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Yesterday we started off with a plea from leaders of Eastern Europe to our president asking him to live up to the responsibilities of world leadership. Today, we start with a similar plea from historian Paul Johnson.
Although the U.S. comes under criticism from all quarters, some facts need to be remembered:
–Since 1945 America has voluntarily accepted leadership of the democratic West and therefore, ultimately, the responsibility for preserving peace in the world.
–Since the end of WWII there has been no major war, no open conflict between great powers.
–This is the longest such period of peace, nearly 65 years, in the recorded history of the world, which is objective testimony to the quality and success of American leadership.
The questions we now face as Barack Obama is subjected to his first practical tests as world security leader are: Can the U.S. continue in this role? Has it the power, the self-confidence and the will to do so? And if America declines to continue as world sheriff, will anyone else take on the duty? …
Abe Greenwald reports that India is refusing to play ball with Obama on CO2 limits.
…“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told Mrs. Clinton and her delegation. …
…First, Obama is taking our allies for granted — and cracks are now showing. In all Obama’s travels since taking office, he hasn’t visited India once. During Hillary Clinton’s first trip to East Asia as secretary of state, she blew off India, citing scheduling problems. George W. Bush forged bold energy and trade deals to ensure excellent relations with the emerging subcontinent; if Obama thinks he can coast on that record, he’s in for a surprise.
Second, the administration has an absurd faith in the power of its own PR. India has been wracked by the global financial crisis. Even putting that aside, it’s a country where 42.5 percent of children under five are malnourished. For India, economic dynamism isn’t a luxury; it’s a miracle. Do Obama and Hillary think Indians will hobble their own industry just because the Change Express is sweeping through town yammering about cooperation?
Third, its carbon moratorium is madness. Climate panic is an outgrowth of Western decadence. Pushing it on emerging powers is exactly what the Left means by cultural imperialism (or what it should mean, anyway). If the Obama administration bossed around our enemies with half the energy it puts into bossing around our friends, perhaps the planet wouldn’t look like a rogue nations’ free-for-all right now.
A foreign policy theme is emerging: the Obama administration is wasting the goodwill we have with our global allies, by pushing for untenable positions. Jennifer Rubin comments on the pressure for Israel to make more concessions.
…we unfortunately see once again how the Obama administration seems determined to flunk Diplomacy 101 when it comes to the Middle East. While Iran proceeds apace with its nuclear program, the Obama administration remains obsessed with the settlements. I can only add a couple of points emphasizing how terribly misplaced and counterproductive this fixation is.
First, under any circumstances, this would be yet another ill-advised and unwarranted bit of “meddling” by the U.S. government. What other country do we lecture on where its citizens might live — in its own capital, no less? …
Moderate David Brooks feels that we’ve seen this political cycle before. This time the liberals have overreached in thinking that they have a mandate.
…This ideological overreach won’t be any more successful than the last one. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday confirms what other polls have found. Most Americans love Barack Obama personally, but support for Democratic policies is already sliding fast.
Approval of Obama’s handling of health care, for example, has slid from 57 percent to 49 percent since April. Disapproval has risen from 29 percent to 44 percent. As recently as June, voters earning more than $50,000 preferred Obama to the Republicans on health care by a 21-point margin. Now those voters are evenly split.
Most independents now disapprove of Obama’s health care strategy. In March, only 32 percent of Americans thought Obama was an old-style, tax-and-spend liberal. Now 43 percent do. …
Roger Simon sets the tone for today’s health care coverage.
We all live in polarities. He who seems the most self-confident is often the most insecure, etc.
Thus Barack Obama – the man who rose so fast to the presidency that he did not pass GO, though he did collect $200. He moves like someone with a preternatural fear of being found out, as if all would crumble if he stops for a second. And now it’s healthcare healthcare healthcare all the time and incessantly as if we were a country of three hundred million suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer. Saith the man: In an interview aired this morning on NBC’s “Today” show, Obama defended his insistence on Congress passing healthcare overhaul legislation before its August summer recess. “If you don’t set a deadline in this town, nothing happens,” the president said, adding, “And the deadline isn’t being set by me. It’s being set by the American people.”
Well, no. Not any American people I’ve met anyway. They all just wish this fella would slow down for a moment, not to smell the roses, but at least to add up the bucks and think things through. …
Thomas Sowell points out that government is not doing a great job handling the healthcare programs already under its purview.
…A bigger question is whether medical care will be better or worse after the government takes it over. There are many available facts relevant to those crucial questions but remarkably little interest in those facts.
There are facts about the massive government-run medical programs already in existence in the United States — Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ hospitals — as well as government-run medical systems in other countries.
None of the people who are trying to rush government-run medical care through Congress before we have time to think about it are pointing to Medicare, Medicaid or veterans’ hospitals as shining examples of how wonderful we can expect government medical care to be when it becomes “universal.” …
Rich Lowry says that for Obama, “Hope and Change” has been overshadowed by “Do It Now”.
When Barack Obama pilfered Martin Luther King Jr.’s line about the “fierce urgency of now,” he wasn’t kidding. The line has come to define his presidency. His legislative strategy moves in two gears — heedlessly fast and recklessly faster.
As with the stimulus package, Obama’s health-care plan depends on speed. More important than any given provision, more important than any principle, more important than sound legislating is the urgent imperative to Do It Now.
Do it now, before anyone can grasp what exactly it is that Congress is passing. Do it now, before the overpromising and the dishonest justifications can be exposed. Do it now, before Obama’s poll numbers return to earth and make it impossible to slam through ramshackle government programs concocted on the run. Do it now, because simply growing government is more important than the practicalities of any new program. …
Rich Lowry also posts on aspects of Obamacare that Obama is not being honest about.
Ann Coulter is smokin’ good on health care today.
… The government also “helped” us by mandating that insurance companies cover all sorts of medical services, both ordinary — which you ought to pay for yourself — and exotic, such as shrinks, in vitro fertilization and child-development assessments — which no normal person would voluntarily pay to insure against.
This would be like requiring all car insurance to cover the cost of gasoline, oil and tire changes — as well as professional car detailing, iPod docks, and leather seats and those neon chaser lights I have all along the underbody of my chopped, lowrider ’57 Chevy.
But politicians are more interested in pleasing lobbyists for acupuncturists, midwives and marriage counselors than they are in pleasing recent college graduates who only want to insure against the possibility that they’ll be hit by a truck. So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat — but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists.
As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him … or going uninsured. People who aren’t planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance — and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don’t have health insurance.
The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down — not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you’re in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas. …
Jennifer Rubin posts that Bill Kristol has explained the ugliest truth about Obamacare.
…Bill Kristol, analyzing Ted Kennedy’s column in Newsweek, gets to what lies at the heart of liberal health care:
The government is going to decide — ahead of time, obviously, since deciding after the fact wouldn’t save any money; and based on certain general criteria, since the government isn’t going to review each individual case — what kinds of hospital readmissions for the elderly are “unnecessary” and what kinds aren’t. And it’s going to set up a system “to reward hospitals and doctors for preventing” the unnecessary ones. That is, the government will reward hospitals and doctors for denying care they now provide, care the government will now deem “unnecessary.” …
Closing this section are some good health care ideas from Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana.
…
•Aligned consumer interests. Consumers should be financially invested in better health decisions through health-savings accounts, lower premiums and reduced cost sharing. If they seek care in cost-effective settings, comply with medical regimens, preventative care, and lifestyles that reduce the likelihood of chronic disease, they should share in the savings.
•Medical lawsuit reform. The practice of defensive medicine costs an estimated $100 billion-plus each year, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, which used a study by economists Daniel P. Kessler and Mark B. McClellan. No health reform is serious about reducing costs unless it reduces the costs of frivolous lawsuits.
•Insurance reform. Congress should establish simple guidelines to make policies more portable, with more coverage for pre-existing conditions. Reinsurance, high-risk pools, and other mechanisms can reduce the dangers of adverse risk selection and the incentive to avoid covering the sick. Individuals should also be able to keep insurance as they change jobs or states. …
If you’re like Pickerhead, you long ago gave up on Chris Matthews. Noemie Emery has the story of Chris and fellow Carter speech writers praising Carter’s “malaise” speech. Leading off the humor section is a good spot for this.
Mid-July 2009 is a season of milestones – the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing; the 40th anniversary of Chappaquiddick, the 10th anniversary of the death of John Kennedy Jr. - so it seems just that MSNBC decided to honor an even more poignant occasion – the 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter’s ‘malaise’ speech to an incredulous nation on July 15, 1979.
To most people, this was less a giant step for mankind than one of the low points in what has been justly described as a “slum of a decade,” but Hardball host Chris Matthews, a one-time speech writer for our 39th president, convened two ex-colleagues – Gerald Rafshoon and Hendrik Hertzberg (now at the New Yorker) – to commemorate and discuss the event.
“I think it was a good thing to do,” Hertzberg said of the oration. …