24 « January « 2008

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WORD

Tony Blankley provides words for our vague misgivings.

… In the aftermath of Sen. McCain’s South Carolina victory, it can only look like the worst of times for the Grand Old Party. Like most Republican regulars, I have been much put out by McCain during the past decade, but I could support him with a serviceable enthusiasm against the appalling Hillary. She is an egregious political cynic with a Eurosocialist polestar — the worst combination for an old Reaganite such as I.

Obama is another matter. To all appearances, he is a mench: filled with personal integrity, high intelligence, wit and a complete inability to fake all those sentiments that winning politicians rely on to dupe the public. How he stumbled onto Walter Mondale’s political philosophy is beyond me. I suppose the gods, having granted him so many favors, decided to deny him just enough to put his otherwise effortless rise to acclaim in doubt.

He seems to me on the precipice of defeat. As I predicted last week, the Clintons’ race politics have polarized the Hispanic vote against Obama (he lost it about 3-1 in Nevada). Meanwhile, working-class (and other) women, in a dreadful moment of self-loathing Evita-worship, are flocking to the distaff Hillary banner. This bodes ill for Obama and, I would point out, for her Republican opponent in the fall.

There is little uglier in democratic politics than playing one aggrieved minority off against another. But Bill Clinton, the Mephistophelean conductor of the political body symphonique, has summoned demographic counterpoint melodies. While we all pray that the devil’s baton ends on a sour note for the conductor, the discordant symphony it raises may well blare loudly for a season or two. …

John Fund starts the campaign coverage.

The Captain keeps us up to date with the Clintons.

… And this is just the primaries. Imagine how the Republicans could goad Bill into more meltdown moments.

How long will Hillary put up with Bill? The better question might be how much more of this will it take to remind American voters of all the dishonest nonsense perpetrated by the Clintons during their first period of power. If this continues, it will just convince Americans that they do not want to put up with either Hillary or Bill for another four years. …

VDH says it all goes back to the Greeks.

… Hillary’s campaign is just heating up, and Bill has, almost by divine will, thrown away not only his emeritus reinvention, but appreciation of his accomplishments of the 1980s and 1990s, themselves unknown to a new generation of American who will remember only his performance the last two months (and it isn’t over yet). …

… He has fabricated almost everything from his own history about unyielding opposition to the war to why he magnanimously did not run in 1988. In temper tantrum after temper tantrum, he has told off interviewers, blown up at reporters, and hectored audiences. In the most embarrassing moments on stage, he has held on to the microphone with an iron-clad grip, and one cannot listen to him without hearing the same mantra of how he suffered at the hands of all our enemies and all for us.

The result is more than embarrassing to watch. Our first black President has unleashed a vicious campaign against our first serious black Presidential candidate â€” and all for the crime of standing in the way of his return for more. In a manner beyond the powers of the most right-wing polemicist, Bill has exposed liberal pieties and condescensions, or the idea that a supposedly black inspirational upstart has no business freelancing without sanction from senior liberals who have paid their dues and alone have the political savvy and experience to help black folks. …

Peter Wehner again.

Of all the people on planet Earth, is there anyone who has less standing to utter the words â€œShame on youâ€ than Bill Clinton? Yet there he was yesterday, scolding a television reporter for asking him about criticisms by other Democrats that he is leveling unfair and inaccurate attacks against Senator Barack Obama. For a man of bottomless dishonesty and irresponsible behavior to act morally offended about anything, especially for being asked about his own role in spreading false charges against a political opponent, is a remarkable thing to see.

Todayâ€™s Washington Post recounts that exchange in a front-page story. According to reporters Alec MacGillis and Anne Kornblut,

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clintonâ€™s presidential campaign aired a new radio ad here Wednesday that repeated a discredited charge against Sen. Barack Obama, in what some Democrats said is part of an increasing pattern of hardball politics by her and former president Bill Clinton.

Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the Democratic Party in South Carolina, accused the Clintons of using the â€œpolitics of deception.â€ A onetime Clinton supporter, Harpootlian said the Clintonsâ€™ recent tactics have been â€œall about deceit.â€ â€œThis is harmful to the party, itâ€™s harmful to the state,â€ Harpootlian added. â€œAnd I understand they want to win, but this is aboutâ€“should be aboutâ€“a competition of ideas, not who can pull the hammer harder.â€ …

Power Line weighs in.

I’ve thought for a long time, as I wrote here, that Hillary Clinton is unlikely ever to be President, largely because lots of uncommitted voters will recoil at the idea of sending Bill back to the White House for something like a third term. Not because they dislike Bill, but because it’s just too strange.

But I always thought that Bill would play a subdued role in Hillary’s campaign and that the issue of his role, should she win, would be a subtle one that would occur to voters in the later stages of the campaign, as they focus seriously on what it would mean for Hillary to be President. Obviously, I misjudged the Clintons’ capacity for restraint. That is, I assumed they had some.

Already, Bill has become the unguided missile of Hillary’s campaign, appearing in state after state, taking the lead in attacking Hillary’s main rival, and often driving Hillary out of the headlines with his own irrepressible zest for political combat. The New York Times, no enemy of the Clintons, finds it a bit odd:

Facing formidable support for Senator Barack Obama in South Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is deploying former President Bill Clinton there while she shifts her attention to campaigning in states with nominating contests next month and to raising money.

The strategic shift intensifies a new dynamic in the race: Mrs. Clintonâ€™s campaign this week in South Carolina is essentially running Mr. Clinton against Mr. Obama. …

And the Economist shows up for a peek and sees conflict between Latinos and Blacks.

â€œI DON’T want us to get drawn into this notion that somehow this is going to be a race that splits along racial lines,â€ said Barack Obama in a debate on January 21st. Well, too bad. As the Nevada caucuses had showed two days earlier, and as South Carolina’s primary election is likely to confirm, Democratic voters are already divided along racial lines. The real issue is who will suffer more from this divide, Mr Obama or his main rival, Hillary Clinton, and whether the split might end up costing their party the White House.

Mr Obama’s candidacy at first seemed a post-racial triumph. While he rarely addressed the issue directly, he seemed to embody the hope that America could transcend its divisions. Iowa’s lily-white electorate flocked to him joyfully. But Mr Obama’s victory in the caucuses there provoked attacks by Mrs Clinton’s allies, which some blacks interpreted (a touch tendentiously) as ethnic slights. Then, just as things were beginning to calm down, Nevada’s Hispanics waded into the fray. …

Regarding the markets, relax says John Stossel. A free world is a prosperous world.

This week’s newspapers are full of predictions of an impending recession, and maybe they’re right. But the great untold story is the good news: the worldwide boom in economic growth.

“I think one of the best kept secrets is that the world is in the midst of an economic boom, and it is largely driven by increases in economic freedom,” says economics professor James Gwartney, director of the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education at Florida State University. “The world has become more free, and, at the same time, growth is soaring to new highs. During 1995 to 2005, the growth rate of per capita GDP in 99 countries for which data are available has increased to 2.2 percent, nearly twice the rate of recent decades. Since 2000, the annual growth rate of per capita GDP has been even more rapid, 3.2 percent.”

As the world gets freer, says Gwartney, it gets richer.

He should know. For years, Gwartney and Robert Lawson of Capital University have compiled an index showing the solid relationship between economic freedom and economic growth. The latest index, covering 2005, was recently published by the Economic Freedom Network, which comprises more than 70 policy institutes worldwide, from Albania to Zambia. …

Dow Industrials 15,000 at year end says Capital Commerce.

Slate has a story says whenever Tiger shows up, the field plays worse.

… How does his participation in a tournament affect other players’ performance? It’s almost a given that other players will rank lower when Tiger gets first place, but what the study asks is whether other players shoot more strokes on a given course when Tiger’s in the mix.

Analyzing data from round-by-round scores from all PGA tournaments between 2002 and 2006 (over 20,000 player-rounds of golf), Brown finds that competitors fare less wellâ€”about an extra stroke per tournamentâ€”when Tiger is playing. How can we be sure this is because of Tiger? A few features of the findings lend them plausibility. The effect is stronger for the better, “exempt” players than for the nonexempt players, who have almost no chance of beating Tiger anyway. …

Pickerhead

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Daily Archives: January 24, 2008

January 24, 2008

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