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Charles Krauthammer thinks it would be nice if the president regarded his country as highly as he regards himself.
…Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to Cabinet members and other high government officials as “my” — “my secretary of homeland security,” “my national security team,” “my ambassador.” The more normal — and respectful — usage is to say “the,” as in “the secretary of state.” These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution — not just the man who appointed them.
It’s a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama’s exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies — both about himself.
Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama’s modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence — yet not of his own country’s.
Peter Wehner comments on the reasons Israel might worry about American policy.
…These statements combine some of Obama’s worst traits: arrogance, condescension, and detachment from reality. …
…In this instance, the anxiety Israel feels toward for Obama is not rooted in his unwise policies or his disgraceful past treatment of the Israeli prime minister. No, the cause is Obama’s middle name. …
…Israel’s wariness toward Obama is rooted in his pursuit of an agenda that is as harmful to Israel. But all of this is beyond the realm of comprehension for Obama. For him, it all comes down to his middle name. We have rarely, if ever, seen self-delusion on a scale quite like this.
Robert Samuelson writes today on the Great Recession’s hold on America’s psyche.
It has been the most egalitarian of all the 11 recessions since World War II. In various ways, it has touched every social class through job loss, pay cuts, depressed home values, shrunken stock portfolios, eroded retirement savings, grown children returning home — and anxiety about all of the above. The Great Recession (as it is widely called) has changed America psychologically, politically, economically and socially. Just how will be examined and debated for years. Here comes a booming cottage industry of scholars, pollsters and pundits.
A new study from the Pew Research Center, based on an opinion survey in May of nearly 3,000 Americans and an exhaustive evaluation of economic data, provides a preview. Not surprisingly, it confirms that Americans have become more frugal; 71 percent say they’re buying less expensive brands, 57 percent say they’ve trimmed or eliminated vacations. Life plans have changed; 11 percent say they’ve postponed marriage or children, while 9 percent have moved back with parents.
One interesting finding is that the elderly have been relatively sheltered. …
David Goldman looks at the changes in the economy that will hinder putting the unemployed back to work. His piece is titled “Americans Who’ll Never Work Again.”
…The employment situation will not improve until small businesses begin to hire. In America’s creative-destruction economy, jobs lost by big companies usually are lost forever; they are replaced by jobs created by startups. Startups created two-thirds of all new jobs in the U.S. during the past three decades. This is the only real hope for the unskilled — but small business remains dead in the water.
We simply don’t know whether the next wave of entrepreneurship—if we are able to launch it—will absorb the millions of young, less-educated men who seem lost to economic activity. I fear that something like Roosevelt’s CCC may be required, despite my conservative’s aversion to government spending. There is, after all, a good deal of infrastructure to be repaired.
In Seeking Alpha, Daryl Montgomery joins those who think another recession is coming.
We have entered another period similar to late 2007 and 2008, when the economic establishment had a rosy view of the economy, but a number of indicators were flashing warning signs that a major downturn was coming. Neither the Federal Reserve, the IMF, nor Wall Street correctly predicted a recession would begin in December 2007. None of these august bodies even realized the greatest economic downturn since the Depression was taking place even months after it had begun. Bullishness once again reigns supreme among the economic elites as one indicator after another is signaling trouble ahead.
Here are 10 reasons to think that there will be a recession soon …
Many have written about how government-created uncertainty in the marketplace hurts growth. In Forbes, Thomas Cooley quantifies corporate restraint, in the face of government recklessness and irrationality.
…The simple truth is that there are times when countries have no choice but to acknowledge the unsustainability of their current policies and take steps to correct them. It is unfortunate that the worst recession since the great crash of the 1930s has forced so many countries to face this choice at the same time. But the fiscal problems facing most countries did not primarily result from the financial crisis and the recession. There have been two decades of public sector growth and fiscal expansion, the consequences of which were masked by growing economies. …
…The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that U.S. corporations are sitting on $1.6 trillion in cash reserves, a record amount, because they are reluctant to expand in the uncertain policy environment. Even looking at the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of blue chips–and stripping out financials, which are required by regulators to keep large cash reserves in order to cushion against risk–the cash-on-hand number is a whopping $1.1 trillion. Would a more transparent, business-friendly environment turn that cash into investment and jobs?
Jon Basil Utley, in Reason, says the Gulf oil spill is nowhere near the disaster the government’s response has been.
…Now CNN reports that almost all new drilling activity has been suspended for over two months. This includes shallow wells in less than 500 feet of water—despite Obama’s statement that such wells would not be affected by his orders to cease all deep-water (over 1,000 feet) drilling. After thousands of deep-water wells have been drilled successfully without spills, the Interior Department, under Secretary Ken Salazar, has so delayed permitting and continuing operations as to possibly bring financial ruin to countless smaller companies. It would be similar to shutting down all airlines after a single crash. It may be that Salazar and his gang are just so ignorant of business that they think the government can simply shut down the super-sophisticated flow of supplies and men and then later restart it like flipping an electric light switch. It’s already estimated that it will take two years or longer to get Gulf production back to its pre-suspension levels. Meanwhile, deep-water drilling rigs—which cost over half a million dollars per day to operate—are being sent away from the Gulf to work in Africa and Asia where they are wanted. It will take months, if not years, to bring them back. Some 100,000 high-paying jobs are now at risk. Already the number of deep-water rigs has dropped from 42 to 19. …
…Most startling is the news that large boat skimmers could have sucked up much of the spill and cleansed it long before the oil reached shore. At the outset of the spill the Dutch offered skimmer boats with experienced crews that could have handled most of the spill. As The Christian Science Monitor reported in “The Top Five Bottlenecks”:
Three days after the accident, the Dutch government offered advanced skimming equipment capable of sucking up oiled water, separating out most of the oil, and returning the cleaner water to the Gulf. But citing discharge regulations that demand that 99.9985 percent of the returned water is oil-free, the EPA initially turned down the offer. A month into the crisis, the EPA backed off those regulations, and the Dutch equipment was airlifted to the Gulf. …
Tonight begins a new documentary about former Secretary of State George Schultz. Dorothy Rabinowitz gives a review.
No, “Turmoil & Triumph” isn’t another series about Winston Churchill, that title notwithstanding. The three-part documentary (airs consecutive Mondays beginning July 12, 10-11 p.m. EDT, on PBS; check local listings) concerns a less historic figure—namely, George Shultz. The turmoil and triumph in question are those of the years in which he served as secretary of state—and by the time this astonishingly dramatic miniseries has come to its end, with the final episode’s play-by-play account of the Reagan-Gorbachev face-off over nuclear disarmament and Star Wars, and the drive toward an end to the Cold War, a powerful case has been made for Mr. Shultz as one of the most significant statesmen in American history. …
Jay Nordlinger posts some anecdotes about George Schultz.
…Finally, a reader sent me an article about Shultz a few months ago (here). … Here is an excerpt from that article:
At a fundraising dinner for a charitable cause a few years ago, Shultz quietly got up and left in the middle of an anti-George W. Bush political monologue by Lily Tomlin. Is it hard for him to be floating in the Bay Area sea of Democrats? “Not a problem at all,” he said. “But if I go someplace and it’s supposed to be a good time, I don’t like that it’s political. I don’t like it when I go to church and the pastor has a political speech. I don’t like that. I go to church to hear the Gospels.” …