Category Archives: Barack Obama

Then, suddenly, the economy got worse faster than you can say ‘Polish death camp’

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This hasn’t been a good week for Mr. Obama. First there was the “Polish death camp” thing that wouldn’t go away. (Hey, I understood what he meant, didn’t you? But just try explaining it to the Poles…)

Today, there’s this:

Worst U.S. Job Data in a Year Signals Stalling Recovery

A dismal job market report Friday gave a resounding confirmation to fears that the United States recovery has markedly slowed, reflecting mounting evidence of a global slowdown.

The report, which showed the smallest net job growth in a year and an unemployment rate moving in the wrong direction, was a political game-changer that bodes ill for President Obama as he faces re-election.

It provided traction for his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, at a time when politicians have been deeply divided over the most effective way to strengthen the economy. And it put increased pressure on the Federal Reserve to take further action to stimulate growth.

The United States economy gained a net 69,000 jobs in May, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 in April, largely because more people began looking for work. And there was more unexpected bad news: job gains that had been reported in March and April were revised downward…

Yow. Now the president knows how John McCain felt when the economy got shot out from under him. OK, not that bad. But still not good.

What do y’all think? Is it a blip, or a negative trend? Because I remain convinced that the health of the economy depends in large part on what y’all — all 300 million or so of y’all — think about it. Yeah, there are some things we can’t help, like the Euro mess, but largely we have the ability to stimulate the economy by ourselves. Hey, that sounds kind of dirty, doesn’t it? Well, that’s not how I meant it. Or maybe I did. Talking about money stuff makes my mind wander…

Gallup: Veterans are cause of the gender gap

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Here’s an interesting fact I didn’t know before.

Turns out that the “gender gap” that has Mitt Romney doing better among men and Barack Obama doing better among women (the usual pattern for a generation, at least) is less a gender thing, and more a matter of whether men have served in the military or not. According to Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ — U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge.

These data, from an analysis of Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted April 11-May 24, show that 24% of all adult men are veterans, compared with 2% of adult women.

Obama and Romney are tied overall at 46% apiece among all registered voters in this sample. Men give Romney an eight-point edge, while women opt for Obama over Romney by seven points. It turns out that the male skew for Romney is driven almost entirely by veterans. Romney leads by one point among nonveteran men, contrasted with the 28-point edge Romney receives among male veterans.

The small percentage of female veterans in the U.S., in contrast to their male counterparts, do not differ significantly in their presidential vote choice from the vast majority of women who are not veterans…

Here’s a graph:

Interesting. I wonder what the long-term implications of this will be. Most of the men who have served in the military are older than I am. Twenty years from now, will much of the gender gap have disappeared, in favor of Democrats? I don’t know. I’d need to understand better why this veteran gap exists to be able to answer that.

Are women fed up with Democratic pandering?

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Tom Edsall makes some interesting observations in this piece in The New York Times from over the weekend. If you haven’t read it, you should.

His topic is the impact of Barack Obama’s rather overt bids for the renewed affections for key Democratic constituencies and interest groups defined by demographic identity. Unsurprisingly, Edsall finds that the voting public at large is suspicious of such moves. For instance, while the public is evenly split on the subject of gay “marriage,” there is widespread cynicism toward the president’s embrace of the notion:

Some evidence that Obama must walk a fine line as he seeks majority backing can be found in the May 15 CBS News/New York Times poll, which showed that 67 percent of respondents said Obama came out for same-sex marriage “mostly for political reasons,” while just 24 percent said he made the decision “mostly because he thinks it is right.”

But the really surprising thing he finds is the way, after all the gyrations Democrats have gone through in recent months, including the “war on women” and other absurd rhetoric, the president has lost ground among women:

In an equally troublesome finding for Obama, the Times poll recorded a dramatic drop in the level of support for Obama among women, with Romney actually pulling ahead, 46-44. Obama’s support among female voters has fallen from 49 to 44 percent over the past two months, while Romney’s rose three points.

Stephanie Cutter, deputy manager of the Obama campaign, has challenged the accuracy of the Times poll, arguing that the methodology – calling people who have been previously surveyed,  known as a “panel back” — resulted in “a biased sample.”

But even if the poll findings can be reasonably disputed, they still suggest that Obama’s aggressive bid to strengthen his support among women may be backfiring. Separate polling by Marquette Law School in Wisconsin shows Obama holding a strong, but declining advantage among women voters. In February, Obama had a 21 percentage point lead among women, 56-35; by mid-May, his margin among women had fallen to 9 points, 49-40….

Could it be that you just can’t go past a certain point in pandering to women without insulting their collective intelligence? It would appear so…

Brooks sees Obama the way I do, as a mensch

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David Brooks didn’t quite go all the way to calling President Obama a Michael Corleone (as opposed to a Sonny, which is more like what George W. Bush was), but he did everything else but say the name:

The key is his post-boomer leadership style. Critics are always saying that Obama is too cool and detached, arrogant and aloof. But the secret to his popularity through hard times is that he is not melodramatic, sensitive, vulnerable and changeable. Instead, he is self-disciplined, traditional and a bit formal. He is willing, with drones and other mechanisms, to use lethal force.

Normally, presidents look weak during periods of economic stagnation, overwhelmed by events. But Obama has displayed a kind of ESPN masculinity: postfeminist in his values, but also thoroughly traditional in style — hypercompetitive, restrained, not given to self-doubt, rarely self-indulgent. Administrations are undone by scandal and moments when they look pathetic, but this administration, guarded in all things, has rarely had those moments….

Brooks said that in the process of marveling at the fact that Obama even has a chance at re-election, since so many of the fundamentals are against him. He concludes that “In survey after survey, Obama is far more popular than his policies” because of what Americans think of him as a man. Not just as a person, but as a man.

Oh, and for those who are tired of me talking about “guy stuff” this week, don’t blame me on this one; Brooks brought it up.

I don’t think either of us has precisely hit the nail on the head. I keep saying “Michael Corleone” to describe his quiet, non-blustering toughness. But of course, the president is a better man than Michael Corleone. “Mensch” doesn’t quite say it either, but it points in that direction. As for Brooks’ reference to “ESPN masculinity” (a term so important to his piece that it’s his headline) — well, I don’t even know what he means by that. Maybe I don’t watch enough sports. (I’ll confess that I also get confused with what people mean when they say “postfeminist.” Some seem to use it to refer to feminism being over and done with, and therefore “NONfeminist.” Others seem to refer to a state in which feminism is taken for granted and no longer a movement, just part of life. So the word is unhelpful to me.)

Another way to say what Brooks is trying to say — “thoroughly traditional in style — hypercompetitive, restrained, not given to self-doubt, rarely self-indulgent” — is “Gary Cooper.”

But we all want to be Gary Cooper (in “High Noon,” specifically — “I’ve got to, that’s the whole thing.”). What Brooks is saying, in a way, is that Obama pulls it off.

Obama sucks! So send me more money!

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Catching up with my email, I’m marveling over this one from Joe Wilson, which takes irrelevant misdirection to a new level. Yes, we know that Nikki Haley got elected governor running against President Obama rather than her actual opponent, but I don’t think anyone has to date produced such a whiplash-inducing change of subject from “Obama sucks!” to “Send me money!” as this one:

Dear Friends,

41% of West Virginia’s Democrats believe that a federal prisoner would make a better president than Barack Obama.

Keith Judd received 69,766 votes Tuesday night in West Virginia’s primary while still serving a 17-year sentence for extortion. Shouldn’t this send a clear message to President Obama that he’s failing the American people?

The President promised to help our economy, but he will not listen to any of the pro-business, pro-competition, pro-free market principles that conservatives have offered.

The President promised to bring change to our country, but his version of change has resulted in restrictions on our American liberties and further partisan divide.

The President promised a lot of things, but he’s been unable to provide the leadership needed.

Americans are tired of the president’s policies. So much that voters say even a jailbird knows more about freedom than Barack Obama.

The choice is clear. In order to get our economy back on track and maintain  liberty, we must elect a new president in November.

We must also elect conservative leaders who are willing to stand up for the truth to President Obama or anyone else in office. I will always work to bring economic policies that produce jobs and protect liberties for the people of South Carolina’s Second District.  Will you join with me and donate to the campaign today?

Sincerely,

Joe

P.S. If you agree that we need to elect a new president this November, please visit Facebook and Twitter to let me know.

Carefully, artfully, Obama shifts to support for same-sex ‘marriage’

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Perhaps some of y’all will want to discuss this. For that purpose, I give you this post.

Basically, in a fairly transparent series of steps designed to test the waters, two people in the administration stepped out and said they now support same-sex marriage. From the time they did so, it seemed highly likely that they were doing so to see if the world exploded in their faces, ahead of the president making this statement. (Excuse the mixed metaphors; I’m having a busy and harried day.)

But it was artful the way they did it. By having Joe Biden, the famous loose cannon, be the first one to step out, it was possible to disown the statement completely if there was too much of a negative reaction. There wasn’t — at least, not particularly (something that reflects the fact that most people, whether they are pro- or anti-, simply don’t care as much about this as the portion of Obama’s base that cares deeply) — and that made it safe for the next soldier to step into the minefield (sorry! sorry! there’s another metaphor). And when Arne Duncan didn’t get blown up, that made everyone go, Arne Duncan — he’s no loose cannon. And he’s Obama’s longtime basketball buddy!

The next step was for the president himself to say the words that would calm down a significant portion of his fund-raising base. And to do it early enough in the campaign that most of us will have mostly forgotten it by November, since there are so many other things we care so much more about.

The calculated nature of this move was reflected in the language used by one “LGBT advocate” quoted by the WashPost: “The conversation is, what can and should we do to quiet the uproar and to get donors back on board.”

Well, that’s done, and now the Obama campaign will be ready to move on, having brought this up and dispensed with it during the dead time in the campaign between the effective end of the GOP contest and the party conventions just before Labor Day. There was no other time that the president could have done this that would have made less of a political splash.

As I say, deftly done. If there was anything about it unartful, it was perhaps this part:

And he said he wanted to be “sensitive” to the fact that for many Americans, the word “marriage” evokes “very powerful positions, religious beliefs and so forth.”

That somewhat bemused characterization of religious traditionalists is somewhat reminiscent of his “God and guns” misstep of four years ago, making people with traditional values sound a bit like critters in the zoo or something — as something out there that one understands only with great effort. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as that earlier faux pas. And after all, how is he supposed to characterize people whose entire worldview he is rejecting?

So the thing was done about as skillfully as it could be done. If one is determined to do it.

Obama definitely deserves bin Laden credit

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President Barack Obama makes a point during one in a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon is pictured at right. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

OK, my Corleone metaphor aside, let’s address the actual political question before us: Does Barack Obama deserve any particular credit for “getting” Osama bin Laden, or would “anyone have done what he did?”

This is actually a very important question. When deciding who should be one’s president going forward, there is no more important question than whether he would be an effective commander in chief (or in the case of the incumbent, whether he is an effective commander in chief).

Republicans, including some who should know better, are essentially saying Obama did nothing that anyone else wouldn’t have done. They are wrong. I initially thought as they did — not that I wanted to take anything away from the president, but because I thought it was true — but as I read and learned more about the decision-making process leading  to the raid on Abbottabad, I changed my mind.

Last night, I inadvertently saw a few seconds of TV “news.” John McCain was saying that of course Mitt Romney would have done the same thing, or something along those lines.

For his part, outrageously, Mitt Romney has said that “even Jimmy Carter” would have ordered the SEALs into the bin Laden compound. I’m going to pause and count to 10 before proceeding after this latest reflexive GOP expression of contempt toward my man Jimmy. (And while I’m counting, I’ll just share with you this HuffPost headline, “Jimmy Carter, Seven Years as Navy Officer; Mitt Romney, 0 Years in Military, 0 Years Foreign Policy Experience.” Effin’ A.)

Well, as it happens, we have strong reason to believe that Jimmy Carter would have ordered such an operation. He actually did order a roughly comparable one. It failed, as military operations sometimes do. (The one Obama ordered could have failed, too, at a number of critical points. That’s one reason he deserves credit for having the guts to give the order.) But he ordered it. It was a big deal that he ordered it. His secretary of state resigned over it.

But would “anyone else” have done the same? There is little reason to think so. It would have been Bill Clinton’s M.O., for instance, to have flipped a couple of cruise missiles in that direction. And as we saw in Kosovo, he had a predilection for air power rather than boots on the ground. But… and this is a huge “but”… is it fair to make the assumption that the real-life Bill Clinton of the 1990s would have been as reticent, as cautious, post-9/11? It’s impossible to say.

What we do know is that in real life, there was sharp disagreement and debate in the Obama administration over how to proceed — whether to believe the assumptions based on incomplete intelligence (for doing that, George W. Bush earned the never-ending “Bush lied” canard), whether to act on them at all, whether to send in troops at all or simply bomb the compound, whether to send a joint force or a coherent Navy team, whether to notify the Pakistanis or just go in, whether to try to capture bin Laden or go in intending to kill him, whether to bring back his body or send it to sleep with the fishes.

And when I say debate within the administration, I don’t mean between what the Republicans would characterized as the Democratic sissy politicos, but among the professionals — the generals and admirals and Sec. Gates.

And at critical stages, the president and the president alone seems to have made very tough calls. And the right ones. Most importantly, he decided to send in men rather than just bombs. That way, he could make sure, he could minimize collateral damage — and the U.S. could reap an intelligence bonanza.

That took nerves not everyone would have. So many things could have gone wrong doing it this way — and nearly did. In what had to feel like a replay of Jimmy Carter’s debacle, we lost a helicopter. But having learned that lesson, we had backups.

Some Republicans would have you believe that giving Obama credit would take away somehow from the superb, almost superhuman job that the SEALs and the rest of the military and CIA team did. Nothing could be further from the truth. It stands as one of the most amazing coup de main operations of the past century. They performed as brilliantly as the Israelis did at Entebbe, for instance. But they had their roles to play, and the commander in chief had his. And all involved did their jobs remarkably well.

I refer you to two posts I wrote last year, as I came to the conclusion that Barack Obama personally deserved credit for the leadership calls that led to our killing bin Laden. Here they are:

In invite you to go back and read them, to see how I reached a conclusion very different from the line we’re hearing from Republicans now.

There is no way of knowing whether Mitt Romney would have made the same calls. I suspect that he might have erred on the side of caution, but I could be completely wrong about that. He might have acted in exactly the same manner. But what I know is that Barack Obama did — and that what he did is not just “what anyone would have done.”

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Binken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Suddenly, Obama appears in Afghanistan…

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I was just this minute repeating to one of my ADCO colleagues my oft-state theory about how Bush was Sonny Corleone, and Obama is Michael. Bush was the blusterer who telegraphed his moves and failed to get his enemies. Michael’s the nice, reasonable, I-want-to-negotiate, blood-is-a-big-expense guy who turns out actually to be far more aggressive than his predecessor. Just when you think he’s totally absorbed in domestic policy (the equivalent of the old Don puttering about in his tomato garden), WHAM!, he whacks some guy in a country where you didn’t even know the U.S. was operating. No seeking permission from the U.N. No paving the way rhetorically. Just bada-BING! and we get another terrorist’s brains all over our nice Ivy League suit.

Anyway, I had just been saying all that, and my iPhone buzzed, and I got this headline:

Obama in Afghanistan to sign security pact

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In an unannounced trip, President Barack Obama has arrived in Afghanistan to sign an agreement cementing the U.S. role in the country after the war ends in 2014….

He’s like the Spanish Inquisition! Nobody expects him; he just turns up!

Right now, he’s probably sitting down with some Taliban leader who think’s he’s safe because his bodyguard is a police captain, and the Taliban guy is saying, “Try the veal; it’s the best in Kandahar.” And Obama is excusing himself to go to the men’s room, where they’ve got one of those old-fashioned toilets — you know, the kind with the chain…

‘… the centre cannot hold… while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’

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Today I pulled from my bookshelf a volume of William Butler Yeats, which I’ve had since college. Someone had recently mentioned the source of the phrase “no country for old men,” and I wanted to look it up.

Eventually, as I browsed, my eyes fell on this:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

W. B. Yeats

Which is a pretty good evocation of what it feels like to be an UnPartisan these days.

And it took me back to what I read in the paper this morning, a story about how SC Republicans (who “are full of passionate intensity”) are reconciling themselves to the man who had turned out to be their best — the one who is widely known  to “lack all conviction.”

I was dismayed throughout the piece. First, there was this quote from Tom Davis — someone I’ve always seen, in person, as a reasonable man, but who continually takes unreasonable positions:

Davis, who backed U.S. Rep. Ron Paul for president in the state’s January GOP primary, now has some good things to say about Romney. But his words sound as much like a warning as an endorsement.

“If he frames the debate between President Obama’s agenda of an ever-growing and more powerful government versus faith in free markets and individual liberty, I think he’s got a good chance of winning,” said Davis, a lawyer in Beaufort. “If he doesn’t draw the line that sharply and tries to tack toward the center, then I think it will be very difficult.”

In other words, my friend Tom is saying that if Romney does anything to make himself more appealing to nonpartisans like me, then people like Tom won’t support him.

This is distressing. It’s distressing that Tom actually seems to believe that the president’s agenda, rather than being the good of the country, is “an ever-growing and more powerful government,” and that he actually doesn’t believe in “individual liberty.” The first is mere hyperbole; the second completely delegitimizes the president, for what American doesn’t believe in liberty?

But this is mild stuff. Tom is the very soul of moderation compared to GOP Chair Chad Connelly:

“He’s a better candidate than he was a year ago. He’s able to articulate all the reasons we need to make sure Obama is just the worst one-term president ever.”…

“When Gov. Romney is the eventual nominee, (those voters) will excited because they’re so disgusted at what Obama has done, trashing the Constitution and pushing Obamacare down our throats,” Connelly predicted.

What?!? “Worst… president ever?” “Disgusted?” “Trashing the Constitution?” “Pushing Obamacare [legislation shaped and legally passed by the Congress) down our throats?”

You would think the leader of our country were Caligula. There has never been a president of the United States who deserved that sort of language, although we’ve had some sorry ones. Yes, I know Chad is the head of a party, but still — I’ve sat and talked pleasantly with him. He’s not a raving lunatic. Yet he speaks as though he’s lost all sense of proportion. This is the way people in the mainstream of the major parties speak these days.

To end on a positive note, I was struck by the language used by Tea Party Freshman Congressman Jeff Duncan:

“Gov. Romney’s policies would be a clear departure from the dubious tactics of the Obama administration,” said Duncan, who hasn’t endorsed Romney or any other Republican candidate.

“I’m confident that Gov. Romney can win over the American people on the promise of limited government, defending individual liberties and a return to common-sense solutions to our country’s biggest problems,” Duncan said.

See, now? That’s the way civilized men speak of others with whom they disagree. “Dubious tactics.” That says one disagrees with the man’s ideas (while at the same time, admitting that the other man could be right, since you are merely calling his approach “dubious”), but one’s sense of proportion is still intact.

Sad, isn’t it, that such rational speech stands out so starkly these days?

One thing seems sure — you won’t get “change” of any kind with Mitt Romney

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This morning on the radio, I heard a discussion of what a challenge Obama has in his re-election effort getting young people to back him they way they did in 2008.

Those young people, the argument went, wanted “hope” and “change,” and didn’t get enough of it.

I can see how that might have the effect of dampening enthusiasm, perhaps even of suppressing turnout.

What I don’t see it doing is translating to support for Romney. Unless these young folks really delude themselves, or unless the change they want is of a rightward bent — in which case, they’re still deluding themselves.

And most of us know this. It’s why the GOP base went running to everyone else they could think of before settling on Romney — they knew he wasn’t a True Believer on the kind of change THEY wanted.

And I knew it, which was why I saw him as the most palatable candidate in the field — the real conservative. Romney is a manager. He wants to manage the nation to prosperity. And maybe he can do that. But he’s not a revolutionary, or a counter-revolutionary. He’s a manager.

Now you might throw at me various statements that he’s made or positions he’s taken that contradict that, to which I’ll say, Right. And he’s also the father of Obamacare, but you don’t see him acting like it, do you? As you may have noted, his positioning is somewhat… flexible… based on what he thinks is needed to get the job done at a given time.

I backed Romney — reluctantly — because I didn’t like the kind of “change” that the GOP field was offering this time around. Repealing Obamacare. Endangering the full faith and credit of the United States by absolutely insisting that budget cuts not be accompanied by any kind of tax increases. I didn’t want any of that stuff.

When McCain and Obama ran four years ago, there were changes I looked forward to with each. I believed McCain would manage the War on Terror much better than Bush had. I knew he had the courage to take on things like comprehensive immigration reform. With Obama, while being reasonably certain that he would NOT institute the kinds of national security changes his base hoped for (and I was right — in fact, he has pursued the war with a stronger hand than Bush, and gotten away with it) and he just might give us meaningful health care reform. I even sorta had hopes for a rational energy policy.

But Romney’s virtue, to me, is that he does not represent the kind of change that his party has stood for since 2010 (or perhaps I should say, since the day after Election Day 2008, which seems to be the moment that party went off the rails). That’s a good thing.

Here they come, all right — and ‘they’ includes YOU

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A fragment from the latest of the DCCC releases that come to me several times a day, which was headlined, “here they come…“:

Since Rick Santorum dropped out yesterday, the Obama-Romney general election has fully engaged.

Just hours after Santorum’s announcement, Karl Rove teamed up with the Koch Brothers to launch a $1.7 million SuperPAC ad buy attacking President Obama in key battleground states.

There’s too much at stake to fall behind Romney, Rove, and the Koch Brothers.

Since the general election kicked off yesterday, we’re only 951 donors away from our goal of 10,000 supporters standing strong for President Obama and a Democratic Majority.

Contribute $3 or more right now to fight back against the Republicans’ swift-boat attacks >>…

My favorite part, I think, is that excellent example of the way parties use completely nonsensical terminology that they know has a proven track record of stirring the emotions of their base — in this case, “swift-boating.” (A term that hasn’t had any sort of relevance for eight years, and never had the meaning that Democrats ascribe to it — but it stirs the indignation of the faithful, and that’s the point.)

This release can be understood on several levels. One is face value: Now that his chief rival has dropped out, Mitt Romney will turn his full evil machine on our beloved President Obama, so you must give us money so we can fight him! Which is problematic in that the situation is not new. Romney has been trying to ignore his rivals and focus on the general election since before the Iowa caucuses; he just kept getting distracted. Now, you’ll see more of the same, with fewer distractions.

Then there’s another, ironic level. This is but one of a very long series of missives over the past few months going after Mitt Romney (remember how bemused I was that the Dems were totally focused on Romney, even as Gingrich was winning the SC primary?), and also trying to scare you into giving money so the party could keep doing so. No Rubicon is being crossed here, folks. Just another step on a long, boring road.

But there is one sense in which we are seeing a qualitative change at this moment. We are, with the departure of Santorum (although not of Gingrich or Paul), entering waters that partisans on both sides have longed to enter. We are entering the area where, according to the self-justifying propaganda of both sides, they believe they have the excuse to throw off any constraints that might in the past have pulled them somewhat in the direction of truth and proportion.

In other words, here they come — the Dems and Repubs both — and their coming at us with stuff likely to be even more outrageous than what we’ve seen.

For months, the two sides have been preparing their followers for this moment. During the SC primary campaign, I repeatedly heard and saw Republicans excusing the attacks they were hurling at each other by saying, “You’d better toughen up and learn to take it now, because if you’re the nominee, this is nothing compared to the horrible stuff that Obama will throw at you in the fall.” And I would turn and look at Obama, and I would wonder whom they were talking about. We’ve all seen the kinds of campaigns Obama runs. The fact that he was NOT like that was a prime reason why we endorsed him in the 2008 SC primary.

Meanwhile, the Dems have been working as hard as ever to demonize the opposition, building to this moment when they could say, “Now these monsters will stop chewing on each other and come after US!” At which point we’re all supposed to run for the hills or something. No, excuse me — we’re supposed to throw all our money at the Democratic Party (which will FIGHT for us!) and then run for the hills.

Well, thanks for the warning. You’ve  reminded me that it’s time to batten down the hatches. A squall of foolishness is headed our way. Here they come…

‘There goes that Obama, undermining initiative…’

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Twitter drew me to this picture (which I’m not actually placing on the blog because I can’t afford to pay what AP demands for rights to pictures), which had this caption:

President Barack Obama helps a little boy roll his egg to the finish line during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, Monday, April 9, 2012, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. In the background, at left are Malia Obama and Sasha Obama. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

As soon as I read that, even before I saw the picture itself, I could imagine what the GOP commentary on the image would be like: Obama undermines individual initiative, picks winners in state-run event.

In the next wave, we’d hear, And look at how the media made that little boy look so precious and harmless! Why didn’t they wait until he was 17, and get him in a hoodie with facial hair?

Do you think I’m exaggerating?

A crucial point that seems to have been forgotten regarding Obamacare

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Our friend E. J. Dionne had a column earlier this week accusing the more conservative members of the Supreme Court of implying a wish to usurp the powers of the legislative branch — something more popularly referred to as “judicial activism” — in their comments and questions during the oral arguments on Obamacare:

It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called “judicial activists,” remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.

Justice Stephen Breyer noted that some of the issues raised by opponents of the law were about “the merits of the bill,” a proper concern of Congress, not the courts. And in arguing for restraint, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked what was wrong with leaving as much discretion as possible “in the hands of the people who should be fixing this, not us.” It was nice to be reminded that we’re a democracy, not a judicial dictatorship.

The conservative justices were obsessed with weird hypotheticals. If the federal government could make you buy health insurance, might it require you to buy broccoli, health club memberships, cellphones, burial services and cars? All of which have nothing to do with an uninsured person getting expensive treatment that others — often taxpayers — have to pay for…

I don’t know whether his inference is correct or not. He seems to be paying closer attention to the arguments than I am, so I’m inclined to give him the benefit on this. Perhaps they are presuming to judge the law on its merits rather than the law. If it were so, it would be a grievous fault — one that you may recall me getting on Sen. Obama’s case about, just before the 2008 election.

In any case, the paragraph in E.J.’s column that appealed most to me was this one:

Liberals should learn from this display that there is no point in catering to today’s hard-line conservatives. The individual mandate was a conservative idea that President Obama adopted to preserve the private market in health insurance rather than move toward a government-financed, single-payer system. What he got back from conservatives was not gratitude but charges of socialism — for adopting their own proposal.

I don’t entirely agreed with the first sentence — it sounds like Bud’s frequent assertions that conservatives are so awful that they should be given no quarter at any time. But the rest of it should be read aloud every day at the start of business in the Congress — and in our Legislature as well, given GOP lawmakers’ penchant for fulminating about the individual mandate rather than concerning themselves with state-level issues.

Yes, boys and girls. The reason there is a mandate to purchase private insurance in this bill is because of all the people on the right who won’t stand for doing the one sensible, rational thing that we should do — create a single-payer system.

Over and over, we hear extremists on the right (and increasingly, extremism has become mainstream among alleged “conservatives”) rant about this. Hey, I’m not crazy about a plan that requires us all to buy private insurance either. But because of opponents on the right, it was the only way we could do the one thing that must be done in any health plan that can be called “reform” — get everyone into the system.

And we all should remember that.

Obama: ‘If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.’

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On a previous post, Phillip said that he likes Bill Maher (or at least excuses him) because “I find myself agreeing with him about 99% of the time.” I made it fairly clear that I do not.

But there are people who I find myself agreeing with to a degree that it is remarkable — a rare experience for me, since I reject the orthodoxies of left and right (which enable the people who do adhere to them to find themselves agreeing with certain people a lot). A good example would be Tony Blair. When he expresses his reasoning behind a position, I am struck by how much it is just like what I would say — or wish I were clever enough to say.

I have a similar experience with President Obama. There are a lot of things I disagree with him on, rather vehemently in some cases. But then he expresses himself on an issue in a way that strikes me as just right, and I am deeply impressed. (Needless to say, on these occasions he’s being about as different from Bill Maher as any one person can be.)

Today was such an instance, when the president carefully weighed in on the Trayvon Martin tragedy. I haven’t commented on it myself because I have thought that everyone else was commenting in such a facile manner — generalizing the incident to fit their own political and social predilections — and I couldn’t find a way to grab ahold of the matter in a way I found meaningful.

But then the president said this:

“I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this,” Mr. Obama said. “All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen.”…

“Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through,” Mr. Obama said, his face grim. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”…

“You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama said, pausing for a moment. “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

Normally, I tend to react against such a personal, emotional response. But in this case, it was exactly right, and the president was wise to recognize it.

To me, this isn’t some microcosm of racial injustice or gun culture gone wild or any other generalization. This is a case — as near as I can tell, and my knowledge of the case is limited — of a confused, emotional, panicky, cowardly man with a gun in his hand pulling the trigger and causing a deep, personal, specific tragedy.

Yes, the president made a genetic, racial observation in saying that his theoretical son would look like the victim in this case. But the more important part of it is that he appeals to “every parent in America” to look at this situation AS parents, rather than as participants in a political debate. It says to whites who may want to recoil and get indignant at seeing, for instance, Al Sharpton exploit yet another tragedy, Set that aside. Look at the personal tragedy. Think of your own kids. That’s what I’m doing.

That’s the wisest possible thing he could have said.

If there’s anything else useful to say about this case, that is the best starting point.

Gas prices pull GOP hopefuls even with Obama

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Put this in the “maybe Democracy isn’t such a good idea after all” department…

This from The Washington Post:

Disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy is heading higher — alongside gasoline prices — as a record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue, according to anew Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Increasingly pessimistic views of Obama’s performance on the economy — and on the federal budget deficit — come despite a steadily brightening employment picture and other signs of economic improvement, and they highlight the political sensitivity of rising gas prices.

The potential political con­sequences are clear, with the ­rising public disapproval reversing some of the gains the president had made in hypothetical general-election matchups against possible Republican rivals for the White House. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) now both run about evenly with Obama. The findings come just five weeks after Obama appeared to be getting a boost from the improving economy.

Gas prices are a main culprit: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the situation at the pump, where rising prices have already hit hard. Just 26 percent approve of his work on the issue, his lowest rating in the poll. Most Americans say higher prices are already taking a toll on family finances, and nearly half say they think that prices will continue to rise, and stay high…

So basically, when gasoline prices head back down, suddenly Obama will be a great president and get credit for the improving economy? Yes, probably. Which shows how ridiculous this stuff gets.

And then, if the president’s new best friend Israel goes ahead and attacks Iran, and that leads to even higher gas prices, suddenly he’ll be a loser again, right? Yep, and the GOP candidates will probably be criticizing him for not being supportive enough of Israel’s actions, while at the same time they will pound him over the natural economic effect of Israel’s action. And the voters will probably swallow that, too.

Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others. Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others. Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others…

I’m just going to keep saying it, until I feel better…

Graham favors ‘rebate’ on Yucca Mountain

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This came in earlier today:

Graham Legislation Provides ‘Rebate’ to Consumers, Utilities, and Communities for Obama Administration’s Refusal to Open Yucca Mountain

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), one of the strongest supporters of nuclear energy in the Senate, has introduced legislation, The Nuclear Waste Fund Relief and Rebate Act.

Electric utilities have been paying into the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund to construct and operate a permanent federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.  The utilities have been charging their costumers a monthly fee in each electricity bill to make these payments.  According to the latest information, South Carolina residents alone have already contributed more than $1.3 billion to the fund, which has collected a total of more than $35 billion in fees.

The legislation introduced by Graham would rebate these monies back to electric utilities and consumers.  Seventy-five percent of the amount rebated to utilities would be returned to their customers and the remaining portion will be used to make upgrades to on-site storage facilities.

Additionally, the legislation authorizes payments to states currently housing defense nuclear waste scheduled to be transferred to Yucca Mountain.  These payments begin in 2017, the date in which Yucca Mountain was to set to receive shipments of defense nuclear waste.

“No one should be required to pay for an empty hole in the Nevada desert,” said Graham.  “The decision by the Obama Administration to close Yucca Mountain was ill-advised and leaves our nation without a disposal plan for spent nuclear fuel or Cold War waste.  It was a political, not scientific, decision.  It is incumbent on the Administration to come up with a disposal plan for this real problem facing our nation.”

The major provisions of the Graham legislation include:

·         Presidential Certification: The Department of Energy has spent billions of dollars and decades studying the suitability of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository for spent nuclear fuel and defense waste.  Consistently, the science has borne out that Yucca Mountain is the best site to dispose of nuclear waste.  Within 30 days of passage, the President must certify that Yucca Mountain remains the preferred choice to serve as the federal repository for spent nuclear fuel and defense-related nuclear waste.

·         Failure to Certify Leads to Rebates: If the President fails to make the above certification, or revokes the certification at a later date, all funds currently in the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund shall be rebated back to the utilities.  Seventy-five percent of the amount rebated to utilities would be returned to their customers and the remaining money will be used to make security and storage upgrades at existing nuclear power plants.

·         Defense Waste: Currently, there is at least 12,800 metric tons of defense-related waste at nuclear weapons complex facilities around the country.  Unlike commercial spent fuel, this waste has no potential future defense or civilian uses.  In many states, the accumulated waste poses the largest potential public health threat.  In order to help mitigate the risk associated with the indefinite storage of defense waste, the legislation authorizes payments of up to $100 million per year if defense waste has not begun to have left the states by 2017.

·         Waste Confidence: In order to continue to renew or issue licenses for civilian nuclear power plants, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must have reasonable confidence that the waste will be disposed of safely.  The legislation includes waste confidence language that allows for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue to license nuclear reactors in the event the Presidential certification is not made.

“Our nation needs real options as a result of the uncertainty created by the Obama Administration’s change in policy,” said Graham.  “I will push this legislation forward and hope to have the full Senate on-the-record on this important issue.”

Co-sponsors of the legislation include Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), John McCain (R-Arizona), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin).

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I don’t know what y’all think, but personally, I don’t want a rebate. I just want want the president to shove Harry Reid aside and put the national repository where it belongs, at Yucca Mountain.

I sort of think that’s what Sen. Graham really wants, too.

Here’s what you say when you don’t like hearing good news

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Just now got to this Joe Wilson release from yesterday. The headline, “Wilson Reacts to February Jobs Report,” made me curious to see how Joe would try to make good employment news sound bad, and of course make it the fault of those awful liberal Democrats. Here’s how:

West Columbia, SC – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) released the following statement regarding the latest unemployment report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning:

“For the past three years, our nation’s unemployment has remained above eight percent.  Almost one million Americans have lost their jobs since the President was sworn into office.   According to recent Congressional Budget Office study, when considering every American who is currently without a job, our actual unemployment rate is 15.2 percent.  The President promised that with the passage of his failed stimulus package in February 2009, the unemployment rate would not exceed eight percent. It is clear that the President’s failed policies and broken promises are not helping Americans find employment, but simply growing our national debt.

“Over the past year, House Republicans have passed dozens of job creating bills, most with bipartisan support.  A majority of these pieces of legislation remain stalled in the Senate.  Just yesterday, the House passed the JOBS Act, a collection of legislation that will help small business startups grow and expand, which will lead to job creation.  It is my hope that the liberal-controlled Senate will take immediate action on the pending legislation in efforts to spur economic growth.  It is past the time for Congress to work together to offset the failed policies the President has implemented and help put Americans back to work.”

There’s an art to this. A crude, lumpish sort of art, but an art nevertheless, with conventions to be followed. For instance, do you notice how he pointedly avoids the fact that President Obama supports the JOBS Act that he praises? That’s standard procedure in this genre. The president can only be mentioned in terms of “failed policies.” One must never, ever acknowledge that he supports the same policy that you do, because then you can’t paint politics in terms of a black-and-white battle between pure good and pure evil, and you don’t get to whip up your contributors as to how horrible the opposition is, so that they keep writing checks.

One grows so tired of this sort of thing.

Saving Private Obama

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The thing that grabbed me was that this campaign video is narrated by Tom Hanks. Hence the headline.

Beyond that, this video is interesting on two levels:

  • It gives us a taste of how the president is going to sell his record for re-election purposes.
  • It’s a new wrinkle to me — a trailer for a campaign ad. Sort of like the trailer for the Ferris Bueller ad ahead of the Super Bowl. It goes (I think) where no candidate marketing has gone before…

More info, from Politico:

The Obama campaign has released the trailer to director Davis Guggenheim’s 17 minute film about President Obama’s first term in office.

The film is narrated by Tom Hanks and the trailer includes interview clips of Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Austan Goolsbee, and Elizabeth Warren among others.

According to the campaign, the film will be released next week at support events around the country.

    Let’s hear it for the flip-floppers — compared to the rigid ideologues, they are a breath of fresh air

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    My friend Bill Day in Memphis sent out this cartoon, which depicts the main rap on Mitt Romney — that he changes his mind.

    To me, that’s the man’s saving grace, to the extent that he has one. It’s what made me able to settle for him after Jon Huntsman dropped out of the SC primary — I believe he’s free of slavish devotion to any man’s ideology. That makes him anathema to the extremists in his party, but that’s not the only think I like about this trait.

    Whatever else you can say about a man who changes his mind, at least it proves that he’s thinking. Even if all he’s thinking is, “I need to change on this to get elected,” he’s at least thinking.

    Here’s my take on Romney: He simply doesn’t care deeply about the kinds of things that left and right tend to get angriest about, such as the Kulturkampf issues that I wish would stay out of our elections. Basically, he sees himself as a manager — he wants to run the United States as he has run other enterprises in the past, no matter what burning issues happen to be at the fore when he’s in office. He believes his executive experience makes him better able to run the country than Barack Obama.

    Set aside whether I believe he’s right, I appreciate that that’s the way he seems to approach this.

    To some extent, this is akin to what appealed to me about “No-Drama Obama.” I saw him as essentially a pragmatist, particularly on the thing that matters most in picking a Commander in Chief — international affairs and security. His adoring supporters heard something that they liked in what he said on the stump about war and peace and international relations, but I listened a bit more closely than many of them did — it was (as always) the first thing I asked him about when he was sitting next to me in the editorial board room, and I was satisfied with his answers. And I was not surprised when he embraced continuity once in office (although I was surprised when he became even more aggressive than George Bush in prosecuting the War on Terror).

    I get a certain amount of that same vibe from Romney, and that’s what reassures me when I think of the possibility (not a very strong possibility at this point, but still a possibility) that he could replace Obama. I don’t think we’d see any dangerous shifts in the policies that matter. And when faced with an unforeseen crisis, I think he’d approach it with sober deliberation.

    I am not, however, convinced at this point that he would do a better job than the incumbent. But I’m still watching.