The Iranian Presidential Election

You have to wonder what the mullahocracy of Iran was thinking in fixing the presidential elections of last week in such an egregiously blatant manner. Without question the incumbent shares their values perfectly, but what interest of theirs does that really promote? They are the ones who run the country, not the president. So then why sacrifice so much for so little in return? Standing idle while the "reformist" candidate got elected would have only advanced the mullahs' development of a nuclear arsenal. It would have encouraged President Obama – a person overly credulous with dictators and despots – to engage in some vain diplomatic effort (the same kind that has been a failure for years now) meant to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons.

Instead, they forced in the incumbent and inflamed simmering popular discontent while simulatenously providing the international community with a greater awareness of their true nature as a regime. Going forward that community will be less willing to engage the regime and its puppet president (or one would hope) which at the very least does not help advance their program of nuclear development.

Essentially, what the mullahs have done is to decline the opportunity to lead the world along a futile path of diplomacy (which advances the mullahs' interests) a little while longer and have instead stirred up a hornet's nest for no appreciable gain. We can only hope that at some point the United States et al can now find some way to stop such a clueless enemy which has – in all truth – been playing us and our friends for fools.

Review: POST-CAPTAIN (AUBREY-MATURIN #2)

Post-Captain by Patrick O'Brian

A little bit of a step-down from Master and Commander. Far too little ink spent on tales of adventure on the sea by Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin and too much spent on unending love triangles between them and hapless women on land. The latter half of the novel did improve in this regard though and its conclusion (after the soap opera was resolved) left me eager to read the next installment of the series.

Ponce de Leon Obama

Given that peace between the Israelis and Palestinians has been the equivalent of the fountain of youth for American presidents for the past two decades (it is that which is desperately sought but never found) it comes as no surprise that the current president has committed himself to the same venture. But what he will soon realize is that the same impediment that thwarted the efforts of his predecessors will do the same to him. It is something which is out of his control, something that even the most finely crafted, sonorously delivered, and heartfelt speech cannot remedy. It is the simple fact that the powers that be in the Palestinian territories still do not stipulate to the one inescapable precondition for peace: acceptance of Israel's right to exist. President Obama and anyone else can try as they may, but without such a stipulation from the Palestinians no two-state solution and no meaningful peace can be realized.

Nothing can overcome this obstacle, including efforts to pressure the Israelis into more concessions. They have made their fair share of such since the failed Oslo Accords and have received little in return. At this point the onus is upon the Palestinian political leadership and people. Peace between Israeli and Palestinian will occur only when the latter is sincerely willing to accept a state situated side-by-side with the former, abandoning forever the effort to push Israel into the sea. It seems self-evident that two sides cannot co-exist peacefully when one side does not recognize the right of the other to exist in the first-place.

Review: Strong Poison

Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers

In this installment it is not necessarily the mystery that grips or holds the reader, but once again the singularly enjoyable experience of observing Lord Wimsey, especially within the new wrinkle of his determination to rescue the damsel from the gallows and win her hand in marriage. Another great and enjoyable read.

Post-‘Stimulus’

There was never any question that the "stimulus" – either in the form of an actual stimulus or as one big pork bill guised as such – would pass the Congress and be signed by the President. This was his first initiative. To reverse course and/or fail with overwhelming majorities in Congress during the zenith of his political power would have done irreparable damage to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. This was a short term battle neither he nor Congress could conceivably lose, and so they would ultimately persevere and pass something come hell or high water, no matter how ugly and painful the endeavor became.

It did get ugly (the most unpleasant sausage making possible, in fact), but the Democratic establishment did finally pass something. Though it was a lot more painful and difficult than anyone had originally expected, the President has his first legislative "victory." Accordingly, now is the time for a post-mortem – an assessment of what he has gained, what costs he has incurred, what he now assumes, etc.

Of the greatest foregoing significance is the fact that Barack H. Obama has now become of flesh and blood. His and the Democrats failure to shove the package through Congress without meaningful deliberation, debate, or scrutiny came at a tremendous cost to the President's image. Though he is still residually very popular, and probably will be for sometime yet, President Obama had to sacrifice his transcendent status and assume the mantle of yet another politician to get the bill through. The scattershot spending on parochially liberal plantation initiatives incurred public disillusionment (as well it should have) and put the President and Democrats in an uncomfortable position defending it. On the merits this was an impossible task, so the agent of a new politics resorted to the tried and true Washington fallback of partisan attack, falsely accusing Republicans of favoring total inaction over action and demagogically predicting economic Armageddon if the "stimulus" was not passed. This dashed, in quite literally a matter of days, the pre-existing illusion that he could and would govern while hovering above the partisan fray. Now that the pinnacle of Olympus has been surrendered it's not at all likely he will be able to reclaim it.

Lost too was the mantle of hyper-competence and good judgment. A handful of his nominees to significant administration positions have been disgraced by ethical issues, a string of developments which condemns him as either incompetent or hypocritical. (It's incompetent if his team's vetting process failed to find these red flags and it's hypocritical if the President who promised to have the most transparent and ethical Presidency in history selected these tax cheats and lobbyists in full awareness of that baggage.)

Such loss of capital doesn't augur well for the next initiatives of his Presidency. He and the Congress plan trillions more in spending to help the economy but they've already cried wolf. They claimed that disaster loomed if the "stimulus" did not pass. Doing so again when the next round of generational theft comes up will not carry the same credibility. The public already had a hard time swallowing this massive new level of spending – the pill is only going to grow larger and bitterer the next time they're asked to ingest. Beyond that, how he will be able to justify vast expansions in government-provided health care and other entitlement spending after all of these emergency spending programs is a gapingly open question.

Most importantly, as the President affixes his signature to this "stimulus" he at the same time affixes it to the deed of ownership for the economy. This package was laid at his feet and he recognized it as his own. To gin up support for it he traveled the country doing the only thing he has ever known and that which he is most adept at – campaigning. He promised it would "create" or "save" 3.5 million jobs. He said we would suffer economic catastrophe if it didn't pass. For that the American people will hold him accountable. If they don't see an equitable return in value for the price of a trillion dollars he and Democrats will suffer terribly. As Irwin M. Stelzer explains:

He now owns the recession. He has asked to be judged by whether this bill and other measures he will propose, create or "save" 3.5-to-4 million jobs, the number lost so far since unemployment turned up. Forget "save" -- if unemployment keeps rising, voters are not likely to rally around the slogan 'It would be still worse if I hadn't spent your trillions'. What the President has done is to promise what he certainly can't deliver in time for the congressional elections next year -- a reversal of job destruction, and millions of new jobs. If the voters prove patient in 2010, they are unlikely to remain as forgiving when the presidential election rolls around in 2012. Since employment is what economists call a lagging indicator -- employers are not confident enough to start hiring until economic recovery is well underway -- Barack Obama will have a lot of explaining to do. Unless, of course, the Republicans find a candidate so inept that the President can once again rely on his very attractive persona to see off any challenger.

Of course, his fear-mongering will only hurt him in this decisive regard. Speaking ad nauseam about how terrible the economy is sends a terrible message. Sure it managed to get the "stimulus" passed but only at the steep price of scaring away investment, consumer-spending, and other engines of economic growth and job creation. As Jen Rubin writes,

Usually, the president and treasury secretary in an economic crisis try to project calm, certainty, and a sense of command. The Obama administration approach is something new indeed. Perhaps it is some Zen-like exercise to 'be the panic; own the fear!' Whatever they are doing they should knock it off. They're going to scare the living daylights out of markets, consumers, and businesses."

It's hard to fathom what victory the administration thinks they're winning when to pass a bill to generate economic recovery the President has to employ rhetoric that only terrifies people away from behaving in a manner conducive to generating that recovery.

The President won his crucial first victory, but the content of the victory itself and the means that had to be employed in securing it pretty much assure that he is in a weaker position politically coming out than he was going in. In fact it's very possible that this initial success has sown the seeds of ultimate failure and pain for the President and his party in the long run, which is also bad for the American people. (There's also that little fact that we just exacerbated our country's debt by a trillion dollars for something that is likely to yield few, if any, actual benefits.)

Sweet victory, Mr. President.

On Bi-Partisanship

One of the central promises of the Obama movement was a new age of bi- or post-partisanship – however you want to put it – and an end to the old games and tired bickering and disagreement. Since the "stimulus" debate has occurred at all and is doing so along strictly partisan lines, the punditry has spent time and ink debating whether such an age is possible and desirable or whether the President has utterly stopped pursuing it (he never substantively did). Not usually dependable for reasonability, the Speaker of the House was at least partly correct in responding to this hoopla by saying that excessive discussion of bi-partisanship tediously over-focuses on process.

The valid point she implicitly makes is that bi-partisanship is not an end in itself. It is not even a means to an end. It is only a characteristic of the means to an end. When we do try to make it an end – when we make a value-based judgment on the ultimate result of something based upon whether it was created in a bi-partisan manner – we are misguided, usually disastrously so. To reach a common consensus all too often you have to sink down to the lowest common denominator, watering down something to such a degree that everyone or a vast majority of people can agree to it. The upshot is ultimately a product that is ambiguous, contradicting, and ineffective. Seeking bi-partisanship for its own sake then is a recipe for a bad product, for it foolishly confuses process and means with the end product itself.

None of this is to say that pursuing bi-partisanship is always a bad thing. It is entirely salutary if you seek issues which enjoy broad agreement and take care of those first, moving on to more contentious matters after. This is no different than plucking the lowest hanging fruit before climbing the tree to grab the stuff nestled securely at the top.

Indeed, this is exactly what the President and Congressional Democrats should have done with the "stimulus" package. There are matters – even within the current legislation, odious as it is – that Republicans and Democrats can mostly agree to, such as some tax relief and infrastructure spending. Why not pass those common items in a smaller version first and take up the divisive stuff after? President Obama would have enjoyed an early success in his Presidency and he would have created an atmosphere of improved comity and seriousness right at the beginning. Instead he allowed Congressional Democrats to rashly create a mountain of disagreeable, wasteful spending that alienated Republicans and became a massive target for ridicule and scorn. (This error is the fruit of President Obama's sense of bi-partisanship, which is to declare "I won" and expect the opposition to support something completely inimical to their better judgment simply because it is his. That isn't bi-partisanship, it's hubris.)

Such a tack is much more productive than racing to the bottom in search of agreement among people who often fundamentally disagree, engaging in some fool's errand not for a good product but one arrived at on a bi-partisan basis. That is just a waste of time.

Self-Condemnation & Straw Men

Implicitly acknowledging the regrettable failure the "stimulus" promises to be, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have refused to defend it on its own merits. Instead, they have adopted the tactics of fear-mongering and straw men construction to resurrect and grow declining public support for it.

If we were to accept – for the sake of argument – that we face an economic "catastrophe" if nothing is done, then this legislation and the behavior of the President et al would be all the more abominable (or Obaminable). It would be malfeasance in the most extreme sense to concoct a trillion dollar appropriations bill with little economic stimulus (even in the Keynesian sense) or comprehensive logic while the country slowly slides over a deep precipice. Yet, if the President is correct in his apocalyptic warnings, that is exactly what is happening – in a time of mortal national danger Democrats are using the crisis as an opportunity to indulge in a smorgasbord of spending on initiatives they've long dreamed of, gorging themselves to gluttony at the public trough.

If things really were as dire as they say they are, they would be a lot more serious in devising a credible ameliorative (one would hope), one that is consistent with the "targeted, timely, and temporary" standard they originally devised.

The President also erred by misrepresenting the Republican position in his prime-time press conference last evening, creating a false dichotomy between passing the present iteration of the "stimulus" and doing nothing. I myself am a Republican, I know many other Republicans, and know of many more Republicans beyond that. None of us have claimed that the federal government should do nothing and that is certainly not the basis for our opposition to the Democratic package. We and many Democrats and Independents oppose it because in times such as these we cannot afford to mess up, especially when the price tag of such a mistake would be north of a trillion dollars. The federal government should enact a real stimulus package, one that addresses the problems plaguing the economy and one that creates the right incentives for future economic growth. We've crafted our own plans that would accomplish exactly that – they've been ignored by the powers that be.

If we are going to borrow so much money from our children and grandchildren we ought to make it worth our while, which is not what the President's package will do. It is little more than a massive scatter-shot of government spending and growth which will plunge us deeper into debt with little in return. Sophistry can only obfuscate this fact, it cannot change it.

Review: The War for all the Oceans

The War for all the Oceans – Roy Adkins and Lesley Adkins

A comprehensive review of the naval aspect of the Napoleonic Wars which, as the authors convincingly argue, was the decisive aspect in Napoleon's ultimate failure. The Adkins' instruct the reader by explaining the meaning of the day's naval terms in footnotes each time they are used or quoted and cite often from the participants diaries, letters, and other reminiscences to depict what life was like fighting on the high seas.

There were several weaknesses with the book. While the extensive quoting was a strength they do often go to excess, depriving the reader of the broader contextualization and analysis that hindsight permits the historian to engage in. I would have liked to have seen more in this way from the authors. Topics and focuses are also dropped and taken up rather clumsily at points and the narrative was not as exciting as it could have been.

Nevertheless, any reader of Forrester and O'Brien should take this book up to gain the historical basis and inspiration for Hornblower and Aubrey.

Same Old, Same Old

In his remarks to the House Democrats' retreat last evening President Obama's growing frustration was palpable. Gone was the calm and even demeanor that had previously been an alleged virtue of his, replaced by a peevish partisanship bred from anger and dismay that he has not gotten his way on the "stimulus." Some of the national columnists have written about how his magic and mystique have disappeared, taking with it the aforementioned tranquility in mien and post-partisan utopia that were supposed to have been hallmarks of the Age of Obama.

This was destined to happen sooner or later, so I will avoid deeper examination of it here. What is worthy of response and examination is the President's angry charge that Republicans dissenting from the "stimulus" are engaging in the same old game and that the solutions they offer are the same prescriptions that got us into this mess. Perhaps President Obama's extreme disillusionment has caused him to be given leave of his senses, for both prongs of this argument are easily refuted.

Criticism of the bill is not the same old Washington game and the President runs into absurdity when he attacks opposition just by virtue of it being opposition to himself. The minority party's province is to oppose, especially when confronted with an egregiously excessive and misguided appropriations bill guised as something it self-evidently is not. President Obama won the election, as he is fond of reminding everyone, but that does not excuse him or Democrats from having to defend their measures on their merits, which they have not done (and really cannot do), or to enact whatever he wants regardless of how much it conflicts with how he presented himself as a candidate. As Rich Lowry writes today, "Obama didn't campaign on a sprawling, nearly $1 trillion new spending plan. If he had pledged in October to double federal domestic discretionary spending in a matter of weeks—including increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by a third, spending hundreds of millions more on federal buildings and throwing tens of billions on every traditional liberal priority from job training to Pell Grants—he'd have been hard-pressed to win at all."

What is really an exercise in the old Washington game is the boondoggle the President and Democrats are trying to enact. The "stimulus" package is the very same bit of excessive, pork-barrel spending that Washington has traded in for decades. The only distinction is the degree, which is multiplied by Democrats using the present economic crisis as an opportunity to enact all of the spending they've dreamed about for years within the Trojan horse of a "stimulus." President Obama should take a breath and realize that he is indeed in his present position because of tired Washington ways, but that it is himself and his Congressional cohorts who are indulging in it.

The charge that Republicans are offering as solutions the policies that incurred this downturn demonstrates that they don't actually understand its causes. It was not Republican policies of lower taxes that got us here (those policies were the source of twenty-five years of unprecedented growth prior to the recession) but irresponsible borrowing and lending, especially in the give and take of home mortgages. Democrats had more than a hand in this, encouraging "fair lending" standards that led to mortgages being given to people who should have never received them. Echoing Victor Davis Hanson, "What exactly does [President Obama] think was the cause of the current financial panic if not over-borrowing, unsustainable household and national debt, and reckless government housing policies, along with too accessible amounts of capital?" Between the two parties, which one is now proposing policies that resemble this? It is of course the President and Congressional Democrats, both of which are now trying to engage in more irresponsible debt creation which will only be another drag on the economy and future generations of Americans.

The next time the President decides to bitterly vituperate he should get his facts straight.

The Worst Part

It's terrible enough that Sen. Daschle neglected to pay taxes he owed on a car and driver provided him by his employers. (That he ever got his foot in the door of the Obama administration is all the more astounding given the fact that they equate paying one's taxes merrily with patriotism.) But the fact that really grinds the gears of average Americans is the deeper circumstances behind his dereliction.

Sen. Daschle used the influence and prestige he had accumulated over years of service in Congress to cash in on millions from various interests paid to exercise that influence on their behalf. In other words, he used the benefits he had accrued from years of receiving the trust of his public constituencies to make a fortune for himself and then neglected to pay his fair share of every working American's social obligation – taxes. He got a lot from public trust and then contributed nothing back in return.

That is absolutely reprehensible.

Rough Start

The Obama Presidency has suffered a rough start in its opening fortnight, largely because it has cannibalized itself through self-generated hype and astronomical expectations that mere mortals could not possibly achieve. To aggravate matters, they have deliberately set-aside or betrayed those standards right out of the gate to an appalling degree, as the events of the day demonstrate. They promised to be the most ethical and transparent administration in history yet waived their ethical regulations – explicitly or implicitly – for a host of administration officials and nominees when they got in the way. Instead of the most ethical administration in history Americans have witnessed one which has installed high ethics standards only to cast them away with the flick of a wrist when they become inconvenient. Some "change we can believe in."

Also promised was a new Washington and an age of post-partisanship, which quickly met the same fate as the new ethics and transparency. The problem which they haven't been able to run away from any longer is that President Obama has always talked of bi-partisanship but never really practiced it. In the first major initiative of his presidency he reached out to pat Congressional Republicans on the forehead only to offer them a nakedly partisan bill full of Democratic pet-spending. The gesture was pleasant but it didn't actually change anything, i.e. make the bill any less partisan after the meeting than it was before.

Beyond the unfulfilled standards and expectations, the administration has also shown an early tendency to act clumsily and overly-passive at times. They foolishly allowed the partisan dogs of the Democratic Congress to write the "stimulus" bill, receiving in return a political headache that provided Republicans an easy means of principled opposition. And, worst of all for the President, it is the gift that keeps on giving: as each day passes the package appears less and less palatable. Despite this there has been little visible effort from the President to improve it. During the transition period he laid out clear guiding principles for a stimulus (timely, targeted, and temporary) but has done little to enforce them. He simply isn't control of the issue, despite the fact that he is at the zenith of his popularity and influence (or at least should be).

This fecklessness is all the more astounding when you consider the frame of mind the President revealed when he declared, "I won" on his second day in office. For all of the assertiveness and command this forceful statement conveyed he sure hasn't lived up to it. He did win and he is the man in charge, but from all appearances he has failed throw his political weight into the issue and forge a stimulus that isn't ripe for ridicule. Instead he's permitting his counterparts in Congress to make a mess that will eventually extend all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue, making him the owner of a stinking pile of refuse. His administration's one positive action to prevent this has apparently been to encourage disenchanted Democrats in Congress to go after their leadership, summoning others to do what they should be doing themselves. That kind of helplessness isn't worthy of a President who confidently replied, "I won." It's worthy of a lame duck, which we were supposed to have been rid of on the twentieth of last month.

Of course no observant person should really be surprised at the President's inauspicious start. His previous government experience was negligible, his executive experience non-existent. His personality and demeanor were always conspicuously passive. Throughout the campaign he demonstrated an unyielding reticence to make firm commitments, preferring instead promises to consider, review, and discuss issues. What's more, he and his supporting structure demonstrated little command of the governing and decision-making skills relevant to the unique demands of the Presidency. (Their talent was in marketing to America's youth culture and independents who simply wanted a Democrat who met the minimum of standards.) As Peter Wehner writes, "so much of his appeal has been aesthetic, theatrical, and tonal, based on creating a particular mood and impression. Obama's appeal was not, and never has been, grounded in anything solid, philosophical, or permanent."

The Obama team did little to hide the fact that they planned to govern as they campaigned, which you simply cannot do. A campaign is a practice in potentialities and hypotheticals, and is relatively brief and transient. Governing is a different animal, entirely a practice in coordinating and moving unwieldy and disparate parts in desired directions over a relatively extended period of time. The President and his administration will inevitably learn and improve going forward, but it has been made abundantly clear that they didn't understand this and so were woefully unprepared to do it when the time came. They better figure it out soon.

President Obama’s Clutter

The hero of the American Left wrote last week about the vastly increased number of personnel and officials President Obama has filled his administration with, specifically his White House Staff. These "changes to the management structure of the White House…will likely undermine his stated aims and create a more centralized and possibly incoherent policy process."

In one example of this, the President has apparently mastered the recipe for confusion and tension in his appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Sen. George Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East, and Richard Holbrooke as the same to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Each of these personages are points of accomplishment and power in their own right who have been lumped together with concurring jurisdictions in the same area. Almost inevitably this will entail jealous turf wars for influence and authority that will leave the President directly in the cross-fire, in much the same manner as his predecessor was caught between the turf wars of Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld.

This tack is in keeping with the ideas the Left has of governance. To manage affairs you install as many managers as possible in a central point. These are either in the form of individuals ("czars") and/or offices, commissions, and agencies (bureaucracy). These entities are the brains in their fields; usually highly educated and experienced officials who are respected by other officials in the central government and trusted to knowledgeably manage a specific set of affairs from their central perch. (It's basically a system of reciprocal self-emolument). This conception of enlightened government runs all the way back in history to the Enlightenment ideology of the philosophѐs in the French Revolution. Messrs. Mitchell and Holbrooke are manifestations of it in the Obama Administration; Mr. Rove details even more in his piece. Congressional Democrats' pleas for a "car czar" to manage the bailout of Detroit were another, as was the creation of the Iraq Study Group. The ultimate example is the infinite number of cabinet departments and federal agencies that have malignantly developed within the federal government (and state governments too) over the decades.

And as Rove points out, it's all a cluttered mess of redundancy, excess, and confusion. It breeds jealousies, petty rivalries and, all too often, slow, stilted, unresponsive action. It's scarcely a wonder that the ship of state rarely ever gets anywhere when so many hands are on the helm pulling it in opposite directions. It is nothing but a big mass that is completely unwieldy, as are the areas it presumes to be able to manage effectively for that matter.

Regrettably, President Obama has deliberately permitted this sorry state of affairs to metastasize within his own White House and administration, almost inevitably guaranteeing its follies will metastasize as well. To respond to the sudden challenges that always pop up – especially in times like these – the President should have a more streamlined structure in place, one capable of rapid and effective response. This current iteration doesn't look to be it.

Some Honeymoon

The stimulus debate in Congress has placed President Obama in a difficult position. With large majorities in both Houses he and Democrats can essentially do anything they want, which in the first major effort of his Presidency is actually panning out to be a negative. Carte Blanche has given Democrats on the Hill all the latitude they need to succumb to their worst instincts, using the country's economic emergency as an opportunity to spend on all manner of their pet causes and special interest constituencies under the guise of "stimulus." As Peggy Noonan writes, Democrats are making themselves appear "not like people who are responding to a crisis, or even like people who are ignoring a crisis, but people who are using a crisis." The more the light of day is shed on this legislation the more terrible it looks, to the point now where just about everybody acknowledges it is a lemon, publicly or privately. Yet with such dominant partisan control of Congress it is probably going to speed down Pennsylvania Avenue to the President's desk, ripe and ready for his signature.

What is he to do? He surely knows that the bill is terrible and fails to fulfill its stated Keynesian purposes, which in turn incinerates his hope to get a bi-partisan bill that will solidify his post-partisan bona fides. Yet it's not like he can veto it or even lean too hard on party leaders privately without tearing the Democratic monolith asunder in its first few weeks; no way to celebrate what was supposed to be your honeymoon.

If and when he signs it though, without any Republican support if kept in its present form, he and Democrats will exclusively own it. They will own a bill that scarcely attempts to fulfill its nominal purpose at a great cost to the taxpayer at a time when money is scarce. Down the road voters will ask what they are getting in return for their assumption of an even greater debt burden, and they will hold the powers that be responsible for that answer.

Such conundrums are inherent to the circumstances the President finds himself in. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," and with power as absolute as it could possibly get Democrats in Congress have immediately become gluttonous. Republicans did too much of the same in previous Congresses with even less power, leaving President Bush the choice of either vetoing spending he was uncomfortable with or preserving party unity to enact higher priorities (Congressional cooperation in the execution of the War on Terror). President Obama now finds himself in the same chasm, forced to select between Option A and B, both of which are imbued with potential peril.

As I'm sure he is now realizing, the burdens of responsibility scarcely ever allow time for honeymoons.

The End of President Obama’s Transcendentalism

Jonathan Martin writes that President Obama couldn't earn a single House Republican vote for the stimulus bill this evening despite his personal visit with the caucus on the Hill yesterday. Thus does a central conceit of the President's (and of every new President's) flutter away into oblivion. He has persistently dismissed partisan disagreement as illegitimate or petty (most recently in his Inaugural) even though vibrant disagreement and debate are the symptoms of healthy democracies. In that same vain he has touted his post-partisanship and ability to bridge chasms between those who disagree. He was a transcendental figure, and would be a transcendental President.

This was a mirage. The President's meet-and-greet with House Republicans was a commendable gesture but it was just that, a gesture. Patting the heads of Republicans is not enough to get their support or basic acquiescence, especially when nothing is done to address their concerns in subsequence. The facts of the matter were the same after the meeting as they were before, and that was that the "stimulus" he was lobbying for is an opportunistic pretense through which Democrats are pushing through reckless spending for their own pet causes. There is nothing in it that any Republican – or any responsible, candid observer for that matter –can support.

President Obama cannot be blamed for trying get a little without giving anything. But neither can he realistically expect to get anything without giving something in return. That is the lesson of this evening's vote.

Of course he doesn't need any Republicans for ultimate passage, but if he wants shared responsibility for this abomination of appropriation he's going to have to make it a lot less abominable. Otherwise he won't be the transcendental figure he fashions himself as and he and Democrats will be all alone with responsibility for their actions. Such is real life. You can't be post-partisan and still be straight-partisan at the same time. Not even if you're Barack Obama.

Review: Shroud for a Nightingale

Shroud for a Nightingale P.D. James

P.D. James' typical sterling characters, plot, and finely-tuned setting are as present in this book as in her previous ones. What are especially present in Nightingale though are examples of perhaps her greatest literary talent, which is her ability to use and describe the subtle phenomena that are peppered in human existence. Take this excerpt from p. 70:

"The recently dead had their own mysterious charisma; not without reason did men talk in whispers in their presence."

On p. 143:

"This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?"

On p. 305:

"He was in that state of physical tiredness when the mind and body seem detached, the body, conditioned to reality, moving half consciously in the familiar physical world, while the liberated mind swings into uncontrolled orbit in which fantasy and fact show an equally ambiguous face."

No literary figure I've ever come across has done this as well as James. Whenever she drops one of these in her stories you know instantly the feeling or phenomenon she is describing. This only comes from a keen awareness of human nature and experience and it makes each one of her stories a pleasure to read, Shroud for a Nightingale included.

How Not to Stimulate the Economy

Lawrence Summers, President Obama's chief economic advisor, appeared on Meet the Press yesterday. Asked a question about the administration's plans for the Bush tax cuts, he all but declared that they would be repealed the minute the economy starts to make a recovery. "I don't think there's any question they have to be repealed. The country can't afford them for the long run…they can't be part of the long-run budget picture…they're not going to be with us for long…"

Dr. Summers is self-evidently a smart guy and knows a thing or two about economics, but there a couple of items wrong with these statements.

First, declarations from him and other Democrats that we can't "afford" the Bush tax cuts ring a bit hollow given all of the additional deficit spending they propose. The most immediate of these is the trillion dollar "stimulus," which is in fact not a stimulus but more like one big pork-barrel spending bill (unless you believe that spending taxpayer dollars on contraception and sod for the Jefferson Memorial isn't pork…). Beyond that there is the universal health care coverage they'd like to see enacted as well as other egregious forms of government expansion that young Americans and their children will involuntarily foot the bill for down the road.

Second, if the Obama Administration's ultimate aim is to boost confidence in the economy then promising to raise taxes at the first opportunity is counterproductive. In fact it will only shove the date of recovery further down the road as consumers and investors et al become dissuaded from investment and expenditure with the specter of looming tax hikes haunting them from straight ahead. When recovery does arrive, raising taxes will indicate that the administration has fallen into what Matthew Continetti has labeled the "stimulus trap," in which the government tries to recoup lost revenue from a recession by raising taxes; which then aggravates or creates anew another recession. Call it "double-dipping," as James Pethokoukis does.

Suffice to say, promising to raise taxes in the future is not the relief the American people need and is not the stimulus the economy requires. Given our current trajectory, it is unfortunately very likely that we're going to witness just how true this really is.

The Stimulus & the Congressional GOP

Congressional Republicans reportedly presented President Obama with several tax cuts they'd like to see included in the proposed "stimulus" package at the White House today. They should think long and hard about this. Are these cuts – if included – really a source of salvation for the bill? Do they actually countervail the fact that it will be an irresponsible creation of debt that will fail to fulfill its stated purpose, if for no other reason than because it's a stimulus in name only? (The Congressional Budget Office is reporting that less than forty percent of the funds will actually be spent anytime soon, and most of the money is simply being directed towards liberal pet causes and projects.)

The real stimulus the economy needs is federal cession, if you will. The Congress and the President ought to approve across the board, permanent tax cuts that will yield a greater portion of the economy to the private sector and give individuals, families, and businesses an increased income that they can depend on year in and year out. Only this will create the conditions required for economic growth, not further inflationary, deficit, and one-time spending. For this reason no Congressional Republican should deem it responsible to support the legislation in any form that will be acceptable to a Democratic Congress and President.

Politically, supporting the stimulus won't help improve the Republican brand either. If Democrats want to saddle future generations with more debt without accomplishing anything for that steep cost than they shouldn't be given any cover. If they want to jump off of a bridge then Republicans can't stop them, but neither do they have to join them.

The choice in this matter is easy. As the saying goes, good governance is good politics; so too is the opposite. Oppose this "stimulus."

Farewell, President Bush

The presidency of George Walker Bush was eight years in length, a quantity that hardly seems sufficient in conveying its actual span. His were two terms longer than their years, replete with one large crisis after another. No president since FDR encountered as much, and by the end all Americans were simply weary of him and the baggage.

His tenure was especially trying for his supporter, who now in the immediate aftermath is made to cope with a gamut of emotions that few other political figures could possibly induce. As a president and a man he was a figure of disparate polarities, endowed with faculties that would at different times cause one to love him and at others shake their head in confused demoralization.

The foundation of this was his feast or famine executive skills. More so than any modern President save for Reagan, he possessed in spades the "vision thing" his father had so struggled with during his presidency. This was a leader who envisioned big things, whether it was a new "ownership society" at home or a reinvigorated, democratic Middle East abroad. He refused to settle for a presidency that would simply bide its time in office or occupy some space in the history books as his predecessor had.

Following the attacks of 9/11 (the first crisis of his presidency) he decided against simply consoling a shocked, grieving nation and lobbing a few cruise missiles in retaliation, instead interpreting the acts as a de facto declaration of war, beginning what he believed to be a long, generational struggle against radical Islam. To prevail, he committed himself and the republic to the daunting task of remaking the Middle East into a land of freedom and democracy. The most complete expression of this was his second inaugural, a paean to the power of freedom and America's eternal mission to promote it.

To commence his second term he pushed hard to reform Social Security, the "third rail" of American politics and a program on the quick road to insolvency. He sought personal savings accounts which would have allowed young workers to invest their payroll tax dollars into the stock market instead of sending them to the treasury to be spent and replaced by IOUs. Few in government were politically willing to touch the issue, but President Bush persisted for months in advocacy of it nonetheless.

This effort was a symptom of another of his executive skills – incorrigible determination or, some might say, stubbornness. He would have his big vision and would push for it no matter what. Whether this was a virtue or vice depended upon the issue. With his Social Security campaign it was a vice, not giving it up until well after it was clear that it wasn't going to happen (and long after its failure had done irreparable harm to his own political strength). With Iraq it saved this country from a humiliating, strategically ruinous defeat. As the Editors of National Review pointed out, his decision to support the surge when nearly everyone else sought withdrawal demonstrated "far better judgment and character than a political establishment that largely approved the initial invasion of Iraq and then sought to abandon it to terrorists." His stubbornness on Iraq was the virtue of his presidency.

His weaknesses as an executive were often times debilitating though. His ability to construct an overall vision was a virtue, as was his courage of conviction in pursuit of them (usually), but at times he lost sight of more immediate imperatives and unfinished business. His understanding that the ultimate defeat of terror depended on the spread of democracy in the Arab world was correct, and that this first and foremost required succeeding in Iraq, the geographical and strategic center of the Middle East. Yet it took far too long for him to grasp the fact that success in Iraq depended upon securing and stabilizing the country first, an accomplishment only belatedly realized by the implementation of the surge policy of 2007.

This was part and parcel to the central failing of his presidency, which was, as Jeffrey Bell writes, a tendency to set a correct objective, pursue it successfully for a time, and then founder. On a host of issues he exhibited a pattern of "excellent initial judgment, strong will, fair to decent early execution, culminating in distraction and in an ultimate failure to finish." Such was the case with tax cuts, marriage, faith-based initiatives, etc.

Undoubtedly, this flaw was a symptom – at least partly – of his spotty record of personnel selection and his penchant, consistent with his stubbornness, to stick by poor selections for far too long. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld might have been the correct choice for a 1990's/post-Cold War military, but he certainly was not for the extended, nation-building reality of the War on Terror. In no way should he have lasted six years.

The incompetence of Michael Brown and FEMA post-Katrina was a calamity his presidency never recovered from, tainting them from then on with the label of incompetence (Alberto Gonzales at the Justice Department and others made their contributions to this as well).

Additionally, his freedom agenda was undercut by the promotion of Scowcroft protégé Condolezza Rice to State, who tacked his administration's foreign policy back to the conventional establishmentarian policy of dialogue and diplomacy for its own sake. The upshot has been a complete failure in efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program and to prevent Iran from developing one of their own, or to promote democracy in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

By the last year or so of his presidency matters had seemingly collapsed. His unpopularity was at historically high levels not seen since the Carter presidency and the only issue he seemed to direct his traditional spunk and feistiness towards was his Iraq policy, which had been under a visceral and execrable attack by the Democratic Congress since '07. With the last significant measure of his presidency he lamely released TARP funds to boost the Detroit automakers, saving them for a few months from the death they were unwilling to save themselves from permanently.

After all of this his faithful supporter was left disheartened and confused. He had always admired his vision, moral clarity, and moral courage but ultimately became frustrated with his poorly chosen cast of subordinates and excessive farsightedness, all of which left far too many of the ventures he and the President shared unaccomplished. He had charged ahead enthusiastically in his re-election fight of '04 only to discover somewhere in the second term that the President wasn't always there next to him, but instead had fallen quite a bit behind.

Now at the end the President's supporter is left to deal with a conflicting miasma of emotions in evaluating what he witnessed the previous eight years. There were many failures and about-faces to brood about: Democratic-style spending, immigration, North Korea, Iran, Harriet Miers, Katrina, etc. But so too did the President have his share of accomplishments in spheres foreign and domestic., many of which have been obscured by the controversies of a political atmosphere imbued with bitter partisanship (which President Bush's Texas bluntness and self-assurance helped to create).

He cut taxes at a time in 2001 when the economy was in a post-boom slowdown and did it again in 2003, both rounds of which helped lessen the length and severity of the recession he inherited from his predecessor. He appointed Samuel Alito as an associate justice of the Supreme Court and John Roberts as chief justice, "whose sterling qualifications appear to include a deep commitment to respect the broad play the Constitution gives to the operations of representative government," as Ed Whelan has written. His committed opposition to federal funding of stem cell research, rooted in a belief in the sanctity of life and the concurrent need to develop other means of research, was vindicated by the announcement in 2007 that scientists have developed a way to turn regular human skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. Yuval Levin is right in stating that "he acted to demonstrate that science and ethics are not mutually exclusive, but could be championed together in a way that demonstrated our commitment to the value of every human life."

In the sphere of foreign affairs he withdrew the United States from the Kyoto protocol, which excluded the world's largest polluters from its obligations and would have been a sullen drag on the economy. He helped foster stronger relationships with East Asian democracies – specifically Japan – and helped to grow a bilateral relationship with India which could be instrumental in managing China's growth going into the future. Despite the incessant talk of America's broken image in the world, pro-American regimes are also in power in Germany, France, Italy, England, and other Eastern European countries. What's more, we have good relationships with Columbia (a fact imperiled by our inability to pass the Columbian Free Trade Agreement), Mexico, and Brazil. And for some reason the lines are as long as ever to get into this country, despite the fact that anti-Americanism is supposed to be higher than ever.

His record of strengthening presidential power and the federal government's capacity to combat the war on terror is mixed, but generally positive as well. Eleven times he vetoed congressional measures which would have weakened the power of the President, and he persisted in the practice of issuing signing statements – despite inane criticism – on the principle that the President is the chief executive officer and not "the legislature's errand boy," as Matthew J. Franck has written. His administration dismantled the al Qaeda network and detained and interrogated many of its operatives, setting up procedures for their continued detention and surveillance. So too did it devise means to monitor terrorists communications in an era of cell phones, e-mail, etc. He put in place an infrastructure to combat the War on Terror which had not existed prior to 9/11 and the country is safer as a result. His only folly was doing all of this unilaterally. He should have struck when the iron was hot, securing congressional implementation of these programs on a permanent basis. That way there wouldn't have been the confusion and controversy that enveloped him at the end of his administration. Further, codification would have established a permanent structure for future administrations to effectively wage the global war.

The results cannot be questioned though, and in what is without doubt the seminal achievement of his presidency there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. That is something no one would have predicted following that terrible day and it was due entirely to the decisive actions he implemented from that point forward. In fulfilling the President's main task of serving as commander-in-chief and defending the United States he consistently did right and did well, persisting regardless of the flak he got from critics, too many of whom were small men. As Congressman Peter Hoekstra writes, "President Bush demonstrated the character and patriotism that define a true American leader despite unrelenting partisan criticism over his decisions."

It was indeed a long eight years, and there were many mistakes the President made. But when the smoke and dust are gone history will remember that George Walker Bush did pretty well. He, like so many Americans, responded to the attacks of 9/11 with grace and determination, recognizing the monumental task before him. It will remember that he ordered the overthrow of two cruel regimes, leaving fifty-million Muslims safer and freer as a result. It will remember that when the chips were down in Iraq; when he could have given in to pressure and despair, he didn't fold but doubled his bet and America snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. It will remember that he lucidly did the hard things needed to be done and kept the American people safe. And finally, it will remember that despite his failings and weaknesses as a leader he never misrepresented who he was, he never lost his class or grace (even when so many of his detractors never demonstrated any themselves), and he never gave up.

And if history doesn't remember him for this, his supporter will.

I will.

Farewell and thank you, President Bush.

The President’s Guantanamo Pickle

After a campaign spent lambasting the Bush Administration for operations at Guantanamo Bay the new President has declared that the facility will be closed within the year. Unfortunately, more problems are created by this than by actually keeping it open.

For one, what is the administration going to do with the combatants being detained there? You know, the people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists who have committed their lives to incinerating the United States? They obviously can't release them without multiplying the folly of Gov. Dukakis' infamous furlough program by powers of a hundred. They could send them back to their countries of origin but that would seem a little hypocritical given the fact that President Obama waxed indignantly at his predecessor for such rendition (a policy the Clinton Administration practiced as well, incidentally).

Neither of these are an option obviously, so the detainees will have to be moved to a new facility, which entails even more problems. Trying to relocate them to domestic military installations, as has been suggested, will be met with fierce resistance from the communities they're located in, and understandably so. As the Wall Street Journal points out today, to have these men on American soil without the security the isolation of Guantanamo provides invites terrorist attack.

There's also that nagging little reality that all of this is farcically symbolic, as the Obama Administration will simply have to create another Guantanamo under another name to fulfill the very same purpose Guantanamo has fulfilled to date. The aforementioned problems seem a steep price to pay for such empty gestures, so wouldn't it be more pragmatic to simply reform the operations within Guantanamo that the President has objected too instead of enduring all of this heartburn? Sure he might look a little duplicitous after having promised to close the installment during the campaign, but there's been a number of positions and sentiments he held as a naïve candidate that he's since had to change when confronted with reality as President-Elect and President. This is just another one of those instances.

But as has become a pattern with this issue, there are even problems with that. He wishes to replace the system President Bush and the Congress set up in 2006 with a hypothetical process that will accord with the "basic principles of [the] Anglo-American legal system." Of course that is predicated upon the fallacy that the war we're in is a province for law-enforcement, which it most certainly is not. The detainees of Guantanamo aren't criminals but illegal combatants engaged in a type of war against the United States that we have not seen before and which, prior to 9/11, our institutions weren't constituted to respond to. Quoting the Journal again, "many of the Guantanamo prisoners haven't committed crimes per se but are dedicated American enemies and too dangerous to let go. Other cases involve evidence that is insufficient for trial but still sufficient to determine that release is an unacceptable security risk."

Unfortunately for the standing of President Obama's and the Left's previous sanctimony on the matter any responsible system that recognizes this fact while providing a fair legal process to deal with these terrorists is going to have to look like a lot like that which had been set up previously by Constitution shredder-in-chief George Bush. The President should just cut his losses, admit as much, and avoid making one of his first mistakes in office.