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In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Nile Gardiner contrasts Bush and Obama in foreign policy.
…Hence, the hallmarks of Obama’s foreign policy have been the naive engagement of an array of odious dictatorial regimes, grovelling apologies before foreign audiences, lamb-like timidity in the face of intimidation, the ending of the War on Terror, and the trashing of traditional alliances. But has this liberal foreign affairs revolution succeeded in advancing American interests and security across the globe? Hardly. Under Obama’s leadership the United States now appears significantly weaker and far more vulnerable, faced with an array of deadly threats that grow more menacing by the day.
When President Bush was in power he may not have been hugely popular abroad, but the United States was widely feared on the world stage, her enemies were hunted to the ends of the earth, and her real allies were treated with respect. As Barack Obama is discovering to his cost, the world stage is not an extension of the set of American Idol, and global leadership is not about winning popularity contests. The doctrine of “smart power” looks increasingly like an empty shell, a naive approach that has reaped no dividends and threatens to usher in an era of American decline, unless it is reversed.
I’ve outlined below ten areas where George W. Bush’s international leadership was considerably smarter than that of his successor. As I noted in an article at the end of the Bush presidency, ten or twenty years from now, historians will view Bush’s actions on the world stage in a more favourable light. President Bush, like Ronald Reagan, understood that American global leadership rests heavily upon the projection of hard power as well as diplomacy, and the United States can only lead effectively if it is willing to aggressively confront its enemies and defeat them. …
Spengler discusses what has been on the minds of voters, and lays out some of the strategies he feels will help the economic situation.
…When Reagan took office in 1981, the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s, America had a 10% savings rate, the current account was in surplus, and America was the world’s largest net creditor nation. Reagan was able to cut taxes and finance an enormous budget deficit because the world’s demand for US Treasury securities was correspondingly large. In 2010, the baby boomers are in their 50s and 60s, America has saved nothing for a decade, the current account remains in severe deficit and the world is choking on the existing supply of Treasury securities. Cutting taxes to stimulate the economy is not as simple this time round.
Professor Reuven Brenner and I argued in the December 2009 issue of First Things that fundamental changes in American economic policy are required to emerge from the Great Recession. We proposed that the United States fix the dollar to the Chinese yuan and other currencies in order to re-orient trade flows to the developing world. We added, “We have been borrowing in order to consume; we need now to save in order to invest. We need to shift the tax burden, moving it away from savings and investment and toward consumption. We should replace individual and corporate income taxes with consumption-based taxes.”
Americans need to be told that they will need to invest before they can consume, and that the cure will take years rather than months to take effect. It’s not a happy message, and no one in politics is willing to deliver it – if indeed anyone in politics understands it.
The WSJ editors have an interesting piece on where Americans are moving.
Every day thousands of Americans vote with their feet on the best places to live and work, and these migration patterns can tell a lot about state economies—and economic policies. United Van Lines has released its annual report for 2009, based on those the moving company has relocated across one state line to another…
…The next two biggest net losers were Illinois and New Jersey, while California and New York also continued to have far more departures than arrivals.
Ten states gained net arrivals: Oregon, Arkansas, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico, Texas and North Carolina. Of those, only Oregon sways decidedly to the political left and it has benefited from the economic refugees fleeing California.
…As for the biggest winner, well, our readers won’t be surprised to learn that it was Washington, D.C. by a large margin. United Van Lines moved nearly seven families to the federal city last year for every three it moved out. As always when the feds gear up the income redistribution machine, the imperial city and its denizens get a big cut of the action. …
Peter Wehner gives his thoughts on the political landscape after the Massachusetts special election.
4. I suspect we will see a damaging split emerge between the Democratic leadership — Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid — and other Democratic lawmakers. The former will talk tough; they will say its time to redouble their efforts, that now is not the time to turn away from their agenda, that reconsidering it in the wake of the Massachusetts election would be a sign of weakness and a path to defeat in November. “This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official told Politico.com. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”
Many Democratic lawmakers will think this counsel to be deeply unwise, bordering on insane. They will argue that the public has sent a message as emphatically as it possibly can: embracing ObamaCare and Obamaism is politically lethal. Give it up. And so the Democratic caucus will politely — and in some instances not-so-politely — decline to follow Obama, Reid, and Pelosi over a cliff.
6. There is a slew of bad data for Democrats to pour through in the aftermath of Scott Brown’s victory. But here is the most frightening data point of all: Mr. Brown won unaffiliated voters by a margin of 73 percent to 25 percent, according to pollster Scott Rasmussen. This 3-to-1 margin comes after independents broke for Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie by 2-to-1 margins in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. This is a stunning, and for Democrats an ominous, development. More than anything else, it explains why they now face the prospect of losing both the House and the Senate in November.
8. The radiating effects of the Massachusetts election will be enormous, including its effects on GOP recruitment and Democrats who opt to stay on (or retire to) the sidelines.
If you are a Republican, you now understand that this may be your best opportunity ever to run and to win; outstanding candidates who might otherwise not throw their hat into the ring will now do so. Conversely, many well-qualified Democrats, seeing the Category Five storm that is now hitting shore, will decide to take a pass at a run. We are seeing a virtuous cycle and a vicious cycle play itself out simultaneously. …
John Steele Gordon points out the irony of the political maneuvering by the Massachusetts legislators.
Among the many lessons to be learned from yesterday’s election in Massachusetts is that politicians should not play games with established law for short-term political advantage.
Like most states, Massachusetts law called for the governor to appoint someone to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat until the next general election. But in 2004, Republican Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, and Democratic Senator John Kerry was running for president. To prevent Romney from appointing a Republican in the event of a Kerry victory, a bill was submitted to the General Court (as Massachusetts calls its legislature) to strip the governor of this power and require a special election to be held from 145 to 160 days after the seat became vacant. The bill stalled in the legislature, however, until Senator Ted Kennedy personally pushed for its passage. Governor Romney vetoed the bill, but his veto was overridden by the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. …
…Had the Massachusetts Democrats and Senator Kennedy simply left the law alone in 2004, this election would not have taken place, and the Democrats’ 60-seat majority in the Senate would still be intact. Had the Massachusetts Democrats, Senator Kennedy, and President Obama left the law alone in 2009, the Senate would have been forced to bargain with Republicans to secure passage of the health-care bill. A bill might have emerged that would have had more public support, and the president and the Democrats might have escaped an epic political disaster.
Jennifer Rubin wonders whether any of the ersatz political advisors at the White House will get the boot.
Yuval Levin raises an interesting point about the Obami:
They have made it impossible for themselves to change course without a massive loss of face and of political capital. But however costly, that change will now need to come. You have to wonder if the people responsible for setting this course—and especially Rahm Emanuel and the House and Senate leadership—will still be standing when it’s all done with.
Obama isn’t big on firing people. It took a weekend of angst before Van Jones was shown the door. No one lost his job over the national security debacle that resulted in the Christmas Day near-catastrophe. So will he now clean house, after his domestic agenda has blown up in the Bluest State, his approval rating has plummeted, his party has formed a circular firing squad, and his congressional majorities are at risk? It seems that the Obama political brain trust — which thought its expertise extended to Afghanistan war strategy and the Middle East “peace process” — wasn’t very good at the jobs in which they were supposedly expert. Rahm Emanuel understood Congress. David Axelrod understood political salesmanship. But they, along with Obama of course, made a perfect mess in only a year.
It might be smart for Obama to toss some of them out. For starters, it might elevate the tone of the White House, which has been languishing in the partisan sewers for a year. And it might signal to panicked Democrats in the House and Senate that Obama doesn’t intend to plow them under. But most of all, it would be a message to the country that the president has learned a lesson and is setting a new direction. …
Rubin continues her thoughts on White House housecleaning.
Dana Milbank reminds me that there’s another White House aide who deserves to be shown the door: the ever-snide Robert Gibbs. Milbank explains:
Gibbs acts as though he’s playing himself in the movie version of his job. In this imaginary film, he is the smart-alecky press secretary, offering zippy comebacks and cracking jokes to make his questioners look ridiculous. It’s no great feat to make reporters look bad, but this act also sends a televised image of a cocksure White House to ordinary Americans watching at home.
This is the most visible manifestation of a larger problem the Obama White House has. Many Obama loyalists from the 2008 race still seem, after a year on the job, to be having trouble exiting campaign mode. They sometimes appear to be running a taxpayer-funded rapid-response operation.
Sometimes? We’ve been treated to attacks from Gibbs on Fox, Gallup, radio talk-show hosts, and CNBC reporters. As Milbank describes, he waves off reporters’ legitimate inquiries with the back of his hand — the perfect metaphor for the contempt with which this White House treats critics.
The WSJ has an editorial on what your taxes (and the taxes of your children and grandchildren) are paying for. Apparently just because his climate theory was debunked doesn’t mean that Michael Mann shouldn’t receive more taxpayer dollars to create more climate science baloney.
As for stimulus jobs—whether “saved” or “created”—we thought readers might be interested to know whose employment they are sustaining. More than $2.4 million is stimulating the career of none other than Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann.
Mr. Mann is the creator of the famous hockey stick graph, which purported to show some 900 years of minor temperature fluctuations, followed by a spike in temperatures over the past century. His work, which became a short-term sensation when seized upon by Al Gore, was later discredited. Mr. Mann made the climate spotlight again last year as a central player in the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which showed climatologists massaging data, squelching opposing views, and hiding their work from the public.
Mr. Mann came by his grants via the National Science Foundation, which received $3 billion in stimulus money. Last June, the foundation approved a $541,184 grant to fund work “Toward Improved Projections of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing,” which will contribute “to the understanding of abrupt climate change.” Principal investigator? Michael Mann. …
So, what does a liberal think of the Mass. mess? John Judis, senior editor of the New Republic thinks Obama’s lucky to get the message about his disastrous policies so soon.
Bill Clinton didn’t know he was in big trouble until the very eve of the November 1994 election. Barack Obama knows now, barely a year into his presidency. While the party loyalists can blame Martha Coakley’s defeat on her ignorance of Red Sox baseball, it was clearly a message to the president and his party. Yes, a less inept candidate might have beaten Scott Brown, but if Obama and his program had been more popular in Massachusetts, even Coakley could have won–and by ten points or more.
There were no network exits polls, only a limited sample by Rasmussen , but some of the polls taken beforehand bear out Obama’s role in Coakley’s defeat. In the final January 17 poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning North Carolina outfit that picked up Brown’s surge early in the month, 20 percent of the respondents who voted for Obama in 2008 said they’d vote for Brown. Among those voters, only 22 percent approved of Obama’s presidency, and only 13 percent backed his health care plan. (Click here to read Thomas B. Edsall: ”Why Health Care is the Graveyard of Democratic Dreams.”)
In fact, the percent of 2008 Obama voters who were backing Brown almost perfectly matched the percentage who were dissatisfied with Obama’s health care plan, which Brown himself singled out for criticism in his campaign. According to the Rasmussen exit sample, 52 percent of Brown voters rated health care as their top issue–a clear indication that they were viewing the election in national and not merely state terms. …