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A Corner Post on the dedication of Reagan’s statue in London.
Intertwined American and British flags normally would seem an odd choice to celebrate Independence Day, but they waved at Grosvenor Square in London in this July 4 under special circumstances: the dedication of a statue of Ronald Reagan commemorating the centennial of his birth on the grounds of the American embassy. Comparable ceremonies abroad over the last week honored Reagan, included a Mass of thanksgiving in Krakow; another statue unveiling in Budapest; and the renaming for Reagan of the street in front of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Prague.
The embrace of President Reagan’s memory 100 years after his birth was hardly predictable in his time. In a 1976 episode of All in the Family, Archie Bunker’s revelation that he had cast a write-in vote for Reagan for president was a laugh line. During the first two weeks of his presidency, Reagan bluntly condemned the Soviet government as amoral, and the Washington Post in turn criticized his supposedly simplistic “good-vs.-evil approach” to the Kremlin. …
Speaking of less capable presidents, Reuters’ James Pethokoukis thinks Obama has made things worse.
The Republican charge is a body shot aimed right at the belly of President Barack Obama’s re-election effort: He made it worse.
No, not that White House efforts at boosting the American economy and creating jobs and “winning the future” were merely inefficient or wasteful, which they certainly were. Even Obama finally seems to understand that. “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” he joked lamely at a meeting of his jobs council.
Rather, that the product of all the administration’s stimulating and regulating is an economy that’s in significantly worse competitive and productive shape than when Obama took the oath in January 2009. He was dealt a bad hand, to be sure – and then proceeded to play it badly. …
… Elections have results. So do bad policies. Obama’s choices on taxing and spending and regulating, sorry to say, seem to have made things worse.
Pethokoukis gives us a graphic illustration of the results of the administration’s foolishness. This is a graph of the employment rate recovering from recessions since the 1960′s.
Peter Wehner says those bad policies have human consequences.
According to the Department of Labor, a smaller share of 16-19-year-olds are working than at any time since records began to be kept in 1948. Less than one-quarter of teens (24 percent) have jobs, compared to 42 percent in the summer of 2001. And in a story in the Wall Street Journal, we read this:
“Two years ago, officials said, the worst recession since the Great Depression ended. The stumbling recovery has also proven to be the worst since the economic disaster of the 1930s. Across a wide range of measures—employment growth, unemployment levels, bank lending, economic output, income growth, home prices and household expectations for financial well-being—the economy’s improvement since the recession’s end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II.”
This merely confirms what those of us at CONTENTIONS have been writing about for many months now. Still, those nine words about the recovery — “the worst since the economic disaster of the 1930s” — are arresting. And underneath the data are countless human lives that are being disrupted, traumatized, and in some cases, ruined. …
And George Will wonders who the GOP will run against “Alibi Ike?”
The Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee will run against Alibi Ike. Lardner, a Chicago sportswriter, created that character (“His right name was Frank X. Farrell, and I guess the X stood for ‘Excuse me.’?”), who resembles Chicagoan Barack Obama. After blaming his predecessor for this and that, and after firing all the arrows in liberalism’s quiver — the stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc. — Obama seems poised to blame the recovery’s anemia on Republican resistance to simultaneously raising the debt ceiling and taxes.
So the Republican nominee’s campaign theme can already be written. In 1960, candidate John Kennedy’s theme was: “We can do better.” In 2012, the Republican candidate should say “Is this the best we can do?”
In the contest to determine who will wield those words, there have been three important recent developments: …
A Corner discussion about the well credentialed takes place between Michael Walsh and Mark Steyn. Here’s Mark;
… The “education” system is one of the biggest structural deformities in America today. It leads to later workforce participation and later family formation, both of which factor into our existentially catastrophic entitlement liabilities. And yet Obama wants every American child to go to college. What sort of “education” do you think they’ll be getting once that happens? And what value do you think that sheepskin will hold in the wider world?
The justification for this absurd prolongation of adolescence is that it opens up opportunities for the disadvantaged. But credential-fetishization has the opposite effect. Remember Ronald Reagan, alumnus of Eureka College, Illinois? Since then, for the first time in its history, America has lived under continuous rule by Ivy League – Yale (Bush I), Yale Law (Clinton), Harvard Business (Bush II), Harvard Law (Obama). In 2009, over a quarter of Obama’s political appointees had ties to Harvard; over 90 per cent had “advanced degrees”. How’s that working out for you? In my soon to be imminently forthcomingly imminent book, I point out that once upon a time America was the land where guys without degrees (Truman) or only 18 months of formal education (Lincoln) or no schooling at all (Zachary Taylor) could become president. Credentialization is shrinking what was America’s advantage – a far greater social mobility than Europe. We’re decaying into a society where 40 per cent of the population do minimal-skill service jobs and the rest run up a trillion dollars of debt in order to avoid that fate, and ne’er the twain shall meet, except for perfunctory social pleasantries in the drive-thru lane. …
Richard Epstein comments on presidential ignorance.
… Second, the president always seems to be making the wrong either/or choices. There is no connection whatsoever between the use of corporate jets and the awarding of scholarship money. The correct way to think about such a tradeoff is to ask this question: is allotting tax dollars to one type of venture preferable to allotting it to another?
The president’s failure to compare different expenditures matters, big time. During his press conference, Obama was asked about the ill-conceived decision of the National Labor Relations Board to chase after Boeing for opening a new plant in South Carolina. Naturally, the president played dumb on the question, saying that he did not know the facts and that the matter was properly before “a judge”—i.e. the National Labor Relations Board—to decide. But here is what he should have said if he had the courage to own up to his own decisions:
“Right now, Lafe Solomon, my acting General Counsel of the NLRB, has decided to chase after Boeing for the temerity of seeking to open up a new plant in South Carolina in order to escape the risk of union strikes back in Seattle. Economic downturns create hard political choices. I think that it is wise for me as your president to spend your hard-earned tax dollars harassing a company whose increased profits from doing business in South Carolina could actually increase tax revenues. We have to get our priorities right, and mine are simple. Stay true to my union supporters, even if going after Boeing means losing money that could be spent on funding scholarships that let poor kids to go to college or to make sure that the food supply is safe against E. Coli infections.”
Unfortunately, you will never hear this level of candor in any presidential press conference. …
Contentions’ Alana Goodman reports the Jewish vote is moving away from Obama.
There was a lot of attention given to a Gallup poll yesterday showing Jewish approval for President Obama has remained fairly steady at around 60 percent since the beginning of the year (though it has also dropped by 20 points since 2009). But another poll released yesterday, taken by conservative strategist Dick Morris, found a shockingly low 56 percent of Jewish Americans said they would vote to reelect Obama over a generic Republican candidate if the elections were held today.
Considering the fact 78 percent of Jewish voters cast a ballot for Obama in 2008, this seems like a staggering — and almost unbelievable — drop in support. But here’s one reason to take it seriously: presidential approval ratings often find more support for the president than generic match-ups. …
… A few final takeaways from both polls: Gallup’s was of 350 Jewish Americans, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 7 percent. In comparison, Morris’ poll was of 1,000 Jewish voters, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. Morris’ seems to have an edge here, which is certainly something to keep in mind as you compare both surveys.
John Tamny notes the results of tapping the oil reserves.
On Wednesday, June 22nd, the price of oil closed at $95.41. The following day President Obama announced to great fanfare the release of 30 million barrels of crude over the next 30 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) with an eye on reducing oil’s price.
Mildly sentient minds with a basic sense of oil-price history knew it wouldn’t work, and sure enough, one week later – yesterday – oil closed at $95.25. As of today oil is trending down to $94/barrel, but this can be chalked up to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s looming resignation. As this piece will make abundantly clear, the price of oil is a dollar phenomenon, and with a weak dollar Treasury Secretary getting ready to depart, gold is down $19/ounce in concert with increased dollar strength, thus helping to explain oil’s slight weakness relative to yesterday. …
… Priced in gold, the most stable measure of value known to mankind, oil’s price has remained mostly the same over the last 40 years. An ounce of gold bought 15 barrels oil in 1971, 15 barrels in 1981, and it buys 15 barrels today. …