Click on WORD or PDF for full content
David Warren comments on recent events in England.
Prince Charles, and Camilla, were not the only things under attack in England this week, on the streets of London, as the British government took its latest steps to avoid the fate of Ireland and Greece. Not only publicly, but privately, the British are now a people who have borrowed and spent themselves into perdition; and at both the public and the private level, the legacy of consumer gratification is at hand. …
…At the root of criminal behaviour, after we have lopped off all its branches and dug to its source, is indifference to the pain of others, contrasted with wilful indulgence of one’s own pleasures. We think of criminals as brutish and cruel and, fair enough, they are. But only towards those who are in their way. In my experience, they are extremely sensitive about their own rights and perquisites. The person who doubts this should spend more time visiting prisoners in jail.
…Reason comes into this, too. At the root of reason is a certain patience in observing the connections between things. One does not, for instance, take out one’s wrath on Prince Charles because the education secretary in a government he never elected has raised one’s tuition fees. One does not even take it out on the education secretary, who is only doing his job in the face of massive public debt. Instead, one patiently reviews his arguments, to see if they can be confuted. …
David Harsanyi has an interesting take on manufacturing in the US.
…William Strauss at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago recently explained that the same number of Americans are working in the manufacturing sector now — around 14 million — as were in 1950. Yet, there has been a 600 percent increase in output. That’s good news.
It makes no sense for government to prop up non-productive manufacturing jobs any more than it makes economic sense to artificially prop up farmers (oh, I know, we try). We need far fewer people to work those jobs, but it doesn’t mean we don’t make anything. But as Williams succinctly points out, “If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy, with its own GDP, it would be tied with Germany for the world’s fourth-richest economy in the entire world.”
Eighty percent of Americans told the National Journal that manufacturing was “extremely or very important to U.S. economic growth over the next five to 10 years.” (Manufacturing what?) Sixty-two percent believe it was important for government to help advanced manufacturing industries with “tax incentives and funding.”
How many price-fixing fiascoes does government have to engage in for us to understand that Washington shouldn’t be picking winners in the marketplace? How many wasted dollars will we need to pump into subsidies to understand that the market doesn’t care what we think, that it cares what we buy? …
Last week’s Obama meltdown is the subject of many posts by our favorites who explore presidential leadership past and present. Roger Simon kicks it off.
…We need a leader and don’t have one. This is extremely bad news for our country, especially now.
What is to be done? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t close to simple even with a real leader. Merely cutting taxes — assuming we do that — may not be nearly enough. And pseudo-stimulus spending, such as has been shamefully added on to this “compromise bill,” will most likely make matters worse. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on our economy, our way of life really. Interest to China alone will soon be enough to bankrupt us.
So what indeed is to be done? Paul Ryan has a prescription that’s a starting point, but even his ideas may not reduce spending fast enough. There is little reason to be optimistic, even with the Tea Party victories. I have just returned from New York and found the situation there similar to California, strongly resistant to change. (A good analysis can be found in the WSJ’s interview with Richard Ravitch — “Gotham’s Savior, Beaten By Albany.”) It’s tempting for some on the right to dismiss this as just New York and California, but these are our two most populous states and comprise a huge percentage of the U.S. economy. Things will not be easily improved without them. In fact, they probably can’t be improved without them. And Illinois too seems out of control.
And we have Barack Obama to lead us. Wow. The Republican leadership had better be strong. Their recent “compromise,” as Charles Krauthammer has shown us, was not inspiring. Color me nervous.
In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Nile Gardiner has depressing poll numbers for the White House. And they are not Obama’s numbers.
You’ve got to hand it to President Bush – his political comeback has been simply stunning. The latest Gallup poll shows him at 47 percent approval, a 13 point increase since he left office, and his highest rating since 2005. He now leads Barack Obama by a percentage point. His book Decision Points is still top of The New York Times bestseller list, and Americans can’t seem to get enough of him at the moment, much to the shock and horror of his increasingly “shellacked” political opponents.
…Bush’s rising popularity is in large part a backlash against Barack Obama’s left-wing and lacklustre leadership of the United States, and the perception that he is weakening America both at home and abroad. As the latest RealClear Politics average of polls shows, almost 60 percent of Americans believe the country is going down the wrong track. The Obama administration’s relentless bashing of the Bush presidency has clearly backfired, and has only served to enhance the former president’s popularity.
In addition, many Americans now look back with nostalgia on a president who had a clear-cut view of the United States as an exceptional nation and a great force for good on the world stage. In contrast to President Obama, there were never any apologies for America’s past from George W. Bush, and the US was feared by its enemies. President Bush liberated 50 million people from tyranny, a staggering achievement. …
John Fund thinks that the president will weather the liberal storm.
…White House officials are playing down the contretemps, emphasizing to reporters that it will use the liberal anger to its political advantage. Distancing Mr. Obama from the left wing of his party will be “a positive byproduct” of the tax extensions for all income groups, a White House aide close to Obama told Politico.com. “Compared to these guys, the president looks mature and pragmatic,” the official said.
But Mr. Obama may have underestimated the potential damage of his about-face on extending the tax cuts. The 2008 campaign featured three Democratic front-runners — Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards — and all solemnly pledged to end the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans. Mr. Obama repeated his pledge after he won the nomination. “We are going to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, those making more than $250,000 a year,” he told an audience in Lake Worth, Fla., just two weeks before the election.
…In the end, of course, liberals will line up to support Mr. Obama against any likely Republican challenger. But the enthusiasm and commitment liberals had in 2008 for Mr. Obama may well be muted. On the margins, that could hurt him as he seeks re-election at a time when many of his core supporters will still be economically stressed.
John Podhoretz comments that Obama’s press conference on the tax cut compromise did not earn him points with either party in Congress.
…Somehow, I don’t think the Democrats disenchanted by his policy choices over the past couple of days are going to be in a coronating mood after Obama furiously upbraided them in ad hominem language of a kind we may never before have heard from a president.
Had he followed their counsel and refused to deal with the GOP, he said, “We [would] be able to feel good about ourselves, and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are.”
And the Republicans who just struck a deal with him will surely be less inclined to compromise in future negotiations if they are going to be insulted immediately afterward. …
Peter Wehner adds his thoughts.
President Obama, who during the heat of the 2010 midterm election referred to Republicans as “enemies,” has now decided to refine things a bit. The car-in-the-ditch analogy is out; the-GOP-as-hostage-takers is in.
As John mentioned, in Obama’s press conference earlier today the president, in discussing the tax cut deal he has negotiated with Republicans, said, “It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers unless the hostage gets harmed. … In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed.”
…On some deep level, Obama must understand that, at this moment at least, his presidency is coming apart. It’s not at all clear to me that he’s particularly well equipped to deal with the shifting fortunes, the hardships, and the battering that a president must endure. Difficult circumstances seem to be bringing out his worst qualities rather than his best. And that may be what was on display this afternoon.
Here’s a sentence from the twilight zone: Jennifer Rubin agrees with Maureen Dowd. The president is not looking very presidential.
I agree with Maureen Dowd on virtually nothing. But now and then she meanders close to the mark. Dowd writes of President Obama’s press conference yesterday:
“Obama used to play poker in the Illinois Legislature, but it’s hard to believe. First, he cried uncle to Republicans standing in the corner, holding their breath and turning blue. Then, in his White House press conference, he was defensive, a martyr for the middle class.”
…What is accurate in Dowd’s description, however, is the sense that this whole governing thing — the public salesmanship, the deal making, the explaining — is not Obama’s strong suit. It was disturbing at some level to see him, rendered so hapless, frustrated and angry. So much for the “superior temperament” we kept hearing about during the campaign. As Dowd uncharitably put it, “There’s an argument to be made for what the president did, but he doesn’t look good doing it.” In fact, many conservative pundits, think tankers, staffers and office holders think it’s a bit pricey, but a fine deal. So to put it differently, there is an argument for conservatives to accept the deal, but little reason other than resignation to reality for liberals to do so.
Let’s be honest here: a lot of being president is the aura of authority and the projection of strength and competence. Right now, does anyone on either end of the political spectrum think he’s demonstrating those traits? Well, Dowd and Rubin sure don’t, and that covers a pretty vast swatch of political territory.
In Contentions, J.E. Dyer was also surprised by the president’s performance.
…I don’t recall Obama ever coming off in a national forum quite so much like a leftist community organizer. In demonizing his political opponents, lecturing his base, and vowing to fight on in a long struggle, Obama appeared to be channeling his political roots in radical activism. He evoked an activist street fighter on the steps of city hall more than a president of the United States. The president is our head of government but also our head of state: a ceremonial symbol of national unity. One of his chief duties is to be happy about that.
As a partisan performance, Obama’s today didn’t stop with the relatively benign Democrat-versus-Republican divide. It recalled the European political sense in which partisanship is narrowly based on ethnicity or ideology, and opposes the putative complacency of all social compacts and central authorities. I suspect that one of the most difficult things for Obama himself, as well as for the more radical in his political base, is coming to grips with the truth that some homage must still be paid to the traditional compact of the U.S. government with its people. It was not, in fact, politically possible for Obama or the Democrats in Congress to imperil the finances of the middle class with a quixotic standoff over raising tax rates on the wealthy.
The people are, by and large, middle-class householders with no interest in suffering to make ideological points. The source of Obama’s peculiar dissonance in American politics is that he doesn’t feel, in his gut, that that is a good thing.
Ed Morrissey thinks that this is the beginning of the end for Obama’s presidency.
If Barack Obama hoped to launch his triangulation strategy with his tax-cut deal, so far it has failed to impress. Charles Hurt, a frequent critic of Obama at the New York Post, spends most of today’s column praising Obama for finally cutting the Left loose and working with newly-energized Republicans on tax rates. At the end, though, Hurt lays out the brutal political math that Obama faces, and declares that Obama has made himself a one-term President with this move…
That may be a little premature, but without doubt Obama is off to a bad start for his apparent triangulation strategy. When Bill Clinton executed it in 1995-6, he put himself at the lead for what had been Republican agenda items on spending and welfare reform. Obama didn’t get out in front on tax-rate extensions; instead, he obviously capitulated in return for a lot less than his base is willing to tolerate.
…Update: Greg Sargent reports the results of a Survey USA/WaPo poll among volunteers and contributors to Obama’s presidential campaign that underscores the problem:
The poll shows clearly that these contributors are deeply opposed (74%) to a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year. The depth of opposition to a deal is severe with former Obama contributors saying that they are less likely (57%) to support Democrats who support this deal in 2012. …
Nile Gardiner has more bad news for the Obami, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK.
…The latest Bloomberg National Poll makes especially grim reading for the White House. More than half of all Americans (51 percent) believe they are worse off than they were two years ago when Barack Obama took office, with just 35 percent saying they are better off. A striking 66 percent of voters believe America is on the “wrong track”, with just 27 percent agreeing with the view that the United States is heading in the “right direction”.
Among Democrats, 48 percent think the country is on the wrong track, as opposed to 44 percent who disagree. And even more worryingly for the president, who is now trying harder to appeal to the centre ground, 67 percent of Independents believe Obama’s America is going down the wrong path, with just 24 percent disagreeing.
Fears over the economy are undoubtedly the biggest factor in the lack of confidence Americans have in their president. According to the Bloomberg survey, 50 percent of respondents listed unemployment and jobs as the most important issue facing the country, with 25 percent citing the federal deficit and government spending. Other issues, such as health care and immigration, are ranked as the most important by just 9 percent and 5 percent respectively. And consumer confidence remains stubbornly downbeat. When asked if they plan to spend more this Christmas season compared to 2009, just 12 percent said yes, with 46 percent declaring they plan to spend less. …