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Mark Steyn goes for the grown-up when looking for a president.
… As for phony energy, consider Bill Clinton. Back in 1998, when he was fending off the first few months of the Monica business, President Clinton used to say that much as he’d like to resign, hand over to Al Gore and sit on the beach all day, he had no choice but to accept the burdens of office and “get back to working for the American people.” There wasn’t a single morning, he assured the public, that he didn’t wake up thinking about how he could make life better for the American people. I’m a foreigner, so it’s hardly my place to tell the American people that the best response to this is: “oh, bugger off, you neo-monarchical narcissist.” The founding principle of the republic is that the American people are perfectly capable of making life better for themselves, and all you wannabe-king types need to do is get out of the way. That goes for the Canadian people, and the British people, and the Spanish people, and pretty much any other reasonably competent citizenry. The height of Bill Clinton’s indestructible belief in his own indispensability came in his “tribute” to the victims of 9/11. “The people who died represent, in my view, not only the best of America,” he said, “but the best of the world that I worked hard for eight years to build.” It seems even the dead of Lower Manhattan are a testament to Clinton’s “hard work.” Showbiz types like to say that the hardest work is making it look easy: Gene Kelly skipping down the street singin’ in the rain doesn’t work unless it’s blithe and carefree, and that takes plenty of rehearsal. On the other hand, when some Vegas lounge act does that untying-the-bow-tie unbuttoning-the-tux look-how-hard-I’m-working shtick, it’s usually a good sign he isn’t. President Clinton was the Lounge-Act-in-Chief.
Stuart Taylor has a great analysis of the waterboading flap in the senate.
The surge of Democratic opposition to President Bush’s nomination of former Judge Michael Mukasey to be attorney general says a lot about certain Democrats, especially after the initial bipartisan applause for a superbly qualified man who has clearly repudiated Bush’s previous claims of near-dictatorial powers.
It is especially telling that the main congressional objection to Mukasey has been his unwillingness to declare illegal an interrogation technique that Congress itself has assiduously and repeatedly declined to declare illegal.
The technique, called “waterboarding,” involves simulated drowning. Congress could seek to explicitly ban it, along with other highly coercive techniques. It has not done so, because it does not want to take the blame for any future terrorist attacks that might have been prevented by highly coercive interrogation.
The attacks on Mukasey are an exquisite example of Congress’s penchant for avoiding accountability by leaving the law unclear and then trashing the executive for whichever interpretation it adopts whenever something goes wrong.
The Captain posts on Hillary’s defenders.
What exactly have they put in the water at The New Republic? First its leadership can’t seem to find an exit strategy with both hands and a flashlight for publishing fabulism, despite TNR having written the book on it in 1998 with Stephen Glass. Now Linda Hirshman, in defending Hillary Clinton from the big Y-chromosomed meanie at Meet The Press, decides to go the Pastor Niemoller route and winds up implying that Tim Russert is some kind of Nazi: …
Captain also posts on the Dem problem with good Iraq news.
… Why resist good news? Some of our media and political class put their chips on defeat, and have begun to realize how victory will destroy their credibility. Not everyone acted as foolishly as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid when he declared victory for the terrorists this past spring, but most of the Western media has relentlessly highlighted every setback while ignoring most of the advances made in Iraq — until the progress became too obvious to ignore any longer.
The (London)Times notes that the defeatists have changed tactics. Where they previously argued that every piece of bad news meant that we should flee Iraq, now they argue that the decline in violence gives us a final opportunity to declare defeat and run away. They want to walk away from a strategic victory just to salvage their own credibility, ignoring what a stabilized and democratic Iraq could mean not just for the Iraqis but for the entire Middle East. …
Kansas U. prof notes the freedoms we lost to campaign finance reform. Thank yewwwwww John McCain.
TODAY, voters in six states – including New Jersey- will decide 38 ballot measures covering such hotbutton issues as school vouchers and stem-cell research. Issues like that invite public comment, but chances are that people in those states have unwittingly violated state campaign-finance laws just by speaking out about them.
Under the First Amendment, every citizen should have an unfettered right to participate in public debate. But try to get involved in political life, and you will soon see how far we have come from the time of anonymous pamphleteers holding forth on the great issues of the day. Apparently, it takes a lot of bureaucracy and red tape to oversee free speech, even when it involves relatively straightforward debate for or against a clearly defined ballot measure. …
BIG GLOBALONEY SECTION TONIGHT.
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California delivered a speech in the Senate last week in which she linked global warming to the San Diego wildfires, Darfur, the imminent loss of the world’s polar bears and even a poor 14-year-old boy who died from “an infection caused after swimming in Lake Havasu,” because its water is warmer. Forget arson. Forget genocide. Forget nature. There is no tragedy that cannot be placed at the doorstep of global-warming skeptics.
Oh, and there’s no need to acknowledge that the regulations or taxes necessary to curb emissions by a substantial degree might damage economic growth. According to Boxer, laws to curb greenhouse gases – this country would have to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half over 12 years to meet the latest international community goals – will do good things for the American economy and create lots of jobs. It’s Nostradamus Science wedded to Santa Claus economics.
It is rhetoric such as Boxer’s – an odd combination of the-end-is-near hysteria and overly rosy economic scenarios – that keep me in the agnostic/skeptic global-warming camp. …
I’ve had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don’t think I will add “0.0001 Nobel Laureate” to my resume.
The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that’s another story. …
Did Al Gore win his Nobel for “peace,” or did it perhaps come in a new category: comedy? I ask in the wake of his rib-tickling routine on this morning’s “Today.” Al, that inveterate card, actually claimed that the MSM’s coverage of global warming is . . . too balanced. View video here. …
Claudia Rosett posts twice on “important” UN globaloney confab on the island of Bali.
The would-be regulators of the world’s climate (and your wallet) will be jetting to Bali this December for Ban Ki-Moon’s next UN weather fest: “UN Climate Change Conference 2007.†UN policy allows even the lowlier UN staffers to travel business class on long-haul flights (your tax dollars at work), the better to arrive wined, dined and ready to hit the ground …and the beaches … and the golf courses … and the tennis courts — running. Apparently there is so much to discuss that the conference will run for a full fortnight, from Dec. 3-14, at Bali’s seaside luxury resort of Nusa Dua. …
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… Quick Multiple Choice Quiz on the UN system: Will the UN release for the perusal of Joe-average taxpayer a detailed post-conference breakdown of staff expense accounts for Ban’s bash on Bali?
A. Ha
B. Ha-ha
C. You’ve got to be kidding
D. In order to operate, the UN must preserve its confidentiality in such matters. Tennis, anyone?
The Great Wheel of China.