail and actually silence his media critics, many of whom wouldn’t touch the Watergate "caper" with a 10-foot poll? It was a truly scary time for America. Nixon was very popular, carrying 49 states that November.

Tom Bevan runs the website, RealClearPolitics, valuable because it covers opinion from both sides of our national debate, including the right. If people want both sides, he’s a great source. If they view liberal media alone—the major networks except FOX, the major print media except the Wall Street Journal—as sufficient, well then, why bother with RealClearPolitics? So Bevan has a self-interest in balanced coverage.

Still, I’m shaken by the intensity of Bevan’s attack on the White House for going after FOX News. I’m shaken because I think Bevan’s truly worried about the White House’s gangster-like (Chicagoan Bevan calls it “the Chicago way”) effort to crush America’s leading cable news network. If Bevan weren’t truly worried, why risk his site’s reputation for balanced coverage by going after the White House?

Here’s what bothers Bevan:

➢ Obama’s top two politicos, Chicagoans David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, made clear on Sunday talk shows that White House efforts to delegitimize FOX News are deadly serious.

➢ Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos: "[FOX News] is not really a news station. It's not just their commentators but a lot of their news programming it's really not news it's pushing a point of view. " Axelrod also went out of his way to suggest to Stephanopoulos that ABC News adopt the White House strategy and not treat FOX News as legitimate. "The bigger thing is," Axelrod said, "other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way. We're not going to treat them that way. "

➢ Emanuel echoed the line to John King on CNN's State of the Union: "The way the president looks at it - we look at it - it's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective. And more importantly is not have the CNN's and others in the world basically be led and following FOX, as if what they're trying to do is a legitimate news organization, in the sense of both sides and a sense of valued opinion."

Bevan feels

the current presidency [depends entirely on] the President's personal popularity. President Obama has, out of necessity, become the Salesman-in-Chief for his progressive agenda. . . the White House . . . is [apparently] unable to brook criticism of the President . . . Thus FOX News is targeted as the enemy. [And, as] Axelrod and Emanuel made clear, they also want to drive a wedge between the rest of the media and FOX News, enlisting other television networks in the effort to paint FOX News as illegitimate.

All this prompts Bevan to editorialize:

And MSNBC doesn't push a certain "perspective?" . . .The White House is all for news organizations taking certain "perspec- tives" -- so long as they're favorable to the administration's agenda. It's actually quite brazen [for Axelrod and Emanuel to suggest] that ABC, CNN and other networks . . . join [the] White House's war to marginalize a competitor because it takes a "perspective" that displeases the President.

Such tactics may not be frowned upon by brass-knuckle operatives working for the political machine in a one party town. But it's different when you're the President. . . the White House's strategy may be the Chicago way, but it isn't the American way.

Hope Yet: Washington Post Supports Troops to Afghanistantan

The Washington Post, a newspaper heretofore unambiguously behind President Obama, last week editorialized against those around Obama (think Vice President Biden) who would defeat al Qaeda but not the Taliban. Saying it’s clear the Taliban’s effort to gain control over nuclear-armed Pakistan is “bad news” for the U.S., the newspaper writes, ”it's curious that spokesmen for the Obama administration continue to talk down the Taliban threat.”

The Post first quotes White House press secretary Robert Gibbs:

I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things. Their capability is somewhat different, [from al Qaeda] though, on that continuum of transnational threats.

The newspaper then adds,

That analysis—which is being used by many who oppose sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan—is badly out of date. Al-Qaeda. . . has suffered serious reverses in the past several years, while the Taliban has gone from struggling for survival to aiming for control over both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Post finds it ironic that with Pakistan’s army “at last” ready to go after the Taliban in Waziristan, the Obama administration is “considering a strategy that would give up” on defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan. The editorial concludes,

Adopting such a strategy would condemn American soldiers to fighting and dying without the chance of winning. But it would also cripple Pakistan's fight against the jihadists. With the pressure off in Afghanistan, Taliban forces would have a refuge from offensives by Pakistani forces. And those in the Pakistani army and intelligence services who favor striking deals or even alliances with the extremists could once again gain ascendancy. [If the U.S.] gives up trying to defeat the Taliban, can it really expect that Pakistan will go on fighting?

To me, the pro-Obama Post’s stance provides hope Obama may do right by Afghanistan, in spite of leftist pressure to get out.

Markets value competition, big business doesn’t, the difference matters.

Luigi Zingales writes, in the inaugural issue of National Affairs, about how Wall Street’s growing dependency on government threatens American capitalism. Traditionally, U.S. business doesn’t want government around, preferring a free, competitive market. Americans have supported our open market economy with its freedom of entry, widespread access to financial resources, and its level playing field. But now, concentrated power at the top, shared between government and corporate and financial powers out to stifle competition, mean America is developing what Zingales calls “crony capitalism,” the stogy political economy that prevails most everywhere else.

Here’s a summary of Zingales’ main points:

➢ Public support for capitalism is positively associated with the perception that hard work, not luck, determines success, and is negatively correlated to any perception of corruption.

➢ Instead under “crony capitalism”, the best way to make money is not to come up with brilliant ideas and work hard to implement them, it’s to cultivate a government connection.

➢ Only in America, democracy predated industrialization. The U.S. enacted regulations reducing the power of big business, developing anti-trust law—pro-market but often anti-business—fueled by an inquisitive press and a populist (but not anti-market) political movement. When Louis Brandeis attacked the money trust, he was trying to make markets work better, not stifle them.

➢ Until World War I, America had a tiny federal government, due in part to our facing no military threat. With government small and weak, people made money by starting a successful business. But as government grew, it became easier to make money by diverting public resources. Starting a business involves a lot of risk—getting a government contract is easier and safer.

➢ In countries with powerful Communist or socialist parties, pro-market and pro-business forces merged to fight the common enemy. Facing the prospect of nationalization (control of resources by a small political elite), “crony capitalism” (control of resources by a small business elite) seemed the lesser evil.

➢ Though American capitalism came closer than any other to the ideal of economic freedom and open competition, obscene wages and profits over the last 30 years have attracted our best talents to finance—with profound implications for government. The brightest undergraduates used to go into science, technology, law, and business. Now, it's finance. Four of the last six Treasury secretaries in fact were directly or indirectly linked to one financial firm: Goldman Sachs. By contrast, only one of the previous six Treasury secretaries even had a finance background.

➢ America’s financial industry is fragile because it relies on the sanctity of contracts and the rule of law. That sanctity cannot be preserved without broad popular support. Yet public mistrust of government, mistrust of bankers, concerns about wasting taxpayer dollars, and worries about rewarding Wall Street threaten a vicious cycle.

➢ To avoid being linked with the companies they are working to help, politicians encourage an assault on finance, which in turn scares off legitimate investors, no longer able to count on contracts and the rule of law. And this in turn forces troubled businesses to seek government assistance.

➢ This is the unhealthy cycle capitalism faces elsewhere. On one hand, entrepreneurs and financiers feel threatened by public hostility, and thus justified in seeking government privileges. On the other hand, ordinary citizens are outraged by the privileges entrepreneurs and financiers receive, which inflames even greater hostility.

We just saw how populism threatens both Democrats (big government) and Republicans (big business). Zingales suggests where Republicans should be—leaving the corporate elite to the Democrats, and channeling populist rage into political support for genuinely pro-market reforms. Republicans should seek to limit the financial industry’s power—any businesses’ power—and restore the fundamental principles that make capitalism ethical: freedom, meritocracy, a direct link between reward and effort, and willingness to ensure those who reap the gains also bear the losses. This would mean abandoning the notion that any firm is too big to fail, and adopting a pro-market, rather than pro-business, approach to our economy.

Populism Hurts Both Parties

Naftali Bendavid [picture] writes for the Wall Street Journal, but was until recently the Chicago Tribune’s #2 in Washington and its White House correspondent. He wrote a book about how Rahm Emanuel and Democrats “thumped” Republicans in 2006.

You should read Bendavid’s latest article, which argues that populism—strong negative feelings about both big business and big government or elites in general—is dominating current politics. That’s bad for both Republicans (big business) and Democrats (big government). Bendavid cites poll numbers to make his point: 43% don’t like Republicans, 39% don’t like Democrats; 45% say the stimulus was a bad idea; 49% feel government tries to do too much; and the $700 billion Wall Street bailout is “especially unpopular”.

Bendavid writes:

➢ With voters simultaneously recoiling at laissez-faire policies and a big-government approach neither party in Washington seems capable of corralling an angry public. . . [There’s] an angry distrust of government, and politicians of all stripes, that is palpable . . .

➢ Some don't see government and business as opposing forces. They see a unified elite pursuing one big swindle, as government takes taxpayers' money and bails out powerful companies such as banks and auto makers. . .People on both sides . . . share a frustration with larger forces.

➢ "They're mad at institutions -- all institutions," said Karin Johanson, a Democratic strategist. "Nobody can underestimate the angst, or even fear, of the American voter right now...The institutions they were relying on which were assuring them of their security were not there."

➢ Episodes of populism in U.S. history are marked by "people being fearful of and opposing concentrated power of any kind," said Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University historian and author of The Populist Persuasion. "Big corporations and big government can be seen as parts of the same problem."

How Now Peace in Afghanistan?

how [are] the truly self-sacrificing professionals who are attempting to create a sound American policy on Afghanistan . . . going to experience this[?] “Hmm, can a president who just won the left's great peace prize decide to increase American troop strength and presence in a foreign war?”

--Peggy Noonan, 10.10.09

We struggle to get Afghanistan right. Do we follow the path of “peace through strength,” allowing the military to prevail the way they did in Iraq after the surge, as they did in Kosovo, in the Gulf War (1991), and as they might have in Vietnam, as Lewis Sorley argued in his book A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, had the opposition at home not blocked their efforts?

Sorley’s 1999 book about Vietnam is must reading for military brass in the aftermath of the Iraq surge’s success—it shows counterinsurgency can work. But the White House political powers, including Vice President Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and the President himself, are reading a different book about Vietnam, Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein’s 2008 study of National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and decision-making in the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses. As Goldstein’s title suggests, the book is about how bright men can make dumb decisions, especially when relying on military power. Obama, as we have said, doesn’t want to be another Johnson, Obama is president, and so Goldstein should win any “battle of the books” with Sorley.

Now does the Peace Prize make it even more likely Obama will overturn his generals’ advice and go for less—the same underfed force in Afghanistan that Bush and Rumsfeld’s “small footprint” unsuccessfully provided Iraq in 2003-06? What is this White House line about the Taliban not being al Qaeda, meaning we don’t have to defeat the Taliban, because they are Afghanistan nationalists, just as the enemy Kennedy-Johnson fought in the 1960s were Vietnamese nationalists? Take on al Qaeda in Pakistan with its worldwide ambitions, but ease off the Taliban, who are only local nationalists? Does this make sense, when the Taliban and al Qaeda, defined by their mutually militant Islamic practices, have worked together so closely over two decades?

What about Holbrooke [picture, top figure], the foreign policy dog fighter Obama has made responsible for Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is Holbrooke comfortable with this emerging strategy of downgrading the war against the Taliban, in the belief that we can just go after al Qaeda in Pakistan?

George Packer has a fantastic, detailed New Yorker profile of Holbrooke and his views. I find Packer’s article reassuring. Holbrooke wants to prevail over al Qaeda, Holbrooke knows how closely linked the Taliban is to al Qaeda, Holbrooke still believes in the “win their hearts and minds” counterinsurgency strategy we were unable to implement successfully in Vietnam but did in Iraq, and Holbrooke is the consummate bureaucratic infighter, especially skilled at winning in liberal Democratic administrations.

Obama still may go wobbly on Afghanistan-Pakistan, especially in the aftermath of his Peace Prize. But with Holbrooke, we have the best chance of being able to continue the fight that has real peace as its final goal.

Great Day for President

Feels like I'm in a race
But I already won first place

--Keri Hilson, “Knock You Down”

Or as Michael Gerson put it:

the Nobel Committee has . . . decided to give a ribbon before the race, a trophy for aspiration, a gold star for admirable sentiments. Which means [its] decision . . . is entirely, purely, solely political. Members of the committee like Obama's goals and rhetoric. And since they aren't American citizens, this is the only way they could vote for him.

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. And his work has yet to begin. Really!

But bully for Obama! That he won; it’s not his fault! And the same day, the stock market hits 52-week highs. My FOX INDEX has reached its new high for 2009 [chart]. The INDEX measures as a percentage the distance traveled from the market’s March 9 bottom; while also marking the distance remaining to its pre-crash healthy level (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ). As of today, the distance traveled from the bottom to healthy has covered 63% of the full path.

National Parks: America’s best idea.

We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

--Wallace Stegner
“The National Parks,” Episode 6

Ken Burns’ comprehensive story of our national parks, just concluded on PBS, is a largely positive picture of how activists interested in preserving the best of American beauty and history have mostly succeeded. The photography is beautiful, the message uplifting, the cause important. In the end, we are encouraged to help keep our parks going.

Burns’ concluding focus on preserving and bringing back the wolf from near extinction, on stopping a paved road into Denali (Mt. McKinley) National Park [picture], and on the vast new parkland set aside in unpopulated Alaska suggest an agenda of 1) greater attention to preserving endangered species, and 2) growing concern about humans over-running unspoiled nature. Earlier shows covered the historical problem of unfettered automobile access to Yellowstone and Yosemite.

One gets the impression the Park Service has pushed back on campers filling the parkland. The series, however, doesn’t cover the Park Service's actual strategy, including its apparent severe restrictions on how many people can stay in parks overnight, actions that have led to creation of small cities just outside some park entrances, but have saved the parks themselves.

John Muir and especially Stephen Mather, the marketing genius who first headed the National Park Service, understood the importance of building a constituency of park supporters by making it easier for people to visit. Needless to say, the idea was an overwhelming success: 270 million now visit park facilities annually. The parks do belong to the people, and the people do love their parks.

We may have a good balance between people and nature in the parks, a parallel system of wilderness areas for those who want fewer humans around, and Burns may be pleased with the balance. But maybe not. Anyway, ambiguity about how to deal with the human power to preserve, or to destroy, may be just the right way to conclude Burns’ excellent series.

Obama Job Gap (updated)

More jobs lost last month, with the unemployment rate rising to 9.8%, its highest level since 1983. Thus far in 2009, employment has dropped 4.1 million. Earlier, President Obama promised his stimulus plan would create or retain 3-4 million jobs by 2010 (average 3.5 million). The resulting gap between what Obama promised and the actual job count currently stands at 7.9 million jobs [chart]. We 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, 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).

A Strange 60th

China today celebrated the 60th anniversary of Communist China’s creation, when Mao Zedong told the world, “the Chinese people have now stood up.” No one doubts Mao’s words now. China is an astounding economic success, due to the dedication and hard work of hundreds of millions of Chinese. Of course, this is more Deng Xiaoping’s China than it is Mao’s. It’s Deng who had the vision decades after Mao uttered his words to institute capitalism in China, thereby unleashing the drive of China’s population.

So maybe it’s odd to celebrate Mao’s anniversary. But odder still is the way China is celebrating its national day, doing so without ordinary people, in fact banning them from central Beijing and putting the surrounding six provinces under marshal law. People only get to watch the festivities [picture, click to enlarge] on TV! How unlike America. And how insecure of the Chinese regime, to separate itself from its own people.

Politics of Destruction

Tom Friedman actually thinks right wing vitriol against Obama is preparing the ground for another presidential assassination. He has to go to Israel (a right-wing fanatic killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995) for his example, however, since neither of the Kennedy brothers' assassins were right-wing, and no right-winger shot at Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan.

Friedman though is correct about the intemperate hounding of every president since Bush 41—Clinton, Bush 43, and now Obama. Friedman blames the excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that means daily politics is about tactics, not strategy; a blogosphere that coarsens our debates to a whole new level, empowering anonymous slanderers and liars, and; most of all, a permanent presidential campaign giving us “all partisanship, all the time.”

Not surprisingly, New York Timesman Friedman completely ignores the media’s central role in going after Bush 43, as well as the degree to which media partisanship in favor of Clinton during the impeachment process and now with Obama triggers right-wing hostility. Conservatives were happier when the national media made some effort to be even-handed, even if after Watergate, that meant going after both parties. Since Clinton’s impeachment, the media's enemies are “all Republicans, all the time.”

Clinton and the media viewed the GOP’s use of the Monica Lewinsky scandal as an extra-constitutional, illegitimate effort to oust Clinton before his term was up. Clinton needed the united support of his party and the media’s strong backing to hang on. He moved his policy program leftward to keep every Democratic vote, and with the media’s cooperation, demonized Newt Gingrich and Kenneth Starr to provide Democrats the enemy to unite against. In 1996, Clinton worked with Gingrich and Republicans. From 1998 onward with the media’s help, Washington turned deeply partisan.

Bush 43 promised a different atmosphere, but since Gore received more popular votes that Bush in 2000, it was easy for Democrats and the media to view Bush as illegitimate. Then came Iraq, a war that cast aside the “lesson of Vietnam” so important in the lives of leading Democrats and media figures. The unchecked hostility Bush faced from Democrats and the media drove him into the arms of his extremists, the same way impeachment had pushed Clinton and the Democratic left together. Bush attempted, ever less successfully, to govern with a small Republican majority, tightly united against those trying to undermine his foreign policy.

Obama really had a chance for a fresh start. He could have been the bi-partisan, post-partisan president we need. But his “Chicago mafia” believe they are right, Republicans are wrong, they have the power, and if they don’t use their power to change America, they are fools. So Obama governs Bush’s way, working to hold his Democrats together, which means keeping his left wing happy, and uniting Democrats against media-demonized (hate filled) Republicans.

As Friedman says, “Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word ‘we’ with a straight face. There is no more ‘we’ in American politics.” How unfortunate.

Wooing the World

Jennifer Rubin, in Commentary, reacts to Obama’s UN address:

Obama plainly embodies [the] mindset of liberal elites. America is flawed. America has no distinct message or values, and its interests are entitled to no more weight than Belgium’s or Cuba’s. It’s wrongheaded to assert our national interests. We should be seeking consensus and righting the great wrongs that America has done to other nations—both its stinginess in redistributing wealth and its failure to cater to other nations’ geopolitical and psychological concerns. Russia needs reassuring. The Arabs need validation. And it’s the president’s job to lower America’s profile so as to not incur the wrath of hostile powers.

Rubin, to me, provides a fair characterization of Obama’s views, but omits some perspective. Obama sees himself astride the divide between America and the rest of the world, 80% “of color.” He’s the U.S. president. He won the election. He doesn’t have to win Americans over. Furthermore, we are on top. It’s the others—Russians, Arabs, Iranians, Third Worlders—who need wooing. Fellow Americans, just let Obama do his wooing job. He knows what he’s up to.

Rubin misses the method to Obama’s madness. Obama will win friends alienated by Bush’s intervention in Iraq. But it is madness to think that thugs like Russia’s Putin, Iran’s Ahmadinejad, or the leaders of Hamas are going to be won over by Obama sweet talk. If anything, they are more responsive to signs that Obama has a spine of steel. You can speak softly if you are willing to use a big stick. Is Obama willing (see Afghanistan)?

Also, as Rubin says, Obama maybe should pay more attention to the millions of Americans alienated by the president’s pandering to foreign prejudices about our country. Obama did win 53% of the popular vote. But many of those who voted for Obama, especially independents, went for someone who promised economic change. They may not like seeing America bowing to foreign despots [picture; click to enlarge].

Obama: the Policy President

David Broder, the conventionally liberal senior political commentator at the Washington Post, has a column offering real insight into how the Obama administration may work. Broder credits his conclusions to an article by William Schambra [picture], director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. According to Schambra, the "sheer ambition" of Obama's legislative agenda and his centralizing authority under a strong White House staff replete with "czars" are evidence "Obama is emphatically a 'policy approach' president.”

For Obama, governing means formulating comprehensive policies that give rational form to large social systems. Long-term, systemic problems such as health care, education, and the environment cannot be solved in small pieces. They must be swallowed whole.

Schambra says this approach began with late 19th-early 20th century progressives who were battling classic interest-group forces. Progressives believed they could apply the new social sciences wisdom to the art of government, and use facts to overcome the ideologies of narrow constituencies. There’s one true path, and the progressives would find it for us.

Obama—a highly intelligent elite university product—isn’t the first president to subscribe to this approach. Jimmy Carter, and especially Bill Clinton, attempted to govern this way. But Obama has made it even more explicit, regularly proclaiming his determination to rely on rational analysis, rather than narrow decisions.

"In one policy area after another," Schambra writes, "from transportation to science, urban policy to auto policy, Obama's formulation is virtually identical: Selfishness or ideological rigidity has led us to look at the problem in isolated pieces. [We must instead] take the long systemic view; and when we finally formulate a uniform national policy supported by empirical and objective data rather than shallow, insular opinion, we will arrive at solutions that are not only more effective but less costly as well."

Broder shows how Obama’s policy approach on energy and health care ran head-on into the politically motivated agendas of his congressional allies, causing Broder to conclude, “Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and . . . Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are . . . frustrated.”

To me, it’s a joy to have Broder realize how the Obama group’s supposed monopoly of good planning, of facts, of the truth, might fall before the popular will, as expressed through their democratic representatives.

Government of the people.

Democratic Socialism versus Growth

Germany now has a center-right government. The pro-business Free Democratic Party headed by Guido Westerwelle gained real power; it won big in yesterday’s election and is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partner-to-be [click to enlarge Westerwelle-Merkel photo and tell us, “Why is this woman laughing?”].

The Socialists (SPD) drop to a historic low after leading or being in Germany’s ruling government for the past 11 years. Last year, Socialists lost in Italy, and two years ago, France’s Sarkozy defeated lionized Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal for president, thereby prolonging conservative rule over that country. Under David Cameron, Britain is expected to go Conservative next year, which will mean Socialists out of power in every major European social democracy. What’s happened?

It’s not as if we’ve reached, as Malte Lehming, an editor at Berlin’s Tagespiegel, suggests, “the end of socialism in Europe.” Western Europe is heavily invested in the welfare state—state supported industries, state housing, heavily subsidized public transit, nationalized health, generous unemployment benefits, nanny state restrictions—and none of Europe’s new governments will take these government blessings away. But Europe’s voters do long for economies that grow faster, and generate jobs. A very large public sector means high taxes, high unemployment, and low growth. Europe wants better.

The G-8 is dead. Long live the G-20.

We can no longer meet the challenges of the 21st century economy with 20th century approaches.

--Barack Obama



With those words, Obama helped bury the G-8 group of developed nations, which did increasingly look like a relic from an earlier era. (This transformation seemed underway when the G-20 had its last summit). The G-8 was seven (largely) white nations, plus Japan. The G-20 includes China, India, Brazil, and eight other non-European nations.

The G-20, not perfect, nevertheless provides a potential forum for real action on major foreign policy problems, at least until we get the UN Security Council right.

Monopoly on Wisdom

We have a country ruled by our wisest. For many, that’s a country right side up. In the 5th century B.C., Athens was a democracy, a polity offensive to the city’s oligarchy, including the philosopher Plato [see bust]. Plato instead favored minority rule, but not by the wealthy, rather by an educated elite that foreswore the pursuit of money. Much like the ideals of the current anti-business, pro-government, Democratic Party elite.

When people believe one class is more fit to rule than others, in my opinion they move us away from democracy and toward meritocracy, from democratic Athens to Plato’s republic. And today, the educated and articulate Obama reigns, the modern version of Plato’s philosopher king.

Janet Daley, writing in the Telegraph (U.K.), gets at why Obama has such a hold over our national elite:

Exceptionally articulate politicians begin with a great electoral advantage because the opinion-forming class is in love with words: to adapt WH Auden, it

worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives.

As Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn writes,

liberal[s assume] they have a monopoly on brain power. . . anyone who dissents, almost by definition, has to be stupid . . . Obama inadvertently encourages [this view] when he [tells] his town halls. . . he's received a letter from a woman upset with his plans for health care. "She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want you meddling in the private market place. And keep your hands off my Medicare.'" Get it? The applause tells us the audience does: How dumb can this woman be?

Fouad Ajami, the committed Johns Hopkins supporter of Middle East democracy, has seen in the health care debate the same elite arrogance that drew McGurn’s attention:

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. . .A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the "loudest voices" are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.

Going back over three decades, we have, from liberal Stanford economist Victor Fuchs’ 1976 article "From Bismarck to Woodcock: The 'Irrational' Pursuit of National Health Insurance," an indication of why health care may be so central to those who believe in government control of our country’s life:

one of the most effective ways of increasing allegiance to the state is through national health insurance. We live at a time when many of the traditional symbols and institutions that held a nation together have been weakened and fallen into disrepute. A more sophisticated public requires more sophisticated symbols, and national health insurance may fit that role particularly well.

The health industry isn’t the whole economy, but it’s one-sixth, an important beginning.

Obama’s UN Speech

I have some comments, in italics, on President Obama’s UN speech yesterday. My comments immediately follow Obama’s direct quotes.

I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me. . .

But in truth, he believes it’s all about him.

I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. . .America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. . .

After the Bush darkness, the Obama light.

more than at any point in human history - the interests of nations and peoples are shared.

“We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

I have carried this message from London to Ankara; from Port of Spain to Moscow; from Accra to Cairo. . . Speeches alone will not solve our problems - . . .

But my speeches really do help solve problems.

The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.

The people move governments, and I move people.

No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world. Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War.

We are now beyond alliances, beyond the “balance of power” politics that generates alliances, and have reached toward “one world.”

Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides - coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east and west; black, white, and brown.

(Paraphrasing Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech,) we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro civil rights song, “Black and white together! Black and white together!”

Today, I put forward four pillars that are fundamental to the future that we want for our children: non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people.

Yet again, Obama’s “pillars”.

determined to act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice . . .

we will support honest police and independent judges. . .

transformative change can be forged by those who choose the side of justice.

Though “justice” wasn’t one of his “four pillars,” it remains a key concern of former law professor Obama, who also believes terrorism is a police problem good courts could handle.

democracy and human rights are essential to achieving each of the goals that I have discussed today. Because governments of the people and by the people are more likely to act in the broader interests of their own people, rather than the narrow interest of those in power

no individual should be forced to accept the tyranny of their own government.

A ringing endorsement of democracy, except that. . .

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside.

One of the “Panchsheel”, the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” is “non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.” Given Obama’s post-alliance, one world views, it seems as if Obama wants to bring back and put in place the 1950s-1970s nonaligned movement foreign policy, essentially folding the First and Second World into the Third, or now dominant “One World”. The “Second World,” that of Communism, has disappeared, and Obama, as U.S. President, leads the old “First World.” So Obama may believe he can make “One World” happen.

we can be a generation that . . . finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations.

We have ... re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council. . . And we address our priorities here, in this institution . . . through the Security Council meeting that I will chair tomorrow

imperfections are not a reason to walk away from this institution . . . The United Nations . . . can be indispensable in advancing the interests of the people we serve.

In his speech, Obama says, “I am not naïve.” But as we have said at length in this blog, the UN in its current format doesn’t work. The General Assembly is just a hall for speeches, and the Security Council doesn’t have the membership needed to take action. One hopes Obama is merely paying lip service to the idea of using the UN to achieve peace. The G-20 will work better.

You Saw It Here, First

August 30:

Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, wrote:

amid talk of a second Great Depression, Obama was often compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt. But by the time FDR took office, the economy had been in free fall for more than three years, creating mass desperation.

July 11:

I wrote that while Bush was in danger of becoming Herbert Hoover to Obama’s FDR,

Here’s the big factual difference. . . The Great Depression clobbered Hoover in his 7th month in office (October 1929), and he lived with it for the next 41.

Obama Struggles with Afghanistan

the American left since the Vietnam years has not wanted to see America victorious in war. They think it makes us look chauvinistic and proud about our nation when we should be, as Obama often has been, apologetic for its sins.

--Michael Barone

I think the left is unambiguously anti-military. But most of all, the left doesn’t want Afghanistan to be Obama’s Vietnam, and bring him down the way Vietnam brought down the last great Democratic domestic policy reformer, Lyndon Johnson. The left wants out now, before things in Afghanistan get any worse.

Les Gelb’s piece in the Wall Street Journal tells us how serious the Afghanistan war issue has become within Obama’s administration. Gelb, the former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the ultimate foreign policy insider. What he writes is what people, probably especially Richard Holbrooke, the frustrated Secretary of State wannabe [picture, click to enlarge] in charge of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, are telling the President. Read Gelb with interest.

Here’s what Gelb (Holbrooke) says:

➢ I'm lost on . . . Obama's Afghanistan policy. . . eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 U.S. forces for starters. He proclaimed Afghanistan's strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan. . .And a mere three weeks ago, he punctuated his commitments by proclaiming that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity," not one of choice.

➢ [Yet now] Obama [says,] "I'm going to take a very deliberate process . . . one of the things that I'm absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources." . . Are we now to understand that he made all those previous declarations and decisions without a strategy he was committed to?

➢ Obama can't simply walk away from the war. A lot of Democrats don't seem to fathom this. At a minimum, the president has got to give Afghan allies a fighting chance to hold their own and prepare the ground to blunt the Taliban and al Qaeda. That will take time.

➢ The U.S. now faces many very serious troubles abroad. These were all born before the Obama presidency. The president's failure in Afghanistan would be America's failure, and we cannot allow this to happen. Defeat for America in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be avoided only if Democrats acknowledge that the Afghans need major help . . .

As I have written, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are central to American foreign policy today. Afghanistan is least important of the three. But Afghanistan sits between the two nuclear/near-nuclear Islamic powder kegs, we are there, and we need to stay, help, and do well. Republicans should support centerist Democrat efforts to help Afghanistan, and combat the left's push to get out.