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IBD Editors have nice things to say about the administration’s moves on trade bills.
After years of dithering and bowing to protectionists, President Obama finally submitted three pending free-trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia to Congress for a vote. Let the U.S. economy recover.
The president’s decision marks the first bright economic move he has made to boost the nation’s ailing economy. Dropping tariffs, opening markets and equalizing investment terms are a proven way to boost economic growth.
Contrary to all the nonsense about outsourcing and giant sucking sounds, the real impact of free trade is new freedom and opportunity.
The pacts are now on their way to a vote in Congress after a long delay, marking Obama’s first real shift from campaign demagogue captive to special interests to President of the entire U.S. …
Bret Stephens wonders why Obama treats so many to his contempt.
… Then again, the contempt Mr. Obama felt for the Bush administration was merely of a piece with the broader ambit of his disdain. Examples? Here’s a quick list:
The gratuitous return of the Churchill bust to Britain. The slam of the Boston police officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates. The high-profile rebuke of the members of the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union speech. The diplomatic snubs, petty as well as serious, of Gordon Brown, Benjamin Netanyahu and Nicolas Sarkozy. The verbal assaults on Wall Street “fat cats” who “caused the problem” of “10% unemployment.” The never-ending baiting of millionaires and billionaires and jet owners and everyone else who, as Black Entertainment Television’s Robert Johnson memorably put it on Sunday, “tried rich and tried poor and like rich better.”
Now we come to the last few days, in which Mr. Obama first admonished the Congressional Black Caucus to “stop complainin’, stop grumblin’, stop cryin’,” and later told a Florida TV station that America was losing its competitive edge because it “had gotten a little soft.” The first comment earned a rebuke from none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, while the second elicited instant comparisons to Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech. They tell us something about the president’s political IQ. They tell us more about his world view. …
Peter Wehner figured out why the president doesn’t like us anymore.
According to President Obama, America has “gotten a little soft” during the last few decades. That revelation is a relatively new one for Obama, who during the campaign assured us that “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” As Obama hop-scotched around the country, he informed us that “We are the hope of the future – the answer to the cynics who tell us … we cannot remake this world as it should be.” Back then, “what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored, that will not be deterred, that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest.” (I’d urge you to take a look at this campaign video and see if you miss the reference to America having gone a “little soft.”)
Let’s see if we can make sense of this, shall we?
When Obama was extremely popular, a kind of celebrity-politician, the American people were lavished with praise, presumably for our profound insight and wisdom when it came to choosing our political leaders. …
Byron York says Clinton has found a subtle way to trash the man who beat his wife. “I made lots of jobs and you haven’t.”
While the political world obsesses over Chris Christie, Rick Perry and the rest of the Republican presidential field, something is up with Bill Clinton. On Nov. 8, the former president will publish a new book entitled “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy.” Judging by pre-release publicity, the book resembles nothing so much as a campaign tract for a third Clinton term. Of course Clinton is barred by the Constitution from being elected president again, but “Back to Work” still seems the product of an author who’s gearing up for something.
The book’s publicity materials say Clinton will offer “specific recommendations” and will propose “how we can get out of the current economic crisis and lay a foundation for long-term prosperity.” The former president will argue that political warfare in Washington “has produced bad policies, giving us a weak economy with few jobs, growing income inequality and poverty, and a decline in our competitive position.”
A new book on anti-Semitism is reviewed by the Claremont Institute.
“In all its myriad manifestations,” says the British historian Paul Johnson, “the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms.” Jews, as the embodiment of whatever the anti-Semite fears, are by turns money-grubbing misers, or crass, showy spenders; fancy Rothschilds or vulgar peddlers. They are unassimilable aliens, secretive and hermetic, or else they are chameleons who assimilate themselves all too well into their host cultures.
Anti-Semitism has also proven itself a surpassingly expedient political fantasy, equally instrumental to Left and Right. Depending on the ax being ground, Jews have been seen as revolutionaries, enemies of the status quo, or as imperialist preservers of the status quo. They were greedy bankers, rapacious loan-mongers, exploiters of workers, and profit-loving capitalists; or they were subversive socialists. In Russia “the Jews” were blamed for capitalism in the 19th century and for Communism in the early 20th. In the 21st, to come full circle, Jewish capitalist oligarchs are often blamed for the Soviet collapse.
But in the capable hands of Robert S. Wistrich, a professor of modern European history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the history of such nonsense becomes scholarship. An expert pathologist, Wistrich traces in his latest book the most virulent strains of the anti-Semitic disease, and diagnoses its symptomatic expressions in Christianity, Nazism, and Islamism. …
Andrew Malcolm has moved to Investor’s Business Daily; including late-night humor.
Letterman: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie keeps saying he’s not running for president. However, he is willing to consider running for Santa.
Conan: Depressing news over Hallmark’s new line of recession-themed greeting cards — “Sorry you lost your job.” They’re printed in China.