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Claudia Rosett writes on the visit to Moscow.
… In Obama’s version of history, Soviet communism (which he referred to not by name but as “old political and economic restrictions”) came to an end through some sort of brotherly mass movement: “The change did not come from any one nation,” he told an audience of Russian students. “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”
Apart from such details as Soviet killings in the Baltics, violent upheaval in Georgia, the slaughter in Romania that preceded the overthrow of President Nicolae Ceausescu, the early stirrings of war in Chechnya, the genocide amid the breakup of Yugoslavia, and what not, Obama is broadly correct. The Cold War ended without the feared exchange of nuclear weapons and all-out global conflagration. And, yes, it ended thanks in significant part to the courage and determination of a great many people in places such as Prague, Warsaw and Moscow itself.
But missing from Obama’s philosophy is the immense role played by the U.S. America stood for decades as a bulwark of freedom. Americans fought real wars in such places as Korea and Vietnam. Americans kept brilliantly alive a philosophy of democratic government and free markets, which offered a beacon to oppressed people of the world, and exported both ideas and inventions that have vastly enriched mankind. Following the fiascoes of Jimmy Carter–on whose watch the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Iran had its Islamic revolution–Americans elected Ronald Reagan. His version of “reset” was to stop the appeasing and apologizing, and to reassert America’s system as one of virtue and America’s global role as one of both moral and military strength. …
Now that we have had a good long look at this president, Rasmussen reports his polls have gone from +30 to -8. Will he learn? Probably not. He will retreat to the scene of his only triumphs – a teleprompted speech. Thing is, someday nobody will tune in.
It’s been a week since Sarah’s swan song. Some of our favorites have comments. John Fund is first.
… Karl Rove acknowledges the unusual battering Ms. Palin has endured in recent months, but told Fox News that GOP leaders are still puzzled by her decision. “If she wanted to escape the ethics investigations and save the taxpayers money, she’s now done that,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, her decision “sent a signal that if you do this kind of thing to a sitting governor like her, you can drive her out of office.”
But Palin friends say such commentary misses the real point. “The Beltway media can’t understand someone not consumed with presidential ambition,” one told me. “Maybe Sarah Palin won’t run for president and maybe her family situation made it tougher to handle the barrage of attacks that come with that territory. The real issue that should be asked is why a mean-spirited system has to treat people who run like that, instead of why someone may choose not to go through it.”
All good points, and they lead me to conclude that Ms. Palin mostly likely will not run for president — in 2012, at least. She made many mistakes after suddenly being thrust into the national spotlight last year, but hasn’t merited the sneering contempt visited upon her by national reporters. She simply was not their kind of feminist — and they disdained the politically incorrect life choices she had made. …
… Her course cannot be easy: she knows the enemy, and she knows that the enemy “debates” by demonizing people, not by rational argument. From her view, she has received a significant personal insight into just how degrading her political enemies can be, and the whole “progressive” culture that supports them.
The word “populist” could mean many things, both good and bad. To my mind, Palin currently has both good and bad populist qualities. But these include the very best quality: a real, visceral identification, amounting to love, for the people who actually do America’s work, take America’s risks, raise America’s children, and believe in God. These people are held in contempt by the progressive elites — they are tax fodder — just as Palin is held in contempt, as “Caribou Barbie.”
Quite frankly, she has scores to settle, and on behalf of all those people. That is what got her into politics to begin with, at the PTA level, and that is what will animate the woman on the national stage. She has the heart of a lion, and she will not run away.
And Tony Blankley.
Professional politicians and political journalists don’t waste energy on political corpses. They reserve their energy — positive or negative — for viable politicians.
Thus, an intriguing part of the Sarah Palin phenomenon is the intensity of response to her every word and move — from both Republican Party and Democratic Party professionals and from the conventional media. The negative but sustained passion being expressed by the professional Washington political class against her tends to belie its almost unanimous assertion that she is washed-up.
I happened to be on CNN Friday just as the story was breaking of Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska, and for the next hour, I was the only on-air guest — Republican, Democrat, journalist, politician — who was not overtly contemptuous and dismissive of Palin and her political future. On Sunday, as a panelist on ABC’s “This Week,” I was similarly situated.
What is it about Palin that elicits such furious bipartisan Washington dismissiveness? …
Camille Paglia gets to weigh in too.
… She does her own thing with seat-of-the-pants gusto. It’s why she remains hugely popular with the Republican grass-roots base — as I know from listening to talk radio. Callers coming fresh from her rallies are always heady with infectious enthusiasm.
Of course you’d never know that from reading hit jobs like Todd Purdum’s sepulchral piece on Palin in the current Vanity Fair. Scurrying around Alaska with his notepad, Purdum still managed to find comically little to indict her with. Anyone with a gripe is given the floor; fans are shut out. This exercise in faux objectivity is exposed at key points such as Purdum’s failure to identify the actual instigator of Palin’s extravagant clothing bills (a crazed, credit-card-abusing stylist appointed by the McCain campaign) and his prissy characterization of Palin’s performance at the vice-presidential debate as merely “adequate.” Hey, wake up — Palin cleaned Biden’s clock! By the end, Biden was sighing and itching to split.
Whether Palin has a national future or not will depend on her willingness to hit the books at some point and absorb more information about international history and politics than she has needed to know in her role as governor. She also needs a shrewder, cooler take on the mainstream media, with its preening bullies, cackling witches, twisted cynics and pompous windbags. The Northeastern media establishment is in decline, and everyone knows it. Palin should not have gotten into a slanging match with David Letterman or anyone else who has been obsessively defaming her or her family. Let surrogates do that stuff. …
Karl Rove says the administration can’t be trusted with numbers.
… Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration “misread” the economy. But he explained that away on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday by saying the administration had used “the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there” to draw up its stimulus plan. That’s not true.
The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts. In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%. Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.
Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren’t previously able to push through Congress. Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy. More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.
On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that “no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money.” …
Rasmussen reports Sotomayor’s polls have declined. Corner with details.
An interesting by-play has arisen in the Sotomayor quest for the Court. Seems her moon-lighting as Sotomayor & Associates has struck some nerves. This from a NY personal injury attorney.
It’s been bugging me since I saw it in the New York Times this morning: Sonia Sotomayor gave a lousy defense to an ethics charge over the name of her solo law practice, “Sotomayor & Associates.”
To backtrack a bit, she had a home office that overlapped her tenures at the District Attorney’s office and her stint at Pavin & Harcourt back in 1983-1986. Despite it being a solo practice, she called it “Sotomayor & Associates,” which is misleading since the Times has now confirmed what I had guessed at a month ago: That there were no actual associates.
Here is the defense, as laid out by an expert that the White House apparently retained after my posting appeared: The authority for prohibiting the misleading firm name was merely “advisory.”
That defense is — as defenses go when you are awaiting confirmation to the highest court in the land — just awful. I mean not just a little bit bad, but truly wretched to the point of embarrassing. ..
Turns out some states are quite clear in regarding “& Associates” as unethical. Culled from Volokh Conspiracy.
… Subject to qualifications below, the use of the word “Associates” in a law firm name, letterhead or other professional designation—such as “Doe Associates”—is false and misleading if there are not at least two licensed attorneys practicing law with the firm. Similarly, the use of the phrase “& Associates” in a firm name, letterhead or other professional designation—such as “Doe & Associates”—is false and misleading if there are not at least three licensed attorneys practicing law with the firm. …
Along comes Justice Ginsburg to tell us Sotomayor should be confirmed.
… Ginsburg offers this feeble defense of Sotomayor’s “wise Latina woman” comment: “Think of how many times you’ve said something that you didn’t get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could.” Ginsburg is evidently unaware that Sotomayor’s comment was part of a text that Sotomayor herself prepared and later published as a law-review article (and that she repeated on several occasions). …
Professor Ernö Rubik inventor of Rubik’s Cube now has Rubik’s 360. London Times has the story.
His cube was one of the most popular and infuriating toys of all time. Now Professor Ernö Rubik is hoping that the sphere will bring sleepless nights to the world’s obsessive puzzlers.
The creator of Rubik’s Cube is back with his first new puzzle for almost 20 years and early indications are that it is going to be every bit as irritating as the original.
Rubik’s 360, which goes on sale next week, features six small balls inside three interlocking spheres. The task is to lock each ball into colour-coded capsules on the outermost sphere. Professor Rubik said of his cube that it was “easy to understand the task, but hard to work out the solution”. It is just as aggravating to crack the 360. …