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Mort Zuckerman remembers Reagan.
… Reagan provided what Americans wanted most: a strong leader who could and would lead in a principled way. To refresh a phrase once used about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, this man was “not for turning.” He made that clear early on, to the gratified astonishment of the nation, when he fired the striking air traffic controllers—who quickly learned that this commander in chief was not to be taken casually.
Reagan had come into office when the United States was mired in an economic and even psychological downturn, reflecting the doldrums of the Carter years and the perception of his administration as feckless and naive. Reagan was determined that more of the same would not do. Shortly into his presidency, he set about convincing the American public that there had to be a decisive change in direction. His map was stereoscopic: He created a vision of where we’d been and where he intended to take us, unafraid to spell out what was to be feared, unabashed in the evocation of dreams for the future. He personified Harry Truman’s definition of a leader—a man who had the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and to like it. It was never easy, even when he made it look so.
As if born with the instinct to be a transformational president, Reagan knew how to instill confidence in a nation that felt it had lost its way. Add to that his transparent likability, and you can understand why Americans felt so good about him and better about themselves when they listened to him. In the process, he earned an enormous presumption of credibility, affection, and support from the American public, even among those, like myself, who hadn’t voted for him.
How much we miss that quality of leadership today, when it is the political system itself that raises disquiet. Much of our contemporary leadership passes off tough decisions to some other body (the perpetual commissions!) or, worse, to some future generation. The resulting political vacuum has created a sense of government in disarray, unable to make the wise and tough decisions required. …
At the end of Zuckerman’s article is a link to a Reagan photo essay. We picked one from 1959 with Marilyn Monroe.
David Warren has additional Egyptian thoughts; especially about ElBaradei.
… To my observation, ElBaradei — now presenting himself as a Kerensky for Egypt — is a creature governed by vanity. He is an opportunist, whose peculiar combinations of malice and naiveté exactly suit his prospective coalition partners. He declared himself only recently against the Mubarak regime — having enjoyed a favoured friendship with the Egyptian dictator, until last year. Having judged that his octogenarian friend is now done for, he has generously come home to lead the opposition.
History is littered with figures of his sort.
To say ElBaradei is two-faced would be misleading, for no one advances in Middle Eastern politics with only two faces. But we can already distinguish the face which supplies sweet plausibilities to the western media, while dispensing to each Egyptian class what he thinks it wants to hear.
He is the smooth presence before the western cameras, assuring us that the Muslim Brotherhood has been misrepresented, and that they will make perfectly safe partners on the usual roads to peace. And only the Copts of Egypt, and the Jews of Israel, will not be fooled. El-Baradei will even fool himself: for as I said, he is a man of formidable vanity.
He will eat, and then be eaten. …
If you, like Pickerhead, are a Rush Limbaugh fan you will enjoy this piece from Commentary. If you’re not a fan, at least you will understand his appeal.
One of the many strategic errors made by the Obama administration in the early days of 2009 was its decision to take on talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh—though it was, perhaps, hard to blame the president and his people for trying. After all, they were riding the wave of a big electoral win and feeling pretty invincible, with large majorities in both houses of Congress and a messiah in the White House, and Limbaugh had just stunned the country, days before Obama was inaugurated, by summarizing his feelings about the new president in four simple words: “I hope he fails.” Limbaugh impatiently brushed aside the happy talk about compromise and bipartisan cooperation and scoffed at the claim that Obama was a pragmatic, post-ideological, post-partisan, post-racial conciliator and healer. Instead, he saw every reason to believe that Obama would aggressively pursue a leftist dream agenda: an exponential expansion of government’s size and power, a reordering of the American economic system, and a dismantling of America’s role as a world power. Limbaugh was not alone in such views, but he was the only major figure on the right willing to stick his neck out at a time when the rest of the nation seemed dazed into acquiescence by the so-far impeccably staged Obama ascendancy.
Such was the mood of the moment that it seemed a sullen breach of etiquette to utter any such criticism. In any event, the White House quickly concluded that Limbaugh’s statement was a rare blunder and that hay was to be made of it. What better way to sow division among the Republicans, and confine them to a tiny corner of American political life, than to identify Rush Limbaugh as the “real head” of their party and brand him as an unpatriotic extremist and sore loser—or, in the light-touch description of longtime Clinton adviser Paul Begala, as “a corpulent drug addict with an AM radio talk show”? If they could succeed in this angle of attack, they would kill two birds with one stone, marginalizing their most popular antagonist while rendering the opposition party impotent with embarrassment and internal squabbling. Each Republican would face a choice of embracing the glittering “new age” of Obama and gathering a few scraps from beneath the Democratic table or following Rush into the fever swamps of an embittered permanent minority and getting nothing at all.
The Democrats’ strategy backfired. Limbaugh’s vocal opposition to the stimulus package, which he dubbed “Porkulus,” helped galvanize a unanimous Republican vote in opposition—an astonishing achievement of partisan unity that would be repeated in subsequent lopsided votes on health care and other issues—and would lay the blame for these failed policies entirely on the Democrats’ doorstep, culminating in a huge and decisive electoral pushback against the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. …
… In retrospect, the amazing part of the story is how thoroughly the White House misunderstood Limbaugh’s appeal, his staying power, and his approach to issues. It also points to a curious fact about Limbaugh’s standing in the mind of much of the American media and the American left. Even though they talk about him all the time, he’s the man who isn’t quite there. By which I mean that there is a stubborn unwillingness, both wishful and self-defeating, to recognize Limbaugh for what he is, take him seriously, and grant him his legitimate due. Many of his detractors have never even listened to his show, for example. Some of his critics regularly refer to him as Rush “Lim-bough” (like a tree limb), as if his name is so obscure to them that they cannot even remember how to pronounce it.
In short, he is never quite acknowledged as the formidable figure he clearly is. Instead, he is dismissed in one of two ways—either as a comic buffoon, a passing phenomenon in the hit parade of American pop culture, or as a mean-spirited apostle of hate who appeals to a tiny lunatic fringe. These two views are not quite compatible, but they have one thing in common: they both aim to push him to the margins and render him illegitimate, unworthy of respectful attention. This shunning actually works in Limbaugh’s favor because it creates the very conditions that cause him to be chronically underestimated and keeps his opposition chronically off-balance. Indeed, Limbaugh’s use of comedy and irony and showmanship are integral to his modus operandi, the judo by which he draws in his opponents and then uses their own force to up-end them. And unless you make an effort to hear voices outside the echo chamber of the mainstream media, you won’t have any inkling of what Limbaugh is all about or of how widely his reach and appeal extend. …
David Harsanyi has kudos for some kinds of judicial activism.
For discussion’s sake, let’s just concede that every four years or so the American public is fooled into voting for a demagogue who’s mastered a pleasant-sounding, market-tested populism. Let’s then imagine — this is for discussion only — that this person’s resulting agenda, cheery but mildly authoritarian, passes with public support.
Does the federal court system exist to rubber stamp legislation? Should they check in and see if it’s cool with the public? Or, do we have courts to decide the constitutionality of laws? Do we insulate judges from democracy for a reason? Do we have a Constitution to keep a check on government or to bend to the constant predilections of the electorate?
The White House’s position is clear. When U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled this week that Obamacare was unconstitutional — due to its individual mandate — the White House’s first reaction was to call the ruling “out of the mainstream,” as if it were remotely true or that it even mattered.
The decision, you may not be surprised to hear, is also a case of “judicial activism” and an “overreach.”
Co-opting conservative terms like “judicial activism” is a cute way of trying to turn the tables on those who have some reverence for the original intent of the Founders. …
Joel Kotkin says parts of the Midwest are making a comeback.
… For nearly a half century … the American Midwest has widely been seen as a “loser” region–a place from which talented people have fled for better opportunities. Those Midwesterners seeking greater, glitzier futures historically have headed to the great coastal cities of Miami, New York, San Diego or Seattle, leaving behind the flat expanses of the nation’s mid-section for the slower-witted, or at least less imaginative.
Today that reality may be shifting. While some parts of the heartland, particularly around Detroit, remain deeply troubled, the Midwest boasts some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, luring back its native sons and daughters while attracting new residents from all over the country.
For example, Des Moines, Omaha, Kansas City, Columbus, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Madison have all kept their unemployment rates lower than the national average, according to a recent Brookings survey. They are also among the regions that have been able to cut their jobless rates the most over the past three years.
This contrasts sharply with the travails of the metropolitan economies of the Southeast, Nevada, Arizona and California. Of course, other regions are doing better than the Sun Belt sad sacks. The stimulus and TARP benefited some parts of the Northeast, but even those areas haven’t performed as well as the nation’s mid-section. The only other arc of prosperity has grown around the Washington leviathan, largely a product of an expanded government paid for by the rest of the country. …