Dividing America
Fracturing the Body Politic

The main significance of the politico-demographic phenomena discussed below, is that the dialectical poles are being geographically consolidated.

High resolution PDF map of county-by-county presidential election 2000 results, from http://nationalatlas.gov/electionsprint.html. preview version:

Medium resolution PNG map of county-by-county presidential election 2004 results. Preview version:

differential map:

See also The 10 Regions of US Politics, by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth: “Our regions are based on voting returns from both national and state elections, demographic data from the US Census, and certain geographic features such as mountain ranges and coastlines. Each region represents about one-tenth of the national electorate, casting between 10.4 million and 10.8 million votes in the 2000 presidential election.”

The fundamental defect of the American political system is bipartisanism, made inevitable by the electoral laws of the federal government and of the states. This arrangement — two parties, opposed to each other — results in what Georg Hegel called a “dialectic”, and what Elias Canetti (Crowds and Power) called a “double crowd”. Whichever conceptualization one chooses, the reliable forecast is of a terrible conflict between irredeemably alienated opponents.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2007-May-24, by Daniel Henninger:

Dancing With Ghosts
American politics plays with the dangers of permanent opposition.

A recent trip through Spain was not long enough to absorb the depths of modern Spanish politics. But it was possible to take the nation's political pulse. It felt a lot like what's been going on in the U.S.

The particulars of a nation's politics aside, it must mean something if the drift of political conversation over tables in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville recurringly feels like that in Washington, New York or San Francisco.

Spain is booming. Propelled by the pro-market policies of the previous conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar--policies that the successor Socialists under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero haven't significantly eroded--the country's economy is vital. As here, the skylines of Madrid and Barcelona are filled with construction cranes erecting new apartments and commercial offices. A taxi driver negotiating impossibly narrow streets in languid Seville remarks, "Yes, the economy is strong but after two years the inconvenience of all this construction is tiresome." Welcome to any once-quiet neighborhood in New York.

So as Spain heads into the 21st century of a long ride through history, life is good in the nation that discovered America a mere 500 years ago. Just don't ask them to talk about their politics. The Spanish are a talkative people. They will ask if you saw the grand Tintoretto show at the Prado museum. They will explicate in detail Rafael Nadal's domination of clay-court tennis. They will explain the economic forces behind the blocks of commercial structures along the Diagonal in Barcelona. But politics? By and large, the Spaniards I encountered would rather not.

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Here, roughly, is the whole of a response from a right-of-center gentleman to a query about the current state of Spain's politics, around a dinner table in a noisy, modern Madrid restaurant: "Well, yes, the Zapatero government." Pause. "It's painful, quite painful." Pause. "It's really not something one wants to talk about." The rest of one's heretofore voluble dinner companions mutter assent. Let's discuss something else.

How like New York, where at this stage of our politics, Democrats and Republicans coexist to the extent they agree not to discuss George Bush, Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz or much of anything deeper than the celebrities of presidential politics.

There are many things America could profitably learn from Spain--its good manners, an unfailing willingness to help a confused traveler, the prideful cleanliness of its cities. But Spain's politics is a cautionary tale for an increasingly harsh American political culture, which seems to think no price will be paid for the relentless demonization of one's opponents.

Primarily what many Spaniards prefer not to discuss in their politics is Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero's determination to assign official responsibility for the Spanish Civil War to the supporters of Gen. Francisco Franco. Some half-million died in that conflict. After Franco died in 1975, virtually all political parties were determined to make Spain a democracy and achieved it with a new constitution in 1978. As important, however, was the informal social pact to submerge the political bitterness of the civil war, no easy thing for Spain's people.

At the moment, the Spanish are doing a pretty good job of negotiating the emotional tripwires and tensions created by Mr. Zapatero's determination to dance with the ghosts of those awful years. But even an outsider feels a palpable concern that the volatile emotions always beneath the surface of Spain's politics have the potential to blow apart what has been achieved in the past 30 years.

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I want to suggest that American politics today is talking and fighting its way toward a similar impasse. How did it come to this?

It has been argued in this column before that the origins of our European-like polarization can be found in the Florida legal contest at the end of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential campaign. That was a mini civil war. With the popular vote split 50-50, we spent weeks in a tragicomic pitched battle over contested votes in a few Florida counties. The American political system, by historical tradition flexible and accommodative, was unable to turn off the lawyers and forced nine unelected judges to settle it. So they did, splitting 5-4. In retrospect, a more judicious Supreme Court minority would have seen the danger in that vote (as Nixon did in 1960) and made the inevitable result unanimous to avoid recrimination. A pacto. Instead, we got recrimination.

From that day, American politics has been a pitched battle, waged mainly by Democrats against the "illegitimate" Republican presidency. Some Democrats might say the origins of this polarization traces to the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton. After that the goal was payback. To lose as the Democrats did in 2000 was, and remains, unendurable (as likely it would have for Republicans if they'd lost 5 to 4).

Politics of its nature is about polar competition. Opposed ideas should compete for public support. Withdraw all possibility of contact or crossover, however, and "politics" becomes just a word that euphemizes national alienation. That, effectively, is what we have now.

Exhibit A through Z is the Iraq war, a major military undertaking by the United States fought, after the 2002 resolution, with little or no support by one of the nation's two political parties. When one Democratic senator persisted in support, his dissent was not allowed, as normal in our politics, but punished with ostracism. Feel free to call this take-no-prisoners opposition "principle," but it's also uncharacteristic for our politics.

One is tempted to settle for a politics whose goals rise no higher than destroying the careers of opposition party figures. But the fate of the immigration bill--an attempt to resolve a real problem--reveals the costs a system in a state of permanent opposition. The left prefers unsolved immigration as an issue to "run" on. The right, more bizarre, insisted we "do something" about illegal immigration, then revealed this week it will let nothing qualify as a solution.

A cynic might argue, plausibly, that so long as the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank don't mismanage the dollar or euro, the world's integrated economies will grow and in time reduce the political class to entertainment, like professional wrestling. Europe may be able to slide by on this basis, but a U.S. politics preoccupied with inconsolable grievances will in time erode America's role in the world. Of course that too could be the point for some in the battle now.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

from the Washington Post, 2010-Feb-7, by Gerard Alexander:

Why are liberals so condescending?

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government -- and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

This sense of liberal intellectual superiority dropped off during the economic woes of the 1970s and the Reagan boom of the 1980s. (Jimmy Carter's presidency, buffeted by economic and national security challenges, generated perhaps the clearest episode of liberal self-doubt.) But these days, liberal confidence and its companion disdain for conservative thinking are back with a vengeance, finding energetic expression in politicians' speeches, top-selling books, historical works and the blogosphere. This attitude comes in the form of four major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and function.

The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War on Science" argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.

This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will "open the floodgates for special interests" to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.

It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years' worth of Wall Street Journal editorial writers: "What do these people really believe? I mean, they're not stupid -- life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they're not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is that higher truth?"

In Krugman's world, there is no need to take seriously the arguments of "these people" -- only to plumb the depths of their errors and imagine hidden motives.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution.

And speaking to a roomful of Democratic donors in 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama offered a similar (and infamous) analysis when he suggested that residents of Rust Belt towns "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" about job losses. When his comments became public, Obama backed away from their tenor but insisted that "I said something that everybody knows is true."

In this view, we should pay attention to conservative voters' underlying problems but disregard the policy demands they voice; these are illusory, devoid of reason or evidence. This form of liberal condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall meetings or "tea party" gatherings, it might be politically prudent for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually listen.

The third version of liberal condescension points to something more sinister. In his 2008 book, "Nixonland," progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, "Chain Reaction," Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

Race doubtless played a significant role in the shift of Deep South whites to the Republican Party during and after the 1960s. But the liberal narrative has gone essentially unchanged since then -- recall former president Carter's recent assertion that opposition to Obama reflects racism -- even though survey research has shown a dramatic decline in prejudiced attitudes among white Americans in the intervening decades. Moreover, the candidates and agendas of both parties demonstrate an unfortunate willingness to play on prejudices, whether based on race, region, class, income, or other factors.

Finally, liberals condescend to the rest of us when they say conservatives are driven purely by emotion and anxiety -- including fear of change -- whereas liberals have the harder task of appealing to evidence and logic. Former vice president Al Gore made this case in his 2007 book, "The Assault on Reason," in which he expressed fear that American politics was under siege from a coalition of religious fundamentalists, foreign policy extremists and industry groups opposed to "any reasoning process that threatens their economic goals." This right-wing politics involves a gradual "abandonment of concern for reason or evidence" and relies on propaganda to maintain public support, he wrote.

Prominent liberal academics also propagate these beliefs. George Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley and a consultant to Democratic candidates, says flatly that liberals, unlike conservatives, "still believe in Enlightenment reason," while Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist and Democratic consultant, argues that the GOP has done a better job of mastering the emotional side of campaigns because Democrats, alas, are just too intellectual. "They like to read and think," Westen wrote. "They thrive on policy debates, arguments, statistics, and getting the facts right."

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial beliefs -- including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that Republicans are "divorced from reality" and that the results show why "it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country." His condescension is superlative: Of the respondents who favored secession, he wonders, "Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?"

I doubt it would take long to design a survey questionnaire that revealed strange, ill-informed and paranoid beliefs among average Democrats. Or does Moulitsas think Jay Leno talked only to conservatives for his "Jaywalking" interviews?

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant -- they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

"There may be other ideas that you guys have," Obama said. "I am happy to look at them, and I'm happy to embrace them. . . . But the question I think we're going to have to ask ourselves is, as we move forward, are we going to be examining each of these issues based on what's good for the country, what the evidence tells us, or are we going to be trying to position ourselves so that come November, we're able to say, 'The other party, it's their fault'?"

Of course, plenty of conservatives are hardly above feeling superior. But the closest they come to portraying liberals as systematically mistaken in their worldview is when they try to identify ideological dogmatism in a narrow slice of the left (say, among Ivy League faculty members), in a particular moment (during the health-care debate, for instance) or in specific individuals (such as Obama or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom some conservatives accuse of being stealth ideologues). A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck.

In contrast, an extraordinary range of liberal writers, commentators and leaders -- from Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" to Obama's White House, with many stops in between -- have developed or articulated narratives that apply to virtually all conservatives at all times.

To many liberals, this worldview may be appealing, but it severely limits our national conversation on critical policy issues. Perhaps most painfully, liberal condescension has distorted debates over American poverty for nearly two generations.

Starting in the 1960s, the original neoconservative critics such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed distress about the breakdown of inner-city families, only to be maligned as racist and ignored for decades -- until appalling statistics forced critics to recognize their views as relevant. Long-standing conservative concerns over the perils of long-term welfare dependency were similarly villainized as insincere and mean-spirited -- until public opinion insisted they be addressed by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress in the 1996 welfare reform law. But in the meantime, welfare policies that discouraged work, marriage and the development of skills remained in place, with devastating effects.

Ignoring conservative cautions and insights is no less costly today. Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bush's aw-shucks style, Sarah Palin's college-hopping and the occasional conservative campaigns against egghead intellectuals. But alongside that, the fact is that conservative-leaning scholars, economists, jurists and legal theorists have never produced as much detailed analysis and commentary on American life and policy as they do today.

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at all.

Gerard Alexander is an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. He will be online to chat with readers on Monday, February 8, at 11 a.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion. On Monday, he will also deliver the American Enterprise Institute's Bradley Lecture, "Do Liberals Know Best? Intellectual Self-Confidence and the Claim to a Monopoly on Knowledge."

from the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, 2010-Jan-19, by James Taranto:

The Great Condescender
No one holds a candle to Barack Obama when it comes to making smart liberals feel superior.

An exchange between The New Republic's Jonathan Chait and Commentary's John Podhoretz vindicates our decision not to watch yesterday's so-called health-care summit. In her column today, Peggy Noonan--who certainly earned her pay for the week by sitting through what sounds like a grim spectacle indeed--observes: "Positions started out hardened, and likely ended so." The Chait-Podhoretz dust-up illustrates just how true that is.

Podhoretz, who also suffered through the harangathon, summed it up this way:

My sense of this summit is that President Obama is exactly as he always is — extremely intelligent, knowledgeable about policy details, so certain of the rightness of his views that he has no compunction about declaring the views of his antagonists to be merely politically convenient rather than substantive, startlingly condescending at moments, and even more startlingly long-winded when he gets going. As a result, he both looks good and bad in these settings — good because he's serious and doesn't appear to be a fanatic, and bad because of the condescension.

Which prompted this defense of condescension from Chait:

Podhoretz calls Obama "startlingly condescending at moments." How can that be avoided when you're trying to have a high-level discussion with people who reply either on debunked claims at best and talk radio-level slogans at worst?

Actually, describing that as a defense of condescension is too charitable, isn't it? It's an example of condescension. If we didn't know better we'd think Chait was exaggerating in order to illustrate Podhoretz's point. And it's not the first time--not even the first time in a day--that Chait did this. Podhoretz's post quoted an earlier one of Chait's:

President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous. . . .

Most the time [sic], this is like watching Lebron James play basketball with a bunch of kids who got cut from the 7th grade basketball team. He's treating them really nice, letting his teammates take shots and allowing the other team to try to score. Nice try on that layup, Timmy, you almost got it on. But after a couple minutes I want him to just grab the ball and dunk on these clowns already.

Podhoretz's answer:

Here we have a sterling example of how ideological predilections, his and mine, might color our opinions here. Except for one thing: You can only think Obama is Lebron James playing 7th graders if you are already certain his opinions are right, because the best you can say about this summit so far for him is that it's a draw, and it's probably worse than that. And given that only 25 percent of the public wants ObamaCare, he needs to be Lebron James. And Pete Maravich. And Oscar Robertson. And Kareem. All at the same time.

Chait actually makes two distinct claims about Obama: that he has a superior intellect and that he is a superior "communicator." The first claim could be true, although it is far from indisputable. But the second claim is so absurd as to be delusional.

Obama has spent the past year trying to sell Americans on ObamaCare. He has failed utterly, as Podhoretz notes. Now, maybe Chait is right that opposition to ObamaCare is a product of stupidity. Maybe ObamaCare would be popular if a majority of Americans were as brilliant as Jonathan Chait. But in a democratic republic, elections are not limited to the elect. Shockingly, half of all Americans have below-average IQs. They vote too.

By no imaginable standard can a politician be considered a great "communicator," or even an adequate one, if he is unable to persuade voters of average-or-below intelligence to back his policies.

Further, is there any evidence that Obama is especially good at communicating with those on the far right of the bell curve? Chait is persuaded, and we're willing to stipulate that Chait is brilliant. But Chait was persuaded before, and we know lots of brilliant people who oppose ObamaCare.

Obama is very good at making smart liberals feel superior. That is a communication ability, but not a terribly useful one for a politician in a democratic country.

from the Washington Post, 2010-Mar-12, by Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen:

If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly

In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman asked, "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?" Her assessment of self-deception -- "acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts" -- captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.

Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.

As pollsters to the past two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, we feel compelled to challenge the myths that seem to be prevailing in the political discourse and to once again urge a change in course before it is too late. At stake is the kind of mainstream, common-sense Democratic Party that we believe is crucial to the success of the American enterprise.

Bluntly put, this is the political reality:

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.

However, a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data.

The White House document released Thursday arguing that reform is becoming more popular is in large part fighting the last war. This isn't 1994; it's 2010. And the bottom line is that the American public is overwhelmingly against this bill in its totality even if they like some of its parts.

The notion that once enactment is forced, the public will suddenly embrace health-care reform could not be further from the truth -- and is likely to become a rallying cry for disaffected Republicans, independents and, yes, Democrats.

Second, the country is moving away from big government, with distrust growing more generally toward the role of government in our lives. Scott Rasmussen asked last month whose decisions people feared more in health care: that of the federal government or of insurance companies. By 51 percent to 39 percent, respondents feared the decisions of federal government more. This is astounding given the generally negative perception of insurance companies.

CNN found last month that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens. When only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed, as was also reported last month, we face an alarming crisis.

Health care is no longer a debate about the merits of specific initiatives. Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters' minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people.

Voters are hardly enthralled with the GOP, but the Democrats are pursuing policies that are out of step with the way ordinary Americans think and feel about politics and government. Barring some change of approach, they will be punished severely at the polls.

Now, we vigorously opposed Republican efforts in the Bush administration to employ the "nuclear option" in judicial confirmations. We are similarly concerned by Democrats' efforts to manipulate passage of a health-care bill. Doing so in the face of constant majority opposition invites a backlash against the party at every level -- and at a time when it already faces the prospect of losing 30 or more House seats and eight or more Senate seats.

For Democrats to begin turning around their political fortunes there has to be a frank acknowledgement that the comprehensive health-care initiative is a failure, regardless of whether it passes. There are enough Republican and Democratic proposals -- such as purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage, initiatives to hold down costs, covering preexisting conditions and ensuring portability -- that can win bipartisan support. It is not a question of starting over but of taking the best of both parties and presenting that as representative of what we need to do to achieve meaningful reform. Such a proposal could even become a template for the central agenda items for the American people: jobs and economic development.

Unless the Democrats fundamentally change their approach, they will produce not just a march of folly but also run the risk of unmitigated disaster in November.

Patrick H. Caddell is a political commentator and former pollster. Douglas E. Schoen, a pollster, is the author of "The Political Fix."

from the Washington Post, 2010-Mar-5, by Charles Krauthammer:

Onward with Obamacare, regardless

So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts's devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.

After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health-care reform.

The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House "summit" with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans' way.

Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of his health-care bill.

As for the Blair House seminar, its theatrical quality was obvious even before it began. The Democrats had already decided to go for a purely partisan bill. Obama signaled precisely that intent at the end of the summit show -- then dramatically spelled it out just six days later in his 35th health-care speech: He is going for the party-line vote.

Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections -- contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.

Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health-care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for preexisting conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments), they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: a dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak is to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3 to 1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health-care bills.

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health-care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

Which is what drove even strong Obama supporter Warren Buffett to go public with his judgment that the current Senate bill, while better than nothing, is a failure because the country desperately needs to bend the cost curve down, and the bill doesn't do it. Buffett's advice would be to start over and get it right with a bill that says "we're just going to focus on costs and we're not going to dream up 2,000 pages of other things." (Disclosure: Buffett is a director of The Washington Post Co.)

Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation's seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington's devious and wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of "budget reconciliation." The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.

Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Mar-4, by Peggy Noonan:

What a Disaster Looks Like
ObamaCare will have been a colossal waste of time—if we're lucky.

It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year.

What a disaster it has been.

At best it was a waste of history's time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one.

In terms of policy, his essential mistake was to choose health-care expansion over health-care reform. This at the exact moment voters were growing more anxious about the cost and reach of government. The practical mistake was that he did not include or envelop congressional Republicans from the outset, but handed the bill's creation over to a Democratic Congress that was becoming a runaway train. This at the exact moment Americans were coming to be concerned that Washington was broken, incapable of progress, frozen in partisanship.

His political mistakes were myriad and perhaps can be reduced to this:

There are all sorts of harm a new president can do to his presidency. Right now, part of the job of a new president in a hypermediaized environment is harm avoidance. This sounds defensive, and is at odds with the wisdom that presidents in times of crisis must boldly go forth and break through. But it all depends on what you're being bold about. Why, in 2009, create a new crisis over an important but secondary issue when we already have the Great Recession and two wars? Prudence and soundness of judgment are more greatly needed at the moment.

New presidents should never, ever, court any problem that isn't already banging at the door. They should never summon trouble. Mr. Obama did, boldly, perhaps even madly. And this is perhaps the oddest thing about No Drama Obama: In his first year as president he created unneeded political drama, and wound up seen by many Americans not as the hero but the villain.

In Washington among sympathetic political hands (actually, most of them sound formerly sympathetic) you hear the word "intervention," as in: "So-and-so tried an intervention with the president and it didn't work." So-and-so tried to tell him he's in trouble with the public and must moderate, recalibrate, back off from health care. The end of the story is always that so-and-so got nowhere. David Gergen a few weeks ago told the Financial Times the administration puts him in mind of the old joke: "How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don't think President Obama wants to make any changes."

Sometimes when I look at the past three chief executives, I wonder if we were witnessing not three presidencies but three psychodramas played out on an intensely public stage.

What accounts for Mr. Obama's confidence and certainty?

Well, if you were a young progressive who'd won the presidency by a comfortable margin in a center-right country, you just might think you were a genius. You might not be surprised to find yourself surrounded by a cultish admiration: "They see him as a fabled figure," said a frequent White House visitor of some on the president's staff.

You might think the great strength you demonstrated during the campaign—an ability to stay in the game you're playing and not the game someone else is playing, an ability to proceed undistracted by the crises or the machinations of your opponents, but to just keep playing your slow and steady game—is a strength suitable to your presidency. If you choose to play health care, that's the game you play, straight through, no jeers from the crowd distracting you.

If you were a young progressive who'd won the presidency against the odds, you probably wouldn't see yourself as someone who lucked out, with the stars perfectly aligned for a liberal victory. And you might forget we are more or less and functionally a 50-50 country, and that you have to keep your finger very much on the pulse of the people if you're to survive and prosper.

And now here are two growing problems for Mr. Obama.

The first hasn't become apparent yet, but I suspect will be presenting itself, and soon. In order to sharpen the air of crisis he seems to think he needed to get his health-care legislation passed, in order to continue the air of crisis that might justify expanding government and sustaining its costs, and in order, always, to remind voters of George W. Bush, Mr. Obama has harped on what a horror the economy is. How great our challenges, how wicked our businessmen, how dim our future.

This is a delicate business. You can't be all rosy glow, you have to be candid. But attitude and mood matter. America has reached the point, a year and a half into the crisis, when frankly it needs some cheerleading. It can't always be mourning in America. We need some inspiration from the top, need someone who can speak with authority of what is working and can be made to work, of what is good and cause for pride. We are still employing 130 million people, and America is still competitive in the world, with innovative business leaders and practices.

The president can't be a hope purveyor while he's a doom merchant, and he appears to believe he has to be a doom merchant to justify ramming through his legislation. This particular legislation is not worth that particular price.

All this contributes to a second problem, which is a growing credibility gap. In his speech Wednesday, demanding an "up or down" vote, the president seemed convinced and committed—but nothing he said sounded true. His bill will "bring down the cost of health care for millions," it is "fully paid for," it will lower the long term deficit by a trillion dollars.

Does anyone believe this? Does anyone who knows the ways of government, the compulsions of Congress, and how history has played out in the past, believe this? Even a little? Rep. Bart Stupak said Thursday that he and several of his fellow Democrats won't vote for the Senate version of the bill because it says right there on page 2,069 that the federal government would directly subsidize abortions. The bill's proponents say this isn't so. It would be a relief to have a president who could weigh in believably and make clear what his own bill says. But he seems to devote more words to obscuring than clarifying.

The only thing that might make his assertions sound believable now is if a group of congressional Republicans were standing next to him on the podium and putting forward a bill right along with him. Which, obviously, won't happen, for three reasons. First, they enjoy his discomfort. Second, they believe the bill is not worth saving, that at this point no matter what it contains—and at this point most people can no longer retain in their heads what it contains—it has been fatally tainted by the past year of mistakes and inadequacies.

And the third reason is that the past decade has taught them what a disaster looks like, and they've lost their taste for standing next to one.

from the Telegraph of London, 2010-Mar-8, by Simon Heffer:

The end of the road for Barack Obama?
Barack Obama seems unable to face up to America's problems, writes Simon Heffer in New York.

It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama's own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician – a Democrat and a supporter of the President – told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity: The Wire is only just fictional.

Last Thursday the House of Representatives passed a jobs Bill, costing $15 billion, which would give tax breaks to firms hiring new staff and, through state sponsorship of construction projects, create thousands of jobs too. The Senate is trying to approve a Bill that would provide a further $150 billion of tax incentives to employers. Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labour secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities' access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one. This massive state spending gives rise to accusations by Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans, that America is now controlled by "Leftists" and being turned into a socialist state.

"Obama's big problem," a senior Democrat told me, "is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN." The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by "progressives" who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama's own party are.

Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. There was much unconditional love a year or so ago of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama's Chief of Staff; oleaginous profiles of this Chicago political hack, a veteran of that unlovely team that polluted the Clinton White House, appeared in otherwise respectable journals, praising the combination of his religious devotion, his family-man image, his ruthless operating technique and his command of the vocabulary of profanity. Now, supporters of the President are blaming Mr Emanuel for the failure of the Obama project, not least for his inability to construct a deal on health care.

This went down badly with friends of Mr Emanuel, notably with Mr Emanuel himself. His partisans, apparently taking dictation from him, have filled newspaper columns and blogs with uplifting accounts of the Wonder of Rahm: as one of them put it, "Emanuel is the only person preventing Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter". They attack other Obama "sycophants", such as David Axelrod, his campaign guru, and Valerie Jarret, a long-time friend of Mrs Obama and a fixer from the office of Mayor Daley of Chicago who now manages – or tries to manage – the President's image. These "sycophants" have, they argue, tried to keep the President above politics, letting Congress run away with the agenda, and gainsaying Mr Emanuel's advice to Mr Obama to get tough with his internal opponents. This naïve act of manipulation has brought its own counter-counterattack, with an anti-Emanuel pundit drawing a comparison with our own Prime Minister and ridiculing the idea that Mr Obama should start bullying people too.

The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can't. That was more Mr Axelrod's fault than Mr Emanuel's. And, to be fair to Mr Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America's politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being "scrubbed" (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.

A thrashing of the Democrats in the mid-terms would not necessarily be the beginning of the end for Mr Obama: Bill Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans swept the House and the Senate in November 1994. But Mr Clinton was an operator in a way Mr Obama patently is not. His lack of experience, his dependence on rhetoric rather than action, his disconnection from the lives of many millions of Americans all handicap him heavily. It is not about whose advice he is taking: it is about him grasping what is wrong with America, and finding the will to put it right. That wasted first year, however, is another boulder hanging from his neck: what is wrong needs time to put right. The country's multi-trillion dollar debt is barely being addressed; and a country engaged in costly foreign wars has a President who seems obsessed with anything but foreign policy – as a disregarded Britain is beginning to realise.

There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation's having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Feb-11, p.A19, by Daniel Henninger:

The Scalia v. Stevens Smackdown

Nothing—not even George W. Bush—has sent liberaldom screaming into the streets more than the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Court's ruling that corporations have a free-speech right to express opinions about politicians running for office really let the furies out.

President Obama's in-their-face criticism of the Supreme Court over Citizens United at his State of the Union speech got pundits on every blogger barstool chattering about the propriety of this public smackdown.

That's nothing compared to how the Supremes smack each other inside their public decisions.

Justice John Paul Stevens dismissed the majority's opinion, written by Anthony Kennedy, as lacking "a scintilla of evidence" for its argument and making "only a perfunctory attempt" to root its reasons in the First Amendment views of the Constitution's Framers.

Justice Antonin Scalia then wrote a majority concurrence solely so that he could go mano a mano with Justice Stevens. A mere three sentences in, he unloads: "The dissent attempts this demonstration, however, in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment."

While the commentary on Citizens United rightly emphasized First Amendment law, the scrum inside the decision between Justices Stevens and Scalia, over the status of corporations in America, deserves more attention than it got.

Their dispute, and especially Justice Stevens's view of corporations, reveals a lot about why Mr. Obama and liberalism's left wing went nuts. It isn't just corporate political advertising that's anathema. Corporations themselves are anathema.

In his State of the Union swipe, Mr. Obama said the Citizens United decision would "open the floodgates for special interests." The "special interests," of course, is Democode for corporate interests. This week we learned Mr. Obama will try to convey his pro-business sentiments Feb. 24 to the Business Roundtable. Don't buy it.

Justice Stevens offered the historic and psychological basis for this foundational antipathy.

"Thomas Jefferson," he notes, "famously fretted that corporations would subvert the Republic." A citation quoted by the justice notes that "the word 'soulless' constantly recurs in debates over corporations"; and "corporations, it was feared, could concentrate the worst urges of whole groups of men."

But here's the public-philosophy belief that flows from this view: "The Framers thus took it as a given," in Justice Stevens's opinion, "that corporations could be comprehensively regulated (my emphasis) in the service of the public welfare."

In short, private corporations have not much, if anything, to do with the public good.

In his crack-back concurrence, Justice Scalia ridicules "the corporation-hating quotations the dissent has dredged up." He notes that most corporations back then had "state-granted monopoly privileges" (sort of like Fannie and Freddie today—columnist's footnote) and that modern corporations without these state privileges "would probably have been favored by most of our enterprising Founders—excluding, perhaps, Thomas Jefferson and others favoring perpetuation of an agrarian society."

He ends with a conservative belief: "To exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy."

America's Democrats and Republicans, crudely defined, are with this presidency and this Congress living today on opposite sides of a moon that they both call the United States.

In the universe inhabited by Justice Stevens and President Obama, corporations—the private sector—are a suspect abstraction, ever tending toward "the worst urges" which have to be "comprehensively regulated." The saints regulate the sinners.

If you think this way, what one does to the private sector, such as the proposed $90 billion bank tax, can never be wrong in any serious way, so long as the rationale offered is the "public good." Private-sector players are seen as barely more than paid galley slaves on the ship of state. So it is with the health-care bill's mammoth, comprehensive regulation of American medicine and insurance.

Mr. Obama seems genuinely perplexed that the opposition can't just, you know, sign onto it. What's their problem?

Evidently, the voters of Massachusetts have a problem with that and more.

In the past year, Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus, seized banks and the auto industry, embarked on a $1 trillion reorganization of the private health-care system, and passed a fiscal 2010 budget that put spending as a percentage of GDP at 24.1%. These are very large claims for the public good.

This public-private tension is an ancient and never-ending debate in the U.S. But what we are seeing this year, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, is American voters arriving at a tipping point over the scale and role of government. Most Americans still go to work each day inside a private economy organized around tens of thousands of corporations. Their basic view of the world and that found inside Justice Stevens's dissent and this White House are out of sync.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-30, by Arthur C. Brooks:

The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism
Tea parties, 'ethical populism,' and the moral case against redistribution.

There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise -- the principle at the core of American culture.

Despite President Barack Obama's early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the "tea parties" that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop up those who engaged in corporate malfeasance and mortgage fraud.

The data support the protesters' concerns. In a publication with the ironic title, "A New Era of Responsibility," the president's budget office reveals average deficits of 4.7% in the five years after this recession is over. The Congressional Budget Office predicts $9.3 trillion in new debt over the coming decade.

And what investments justify our leaving this gargantuan bill for our children and grandchildren to pay? Absurdities, in the view of many -- from bailing out General Motors and the United Auto Workers to building an environmentally friendly Frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas. On behalf of corporate welfare, political largess and powerful special interests, government spending will grow continuously in the coming years as a percentage of the economy -- as will tax collections.

Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an "ethical populism." The protesters are homeowners who didn't walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.

Voices in the media, academia, and the government will dismiss this ethical populism as a fringe movement -- maybe even dangerous extremism. In truth, free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurship are still a majoritarian taste. In March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked people if we are better off "in a free market economy even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time." Fully 70% agreed, versus 20% who disagreed.

Free enterprise is culturally mainstream, for the moment. Asked in a Rasmussen poll conducted this month to choose the better system between capitalism and socialism, 13% of respondents over 40 chose socialism. For those under 30, this percentage rose to 33%. (Republicans were 11 times more likely to prefer capitalism than socialism; Democrats were almost evenly split between the two systems.)

The government has been abetting this trend for years by exempting an increasing number of Americans from federal taxation. My colleague Adam Lerrick showed in these pages last year that the percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liability will rise to 49% from 40% under Mr. Obama's tax plan. Another 11% will pay less than 5% of their income in federal income taxes and less than $1,000 in total.

To put a modern twist on the old axiom, a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head, or pays no taxes. Social Democrats are working to create a society where the majority are net recipients of the "sharing economy." They are fighting a culture war of attrition with economic tools. Defenders of capitalism risk getting caught flat-footed with increasingly antiquated arguments that free enterprise is a Main Street pocketbook issue. Progressives are working relentlessly to see that it is not.

Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It's also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don't have without regard for our children's future.

Enterprise defenders also have to define "fairness" as protecting merit and freedom. This is more intuitively appealing to Americans than anything involving forced redistribution. Take public attitudes toward the estate tax, which only a few (who leave estates in the millions of dollars) will ever pay, but which two-thirds of Americans believe is "not fair at all," according to a 2009 Harris poll. Millions of ordinary citizens believe it is unfair for the government to be predatory -- even if the prey are wealthy.

Political strategy aside, intellectual organizations like my own have a constructive role in the coming cultural conflict. As policymakers offer a redistributionist future to a fearful nation and a new culture war simmers, we must respond with tangible, enterprise-oriented policy alternatives. For example, it is not enough to point out that nationalized health care will make going to the doctor about as much fun as a trip to the department of motor vehicles. We need to offer specific, market-based reform solutions.

This is an exhilarating time for proponents of freedom and individual opportunity. The last several years have brought malaise, in which the "conservative" politicians in power paid little more than lip service to free enterprise. Today, as in the late 1970s, we have an administration, Congress and media-academic complex openly working to change American culture in ways that most mainstream Americans will not like. Like the Carter era, this adversity offers the first opportunity in years for true cultural renewal.

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute.

from Rasmussen Reports, 2010-Feb-18:

Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the Governed

The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.

However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

That helps explain why 75% of voters are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most members of Congress are defeated this November. Just 27% believe their own representative in Congress is the best person for the job.

Among voters under 40, 25% believe government has the consent of the governed. That compares to 19% of those ages 50 to 64 and 16% of the nation's senior citizens.

Those who earn more than $100,000 a year are more narrowly divided on the question, but those with lower incomes overwhelming reject the notion that today's government has the consent from which to derive its just authority. Those with the lowest incomes are the most skeptical.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Republicans say the government does not have the consent of the governed, and that view is shared by 65% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties. A plurality of Democrats (44%) agrees, but 32% of those in President Obama's party believe the government has the necessary consent.

From an ideological perspective, most moderate and conservative voters say the government lacks the consent of the governed. Liberals are evenly divided.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Feb-20, p.A12:

To the ObamaCare Barricades
The 'public option' makes a comeback.

Ever since the Massachusetts Senate election that put ObamaCare into critical condition, President Obama has been all for "bipartisanship," even going so far as to claim to take Republican ideas seriously. So how to explain this week's sudden scorched-earth campaign?

Liberals are making a bid to restore the "public option," ObamaCare's most controversial and destructive inspiration. Some 18 Senators as we went to press—led by Colorado's Michael Bennet and growing to include New York's Chuck Schumer on Thursday—have endorsed slipping this government-run insurance entitlement in the reconciliation process that would let Democrats abuse Senate rules to hustle ObamaCare into law with 50 votes. Vehemence among House progressives is also at a fever pitch, though it always is.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined the mob, telling MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that if the public option is "part of the decision of the Senate leadership to move forward," then the White House is all-aboard. Right on cue, Majority Leader Harry Reid put out a statement that he'll work to "craft a public option that can overcome procedural obstacles."

On that score, the main obstacles to this agenda aren't procedural but moderates in his own party. Rational Democrats killed the public option because it is hated by the insurers that will be driven out of business by its subsidy advantage, by the doctors and hospitals that will be forced to accept its below-market rates, and by the taxpayers who will get stuck with the bill. On the other hand, this new political strategy might fire up the dispirited liberal base—and allow the White House to cast the GOP as obstructionist going into the health summit next week.

It really does seem as if the Democrats are gearing up for Pickett's reconciliation charge. What was that again about "the best ideas from both parties"?

from Rasmussen Reports, 2010-Feb-21:

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. That is the lowest level of strong approval yet recorded for this President.

Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19. The Approval Index has been lower only on one day during Barack Obama's thirteen months in office (see trends). The previous low came on December 22 as the Senate was preparing to approve its version of the proposed health care legislation. The current lows come as the President is once again focusing attention on the health care legislation.

Currently, 39% of voters nationwide favor the health care plan proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats. Fifty-eight percent (58%) are opposed. Only 35% believe Congress should pass health care reform before the upcoming midterm elections anyway. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Congress should wait until voters select new congressional representatives in November.

If the proposed health care plan becomes law, 78% of voters expect it will cost more than projected. Voters overwhelmingly believe passage of the plan will increase the federal deficit and lead to middle-class tax hikes. Most of those with insurance fear that they could be forced to change their coverage if the health care legislation passes.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Feb-22:

ObamaCare at Ramming Speed
The White House shows it has no interest in compromise.

A mere three days before President Obama's supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House yesterday released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters want they don't want anyway.

Ah, the glory of "progressive" governance and democratic consent.

"The President's Proposal," as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone.

The bill's one new inspiration is a powerful federal board that would regulate premiums in the individual insurance market. In all 50 states, insurers are already required to justify premium increases to insurance commissioners, who generally have the power to give a regulatory go-ahead, or not. But their primary concern is actuarial soundness and capital standards, making sure that companies have enough cash to pay claims.

The White House wants to create another layer of review that will be able to reject any rate increase that is "unreasonable or unjustified." Any insurer deemed guilty of such an infraction by this new bureaucracy "must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable." In other words, de facto price controls.

Insurance premiums are rising too fast; therefore, premium increases should be illegal. Q.E.D. The result of this rate-setting board will be less competition in the individual market, as insurers flee expensive states or regions, or even a cascade of bankruptcies if premiums are frozen and the cost of the care they are expected to cover continues to rise. For all the Dickensian outrage about profiteering by WellPoint and other companies, insurance is a low-margin business even for health care, and at least 85 cents of the average premium dollar, usually more, is devoted to actual health services.

Price controls are always the first resort of national health care—i.e., Medicare's administered prices for doctors and hospitals. This new White House gambit is merely a preview of ObamaCare's inevitable planned medical economy, which will reduce choice and quality.

The coercive flavor that animates this exercise is best captured in the section that purports to accept the Senate's "grandfather clause" allowing people who like their current health plan to keep it. Except that "The President's Proposal adds certain consumer protections to these 'grandfathered' plans. Within months of legislation being enacted, it requires plans . . . prohibits . . . mandates . . . requires . . . the President's Proposal adds new protections that prohibit . . . ban . . . and prohibit . . . The President's Proposal requires . . ." After all of these dictates, no "grandfathered" plan will exist.

Meanwhile, the new White House plan further vitiates the remnants of cost-control that remained in the House and Senate bills. Now the highly vaunted excise tax on high-cost insurance plans won't kick in until 2018, whereas it would have started in 2013 in the Senate bill, and this tax will only apply to coverage that costs more than $27,500.

Very few plans ever reach that threshold, and sure enough, this is the same $60 billion deal the White House cut in December with union leaders who have negotiated very costly benefits. Now it is extended to all to avoid the taint of political favoritism.

While the White House claims to eliminate the "Cornhusker Kickback," the Medicaid bribe that bought Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson's vote, political appearances are deceiving. As with the union payoff, what the White House really does is broaden the same to all states, with all new Medicaid spending through 2017 and 90% after 2020 transferred to the federal balance sheet. Governors will love this ruse, but national taxpayers will pay more.

And more again, because the White House has adopted the House's firehose insurance subsidies. People earning up to 400% of the poverty line—or about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—will qualify for government help, and, naturally, this new entitlement is designed to expand over time.

The Administration also claims to have discarded the House's 5.4-percentage-point surtax on joint-filers earning more than $1 million a year, but it sneaks it back in by expanding the Senate's expansion of the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to joint income about $250,000. The White House would now apply that tax for the first time to income from "interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents," details to come.

***

The larger political message of this new proposal is that Mr. Obama and Democrats have no intention of compromising on an incremental reform, or of listening to Republican, or any other, ideas on health care. They want what they want, and they're going to play by Chicago Rules and try to dragoon it into law on a narrow partisan vote via Congressional rules that have never been used for such a major change in national policy. If you want to know why Democratic Washington is "ungovernable," this is it.

from the New York Times, 2010-Feb-26, printed 2010-Feb-27, p.A12, by Robert Pear:

Democrats to Press Health Bill With Simple Majority

WASHINGTON — Seeing no prospect of a bipartisan agreement on health care, Congressional Democrats said Friday that they would make another effort to pass sweeping health care legislation on their own.

If anything, Democrats said, their seven-hour meeting with President Obama and Republicans on Thursday confirmed their belief that it was futile to try to work with Republicans on a major health care bill because the philosophical differences between the parties were too profound.

Accordingly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, Democrats in the House and the Senate have begun work on a bill that they hope could be passed in the Senate by a simple majority.

Under the tentative plan sketched by Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats, the House would pass the health care bill approved in December by the Senate, and both chambers would approve a separate package of changes using a parliamentary device known as budget reconciliation. The legislation would revise the Senate health bill to reflect compromises between House and Senate Democrats and suggestions by Mr. Obama.

Democrats acknowledged that at the moment they did not have the votes for the reconciliation maneuver, which is intended to avoid the threat of a filibuster and the need for a 60-vote majority in the Senate.

“What you call a complicated process is called a simple majority,” Ms. Pelosi said. “And that's what we're asking the Senate to act upon.”

Democratic leaders said Republican intransigence could help them round up the votes of wavering centrists in their own caucus. Republicans adamantly oppose the health care bill, as well as the use of any parliamentary shortcuts.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Friday that Mr. Obama would “make an announcement next week about the way forward” on health care. Mr. Gibbs declined to provide details.

Ms. Pelosi described the steps she had in mind, saying: “What is the substance? That's what we will be putting together, and we didn't want to do that before we could hear from our Republican colleagues yesterday. Secondly, what is the Senate able to do with a simple majority? And then we will act upon that.

“I believe that we have good prospects for passing legislation,” said Ms. Pelosi, of California.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and an architect of the Senate health bill, said he was “not a great fan” of using the budget reconciliation procedure.

“But,” Mr. Dodd said, “the issue trumps the process. Would you drop doing health care altogether because you do not like the process? I don't think so.”

Mr. Dodd said it was difficult for him to take seriously the latest Republican proposals because they would cover just three million uninsured people, about one-tenth as many as the Democrats' legislation.

Ms. Pelosi mocked the Republican proposals, saying they were too limited to be effective.

“Incy Wincy Spider, little teeny tiny, you can't do it,” the speaker said. “There are certain things, unless you do them together, it doesn't have the impact, it doesn't have the synergy, it doesn't hold the insurance companies accountable.”

Mr. Dodd dismissed Republican demands that Democrats start from scratch.

“That may be an appropriate answer for a narrow constituency,” he said. “But it just does not make sense for most people, who have watched their rates go up in the last year.”

Democratic leaders hope that both chambers can complete action by March 26, when Congress is scheduled to begin its spring break. But, like many deadlines on this legislation, it could slip, leaving lawmakers to fight over health care in their midterm election campaigns.

White House officials and their allies in liberal advocacy groups are making an all-out push to persuade Congress and the public that budget reconciliation is a legitimate procedure used often in the last 30 years to pass major legislation, including President Ronald Reagan's domestic agenda in 1981, an overhaul of welfare programs in 1996 and President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said he knew those precedents. But, he said, they amount to “peanuts compared with this total restructuring of one-sixth of the economy.”

The No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, asked the House Democratic leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, to renounce use of the budget reconciliation procedure for health care. But in an exchange on the House floor on Friday, Mr. Hoyer refused to do so.

Use of the procedure is “in the Republican tradition,” Mr. Hoyer said. In any event, he said, Senate rules requiring a 60-vote majority to cut off a filibuster “are impeding the work of the American people.”

Democrats said they would welcome Republican ideas that could be inserted into their legislation. But they made clear that they had no intention of changing the basic architecture of their bill, which would require people to carry health insurance and require many employers to help pay for it. Democrats would significantly expand Medicaid and would offer subsidies to help moderate-income people buy private insurance.

The cost to the government, roughly $950 billion over 10 years, would be offset with new taxes and fees and cutbacks in Medicare.

Democrats said they would take guidance from a White House proposal issued Monday, but would try to hash out a bicameral bill of their own to get the needed votes. Ms. Pelosi said she would try to work out details in meetings with her caucus next week.

from the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog, 2010-Feb-26, by Mark Hemingway:

Astroturfing: Obama plans to flood conservative talk radio with liberal talking points

Organizing for America, the powerful activist organization with some 13 million email addresses that grew out of the Obama campaign, has launched a new website -- http://radio.barackobama.com. The website provides users with the name of a talk show that's going on right at that moment and what is being discussed. Users can listen live to the radio program directly from the website.

The purpose of the website is supply the President's supporters with liberal talking points on health care reform. Supporters are then encouraged to call in to conservative talk radio shows armed with the talking points provided and "report your call."

It's not exactly the fairness doctrine, but it doesn't seem transparent either. If you can't beat 'em, astroturf 'em

from USA Today, 2010-Jan-25, by David Jackson:

Obama: Most polarizing president in history?

The Gallup Poll people delivered an interesting report today [see item immediately below -AMPP Ed.]: President Obama was the most polarizing first-year president in history.

The average difference in Obama's approval ratings between Democrats and Republicans turned out to be 65 percent -- the highest first-year gap of any president so measured.

Of course, it takes two to tango, and, as Gallup's Jeffrey Jones put it, "the extraordinary level of polarization in Obama's first year in office is a combination of declining support from Republicans coupled with high and sustained approval from Democrats."

Obama's 88 % approval rating from Demcrats is the second highest level of party support for a first-year president, trailing only the 92 % Republican support for George W. Bush in 2001.

On the other hand, Obama's 23 % rating among Republicans is tied for lowest party rating of a rookie president, matching GOP "backing" of Bill Clinton back in 1993.

There's also the question of whether Obama is a polarizing president -- or is only the latest president in a polarized era.

"Prior to Ronald Reagan, no president averaged more than a 40-point gap in approval ratings by party during his term," said the Gallup report. "Since then, only the elder George Bush has averaged less than a 50-point gap."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also cited recent history.

"I think we live in a divided country," Gibbs said. "Washington has been a polarizing place for quite some time."

from Gallup, 2010-Jan-25, by Jeffrey M. Jones:

Obama's Approval Most Polarized for First-Year President
Shows much greater party differences than approval for any prior first-year president

PRINCETON, NJ -- The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats' (88%) and Republicans' (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton.

Overall, Obama averaged 57% job approval among all Americans from his inauguration to the end of his first full year on Jan. 19. He came into office seeking to unite the country, and his initial approval ratings ranked among the best for post-World War II presidents, including an average of 41% approval from Republicans in his first week in office. But he quickly lost most of his Republican support, with his approval rating among Republicans dropping below 30% in mid-February and below 20% in August. Throughout the year, his approval rating among Democrats exceeded 80%, and it showed little decline even as his overall approval rating fell from the mid-60s to roughly 50%.

"Prior to Ronald Reagan, no president averaged more than a 40-point gap in approval ratings by party during his term; since then, only the elder George Bush has averaged less than a 50-point gap."

Thus, the extraordinary level of polarization in Obama's first year in office is a combination of declining support from Republicans coupled with high and sustained approval from Democrats. In fact, his 88% average approval rating from his own party's supporters is exceeded only by George W. Bush's 92% during Bush's first year in office. Obama's 23% approval among supporters of the opposition party matches Bill Clinton's for the lowest for a first-year president. But Clinton was less popular among Democrats than Obama has been to date, making Obama's ratings more polarized.

Obama still has three years left in his first term and possibly seven more as president, so there is much time for the polarization of his approval ratings to subside. However, if the current level of polarization persists through the end of his term, Obama would exceed Bush as the president with the most polarized approval ratings.

Bush's average Republican-Democratic gap for his eight years in office was 61 points. This included the record gap for a single approval rating: 83 points, which occurred twice -- in September 2004 (95% Republican, 12% Democratic) and October 2004 (94% Republican, 11% Democratic).

The political divide in Bush's ratings is to some extent understated, though, given the rally in public support for Bush after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when he received record-high approval ratings. Even with these approval ratings, he averaged a 55-point gap in approval by party during his first term. During his second term, the average party gap in his ratings was 68 points, higher than Obama's to date.

The accompanying graph makes clear how much the level of political polarization has grown in Americans' evaluations of presidents in recent decades. Prior to Ronald Reagan, no president averaged more than a 40-point gap in approval ratings by party during his term; since then, only the elder George Bush has averaged less than a 50-point gap, including Obama's average 65-point gap to date.

Bottom Line

As a candidate and as president, Obama -- like his immediate predecessor, Bush -- sought to bring Americans together after periods of heightened political polarization in the United States. But despite their best intentions and efforts, both men's approval ratings have been characterized by extreme partisanship -- with high and seemingly unwavering approval from their own party's supporters and very little from the opposition party.

The way Americans view presidents has clearly changed in recent decades, perhaps owing to the growth in variety, sources, and even politicization of news on cable television and the Internet, and the continuing popularity of politically oriented talk radio. The outcome is that Americans evaluate their presidents and other political leaders through increasingly thick partisan lenses.

from Rasmussen Reports, 2010-Jan-31:

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 33% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -7 (see trends).

This is the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted since the State-of-the-Union Address and it reflects a bounce for the President. The number who Strongly Approve is the highest in more than four months (since September) and the overall Approval Index rating is the best in more than three months (since October).

The bounce comes almost entirely from those in the president's party. Sixty-four percent (64%) of Democrats now Strongly Approve, up from 50% before the speech. However, the speech appears to have had the opposite impact on unaffiliated voters. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 50% now Strongly Disapprove. That's up from 42% before the speech. The next few days should give an indication as to whether these changes will fade or if they signify the beginning of a new phase in the political environment.

Most voters do not believe the President's assertions about tax cuts, economic growth, or job creation. Additionally, just 19% believe the President accomplished most of his first year objectives.

Check out our review of last week's key polls to see “What They Told Us.”

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That's up four points since the morning of the speech and is the first time his approval has reached 50% among likely voters since November 16. Fifty percent now (50%) disapprove.

Just 12% say that Congress is doing a good or an excellent job. In his new book, Scott Rasmussen notes that “If we ever found a Little League team behaving as poorly at the Republicans and Democrats or the Congressmen or Senators, we'd probably disband the team and go home. Heck, we might even disband the entire league and bulldoze the field.” In Search of Self-Governance is available from Rasmussen Reports and at Amazon.com.

[...]

from Rasmussen Reports, 2010-Feb-1:

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 35% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. That's the highest level of strong approval for the President in more than seven months and reflects a significant bounce following the State-of-the-Union address. Before the speech, just 27% voiced strong approval.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) now Strongly Disapprove down from 42% before the speech. Putting it all together gives Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -4. That's the President's best Approval Index rating in months. In fact, he's earned a better rating on only two days in the past six months (see trends).

When tracking President Obama's job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis. For the full-month of January, the President's Approval Index rating improved a point to -14. That's the first time his numbers have improved since September.

The President's recent gains have come from firing up his base and one of the keys to Election 2010 will be to see whether he can maintain this increased level of enthusiasm. If he does, Republican gains could be less than some are now projecting. On the other hand, if the improvement turns out to be just a short-term bounce, then the GOP may enjoy better prospects. New polling out today shows that Republicans continue to have the edge in the Florida Senate race.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters now hold populist, or Mainstream, views of politics and government. That's up from 55% last March.

[...]

from Rasmussen Reports, 2010-Feb-6:

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove which gives Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15. That matches the President's ratings just before the State-of-the-Union Address. While Obama received a modest bounce in his ratings following the speech, today's results suggest that the bounce is over (see trends).

Voters continue to trust Republicans more than Democrats on most key issues facing the nation, but the gap is smaller now when it comes to the economy. Forty-six percent (46%) trust the GOP more when it comes to the economy while 42% trust the Democrats more. The American people overwhelmingly reject the basics of Keynesian economics: only 11% believe more deficit spending is needed to spur the economy while 70% say deficit cutting is the answer.

As the federal budget debate heats up, just 35% of voters realize that most federal spending goes to just three areas: National Defense, Social Security, and Medicare.

[...]

Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That matches the lowest level of overall approval yet measured for this president. Fifty-five percent (55%) now disapprove.

[...]

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Feb-17, by Dorothy Rabinowitz:

What Sarah Palin Doesn't Know
Her obsession with the politics of grievance puts her at odds with Ronald Reagan.

From the day she turned heads at the 2008 Republican Convention—becoming at once an object of fevered controversy—one truth about Sarah Palin stood clear: She was fortunate in her antagonists.

Those in the media, especially, would stoke a mighty sympathy backlash on her behalf. That resentment would feed nicely into the candidate's role as a voice for the aggrieved: those regular citizens under the heel of the "elites"—that immense, tentacled power whose depredations she has been describing to audiences since her star turn on the McCain ticket.

She showed resilience and not a little backbone throughout, bouncing back after a hapless on-air encounter with CBS's Katie Couric. And after a daunting encounter with ABC's Charles Gibson—a civilized presence and one of the most genial of men ever to occupy a news anchor's chair—now turned into an oaf unable to conceal disdain as he questioned his guest on her capacities for office. That was, to be sure, a pale echo of other spectacles. CNN's Campbell Brown rocketed, nightly, to impressive levels of semi-hysteria on the subject of Mrs. Palin and her incapacities.

Andrew Sullivan, blogger, would become disseminator-in-chief of the theory that Mrs. Palin could not have been the mother of her youngest child Trig, and was therefore the grandmother. This was, Mr. Sullivan let it be known, a matter of urgent journalistic endeavor.

In a noteworthy message directed to Mrs. Palin in December, Mr. Sullivan allowed that he would like "this line of inquiry to end as soon as possible for the sake of all of us but especially the innocent child"—a child, he explained, who had been caught up in all sorts of secrets he didn't deserve. A wonderful message indeed, considering that Mr. Sullivan himself was the chief architect of that inquisitory foray, which he pressed unrelentingly.

There's no underestimating all that Mrs. Palin owes Mr. Sullivan for lines of inquiry like this. That's not to slight David Letterman's gross sexual insult, directed at one of the Palin daughters, when she and her mother attended a Yankees baseball game. Political gifts like these, so potent in what they convey about a candidate's detractors—and to a vast national audience—don't come along every day.

Sarah Palin isn't a candidate for office currently but the buzz of expectation surrounds her, none of it exactly vague. She could hardly have been more emphatic, in the last week, about her openness to a presidential run. All the more reason for the intense scrutiny of both her keynote speech to the Tea Party convention a week ago and a subsequent interview with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." Not that it required much scrutiny to see the obvious, and fast: that the Sarah Palin of election year fame has not been much transformed since last we met.

For many who look to her as a presidential hopeful, and a voice for their social views, this can't be encouraging news.

Mrs. Palin has, it's clear, enjoyed plenty of adulation, and displays even greater confidence than during that unexpected, bedazzling convention speech. Like Barack Obama, she is at home with adoring crowds.

There are, true, a few tonal changes: the jokes are jokier, the touches of malice heavier, and she revels more obviously than before in the playfulness she brings to her performances. It's hard to imagine a more assured, better-timed delivery than the one evident in that down-home thrust at Obama supporters—"How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?"—in her Tea Party address.

Mrs. Palin now has, she reports, a team of Washington policy advisers who provide her with daily briefings on domestic and foreign affairs. None of them have, it appears, provided her with intelligence on the impact of certain of her central themes.

On, for instance, the unsavory echoes of her regular references to "the real America" as opposed to those shadowy "elites," now charged with threats to the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of all real Americans. Neither does she seem to have any idea of how that low soap-box oratory—embracing one kind of American as the real kind, those builders in the towns and cities across America—rings in the ear today. It is not new.

So entrenched a place does this thinking occupy in Mrs. Palin's bag of references that it can pop up anytime on any subject. Challenged in Mr. Wallace's interview on alleged irregularities in her husband's direct contacts with Alaska state officials—on judicial appointments, labor issues, and the like—Mrs. Palin countered that he was her "soul mate," her "best friend." The one she could trust while she was off traveling—and he busy working on "issues that meant a lot to him and to people, yes, out there in the real world with steel-toed boots and hard hats trying to build this country."

Though it hasn't attracted wide attention, nothing Mrs. Palin has done recently has been worthier of notice than her endorsement of Rand Paul, now running in Kentucky's GOP senate primary. Dr. Paul, an opthamologist and radical libertarian, holds views on national security and defense that have much in common with those of the far left. Not to mention those of the considerable body of conspiracy theorists, antigovernment zealots, 9/11 truthers, and assorted other cadres of the obsessed and deranged who flocked to the presidential candidacy of his father Ron Paul, the congressman from Texas.

Rand Paul has indicated, in interviews on his policies—these so shrouded in ambiguity as to require expertise of the sort that cracked the Enigma code—that some of his views differ from that of his father. No surprise, that. Ron Paul, it will be remembered, has said repeatedly that the United States had given Osama bin Laden good cause to attack us, which bin Laden himself had explained. Bin Laden, Ron Paul opined, was no doubt "bad" but "he's not known to be a liar."

Rand Paul, who offers no opinion on his father's touching faith in bin Laden's devotion to truth, says only that his father's statements have been misunderstood. On one or two things his own views are clear: He stands opposed to the Patriot Act and he wants to cut defense spending.

Asked about her endorsement of this candidate, Mrs. Palin informed Mr. Wallace she was proud of her choice. She admired Rand Paul's domestic policies, not of course that she agreed with everything he stood for. It does not, apparently, occur to her that everything he stands for—and can vote on—is precisely what comes into play when, and if, he becomes a senator with her help.

Mrs. Palin regularly invokes the name of the most revered of her heroes, Ronald Reagan—among the sunniest stars ever to mount the political stage, and a leader who spoke to all of America. He did not appeal to the aggrieved. Nor did he see in the oratory of grievance, or talk of real Americans and those who were not, a political platform.

Mrs. Palin would do well to look to his model, between study of those daily policy briefings. Her supporters will have to wait a while. At a time when Republican hopes are in the ascendancy, as now (and even when they are not), it's impossible to imagine the Sarah Palin known to the world today as their leader. It would be well for her to begin pondering the reasons.

from the Washington Examiner, 2010-Feb-9, by Byron York:

White House: People who criticize us are helping al Qaeda

In a brief op-ed in USA Today, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan charges that critics who question the Obama administration's decision to grant Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are "serv[ing] the goals of al Qaeda."

"Too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points," Brennan writes. "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."

Now, however, those critics are questioning whether Brennan is trying to score a few political points of his own. First, Brennan supports the administration's position, which most critics find absurd, that the initial 50-minute interrogation of Abdulmutallab -- all the Justice Department would allow before he was read his Miranda rights -- was somehow adequate. "Immediately after the failed Christmas Day attack," Brennan writes, "Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thoroughly interrogated and provided important information."

Second, Brennan writes that, "The most important breakthrough occurred after Abdulmutallab was read his rights…" What Brennan does not say is that that breakthrough reportedly occurred several weeks after Abdulmutallab was read his rights. In the intervening period, apparently, investigators got little out of the suspect.

Third, Brennan sets up a fairly obvious straw man when he writes that, "Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation." The argument over the treatment of Abdulmutallab is an argument specifically over the treatment of an al Qaeda soldier who was caught trying to blow up an airliner -- not whether terrorists should be tried only in military courts. As far as I know, the critics who believe the administration made a serious mistake with Abdulmutallab also believe that there are other cases -- involving financial or logistical support of terrorism, for example -- that are well suited to the civilian court system.

Finally, Brennan repeats President Obama's argument that the Bush administration's treatment of Richard Reid justifies the Obama administration's handling of Abdulmutallab. "Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken off a plane he tried to blow up," Brennan writes. "The same people who criticize the president today were silent back then." Critics find the argument weak because when Reid was apprehended, in December 2001, the institutions to handle suspects like him did not exist. Should Bush have put Reid before a military commission? A high-value detainee interrogation group? Send him to Guantanamo? None of that existed in the early months of the war on terror.

On the other hand, at least Brennan does not blame Republicans for the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab. In my new story today, GOP winning war over Miranda rights for terrorists, I discuss Brennan's talk-show accusation that top Republican officials knew about, and did not object to, the decision to grant Miranda rights to Abdulmutallab. GOP sources on Capitol Hill told me they suspected that Brennan "test-drove that one himself" -- that is, he put out the argument without getting pre-approval from the White House. "I think if they really thought they had a gotcha, they would have rolled it out weeks ago," I was told. "But there really wasn't anything to roll out." In the story, I wrote that "GOP lawmakers don't expect to hear that charge again."

And sure enough, in the new op-ed, Brennan writes that, "Senior counterterrorism officials from the White House, the intelligence community and the military were all actively discussing this case before he was Mirandized and supported the decision to charge him in criminal court," Brennan writes. Not a word about Congress.

from the Associated Press via the Baltimore Sun, 2010-Jan-28, by Calvin Woodward:

Obama's high court smackdown prompts read-my-lips dissent from a justice and a decorum debate

WASHINGTON — An unusual piece of theater that unfolded in the blink of an eye at the State of the Union speech raises questions:

Was President Barack Obama rude to criticize a Supreme Court decision in the company of the justices?

Was his complaint about the decision, which removed corporate campaign spending limits, right?

Was Justice Samuel Alito's read-my-lips critique — "not true" — not true?

Republicans huffed Thursday about Obama's jab at the court. But it was worth keeping in mind that presidents and lawmakers routinely criticize Supreme Court decisions and the justices who make them. Remember Bush v. Gore and the mutterings about a politically rigged court?

Democrats huffed about the huffing and declared that one of the great things about America is that powerful people can disagree in public. But it also was worth remembering that the justices were guests for Wednesday night's speech to Congress, placed as always in the best seats in the House.

It was an odd time and place for Obama to deliver a Supreme Court smackdown.

The ceremony and courtesies that attend rare assemblies of all three branches of power call on everyone to act with respect for tradition and a certain fellowship, however forced.

Exhibit A: The robed justices only clap at the beginning, the end and the safest moments in between. Their applause is invariably judicious, tipping no hand about their political leanings or whether they actually liked what they heard. No fist bumps here.

Still, this is not a nation of powdered wigs and genuflection.

Authority is constantly, bluntly challenged, although not usually during wedding toasts, funeral rites or State of the Union addresses.

Looking down at the six justices seated in front of him as well as to the wider masses, Obama departed from the scrolling text of his speech and added an unscripted preamble.

"With all due deference to the separation of powers," he began delicately, then reverted to his prepared remarks, "the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections."

Alito, part of the 5-4 majority in the landmark case, objected to the reference to a century of law upended, to the notion that floodgates have been opened, or both.

In any event, after Obama's line on those subjects, he shook his head and quietly mouthed words that included the phrase "not true."

He did not mean for lip-readers to go viral with it. Still, the episode stirred memories of the decorum-shattering shout of "You lie" by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., during Obama's health care speech to Congress in September.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said Obama was "kind of rude" in his remark. "It's one thing to say that he differed with the court but another thing to demagogue the issue while the court is sitting there out of respect for his position," he told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton saw it differently: "One of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of the government at high levels can disagree in public and in private."

Vice President Joe Biden pointed out Obama did not question the integrity of the justices in criticizing the decision.

Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned the integrity of the justices.

He accused "conservative activists" on the court of making decisions on their "whimsical preferences" and "ideological agenda" instead of the law.

Not one for understatement, Leahy said the decision was even worse than the Bush v. Gore case that settled a disputed election in the Republicans' favor in 2000 because conservative activist justices "have now decided to intervene in all elections."

The court's decision broke a century-old trend of tougher limits on corporate political activity. Specifically, the court said corporations and unions could spend freely from their treasuries to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

Obama was not quite accurate in saying the ruling "reversed a century of law" because the 1907 law in question was left intact.

Nor is it established, as Obama suggested it was, that corporations and foreigners can now have the run of the body politic, given other prohibitions still in place.

Still, those firewalls could tumble over time as a consequence of the court's broadly-drawn ruling. That would give fresh meaning to an observation made more than a century ago by Marcus Alonzo Hanna, an Ohio Republican operative who systematically hit up businesses for political cash.

"There are two things that are important in politics," he said in 1895. "The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is."

(This version CORRECTS that Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst took place during Obama's health care speech in September, not his first speech to Congress.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-29:

Obama v. the Supremes
Alito wins the oral, and factual, argument.

In the case of Barack Obama v. Supreme Court of the United States, that was some oral argument on Wednesday night. With the Justices arrayed a few feet in front of him in the House chamber, President Obama blistered their recent decision defending free political speech for corporations and unions. As Democrats in Congress and Cabinet members rose and applauded around them, the Justices sat stern-faced, save for Samuel Alito, who was seen shaking his head and mouthing the words "Not true."

Bravo, Justice Alito.

We're not among those who think the Supreme Court is above criticism. Especially in recent decades as the judiciary has become more political, and has encroached on the powers of Congress and the executive, politicians in the other branches have an obligation to defend their powers. Mr. Obama may have exhibited bad manners in sandbagging the Justices without warning on national TV, but he has every right to disagree with their rulings.

But could a graduate of Harvard Law School at least get his facts right? "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections," Mr. Obama averred. "Well, I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."

Let's unpack the falsehoods. The Court didn't reverse "a century of law," but merely two more recent precedents, one from 1990 and part of another from 2003. Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990 had set the Court in a markedly new direction in limiting independent corporate campaign expenditures. This is the outlier case that needed to be overturned.

Mr. Obama is also a sudden convert to stare decisis. Does he now believe that all Court precedents of a certain duration are sacrosanct, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal, 1896), which was overturned by Brown v. Board (1954)? Or Bowers v. Hardwick (a ban on sodomy, 1986), which was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas (2003)?

The President's claim about "foreign entities" bankrolling U.S. political campaigns is also false, since the Court did not overrule laws limiting such contributions. His use of "foreign" was a conscious attempt to inflame public and Congressional opinion against the Court. Coming from a President who fancies himself a citizen of the world, and who has gone so far as foreswear American exceptionalism, this leap into talk-show nativism is certainly illuminating. What will they think of that one in the cafes of Berlin?

Desperate Presidents do desperate things, and Mr. Obama's riff against the Supremes reveals a President who—let us try to follow Mr. Obama's admonition about changing the "tone" of our politics—lacks grace under pressure.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-28, by Randy E. Barnett:

Obama Owes the High Court an Apology
The justices were there as a courtesy to him.

In his State of the Union address, the president of the United States called out the Supreme Court by name for sharp condemnation and egged on his congressional supporters to jeer its recent decision:

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

Even before he finished, hundreds of Democratic senators, congressmen and cabinet officials surrounding the six seated justices stood, applauded and cheered.

Suppose for a moment that you were a justice seated there as the president of the United States singled you out for criticism and the room stood and cheered. Could they take it? Yes, of course. Should they have been put in this position? Absolutely not.

This is not to deny that the Supreme Court may be criticized. I do it regularly in class, op-eds, blog posts, and in the pages of law reviews. So too should the president when he thinks the Court is wrong. But not when the justices are in attendance as a courtesy to him, seated as a captive audience on national television, while surrounded by hundreds of his political partisans. Imagine the howls if the president had been a guest in the House of Commons when the British prime minister called him out for failing to live up to his promises in Copenhagen about imposing a carbon tax.

Judge not the words themselves, but their effect on the audience. The president fully expected that his hundreds of supporters in the legislative branch would stand and cheer, while the justices remained seated and silent, unable to respond even afterward. Moreover, the president's speech was only released about 30 minutes before the event, after the justices were already present. In short, the head of the executive branch ambushed six members of the judiciary, and called upon the legislative branch to deride them publicly. If you missed it, check the YouTube video. No one could reasonably believe in their heart that this was respectful behavior.

Then there is the substance of the remark itself. It was factually wrong. The Court's ruling in Citizens United concerned the right of labor unions and domestic corporations, including nonprofits, to express their views about candidates in media such as books, films and TV within 60 days of an election. In short, it concerned freedom of speech; in particular, an independent film critical of Hillary Clinton funded by a nonprofit corporation.

While the Court reversed a 1990 decision allowing such a ban, it left standing current restrictions on foreign nationals and "entities." Also untouched was a 100-year-old ban on domestic corporate contributions to political campaigns to which the president was presumably referring erroneously.

That is a whole lot to get wrong in 72 sanctimonious words. Clearly, this statement had not been vetted by the president's legal counsel. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, for example, would never have signed off on such a claim. Never.

Then there is the lack of any reference to the Constitution or First Amendment upon which the Court rested its decision. The president made a nakedly result-oriented criticism: Because interest groups and foreigners (gasp!) will allegedly get to influence our elections, the Supreme Court made a legal mistake. As though this is the way the Supreme Court should decide constitutional cases.

Oh, and how exactly is Congress supposed to override a constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court by enacting a statute? Or was the president merely urging Congress to evade it?

If the president, himself a Harvard Law School graduate, is going to criticize a judicial opinion, it is incumbent upon him to be legally accurate and responsible in his commentary. If that is too much to expect of a politician giving a nationally televised speech to the general public, then this again illustrates the inappropriateness of making this remark in this venue.

For those who strongly object to the ruling in Citizens United and still do not see the impropriety of criticizing the Court this way, consider Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst during the president's address to a joint session of Congress in September. No one denied the right of a congressman to criticize the accuracy of the president's remarks. The objection was to the rudeness and disrespect shown the president, for which Mr. Wilson promptly apologized. So too should the president.

Mr. Barnett teaches constitutional law at Georgetown Law Center, and is author of "Restoring the Lost Constitution" (Princeton, 2005).

from ABC News, 2010-Jan-28, by Jake Tapper:

Supreme Court Historian: After President's “Insult,” Won't Be Surprised If Supreme Court Doesn't Attend Next Year's State of the Union Address

A noted Supreme Court historian who “enthusiastically” voted for President Obama in November 2008 today called President Obama's criticism of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address last night “really unusual” and said he wouldn't be surprised if no Supreme Court Justices attend the speech next year.

“It was really unusual in my mind to see the president going after the Supreme Court in such a forum,” said author and Law Professor Lucas Powe, the Anne Green Regents Chair in Law, and a Professor of Government at the University of Texas-Austin School of Law. “I'm willing to bet a lot of money there will be no Supreme Court justice at the next State of the Union speech.”

Added Professor Powe, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, “you don't go to be insulted. I can't see the Justices wanting to be there and be insulted by the president.” His opinion has nothing to do with animus towards the President, for whom Powe said he voted enthusiastically.

President Obama took the apparently unprecedented step of assailing a Supreme Court decision in his speech last night, saying, “with all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that corrects some of these problems."

The president was assailing the decision in the Citizens United case, allowing corporations to spend money to influence elections. The remarks were called “kind of rude” by the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who told the Salt Lake Tribune, "It's one thing to say that he differed with the court but another thing to demagogue the issue while the court is sitting there out of respect for his position." 

It has also raised eyebrows among legal commentators. At Legal Times, Tony Mauro headlined one blog post “Supreme Court Turns Out for Tongue-Lashing at State of the Union.” 

The way the president deviated from the prepared text indicated he may have tried to soften his remarks as he made them. He added “with all due deference to separation of powers” and replaced his desire that Democrats and Republicans “pass a bill that helps to right this wrong” with one for lawmakers to “pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."

Listening to the speech Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing the words “that's not true.”

“I think Alito's correct,” Powe told ABC News. “They weren't overthrowing 100 years' worth of history. They were overthrowing 20 years' worth.”

There is some history here. President Obama is a former constitutional law lecturer who, aides say, was genuinely outraged by the decision.

(He's also the first US President to have ever voted to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. That nominee was Justice Alito.)

Powe said the polar opposite of the tension last night was when President Lyndon Johnson gave his “We shall overcome” speech in March 1965 and “Supreme Court Justices were standing and clapping with everyone else.”

Asked today what President Obama's reaction was to Justice Alito's reaction, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said, “one of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of the government at high levels can disagree in public and in private.  This is one of those cases.”

Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News' Good Morning America, “I think it's an outrageous decision, Not outrageous in the fact that these guys are bad guys, outrageous in terms of the way in which to read the Constitution and what constitutes free speech…What the president was saying was 'look this was a big decision, a significant departure, a 5-4 decision, I think it was dead wrong and we have to correct it, and so Congress and the Senate, look at this. Look at it, and help me change it.'”

The president who historically had the most tense relationship with the highest court in the land was arguably Franklin Roosevelt, who – after the Supreme Court struck down several New Deal measures – introduced the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, which would have given him the power to appoint up to six new Supreme Court Justices – one for each sitting Justice over the age of 70 ½.

When FDR mentioned the court that in the 1937 State of the Union address, however, he did so vaguely, saying, “the Judicial branch also is asked by the people to do its part in making democracy successful. We do not ask the Courts to call non-existent powers into being, but we have a right to expect that conceded powers or those legitimately implied shall be made effective instruments for the common good. The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government."

After his second inaugural, FDR recalled to an aide, when “the Chief Justice read me the oath and came to the words `support the Constitution of the United States' I felt like saying: `Yes, but it's the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy—not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.'”

from the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, 2010-Jan-19, by James Taranto:

Planet Enron
Some columnists are not of this world.

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman thinks he has an explanation for the failures of President Obama's first year in office, which ends tomorrow:

It's instructive to compare Mr. Obama's rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It's often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan's 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Obama could have done the same--with, I'd argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America's economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration's refusal to regulate the banks.

But he didn't.

This description of Barack "Someone Else's Mess" Obama is so far removed from reality that there are only two possible explanations: (1) Krugman is trolling for links, or (2) He is from another planet. We're going to assume it's the latter, because trolling for links would be beneath the dignity of a Nobel Prize winner.

Let's call Krugman's home world Planet Enron. While there are few signs of intelligent life on Enron, Krugman is not alone in the unearthliness of his observations. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne is similarly--though, to be fair, not quite equally--deluded as he analyzes the Democratic left's political predicament:

The success of the conservative narrative ought to trouble liberals and the Obama administration. The president has had to "own" the economic catastrophe much earlier than he should have. Most Americans understand that the mess we are in started before Obama got to the White House. Yet many, especially political independents, are upset that the government has had to spend so much and that things have not turned around as fast as they had hoped.

It's also striking that most conservatives, through a method that might be called the audacity of audacity, have acted as if absolutely nothing went wrong with their economic theories. They speak and act as if they had nothing to do with the large deficits they now bemoan and say we will all be saved if only we return to the very policies that should already be discredited. . . .

The truth that liberals and Obama must grapple with is that they have failed so far to dent the right's narrative, especially among those moderates and independents with no strong commitments to either side in this fight.

On Planet Enron, this must all seem logical. Here on Earth, it makes no sense. Independents and moderates voted out the big-spending Republicans and ended up getting even bigger-spending Democrats. Now they're upset at the Democrats. Dionne seems to be saying they should be more upset at the Republicans because the Republicans are almost as bad. We'd venture to say they will be if the Republicans get back into power and continue to be almost as bad. But we defy any Earthling to make sense of Dionne's claim that this all somehow amounts to an argument in favor of Democratic policies.

What about David Brooks, a Krugman colleague at the New York Times? Is he human or is he Enron? He describes the president's first year in office as follows:

In many ways, Barack Obama has lived up to his promise. He has created a thoughtful, pragmatic administration marked by a culture of honest and vigorous debate.

Is there any way to square that characterization with the president's insistence on pushing ahead with ObamaCare, months after it was clear that it would be a political--never mind financial and medical--disaster?

It seems to us that, at least on domestic policy, exactly the opposite of Brooks's characterization is true: Obama has created a reflexively ideological administration that brooks little dissent--and that has a particular disdain for public opinion. The next year or so ought to answer the question of whether the president is temperamentally capable of altering this approach. If not, the 45th president will likely take the oath of office three years from tomorrow.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-28, by Kimberley A. Strassel:

Bonfire of the Populists
The president's anti-Wall Street rhetoric is not good for the economy, and may hurt his party politically.

The problem with fires is that they can blow in any direction. Consider the White House, which is seeing a backdraft from the anti-Wall-Street flame it has been dousing with gasoline.

His agenda on the ropes, President Obama made a calculated decision to pivot to populism. The Massachusetts Senate race highlighted a fed-up public. The White House strategy: Channel that anger away from itself and to easier targets. Its opening shots were a new tax on banks, new restrictions on banking activities, and Mr. Obama roaring, "We want our money back!"

The president fed the fire with his State of the Union address. Americans are angry at "bad behavior on Wall Street." It is time to "slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas." Lobbyists are trying to "kill" financial regulation. American "cynicism" is the result of "selfish" bankers, CEOs who "reward" themselves "for failure" and lobbyists who "game the system." (No mention of Cornhusker Kickbacks or backroom union deals, but never mind.)

For an administration that claims to know its political history, the White House appears to have misread at least one decade. FDR was re-elected in 1936 for many reasons, but among them was his fiery denunciations of "economic royalists," "economic tyranny," and "economic slavery." Business knew it was in the president's crosshairs and put its capital on strike. The economy didn't recover until the war.

Team Obama is already witnessing a repeat. The U.S. economy ought to be flying out of recession. Yet bank lending is sluggish. Companies refuse to hire. Business is going elsewhere to raise capital: China last year outstripped the U.S. as a center for initial public offerings. The market gyrates on Washington's latest political drama.

A venture capitalist recently remarked to me that the uncertainty the administration has created is "nothing short of paralyzing." Nobody will invest in an industry that might be the next to be overtaxed, overregulated, or publicly disemboweled.

Add to that uncertainty the administration's new populist bent, and it's a recipe for a continued capital freeze. "People in the economy are thinking about whether to invest or take risks when what they are seeing are early signs of Hugo Chávez economics," says Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan. With the White House's political fortunes fundamentally tied to economic recovery, this populist fire is an act of self-immolation.

The blowback is already hobbling the White House's own economic team. Senate Democrats, following presidential example, have been newly eager to skewer their own "symbol" of Wall Street. The nearest to hand happened to be Mr. Obama's own Fed chief, Ben Bernanke. Majority Leader Harry Reid spent two weeks putting down a reconfirmation revolt, helping save Mr. Obama from his own antibank rhetoric.

In the House, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was meanwhile called to answer questions about AIG disclosure and counterparties. He left accused by Democrat Edolphus Towns of aiding Wall Street banks in "looting the corpse" of the insurer. Talk about a populist liability. The two men survive only as damaged goods, more susceptible to congressional pressure, less able to make tough decisions. And should Mr. Obama cut Mr. Geithner loose, the White House's tough talk narrows the pool of experienced hands it can nominate as replacements.

Policy-wise, too, the administration is boxing itself in. In keeping with the populist swerve, a feisty Mr. Obama this week upped the ante on financial regulation, warning Congress he'd veto anything less than "real reform." Yet it is precisely a stick-it-to-them bill that will have the most trouble passing a frayed Congress in an election year. And heaven help the administration if there is another financial meltdown, one that truly poses systemic risk. Could this White House dare write another bailout check to "Wall Street"?

And for what? The administration made the mistake of leaking that its new strategy was pure politics, designed to re-energize the public and put Republicans on defense. That somewhat robbed it of its authenticity. Americans have also watched this White House prop up moribund auto makers, float Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and cut deals with pharmaceutical companies. The bank war appears a bit disingenuous. The country's growing investor class is not impressed by the sort of business mau-mauing that pummels their 401(k)s.

As for those Republicans, they are hardly cowering in fear. They watched Scott Brown bat away the president's bank tax, explaining it would be passed on to consumers and hurt lending. His victory suggested the public is open to free-market explanations, and the GOP is feeling more emboldened to make them.

Not all populism is bad. There is indeed an anti-establishment anger in the nation. But the majority of it is directed at a Washington that is foisting an unpopular agenda on the country, and at the cavalier treatment of the free market that creates jobs. The president might try tapping into that.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Nov-4, by Daniel Henninger:

The Permanent Tea Party
Independent voters have become like a herd of cattle looking for political leadership.

Welcome to the permanent American tea party.

You will recall how when the tea-party movement erupted during the congressional recess in August, it was spun on the left that these events were the creation of conservative ideologues. At the start, yes. By the end, though, it was about anxieties deeper than that.

The GOP is now spinning the results in Virginia and New Jersey as proof that voters are fed up with the liberal ideologues in the White House and Congress. Yes, but it's deeper than that.

What was learned Tuesday is that the American voter is absolutely, totally, unremittingly disgusted with both political parties. More than anything, the American voter is desperate for political leadership.

That electorates in two politically significant states, led by the widening independent movement, could swing within one year from enthusiasm for electing Barack Obama to support for Virginia's OK Republican Bob McDonnell and New Jersey's lackluster Chris Christie is simply astonishing.

Add another American metaphor to the political landscape: the cattle stampede. Independent voters across the U.S. have become like the massive cattle herd John Wayne drove from Texas to Kansas in "Red River." These voters are spooked and on the run, a political stampede that veered left in November 2008 and now right a mere year later. They will keep running—crushing incumbents, candidates and political models of the left and right—through November 2010 and onto 2012 until they find a person or party capable of leadership appropriate to our unsettled times. And yes, Virginia, the possibility of a man on a white horse in 2012 is not out of the question.

Exit polls in New Jersey and Virginia said the economy was on voters' minds. Unemployment is near 10% and may stay there for a year. But it's deeper than that.

This isn't just another turn in the business cycle. On Sept. 15, 2008, the economic structure of the U.S. imploded. Lehman Brothers, a synonym for the American financial bedrock, filed for bankruptcy. On June 1, 2009, General Motors, once a synonym for American economic primacy, filed for bankruptcy and was effectively nationalized. In the nine months between these two iconic events, the American people were riveted to news of economic distress.

The signal event of the 2008 presidential election was the day in September when Sen. John McCain "suspended" his campaign to deal with the financial crisis. Within 48 hours, his candidacy stood naked. Mr. McCain's instincts were right; The American people wanted leadership. But he didn't have a clue how to provide it. The restless herd ran toward Barack Obama.

Now they're ready to run toward someone else. They just did in New Jersey and Virginia.

This is not normal. A new American presidency, especially this one, should not be in this much trouble 10 months into a four-year term. Nor would it be if not for the economic events that fell out of September 2008.

Absent the immediate need to steady the credit markets and deal with a deepening recession, the Obama White House would have introduced—and passed—its restructuring of the U.S. health-care system in early spring. Instead, voters watched Congress create and pass a nearly trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill, and then erect the world's tallest national budget—a towering $3.5 trillion. They watched the Obama Treasury, now hard-wired to the Federal Reserve, intervene massively in the structure of the private economy. There was an attempted federal climate-control bill, an attempted expansion of union organizing rights (card check) and second thoughts on free-trade agreements.

Only then, in June, was this hyperactive government able to introduce its health-care proposal—the public option, the remaking of the insurance industry, a 5.4% tax surcharge, the expansion of Medicaid.

After his election, Mr. Obama's strongest attribute was limitless self-confidence. He was a man aglow with knowledge, control and . . . leadership. Now, with the scale and cost of Mr. Obama's ambitions so clear, the question many voters are asking is whether the Obama government's reach exceeds its grasp or abilities—or any government's.

The most acute voters know these are not normal times. The Obama vision so far looks a lot like the social-market economic model of Europe, where leaders such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel give homilies about the "crisis" of capitalism. If American voters then look toward Asia, they see rising economies using capitalism to supplant Europe.

American voters know they've reached a long-term economic tipping point. Which way to go, old West or new East? They understand the challenges are growing while the politicians seem to be shrinking.

So the Republicans "won" Tuesday. Now what?

Just as the Democrats in 2008 ran mainly against "Bush," the Republican political model seems to be to let Democratic failure dump states like New Jersey and Virginia into their control. But I think most voters, no matter their party registration, know that in the past 12 months the stakes for them have suddenly become larger than political "control."

Unless leadership emerges equal to the new world voters see they have fallen into, volatility in America's election returns is going to be the norm for a long time.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Feb-11, by Peggy Noonan:

The Off-Center President
Obama says he'd settle for a single term—and seems to mean it.

There is, I think, an amazing political fact right now that is hiding in plain sight and is rich with implications. It was there in President Obama's Jan. 25, pre-State of the Union interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, who was pressing him about his political predicaments. "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," he said. "And I—and I believe that."

Now this is the sort of thing presidents say, and often believe they believe, but at the end of the day they all want two terms. Except that Mr. Obama shows every sign of meaning it, and if he does, it explains a lot about his recent decisions and actions.

A week after the Sawyer interview, the president had a stunning and revealing exchange with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat likely to lose her 2010 re-election campaign. He was meeting with Senate Democrats to urge them to continue with his legislative agenda. Mrs. Lincoln took the opportunity to beseech him to change it. She urged him to distance his administration from "people who want extremes," and to find "common ground" with Republicans in producing legislation that would give those in business the "certainty" they need to create jobs.

While answering, Mr. Obama raised his voice slightly and quickened his cadence. "If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression . . . the result is going to be the same. I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us in this fix in the first place." He continued: "If our response ends up being, you know . . . we don't want to stir things up here," then "I don't know why people would say, 'Boy, we really want to make sure those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.'"

When I saw the videotape later, I wondered how the senator, now down by as much as 23 points in her bid for re-election, felt. Actually I wanted to ask, "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

The Washington Post's Charles Lane, one of the few journalists to note the exchange, said he found it revealing in two ways: First, the president equates becoming more centrist with becoming more like George W. Bush, and second, he apparently sees movement to the center as a political loser.

These are two surprising things to think, and they have contributed to our astonishing political moment, in which a popular young president who won by 9.5 million votes 15 months ago has seen support for his programs slip to the point that a Gallup poll this week found him running even with a nameless Republican in 2012.

His reaction to all this is striking. He doesn't seem a man at sea who's flailing and trying to grab any deck chair that floats by. He seems a man who is certain he is right, in the long term if not in the day-to-day. And if the cost of being right is a single term, then so be it. Which, again, is not how presidents usually think. And not how legislators, who live to be re-elected, want the president of their party to think.

This touches on the still-essential question that historians will write books about: How did the president lose the room? How did he lose popularity?

The leftward edge of the left says he did it by being too accommodating, by trying for a bipartisanship that doesn't exist. The rightward edge of the right says he did it by revealing his essentially socialistic agenda. The center has said, in polls and at the polls, that it didn't like his administration's first-year obsession with a health-care bill that was huge, costly and impenetrably complicated, and would be run by those people who gave you the DMV and the post office.

The political class this week blamed it on the Chicago Mafia, the longtime Obama friends and associates who surround him in the Oval Office. But even that doesn't explain it. What did they do wrong? And why do people think Mr. Obama's advisers are different from Mr. Obama?

Washington's pundits have begun announcing that the White House is better at campaigning than at governing, but that was obvious last summer. The president and his advisers understand one thing really well, and that is Democratic primaries and Democratic politics. This is the area in which they made their careers. It's how they defeated Hillary Clinton—by knowing how Democrats think. In the 2008 general election, appealing for the first time to all of America and not only to Democrats, they had one great gift on their side, the man who both made Mr. Obama and did in John McCain, and that was George W. Bush.

But now it is 2010, and Mr. Bush is gone. Mr. Obama is left with America, and he does not, really, understand it. That is why he thinks moving to the center would be political death, when moving to the center and triangulating, as Bill Clinton did, might give him a new lease on life.

But there's something else that has led Mr. Obama to his falling poll numbers. When FDR followed the disaster that was Herbert Hoover, he took a new and different path. The government would now hold a new place in the daily American reality. When Ronald Reagan followed the disaster that was Jimmy Carter, he took a new and different path. The federal government would be pushed back from its intrusions on Americans. But when Barack Obama took over after the disaster that was George W. Bush, he did not, in terms of the most pressing domestic issue after unemployment, take a new and different path. He spent, just like Mr. Bush, only even more. It was as if he were saying, "You think Bush broke the bank? I'll show you what a broken bank looks like." This isn't a departure, it's a doubling down.

One can argue that in some areas Mr. Obama had little choice—an economy in collapse, a desperate attempt to prop it up. But he initiated plenty of spending that involved plenty of choice, and that garnered little centrist support.

Do the Democrats have hope? Oh, yes. Many Republicans spent the past year watching the president self-destruct, and not getting in the way while he did. A lot of Democrats will spend the next year hoping the Republicans self-destruct by overplaying their hand, by coming up with their own legislation and policy ideas that leave the center, and the middle class, anxious.

Republicans have a recent history of overplaying their hand when up against Democrats with difficulties. It can be hard in policy decisions to determine the difference between what is brave and what is foolhardy, what is desirable and what is possible, especially in a time such as this, when few feel secure. If the Republicans begin to jabber about the abstract and theoretical, they will find the public has little appetite for it. If they amuse themselves with speculation about the potential popularity of "playing the war card," they will find out that war, actually, is not as popular as they think, and is not, actually, a card.

Democrats in Congress, on the other hand, may choose this spring to save themselves by revolting—not only against the Republicans, but against the possible one-termer who jeopardizes their positions.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-21, by Peggy Noonan:

The New Political Rumbling
Massachusetts may signal an end to old ways of fighting.

What does the Massachusetts election mean? It means America is in play again. The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.

America never stops moving now.

Massachusetts said, "Yes, we want change, but the change we want is not the change that has been delivered by the Democratic administration and the Democratic Congress. So we will turn elsewhere."

We are in a postromantic political era. They hire you and fire you, nothing personal. Family connection, personal charm, old traditions, fealty to party, all are nice and have their place, but right now we are immersed in crisis, and we vote on policies that affect our lives.

It is not the end of something so much as the beginning of something. Ted Kennedy took his era with him. But what has begun is something new and potentially promising.

President Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points on Nov. 4, 2008. Fifteen months later, on Jan. 19, 2010, the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration, his party's candidate lost Massachusetts by five points. That's a 31-point shift. Mr. Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008. A year later, on Nov. 2, 2009, his party's candidate for governor lost by 18 points—a 25 point shift. Mr. Obama won New Jersey in 2008 by 16 points. In 2009 his party's incumbent governor lost re-election by 4 points—a 20-point shift.

In each race, the president's party lost independent voters, who in 2008 voted like Democrats and in 2010 voted like Republicans.

Is it a backlash? It seems cooler than that, a considered and considerable rejection that appears to be signaling a conservative resurgence based on issues and policies, most obviously opposition to increased government spending, fear of higher taxes, and rejection of the idea that expansion of government can or will solve our economic challenges.

And it's taking place within a particular context.

Speaking broadly: In the 2006 and 2008 elections, and at some point during the past decade, the ancestral war between Democrats and the Republicans began to take on a new look. If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the bed, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.

In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort. In 2009 and 2010, they looked at his general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations—health care, cap and trade—and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, "Uh-oh, he's a Nut!"

Which meant they were left with the Creeps.

But the Republican candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, and now Scott Brown in Massachusetts, did something amazing. They played the part of the Creep very badly! They put themselves forward as serious about spending, as independent, not narrowly partisan. Mr. Brown rarely mentioned he was a Republican, and didn't even mention the party in his victory speech. Importantly, their concerns were on the same page as the voters'. They focused on the relationship between spending and taxing, worried about debt and deficits, were moderate in their approach to social issues. They didn't have wedge issues, they had issues.

The contest between the Nuts and the Creeps may be ending. The Nuts just got handed three big losses, and will have to have a meeting in Washington to discuss whether they've gotten too nutty. But the Creeps have kind of had their meetings—in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. And what seems to be emerging from that is a new and nonsnarling Republicanism. It may be true—and they will demonstrate in time if it is true—that they have learned from past defeats, absorbed the lessons, reconsidered the meaning of politics. Maybe in time it will be said of this generation of Republicans what André Malraux said to Whittaker Chambers after reading his memoir, "Witness": "You did not come back from hell with empty hands."

For Mr. Brown now, everything depends on execution. He made the Olympics. Now he has to do the swan dive, with a billion people watching. And then he has to do it again.

He needs to serve the country the way he campaigned for votes—earnest, open, not beholden to interest or party. And he needs to avoid the Descent of the Congressional Vampires, who'll attempt to claim his victory as their own and suck from his neck until he's a pale and lifeless husk. Not to understate. But they'll want him fund-raising and speaking all over the country, not knowing or perhaps caring that the best work he can do for his party is succeeding in the eyes of his constituents, who couldn't care less about the fortunes of the GOP. He needs to avoid the vampires in the nicest possible way. Maybe he should carry a little cross deep inside his breast pocket so they retreat without knowing why: "I tried to get him to Boca for the donor retreat but some invisible force stopped me! I ran backwards and slipped on the shiny marble floor! Mah hip is out! "

In a telephone conversation Wednesday night, Mr. Brown spoke of what's ahead. The conversation turned to the movie "The Candidate," to the moment Robert Redford wins the election and takes a top strategist aside to ask: "What do we do now?"

Mr. Brown laughed: "I know what I want to do: go down there and be a good person, a good and competent senator. I have huge shoes to fill, the legacy is just overwhelming. I'm a consensus builder. . . . I can disagree in the daytime and have a coffee or beer later on. Everyone's welcome to their opinion."

He said he thought the president "inherited a lot of problems," that "he's doing a great job with North Korea, a nice job with Afghanistan." A centerpiece of Mr. Brown's campaign was opposition to the president's health-care plan, but he stressed that he opposes high spending wherever it comes from. "I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government."

The next morning he took the 7 a.m. shuttle from Boston to Washington for his first trip to the Capitol. On the plane, after they took off, the pilot came on and said, "Senator Brown is on board, on his way to Washington." The plane erupted in applause.

That's a good way to begin. It reminded me of 12 months before, on the shuttle to Washington, with a plane full of people on their way to the inauguration of Barack Obama. The pilot spoke of it, and the plane erupted in cheers.

That feels like another era. Because America keeps moving, the plates keep shifting, and execution is everything. Everything.

from National Journal, 2010-Jan-14, by Reid Wilson:

Majority Would Vote Against Obama

A year into his tenure, a majority of Americans would already vote against Pres. Obama if the '12 elections were held today, according to a new survey.

The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else. Fully 37% say they would definitely cast a ballot against Obama. Meanwhile, just 39% would vote to re-elect the pres. to a 2nd term, and only 23% say they definitely would do so.

Obama's first year in office has been marked by an unemployment rate that surged to 10%, an increased commitment of troops to Afghanistan and a health care battle that has taken a serious political toll on the WH.

Obama's approval rating is down to 47%, the poll showed, a 14-point drop since the April survey. 45% disapprove, up 17 points from April. Only 41% say they trust Obama more than Congressional GOPers, while 33% pick the GOP over the WH. That 8-point gap is down from a 21-point edge Obama sported as recently as Sept.

Just 34% say the country is moving in the right direction, down 13 points since April, and 55% say it is off on the wrong track, up 13 points over the same period.

But as GOPers focus on taxes and spending, that message seems to be causing Obama the most harm. Among those who believe Obama's policies have moved the country in the wrong direction, 45% cite spending and government regulation as a top cause for their opposition.

Meanwhile, those who think Obama's policies are moving the country down the right track largely cite long-term benefits of his initiatives.

In the meantime, health care legislation is by no means popular, but a majority of Americans don't oppose the legislation yet. 44% said they support the legislation under consideration, down 5 points from the last poll in Sept., while 46% oppose it.

The poll, conducted by Financial Dynamics, surveyed 1,200 adults between Jan. 3-7 for a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.

For more on the Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll, see Ron Brownstein's take on a distrustful America and the withering green shoots after a year under the Obama admin. Full poll results are available here [pdf].

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-19:

Boston Tea Party
Massachusetts voters tell Democrats to shelve ObamaCare.

'It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."

—Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789.

Two hundred and twenty-one years later, the sage of Monticello has been proven right again. Aroused and well-informed by a year of watching a liberal majority go very far wrong, Massachusetts voters handed a Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for 47 years to Republican Scott Brown, a little known state senator from Wrenthem.

The resounding five-point victory in one of America's most liberal states is an upset heard 'round Washington—and one that ought to force Democrats to rethink their entire agenda, national health care in particular. Despite an 11th-hour intervention by President Obama in a state he carried with ease only 14 months ago, state Attorney General Martha Coakley was routed even in such unlikely tea-party outposts as Andover (58%) and amid a large turnout for a midwinter special election.

***

Democratic delusionists are already attributing Mrs. Coakley's defeat solely to her weaknesses as a candidate, and those were real enough (Curt Schilling, "Yankee fan"). But the last time the Bay State elected a Republican to the Senate was 1972, and a mere 15% of state voters now belong to the GOP. Mr. Brown won because moderates and independents swarmed to him, and because he had the wit and nerve to make the race a referendum on Democratic policies in Washington.

The White House insists that the election had nothing to do with health care. But Mr. Brown ran explicitly on a promise to be the 41st Senator against ObamaCare. "I can stop it,'' he declared in one debate.

Massachusetts passed a prototype of the Obama plan in 2006, and residents have since watched as their insurance premiums have risen to the highest in the nation, budget costs have soared, and bureaucrats are planning far more draconian regulation of medical practice. Mr. Brown accurately said the national sequel would be too expensive and reduce the quality of care, and that it would be a "raw deal" forcing Massachusetts taxpayers to subsidize all other states.

It's telling, too, that at his rally for Mrs. Coakley on Sunday, Mr. Obama mentioned health care only by implication. The Commander in Chief did find time to deride Mr. Brown's pickup truck—six separate times. Mrs. Coakley also didn't mention health care in her final TV ad. The Democratic Party's top priority had become such a political albatross that Democrats didn't dare mention it lest it drive more votes to Mr. Brown.

***

The question now is how Democrats will respond to this historic election rebuke. Only a fleeting supermajority and corrupt logrolling has allowed ObamaCare to advance as far as it has, but many liberals will be tempted to keep telling voters to shut up and learn to like what Democrats give them. "Let's remove all doubt," Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters this week. "We will have health care one way or another."

Sometimes politicians really are as obtuse as they seem.

One of those Pelosi ways would be to delay certifying the election or seating Mr. Brown, and then rushing a bill to a vote in the next 15 days. But even liberals can't relish that spectacle of disdain for voters. Another option is to use the budget reconciliation process that would require only 51 Senators. But that would take several more months of committee work and controversy when the White House desperately wants to move on to jobs and its "austerity budget."

A third bloody-minded option would be for the House to pass the Senate's Christmas Eve bill, word for word without amendment. Liberals might swallow that humiliation, but then again ObamaCare only slipped through the House by an eyelash before Thanksgiving, and the bill keeps getting more unpopular.

Many Members may be curled on the floor in a fetal position now that the GOP has won even in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. (We'd love to eavesdrop on the next Blue Dog caucus meeting, or Indiana Senator Evan Bayh's conversations with his pollster.) And assuming they're not paper tigers, Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) and his band of 10 or so pro-life Democrats have said they can't accept the Senate language on funding abortions.

Even if one of these partisan efforts in brute political force succeeded in passing a bill, the effort would only further enrage the public and lead to an even larger Democratic rout in November.

The sensible alternative would be for Democrats to concede how badly they have misread the mandate of their 2008 victory and the public mood. They were elected to fix the economy and to replace a tapped-out GOP, not to exhume and pass every dead 20th-century liberal dream.

The place to start such a rethinking is on health care, by dumping the House and Senate bills and negotiating one that can attract Republican votes. A de minimis package that fixed some of the cost-drivers embedded in the tax code and added refundable tax credits to help the uninsured wouldn't be our policy ideal, but it would be better than the vast new entitlement spending, taxation and central planning that is ObamaCare. Mr. Brown (like everyone) says he supports universal coverage, and what an irony it would be if he and other Republicans ultimately voted for a more moderate plan that saved Democrats from their worst ideological obsessions.

More broadly, Mr. Brown's entire platform was built on change in Washington, and his candidacy tapped into the economic anxiety and political estrangement that voters feel nationwide. The electorate is livid about bailouts, blowout spending and the coming tax increases that Democrats will claim are necessary because of the deficits they have created.

On the economy, Mr. Brown didn't merely oppose tax increases; he was forthright in proposing across the board tax cuts to spur the economy. One of his ads cited JFK's supply-side cuts, and Democrats would be wise to heed that message and reconsider their desire to let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year. Cap and tax on energy, easier unionization and higher estate taxes should all be dropped as burdens holding back job creation and the pace of the economic recovery.

***

Yesterday's vote wasn't a repudiation of Mr. Obama's Presidency, or at least it needn't be. The President remains more popular than his policies, and voters want him to succeed. But they are also telling him he needs to steer a more moderate, less partisan course, returning to the pragmatism and comity that shaped his political rise but have vanished in his first, squandered year.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-19:

The Message of Massachusetts
A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit.

Whether or not Republican Scott Brown wins today in Massachusetts, the special Senate election has already shaken up American politics. The close race to replace Ted Kennedy, liberalism's patron saint, shows that voters are rebelling even in the bluest of states against the last year's unbridled pursuit of partisan liberal governance.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of President Obama's Inaugural, and it's worth recalling the extraordinary political opportunity he had a year ago. An anxious country was looking for leadership amid a recession, and Democrats had huge majorities and faced a dispirited, unpopular GOP. With monetary policy stimulus already flowing, Democrats were poised to get the political credit for the inevitable economic recovery.

Twelve months later, Mr. Obama's approval rating has fallen further and faster than any recent President's, Congress is despised, the public mood has shifted sharply to the right on the role of government, and a Republican could pick up a Senate seat in a state with no GOP Members of Congress and that Mr. Obama carried by 26 points.

What explains this precipitous political fall? Democrats and their media allies attribute it to GOP obstructionism, though Republicans lack the votes to stop anything by themselves. Or they blame their own Blue Dogs, who haven't stopped or even significantly modified any legislation of consequence.

Barney Frank; Ed Markey

Or they blame an economic agenda that wasn't populist or liberal enough because it didn't nationalize banks and spend even more on "stimulus." It takes a special kind of delusion to believe, amid a popular revolt against too much government spending and debt, that another $1 trillion would have made all the difference. But that's the latest left-wing theme.

The real message of Massachusetts is that Democrats have committed the classic political mistake of ideological overreach. Mr. Obama won the White House in part on his personal style and cool confidence amid a recession and an unpopular war. Yet liberals in Congress interpreted their victory as a mandate to repeal more or less the entire post-1980 policy era and to fulfill, at last, their dream of turning the U.S. into a cradle-to-grave entitlement state.

We had been encouraged a year ago by Mr. Obama's selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff because we thought he would have learned from the Clinton failure of 1993-1994 and knew enough to stand up to the Congressional left. How wrong we were. Mr. Emanuel and his boss have instead deferred to Congress's liberal barons on every major domestic policy.

These committee chairmen are all creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.

George Miller; David Obey

While Mr. Obama campaigned as a young postpartisan Democrat who wanted a new era of comity in Washington, his victory has instead empowered these ancient left-wing warriors. These are the men who have run Washington this past year, and they are Mr. Obama's de facto cabinet. The nearby photos show some of the most powerful, clockwise from the top right:

• Ed Markey of Massachusetts, first elected in 1976, helped to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the House and has pushed relentlessly for the EPA to declare carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act that didn't mention carbon.

• Wisconsin's David Obey, elected in 1969, is the House Appropriations chairman who steered the $787 billion stimulus to focus on Medicaid expansion and other transfer payments that have done nothing for economic growth.

• Henry Waxman, first elected in the Watergate class of 1974, deposed John Dingell in 2008 as too moderate to run the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Hollywood liberal is co-author of the cap-and-tax vote that will cost numerous Blue Dogs their seats.

• Pete Stark, class of 1972, runs the health subcommittee on Ways and Means and has written most of the House health reform that has forced moderates to walk the plank on the "public option."

• George Miller, class of 1974 and chief enforcer for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has pushed to nationalize the college student loan market. Like Mr. Stark, he's from California.

Pete Stark; Henry Waxman

• Barney Frank of Massachusetts, class of 1980 and chief protector of Fannie Mae, wrote the financial reform that would make too-big-to-fail the law for the largest banks. He has also pushed the mortgage foreclosure programs that have extended the housing recession by preventing home prices from finding a bottom.

It is the combination of all of these and other policies that has ignited the political revolt we are now seeing in Massachusetts, and first saw last November in Virginia and New Jersey. Had Democrats modified their agenda to nurture a fragile economy and financial system, they could now claim their policies worked and build on them later.

Instead, their frenetic agenda has frightened voters and businesses about the vast expansion of government power and enormous tax increases to come. The resulting uncertainty and the anticipation of higher costs for labor, taxes and energy have undermined what ought to be a more robust pace of job creation and overall recovery.

The lesson of Mr. Obama's lost first year is that an economic crisis is a terrible thing to exploit. As they have each time in the last 40 years that they have had total control of Washington, Democrats are proving again that America can't be successfully governed from the left. If that is the lesson Mr. Obama learns from Massachusetts, he might still salvage his Presidency.

from the Washington Examiner, 2010-Jan-13, by Michael Barone:

Obama's rapturous style versus tea party substance

In his New York Times column last week, David Brooks contrasted "the educated class," which supports Barack Obama and his liberal worldview, with the tea party movement, "a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against, ... the concentrated power of the educated class."

Many conservatives read Brooks as putting down the tea partiers. I think he was indicating distaste for both sides. "I'm not a fan" of the tea party movement, he wrote, but he also noted, "Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the year."

Still, it sounds like Brooks was indulging the conceit of so many liberals that they are, well, simply smarter than conservatives.

But when you look back over the surges of enthusiasm in the politics of the last two years, you see something like this: The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance.

Remember those rapturous crowds that swooned at Barack Obama's rhetoric. "We are the change we are seeking," he proclaimed. "We will be able to look back and tell our children," that "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

A lot of style there, but not very much substance. A Brookings Institution scholar who produced nothing more than that would soon be looking for a new job.

In retrospect, the Obama enthusiasts seem to have been motivated by a yearning for a rapturous, nuanced leader. Send that terrible tyrant with his tortured sentences and moral certitude back to Texas and install The One in the White House, and all would be well.

The Obama enthusiasts have achieved that goal, and perhaps it's not surprising that, as polls show, they're not much engaged in the details of the health care bills or cap-and-trade legislation or looming tax increases and the like. They, or at least most of them, were never much interested in those things anyway.

In contrast, the tea party protesters, many of them as fractious and loudmouthed as David Brooks thinks, are interested in substantive political issues. They decry the dangers of expanding the national debt, increasing government spending, and putting government in command of the health care sector.

Their concerns have basis in fact. The national debt is on a trajectory to double as a percentage of the economy over 10 years, and the Democrats' health care bills threaten to bend the cost curve up. Higher taxes could choke off economic recovery and keep unemployment up near double-digit rates for years.

Last year's stimulus bill surreptitiously raised the budget baseline for many domestic spending programs and sent money to state and local governments -- a payoff to the public employee unions who spent more than $100 million to elect Democrats in 2008.

Agree with the tea party folk or not, these are substantive public policy issues of fundamental importance.

Or look at other issues on which Brooks notes, correctly, that Americans have been moving away from positions "associated with the educated class."

The educated class thinks that gun control can reduce crime. But over the last 15 years, crime rates have plummeted thanks to Giuliani-type police tactics and while 40 states have laws permitting law-abiding citizens to get licenses to carry concealed weapons.

"The educated class believes in global warming," Brooks notes. But ordinary Americans have been noticing that temperatures have not been rising in the last decade as climate scientists' models predicted, and they may have noticed those Climategate e-mails that show how climate scientists have been jiggering the statistics and suppressing opposing views.

On these issues the educated class is faith-based and the ordinary Americans who increasingly reject their views are fact-based, just as the Obama enthusiasts are motivated by style and the tea partiers by substance.

As the educated class bitterly clings to its contempt for the increasing numbers not enlightened enough to share its views, other Americans have noticed, even in the liberal heartland of Massachusetts, where Republican Scott Brown seems on the brink of an upset victory in the special Senate election next Tuesday. That would have reverberations for the educated class an awful lot like that tea party back in 1773.

Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

from the Washington Post, 2010-Jan-13, by Michael Gerson:

Where has Obama's inspiring oratory gone?

Along with President Obama's declining public standing has come a declining rhetorical reputation. There is, of course, a relationship between the two. Even Ronald Reagan seemed a less-than-great communicator after the 1981-82 recession, with his job approval rating in the 30s. And few would be criticizing Obama's speeches if unemployment were at 6 percent. Success is the best eloquence.

But Obama's rhetorical challenge runs deeper than the recession. In the most unexpected development of his presidency, what was once universally recognized as Obama's greatest political strength -- his oratory -- now seems a serious weakness.

The swift rise of Barack Obama was primarily a literary phenomenon. His accomplishments did not come on the Senate floor; they came at Barnes & Noble. His two autobiographies, along with his 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, raised expectations of a rhetorical golden age. One early profile in New York magazine referred to Obama as "our national oratorical superhero -- a honey-tongued Frankenfusion of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cicero, Jesus, and all our most cherished national acronyms (MLK, JFK, RFK, FDR)."

But Obama went from this exaggerated expectation to his current workmanlike utterances on health care and Afghanistan without an intervening period of remarkable eloquence. His acceptance speech was flat and typical. His inauguration was an extraordinarily historic moment -- which went uncelebrated by a comparably historic utterance. Obama's speeches to Congress and the American people have generally been explanatory rather than inspirational. His demeanor at West Point -- in a speech arguing for new sacrifices in the Afghanistan war -- was so stone-cold sober that one was left longing for happy hour.

Nothing has been more damning than the praise of Obama's defenders. James Fallows of the Atlantic says, "I'm not saying that his big set-piece speeches are cliche-free. . . . Often they're not even that 'well written,' in a fancy-phrasemaking sense." And further: "Indeed, I can hardly remember any phrase or sentence from any speech Obama has ever given." Obama does not need "fine language" or "rhetorical polish" because he has the "eloquence that comes from original thought." Another defender has praised Obama's avoidance of "gratuitous bids" for a Bartlett's citation. Another concludes, "Maybe we don't need an inspiring president right now."

Unasked is the question: Why can't original thought and intellectual seriousness also be expressed in speeches that are well written, cliche-free, polished, inspiring and memorable?

There are passages from Obama speeches that embody all these things -- parts of his Nobel Prize speech come to mind. But they mainly serve as reminders of what is too often missing. Even Obama's well-constructed lectures -- such as his Philadelphia race speech or his Cairo remarks -- are marred by a transparent rhetorical ploy. In Obama's running seminar, a flawed thesis and a flawed antithesis are always resolved by the synthesis of Obama himself -- the speaker as Hegelian culmination of history. In this way, Obama manages to be both academic and arrogant. Instead of exploring the genuinely historic nature of his time, he veers toward messianism. His arrival is "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

But Obama's largest rhetorical failure has come at times of crisis -- when a president's words matter most, and the time to craft them is most limited. His reactions to the Fort Hood murders and the Christmas Day attack were oddly disconnected from the emotions of the country he represents. His speech at Fort Hood was strong on paper but delivered with all the passion of remarks to the Chamber of Commerce. His recent White House speech on the terrorist threat was bureaucratic and bloodless. Both grief and resolve seem beyond his rhetorical range. People once thought Obama could sound eloquent reading the phone book. Now, whatever the topic, it often sounds as though he is.

His defenders, once again, elevate this into a virtue. He is an emotionally disciplined grown-up. But at least since Reagan, the rhetorical expectations of an American president have included not only mental toughness but empathy -- the ability to wear the nation's emotions on his sleeve. People want their president to be both the father and the mother of his country -- a talent shared by politicians as diverse as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (whose speeches I once helped write).

Obama's model, instead, is the coolness of Coolidge. It is old-fashioned. It may even be admirable. It is hard to call it effective. With every speech, a realization grows: A president lacking in drama may also be lacking in inspiration.

from the Washington Examiner, 2010-Jan-17, by Byron York:

Will Obama's lackluster speech really help Coakley?

Martha Coakley, the struggling Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts, has had the luxury of two presidents campaigning for her. Bill Clinton was in Boston and Worcester on Friday, and Barack Obama came to Boston today.

Who was more effective? Having watched Clinton's Boston speech from inside the room Friday, and Obama's speech on television today, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that Clinton just blew Obama's doors off. Obama's speech was halting, wandering, and humorless; the president looked as if he didn't want to be there. There's no doubt the crowd was excited to see Obama, but he seemed so hesitant and out-of-rhythm at the top that it appeared he might have been having teleprompter trouble, and he was also clearly rattled and unable to handle the completely-predictable presence of a heckler. By contrast, Clinton's speech, delivered without a prompter and seemingly off the cuff, was about as good as you can get on the stump. Clinton remains the greatest simplifier in American politics; he can present an issue -- usually the wrong side of an issue -- as the most obvious, common-sense idea you could possibly imagine. His speech was better than Obama's by a mile.

The fact is, for all his reputation as a great orator, Obama just doesn't look very good outside the comfort zone of his teleprompter and a carefully scripted event. His admirers in the Democratic party and the press may tingle with excitement when he takes the stage, but Obama was clearly the second-best presidential campaigner in the Massachusetts race.

from the Weekly Standard's blog, 2010-Jan-17, by Mary Katharine Ham:

Obama's Copy-and-Paste Campaign

President Obama will take his traveling Skillful Oratory Show to Massachusetts today. I'm sure he dislikes the circumstances under which he must travel to the Bay State—state-wide disillusionment and anger with an overreaching Obama agenda combined with a gaffe-prone Democratic candidate, improbably turning Teddy Kennedy's state into a battleground. But, let's face it, the stump is where he feels at home, and he'll likely deliver quite a speech today, full of the jaunty audience interaction, lilting preacher speak, and lofty calls to arms we know so well.

But isn't it a problem, at this point, that we do know them so well? A year into his presidency, even the AP has begun to pick on the prez's verbal tics:

All politicians have their verbal tics -- say, John McCain's "my friends" -- but few resort to their crutches as often as Obama relies on his "let me be clear" set-up. He deploys it in formal speeches as well as in impromptu remarks, meaning that the White House speechmakers have keyed in on the boss's security blanket.

It's not just that the president's words and phrases are often the same. They are, but that is forgiveable. What's more problematic is that the message crafted by those words is almost exactly the same as it was in August of 2008. Things have certainly changed since he was elected—the unemployment rate, the nation's deficit, the American people's patience with sweeping liberal overhauls, and confidence in the government to make any of it better—but Obama's stump message has not changed with the times.

To an increasing degree, when he hits the trail, Obama's overdone message of "new politics" and "change" paradoxically highlights how tired and status quo are the candidates he's supporting.

When Obama was campaigning for an uninspiring Democratic gubernatorial candidate blanketing Virginia with negative advertising, he touted the "smart decisions and sound investments and renewed civility to our politics."

Anyone who had paid any attention to the race, even Democrats, would have conceded it was actually Republican candidate Bob McDonnell talking solutions over personal attacks, taking that above-the-fray, hopeful Obama approach to advertising and speeches. To be sure, a wide lead gave him the luxury of striking that posture, but the fact remained that Obama's rhetoric was referring to the wrong man:

somebody who listens to folks even when we don't always agree; somebody who focuses not on short-term politics, but on a practical, long-term vision -- and that man is...

Creigh Deeds?

But at least Deeds was a new-ish candidate, even if he was running to replace a Democratic governor (in Virginia, governors can serve only one term).

The "change" message was even more jarring when applied to incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey. Corzine may be a lot of things, but he's hardly a symbol of ethical renewal. Nor is the state's Democratic machine the pinnacle of Obama-brand "people power." But no matter. The rhetoric was applied, liberally, at a rally in New Jersey:

So let me just -- let me just be clear.  I know there are folks here who may be cynical about politics.  Certainly there are folks watching who might be cynical about politics.  I know that folks are skeptical about whether their elected leaders can or will do anything about the problems they face.  And you've got a right to be cynical.  Year after year, decade after decade, you've seen progress stymied, partisan gridlock, whether it's in your state capitols or your nation's capitol.

But here's the thing.  New Jersey now has a governor who's bucking that trend, who's refusing to go along with business as usual.  He's telling the truth about the challenges you face and he's making every effort to meet them.  And I'm here today to urge you to cast aside the cynics and the skeptics, and prove to all Americans that leaders who do what's right and who do what's hard will be rewarded and not rejected. 

Part of the reason there were cynics in New Jersey that night is because they live in New Jersey and had Jon Corzine as a governor. They knew very well that Obama's mere presence would not wash away the "old-style" politics there any differently than it did in Washington. They knew Jon Corzine wasn't the guy to try, as they proved at the polls, electing Republican Chris Christie by six points. But Obama was full steam ahead on the inspiration, no matter how little it applied:

One voice can change a room.  (Applause.)  And if one voice can change a room, it can change a city.  And if it can change a city, it can change a state.  If it can change a state, it can change a nation.  Change a nation, it can change the world.  It can change in New Jersey right here.  Your voice can change this election.  Don't give up.  Don't lose heart.  Don't get impatient.  Support the guy who's fighting for you.  Your voice can change the world.  Your voice can elect Jon Corzine, governor once again of New Jersey.

You can change the world by re-electing this incumbent, lackluster, and occasionally corrupt Democratic governor of New Jersey.

Can one blame voters if the Obame's old-style rhetoric didn't match up with their new-style angst? In speeches in Virginia and New Jersey, Obama repeatedly talked about candidates who create "real solutions to real problems," but he himself is applying 2008 rhetoric to 2010 campaigns.

He'll do the same thing in Massachusetts today.

Will he tout "civility" and "new-style" standing next to the woman whose campaign sent the notorious Massachusetts Rape Mailer? Will he bash Washington elitism and the entitlement of politicians as he stumps for the woman who thought she'd mosey through a cakewalk on her way to "Teddy's seat?" Will he claim that stubborn adherence to a sweeping health-care overhaul for more than a year as it grows unpopular even in Massachusetts is "pragmatic," "non-partisan," or represents "change?"

I imagine he'll do all those things. He'll talk about the mop he's had to pick up to clean the mess left for him. He'll concede that things are hard everywhere, not just Massachusetts, but there seems to be some "selective memory about who got us in this situation." He'll close with an emotional call to arms—"knock on doors, one voice, change the world, etc."— but likely won't be able to hit those notes quite the way he used to. It was clear in his web video for Coakley this week, that it's hard for him to convince even himself that she's "the one we've been waiting for."

Obama's 2008 rhetoric worked in 2008. His mere presence could change minds and rally millions then. Since then, his words and presence have not delivered the Olympics, an agreement on climate change, Iranian cooperation, Virginia, or New Jersey.

In Massachusetts, no matter what he says, Obama will find that it's not his crowd that's "fired up and ready to go."

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-14, by Peggy Noonan:

Slug the Obama Story 'Disconnect'
Obama and the public are on different pages, if not different in books.

The first thing I learned in journalism is that every story has a name. At WEEI News Radio in Boston, the editor would label each story with one word, called a "slug," and assign a writer to write it for air. This week's devastating earthquake would be slugged "Haiti." A story about a gruesome murder might be "Nightmare."

We're at the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and the slug, the word that captures its essence, is "Disconnect."

This is, still, a surprising word to use about the canny operatives who so perfectly judged the public mood in 2008. But they haven't connected since.

There is a disconnect, a detachment, a distance between the president's preoccupations and the concerns of the people. There's a disconnect between his policy proposals and the people's sense, as expressed in polls, of what the immediate problems are.

I'm not referring to what is being called the president's rhetorical disconnect. In this criticism, he is not emotional enough when he speaks, he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, he is aloof, like a lab technician observing the movements within a petri dish called America. It may be true that this doesn't help him, but so what? In a successful presidency, his cool demeanor would be called an interesting facet, not a problem. And we don't really need presidents to move us, when you think about it. We need them to lead, and in the right direction.

Nor am I referring to an iconic disconnect. In this criticism, the president refuses to or is unable to act as a paternal figure. "A president is a father," say these critics. "He must comfort us." But, actually, your father is your father. Voters didn't hire Mr. Obama to play the old dad in the MGM movie. In any case he always seemed like the bright older brother, not the father. At the end of the day you, being a grown-up, don't need him to be your daddy, do you?

You want a competent chief executive with a deep and shrewd sense of the people. Americans want him to be on the same page as they are. But he's on a different page, and he may in fact be reading a different book. Thus the latest Quinnipiac poll, which puts his approval/disapproval at a descending 45% to 45%. Pure hunch: The approval number is probably slightly high because people don't want to disapprove of their new president—the stakes are so high!—and don't like telling pollsters they disapprove of him.

The real story is that his rhetorical and iconic detachment are harped on because they reflect a deeper disconnect, the truly problematic one, and that is over policy. It doesn't really matter how he sounds. It matters, in a time of crisis, what he does. That's where the lack of connection comes in.

The people are here, and he is there. The popularity of his health care plan is very low, at 35% support. Someone on television the other day noted it is as low as George Bush's popularity ratings in 2008.

Yet—and this is the key part—the president does not seem to see or hear. He does not respond. He is not supple, able to hear reservations and see opposition and change tack. He has a grim determination to bull this thing through. He negotiates each day with Congress, not with the people. But the people hate Congress! Has he not noticed?

The people have come alive on the issue of spending—it's too high, it threatens us! He spends more. Everywhere I go, I hear talk of "hidden taxes" and a certainty that state and federal levies will go up, putting a squeeze on a middle and upper middle classes that have been squeezed like oranges and are beginning to see themselves as tired old rinds. Mr. Obama seems at best disconnected from this anxiety.

The disconnect harms him politically, but more important it suggests a deepening gulf between the people and their government, which only adds to growling, chafing national discontent. It also put the president in the position, only one year in, only 12 months into a brand-new glistening presidency, of seeming like the same old same old. There's something tired in all this disconnect, something old-fashioned, something sclerotic and 1970's about it.

And of course the public is reacting. All politicians are canaries in coal mines, they're always the first to feel the political atmosphere. It was significant when the Democrats lost the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey two months ago. It is significant that a handful of House and Senate Democrats have decided not to run this year. And it is deeply significant that a Republican state senator in Massachusetts, Scott Brown, may topple the Democratic nominee to fill Ted Kennedy's former seat, Martha Coakley. In a way, the Republicans have already won—it's a real race, it's close, and in "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts"!

Mr. Brown's whole story right now is not about disconnect but connect. Massachusetts has an 8.8% unemployment rate, and graduates of the commonwealth's great universities can't find work. An old Boston Republican hand said of the race, "It's 100% percent about policies—health care, taxes, what's the plan on the economy?" Mr. Brown charges that Ms. Coakley's support for cap and trade and health care will amount to $2 trillion in taxes in the next five years.

Ms. Coakley has the advantage—Massachusetts is the heart of blue-state America—but in a way her advantage is her curse. Because she is the candidate of a party that for 40 years has been used to winning, reigning and winning again, she looks like the same old same old, a standard old-line liberal, the frontwoman for a machine, a yes woman for the Obama-Pelosi era.

It is interesting that Ms. Coakley, too, has been told by pundits the past week that her problem is that she's not emotional enough. She should show passion and fire! She should cry like Hillary!

This comes not only from pundits but normal people, and if you contemplate the meaning it is, weirdly: You're not good enough at manipulating us! We want more theatrics!

Both national parties are trying to pour in money and resources, but the most obnoxious intrusion must have been the fund-raising letter this week from New York's Sen. Charles Schumer, who tried to rouse the troops by calling Mr. Brown a "far-right teabagger." Does that kind of thing even work anymore? Doesn't name calling put off anyone not already predisposed to agree with it?

In a time when the people of Massachusetts have real concerns about their ability to make a living, stuff like the Schumer letter is just more evidence of a party's disconnect.

Politics is about policy. It's not about who's emotional and who cries or makes you cry. It's not about big political parties and the victories they need in order to rule. It's not about going on some ideological toot, which is what the health-care bill is, hoping the people will someday see and appreciate your higher wisdom.

In a way, Mr. Obama's disconnection is a sign of the times. We are living in the age of breakup, with so many of the ties that held us together loosening and fraying. If the president wants to lead toward something better, he should try listening. If you can't connect through the words you speak, at least you can do it through your ability to hear.

from the Washington Post, 2010-Jan-29, p.A1, by Paul Kane and Shailagh Murray:

After Obama speech, Democrats confused about path ahead

A day after President Obama called on them to renew efforts to pass his ambitious agenda, congressional Democrats remained in disarray Thursday about how to move forward, with at least some pointing at the White House as the cause of the legislative standstill gripping Capitol Hill.

Democrats left town early Thursday weighing their next steps on everything from the stalled health-care bill to competing job-creation packages. Before they departed, some criticized Obama for casting blame on the Senate, where moderates felt singled out for ridicule. Others sought to shift the burden to the GOP, latching on to Obama's call for Republicans to share responsibility for governing after a devastating special-election loss left Democrats a vote shy of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Still others said the president's calls for bipartisanship were wishful thinking and suggested that daring Republicans to block their ambitious agenda would set up a "liberating" contrast for November's midterm elections.

"We also have the responsibility, if we can't find that common ground, to stand our ground on principles," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), rejecting bipartisanship as a goal unto itself. "If we can't find a bipartisan way to do it, we are not going to say, 'Well, if it is not bipartisan, we are not going to do it.' We are going to do what we believe."

The first order of business continues to be the far-reaching health-care bill that Obama once considered the cornerstone of his domestic agenda but that took a back seat to the economy in his State of the Union address Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he felt "a little bit" more confident about the health-care bill's prospects after Obama sought to rally the 48 million Americans who watched the speech.

"I think he did a good job of laying out the problem," Reid said.

Reid and Pelosi said they remain stalled on the most likely option for moving ahead on health-care reform. That would require the Senate to pass a bill, through a parliamentary move requiring a simple majority, resolving issues in its version of the legislation that have prompted objections from House Democrats. That would allow the House to then approve the Senate's measure, thus avoiding another vote on the entire bill in the Senate, where it would almost certainly face a successful 41-vote filibuster by Republicans.

Pelosi, reiterating her opposition to simply passing the Senate legislation, said it is only "75 percent the same" as the House bill and mocked Obama for suggesting that the two measures are 90 percent similar.

Democratic criticism

Moderates said the president did not meet their hopes that he would adjust his legislative strategy to consider the Senate's limitations, including the need for Republican votes on most major bills. "I thought he was pointing the finger at the Senate a lot," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). "I do not think it was fair."

Landrieu echoed the concern of several Democrats who said Obama still has not stated his preference on how to proceed on health-care reform. "I think the president should have been more clear," she said. "I'm hoping in the next week or two, he will be. Mailing in general suggestions, sending them over the transom, is not necessarily going to work."

Other Democrats said they wish Obama had been a more direct part of the legislative process.

"Right now, the president needs to become totally involved in domestic policy," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.). "Rather than call for a bill [to be approved], send a bill [himself]."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said the mistake was not keeping the emphasis on ways to fix the economy and create jobs throughout 2009. "I think that the recession has proven to be much longer and deeper than he thought it would be," Bingaman said. "Hindsight being 20/20, we should have kept more focus on that. . . . There have been so many issues and events that have intervened, it's been hard to keep a focus on the economy."

GOP leaders showed little interest in the constructive collaboration that Obama called for in his speech, criticizing most of his policy proposals, including his job-creation agenda, because it would rely on rerouting money from the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program. "Everybody's for jobs, but I'm not for maxing out the credit cards using TARP funds," said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.). "I think there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and that's not the right way."

Discord on jobs bill

Widespread disagreement remains among Democrats on what the jobs bill should include when they return it to the forefront. Pelosi pushed through a $154 billion stimulus plan in December, filled with an expansion of unemployment and health-care benefits as well as new infrastructure spending. Senate Democrats have been met with resistance from moderates who objected to such a high cost.

The initial offering from Senate Democrats is expected to include tax credits for job creation by small businesses, followed by a broader effort in the spring. Reid has delayed announcing the first proposals so he can incorporate several of the ones Obama offered, including shaving $30 billion from TARP and sending it to community banks to boost lending to small businesses.

Obama will prod Democrats on the issue Friday, when he plans to announce a $33 billion package of tax breaks aimed at encouraging businesses to hire new workers and give their employees raises.

Several Democrats said Republican Scott Brown's Senate victory in Massachusetts takes the burden off them to deliver every vote for critical legislation, giving them an opportunity to frame Republicans in an unfavorable light on key issues. One senior Senate Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal caucus discussions, said his party did not hold Republicans accountable last year when they tried to filibuster funding for Veterans Affairs hospitals and the Pentagon's budget.

Some Republicans said they shared Obama's frustration that Congress had become so polarized that urgent problems are festering. Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) said one test would come with the financial regulatory overhaul bill taking shape in the Senate banking committee. "We have a great chance of passing a bipartisan bill if the destructive forces that exist here in Washington don't overtake the process," he said.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-15, by Jon Keller:

The Backlash Is Coming! The Backlash Is Coming!
People in Massachusetts think they're at the leading edge of politics. That's not good news for Democrats.

Boston

With characteristic hubris, people in this state like to think they've been at the leading edge of American politics since the "shot heard 'round the world" in 1775. And in the past few years, we've given the nation a preview of Barack Obama's presidential campaign with Deval Patrick's successful 2006 bid for governor; provided a critical boost for Mr. Obama's candidacy in the form of an endorsement by Edward Kennedy; and enacted a health-care law that is a template for ObamaCare.

But hubris has yielded to shock here at the possibility that the next political trend the Bay State might foreshadow is a voter backlash against the Democratic Party.

After Kennedy's death in August, few imagined there would be any problem replacing him with another Democrat in the U.S. Senate. It's been 16 years since Massachusetts elected a Republican to a congressional seat, 31 years since the last Republican senator left office. Gov. Patrick appointed a former Kennedy aide as the interim senator, and Democratic primary voters chose the well-regarded state Attorney General Martha Coakley as their nominee for the special election.

That election, which will be held on Tuesday, was widely seen as a formality. Ms. Coakley coasted through the holiday season while the GOP challenger, little-known state Sen. Scott Brown, scrambled for traction.

The new year, however, brought polls showing the race tightening. This week a Rasmussen Reports poll gave Ms. Coakley a slim 49% to 47% advantage; a Suffolk University survey has Mr. Brown with a narrow lead. Independents are breaking for Mr. Brown by a three-to-one margin, Rasmussen finds. And many people do not realize that independents outnumber Democrats—51% of registered voters in the state are not affiliated with a party, while 37% are registered as Democrats and 11% as Republicans.

"Around the country they look at Massachusetts and just write us off," longtime local activist Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation and Government told me. "But people around here are really not happy with the extremes in the Democrat Party."

Those extremes are cropping up as issues in this race. One is giving civilian legal rights to terror suspects, which Ms. Coakley supports. Mr. Brown, a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard, hammered her for that even before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day. That incident has tried the patience of an electorate normally known for its civil libertarianism. Rasmussen's most recent survey found that 65% of them want Abdulmutallab tried by the military.

Another issue is taxes. Mr. Brown has scolded Ms. Coakley for supporting a repeal of the Bush tax cuts, for entertaining the idea of passing a "war tax," and for proclaiming in a recent debate that "we need to get taxes up." Ms. Coakley says she meant that tax revenues, not rates, need to rebound. Nonetheless, Mr. Brown's critique resonates with voters who are smarting from a 25% hike in sales tax last year.

Gov. Patrick's approval ratings have also crashed, fertilizing the soil for Mr. Brown's claim in a radio ad that "our government in Washington is making the same mistakes as our government here in Massachusetts."

But nothing excites Mr. Brown's supporters more than his vow to stop ObamaCare by denying Democrats the 60th vote they would need in the U.S. Senate to shut off a GOP filibuster. The Rasmussen and Suffolk polls report that once-overwhelming statewide support for the federal health reform has fallen to a wafer-thin majority.

Support for the state's universal health-care law, close to 70% in 2008, is also in free fall; only 32% of state residents told Rasmussen earlier this month that they'd call it a success, with 36% labeling it a failure. The rest were unsure. Massachusetts families pay the country's highest health insurance premiums, with costs soaring at a rate 7% ahead of the national average, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

Doubt about the Massachusetts health-care reform "does not necessarily translate into opposition to the federal bill," cautions veteran local Democratic strategist Stephen Crawford, who is not working for any candidate in the Senate race. "I don't think opposition to the plan is going to be a make-or-break issue." That's a far cry from the once widely-held belief here that the Democratic nominee would be hustled into office by voters eager to pass ObamaCare. But it reflects a conviction among local Democratic elites that antitax and anti-big-government politics are "a tired strategy, the same old Karl Rove playbook," as Mr. Crawford puts it.

On Tuesday, we'll have a reading on whether that complacency is justified. It may not be definitive; barely two in 10 voters voted in the primaries, and turnout, especially if it is short on independents, could render the outcome a road test for each party's get-out-the-vote machinery. Here that's akin to a drag race between a Democratic Cadillac fueled with high-octane labor support and a GOP go-kart driven by pedal power. But the long-range weather forecast for the Election Day is clear. There are anecdotal reports of brisk absentee voting, a practice often driven by the state's small but aggressive pro-life faction. And the polls show a sharp enthusiasm gap in Mr. Brown's favor.

Tellingly, the usually-demure Ms. Coakley has been scorching Mr. Brown with a tired strategy out of the Obama campaign playbook, linking him to "the failed policies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney." Mr. Brown counters by linking Ms. Coakley to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Deval Patrick—people actually in power.

Are we in for another shot heard 'round the world? Perhaps. More likely, listen for the sound of horse hooves on the pavement, and a modern-day version of Paul Revere's historic warning—the backlash is coming.

Mr. Keller is the political analyst for WBZ-TV and WBZ Radio in Boston.

from the Associated Press via the Washington Post, 2010-Jan-16:

Mass. GOP Senate candidate claims defamation

BOSTON -- Republican Scott Brown charged Saturday that a Democratic mailing against his U.S. Senate campaign violates a Massachusetts law prohibiting false statements against a political candidate.

The cover of a four-page mailer sent by the Massachusetts Democratic Party says, "1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away."

Brown is a state senator, and in 2005 he filed an amendment that would have allowed workers at religious hospitals or with firmly held religious beliefs to avoid giving emergency contraception to rape victims. The amendment failed, and Brown voted in favor of a bill allowing the contraception. He also voted to override a veto issued by his fellow Republican, then-Gov. Mitt Romney.

A section of the Massachusetts General Laws prohibits false statements against political candidates that are designed or tend "to aid or to injure or defeat such candidate," with a penalty of to $1,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

Brown campaign legal counsel Daniel Winslow said, "People can shade things and spin things, but it has to have some kernel of truth."

Brown is locked in a dead heat with Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general, in the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. Independent Joseph L. Kennedy, who is not related to the famed Kennedy political family, is also on Tuesday's ballot.

Winslow called on the Democratic Party and the Coakley campaign to disavow the mailer's claim. The Brown campaign plans to wait until Tuesday, the next business day, before seeking a legal remedy, he said.

Coakley campaign spokesman Corey Welford said: "This is a failed attempt by his campaign to divert attention from the fact that Scott Brown filed an amendment that would have prevented women who have been raped from getting the health care that they need."

A party spokeswoman did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-7, by Peggy Noonan:

The Risk of Catastrophic Victory
Obama is in the midst of one. Can the GOP avert one of their own?

Passage of the health-care bill will be, for the administration, a catastrophic victory. If it is voted through in time for the State of the Union Address, as President Obama hopes, half the chamber will rise to their feet and cheer. They will be cheering their own demise.

If health care does not pass, it will also be a disaster, but only for the administration, not the country. Critics will say, "You didn't even waste our time successfully."

What a blunder this thing has been, win or lose, what a miscalculation on the part of the president. The administration misjudged the mood and the moment. Mr. Obama ran, won, was sworn in and began his work under the spirit of 2008—expansive, part dreamy and part hubristic. But as soon as he was inaugurated ,the president ran into the spirit of 2009—more dug in, more anxious, more bottom-line—and didn't notice. At the exact moment the public was announcing it worried about jobs first and debt and deficits second, the administration decided to devote its first year to health care, which no one was talking about. The great recession changed everything, but not right away.

In a way Mr. Obama made the same mistake President Bush did on immigration, producing a big, mammoth, comprehensive bill when the public mood was for small, discrete steps in what might reasonably seem the right direction.

The public in 2009 would have been happy to see a simple bill that mandated insurance companies offer coverage without respect to previous medical conditions. The administration could have had that—and the victory of it—last winter.

Instead, they were greedy for glory.

It was not worth it—not worth the town-hall uprisings and the bleeding of centrist support, not worth the rebranding of the president from center-left leader to leftist leader, not worth the proof it provided that the public's concerns and the administration's are not the same, not worth a wasted first year that should have been given to two things and two things only: economic matters and national security.

Those were not only the two topics on the public's mind the past 10 months, they were precisely the issues that presented themselves in screaming headlines at the end of the year: unemployment and the national-security breakdowns that led to the Christmas bomb plot and, earlier, the Fort Hood massacre. "That's two strikes," said the president's national security adviser, James Jones, to USA Today's Susan Page. Left unsaid: Three and you're out.

Just as bad, or worse, the president's focus on health care allowed the public to infer that his mind was not focused on our security. He'd frittered his attention on issues that were secondary and tertiary—climate change, health care—while al Qaeda moved, and the system stuttered. A lack of focus breeds bureaucratic complacency, complacency gives rise to slovenliness, slovenliness results in what was said in the report issued Thursday: that, faced with clear evidence of coming danger, the government failed, as they're saying on TV, to "connect the dots." Dots? They were boulders.

I am wondering if the Obama administration thinks it vaguely dishonorable to be popular. If you mention to Obama staffers that they really have to be concerned about the polls, they look at you with a certain . . . not disdain but patience, as if you don't understand the purpose of politics. That purpose, they believe, is to move the governed toward greater justice. Just so, but in democracy you do this by garnering and galvanizing public support. But they think it's weaselly to be well thought of.

In politics you must tend to the garden. The garden is the constituency, in Mr. Obama's case the country. No great endeavor is possible without its backing. In a modern presidency especially you have to know this, because there will be times when history throws you a crisis, and to address it you may have to do an unpopular thing. A president in those circumstances must use all the goodwill he's built up over the months and years to get through that moment and survive doing what he thinks is right. Mr. Obama acts as if he doesn't know this. He hasn't built up popularity to use on a rainy day. If he had, he'd be getting through the Christmas plot drama better than he is

The Obama people have taken to pointing out how their guy doesn't govern by the polls. This is all too believable. The Bush people, too, used to bang away about how he didn't govern by the polls. They both added unneeded stress to the past 10 years, and it is understandable if many of us now think, "Oh for a president who'd govern by the polls."

If Mr. Obama is extremely lucky—and we're not sure he's a lucky man anymore—he will get a Republican Congress in 2010, and they will do for him what Newt Gingrich did for Bill Clinton: right his ship, give him a foil, guide him while allowing him to look as if he's resisting, bend him while allowing him to look strong. ***

Which gets us to the Republicans. The question isn't whether they'll win seats in the House and Senate this year, and the question isn't even how many. The question is whether the party will be worthy of victory, whether it learned from its losses in 2006 and '08, whether it deserves leadership. Whether Republicans are a worthy alternative. Whether, in short, they are serious.

I spoke a few weeks ago with a respected Republican congressman who told me with some excitement of a bill he's put forward to address the growth of entitlements and long-term government spending. We only have three or four years to get it right, he said. He made a strong case. I asked if his party was doing anything to get behind the bill, and he got the blanched look people get when they're trying to keep their faces from betraying anything. Not really, he said. Then he shrugged. "They're waiting for the Democrats to destroy themselves."

This isn't news, really, but it was startling to hear a successful Republican political practitioner say it.

Republican political professionals in Washington assume a coming victory. They do not see that 2010 could be a catastrophic victory for them. If they seize back power without clear purpose, if they are not serious, if they do the lazy and cynical thing by just sitting back and letting the Democrats lose, three bad things will happen. They will contribute to the air of cynicism in which our citizens marinate. Their lack of seriousness will be discerned by the Republican base, whose enthusiasm and generosity will be blunted. And the Republicans themselves will be left unable to lead when their time comes, because operating cynically will allow the public to view them cynically, which will lessen the chance they will be able to do anything constructive.

In this sense, the cynical view—we can sit back and wait—is naive. The idealistic view—we must stand for things and move on them now—is shrewder.

Political professionals are pugilistic, and often see politics in terms of fight movies: "Rocky," "Raging Bull." They should be thinking now of a different one, of Tom Hanks at the end of "Saving Private Ryan." "Earn this," he said to the man whose life he'd helped save.

Earn this. Be worthy of it. Be serious.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-15, by James Taranto:

'Nobody's Watching Charlie Rose'
Glenn Beck on conspiracy theories, his critics on the right and left, and how he resembles Howard Beale of 'Network.'

New York Glenn Beck didn't always believe in what he was doing. "When I was young, I used to hear people say, 'He's a golden boy. Look at that guy. Can you imagine what he's going to be like when he grows up?' Well, I unfortunately bought into that. And I hadn't even found myself. Quite honestly, I was running from myself. But I knew how to work Top 40 radio." "Golden boy" was no exaggeration. "I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the mornings. I think I was making, I don't know, a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was 25," he tells me in his midtown Manhattan office, a few blocks from the Fox News Channel studio where he now broadcasts his eponymous program every afternoon. A drinking problem helped plunge Mr. Beck into personal and professional crisis: "By the time I was 30," he says, "nobody would work with me. I was friendless, I was hopeless, I was suicidal, lost my family—I mean, it was bad. Bottomed out, didn't know what I was going to do. I actually thought I was going to be a chef—go to work in a kitchen someplace." Instead he found a calling in talk radio. It was late in the 1990s: "I did one of my first shows at WABC [in New York]. I was filling in for somebody. . . . I used to have to write everything out and keep copious notes on everything. I overprepped everything. And I got to the end of my first hour, and I looked down at all the notes, and I hadn't touched the first piece of paper. It was all off the top of my head. It was me being me. That's when I knew: This is what I have to do." Mr. Beck, 45, has many detractors, but there's no denying that he has made a success of himself. In addition to his Fox show, he hosts "The Glenn Beck Program," syndicated on radio, publishes a magazine and a Web site, and has written seven books. "Somebody told me that our footprint in a month"—the number of people he reaches in all media—"is about 30 million," he says. His politics are libertarian. "I really kind of dig this whole freedom thing," he says. "I'd like to pass it on to the kids." But he is pessimistic about the prospects for doing so: "I'm a dad, and I no longer see a way for my kids to even inherit the money that I'm making, let alone go out there, have an idea, and create it in their own lifetime." Mr. Beck blames a political system that he describes as corrupt and out of touch, a sentiment that is widely shared: "People in Washington . . . not all of them, but a lot of them, are not men and women of honor anymore," he says. "I just saw a poll today that said 25% of Americans now believe that their government officials will, for the most part, do the right thing. Only 25%. It's the lowest number ever recorded." Mr. Beck appeals to a slice of the remaining 75% with a style that is earnest and emotional; he is known to cry on air. Although he has reported on some major news stories, including the scandals involving Acorn and former Obama aide Van Jones, he thinks of himself as a commentator and entertainer rather than a journalist. "I'm not interested in breaking news," he tells me. "I'm interested in telling the story of what's going on and then trying to figure it out." In doing so, Mr. Beck draws strong negative reactions for both his right-of-center views and his populist style. "Right now, I'm getting hammered by the left and the right, and I get hammered for being an opportunist," he says. He pleads innocent, arguing that he was as hard on George W. Bush—especially over spending and immigration—as he is on Barack Obama: "Nobody seems to recall the years . . . when I was saying the same thing and program directors were calling me saying, . . . 'Are you kidding me? You're on a conservative talk radio network. You can't come out against George W. Bush.' Well, here it goes. "That's why I connect now with the American people, because the listeners that . . . have been with me for a long time know that I have said these things at my own peril, that I'm not in it for—I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a capitalist. I dig money. But I'm not in it for the money." Cheerful and affable, Mr. Beck responds good-naturedly, even eagerly, when I ask him to respond to his critics. It's a far cry from the liberal stereotype of an angry hater. But his worldview has a dark side: "I don't believe our government officials will do the right thing. They will do the right thing for special interests and for some sort of agenda that they're not bringing me in on." When I ask him to respond to the charge that he is a conspiracy theorist, he answers, "I am the guy who debunked conspiracy theory." Mr. Beck says he received death threats from "truthers"—crackpots of the far left and the far right who believe that the U.S. government was behind 9/11—after he denounced them on his old CNN Headline News show in 2007. (Mr. Beck's revelation that Van Jones had signed a truther petition helped force Mr. Jones to resign from the White House Council on Environmental Quality in September 2009.) "I said those people were a gigantic danger from within, because we must trust each other," Mr. Beck says. "There are limits to debasement of this country, aren't there? I mean, it's one thing to believe that our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff. It's another to think that they are willing to kill 3,000 Americans. Once you cross that line, you're in a whole new territory." Yet while this is all to Mr. Beck's credit, it is not quite responsive to the question. It is possible, after all, to reject one conspiracy theory while espousing others, and the claim that "our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff" is, to say the least, a rather sweeping indictment. Mr. Beck's answer: "I believe the conspiracies, quote-unquote, that are happening now are happening all out in the open. All you have to do is track their actions. Their actions speak louder than their words. It's easy to throw out, 'Well, he's a conspiracy theorist.' Why do you say that? 'Well, because they say they're not doing that.' But their actions show that they are. "TARP, stimulus—a stimulus package that makes no sense whatsoever. No sense whatsoever! TARP, stimulus, health care that is behind closed doors, where they're giving Medicaid free to states, where they're saying, 'We're going to pay for it by reducing the cost of Medicare while we expand Medicare.' When you look at all those things, and you know that the people who are in and around the planning of those things believe in [welfare activists Richard] Cloward and [Frances Fox] Piven, believe in ["Rules for Radicals'" author] Saul Alinksy—that's not a conspiracy. That's a pretty good educated guess." As an example, Mr. Beck notes that Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, last month described the Senate health-care bill as a "starter home." Says Mr. Beck: "Sen. Harkin says to the progressive left, 'This is a starter home. Don't worry, we can add additions to this, and we'll grow it'"—a paraphrase of Mr. Harkin's remarks, but an accurate one. Mr. Beck continues: "Excuse me? That's everything that I've been saying you're going to do, and you've been denying it." This fall, Mr. Beck drew friendly fire on an American Enterprise Institute blog from Charles Murray, a libertarian social scientist who conceded that "Beck is spectacularly right (translation: I agree with him) on about 95 percent of the substantive issues he talks about." But Mr. Murray does not care for Mr. Beck's manner: "Our job is to engage in a debate on great issues and make converts to our point of view. The key word is converts—referring to people who didn't start out agreeing with us. We shouldn't be civil and reasonable just because we want to be nice guys. It is the only option we've got if we want to succeed instead of just posture. The Glenn Becks of the world posture, and make our work harder." Mr. Beck answers carefully: "I'm sorry he doesn't agree with me—doesn't agree with my approach." Then he notes the irony of a think-tank intellectual criticizing a populist media star for lacking broad appeal: "How many are reading his blog, and how many are listening to my radio show, television show, reading my books, going to conventions, seeing me on stage? I mean, I think, while I respect his position and his difference in opinion on presentation, I think one of us is probably reaching more people daily." He continues: "Look, I know a lot of people will disagree with the way I present things. I am being myself—I am a guy who is a recovering alcoholic, who lived a pretty fast life, who works hard every day, quite honestly, not to use the F-word—it used to be an art for me. I am a work in progress. But I also am a businessman that looks to get the word out to the maximum number of people." And he rejects the implication that his is a lowbrow appeal: "You name the conservative that can do a full hour—a full hour—on Woodrow Wilson and the roots of modern liberalism—for an hour—and have high ratings with it. . . . I had like three really big eggheads on the show, and people watched it. Now, you could be Charlie Rose all you want, but nobody's watching Charlie Rose." Mr. Beck identifies with the Howard Beale character from the 1976 film "Network." Beale, played by Peter Finch, is a news anchor on a fictional broadcast network who has a nervous breakdown on air, becomes a raving populist, and is a big hit with viewers. Mr. Beck invokes the fictional anchorman's most famous line: "I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. The part of Howard Beale that I liken myself to is the moment when he was in the raincoat, where he figures everything out, and he's like, 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Why the hell aren't you up at the window shouting outside?'" Mr. Beck adds, "What the media wants to make me is the Howard Beale at the end, the crazy showman that's doing anything for money. That I don't liken myself to." Some of Mr. Beck's detractors on the left, including MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann, draw a more sinister cinematic analogy. Mr. Olbermann calls Mr. Beck "Lonesome Rhodes," the cynical TV demagogue played by Andy Griffith in 1957's "A Face in the Crowd." "I had never heard of Lonesome Rhodes," Mr. Beck says. "I had never seen the movie. . . . As soon as I heard that, I watched it. . . . Lonesome Rhodes and I, I guess, had a few things in common. He was a drunk. I'm in AA; he wasn't. He, at the very beginning, said things that he believed—I think. I'm not really even sure on that. I used to not say the things I believe. . . . Now I've made a vow to myself—it actually comes from Immanuel Kant, the philosopher: 'There are many things that I believe that I shall never say. But I shall never say the things that I do not believe.' . . . The minute I violate that, I'm back to the old drunk Glenn." The source of the comparison points to another difference between Mr. Beck and Lonesome Rhodes. Mr. Olbermann is no closer to the old ideal of the straightforward, objective newsman than is Mr. Beck, and cable television has yielded up a multitude of other personalities who blend news, strong opinion and entertainment in varying degrees, including Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and, until his recent departure from CNN, Lou Dobbs. By contrast, the authors of "A Face in the Crowd" and "Network" imagined their protagonists as singular sensations who drew massive audiences at a time when viewing options were far fewer. At his peak, Lonesome Rhodes claims 65 million viewers, more than one-third of the entire U.S. population in 1957. Mr. Beck's Fox show, the third-highest-rated on the cable news channels, averaged 2.9 million viewers a day in 2009, according to Nielsen Media Research. Even his estimated monthly multimedia audience of 30 million amounts to less than 10% of all Americans. The development of cable television, with its diversity and audience segmentation, seems to have been a necessary condition for the emergence of such programming. Charles Murray may be right that Mr. Beck mostly preaches to the choir, but the observation applies equally to Mr. Beck's competitors and their respective choirs. Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-22, p.A22:

Big Government Backlash
The enormous and helter-skelter expansions of the federal government seem to be sinking the president's approval ratings.

President Obama's approval rating has sunk below 50% for the first time, but for our money the bigger polling news is the way his agenda is turning the public against activist government.

Last week's NBC/Wall Street Journal survey asked whether voters thought that "government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people" or if "government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals." This is a familiar polling question to gauge the credibility of government, albeit a bit loaded toward liberal social rhetoric.

Some 47% nonetheless replied that they thought government is doing too much, while only 44% believed that it should do more. That's a striking change since February, when the views were reversed, with 51% saying the government should do more, and only 40% saying do less.

Even more startling, in the latest survey only 18% said they trusted government to do the right thing "most of the time," down from a high of 36% in July 2004 and 27% in August 2005. Some 32% said they trusted government to do the right thing "almost never," up from single digits in earlier surveys when it was a volunteered response.

One of Mr. Obama's not so subtle political goals has been to rehabilitate the public's confidence in government as a way to further his policies of expanding the entitlement and welfare state. As he said during the campaign, the President sees himself as the anti-Reagan, seeking to build a new Democratic majority as the party of government. And in his September health-care speech to Congress, he devoted several paragraphs to defending government as an agent of social change.

So far, however, his Administration's enormous and helter-skelter expansions of the federal government seem to be having the opposite political effect.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Nov-6, by Charles Krauthammer:

The myth of '08, demolished

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.

In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The '08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 -- a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus-15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-four in 2009. A 19-point swing.

What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.

White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat? Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.

The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African American president.

November '08 was one shot, one time, never to be replicated. Nor was November '09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm -- and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm -- deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years -- because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his "New Foundation" for America -- from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt -- the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters -- as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.

Some rump. Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the "rump" rebelled. It's the natural reaction of a center-right country to a governing party seeking to rush through a left-wing agenda using temporary majorities created by the one-shot election of 2008. The misreading of that election -- and of the mandate it allegedly bestowed -- is the fundamental cause of the Democratic debacle of 2009.

from Works and Days, 2009-Dec-30, by Victor Davis Hanson:

A Humpty-Dumpty View of the World

What might explain the inexplicable like the following?

A president comes into office facing a $500 billion deficit and grows it to $2 trillion.

A president comes into office facing a threat of radical Islamic terrorism, and at home changes the very name of the struggle from war on terror to a variety of wishy-washy euphemisms.

A president comes into office facing a variety of Middle East thugs, from al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas to Syria and Iran, and employs the ancient kowtow, the postmodern apology, and the Carteresque reach-out to allay the threat?

A president comes into office after record high energy prices have nearly crippled the American economy, and he ignores new drilling and brushes off nuclear power — only to wax about wind and solar that provide less than 5% of our energy needs, and crushing cap and trade taxation to come.

The Wrong Narrative

I think candidate Obama had the wrong narrative. Many presidents do. Bush railed against nation-building and decided he would do just that. Reagan raised not lowered deficits. Clinton ended up being a moderate after 1995. But rarely has a candidate's entire world view been so abruptly refuted in the first year of a presidency.

As president, Obama suddenly found himself a stranger in a strange land, far from that of the Ivy League dean, the upscale liberal suburbanite, the radical chic, hip world of Chicago yuppies, and the brooding, shrill pulpit of Rev. Wright. The result is that his fantasies are out of place in the all too real world of the White House.

When he started his campaign in 2007 the U.S. economy was still strong, and he felt his redistributive agenda would merely need to skim off a few trillions from the wannabe rich.

There was plenty of money socked away; we could “share the wealth” and “they” could “pay their fair share” in “patriotic” fashion to ensure “redistributive change.” But when the recession hit, the money dried up, and there was no “they” any longer. No matter, Obama is stuck with his preconceived notion of gorging the beast, and so we will rack up $8 trillion more in aggregate debt and redefine the English language, as trillion becomes billion, and billion a mere million.

War—what war?

It was so simple in late 2007. The surge was “not working.” Few were dying in Afghanistan, now dubbed the good war where there were lots of Europeans. Al-Qaeda was quiet and its dozens of plots all foiled.

Presto — the real narrative was how the Bush-Cheney nexus destroyed our liberties. Only a Chicago law lecturer could understand the complexity: the Patriot Act, renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Guantanamo, Predators, all that had shredded the Constitution. Such a compelling thesis — as long as one could blame the prior administration for keeping us safe.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Barack Obama would drop this mythical war on terror, and instead conduct legal seminars at press conference to remind us how the “prior administration” had scared us to death to destroy our liberties.

Then the real war returned in Afghanistan. Iraq quieted down. And there really are thousands of radical Muslims like Major Hasan and Abdulmutallab who want to kill us.

So the narrative imploded. Even the most fawning Obama aficionado does not wish to get blown-up at 30,000 feet, because a political hack appointee wanted to broadcast politically-correct credentials.

Now a reluctant Obama has to face the reality that all his chest-thumping about his middle name, his unique background, and his liberal sensitivity means less than nothing to a killer such as Dr. Zawahiri.

In 2007 candidate Obama had some interesting theories about the world abroad — not unlike those voiced in the 1920s by the well-intentioned who formed the League of Nations to end all wars. A Gilbert Murray or H.G. Wells or Alfred Zimmern all had interesting things to say, as did Smuts and House — all interesting and all dead wrong once an Austrian-born corporal fancied himself the architect of a new Reich.

The “reset button” foreign policy postulated that twangy, “smok' em out” Bush had caused all the bad feelings. As an antidote, a postracial, postnational charmer could assure the world that we were on its side. We are back to 1930 in a blink of an eye.

Remember, in this reset narrative, there are no such bothersome things as irreconcilable differences, antithetical agendas, or reductionism such as thugs like Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, or Putin, who always interpret magnanimity as weakness in their nonstop quest for more influence and power at the expense of the perceived weaker party.

So here we are after all the apologies, all the bowing, all the trashing of Bush, all the Cairo speeches and al Arabiya interviews: Putin brags about a new generation of nuclear weapons, bullying his neighbors and doing nothing to stop Iran; Iran kills its dissidents while we sleep and promises a bomb to come. Chavez wants one too, and Syria does it best to destroy Lebanese autonomy. And that is just the beginning.

It was not supposed to happen that way. (All those adoring crowds in the streets of London, Cairo, and Nairobi were supposed to translate into their leaders' infatuation with Obama.)

Tilting at Windmills

Those in the faculty lounge, in the community-organizing hall, or media green room often wax on about how “they” are doing nothing to make us energy independent. In this fantasyland of a con artist like Van Jones, millions of windmills and solar panels will free us from energy costs and cool the planet.

In such mythologizing, and without any knowledge of the grubby world of oil rigs and dirty pipeline laying, we could have all the clean power we wished if only an Exxon just weren't so greedy. So the narrative emerged that we need not drill for more oil here in the US. New natural gas fields still meant bad carbon fuels. Coal, burned daily, was still politically-taboo. Nuclear plants were always referenced in terms of Chernobyl and Three-Mile-Island.

The result, however, in the real world was that low energy prices are a result of a global downturn in the economy, not Obama's dreams of ugly windmills on every mountain ridge. In short, very soon a President Obama is going to have to explain what exactly he did to transition us to new sources of power during this reprieve, as we begin to pay for $5 a gallon of gas.

I could go on. But most of you readers remember young Barack Obama in late 2007 hitting the stump against Hillary, proclaiming to the world how his hope and change bromides would stop the Bush-Cheney nexus from destroying the planet.

Those were heady times when Guantanamo was still a gulag with its hundreds of Solzhenitsyns, not psychopaths like Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds, when we could just leave Iraq by “March 2008”, and when there would be no lobbyists, no tax cheats, no insider buy-offs and horse-trading for votes. In such a dreamy world, geniuses like Timothy Geithner don't pocket their FICA allowances, and Tom Daschles don't fudge on their complimentary limo services.

And then tragically Obama got elected and discovered that the real world had no relationship whatsoever to his fantasy impressions of it. In a cosmos of radical Islam, Chinese bankers, Japanese exporters, and Arab oil producers, there were no more law school profs, Rev. Wrights, or Chris Matthews and Newsweek editors to wink and nod and reassure Obama that his mellifluous but empty rhetoric allusions were at all reality-based.

So here we are. A president of the United States does not want to rush to the microphones and swear he will hunt down the Abdulmutallabs of the world and their sponsors, or that there will be no more Major Hasans (so much easier to rush to call the Cambridge police “stupidly” acting, while employing “allegedly” for the bomb-making of Abdulmutallab).

He does not wish to sound like a can-do guy who reassures us that we will tap all the American energy we can to ensure that we don't go bankrupt before the new generation of power arrives. Obama does not wish to sound like some retrograde SOB who warns Ahmadinejad there really will be things he won't like if he insists on going nuclear. Our commander in chief does not wish to snarl at the American people to announce that the party is over and all those trillions really do have to be paid back.

No, all that was someone else's fault, others’ reality — and certainly not what Obama signed on for.

So if he seems bewildered, angry sometimes, and more at home in warm, lush Hawaii, you would be too — once you discovered that your easy fantasies and winged rhetoric of the last thirty years have no relation with the here and now.

All the soaring cadences in the world, all the self-referencing, and all the whining and blame-gaming sadly cannot put the shattered Humpty-dumpty view of a once comfortable world back together again.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Jan-6:

The Tom DeLay Democrats
So much for the President's pledge of C-Span transparency.

Rehabilitating Tom DeLay's reputation always seemed hopeless, or so we thought—but then again, President Obama ran on hope. Against the odds Democrats are making the former GOP Majority Leader look better by comparison as they bypass the ordinary institutions of deliberative democracy in the final sprint to pass ObamaCare.

Instead of appointing a formal conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate health bills, a handful of Democratic leaders will now negotiate in secret by themselves. Later this month, presumably white smoke will rise from the Capitol Dome, and then Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the college of Democratic cardinals will unveil their miracle. The new bill will then be rushed through both chambers with little public scrutiny or even the chance for the Members to understand what they're passing.

Evading conference has become standard operating procedure in this Congress, though you might think they'd allow for the more open and thoughtful process on what Mr. Obama has called "the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s and the most important reform of our health-care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s."

This black-ops mission ought to be a particular embarrassment for Mr. Obama, given that he campaigned on transparent government. At a January 2008 debate he said that a health-care overhaul would not be negotiated "behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-Span so the American people can see what the choices are."

The C-Span pledge became a signature of his political pitch. During a riff at the San Francisco Chronicle about "accountability," he added that "I would not underestimate the degree to which shame is a healthy emotion and that you can shame Congress into doing the right thing if people know what's going on."

Apparently this Congress knows no shame. In a recent letter to Congressional leaders, C-Span president Brian Lamb committed his network to airing "all important negotiations," which if allowed would give "the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American." No word yet from the White House.

At a press conference in December, even Mrs. Pelosi said that "we would like to see a full conference." One reason she mentioned was that "there is a great deal of work involved in reviewing a bill and seeing what all the ramifications are of it," though her real motive at the time was that a conference seemed like a chance to drag the bill closer to the House version.

With public support collapsing, however, Democrats now think the right bill is any bill—and soon. Democrats know that a conference forces the majority party to cast votes on awkward motions and would give the Republicans who have been shut out for months a chance to participate. This sunlight, and the resulting public attention, might scare off wavering Democrats and defeat the bill. Ethics rules the Democrats passed in 2007 also make it harder to "airdrop" into conference reports the extra bribes they will no doubt add to grease the way for final passage.

Democrats howled at the strong-arm tactics Mr. DeLay used to pass Medicare drug coverage in 2003, and so did we. But they've managed to create an even more destructive bill, and their tactics are that much worse. We can't even begin to imagine the uproar if the Republicans had tried to privatize Social Security with such contempt for the democratic process and public opinion.

from the Washington Examiner, 2009-Dec-23, by Michael Barone:

When legerdemain is used to pass an unpopular bill

It's time to blow the whistle on two erroneous statements that opponents and proponents of the health care legislation being jammed through Congress have been making. Republicans have been saying that never before has Congress passed such an unpopular bill with such important ramifications by such a narrow majority. Barack Obama has been saying that passage of the bill will mean that the health care issue will be settled once and for all.

The Republicans and Obama are both wrong. But perhaps they can be forgiven because the precedent for Congress passing an unpopular bill is an old one, and the issue it addressed has long been settled, though not by the legislation in question.

That legislation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Its lead sponsor was Stephen A. Douglas, at 41 in his eighth year as senator from Illinois, the most dynamic leader of a Democratic Party that had won the previous presidential election by 254 electoral votes to 42.

Douglas' legislative prowess far exceeded that of current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. To hold together his 60 Senate Democrats, Reid simply dispensed favors -- eternal Medicaid financing for Ben Nelson's Nebraska, a hospital grant for Chris Dodd's Connecticut, more rural health money for Byron Dorgan's North Dakota and Montana's Max Baucus.

Douglas did something far more difficult. He got the Senate to pass a bill some of whose provisions were supported by half of the Senate plus Douglas and some of which were supported by the other half plus Douglas. After passage, Douglas spent a day getting drunk -- a consolation unavailable to the teetotaling Reid.

The issue that Douglas said the Kansas-Nebraska Act would settle forever was slavery in the territories. His bill repealed the 34-year-old Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery in territories north of Arkansas and substituted popular sovereignty -- territory residents could vote slavery up or down.

We cannot say with assurance that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was unpopular; Dr. Gallup didn't start polling until 81 years later. But the results of the next election were pretty convincing. The Republican Party was suddenly created to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the 1854-55 elections transformed the Democrats' 159-71 majority to a 108-83 Republican margin. Democrats didn't win a majority of House seats for the next 20 years.

On the health care bill, there can be little doubt about public opinion. Quinnipiac, polling just after the Senate voted cloture, found Americans opposed by a 53 percent to 36 percent margin. Polls suggest that Democrats may suffer as much carnage in the 2010 elections as they did in 1854.

Nor did the Kansas-Nebraska Act settle the issue it addressed. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers fought it out in "bleeding Kansas," and Douglas felt obliged to break with the Democratic administration and disown election stealing by the pro-slavery side. The issue roused a former congressman named Abraham Lincoln to re-enter politics, and he beat Douglas in the popular vote (but not in the legislature) in 1858 and then was elected president in 1860.

A health care bill like the Senate's is unlikely to settle all health care issues either, though the ensuing political struggles will stop somewhere short of civil war. "We aren't done talking about health care," writes Atlantic blogger (and Obama voter) Megan McArdle. "We haven't even really started. Our budget problems are as big as ever, and we just used up both political capital, and some of our stock of tax increases and spending cuts, to pay for something else."

The Senate bill contains provisions that are likely to be revisited. Its language channeling federal and consumer dollars to abortion coverage is opposed, according to Quinnipiac, by a 72 percent to 23 percent margin. Its provision establishing an Independent Medicare Advisory Board and stating that it cannot be abolished except by a two-thirds vote of the Senate is of dubious constitutionality, and even if upheld in a court of law may not pass muster in the court of public opinion. Since when has Congress passed laws that cannot be repealed?

Kansas-Nebraska was an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by legislative legerdemain and political trickery. The Democrats' health care bills are an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by partisan maneuver and cash-for-cloture. As Stephen Douglas learned, such tactics can work for a while, but the country -- and the Democratic Party -- can end up paying a heavy price.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-28, by Fred Barnes:

The Tyranny of the Majority Party
If Democrats insist on passing unpopular laws, they won't control Congress for long.

Alexis de Tocqueville never met Harry Reid. Had he encountered the Senate Democratic leader—or President Barack Obama or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—de Tocqueville might have learned about a new twist on his concept of the "tyranny of the majority."

The Frenchman toured America in the 1830s and published his conclusions in the classic "Democracy in America." He noted the powerful impact of public opinion. "That is what forms the majority," he wrote. Congress merely "represents the majority and obeys it blindly" and so does the president. They are free to brush aside minority opinion, creating a threat de Tocqueville described as the "tyranny of the majority."

Democrats in Washington do have large majorities in Congress. But instead of reflecting popular opinion, they are pursuing wide-ranging initiatives in defiance of the views of the majority of Americans. This stands de Tocqueville's concept on its head.

The most striking example is health-care reform. It is intensely unpopular but was approved by the House in November and the Senate on Christmas Eve. Asked in a Rasmussen poll in mid-December if they'd prefer no bill to ObamaCare, 57% said they would. Only 34% said they'd rather ObamaCare be enacted.

Yet Democrats are forging ahead as if the public actually approves of their health-care reform. Why, when Republicans are preparing to hammer them on the issue in next year's elections, would they do that?

Democrats offer different explanations—besides their obsessive attachment to national health care—which suggests that they aren't quite sure of the political fallout.

After Senate Democrats locked up the 60th vote to assure Senate passage of ObamaCare, Mr. Obama sounded worry-free. Risk? What risk? The bill "is a major step forward for the American people," he said. The president didn't mention the public's disapproval as expressed in countless polls. Vice President Joe Biden, in an op-ed in the New York Times, didn't either.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, is more realistic. While acknowledging bad poll numbers, he suggested recently on ABC's "This Week" that enactment of sweeping health-care legislation will melt public misgivings. "The reality, I think, will trump poll numbers in the dead of winter as this debate is going on," Mr. Axelrod said.

Ms. Pelosi, too, is brimming with wishful thinking. "Now we will have the attention placed on the truly great things that are in the bill that we have in common," she declared recently. And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) told Politico, "When people see what is in this bill and when people see what it does, they will come around."

Then there are the martyrs. Doing a reverse de Tocqueville, willingly endangering one's political career by voting for ObamaCare, hasn't fazed Democrat Michael Bennet, the appointed senator from Colorado. He was asked by CNN's John King whether he'd vote for ObamaCare "if every piece of evidence tells you, if you support that bill, you'll lose your job." Mr. Bennet said "yes."

Mr. Bennet isn't the only potential martyr. A Democratic strategist told Byron York of the Washington Examiner that Mrs. Pelosi "believes losing 20 or even 40 Democratic seats in the House would be an acceptable price for achieving a goal the party has pursued since Franklin Roosevelt." Now that Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith has bolted the Democratic Party, Republicans need 40 seats to capture control of the House.

With large congressional majorities, Democrats decided to forget about Mr. Obama's campaign theme of bipartisanship. They brook no compromise with Republicans and forge ahead on issue after issue—health care, cap and trade, Guantanamo, spending, the deficit—despite the public's mounting disapproval.

That arrogance shaped the economic stimulus passed in February. Republicans wanted tax cuts to spur investment and create jobs. Democrats rejected that idea and enacted a huge increase in spending. As unemployment continued to rise, public opinion turned against the stimulus. Nonetheless, House Democrats passed a new, smaller stimulus bill last week with the same emphasis on spending.

Large majorities create what de Tocqueville called a sense of "omnipotence." This leads to overreaching and spawns dubious ideas. Since Democrats believe they will benefit from passing any sort of health-care bill regardless of public opinion, they're committed to passing anything they can call a "historic" achievement. That makes little sense.

With history in mind, cutting procedural corners becomes acceptable. Thus Democrats have set arbitrary deadlines, scheduled post-midnight votes and put limits on debate, all in the name of achieving a breakthrough.

Not that such behavior is anomalous. To pass a Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003, Republicans kept the House vote open for three hours to round up votes. Unlike ObamaCare, however, the drug benefit had popular support.

This is not the first time in recent memory when a sizeable congressional majority, feeling self-sufficient, ignored popular opinion at its peril. In 1995, Republicans, led by newly installed House Speaker Newt Gingrich, shut down the federal government in their fight over spending with President Bill Clinton. The public sided with Mr. Clinton, and the clash spurred his re-election in 1996.

William Daley, who was Mr. Clinton's Commerce secretary and is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, worries that Democrats are doing now what Republicans did then: provoking a public backlash. Democrats must "acknowledge that the agenda of the party's most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans," he wrote last week in the Washington Post. "Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come."

"I regard as impious and detestable the maxim that in matters of government the majority of a people has the right to do everything," de Tocqueville wrote roughly 175 years ago. But what about a congressional majority—which lacks a mandate from a majority of Americans—seeking to do everything? The Frenchman might have dubbed that the "tyranny of the minority."

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.

from Pajamas Media, 2009-Aug-7, by Jim Hoft:

SEIU Thugs Teach Health Care Protesters the ‘Chicago Way’ of Politics

A first-person account from the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting where union goons went looking for heads to bust — and found one. (PJTV is soliciting citizen reporters to cover the ongoing town hall meetings on health care reform. Post videos, photos, and text here.)

Barack Obama told a crowd of supporters in Philadelphia back in 2008, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” He added, “That’s the Chicago way.”

Last night in St. Louis, Missouri, a local conservative found out firsthand about the “Chicago way.” Kenneth Gladney, a black conservative from the city, was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags after a Russ Carnahan town hall meeting on health care in Mehlville. This didn’t go over well with the Obama supporters and union thugs who attended the meeting. They punched him in the face, kicked him in the head, and stomped on him on the pavement. So much for hope and change.

This is my first-person account of what I saw at the the town hall meeting in Mehlville.

I was running late for the Carnahan meeting last night. The doors opened at 6:00 PM and it was around 6:20 when I arrived at Bernard Middle School in St. Louis county. The parking lot was already full. The streets next to the school were also filled up. I ended up walking about three blocks to reach the school. By the time I arrived, the line outside of the school was about 200 yards long. The line wrapped around the front of the building and halfway down the school’s driveway. I was told they had already stopped letting people inside the building. The people up front were told that they could not let anyone else in because of a fire code.

I continued up to the front of the school and a friend I ran into told me to try the media entrance on the side of the building. My friend thought it was a media entrance. It wasn’t. It was marked “handicapped,” but as I approached the side entrance, it was obvious that these were not handicapped individuals who the Carnahan staffers were letting in.

Several people entered through these doors. I pulled out my camera and filmed the action. Right before I made it to the door the staffers let a man walk right in. Two SEIU members in purple shirts walked up to the door and did not even hesitate to enter the school. It was like they knew right where to go. But by this time the crowd of tea party protesters locked outside started to notice what was going on. They began yelling, and one man stepped in front of the SEIU members and asked that he be let in, too. Enough people were screaming now that the union members backed off and moved over to the side. The Carnahan staffers decided to stop letting people in this entrance.

There must have been 1,000 tea party protesters standing outside in the 90 degree heat and they were agitated. There were now a few SEIU members outside, and they started to taunt the crowd. Not a very smart move, but they didn’t seem to care. A former marine with his young son on his shoulders told the crowd not to react to the taunting. The crowd outside started to sing “God Bless America.” This really seemed to ease the tension that was beginning to build outside the school.

Inside the school the chaos continued. The Carnahan people had roped off the gymnasium into two sides. One side was marked reserved. This was for the union supporters who arrived late for the event. The other side quickly filled up with tea party protesters. A couple of tea party taxpayers sat in the reserved section but moved after the union members arrived. They said they didn’t feel safe. There were several planned speakers who took turns talking before Rep. Carnahan took the stage.

As he spoke the crowd of union supporters continually interrupted him with their applause. A few of the tea party protesters left during this staged show by Carnahan and his cronies. After Carnahan was through speaking he said he was going to take a few questions. His staffers then pulled out a few questions and read them to him from their index cards. They said they had collected the cards beforehand, but the tea party taxpayers did not even know they were only taking questions that were written down. It was a total dog and pony show.

After the event, things got really out of control. The SEIU members were looking for trouble. They roamed the parking lot like a pack of thugs. Conservative Kenneth Gladney, who is black, was passing out “Don't Tread on Me” flags and tea party buttons to the taxpayers at the school. Unfortunately for Kenneth, the SEIU members were not happy that a black man was passing out tea party buttons. Kenneth’s lawyer described what happened next:

The SEIU member used a racial slur against Kenneth, then punched him in the face. Kenneth fell to the ground. Another SEIU member yelled racial epithets at Kenneth as he kicked him in the head and back. Kenneth was also brutally attacked by one other male SEIU member and an unidentified woman. The three men were clearly SEIU members, as they were wearing T-shirts with the SEIU logo.

The three SEIU members were arrested at the scene. Kenneth was hurt badly and taken to the emergency room, where he was treated for his numerous injuries. We all hope that he recovers quickly from this vicious attack.

Tomorrow, Saturday, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition is holding a rally at the local SEIU headquarters. We are going to demand justice for Kenneth Gladney, who was brutally beaten on Thursday night. The St. Louis Coalition will request that the NAACP and the ACLU come out in support of Kenneth Gladney's rights which were trampled by the union hooligans.

What happened on Thursday night may be the Chicago way of holding a town hall meeting. But it won’t fly in St. Louis.

from KMOX Radio, 2009-Nov-25, Kevin Killeen:

Charges filed in Carnahan health care forum fight

ST. LOUIS -- Three months after the punches were thrown, a prosecutor in St. Louis County has filed charges against six people in connection with fights outside a congressional forum on health care.

It happened outside a Russ Carnahan town hall meeting, on an August night when the national debate over health care reform was rising like a heat wave before a thunderstorm. Members of the Service Employees International Union clashed with members of the Tea Party.

Now, St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Redington has issued a total of ten charges spread out among six people.

Reached by phone after she left the office for the Thanksgiving holiday, Redington spoke from memory in general terms about the case.

Among those charged, two accused of assault in connection with the beating of Tea Party activist Kenneth Gladney. Gladney had claimed that two men wearing SEIU shirts attacked him as he sat at a table giving away tea party buttons.

Redington could not immediately provide the names of those charged, and she said she did not know whether those charged are members of SEIU.

The charges are all St. Louis County ordinance violations, which are lesser charges than a misdemeanor. If convicted, the six people face up to a year in jail and a thousand dollars fine on each count, Redington said.

Redington was asked if she was pressured after recent publicity about the lack of charges to wrap up the case. "Nobody called me and I don't know why that was perceived to be long," Redington said. "We have about 90 thousand charges a year. We try to get charges written up within six to eight weeks of getting a report."

So why did this case take three months?

"Most of our charges don't involve dozens of police officers, multiple defendants and quite a few videos to review," she said.

Kenneth Gladney is reacting with disappointment to the charges against those accused of beating him.

His brother Keith, who has been acting as his spokesman, told KMOX the charges "should have been more serious." Keith Gladney also claims investigators failed to contact his brother Kenneth or interview the witnesses to his alleged beating during the three month investigation.

Redington confirms that among those charged is St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman, accused of interfering with police. Wagman had been working the story and shooting video when a dispute arose with police over where a reporter could be allowed to stand.

from Gateway Pundit, 2009-Dec-30, by Jim Hoft:

The Gladney Twins Need Assistance

In August of 2009, a man selling Gadsden flags was attacked, beat and stomped on by at least two purple-shirted union members outside a townhall in Mehlville.

This man, Kenneth Gladney, waited three long months for the county authorities to press charges by a heavily biased Democratic prosecutor in St Louis County. The charges were only brought after local station KMOX ran two stories about the case, including a story quoting Kenneth Gladney's twin brother, Keith Gladney, who complained about the length of time it was taking and the lack of communication by county counselor Patricia Redington's office.

St Louis County employs Keith Gladney as an Animal Control officer, or at least did until December 23rd, when without warning Keith was brought into an office and fired, two days before Christmas. Details of the case are not yet public, but local bloggers working in tandem with the Gladney family now believe the firing was retaliation for speaking out in defense of his brother. Keith Gladney, a hard-working family man with a stellar employment record, was terminated from his employment with the county with a questionable paper trail and with several very fishy employment practices.

The Gladney family is weighing its options, but the timing couldn't have been worse for them or nastier by the county. Firing a man two days before Christmas, when his supervisor was already on holiday, has put an enormous strain on a family that has suffered the loss of a father, the beating of one son, and now what appears to be the retaliatory firing of another son for daring to speak out in defense of his brother.

Both brothers need help, and while offers of charity are appreciated, what both need are jobs. Keith lives in St Louis, and Kenneth lives in St Charles. If you are aware of any job leads for any of these brave Americans who stood up to petty corruption by local officials.

Jim Durbin from 24thstate.com is the contact for this work.

He has stepped forward as a trustee for donations to the Gladney brothers to help them through this difficult time, and has set up a trust with a local bank to ensure all donations are accounted for. 100% go to the Gladney brothers. This trust is not for legal expenses, but is for short-term personal expenses for the next 60 days.

As we said, donations are welcome for the short run, as Keith has rent to pay immediately, and he was the sole source of income for his family. But both Keith and Kenneth need jobs – the ability to move past what has happened to them and contribute. Neither are asking for handouts. Both are out pounding the pavement, but any help is appreciated.

If you have a job lead or offer, or want to know more about employment, contact editor@24thstate.com with the subject “Gladney job.“ If you don't have any leads but want to offer a few dollars, contact editor@24thstate.com with the subject line, “donations.” Jim will email you back with the details. Due to the nature of the trust, he cannot take money personally or process funds online, but donations can be made deposited directly into the bank account.

Thanks.

from 24th State, 2009-Dec-31, by James Durbin:

Could It Really Happen Here?

Gateway Pundit was telling me about a conversation he had at the Democracy & Security International Conference in Prague a while back. He met a woman from Azerbaijan, a small country in the Russian orbit that hosts what we would call a soft dictatorship.

When you speak out against the regime in Azerbaijan, they don't come to your house in the middle of the night and "disappear" you. Instead, they go to your place of employment and lean on the owner to fire you. Then they go to where your brother works, and they get him fired. And his wife. And your cousin.

The message is clear - you can speak your mind, but we will ruin you and put you out on the street.

Now, I'm no Pollyanna. That's the way things have worked for most of mankind's history, and even in the US, this kind of treatment has been the norm in corrupt locales throughout our history. What makes this country different is we hear a story about a government official using his or her power to ruin a family, and we know it's wrong. And we expect someone to do something about it. That is one of the strengths of this country. We expect a sense of fair play.

And that's why the Keith Gladney firing is a shot across the bow to all of us. I've been warned over and over that daring to write this blog will make me a target. I've laughed it away - what are they going to do to me? But I'm aware that not everyone is in this position. I warned the Gladney's that putting your neck out is dangerous, but I honestly didn't believe a St Louis County government official could be as stupid as to actually act on the nastiest of impulses - to fire a man two days before Christmas for the crime of being the brother of a beating victim.

St Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley may or may not be involved, but he is responsible. It is his department of health that is waging war on the Gladneys, and it is his political appointee that pulled the slow-down on the assault charges. If the St Louis County Council is so corrupt that they allow retaliation against the family of beating victims, then every elected official in that government and every press organ that covers for them must be made to pay the price.

I'm no high priced political hack. I can't send press releases to local news and newspapers and expect results like those generated by Bob Sweeney. But I am a St Louis County resident and an American citizen. The country I live in will not allow corrupt politicians to destroy a family because they happened to stand between SEIU and their goal of healthcare.

I've looked into the details. I've given my word to those who have run with the story that there is definitely something there. Right now I'm working to help Keith and Kenneth get employed, because their family needs our help, but don't think this story is going away.

In the last year, this blog has been a refuge for those stories not told by the local press. We've got several more stories of local and state corruption in the queue, and when all is said and done, we are going to do what we do best.

Defend the weak and innocent. Destroy evil in all of its monstrous forms. Crush the monsters that steal our land and rob our people.

We are Freedom's Voice. 2010 is upon us. Join the ranks of freedom loving people around the world and remind them that here, in this land, freedom is worth fighting for.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-16, by Karl Rove:

The President Is No B+
In fact, he's got the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year.

Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening.

Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics—free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin—was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.

Consider Mr. Obama's comment in his interview this past Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" that the Bush administration made a mistake in speaking in "a triumphant sense about war."

This was a slap at every president who rallied the nation in dark moments, including Franklin D. Roosevelt ("With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph"); Woodrow Wilson ("Right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts"); and John F. Kennedy ("Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed . . . will be met by whatever action is needed").

This kind of attack gives Mr. Obama's words a slippery quality. For example, he voted for the bank rescue plan in September 2008 and praised it during the campaign. Yet on Dec. 8 at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Obama called it "flawed" and blamed "the last administration" for launching it "hastily."

Really? Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner designed it. If it was "flawed," why did Mr. Obama later nominate Mr. Bernanke to a second term as Fed chairman and make Mr. Geithner his Treasury secretary?

Mr. Obama also claimed at Brookings that he prevented "a second Great Depression" by confronting the financial crisis "largely without the help" of Republicans. Yet his own Treasury secretary suggests otherwise. In a Dec. 9 letter, Mr. Geithner admitted that since taking office, the Obama administration had "committed about $7 billion to banks, much of which went to small institutions." That compares to $240 billion the Bush administration lent banks. Does Mr. Obama really believe his additional $7 billion forestalled "the potential collapse of our financial system"?

Mr. Obama continued distorting the record in his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday when he blamed bankers for the financial crisis. They "caused the problem," he insisted before complaining, "I haven't seen a lot of shame on their part" and pledging to put "a regulatory system in place that prevents them from putting us in this kind of pickle again."

But as a freshman senator, Mr. Obama supported a threatened 2005 filibuster of a bill regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He doesn't show "a lot of shame" that he and other Fannie and Freddie defenders blocked "a regulatory system" that might have kept America from getting in such a bad pickle in the first place.

The president's rhetorical tricks don't end there. Mr. Obama also claimed his $787 billion stimulus package "helped us [stem] the panic and get the economy growing again." But 1.5 million more people are unemployed than he said there would be if nothing were done.

And as of yesterday, only $244 billion of the stimulus had been spent. Why was $787 billion needed when less than a third of that figure supposedly got the job done?

Mr. Obama also alleged on "60 Minutes" that health-care reform "will actually bring down the deficit" (which people clearly know it will not). He said his reform reduces "costs and premiums for American families and businesses" (though they will be higher than they would otherwise be). And he claimed 30 million more people will get coverage through "an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses" to purchase insurance (though 15 million of them are covered by being dumped into Medicaid and don't get private insurance).

Mr. Obama may actually believe it when he says, "I think that's a pretty darned good outcome" and congratulates himself that he could succeed where "seven presidents have tried . . . [and] seven presidents have failed."

But voters seem to have a different definition of success. And they are tiring of the president's blame shifting and distortions.

Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ. A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.

Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).

from RassmussenReports.com, 2009-Nov-30:

71% Angry at Federal Government, Up Five Points Since September

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they're at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry.

Men are angrier than women, and voters over 40 are more angry than those who are younger. A majority of those over 40 are Very Angry. Only 25% of under-30 voters share that view.

The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September.

Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

Among the nation's Political Class, just six percent (6%) are angry. However, among those with more Mainstream, or populist, views, 85% are angry. A majority of Americans today hold views that can be described as Mainstream or populist. Very few align with the Political Class (see more information on this divide).

Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters nationwide believe neither Republican nor Democratic political leaders have an understanding of what is needed today. That frustration is down eight points from 60% in September.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters say that neither party has the answers. Those percentages are down significantly since September. Democrats remain fairly evenly divided as they were in September.

This unhappiness with government policies and leaders is reflected in numerous other Rasmussen Reports surveys. Americans, for example, now view being a member of Congress as the least respected job one can hold. President Obama's job approval ratings also have suffered in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

The latest numbers show that only nine percent (9%) of voters trust the judgment of America's political leaders more than the judgment of the American people. Seventy-four percent (74%) place more trust in the wisdom of the crowd.

Seventy-one percent (71%) believe the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Sixty-eight percent (68%) believe that government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

Opposition to the health care plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats remains high. Voters continue to oppose the government bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, and a growing number now believe their taxes will go up during the Obama years.

See survey questions and toplines. Crosstabs and are available to Premium Members.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Dec-29, by Allysia Finley:

Are Taxes the Root of Unhappiness?
States with the highest taxes also rank as the unhappiest.

Does living in a blue state make people blue? It seems so, according to a new study in Science magazine that ranks states according to their happiness. The study finds that New Yorkers are the unhappiest people in America and their neighbors in Connecticut come in a close second, followed by Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, California, and Illinois. And the happiest states? Drum roll, please…Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, and Arizona.

Eight of the ten happiest states lean right while eight of the ten unhappiest tilt left. While the study by no means proves that being liberal makes people unhappy, it does reflect some of the unfortunate implications of living in a blue state.

But first a note on the study. Using data from the 2005-2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and a 2003 economics paper examining quality-of-life indicators, economists regressed the subjective measure of well-being (how people rate their satisfaction) against the objective measure (states' quality-of-life rankings based on compensating differentials). A compensating differential in labor economics refers to the additional amount of income an employer must pay a worker to compensate for the undesirability of a job or the location's lack of amenities (e.g. local and state tax levels, climate, environmental conditions, quality of schools, and crime rates).

For example, employers in New York would have to pay higher wages to compensate for New York's high taxes, traffic congestion, cold weather, and poor schools. Due to these "disamenities," New York ranked lowest on the quality-of-life index.

What's noteworthy about the study is that states' quality-of-life rankings (measured by their compensating differentials) correlated exceedingly well with residents' satisfaction ratings. The correlation between quality of life and satisfaction is statistically significant (P=0.0001; r=0.6; r2=0.36). The coefficient of determination r2 shows how well the regression line fits the data points. While an r2 of 0.36 may not seem large---and in some studies may not be statistically significant---it is unusually high by the standards of behavioral science. To give an idea of the magnitude of this correlation, the r2 of people's satisfaction ratings taken two weeks apart is also 0.36.

The study suggests that quality of life heavily influences happiness. This may seem obvious, but until this study, social scientists have struggled to develop a model that supports this hypothesis. Now we know that people who say they're satisfied with their lives aren't just delusional or overly optimistic, and people who say they're unsatisfied aren't just pessimists. People have legitimate reasons to be happy or unhappy.

And well, high taxes seem to be a big reason---ostensibly an even bigger reason than weather given that California is one of the unhappiest states and inclement Louisiana is the happiest. Further, considering how much New York's crime rate has dropped and schools have improved in the last decade, taxes seem to overwhelm even these two critical factors in the happiness equation. According to the Tax Foundation 2008 analysis, three of the top five unhappiest states—New York, Connecticut and New Jersey—have the highest state-local tax burdens. On the other hand, four of the top five happiest states—Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona—are among the states with the lowest state-local tax burdens. True, correlation doesn't prove causation, and high taxes alone don't always make people miserable, but there's something going on here.

In states with high property, income, and sales taxes like New York, people have less money to spend on other things that make them happy. They have less money to spend on vacations, hobbies, home improvements, eating out and child care. Another problem may be that people receive a low return on their tax dollars. The study's authors note that people are least happy in states that impose high taxes but don't provide matching public benefits (e.g. good highways to relieve congestion and reduce commute times). It's in states where taxes disproportionately subsidize public employee pensions and entitlement programs, but don't much improve the general public's quality of life, that people are most unhappy.

This intuitively makes sense. If you're paying more than a third of your income in taxes, as many New Yorkers do, then you expect to realize the benefits from your hard-earned tax dollars. You expect quality schools, good roads, low crime rates, and quick commutes. You expect your local and state governments to be responsive to your needs, not to the cash flows of entrenched public employee unions and other special interests.

Many liberal state governments like those in Albany, Trenton and Sacramento are spending more and more on entitlement programs and public employee pensions, racking up more and more debt, and imposing more and more taxes to pay for it all---while ignoring their taxpayers' needs. Taxpayers, however, aren't just getting unhappy. They're getting out. United Van Lines' 2009 annual study shows that New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois are among the states with the highest outbound migration while Alabama and Tennessee are among the states with the highest inbound migration.

This doesn't bode well for high-spending, high-tax states like New York where outbound migrants' income is 13% greater than that of inbound migrants. In 2006, this differential meant a loss of $4.3 billion in taxpayer income for the state. State governments therefore have a vested interest in keeping residents happy by reducing taxes and reigning in irresponsible spending.

Taxes may not be the root of all unhappiness, but they do result in some very sad citizens.

Ms. Finley is Assistant Editor of OpinionJournal.com.

from FoxNews.com, 2009-Dec-7:

Reid Compares Opponents of Health Care Reform to Supporters of Slavery

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women's suffrage and the civil rights movement -- even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and it was Republicans who led the charge against slavery.

Senate Republicans on Monday called Reid's comments "offensive" and "unbelievable."

But Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era.

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"

He continued: "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.

"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

That seemed to be a reference to Thurmond's famous 1957 filibuster -- the late senator switched parties several years later.

Reid's office stood by the remarks, with spokesman Jim Manley saying Republicans have "done nothing but obstruct health care" in the Senate.

"Today's feigned outrage is nothing but a ploy to distract from the fact they have no plan to lower the cost of health care, stop insurance company abuses or protect Medicare," Manley said.

But Republicans said they were genuinely appalled. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Reid's remarks were over the top.

"That is extremely offensive," he told Fox News. "It's language that should never be used, never be used. ... Those days are not here now."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who on the Senate floor read from this FoxNews.com article and asked that it be placed in the record, called on Reid to return to the floor and, if not apologize, at least explain what he meant.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., suggested Reid was starting to "crack" under the pressure of the health care reform debate.

"I think it's beneath the dignity of the majority leader," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said. "I personally am insulted."

from the American Spectator, 2009-Dec-20, by Robert Stacy McCain:

Democrat Compares Health-Care Opponents to Nazis

This afternoon, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) gave a speech in which he quoted Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and accused ObamaCare opponents of inciting "vindictive passions":

"Far from appealing to the better angels of our nature, too many colleagues are embarked on a desperate no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, obstruction and fear. History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner waving secret lists." (Emphasis added.)

A full text of Sen. Whitehouse's remarks is not yet available, but at this moment, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is rebutting the Democrat's accusations. And, by the way, that Senate tail-gunner was right about one thing: There were indeed Soviet agents in the State Department.

UPDATE: More from the Whitehouse speech, referring to Hofstadter's "paranoid style" thesis:

"Vindictive passions often arise, [Hofstadter] points out, when an aggrieved minority believes that America has been taken away from them their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. Does that sound familiar . . . in this health debate? . . . [Hofstadter] wrote of the dangers of an aggrieved right-wing minority with the power to create what he called a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible."

It's interesting -- but probably no accident -- that the first Republican to respond to Whitehouse's provocative remarks was Kyl of Arizona. In 1964, Hofstadter's essay was taken as an analysis of the conservative supporters of another Arizona Republican, Barry Goldwater.

By the way, these quotes are taken from an audio rush transcript of Sen. Whitehouse's speech, the official text of which has not yet been published. 

UPDATE II: More from the transcript of the Whitehouse speech:

"[Republicans have engaged in] a campaign of falsehood about death panels and cuts to Medicare benefits and benefits for illegal aliens and bureaucrats to be parachuted in between you and your doctor. Our colleagues terrify the public with this parade of imagined horrors.  They whip up concerns and anxiety about socialized medicine and careening deficits and then they tell use the public is concerned about the bill."

UPDATE III: Accusing the bill's opponents of inflaming “unprecedented passions,” Whitehouse blamed the GOP for the extension of the health-care debate into the Christmas holiday:

“We see it in bad behavior. We see it in the long hours of reading by the clerks our Republican colleagues have forced. We see it in Christmases and holidays ruined by the Republicans for our loyal and professional Senate employees. It's fine for me. It's fine for the president. We signed up for the his job, but why ruin it for all the employees condemned by the Republicans to be here?”

UPDATE IV: If you voted Republican, here is how Sen. Whitehouse describes you:

“Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our young president. They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The `birthers,' the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militias and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Obama should exist.”

OK, so much for all those Aryan militia fanatics who vote Republican, what does Sen. Whitehouse think of the Senators those voters elected?

“Our colleagues are behaving in this way – unprecedented, malignant and vindictive – because they are desperate to avoid that day of judgment, frantic and desperate now and willing to strange and unprecedented things, willing to do anything, even throw our troops at war in the way of that day of reckoning. If they can cause this bill to fail, the truth will never stand up as a living reproach to the lies that have been told. . . . But when the bill passes and this program actually comes to life . . . there will come a day of judgment, and our Republican friends know that. That, Mr. President, is why they are terrified.”

There you have it, then: Nazis and militia kooks elect lying Republican senators who ruin Christmas and who oppose the bill only because they want to "break" the president and are terrified that if the bill passes, it will expose how they've engaged in fear-mongering propaganda.

Amazing that in his 1,700 word speech, Sen. Whitehouse didn't find time to accuse his opponents of being "divisive" and "polarizing."

from the Washington Post, 2009-Dec-11, to print 2009-Dec-13, by Dana Milbank:

Harry Reid's main focus: Harry Reid

Harry Reid began the week in familiar fashion, by detonating an improvised literary device on the Senate floor. It bombed.

Instead of merely scolding Republicans for delaying action on health-care legislation, he compared them to slaveholders and racists. "You think you've heard these same excuses before? You're right," the Senate majority leader proclaimed. "There were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early, let's wait, things aren't bad enough' about slavery. . . . When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

Predictably, these words shifted the debate away from health care and toward Reid's mouth -- which for Democrats is not a safe place.

It was not the first time that Senate Democrats found themselves subject to the whim of their leader in the Senate. As the Nevada Democrat struggles to convince voters in his home state to return him to the Senate next year for a fifth term, his reelection fight has become a dominant theme in the Capitol and throughout the federal government. To borrow a Reid metaphor, you might even say it's enslaving the Democrats.

Take the case of the ill-fated "public option" in the health-care bill. Everybody, including Reid, knew the idea didn't have enough votes to clear the Senate. But Reid called a solo news conference and announced that he was including the proposal anyway. The reason was clear: The attempt would excite his Democratic base in Nevada, which would give him credit for trying even when the plan ultimately failed, as it did this week. But Reid seemed not to have considered, or cared about, the collateral damage: forcing Senate Democratic moderates such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas to cast a procedural vote in favor of the public option that could prove ruinous to their own careers -- and to the Democratic majority.

Democratic colleagues on the Hill and in the Obama administration, meanwhile, have been rallying the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind his campaign. House Democrats invited him to testify at a hearing on Nevada workplace safety. Senate Democrats invited him to testify about tourism in Las Vegas. In a six-month period this year, no fewer than seven Cabinet members, along with the president and vice president, traipsed to Nevada to promote the majority leader, often bringing gifts such as high-speed rail linking Las Vegas to Los Angeles, renewable energy projects and fundraisers for Reid's campaign.

Why the need for this federal mobilization? A Mason-Dixon poll for the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week found Reid's approval rating at just 38 percent. That's because he is disliked by Republicans (only 5 percent favor him) and independents (37 percent). That means he needs to fire up Democrats, who slightly outnumber Republicans in Nevada and support Reid at a rate of 75 percent. Reid "needs to shore up and bond with his base," says the political handicapper Charlie Cook.

That could explain Reid's vote this week with abortion-rights senators on an amendment to the health bill, even though he is usually anti-abortion. And there's probably more of that to come: Reid has been pushing for rapid action on immigration reform and has written to President Obama urging quick repeal of the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy. But as his public-option gambit demonstrated, merely dangling proposals, regardless of how meritorious they may be, doesn't cause them to become law -- and it may cause Democrats from more conservative states, such as Lincoln's Arkansas, to lose their jobs.

Democratic senators like their leader, and they tolerate his rhetorical flourishes. Just before his slavery mishap, he tried to discredit David S. Broder, a twice-weekly Post columnist, by calling him "a man who has been retired for many years and who writes a column once in a while." In the past, he called the chairman of the Federal Reserve a "hack," President Bush a "loser" and the war in Iraq "lost."

But after spending so much energy on Reid's reelection -- and before that, the failed reelection bid of Democratic leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota -- Democrats may conclude that it's better to have a leader from a safe state where parochial concerns won't interfere as much. Both of Reid's would-be replacements, New York's Chuck Schumer and Illinois' Dick Durbin, fit the bill.

The 400,000 registered Democrats of Nevada deserve to be represented -- but in a nation of 300 million, the Senate majority leader needs to think bigger.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Oct-30, by Michael Gerson:

Too small to lead

R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, seems poised to lose the jewel in President Obama's political crown.

In November 2008, Obama was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win the electoral votes of the commonwealth. Obama's victory was a case study in how he might transform American politics, building an alliance of new voters and suburban Southerners to defeat Republicans at the heart of their power.

A year later, the Virginia governor's race displays a Democratic promise gone crusty and stale. The Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell, threatens to turn a lead into a rout. Democratic leaders, getting a head start on recrimination, fault Deeds's political skill, but mainly his tirelessly negative campaign. While McDonnell has talked of jobs and roads, Deeds has spent millions on ads warning of the Talibanization of Virginia by Mullah McDonnell, who was accused of opposing birth control, women in the workplace and breast-cancer screening. The charges did not stick. One unnamed White House official recently complained that Obama "had drawn a road map to victory in Virginia. Deeds chose another path."

But there is another explanation. Perhaps Deeds and Obama have declined in support for the same reason -- because they are taking the identical path.

It is difficult to remember now, but Obama was elected largely for his tonal, not ideological, appeal. His announcement speech in Springfield, Ill., denounced "the smallness of our politics." At the time, Obama adviser David Axelrod explained, "If you can inspire people and if you can give them something real to believe in, you can advance your campaign without tearing everybody else down." During the primaries, Obama ended up benefiting from the contrast with Hillary and Bill Clinton's wrecking crew.

But the tonal candidate also had a conventionally liberal policy agenda. And as that agenda has run into resistance -- on spending, health care and climate legislation -- the president's tone has utterly changed.

The Obama administration has gone after both Rush Limbaugh and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- showing an inability to distinguish between the burning of heretics and the burning of bridges. It has courted insurance companies, then publicly demonized them for showing independence. Obama has tended to define all opposition, particularly on health care, as resulting from fear, cowardice and selfishness -- instead of admitting genuine disagreement. At a recent fundraiser, he mocked Republicans as robots who "do what they're told." He has engaged in consistent, classless, self-excusing criticism of his predecessor. Other presidents have been known for a war on totalitarianism or a war on terrorism. Obama is known for a war on Fox News.

"The campaign," Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen say in Politico, "underscores how deeply political the Obama White House is in its daily operations -- with a strong focus on redrawing the electoral map and discrediting the personalities and ideas that have powered the conservative movement over the past 20 years." Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander -- a conservative, but not normally an angry one -- describes these tactics as behavior "typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants." It is also behavior typical of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called town hall protesters "evil-mongers," and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who labeled them as "simply un-American."

There are many reasons why Obama, according to Gallup, has suffered the largest decline in approval, at this point in his term, of any elected president since 1953 -- and why fewer Americans approve of the job done by Congress than believe in UFOs. But one reason is surely the bitter, brittle tone of the new Democratic establishment -- highlighted by the promise they have raised and disappointed.

How did the tonal candidate become so tone-deaf? We have always known that there are two Obamas. One is the thoughtful, Niebuhr-quoting professor, who listens to every side and speaks inspiring words of unity. The other Obama comes from Chicago and suffers from an excess of Chicagoans around him. Many Democrats seem to like the street-brawling side of Obama and his team. Many independents and Republicans seem less enthusiastic that Mr. Hyde has moved in his furniture and clearly plans to stay.

America in 2008 and Virginia in 2009 show that tone is an underestimated factor in American politics. Positive candidates in these races have looked like leaders and winners. Negativity has seemed trivial. Virginians seem to be deciding that Deeds is too small to be governor. Obama seems intent on proving that he is too small to be an effective president.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Nov-6, by Michael Gerson:

Obama cedes the center

During long campaign swings in Virginia's recent gubernatorial campaign, Bob McDonnell's staff would count the cars that sported both Obama and McDonnell bumper stickers. These ideologically confused motorists turned out to be an important demographic. On Election Day, according to exit polls, about one in 10 voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 voted for McDonnell, the Republican.

Cable television debates offer a choice between extremes. Competitive statewide elections are a fight for the middle. This is the contest Republicans won on Tuesday.

Given the breadth of Obama's victory a year ago, Republicans had no choice but to seek the support of wavering Obama voters and independents. McDonnell, in particular, went after them with unflappable discipline -- speaking respectfully of Obama while seizing the momentum of economic discontent. Obama won just under half of Virginia independent voters last year. On Tuesday, McDonnell carried 66 percent.

Both McDonnell and New Jersey's governor-elect, Chris Christie, were blessed with opponents who combined weakness and viciousness in equal measure. But the ideological atmosphere for the election was determined by Obama himself. When I interviewed McDonnell in September, he saw the first signs of an anti-Democratic backlash among Virginia businesspeople who were concerned about the "card check" bill (which would allow union organization without a secret ballot). Then a broader resentment about the level of spending and new burdens imposed by cap-and-trade climate legislation. Then the summer of health-care-reform discontent.

The White House now dismisses Tuesday's losses as the reflection of "local issues" -- as though the Virginia outcome was determined by zoning disputes on the proposed site of a new 7-Eleven. When one of the primary concerns of the electorate is the direction of the economy, all politics is national.

By creating deficits unequaled as a percentage of the economy since World War II, by proposing to nearly triple the national debt in the next 10 years, by using the economic crisis as an excuse for the massive expansion of government authority over health care, Obama has become a polarizing figure. Of course, some Republicans thrive on ideological combat and would seek it even if unprovoked. But it is Obama's tax-and-spend ambitions that have united Republicans of every stripe in opposition, put fiscally conservative Democrats in an impossible bind and ceded the economic center to Republican candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.

Advocates of purity politics on both left and right see Tuesday's lessons differently. "If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary 'bipartisanship,' " said the Daily Kos, "you will lose votes." But what could this possibility mean in practice? Would Democrats have saved Virginia and New Jersey if they embraced a single-payer takeover of American health care? If they proposed another trillion dollars in new debt? Yes, Democratic turnout and enthusiasm were down in both states. But this is probably because Obamamania was an acute, not chronic, malady. And though Obama remains fairly popular, his liberal policies look considerably less appealing without his winning personality on the ticket.

Others make a similar argument with a different ideology: If only more conservatives were nominated, such as Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd Congressional District, the party might be pure enough to excite the base. Liberal Republicans who eventually endorse Democrats, such as Hoffman's opponent, should probably expect a conservative primary challenge. But this strategy is self-destructive when universalized. Would Republican appeal throughout the Northeast really be expanded by more ideological nominees? Though the Republican Party will remain the conservative party nationally, it is not possible for Republicans to win everywhere with an identical conservative message.

The Republican candidates who won on Tuesday were generally conservative, but not angry. They were supported by the Republican base but spent most of their time reaching toward the middle. It was a center-right victory in a center-right country.

Politicians who have run for governor -- say, Bill Clinton -- had a good feel for the politics of the center. Obama has yet to demonstrate it. According to the White House, on election night he was "not watching returns" -- displaying a French monarch's indifference to America's shifting middle.

Now comes Obama's largest test, which will determine the ideological atmosphere for the 2010 election. If the president -- opposed by a majority of Americans, with almost no support from the other party -- imposes an ideologically divisive health reform, it will smack of radicalism, reinforce polarization and may cede the ideological center to Republicans for years to come.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Nov-1, by Karl Vick and Philip Rucker (Rucker reported from Washington):

In a war within GOP, the right wins a battle
Moderate nominee leaves House race in Upstate New York

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -- The moderate Republican nominee for a vacant U.S. House seat here unexpectedly withdrew from the race Saturday, bowing to a revolt led by conservative activists that badly split the national GOP leadership and is likely to influence the shape of the party heading into next year's midterm elections.

With campaign funds drying up and support in public polls eroding significantly, Dede Scozzafava suspended her campaign three days before Tuesday's special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District. Her move paves the way for a more conservative third-party candidate, Doug Hoffman, in his effort to deny Democrats a seat that has been in the Republican column for more than a century.

Scozzafava's sudden departure represented a clear victory for the right flank of a fractured Republican Party that is trying to rebuild itself nationally after consecutive losses in 2006 and 2008 left the White House and both branches of Congress in Democratic hands.

The sudden turn of events in this Upstate New York district sends a signal to Republican candidates across the country that the populist forces are prepared to exercise their muscle against GOP candidates they regard as insufficiently conservative.

"The grass roots of the conservative movement just claimed a scalp before anyone even voted," said party strategist Mark McKinnon, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "The conservative movement is alive, well, kicking hindquarters and taking names. And if you don't measure up, look out."

Right sends a message

For weeks, conservatives had assailed Scozzafava, the handpicked candidate of local party leaders, over her relatively liberal positions on fiscal issues and her support for gay rights and abortion rights. Her withdrawal underscored the potency of the conservative populist movement that has risen up to challenge President Obama's domestic agenda and shape the future of a Republican Party lacking in strong leadership and a clear agenda.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who was one of Scozzafava's most prominent supporters, said her experience delivered a message to 2010 candidates and to those considering presidential campaigns in 2012.

"It says that you had better have a willingness to take on the establishment and a willingness to represent conservative values if you're going to have the energy and the capacity to create a Republican Party that's able to hold together a coalition," he said.

Already, conservative activists have zeroed in on the 2010 race for Florida's open Senate seat, in which the party campaign committee has endorsed moderate Gov. Charlie Crist but the more conservative Marco Rubio, a former state House speaker, is mounting a strong challenge.

"If I were Charlie Crist in Florida, what's happening in New York 23 would make me extremely nervous," GOP strategist Todd Harris said. "A lot of the establishment Republicans underestimated the grass-roots anger across the country about spending and the expansion of the federal government. The anger is boiling over now, but a lot of the seeds of discontent were planted over the last five to six years."

For the rebounding party, however, the grass-roots discontent comes with risks.

"Because of what's happened, we're going to have some mischief-making, which is not positive for a party that needs to really focus on other fundamentals in order to make a comeback," Republican strategist John Weaver said.

National attention

With this New York district holding the only congressional election in an off-year cycle, much of the nation's political attention has gravitated here to the state's remote crown, an area so close to the Canadian border that highway signs are in English and French. The district covers so much territory that canvassers pack a bag before setting off from Plattsburgh, a city of 19,000 nestled on Lake Champlain beside Vermont, for the six-hour drive to the next great cluster of voters, sprinkled like pine cones along Lake Ontario.

"We still have a type of isolation up here compared to the cities, so we still have the old traditional American values," Hoffman, who is running as the Conservative Party candidate, said in an interview here. "And that's why the majority of the people in this district are so conservative."

Since Obama's nomination of Rep. John McHugh as secretary of the Army, the race to fill his seat has become a microcosm of the struggle within the Republican Party between conservative activists and the moderate establishment.

"This is entirely a battle over the definition and winning formula for Republican candidates going into the midterm elections of 2010 and beyond," GOP strategist Paul Erickson said.

Several likely 2012 presidential contenders, including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, bucked the party leadership to endorse Hoffman. Even Richard K. Armey, the former House Republican leader, traveled here in late October with strategists from his Freedom Works network to help Hoffman, a rail-thin, bespectacled accountant making his first run for office.

The conservative Club for Growth financed a barrage of negative advertisements in recent weeks casting Scozzafava as a closet liberal, and the state assemblywoman's support among likely voters dropped to 20 percent in a Siena College poll released Saturday. Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens were in a dead heat, with 36 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

On Wednesday night, Scozzafava found herself on a Plattsburgh stage after a debate Hoffman had skipped, visibly perspiring as she recited her conservative credentials before a crew from Fox News Channel.

"I believe in the Republican Party that stands for less government interference in the lives of individuals," Scozzafava said. "I believe in lower taxes, less government regulation. . . . I believe in all those core principles of the Republican Party. I believe in the First Amendment of the Constitution, the Second Amendment of the Constitution, all the amendments."

"People don't know who I am," Scozzafava implored. "My background and my record has been totally lied about."

But Scozzafava's pleas were not enough, and on Saturday she released a statement:

"The reality that I've come to accept is that in today's political arena, you must be able to back up your message with money -- and as I've been outspent on both sides, I've been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record."

She released her supporters to "transfer their support as they see fit" but did not directly endorse Hoffman. Within hours, however, Republican leaders in Washington mobilized the party apparatus around Hoffman.

"This selfless act of releasing her supporters provides voters with the opportunity to unite around a candidate who shares Republican principles and will serve the interests of his constituents in Congress by standing in opposition to the liberal policies of President Obama and Speaker Pelosi," said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele.

A blow to Democrats?

Democrats thought the three-way race could result in Owens winning a plurality of votes in the district, where the last non-Republican to win the seat "was a Whig," joked a local councilman. Still, Obama won the district last year and Hillary Rodham Clinton carried it in her 2006 Senate reelection victory.

Political strategists said Scozzafava's departure is likely to benefit Hoffman, who has been attracting independent voters as well as conservatives.

"While the circumstances in this race are unusual, the one constant factor at play -- both locally and nationally -- has been that independent voters continue to peel away from the Democrats and gravitate toward the right," said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee.

When Hoffman visited McSweeney's Red Hots here last week, he told folks that he entered the race "because it's principle over party." As he polished off a chili dog, Pam Murray Wojtowicz asked from across the counter: "You know why I got involved? Joe the Plumber! I met him at CPAC in Washington. He said, 'You've got to get involved.' And now I'm a City Council member in Saratoga Springs."

"I'm a Ronald Reagan Republican," she added, "and we don't need another wishy-washy, let's-be-like-the-Democrats candidate."

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Nov-7, by Toby Harnden:

Bloodless President Barack Obama makes Americans wistful for George W Bush

Barack Obama's reaction to bad news is to play it so cool that Americans yearn for a bit more drama - and some even for his predecessor, writes Toby Harnden in Washington.

During the election campaign, Barack Obama's cool detachment was a winning quality, the "No Drama Obama" a welcome contrast with the "Mr Angry" John McCain, never mind the hot-headed "I'm the decider" President George W Bush.

A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone's guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him.

He has spent more than two months considering a troop increase but do we know how he really feels about the Afghan war?

In a sign that the Obama honeymoon truly is over, I began to hear this week the first stirrings of a wistfulness about Mr Bush. "I never thought I'd hear myself say it," one Democrat told me. "But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on something."

When Mr Bush's Republicans were defeated in the 2006 mid-term elections, it was the President himself who stepped up and declared that his party had received "a thumpin'". The Democratic defeats on Tuesday were not on anything like the same scale but Mr Obama acted as if nothing at all had happened.

Mr Obama had campaigned for Jon Corzine, New Jersey's Democratic governor, five times, twice just last Sunday. But when Mr Corzine lost by four points in a state Mr Obama won by 15 last year - a 19-point swing to Republicans - White House aides just shrugged.

In Virginia, which Mr Obama won by six points last year, prompting Democrats to declare an historic political realignment in the state, the Democratic candidate went down by 17 points in the biggest landslide since 1961 - a 23-point swing to the Grand Old Party.

It took Senator Mark Warner of Virginia to admit that his party "got walloped". For three days, Mr Obama maintained a studied silence about the results while his aides blamed them on local factors that had nothing to do with the President. And to think that it was Mr Bush who was always accused of being "in denial".

More serious perhaps was Mr Obama's strange disconnectedness over the Fort Hood massacre of 13 soldiers by an Army major and devout Muslim who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had praised suicide bombing and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire.

Maybe Mr Obama had been reading the American press, much of which somehow contrived to present the atrocity as a result of combat stress due to soldiers going on repeated war deployments (though Major Nadal Hasan had not been on any) and therefore, no doubt, Mr Bush's fault.

When the television networks cut to the President, viewers listened to him spend more than two surreal minutes talking to a gathering of Native Americans about their "extraordinary" and "extremely productive" conference, pausing to give a cheery "shout out" to a man named Dr Joe Medicine Crow. Only then did he briefly and mechanically address what had happened in Texas.

On Friday, when most of the basic facts were available, Mr Obama tried again. It was scarcely any better. He began by offering "an update on the tragedy that took place" - as if it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack from an enemy within - and ended with a promise for more "updates in the coming days and weeks".

Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathised with the families and comrades of those murdered.

It was a reminder that for the past 16 years Americans have had two Presidents who would often extemporise and express emotion. President Bill Clinton could certainly "feel your pain" while Mr Bush sometimes struggled to hold back tears. Mr Obama is more like President George Bush Snr, who famously communicated his concern for people by blurting out: "Message - I care."

The White House argues that Mr Obama was not on the ballot last week and there is therefore no need to fret. The problem with this complacency is that voters were angry about the state of the economy, which Mr Obama can't keep blaming on his predecessor. With unemployment now above 10 per cent, Mr Obama needs to show Americans that he can relate to what they're going through, and take responsibility.

It could do him good to show he has a bit of fire in his belly. Perhaps he might make a decision or two based on gut instinct and deep conviction. In other words, maybe he should try being a bit more like Mr Bush.

from the Telegraph of London, 2009-Oct-30, by Toby Harnden:

Barack Obama: so much for superhero

As the anniversary of his victory looms, the troubles are mounting for a president who promised so much. Toby Harnden reports.

Washington — What a difference a year makes. On a balmy Tuesday evening in November just under a dozen long months ago, Barack Hussein Obama's unlikely journey to the presidency reached its heady conclusion. Americans had shown, he proclaimed, that they could "put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day".

The then Illinois senator told the enraptured crowd, and a world that watched in awe at what the United States had achieved, that "all things are possible", that "our union can be perfected" and it was time for the "partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long to be cast aside".

This Tuesday, Democrats face almost certain defeat in the governor's race in Virginia – the key Southern state that helped deliver Mr Obama victory – and a desperately close call in New Jersey, where the Democratic governor is in deep trouble in what should be a safe seat.

Although the White House was buoyed by the release of gross domestic product figures yesterday showing that the US had climbed out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, little else is going right for Mr Obama.

His popularity ratings have slumped to an anaemic average of 51 per cent. He has spent a full 60 days thus far considering a request from General Stanley McChrystal, Nato commander in Afghanistan, for another 44,000 troops to stave off defeat.

There are increasing signs that Mr Obama is deeply discomfited by the war that he had declared in his election campaign to be a "war of necessity". Amid grave concern at the Pentagon about the cost of delaying decision making so long, it emerged yesterday that Mr Obama had asked for a detailed province-by-province study of Afghanistan.

Senior military officers fear he is second-guessing and undermining Gen McChrystal, whom he has met only twice. The indications are that a decision on troop levels might not come until mid-November. In the two months that Mr Obama has "dithered" – a word that is increasingly used across the political spectrum – over the McChrystal request, 96 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan.

In Congress, Mr Obama's health care plan – which the White House had said it wanted to be finalised by August – is in deep trouble. Senate Democratic leaders have defied him by backing a liberal bill that establishes a government-run insurance option – something that the sole Republican who has supported reform has said she cannot countenance.

This week Mr Obama is front and centre in both states where governorships are up for grabs. He campaigned in Hampton Roads, Virginia, even though Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate, has been seen by some at the White House to have distanced himself from Mr Obama and his policies.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Mr Obama dispatched his pollster Joel Benenson to take charge of a campaign that was seen to be in disarray. On Sunday, the president himself will headline two events for Governor Jon Corzine, an unpopular former Goldman Sachs executive.

But on the campaign trail Mr Obama is striking some false notes. The president labelled Chris Christie, Mr Corzine's Republican opponent, as "slick" – the one thing he is. And last month, the Corzine campaign – presumably with Mr Benenson's blessing – produced a television advertisement that depicted Mr Christie manoeuvring his ample girth out of a car and accusing him of "throwing his weight around".

It is unclear how this fits with Mr Obama's oft-repeated pledges to bring a "new tone" to Washington, reach out to Republicans and work to end partisanship and incivility.

To coincide with the anniversary of Mr Obama's election, a new book by his campaign manager, David Plouffe, is being published. Parts of the excerpts released by Time magazine yesterday read like a jarring parody.

Mr Plouffe records that Mr Obama "handled everything with brilliance", was "the pillar of reassurance" and that an important speech "received rave reviews from political commentators and spawned hundreds of positive editorials".

It was back in February that Hillary Clinton, then Mr Obama's implacable foe and now his Secretary of State, mocked his kumbaya message that everything could change if Americans only had the vision to elect him to the White House. "I could just stand up here and say 'Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified'," she told supporters at a rally in Providence, Rhode Island. "The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect. Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions at how hard this is going to be."

At the time, many dismissed this as the bitterness of a Democratic front-runner who was heading towards a painful defeat. But Mrs Clinton's words have taken on a prophetic tinge.

Many of Mr Obama's actions have demonstrably failed to live up to his campaign rhetoric. He promised to knock heads together to achieve health-care reform and shine a light on the legislative process by televising live meetings to discuss policy. Instead, bills have been stitched together behind closed doors.

This week he signed a $680 billion National Defence Authorisation Act that was loaded by Congress with equipment the Pentagon didn't need. He is poised to sign a defence appropriations bill that currently has 778 "earmarks" or pet projects from Senators and 1,080 from members of the House of Representatives. On the stump, Mr Obama had railed against earmarks and promised to scrutinise bills "line by line" to eliminate them.

Beyond Washington, Mr Obama's June speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was almost universally well received. But the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remains stalled and Mr Obama's "new era of engagement" with Iran and Russia is showing precious little in terms of concrete results or even the prospect of them.

In recent days, the White House has been preoccupied not with the war in Afghanistan or even the battle on Capitol Hill to produce a health-care bill. Instead, it has been engaged in a war with Fox News, the Right-leaning cable channel owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Mr Obama continues to blame George W Bush, his predecessor, for whatever might be going wrong in America.

Appearing on CNN, Valerie Jarrett, a long-time close confidante of Mr Obama and a senior White House aide, stated that in taking on Fox News the administration was speaking "truth to power" – an indication of the mindset that the election campaign is still on.

She praised Mr Obama's "thoughtful and deliberate" consideration of the Afghanistan troop request, adding: "Before he puts our men and women in harm's way, he wants to make absolutely sure, not just of the number of troops, but that there's an overall strategy for success."

But there are already 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan caught in limbo.

Perhaps the most dangerous sign for Mr Obama is that the media – whose adoring coverage helped propel him to victory – are growing tired of the Obama Superhero theme. It has been pointedly noted this week that he has played as much golf already as Mr Bush did in his eight years in the White House.

Details have emerged of big Democratic donors being richly rewarded with birthday trips to the Oval Office, golf outings and special White House briefings. These are long-established practices in Washington but Mr Obama solemnly promised to end them.

The White House is pleading for patience, arguing that change sometimes doesn't come quickly or easily. Unfortunately for Mr Obama, Americans tend to expect instant results. If Mr Obama doesn't deliver soon, they are liable to write him off as – to use the Texan phrase – all hat and no cattle.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-25, by Arthur C. Brooks:

Why Government Health Care Keeps Falling in the Polls
The health-care debate is part of a larger moral struggle over the free-enterprise system.

Regardless of how President Barack Obama's health-care agenda plays out in Congress, it has not been a success in public opinion. Opposition to ObamaCare has risen all year.

According to the Gallup polling organization, the percentage of Americans who believe the cost of health care for their families will "get worse" under the proposed reforms rose to 49% from 42% in just the past month. The percentage saying it would "get better" stayed at 22%.

Many are searching for explanations. One popular notion is that demagogues in the media are stirring up falsehoods against what they say is a long-overdue solution to the country's health-care crisis.

Americans deserve more credit. They haven't been brainwashed, and they aren't upset merely over the budget-busting details. Rather, public resistance stems from the sense that the proposed reforms do violence to three core values of America's free enterprise culture: individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition.

First, Americans recoil at policies that strip choices from citizens and pass them to bureaucrats. ObamaCare systematically does so. The current proposals in Congress would effectively limit choice across the entire spectrum of health care: What kind of health insurance citizens can buy, what kind of doctors they can see, what kind of procedures their doctors will perform, what kind of drugs they can take, and what treatment options they may have.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare would limit the ability of people to choose affordable insurance coverage through less-comprehensive, consumer-driven insurance plans. And it wouldn't allow Americans to shop for better health-care plans from out-of-state carriers.

Second, Americans believe we should be responsible for the consequences of our actions. Many citizens bitterly view the auto and Wall Street bailouts as gifts to people who took imprudent risks, imperiled the entire economic system, and now appear to be walking away from the mess.

Similarly, Americans are cold to a health-care system that effectively rewards individuals for waiting to get insurance until they get sick—subsidizing their coverage by taxing those who responsibly carry insurance in good times and bad.

On its face, the reformers' promise to provide health insurance to nearly all, regardless of pre-existing conditions, is appealing. But as most instinctively realize, if people don't have to worry about carrying insurance until they need it, many won't buy it. Already, the Census Bureau tells us that 21% of the uninsured are in households earning at least $75,000. Although there are certainly plausible reasons for this in some cases, this phenomenon will worsen under ObamaCare.

Third, ObamaCare discourages personal ambition. The proposed reforms will institute a set of government mandates, price controls and other strictures that will make highly trained specialists, drug researchers and medical device makers less valued now and in the future. Americans understand that when you take away the incentive to make money while saving lots of lives, the cures, therapies and medical innovations of tomorrow may never be discovered.

Yet we are told this is all for the best. In his commencement speech at Arizona State University earlier this year, Mr. Obama told the graduates not to "fall back on the formulas of success that have been peddled so frequently in recent years": "You're taught to chase after all the usual brass rings . . . let me suggest that such an approach won't get you where you want to go."

Crass materialism is indeed a tyranny that can lead to personal misery. But most Americans believe it's up to individuals, not a nannying government, to decide what constitutes too much income and too much ambition.

An April 2009 survey conducted by the polling firm Ayers, McHenry & Associates for the conservative nonprofit group Resurgent Republic asked respondents which of the following statements about the role of government came closer to their view: (a) "Government policies should promote fairness by narrowing the gap between rich and poor, spreading the wealth, and making sure that economic outcomes are more equal"; or (b) "Government policies should promote opportunity by fostering job growth, encouraging entrepreneurs, and allowing people to keep more of what they earn." Sixty-three percent chose the second option; just 31% chose the first.

This is consistent with nonpartisan surveys showing that most Americans think our increasingly redistributionist government is overstepping its bounds. For example, a September 2009 Gallup Poll found that 57% believe the government is "doing too much"—the highest percentage in more than a decade. Just 38% said it "should do more."

We will continue to hear both sides of the health-care debate argue about particulars of insurance markets, the deficit impacts of reform, and the minutiae of budgetary assumptions. These arguments, while important, do not address the deeper issues involved.

The health-care debate is part of a moral struggle currently being played out over the free enterprise system. It will be replayed in every major policy debate in the coming months, from financial regulatory reform to a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions. The choices will ultimately always come down to competing visions of America's future. Will we strengthen freedom, individual opportunity and enterprise? Or will we expand the role of the state and its power?

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future," to be published by Basic Books next June.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Oct-27, by Bill Kristol:

A good time to be a conservative

Bien-pensant conservative elites and establishment-friendly Republican big shots yearn for a more moderate, temperate and sophisticated Republican Party. It's not likely to happen. And probably just as well.

The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public's conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.

The conservative number is as high as it's been in the two decades that Gallup has been asking the question.

What's more, fully 72 percent of Republicans say they're conservative. Thirty-five percent of independents do so as well -- and presumably the percentage of conservatives among independents who might be inclined, where the rules permit it, to vote in GOP primaries would be much higher.

The implications of this for the Republican Party over the remaining three years of the Obama presidency are clear: The GOP is going to be pretty unapologetically conservative. There aren't going to be a lot of moderate Republican victories in intra-party skirmishes. And -- with the caveat that the political world can, of course, change quickly -- there will be a conservative Republican presidential nominee in 2012.

That nominee seems unlikely to be a current officeholder. Right now, the four leading candidates for the GOP nomination are private citizens. In a recent Rasmussen poll, the only candidates with double-digit support among Republicans were Mike Huckabee (at 29 percent), Mitt Romney (24 percent), Sarah Palin (18 percent) and Newt Gingrich (14 percent). These four are running way ahead of various senatorial and gubernatorial possibilities. So a party that has over the past two decades nominated a vice president (George H.W. Bush), a senator (Bob Dole), a governor (George W. Bush) and another senator (John McCain), now has as its front-runners four public figures who are, to one degree or another, outsiders.

To an extent this situation is the product of accidental circumstances, and it could change. But when one considers the anti-Washington and anti-political mood in the country, especially among conservatives, it's easier to see it not changing.

Indeed, I suspect that the person most likely to break into this group of front-runners would be a businessman who stands up against President Obama's big-government proposals, a retired general who objects to Obama's foreign policy or a civic activist who rallies the public against some liberal outrage. If a Republican elected official emerges, it will probably be because he or she champions some populist cause, not because that person is a fine representative or senator or governor.

One reason is that many Republicans lack confidence not just in Congress but even in Republican members of Congress. In last week's Post-ABC News poll, a plurality of respondents disapproved of Obama-type health-care reform. In other words, they agree with the Republicans in Congress. But when asked how much confidence they had in congressional Republicans to make the right decisions for the country's future, only 19 percent of respondents expressed much confidence in the GOP -- well behind the confidence levels in congressional Democrats (34 percent) and Obama (49 percent).

Obviously, many Republicans and conservatives -- and lots of moderates and independents -- will be grateful to Mitch McConnell if he can stop ObamaCare, and to Jon Kyl if he can induce the president to embrace a stronger foreign policy. But it's unlikely that the minority party in Congress will be the source of bold new conservative leadership over the next three years. Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill.

The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.

And next week, in real balloting, conservative Republicans are likely to win in Virginia, a state Obama carried. Meanwhile, a liberal Republican anointed by the GOP establishment for the special congressional election in Upstate New York will probably run third, behind the conservative Republican running on the Conservative Party line, who may in fact win.

The lesson activists around the country will take from this is that a vigorous, even if somewhat irritated, conservative/populist message seems to be more effective in revitalizing the Republican Party than an attempt to accommodate the wishes of liberal media elites.

So the GOP is likely, for the foreseeable future, to be of a conservative mind and in a populist mood. In American politics, there are worse things to be.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, writes a monthly column for The Post.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-29, p.A19, by Daniel Henninger:

Obama and the Old Hat People

If you're an elected Democrat anywhere to the right of Barney Frank, and trying to defend a competitive seat next November, you've got to be starting to sweat.

You wake up in the morning and just like every other morning as far as the eye can see the only thing in the news is the president's health-care reform. It's starting to look like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are leading the Donner Party, the snowbound emigrants who bogged down in the Sierra Nevada winter in the 1840s and resorted to cannibalism to survive.

The betting is that with raw political muscle and procedural magic, the Congressional Democrats will pass something, call it reform and hand Barack Obama a "victory." Maybe, but I think what we are seeing with this massive legislation is that the Democrats in Washington have a bigger problem: Their party is looking so yesterday.

In a world defined by nearly 100,000 iPhone apps, a world of seemingly limitless, self-defined choice, the Democrats are pushing the biggest, fattest, one-size-fits all legislation since 1965. And they brag this will complete the dream Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1939.

The culture still believes the U.S. has a hipster for president. But the Obama health-care bill, and maybe this whole administration, is starting to look totally out of sync with the new zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

Everything about the health-care exercise is looking very old hat, starting with the old guys working on it. Max Baucus, Patrick Leahy, Pete Stark—all were elected to Congress in the 1970s, and live on as the immortals in Washington's Forever Land. But it's more than the fact that Congress looks old. The health-care bill is big, complex, incomprehensible and coercive—all the things people hate nowadays.

It's easy to make jokes about how insubstantial the millions of people seem to be who are constantly using technologies like Twitter. But these new digital and Web-based technologies, which have decentralized virtually everything, now occupy most of the average person's waking hours at work or at home. Mass media is struggling to stay massive in a world whose people want to break up into many discrete markets.

The one lump that won't change is government. Government in our time is looking out of it. It'd be one thing if government were almost cool in an old-fashioned way, but it's not. When everyone else's job gets measured by performance, its hallmark is malperformance—whether in Congress, California or New York.

We define the past 25 years in terms of entrepreneurs and visionaries in places like Silicon Valley who took a small idea and ran with it. Congress does the opposite. It take something already big . . . and make it bigger.

We've got Medicare for the elderly, with spending claims out to Mars, so let's create Medicare for All! One of the least noticed parts of the health-care legislation is its intention to make Medicaid even bigger, when Medicaid's cost is arguably the main thing destroying California.

There was a time when contributing to the common good meant joining something relatively small like the Peace Corps or Teach for America. Now it means being willing to just fall into line behind some huge piece of legislation.

Read Mr. Obama's speech last week at MIT on climate change: "The folks who pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized." This, ironically, sounds a lot like the 2007 antiHillary "Big Brother" TV commercial. Its message was that Hillary represented something big and ominously coercive. Boot up that ad now and put Obama's face where Hillary's is.

The larger point here isn't necessarily partisan. It's a description of the way people live their lives in a 21st century world, and how disconnected politics has become from that world.

If we were really living in the world of leading-edge politics that many people thought they were getting with Barack Obama, he would have proposed an iPhone for health care—a flexible system for which all sorts of users could create or choose health-care apps that suited their needs. Over time, with trial and error, a better system would emerge.

No chance of that. Our outdated political software can't recognize trial and error. What ObamaCare is doing with health care—the "public option"—may be fine with the activist left, but I suspect it's starting to strike many younger Americans as at odds with their lives, as not somewhere they want to go. Wait until EPA's ghost busters start enforcing cap-and-trade.

People thought something small, agile and smart was coming to government, but so far it's turning out to be just big-box politics.

None of this is to suggest the Republicans are any better. They do, however, have a better chance of breaking out of the ancient political castle. So long as the Democratic Party is the party of the Old Hat People, dependent on public-sector unions with Orwellian names like the Service Employees International Union, it will remain yoked to a pre-iPhone political model that will increasingly strike average everyday American voters as weird and alien to their world.

from the Washington Examiner, 2009-Nov-8, by Michael Barone:

Freewheeling young voters scare both parties

In November 2008, 658,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 782,000 did so in Virginia. In November 2009, 212,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 198,000 did so in Virginia. In other words, young voter turnout this year was down two-thirds in New Jersey and three-quarters in Virginia.

These numbers are extrapolations from exit poll results and should be regarded as approximate and not precise. But they tell a vivid story, and one with scary implications for both Democratic and Republican political strategists.

The scary story for Republicans was plain a year ago. Young voters went 66 to 32 percent for Barack Obama, while voters over 30 went for Obama by only 50 to 49 percent. Some analysts projected an enduringly Democratic Millennial Generation that would send the Republican Party the way of the Whigs.

But that future obviously didn't arrive last week and it doesn't seem likely to arrive in November 2010. Young voters cast 441,000 votes for Obama in New Jersey but only 121,000 for Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, who brought Obama into the state five times and featured him in his TV ads.

Young voters cast 469,000 votes for Obama in Virginia and provided him with 70 percent of his statewide plurality, but they only cast 87,000 votes for the hapless Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds. Republican Bob McDonnell actually carried the young vote 54 to 44 percent.

A drop-off in young turnout is normal in off-year elections. But this drop-off was enormous. Evidently the aura of candidate Obama was a lot more attractive to young Americans than the policies of President Obama and the roughly similar policies of the Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia.

This is a generation accustomed to making its own choices and shaping its own world. They listen to their own iPod playlists, not someone else's Top Forty; they construct their own Facebook pages rather than enlisting in the official Elvis Fan Club.

Democrats' policies are not in sync with this mentality. They seek a government-run health care regimen, in which young Americans will be forced to sign up for expensive insurance to subsidize older people with more health problems. They seek to jam employees into labor unions, who will insist on 5,000 pages of work rules and rigid seniority systems.

They have a raft of policies -- higher taxes on high earners and those not enrolled in favored health insurance plans, cap-and-trade legislation that taxes everyone who use electricity -- that discourage job creation and stifle innovation. Freezing things in place may sound good to those who already occupy a comfortable niche, but it does little for the many young people who are currently looking for a job.

Especially when they're seeking a job in which they can use their talents creatively and imaginatively to serve society as well as themselves. The full employment economy that prevailed for a quarter of a century until 2008 enabled new workers to find such opportunities. An economy that promises 10 percent unemployment as far as the eye can see -- which is where the Democrats' job-killing policies seem likely to produce -- forces young people to take whatever job they can get, however unappealing, as young people did in the 1930s.

Against this background, the Democrats' relatively liberal policies on cultural issues don't seem to have much appeal, as was plain in Virginia. Certainly not enough to bring many young voters to the polls. Obama posters and T-shirts are no longer selling well and chants of "hope and change" now seem dated.

That's likely to be a problem for Democrats in 2010, as it was in 2009. But there's a problem for Republicans too, when the Millennials do turn out again in large numbers, in 2012 or whenever. The challenge for them is to come up with policies that they can argue will enable young Americans to choose their future, policies that will again produce the bounteous economic growth that provides opportunities for work that can be productive, creative and satisfying.

The House Republicans' alternative to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's chaotically cobbled together health care bill is a start. So are Gov.-elect McDonnell's detailed proposals in Virginia and Gov.-elect Chris Christie's somewhat vaguer proposals in New Jersey.

This year the Democrats' proposals proved unappealing enough to keep young voters from the polls. But Republicans will need better ideas when they finally do show up.

Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.

from the Los Angeles Times, 2009-Oct-23, by Tim Rutten:

Obama's misguided Fox hunt
The White House is over the line when it tries to persuade other media organizations to shun the news outlet.

One of the lessons most people carry away from the schoolyard is that picking an avoidable quarrel with somebody who really likes to fight generally is a losing proposition.

It's too bad nobody reminded the Obama administration of that before it launched into its ill-advised campaign against Fox News. First of all, even though the White House is right on the merits when it describes Fox News as operating mainly as a surrogate for the Republican Party, making an issue of that fact is a tactical mistake.

Fox News' core audience is a cadre of true believers whose regard for their network of choice simply will be vindicated by criticism from the administration. Glenn Beck -- less a commentator than a candidate for a 72-hour psychiatric hold -- and Sean Hannity -- the sort of bully you can find at the end of every Irish bar from South Boston to Outer Richmond -- couldn't buy the kind of publicity the White House has handed them gratis.

So what's the point? According to a variety of reports this week, Obama's advisors are concerned by polls that show his personal approval numbers remaining high but disenchantment with his major policy initiatives growing. The president's aides apparently think one way to reverse the discrepancy is to go after and marginalize prominent critics, such as Rush Limbaugh, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News commentators. Without judging the wisdom of that strategy, it's interesting to recall that Franklin Roosevelt managed to get through a momentous presidency with virtually every newspaper editorial page in the country against him, though he did persuade Joseph P. Kennedy and Cardinal Francis Spellman to intervene with the Vatican to silence Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic, anti-New Deal, pro-fascist radio priest.

Essentially, Fox News is an inverted version of a conventional American news operation: long stretches of editorial comment, conservative and pro-Republican, interspersed with snippets of normative reporting. Roger Ailes, the former GOP political strategist who runs the operation for Rupert Murdoch, conceived that format as a way of delivering 24 hours of programming on the cheap. Even successful commentators don't cost all that much; producers and reporters are, at least relatively, expensive. Ailes lucked into a ratings success because Fox News was launched at about the same time America began slipping into its most fevered ideological divisions since the Civil War, a process Fox News has egged on.

Obama seems to think he can swim against that tide by persuading other news organizations to shun Fox News. "It's not really news," White House political chief David Axelrod said on ABC last Sunday.

"... And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way." On CNN, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel insisted it's important "to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox."

That's way over the line. The White House is perfectly free to refuse to have its people go on Fox News shows, but it shouldn't tell other news organizations that they ought not to follow up on Fox News' reporting or that they ought to keep their journalists from appearing on Murdoch's networks. The White House, moreover, does its case no favors when it invites pro-Democratic commentators like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to private briefings with the president, even though their work is every bit as histrionic as Bill O'Reilly's.

One of the things lacking in the administration's anti-Fox News campaign is a sense of proportion. Murdoch's cable news operation may cast an outsized shadow inside the politically preoccupied Beltway, but in the rest of the country, it's at best a wispy presence. As the Project for Excellence in Journalism's Tom Rosenstiel pointed out this week, the network's star attraction, O'Reilly, "has around 3.5 million people watching each night, or about 1% of American adults. That would get you canceled on broadcast television. The three nightly [network] newscasts have about 20 million viewers."

A widely discussed media phenomenon in recent years has been the success -- particularly among young viewers -- of Comedy Central's nightly riffs on the news, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report." In large part, the explanation for their popularity is that they forthrightly do what Fox News and, increasingly, MSNBC do covertly, which is treat information as entertainment, and growing numbers of Americans insist that they have a God-given right to be entertained, even by the news.

That suggests that the White House could come to terms with Fox News -- if it simply learned to take a joke.

from the Media Research Center via the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-23, by Lachlan Markay:

White House Met Privately With Many Left-Wing Opinionistas
Not surprisingly, Fox News wasn't invited.

The White House has berated Fox News for days now for purportedly pushing an agenda and calling it news. So Americans may have been surprised when, as reported by Noel Sheppard, Obama invited two of MSNBC's most divisive liberal pundits--Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow--to the White House for an off-the-record briefing.

As it turns out, Maddow and Olbermann were only two of the left's heavyweights at the briefing. Yesterday, TVNewser received from the White House a complete list of names. Virtually all of them have their histories of shilling for the administration or Democrats generally, and of bashing conservatives.

Let us review the colorful histories of these pundits, and the reader can decide whether they "have a perspective," in the words of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (in the context of a Fox News attack).

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd hears racism everywhere. She somehow managed to draw racial motivations from Joe Wilson's 'you lie!' outburst last month. That the comment may have been a valid--if poorly timed--objection to disingenuousness on the President's part was of course out of the question. Because, you know, Wilson's from South Carolina.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wanted Democrats to "make the world safe for tax increases." He notably accused President Bush of using "the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised."

Another WaPo columnist, Eugene Robinson, suggested in 2005 that fears of a conspiracy in New Orleans to "save the French Quarter and the Garden District at the expense of the Lower Ninth Ward, which is almost all black" were not that crazy, and that the people muttering these theories were "reasonable" and "sober."

New York Times columnist Frank Rich has compared Joy Behar to Edward R. Murrow. He also attributed a large portion of the opposition to Obama to conservatives who are "irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies."

PBS anchor Gwen Ifill penned a book about the Obama campaign that contained these glowing words about inauguration day: "the romance and achievement of 1960s civil rights marches bearing fruit, as the lions of the movement mingled with the up and comers. Some had been slow to embrace Barack Obama. Some had been quick. But, this night, all wanted to bear witness..."

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert claimed that an ad attacking Barack Obama during the campaign was racist because it showed Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (in the context of criticizing Obama's celebrity) and contained the phallic (in Herbert's words) images of the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

These pundits have certainly shown their willingness to shill for Obama and liberals and to decry opposition as somehow illegitimate. They all have "perspectives," and push their agendas through the media for which they report. If that makes Fox News an enemy, why are these commentators being invited to the White House?

from the Chicago Tribune, 2009-Oct-25, by Clarence Page:

Obama outs Fox, but reveals a big flaw

Surely President Barack Obama and his advisers don't really think that their feud with Fox News will do anything but enhance the cable network's viewership. A deeper problem is what the flap reveals about Team Obama, which seems to be more comfortable with campaigning than governing.

I'm not happy about that. It does not fill me with glee to see Fox News star Sean Hannity joyfully replaying Obama's 2004 come-together speech about how we're "not red states or blues states" but "the United States of America" and asking where is Obama's promise now?

I don't agree with Hannity on much. He's only a tad more serious-minded as a news clown, in my grumpy view, than his colleague Glenn Beck. But, as much as my wife might run from the house when she hears me say it, Hannity's right on this one.

Sure, it is disingenuous for right-wing pundits to accuse Obama of dividing the country, considering the five-star job they have done in turning us against each other. But if Obama is being judged by a different standard of civility, it is a standard he set for himself. He promised to bridge Washington's culture wars, not fire them up.

That's why it was disappointing to hear what every administration does sooner or later, blame media for their problems. White House communications director Anita Dunn started the fracas by calling Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Senior adviser David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel offered similar views and urged other media not to be led around by Fox on any stories.

Obama defended his team while also noting that he didn't spend much time thinking about Fox. Right. So why talk about Fox in such harsh terms? When powerful people lash back at the media that cover them, they only make the media look sympathetic. They boost their adversary's audience with curiosity seekers who wonder what all the fuss is about.

They also provoke a classic reflex: Other media and pundits from all sides circle their -- Our! -- wagons in solidarity, even when our embattled brothers and sisters make us feel like holding our noses while we defend the move.

In fact, Fox is what their defenders say it is, not a political organization but a news operation. It just happens to have some strong right-wing voices like Beck and Hannity who happen to be two of Fox's biggest audience attractions. Such phenomena were forecast in the movie "Network" in 1976. Back then the idea of a half-deranged demagogue set loose on a national audience for the sake of ratings still sounded far-fetched. These days the movie looks almost like a documentary.

But love Fox or hate it, it is a major news channel. Fox's credibility got a boost from two recent scoops that eventually caused other media to play catch-up: They hounded "green jobs" czar Van Jones into resigning, mainly because years earlier he signed a loony 9/11 "truther" petition, and they crusaded against the poor people's activist group ACORN, famously assisted by two young conservative freelance undercover reporters.

So the White House is pushing back. The administration's real goal: raise questions with other reporters so they'll double-check anything they hear on Fox before they run with it. Try to isolate and marginalize Fox's voice. Cut off Fox's influence before it blossoms into the rest of the mainstream media.

It's the sort of strategy that pops up when you're in campaign mode, a mode to which Obama's team is intimately familiar. But there also comes a time to ignore the yammering from the press box and pick up the olive branches of negotiations, compromise and reconciliation.

That was the big take-away in Sen. Lamar Alexander's thoughtful speech last week. The Tennessee Republican, who worked for President Richard Nixon, cautioned Obama against creating a Nixon-like "enemies list" of media, industry or congressional adversaries. That's a wise warning, even if the "list" in Obama's case appears to have only one name on it.

Hardball has its place. Obama doesn't have to cave in to his adversaries to get things done. But his inner circle could use the pragmatic, independent, old-school voice of, say, Ronald Reagan administration veterans like David Gergen, enlisted by Bill Clinton's White House, or Colin Powell, who has informally advised Obama.

Every president needs campaign experts. But every president also needs people who know how to slip off to the private meeting and bring leaders together in ways that also bring the country together. That's the change we're waiting for.

Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-22, by Kimberley A. Strassel:

The Chicago Way
The Chamber of Commerce is only the latest target of the Chicago Gang in the White House.

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.

–Jim Malone,

"The Untouchables"

When Barack Obama promised to deliver "a new kind of politics" to Washington, most folk didn't picture Rahm Emanuel with a baseball bat. These days, the capital would make David Mamet, who wrote Malone's memorable movie dialogue, proud.

A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn't, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.

In recent weeks the Windy City gang added a new name to their list of societal offenders: the Chamber of Commerce. For the cheek of disagreeing with Democrats on climate and financial regulation, it was reported the Oval Office will neuter the business lobby. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett slammed the outfit as "old school," and warned CEOs they'd be wise to seek better protection.

That was after the president accused the business lobby of false advertising. And that recent black eye for the Chamber (when several companies, all with Democratic ties, quit in a huff)—think that happened on its own? ("Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him! Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole. Not talk to him for spitting on the sidewalk. Understand!?")

The Chamber can at least take comfort in crowds. Who isn't on the business end of the White House's sawed-off shotgun? First up were Chrysler bondholders who—upon balking at a White House deal that rewarded only unions—were privately threatened and then publicly excoriated by the president.

Next, every pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance executive in the nation was held out as a prime obstacle to health-care nirvana. And that was their reward for cooperating. When Humana warned customers about cuts to Medicare under "reform," the White House didn't bother to complain. They went straight for the gag order. When the insurance industry criticized the Baucus health bill, the response was this week's bill to strip them of their federal antitrust immunity. ("I want you to find this nancy-boy . . . I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground!")

This summer Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl criticized stimulus dollars. Obama cabinet secretaries sent letters to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. One read: "if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to the state, as Senator Kyl suggests," let us know. The Arizona Republic wrote: "Let's not mince words here: The White House is intent on shutting Kyl up . . . using whatever means necessary." When Sens. Robert Bennett and Lamar Alexander took issue with the administration's czars, the White House singled them out, by name, on its blog. Sen. Alexander was annoyed enough to take to the floor this week to warn the White House off an "enemies list."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor? Targeted for the sin of being a up-and-coming conservative voice. Though even Mr. Cantor was shoved aside in August so the Chicago gang could target at least seven Democratic senators, via the president's campaign arm, Organizing for America, for not doing more on health care. ("What I'm saying is: What are you prepared to do??!!")

And don't forget Fox News Channel ("nothing but a lot of talk and a badge!"). Fox, like MSNBC, has its share of commentators. But according to Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn, the entire network is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Many previous White House press officers, when faced with criticism, try this thing called outreach. The Chicago crowd has boycotted Fox altogether.

What makes these efforts notable is that they are not the lashing out of a frustrated political operation. They are calculated campaigns, designed to create bogeymen, to divide the opposition, to frighten players into compliance. The White House sees a once-in-a-generation opportunity on health care and climate. It is obsessed with winning these near-term battles, and will take no prisoners. It knows that CEOs are easily intimidated and (Fox News ratings aside) it is getting some of its way. Besides, roughing up conservatives gives the liberal blogosphere something to write about besides Guantanamo.

The Oval Office might be more concerned with the long term. It is 10 months in; more than three long years to go. The strategy to play dirty now and triangulate later is risky. One day, say when immigration reform comes due, the Chamber might come in handy. That is if the Chamber isn't too far gone.

White House targets also aren't dopes. The corporate community is realizing that playing nice doesn't guarantee safety. The health executives signed up for reform, only to remain the president's political piñatas. It surely grates that the unions—now running their own ads against ObamaCare—haven't been targeted. If the choice is cooperate and get nailed, or oppose and possibly win, some might take that bet.

There's also the little fact that many Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together. It's hard to do that amid gunfire, and voters might just notice.

("I do not approve of your methods! Yeah, well . . . You're not from Chicago.")

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-8, p.12, by Daniel Henninger:

Michael Moore's 'Socialist' President
The most immediate problem facing the U.S. is not that we have too much capitalism, but that we don't have enough of it.

Barack Obama has an identity problem. When this column has suggested that Barack Obama is not a standard-brand socialist, some readers have attached nuclear warheads to their emails, which scream of course Obama is a socialist (you idiot).

The White House itself appears to be getting some of this same email, judging from Mr. Obama's plaintive defense when insisting to George Stephanopoulos that his health-care tax isn't a tax: "My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy." Which if true, would be socialism.

With friends like Michael Moore, Barack Obama doesn't need imaginary enemies. Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" has opened and is doing poorly at the box office. Feeling sorry for the old Catholic socialist, I spent 12 after-tax dollars to see it.

Don't expect "Capitalism" to make the White House theater.

The movie is largely a paean to plaintiffs lawyers and unions, who alas depend on evil capitalism for their incomes. Still, it's been noted that "Capitalism" slams Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd for being one of the unseemliest friends of Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide Financial, the famous subprime toxic waste site.

In fact, Mr. Moore holds up to ridicule a Who's Who of notable Democrats for selling out to the bankers: Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin. At this point in Mr. Moore's narrative, all hope is lost, sinking beneath satanic capitalism.

But something happened, the movie says, that no one saw coming. "Change is what's happening." We are introduced to the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama (whose post-election supervisory link to the unseemly Geithner and Summers goes unremarked).

Of all the issues raised in the two-year campaign, Mr. Moore picks one, the famous charge that will not die: "Obama is a socialist."

Unlike the president, Mr. Moore doesn't duck. "The more they called Obama a socialist," he says, "the more he rose in the polls."

Michael Moore is a progressive saint. If he believes Barack Obama is a socialist camouflaged inside a Brioni suit, so must many of his fellow progressives.

This matters because the president's confused ideological identity has become an impediment to passing his agenda.

He says his health-care bill is not a Trojan horse for a Canadian-style single-payer system, but then feels forced to appear on five Sunday talk shows to prove otherwise; or he plants white-coated docs like plastic flamingos on the White House lawn.

On the first September anniversary of the end of Wall Street as we know it, Mr. Obama stood in the Federal Hall on Wall Street to say, "I've always been a strong believer in the power of the free market." Only a therapist could explain why some people say, "I've always been . . ."

We live in an age of ideologically transgendered leaders. France's Nicolas Sarkozy ridicules Mr. Obama's "dream of disarmament" one day and the next calls for redefining GDP in terms of happiness. Germany's Angela Merkel hops a little bit right or a little bit left as the moment requires. The U.K.'s Gordon Brown is about to disappear amid an ideological fog, to be replaced by the foggy Tory David Cameron. American conservatives can't name one politician they would trust with their ideas.

Michael Moore's "Capitalism," however awful, should not be passed off as irrelevant. Beyond the agitprop lie individuals screaming at political and economic institutions that are manifestly bogged down.

Congress's approval rating is dead in the water at 22%. California is being described as America's first failed state. Voters in New Jersey, which may already be a failed state, must choose soon between the ineffectual Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine and his hapless GOP opponent Chris Christie.

If Mr. Moore and his gallery of weeping victims took a closer look, they'd see their problem is not capitalism but politics. Once elected, virtually all politicians in the U.S. or Western Europe join the Not Much of Anything Party, and that includes Barack Obama, or soon will.

In the U.S., both Republican and Democratic pols define capitalism as a system with economic activity sufficient to produce campaign contributions. But that ensures income stagnation for Mr. Moore's masses.

The most immediate problem facing the U.S. is not that we have too much capitalism, but that we don't have enough of it.

In a recent visit to the Journal's offices, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key suggested Americans and Europeans don't quite comprehend the enormous "wealth" rising in Asia. Add to that Brazil. This isn't just fat cats but the wealth of billions rising on commerce—on crude, potent capitalism.

The Olympic Committee's rejection of Chicago played here as yet another Obama story. The real, less entertaining message is that from where the well-traveled committee members sit, Chicago is a has-been. Rio is the future.

The important difference between the "socialist" Barack Obama and the Republicans is he'd settle for 2% annual growth (gotta pay for the green dreams) and they might get 3%. In a world of China, India and Brazil, growing at rates between 5% and 9%, we need more. A future president who puts the U.S. back in the race with these fast runners could call himself a communist for all I care.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-19:

Irving Kristol
The man who put 'neo' into conservatism.

Perhaps the greatest gift of the gifted Irving Kristol, who died yesterday at 89, was prescience. This does not mean predicting the future. Prescience, a more useful gift, is seeing the direction in which the future is headed.

In his early years, Kristol saw that the Marxism which fascinated him and many others at mid-century had no future, and he embraced the ideals of the West, holding them tight for a lifetime. Later as a Democrat, he saw that many of the social welfare policies of the 1960s would fail, and so he undertook a long, unsparing critique of his own party's most cherished ideas. Later still, as a Republican, Kristol realized that his party's economic ideas were moribund, and he turned his energies to leading the pro-growth, "supply-side" revolution that culminated in the historic Reagan Presidency.

Irving Kristol is most often credited with leading the movement in American politics that came to be called neoconservatism. Begun in the 1970s, it may be counted as a testament to its enduring strength that as recently as the administration of George W. Bush, critics were bursting blood vessels screaming, again, that the government had fallen into the hands of "the neocons." Nothing more made Irving break into his familiar wide smile than the intensity of his opposition.

The tension between neoconservatism and its critics still lies at the heart of our political division today, or much of it. Irving Kristol was a monthly contributor to these pages for some 25 years, beginning in the early 1970s at the invitation of then editorial page editor Bob Bartley.

It was through this period, both as a contributor to the Journal Editorial Page and as the editor of The Public Interest magazine, that Kristol developed his critique of the welfare state, the often illiberal ambitions of liberal social science, and the Democratic Party's steady drift to the left. (See excerpts from those columns nearby.)

In late July 1998, he wrote a piece for the Journal titled "Politics Reaches an Endpoint." In it he described the evolution of the Democratic Party into what it remains today. In typical fashion, Kristol made his argument by looking for a counterintuitive truth. Here, it was that George McGovern had "won" the 1972 election:

"He did not win the White House but he won the Democratic Party. Again, it was his nomination that was the crucial event, not the election. His nomination meant that the left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party had finally seized control, ousting the more 'centrist' wing that had its base mainly in the South and West. Can anyone imagine Lyndon Johnson being terribly concerned about discrimination against homosexuals in the military, fighting tooth and nail against tax cuts or vetoing legislation limiting late-term abortions?"

The Kristol critique helped shape the basis for many opposition ideas to the modern political left, in both domestic and foreign policy. American politics rarely bends for long to the ideas of one person, a modest truth that Irving Kristol understood. So it should be noted that he enlisted a small army of similarly minded intellectuals ("like-minded" would be an oxymoron among this crowd) to carry the fight.

From his editor's perch at the monthly Public Interest, beginning in 1965, he sent forward an unceasing barrage of ideas from the pens of writers. A short list would include: magazine cofounder Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, James Q. Wilson, Glenn Loury, Abigail Thernstrom, Michael Novak, Aaron Wildavsky, Samuel Huntington, Seymour Martin Lipset, James C. Coleman, Edward Banfield, Chester Finn, Alfred Kahn, Leon Kass, Brigitte Berger, William Bennett, Diane Ravitch. And hundreds of others.

To the extent that American politics today consists of two sides—one insisting that the state guide the country forward, the other that the private economy drive the country forward—it is in large part Irving Kristol and his thinkers who defined the order of battle.

Where the next turn in history lies is beside the point. Irving Kristol's life and career are a compass for anyone who wants to know how ideas and honest inquiry can shape American politics.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-18:

Irving Kristol's Reality Principles
A great mind exposes ideological illusions, while thinking through better alternatives.

The following are excerpts from essays that appeared in The Wall Street Journal by Irving Kristol, who died yesterday at age 89. An editorial on his legacy appears nearby.

Symbolic Politics and Liberal Reform, Dec. 15, 1972

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . .

It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves. Indeed, the outstanding characteristic of what we call "the New Politics" is precisely its insistence on the overwhelming importance of revealing, in the public realm, one's intense feelings—we must "care," we must "be concerned," we must be "committed." Unsurprisingly, this goes along with an immense indifference to consequences, to positive results or the lack thereof.

The Conservative Prospect, June 13, 1975

But there is little question that the ideological atmosphere as a whole has changed, and in a direction that can be fairly called conservative. . . . Expectations that outdistance reality by too much create unstable people and unstable societies. A politics which constantly incites such expectations is a politics of disorder, and ultimately of self-destruction. We have, in this past period, lived through such a politics and have experienced its baleful power. Now the American people seem to be saying that it is a time for sobriety and self-discipline.

The 'New Cold War,' July 17, 1975

If the United States is to gain the respect of world opinion, it first has to demonstrate that it respects itself—its own institutions, its own way of life, the political and social philosophy that is the basis of its institutions and its way of life. Such a sense of self-respect and self-affirmation seems to be a missing element in our foreign policy.

Reforming the Welfare State, Oct. 25, 1976

Our urban experts, planners, and social scientists generally . . . are people who are convinced that, if fully employed and given adequate budgets, they can successfully practice the art of making everyone healthier, wealthier, and happier. Congress has listened to them, and has structured legislation according to their design; and we are now paying the bills. It is these activities—in education, urban revitalization, mental health, welfare, etc.—which constitute an excrescence on the welfare state, properly understood. It is these programs, which do not work and involve vast intricate bureaucracies, that are bringing the welfare state into disrepute.

Détente and 'Human Rights,' April 15, 1977

Ironically, what makes the idea of "coexistence" so precarious is that there are so few Communists in the Soviet Union for us to coexist with. It is only terror and coercion that keep the regime in power—which, in turn, is why the Soviet rulers cannot possibly view the issue of "human rights" as simply one aspect of a larger ideological debate. For them it represents a clear and present danger.

Toward a 'New' Economics?, May 9, 1977

A "new" economics is beginning to emerge. Based on the critique of Keynesianism by the "monetarist" school, as further developed (in a rather heterodox way) in the work of such economists as Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer, and as vigorously publicized by Jude Wanniski of The Wall Street Journal and Congressman Jack Kemp, it is still in an embryonic condition and the world has not yet taken much notice of it. . . .

One uses the inverted commas around that term "new" because, in truth, much of the "new" economics is very old—as old as Adam Smith, say. Its focus is on economic growth, rather than on economic equilibrium or disequilibrium, and it sees such growth arising from a free response (e.g., investment, hard work, etc.) to the economic incentives of a free market. . . . At the moment, and under the existing circumstances, the major emphasis by far of the "new" economics is on the need for a substantial, across-the-board cut in tax rates, because it is the high level of tax rates that is stifling incentives to growth. . . .

It is hard to overstate the importance of the fact that, for the first time in half a century, it is the economic philosophy of conservatives that is showing signs of intellectual vigor, while the economic philosophy of liberalism keeps tying itself into ever more elaborate knots.

The White House Virus, April 17, 1978

Most politicians, most of the time, will end up yielding, however reluctantly, to the reality principle.

Our Foreign Policy Illusions, Feb. 4, 1980

The foreign policy of the United States ought to have as its central purpose a world order that has been shaped, to the largest degree possible, in accord with our national interests as a great power that is free, democratic and capitalist.

Two Economic Questions, June 26, 1980

Our economic problems are not intractable. We can bring down—are bringing down—the rate of inflation. We can afford a tax cut without creating economic chaos. Despite the follies of the past decade, our economy is not at the edge of apocalypse. Economic policies that are just a bit more sensible, especially in the areas of taxation and regulation, can make a lot of difference for the future.

On the other hand, once the idea gets around that we are in a profound crisis and that only "drastic action" by Washington can save us—then it will be time to head for the storm cellars.

Whatever Happened to Common Sense?, Jan. 17, 1984

Or take the issue of crime. It is not sufficiently appreciated how extraordinary—one can even say unique—the situation with regard to crime is in the U.S. today. Ours may well be the first society in all of human history in which the average citizen lives with the constant fear of being victimized by criminal assaults against his person—assaults perpetrated, not by the government or its police forces, but by one's fellow citizens. It is a novel condition. . . . How did it happen?

A good part of the answer is that our sociologists and criminologists and jurists have applied their theories and their presumed expertise to create a criminal justice system that was supposed to reduce criminality but has instead caused it to proliferate wildly. It is an ironical fact that those so-called "less-developed" nations, which have far fewer criminologists than we do, also have much lower crime rates. That is what results when one permits "sophisticated" theories—elaborate ideologies, really—to prevail over common sense and traditional wisdom. In modern societies, crime (like education) becomes a problem when our expert theorists make it one.

The Old World Needs a New Ideology, April 1, 1985

The administration of Ronald Reagan is a fascinating meld of two strands of conservative thinking. The first is a traditional conservatism that emphasizes the prudential management of both economic affairs and foreign policy.

At least half the time, Mr. Reagan speaks and acts as such a traditional conservative. But he also, at critical moments, speaks and acts as a new kind of conservative—a "neoconservative." Neoconservatism is that strange creature, a future-oriented conservatism, stressing the economics of growth rather than of stability, the politics of hope rather than of preservation. It exudes a spirit of buoyant self-confidence rather than of grim defensiveness. It is this new kind of conservatism that marks this administration off from previous Republican administrations. It is neoconservatism that gave rise to supply-side economics and to what one may now call a "supply-side" foreign policy—i.e., a policy of action rather than reaction, as represented by the invasion of Grenada, the Strategic Defense Initiative and support for the contras in Nicaragua.

Life Without Father, Nov. 3, 1994

One of the incontestable findings of modern social science is that fathers are Very Important People. I confess to having been astonished to discover just how important we are. Important in all sorts of unexpected ways. Thus, it turns out that almost two-thirds of rapists, three-quarters of adolescent murderers, and the same percentage of long-term prison inmates are young males who grew up without fathers in the house. I doubt that many fathers have understood that their mission in life had anything to do with the prevention of rape, murder, or long-term imprisonment among their sons.

Income Inequality Without Class Conflict, Dec. 18, 1997

It is often said that capitalism—that is, a market economy—is morally obnoxious because its "trickle-down economics" inevitably creates inequality of income and wealth. Now it is certainly true that "trickle-down economics" has that effect. It is also true, however, that if you want economic growth and greater affluence for all, there is simply no alternative to "trickle-down economics," which is just another name for growth economics.

The world has yet to see a successful version of "trickle-up economics," an egalitarian society in which the state ensures that the fruits of economic growth are universally and equally shared. The trouble with this idea—it is, of course, the socialist ideal—is that it does not produce those fruits in the first place. Economic growth is promoted by entrepreneurs and innovators, whose ambitions, when realized, create inequality. No one with any knowledge of human nature can expect such people not to want to be relatively rich, and if they are too long frustrated they will cease to be productive. Nor can the state substitute for them, because the state simply cannot engage in the "creative destruction" that is an essential aspect of innovation. The state cannot and should not be a risk-taking institution, since it is politically impossible for any state to cope with the inevitable bankruptcies associated with economic risk taking.

from Rasmussen Reports, 2009-Sep-22:

59% Say Americans Angrier Now Than Under Bush

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of U.S. voters believe that the current level of political anger in the country is higher than it was when George W. Bush was president.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 22% think the level of political anger is lower now, while 16% rate it as about the same.

Despite frequent Republican complaints about the vitriol leveled at President Bush, 69% of GOP voters say the level of anger is higher now, a view shared by 53% of Democrats and 56% of voters not affiliated with either party.

But just 12% of voters nationwide say that the opposition to President Obama's health care plan and other initiatives is racist, as some prominent Democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter, have charged.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of all voters say they're at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government, including 36% who are Very Angry.

Among those voters who are Very Angry, 74% say the level of anger is higher now, while 13% say it's lower and 12% say it's about the same.

Even the majority of those who are now very or not at all angry about the government's actions right now say the level of political anger is higher under Obama.

Forty-three percent (43%) of voters are at least somewhat concerned that the political anger will turn violent, with 22% who are Very Concerned. But 54% are not that worried about potential political violence.
Anger at Bush's policies, particularly the war in Iraq, played a major role in Obama's election last November over Republican candidate John McCain. In the final full month of his presidency, just 13% of Americans said they Strongly Approved of the way that Bush performed his job, giving him an overall job approval rating of –30 in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

By comparison, although Obama has been tracking in negative territory for weeks, 31% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way he is performing as president. His job approval rating stands at –8 in the daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
Just before Bush left office in January, 57% of Americans said he was one of the five worst presidents in U.S. history.

Most voters (56%) continue to blame the nation's current economic problems on the recession that started under Bush, but 37% blame the policies implemented by Obama.

Adding to the level of anger is the new finding that 75% of adults now say Americans are becoming ruder and less civilized.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it's free) or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

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from the Times of London, 2009-Nov-1, by Tony Allen-Mills:

Barack and Michelle Obama: Mr&Mrs show irks voters
As political woes mount, not all have been won over by the first couple's intimate revelations

Washington — With difficult state elections and a crucial military decision looming, President Barack Obama sat down with his wife Michelle last month to give an in-depth magazine interview about a subject that has hitherto not ranked highly on the White House political agenda — the state of the first couple's marriage.

The president used the occasion to complain that when he recently hopped aboard Air Force One to fly his wife to New York for dinner and a Broadway show, “people made it into a political issue”.

Obama went on to insist that his marriage was “separate and apart from a lot of the silliness of Washington”. He then proceeded to discuss his romantic ups and downs in startling detail with a reporter from The New York Times Magazine.

Publication of that unusually candid interview highlighted an intriguing contradiction that has begun to haunt the Obama White House. The president's family has become one of his most valuable political assets. Yet the attempts by the Obamas to shield their private lives from scrutiny are increasingly being subverted — by the Obamas themselves.

When the interview appeared on the paper's website ahead of publication today, it prompted a flood of reader reactions from “They are a beautiful couple” and “exceptional role models” to “Why should I care about their marriage?” and “This stuff is none of my business”.

There were also several expressions of concern, echoed privately by Democratic strategists, that the openness of the Obamas about what Michelle described as the “bumps” in their relationship, may help turn a historic presidency into a soap opera. “All this scrutiny cannot be good for a marriage,” worried one of the readers of the Times.

The sense that the Obamas are flirting with disaster by parading their happy family life was magnified by Michelle's Marie Antoinette-like appearance this week on the cover of Glamour magazine — at a time when many Americans continue to lose their homes or jobs every month.

In the interview with Glamour, Michelle discussed her fashion choices and appeared to tease her husband: “One thing I've learnt about male role models is that they don't hesitate to invest in themselves.” The timing and content of the piece prompted Sally Quinn, a veteran Washington style-watcher, to suggest that the first lady had been badly advised.

“I'm not sure if I had been her adviser I would have said for her to do the Glamour cover because it might begin to trivialise her and what her role is,” she said.

The enthusiasm for the Obama family has until now obliged most Republicans to bite their tongues when discussing Michelle and the children, but there were mutterings last week that the president might be using his enviable private life as a diversion from awkward political realities — notably the prospect this week of Democratic defeats in elections for state governors in New Jersey and Virginia.

“Funny how every time there's a crisis we end up reading about Michelle,” noted one Republican insider. “It's great to see that the first couple have such a wonderful relationship,” added a Times website reader. “Now can the president please get down to solving the country's problems?”

Yet even the hardest-nosed Washington operatives confessed last week that reading about the Obamas' love life was a lot more fun than ploughing through 1,900 pages of the revised healthcare bill.

In their tell-nearly-all interview, the Obamas came across as a thoughtful, sensible and undeniably appealing couple who have nonetheless experienced the professional and personal strains that any working couple would recognise.

At one point Michelle expressed frustration at her secondary role after the years she spent as a high-earning hospital executive in Chicago: “Clearly Barack's decisions are leading us. They are not mine, that's obvious,” she said. “I'm married to the president of the United States, I don't have another job.”

That the marriage experienced “bumps” came as no surprise: Richard Wolffe, a Newsweek journalist, has already described in his book on Obama's rise how Michelle at one point became “angry at [Barack's] selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful”.

Asked if their marriage had come close to rupture, Obama told The New York Times: “That's over-reaching it. But I wouldn't gloss over the fact that that was a tough time for us. There were points in time where I was fearful ... that she would be unhappy.”

Michelle said the strains had been “sort of the eye-opener to me, that marriage is hard. Going into it, no-one ever tells you that. They just tell you, `Do you love him ... what's the dress look like'?”

Valerie Jarrett, the couple's close friend and White House adviser, said last year's campaign had initially caused problems when Michelle was depicted as bitter and unpatriotic. Yet she eventually became a valuable surrogate, impressing huge crowds when her husband was absent.

“They both rallied to each other's defence and support,” said Jarrett. “By having to work hard at it, it strengthened their marriage.”

In the White House, the couple seems to have settled into a comfortable routine of public affection and teasing — Barack sometimes addresses Michelle as Flotus (first lady of the United States) but both sought to dispel the notion that everything in the White House rose garden is pink.

“The strengths and challenges of our marriage don't change because we move to a different address,” said the first lady. The image of a flawless marriage was “the last thing we want to project . . .this perfection that doesn't exist”.

Currently condemned to a photogenic but stultifying life as chief fashion plate and do-gooder, Michelle is widely assumed in Washington to be desperate to sink her teeth into a meaty political issue.

Yet she protested, a little too fiercely some thought, that she was “so not interested in a lot of the hard decisions that he's making ... I have never in my life ever wanted to sit on the policy side of this thing”.

Those latter remarks were in striking contrast to the magazine article's portrayal of the Obamas as the model of a modern presidential couple. Many Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton, now Obama's secretary of state, have noted that Michelle seems closer to Laura Bush, wife of George W, in choosing a non-political role.

Hillary Clinton, who famously took an aggressive role in presidential policy-making, notably on healthcare, was the “truly modern and transformational first lady”, noted one of her Democratic supporters. “Michelle has proven to be utterly conventional.”

Yet the bottom line for Obama remains the state of the economy and the progress of the wars he is fighting abroad. While Michelle's approval ratings remain buoyant, the president's continue to slide. A poll last week showed only 31% of Americans believe he can control federal spending (down from 52% at his election) and only 28% believe he can heal political divisions (down from 54%).

For all Obama's glamour and sophisticated intellect, he is in danger of being seen as a failing politician. And familiarity with the details of his private life may quickly turn to contempt.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-1, by Peggy Noonan:

Keeping America Safe From the Ranters
As the Elders of the media die, who'll replace them?

When William Safire died the other day, we lost one of the Elders of journalism and the argumentative arts. We've been losing a lot of them lately: Walter Cronkite, Bob Novak, Don Hewitt, Irving Kristol. "The stars seem to be going out one by one," said Howard Stringer at Cronkite's memorial.

At a gathering of Safire's friends and family this week, Bill stories were told with affection, humor, and a bit of awe. He made his way in a profession that was, early on, hostile to the former Nixon speechwriter and PR man. He barreled through with well-marshalled gifts and a heroic work effort. He was a famous lover of words and language whose deepest loyalty was reserved, kept apart, for his wife, children and friends. He took care of those in his ken. And there was the professionalism: He loved journalism, respected what he did, loved helping young ones on the way up, and was so proud of his work that he was only half kidding when he said, "It's not a column, it's a pillar."

Anyway, everyone there knew we'd suddenly lost one of the great ones, the Elders, and there is lately a sense of a changing of the guard.

***

Who are The Elders? They set the standards. They hand down the lore. They're the oldest and wisest. By proceeding through the world each day with dignity and humanity, they show the young what it is that should be emulated. They're the tribal chieftains. This role has probably existed since caveman days, because people need guidance and encouragement, they need to be heartened by examples of endurance. They need to be inspired.

We are in a generational shift in the media, and new Elders are rising. They're running the networks and newspapers, they own the Web sites, they anchor the shows. What is their job?

It's to do what the Elders have always done, but now more than ever.

You know the current media environment. You think I'm about to say, "Boy, what's said on cable, radio and the Internet now is really harmful and dangerous." And you're right, and it is. Some of the ranters don't have the faintest idea where the line is. "They keep moving the little sucker," said the William Hurt character, the clueless and unstoppable anchorman, in "Broadcast News." They've been moving the little sucker for 20 years. But it's getting worse, and those who warn of danger are right.

Two examples from just the past week. A few days ago, I was sent a link to a screed by MSNBC's left-wing anchorman Ed Schultz, in which he explained opposition to the president's health-care reform. "The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. They'd rather make money off your dead corpse. They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don't have anything for us." Next, a link to the syndicated show of right-wing radio talker Alex Jones, on the subject of the U.S. military, whose security efforts at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh show them to be agents and lackeys of the New World Order. "They are complete enemies of America. . . . Our military's been taken over. . . . This is the end of our country." Later, "They'd love to kill 10,000 Americans," and, "The republic is falling right now."

This, increasingly, is the sound of our political conversation.

It is not new to call this kind of thing destructive, though it is. It is a daily agitating barrage that coarsens and inflames. It tears the national fabric. But it could wind up doing worse than that.

I see it this way. There are roughly 300 million people in America. Let's say 1% of them, only 1 in 100, are composed of those who might fairly be called emotionally unstable—the mentally ill, those who have limited or no ability to govern their actions, those who act out, as they say, physically or violently. That's three million people.

Let's say a third of them are regularly exposed to political media rants from right or left. That's a million people.

What effect might "they want to see you dead" and "the Republic is falling right now" have on their minds?

I was once in a small joust with Roger Ailes about violence on television. I was worried about it. He responded, I paraphrase: But there's comedy all over TV, and I don't see people breaking out in jokes and laughter on the streets. True, I said, but depictions of violence are different. Violent images excite the unstable. Violent words do, too.

This is why, I think, so many people—I include, literally, every person I know, from all walks of life, and all ages—are worried that our elected leaders are not safe, that this overheated era will end in some violent act or acts.

Stop reading this and ask whoever's nearby, "Do you find yourself worrying about President Obama's safety?" I do not think you are going to get, "No."

***

Some conservatives feel umbrage when this is said. "The left equates criticism with violence in order to squelch dissent." In some cases that of course will be true. But this isn't debate, it's more like incitement. And it comes from both right and left.

Democracy cannot healthily endure without free and unfettered debate. It's our job to watch, critique and question, and, being us, to do it in colorful terms.

But knowing where the line is, matters. Seeing clearly the lay of the land, knowing the facts of the country and your countrymen, matters.

Which gets us back to Safire and Cronkite and Novak and the rest. They knew where the line was. They were tough guys who got in big fights, but they had a sense of responsibility towards the country, and towards its culture. They, actually, were protective toward it. They made mistakes, but they were solid.

Now the new Elders must do the job they once did. Some of them will think they can't, that the old ones were too big. But it always looks that way. Who thought Walter Cronkite of United Press would become Ed Murrow, only maybe more influential? Who would have thought Bill Safire, refugee from the Nixon White House, could fill the shoes of Scotty Reston? But he did, and more.

Everything has changed since the old ones came up—new platforms, new ways of communicating. Everyone has a mic now, from the guy making YouTubes to the anonymous drunk on the comment thread.

But it's still possible to set an example, encourage the helpful, stand for the good, pass on the lore, take responsibility.

The new Elders will have to rescue America from the precipice. They'll have to be mature, think of the collective, of the country as a whole.

If they don't do it, who will? If they don't lead through this polarized time, who can? People who are 25 and 30 can't. They haven't been around long enough and don't have the sway. They're the guests on the broadcasts, not the executive producers. The new Elders are.

And they'll have obits someday too. Their careers will be captured in eulogies, leaving their children proud, or not. In a way you're writing your own obit every day. You're making the lead paragraph positive and constructive, or not.

Someone's going to sum you up one day. You want to live your professional life in a way that they can write good things.

from the New York Times, 2009-Sep-28, by Derrick Henry:

Bill Clinton Echoes `Right-Wing Conspiracy' Theme

When Hillary Clinton suggested in 1998 that there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy” out to get her husband, the remarks drew wide attention and scorn among conservatives. Now Bill Clinton himself is echoing that line, saying that such a conspiracy now targets President Obama.

Asked on NBC's “Meet the Press” whether a “vast right wing conspiracy” is involved in the attacks on Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton said, “It's not as strong as it was, because America's changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was.”

Mr. Clinton suggested that the right wing is concocting stories about Mr. Obama in an effort to scuttle his efforts early in his term.

“Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail, and that's not a prescription for a good America,” Mr. Clinton said. “They can take his numbers down; they can run his opposition up. But fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America.”

The former president also said that a credible debate was needed on striking the proper balance between expanding the American economy through stimulus plans while being fiscally responsible. He also suggested more such debate was needed on universal health care coverage.

Mr. Clinton was also asked if he worried that 2010 might see a repeat of the mid-term elections in 1994 that ended with Republicans taking control of the House and Senate.

“There's no way they can make it that bad,” Mr. Clinton said. First, he said, the country is more diverse and more interested in positive action. Second, he said, when the Republicans finally won control of the whole government, “they know the results were bad” after eight years under President Bush. And third, he said the Democrats haven't taken on the gun lobby like he did.

“Whatever happens, it'll be manageable for the president,” Mr. Clinton said.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-17, p.A21, by Karl Rove:

ObamaCare and Red State Democrats
The president is changing the political landscape, but not in the way he intends.

On Friday, I was at DePauw University in Indiana debating former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. It was two days after Barack Obama's big speech before a joint session of Congress and Mr. Dean is a strong advocate for his party's agenda and a medical doctor, so I expected him to defend the president's idea of adding a "trigger" to health-care reform to ease its passage and thereby guarantee a government takeover of our health-care system.

But Mr. Dean turned out to be tougher on triggers than I was. He called them a "terrible" idea.

It's now becoming clear that Mr. Obama's speech failed to rally voters and failed to inspire Democrats to follow their president's lead. And while the fissures are small now (Mr. Dean's worry seems to be that triggers would give too much away to Republicans), they will likely widen unless the president shows that his policies will do what his campaign did — expand the pool of voters in favor of Democrats.

That's not happening now. A Gallup poll this week found that 38% of Americans say their representative should vote for ObamaCare — 40% want their member to vote against it. It was 37%-39% on the same question the day before Mr. Obama spoke.

Part of Mr. Obama's problem is his language. His speech contained little new information and his tone was unpresidential. Instead of binding Americans to his cause, he called legitimate concerns "misinformation," "false," "demagoguery," "distortion" or "tall tales." Earlier in the week he declared them "lies." This was like calling people with concerns stupid, and it's not the way to win them over.

Take the issue of illegal aliens. The president's assertion that his reform "would not apply to those who are here illegally" drew an angry eruption from a GOP House backbencher. Then late Friday night, the White House quietly announced that proof of citizenship would be required to enroll in the president's health plan. This closed the loophole that provoked Rep. Joe Wilson. Had Mr. Obama acknowledged the concern and offered a solution in his speech, he would have come across as reasonable.

Mr. Obama is forgetting that the political landscape can change when the pool of people who vote changes. In 2008, five million more people voted than in 2004. Mr. Obama drew two million more African-Americans to the polls. He also shifted support among younger voters (ages 18-24) from 54% Democratic, 45% Republican in 2004 to 66% Democratic, 32% Republican.

Today, Mr. Obama's approval among young voters is down 10 points since July, according to Gallup polls. It may drop more when those voters discover that the plan put out by Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) this week would fine them up to $950 a year for not being insured. Young people are 9.9% of the population. Fining them only antagonizes them.

Fiscally conservative independents who were already upset with Mr. Obama's stimulus spending will only be more upset with his health-care plan. It starts running annual deficits in its third year, piles up $219 billion in deficits in its first decade, and could add $1 trillion to the debt in its second.

Last weekend's grassroots rally against ObamaCare in Washington was a sign that voters are getting active to oppose the president's agenda. If it keeps up, middle-class anxiety about the national debt could make 2010 a tough year for any Democrat up for re-election.

Those Democrats will soon notice that seniors are worried about Mr. Obama's proposed Medicare cuts and that Hispanics — the fastest growing part of the electorate — are slipping away from the president. Gallup polls reveal his support among Hispanics fell 14 points to 67% over the summer. Mr. Obama may be changing the electorate for 2010, but in the wrong direction for his party. This has worried many of the 70 Democrats in congressional districts carried by George W. Bush or John McCain.

Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire's district went 55% for Mr. McCain last year. After Mr. Obama's speech, he called the House bill "flawed" and said, "We can do better." Ohio Rep. John Boccieri, whose district favored Mr. McCain 50%-48%, told reporters, "I don't believe the president has shifted any of my opinions." Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith, whose district gave Mr. McCain 61% of its vote, called for health-care reform "without expanding government or adding more debt to an already overburdened treasury."

And it's not only Democrats in red districts who are questioning the president. California Reps. Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa followed the speech by saying it hadn't swayed them. Mr. Obama carried their districts with 60% of the vote. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Artur Davis of Alabama, both African-Americans, voiced similar sentiments.

Mr. Obama will appear on five news shows on Sunday. His time might be better spent praying for more public support.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

from the New York Times, 2009-Sep-18, p.A31, by David Brooks:

No, It's Not About Race

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I go running several times a week. My favorite route, because it's so flat, is from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol and back. I was there last Saturday and found myself plodding through tens of thousands of anti-government “tea party” protesters.

They were carrying “Don't Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions.

Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction. These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They'd both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn't discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

And yet we live in a nation in which some people see every conflict through the prism of race. So over the past few days, many people, from Jimmy Carter on down, have argued that the hostility to President Obama is driven by racism. Some have argued that tea party slogans like “I Want My Country Back” are code words for white supremacy. Others say incivility on Capitol Hill is magnified by Obama's dark skin.

Well, I don't have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama's critics, so I can't measure how much racism is in there. But my impression is that race is largely beside the point. There are other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.

For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government. Jefferson advocated “a wise and frugal government” that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Jefferson's philosophy inspired Andrew Jackson, who led a movement of plain people against the cosmopolitan elites. Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States because he feared the fusion of federal and financial power.

This populist tendency continued through the centuries. Sometimes it took right-wing forms, sometimes left-wing ones. Sometimes it was agrarian. Sometimes it was more union-oriented. Often it was extreme, conspiratorial and rude.

The populist tendency has always used the same sort of rhetoric: for the ordinary people and against the fat cats and the educated class; for the small towns and against the financial centers.

And it has always had the same morality, which the historian Michael Kazin has called producerism. The idea is that free labor is the essence of Americanism. Hard-working ordinary people, who create wealth in material ways, are the moral backbone of the country. In this free, capitalist nation, people should be held responsible for their own output. Money should not be redistributed to those who do not work, and it should not be sucked off by condescending, manipulative elites.

Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector.

Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color. And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.

What we're seeing is the latest iteration of that populist tendency and the militant progressive reaction to it. We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos.

“One could argue that this country is on the verge of a crisis of legitimacy,” the economic blogger Arnold Kling writes. “The progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate, and vice versa.”

It's not race. It's another type of conflict, equally deep and old.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Sep-17, p.A6, by Naftali Bendavid:

Carter Joins House Feud Over Shout

WASHINGTON -- Former President Jimmy Carter fueled a renewed political furor over race by saying Rep Joe Wilson's outburst during President Barack Obama's speech last week was "based on racism."

The former president's remarks drew a rebuke Wednesday from Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who called accusations of racism "an outrage."

The White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday, "The president does not believe that the criticism comes based on the color of his skin."

Mr. Obama has sought during his presidential campaign and much of his first months in office to downplay racial divisions. But Mr. Wilson's shout of "You lie," during Mr. Obama's speech on health care, and the reaction to that event, have brought sensitive issues of race back to the surface.

Rep. Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, apologized to the president, who accepted the apology.

Mr. Carter made his remarks about Rep. Wilson's interruption in response to a question at a town-hall meeting in Atlanta on Tuesday. "There is an inherent feeling among many people in this country that an African-American ought not to be president, and ought not to be given the same respect as if he were white," Mr. Carter said.

Mr. Steele, who is African-American, replied on Wednesday. "Characterizing Americans' disapproval of President Obama's policies as being based on race is an outrage and a troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them," Mr. Steele said.

The furor didn't prompt Mr. Carter to back down. He reiterated his argument in a talk Wednesday night at Emory University, citing various attacks on Mr. Obama, though not Mr. Wilson's comment.

Mr. Wilson couldn't be reached Wednesday. On the Washington Times'"America's Morning News" radio program Wednesday, Mr. Wilson said, "That is such a distraction and a diversion from the issues that we should be discussing."

from the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web, 2009-Sep-18, by James Taranto:

Shrieker of the House
Nancy Pelosi worries about incitement. But she probably couldn't be convicted.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is worried that the heated debate over ObamaCare is getting too heated. "Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results," the Associated Press reports:

"I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm [tune in for the season premiere, Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO] in some of the statements that are made," Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message "are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume," she said. "Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe," she added. "But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause."

Pelosi raises an excellent point. Two weeks ago we noted an example: A prominent California politician had referred to opponents of ObamaCare as "un-American" and accused them of "carrying swastikas." Subsequently, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., an unbalanced-American bit off the finger of an elderly protester, Bill Rice. The politician? Nancy Pelosi.

To be sure, it is unclear whether the biter took inspiration from that politician's inflammatory words; Thousand Oaks' Finest tell us they have yet to finger a suspect. Further, even if this act of mayhem was directly provoked by Pelosi's rhetoric, she probably could not be convicted of incitement. The relevant legal standard, which the U.S. Supreme Court set forth in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), entails a two-part test: first, the speaker (in this case, the speaker) must intend to incite violence; second, there must be an imminent threat that such violence actually will be carried out. In the Pelosi case, it is highly unlikely that prosecutors could prove both elements without a reasonable doubt.

Yet although Pelosi is protected from legal liability by the First Amendment, she is right to take moral responsibility. As the AP reports: "Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results." This hits especially close to home for Pelosi, as the AP notes:

Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted in 1977 [actually 1979] of the murders [in 1978] of openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.

Dan White, like Nancy Pelosi, was a Democratic elected official from San Francisco. But let's not make too much of this comparison. Between her rhetorical excesses and his despicable crimes, there is a world of difference.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Aug-31, by Alexi Mostrous:

Cheney: Interrogations Probe Is a 'Political Act'

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney on Sunday condemned the Justice Department's decision to investigate suspected CIA prisoner abuses, reiterated his assertion that enhanced interrogation techniques worked in revealing terror plots, and indicated that he may not cooperate with the prosecutor assigned to the case.

Cheney accused President Obama of setting a "terrible precedent" by allowing an "intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration." Asked whether he would talk to John Durham, the veteran prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to examine allegations that the CIA abused Sept. 11 terror suspects, Cheney said: "It will depend on the circumstances and what I think their activities are really involved in."

Holder announced the investigation last Monday, the same day that a long-awaited inspector general's review of the agency's interrogation methods was released.

"I just think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage, long term, to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say," Cheney said in a taped Fox News interview that was aired Sunday.

The 2004 inspector general's report concluded that some CIA interrogators went beyond Bush administration rules permitting the use of techniques such as waterboarding, or simulated drowning. Terrorists disclosed more information after being subjected to the controversial methods, which included threatened executions and the use of a power drill to scare a detainee, the report concluded. However, John Helgerson, the former IG who commissioned the 2004 study, said Saturday that his office's work did not permit "definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of particular interrogation methods."

Former intelligence officials have also been quoted saying there was no way of knowing whether information gained during harsh interrogations could have been obtained in other ways.

Cheney called the techniques "good policy" and said he was comfortable in cases where interrogators went beyond what they were authorized to do. Holder's decision to examine about 10 cases of alleged detainee abuse runs contrary to Obama's repeated desire to look forward, and raises the question of whether the legal reassurances of one administration carry over to its successor. "Now you get a new administration and they say, 'Well, we didn't like those opinions, we're going to go investigate those lawyers and perhaps have them disbarred,' " Cheney said. "I just think it's an outrageous precedent to set."

On the Sunday talk shows, Democratic lawmakers tried to counter Cheney's criticism and defend the Justice Department's investigation. "Dick Cheney has shown through the years, frankly, a disrespect for the Constitution, for sharing of information with Congress, respect for the law, and I'm not surprised that he is upset about this," Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said on ABC's "This Week."

On CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called the investigation "very appropriate."

Cheney also said Sunday that he supported taking military action against Iran's nuclear program but was overruled by then-President George W. Bush. "I thought that negotiations could not possibly succeed unless the Iranians really believed we were prepared to use military force," he said.

Cheney added that he was aware of a Bush administration order banning the CIA from advising Congress about a program to kill or capture terrorists. But he stopped short of saying he issued that order.

The House intelligence committee last month launched an investigation to determine whether the CIA broke the law by not informing Congress about the secret program.

from the New York Times, 2009-Sep-1, p.A29, web-posted 2009-Aug-31, by David Brooks:

The Obama Slide

Two tides swept over American politics last winter. The first was the Obama tide. Barack Obama came into office with an impressive 70 percent approval rating. The second was the independent tide. Over the first months of this year, the number of people who called themselves either Democrats or Republicans declined, while the number who called themselves independents surged ahead.

Obama's challenge was to push his agenda through a Democratic-controlled government while retaining the affection of the 39 percent of Americans in the middle.

The administration hasn't been able to pull it off. From the stimulus to health care, it has joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress. The White House has failed to veto measures, like the pork-laden omnibus spending bill, that would have demonstrated independence and fiscal restraint. By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington.

The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment. The number of Americans who trust President Obama to make the right decisions has fallen by roughly 17 percentage points. Obama's job approval is down to about 50 percent. All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.

Anxiety is now pervasive. Trust in government rose when Obama took office. It has fallen back to historic lows. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The public's view of Congress, which ticked upward for a time, has plummeted. Charlie Cook, who knows as much about Congressional elections as anyone in the country, wrote recently that Democratic fortunes have “slipped completely out of control.” He and the experts he surveyed believe there is just as much chance that the Democrats could lose more than 20 House seats in the next elections as less than 20.

There are also warning signs in the Senate. A recent poll shows Harry Reid, the majority leader, trailing the Republican Danny Tarkanian, a possible 2010 opponent, by 49 percent to 38 percent. When your majority leader is down to a 38 percent base in his home state, that's not good.

The public has soured on Obama's policy proposals. Voters often have only a fuzzy sense of what each individual proposal actually does, but more and more have a growing conviction that if the president is proposing it, it must involve big spending, big government and a fundamental departure from the traditional American approach.

Driven by this general anxiety, and by specific concerns, public opposition to health care reform is now steady and stable. Independents once solidly supported reform. Now they have swung against it. As the veteran pollster Bill McInturff has pointed out, public attitudes toward Obamacare exactly match public attitudes toward Clintoncare when that reform effort collapsed in 1994.

Amazingly, some liberals are now lashing out at Obama because the entire country doesn't agree with The Huffington Post. Some now argue that the administration should just ignore the ignorant masses and ram health care through using reconciliation, the legislative maneuver that would reduce the need for moderate votes.

This would be suicidal. You can't pass the most important domestic reform in a generation when the majority of voters think you are on the wrong path. To do so would be a sign of unmitigated arrogance. If Obama agrees to use reconciliation, he will permanently affix himself to the liberal wing of his party and permanently alienate independents. He will be president of 35 percent of the country — and good luck getting anything done after that.

The second liberal response has been to attack the budget director, Peter Orszag. It was a mistake to put cost control at the center of the health reform sales job, many now argue. The president shouldn't worry about the deficit. Just pass the spending parts.

But fiscal restraint is now the animating issue for moderate Americans. To take the looming $9 trillion in debt and balloon it further would be to enrage a giant part of the electorate.

This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn't proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him.

The president's challenge now is to halt the slide. That doesn't mean giving up his goals. It means he has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.

Events have pushed Barack Obama off to the left. Time to rebalance.

from the Canadian Press, 2009-Aug-23, by Lee-Anne Goodman:

Casualties in health-care debate include Whole Foods, the reputation of Arizona

WASHINGTON — The state of Arizona, Whole Foods, various lobbyists - they're all paying a price this summer amid a blistering debate on health-care reform in the United States that's bitterly pitting left against right.

Officials in Phoenix are trying to convince travel guide guru Arthur Frommer to reconsider his recent proclamation: he doesn't consider Arizona a safe travel destination after seeing images of armed protesters outside a presidential event in the city last week.

"I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest," said Frommer in a message to his readers on the Frommers.com website. "And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona."

Frommer was referring to the scene outside a town hall on health-care reform hosted by President Barack Obama, where several protesters in the crowd toted guns. They included one man [one black man -AMPP Ed.] with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle who was engaging in a stunt for a libertarian radio show.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and other civic officials personally appealed to Frommer to reconsider, inviting him to the city to clear up any misconceptions about its safety. Arizona is one of several American states that allow citizens to openly carry weapons.

"It's a great place to live, work, raise a family and particularly to visit," Gordon said. "Phoenix is one of the safest major cities in the United States." [Nonsense! Drug cartels are running amok there! -AMPP Ed.]

Whole Foods, meantime, was dealing with a similar backlash. The organic supermarket chain was facing a growing boycott by its largely liberal, well-heeled customers almost two weeks after company president John Mackey argued against health-care reform. [Mackey argued for health care reform, introducing his plan with the words “Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone”. -AMPP Ed.]

"A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter, because there isn't any," Mackey wrote in a piece that also alleged 830,000 Canadians were waiting for treatment north of the border.

"This 'right' has never existed in America."

By Sunday, more than 25,000 Whole Foods customers had joined the boycott as some advertising analysts warned Mackey's views represented the kind of "brand dissonance" that could hurt the company's bottom line.

"I just won't go there again, it's as simple as that," said Meredith Taylor, 45, as she pored over peaches recently at a Whole Foods competitor - Trader Joe's - in Silver Spring, MD.

"Trader Joe's is cheaper anyway and just as good, and I just can't bring myself to spend my money at a place knowing that's the mindset. It's an inhumane viewpoint, it's selfish and wrong, and it's not what this country is supposed to be all about."

Two vocal opponents of Obama's health-care reform plans have also lost jobs in the heat of the battle.

Betsy McCaughey, the former Republican lieutenant governor of New York, resigned from the board of a New Jersey medical device company after weeks of alleging the Obama plan will mandate end-of-life consultations that could lead to the forced euthanization of the sick and elderly.

"Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over health-care reform," the company said in a release.

The announcement came Friday, a day after she appeared on the popular "Daily Show" and sparred with host Jon Stewart, who challenged her interpretation of the health-care reform bill while calling her "dangerous" and "hyperbolic."

Republican Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, also recently resigned from an international law firm amid a wave of negative press about his grassroots organization, Freedom Works. The lobby group has been working with members of Congress to help organize protests at health-care town hall meetings that have frequently erupted into angry shouting matches.

Armey said his law firm, DLA Piper, had been unfairly linked with Freedom Works and was forced to shoot down "spurious allegations."

"No client of this firm is going to be free to mind its own business without harassment as long as I'm associated with it," Armey said.

The resignation came days after DLA Piper sent out an e-mail making clear it wasn't actively involved in protesting health-care reform.

"On the contrary, DLA Piper represents clients who support enactment of effective health care reform this year and encourages responsible national debate," the e-mail read.

Fox News, a vehement opponent of Obama's plans, was also facing a continuing advertiser pullout as tensions simmered.

At least 20 corporations - including Wal-Mart, Procter and Gamble and Best Buy - have pulled advertising from Fox News personality Glenn Beck's 5 p.m. show to protest his July 28th comments on the program "Fox and Friends."

Beck called Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people" in the midst of the controversy about the arrest in Massachusetts of a black professor, Henry Louis Gates, as he tried to enter his home.

In a televised news conference, Obama said the Cambridge, Mass., police had acted "stupidly" in arresting Gates as a suspected burglar, and suggested the investigating officers had partaken in racial profiling.

Beck has since compared Obama's sweeping health-care overhaul to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich policies.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-18, by William Mcgurn:

Harry Reid's 'Evil' Moment
And Democrats wonder why their health plan isn't selling.

Remember when polite society treated a politician's use of the word "evil" as a sign that the old boy was dangerously lacking upstairs?

We saw it in 1983, when Ronald Reagan famously used the word in a speech to describe the Soviet empire. What a rube! New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis spoke for the smart set when he wondered what Soviet leaders must think: "What confidence can they have in the restraint of an American leader with such an outlook?"

We saw it again in 2002, when George W. Bush characterized North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as an "axis of evil." Tom Daschle, a Democrat and then Senate majority leader, warned that "we've got to be very careful with rhetoric of that kind"; former President Jimmy Carter called it "overly simplistic and counterproductive"; and comedian Will Ferrell parodied it on Saturday Night Live. Soon the phrase became acceptable only in the ironic sense—as in the Chris Fair cookbook titled "Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations."

With all this history, you would think Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had ample warning. Nevertheless, the Senate majority leader invoked the e-word himself last week at an energy conference in Las Vegas, where he accused those protesting President Barack Obama's health-care proposals of being "evil mongers." So proud was he of this contribution to the American political lexicon that he repeated it to a reporter the next day and noted the phrase was "an original."

And then . . . nothing. No thundering rebuke from the New York Times. No outburst from Mr. Carter. In fact, it's hard not to notice that the good and gracious people who instinctively recoil at words like "evil" or "un-American" (the preferred term of Mr. Reid's counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi) have all been silent.

It would be easy to read something dark into Mr. Reid's characterization, and the yawn with which it has been greeted. In fact, what we have here is really the logical extension of the liberal assumption that they have a monopoly on brain power. In such a world, anyone who dissents, almost by definition, has to be stupid or evil or both.

It's a point of view Mr. Obama inadvertently encourages when he indulges in, say, the trope about Medicare that has become a staple of his town halls. The president tells the crowd he's received a letter from a woman upset with his plans for health care. "She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want you meddling in the private market place. And keep your hands off my Medicare.'"

Get it? The applause tells us the audience does: How dumb can this woman be?

It's much the same with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. In his press briefings, Mr. Gibbs seems to suggest that all hard questions about health care are based on "misconceptions." Really?

Is the Congressional Budget Office's finding that the House plan would significantly raise health-care costs a "misconception"? Was it a "misconception" that the now-abandoned section covering end-of-life issues had an in-built conflict of interest between lowering costs and providing care for the elderly? And is it a "misconception" that Mr. Obama's ultimate goal is a single-payer system, when Americans can watch him on earlier videos saying as much?

Right now the entire Beltway—including the West Wing—seems obsessed with finding out what went wrong with the administration's sales pitch. No one appears to think the problem might be substance. Or that the vague answers and vitriolic rhetoric we get from Democrats such as Mr. Reid convey a sense that the plans they favor will not hold up under public scrutiny.

In fairness to the senator, perhaps history will one day vindicate his "evil monger" statement as a prophetic Gipper moment. If so, the legions of white-haired grandpas and grandmas now descending on our nation's town halls will be exposed to be as irredeemably evil as, say, Iran or the USSR. When asked if the senator has any second thoughts about calling American citizens evil, a spokesman emailed me to say that Mr. Reid's only regret is the "hate-filled rhetoric and signage" being used "to disrupt civil dialogue."

Plainly the Nevada Democrat is taking no chances. Instead of pressing the flesh at a real town hall this August, Mr. Reid has opted for a tele-town hall late next week. Aides say the format allows him to reach thousands more people. Of course, it also protects him from having to come face to face with all those evil mongers out there.

As with so many of his colleagues, Mr. Reid appears unable to connect his attitude to a questioning American citizenry to poll results showing increased sympathy for town-hall protestors, flagging public support for the health-care plans in Congress, and an erosion of Democratic credibility from the White House to Capitol Hill. To paraphrase Anthony Lewis, what confidence can the American people have in leaders with such an outlook?

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-21, by John C. Goodman:

Explaining the Town-Hall Protests
Our 1.1 million signers include cancer survivors, seniors, and others who are very well informed.

`They're un-American,” says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “They're spreading lies and distortions,” says senior White House adviser David Axelrod. They are “being funded and organized by out-of-district special-interest groups and insurance companies,” says the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

"They," as you probably guessed, are the concerned citizens who've shown up at town-hall meetings across the country to express their displeasure over what President Barack Obama and the Democrats are about to do to our health-care system. But who are they really? What motivates them? And why are they so angry?

I believe my colleagues and I are in an excellent position to answer those questions. For the past two months the National Center for Policy Analysis (the think tank I run) and Salem Communications (which employees such talk-show hosts as Mike Gallagher, Bill Bennett and Michael Medved) have been sponsoring an online petition at www.freeourhealthcarenow.com for those who wish to express their opposition to nationalized health care. In the process we've collected more than 1.1 million signatures and we're in email communication with many on a weekly basis.

These are a very diverse group of people. Some of them are part of a 40,000-person network of former Obama supporters who are experiencing buyer's remorse. Others are part of various disease networks, including patients concerned about the future of cancer care. There are networks of senior citizens worried about cuts in Medicare and the possible closing of their private Medicare insurance plans. There are Christian conservatives worried about taxpayer-funded abortions and subsidies for euthanasia. And there are an enormous number of people who are simply concerned about their health care.

For the most part, these individuals are not funded or organized by anybody. They really are grass roots. Sure, there may be a few top-down "astroturf" groups and some special-interest groups that are secretly gleeful. But there is no way the kind of spontaneous outpouring we've witnessed could be bought or organized by anyone.

Why are they so angry? The reasons are manifold, but the single biggest reason is the arrogance of our elected officials in Washington. Think about it. For the past seven months a small group of politicians has been meeting behind-closed-doors with powerful special interests to decide whether you will be able to keep your current insurance, where you will be directed to get new insurance and at what price, what fines you and your employer will have to pay if you don't conform, and how they're going to get your doctor to change the way he or she practices medicine. In the process, they never asked you what you thought about anything. If you are not mad about this, odds are you don't understand the situation.

Remember, according to a Fox News poll conducted last month, 84% of Americans rate the quality of their insurance as "excellent" or "good." When they voted for Mr. Obama for president, they thought "universal care" meant helping some unfortunate Americans obtain insurance they cannot otherwise afford. Not once did candidate Obama say he was going to make changes that affected them and their health care. In fact, he promised the opposite.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration is pulling out all the stops for its "public option." While the mainstream media generally fail to cover it, at least once a week a message on health care goes out from the president, his staff, or someone from the DNC to 13 million Americans. These messages convey talking points defending the bills in Congress, attacking points aimed at critics, and suggested "to dos" for the faithful.

To counteract that, my colleagues and I have used talk radio and the Internet to send out counter messages, using material that has previously been posted at John Goodman's Health Policy Blog—where everything is vetted in the clear light of day by policy wonks on the left and the right. We pride ourselves on being accurate and believe we're far more accurate than the White House on the issues.

Indeed, most opponents of ObamaCare are much better informed than is commonly believed. At a typical town-hall meeting, the citizens are usually better versed on the Obama plan than the member of Congress. Some have actually read the 1,000-plus page House bill (HR3200), which most representatives have definitely not read. In my opinion, Mr. Obama is losing the health-care debate because his critics are better informed than his defenders.

He is also losing because of the off-handed way he discusses matters that are deeply personal and very important. For example, it was Mr. Obama—not the critics—who first brought up the issue of giving people less health care. It was the president who mused on whether his grandmother really needed a hip replacement. It was the president who casually said that sometimes "you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the pain killer."

Before the American Medical Association, he told the doctors we have too many tests, too many exams, too much of everything. In an off-the-cuff answer to a question on ABC's nationally televised White House infomercial, the president said we're only talking about people giving up care that is "unnecessary." Yet no patient, no doctor, not even the most liberal person in the country thinks the government can pull that off without a glitch.

In truth, there is a deadly serious issue here: How do you get rid of waste and inefficiency without denying people care they really need? The answer is not easy. No other country has found it. And if the president wants to tackle this challenge he, not his opponents, bears the burden of proof to show how that will work.

Yet far from accepting this responsibility, the White House is ducking the issue. For example, they have chosen to scapegoat the insurance industry, making them out to be the villains in the health-care debate. These are the very same companies that have been negotiating with the administration behind closed doors in good faith, and are even spending millions of dollars on television ads supporting health reform.

The new tactics it is employing show the White House is completely out of touch with the American people. Those who attend town-hall meetings know they are not being organized or funded by anyone. And when the administration attacks their character and their motives and intentionally distorts the truth, it only adds to the anger people already feel.

Mr. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-25, by Jonathan Weisman:

Obama Allies Find Words Fail Them

WASHINGTON -- In the rhetorical battle over health care, the forces backing President Barack Obama's overhaul have spent years polling and using focus groups to find the precise language that would win over voters -- an effort that doesn't at the moment appear to be working.

When Mr. Obama told grass-roots organizers last week that the mandatory purchase of health insurance would "be affordable, based on a sliding scale," the phrasing precisely mirrored language that had been poll-tested and put before batteries of focus groups by Democratic consultants over the past few years.

The words had been carefully chosen in an effort to take away the rhetorical targets of health-overhaul foes and replace them with terminology that would bring ordinary Americans on board. But under steady attack from opponents using more-emotional language, some of the president's allies are rethinking the linguistic strategy.

"There are emotions on both sides, and some of these recommendations really avoid connecting to emotion in a way that we hoped would bring the temperature down and disarm opponents," said John Rother, executive vice president for policy and strategy at AARP, the giant seniors lobby. "I don't want to second-guess them, but the research is very much a product of where the debate was at the time. Times have changed. Temperatures have gone up."

An Obama spokesman said at least one member of the administration had met with the group crafting the health-care language, but declined to comment on whether the research had affected Mr. Obama's own language in discussing health care.

The effort began four years ago, when a center-left coalition of advocacy groups, union leaders and health-care experts teamed up to try to change the language of the health-care debate. The Herndon Alliance, named after the northern Virginia suburb where proponents first met, included the AARP, Service Employees International Union, the American Cancer Society and the liberal health-policy group Families USA, among others.

The alliance, now based in Seattle, hired the Democratic polling outfit Lake Research and California market-research firm American Environics.

The idea was to take a page from the Republican playbook, said Robert Crittenden, a physician and founder of the Herndon Alliance. Republicans had become adept at using words to seize issues, turning the estate tax into the "death tax," for instance.

"We always had the facts on our side," Dr. Crittenden said. "But our language hasn't connected with what the general public actually cared about."

The first polling began in the fall of 2005 and continues today. In 2007, American Environics met with senior members of the Obama campaign staff, according to people familiar with the meeting. Alliance representatives met with Neera Tanden, a top Obama administration official involved in the overhaul effort.

Herndon participants aren't saying they dictated the language the president is using. An administration official acknowledged Ms. Tanden's meetings, and said she appreciates the work done on behalf of a health-care overhaul. But Herndon members do say they have influenced the lexicon of overhaul advocates.

"When you've gotten the groups speaking with a similar voice and you've got data to show one phrase works well and one doesn't, that gets into circulation," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

The results are echoed in the words of Mr. Obama and others. Out is talk of "universal" health-care coverage, a "government" health-insurance option or "health care for all." In are such phrases as "quality affordable health care," a "public" option and a "choice of private and public plans."

But Republican aides with their own lexicon argue that in the end, voters will see little difference between a "public option" and a "government plan."

The alliance and its pollsters planned responses to the charge of "government-run health care" and "socialized medicine," and thought through how to neutralize fear that expanding health-insurance coverage would help illegal immigrants and what to say to small businesses.

But Dr. Crittenden said no one anticipated the charges that the Obama program would include "death panels" or advocate euthanasia. Perhaps more important, said Lake Research head Celinda Lake, no one foresaw the intensity of protests at town-hall meetings.

"To the extent that we're getting our message out, it's been very influenced by Herndon work. Our biggest problem is it's not getting out," Ms. Lake said.

from RealClearPolitics.com, 2009-Aug-13, by Michael Barone:

When Liberal Leaders Confront a Centrist Nation

There are more conservatives than Republicans and more Democrats than liberals. That's one of the asymmetries between the parties that helps to explain the particular political spot we're in. The numbers are fairly clear. In the 2008 exit poll, 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservatives and 32 percent as Republicans; 39 percent described themselves as Democrats but only 22 percent as liberals.

It's been this way for a long time. The premise of John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Liberal Hour," published in 1960, was that conservative politicians wanted to identify themselves as liberals, as supporting Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, when it came time for elections.

But as in his description of the economy in "The New Industrial State," Galbraith was telling us how things had been, not how they would soon be. By the late 1960s, with riots blazing in big cities and rebellions roaring on university campuses, the balance shifted away from liberals and toward conservatives.

The result is that the two parties have offsetting political advantages. Democrats tend to win on party identification. Republicans tend to win on ideology. Democrats don't have to appeal to as many independents as Republicans do. Republicans don't have to appeal to as many moderates as Democrats do.

But the Democrats have a problem here. The party's leadership currently tilts heavily to the liberal side. Barack Obama is from the university community of Hyde Park in Chicago. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is from San Francisco, and important House committee chairmen are from similar "gentry urban" locales -- Henry Waxman from the West Side of Los Angeles, Charles Rangel from a district that includes not only Harlem but much of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Barney Frank from Newton, Mass., next door to Boston.

Of the 21 top leadership members and chairmen, five come from districts carried by John McCain, but the average vote in the other 16 districts was 71 percent to 27 percent for Obama.

All these Democratic leaders understand that their home turf tilts far left of the rest of the nation. But a politician's political base is ultimately his or her reality principle. Moreover, most of these leaders -- though Obama obfuscated this in his campaign -- have strong, long-held convictions that are well on the left of the American political spectrum.

These are the people -- the House leaders more than Obama, surprisingly -- who have shaped the Democrats' stimulus package, cap-and-trade legislation and health-care bills. The rules of the House allow a skillful leader like Pelosi to jam legislation through on the floor, although she's had more trouble than expected on health care. But their policies have been meeting resistance from the three-quarters of Americans who don't describe themselves as liberals.

Republican leaders tend to come from mostly suburban districts closer to the national political average. Of the 19 lawmakers who are in the GOP's House leadership or who are ranking committee members, four come from districts carried by Obama. The average vote in the other 15 districts was a less-than-landslide 57 percent to 41 percent for McCain. Only three of those districts voted more than 60 percent for McCain.

In these circumstances, the Republicans have been winning the battle for public opinion and, more importantly, for public enthusiasm -- in sharp contrast to 2008. Democrats complain that Republicans have no alternatives on health care or other issues. Actually some of them do, but no one is paying any more attention to them than people did to Democratic proposals four years ago, when Republicans held the White House and congressional majorities.

The exit poll showed that though the Republican label had lost support since 2004, conservatives did not lose their edge over liberals. The health-care debate has shown that the economic distress caused by the financial crisis and recession has not, at least so far, moved significant numbers of Americans to change their views on the proper balance between markets and government.

"I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking," Barack Obama said on a campaign stop in Virginia on Aug. 6. "I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess."

When a politician tries to stop debate, it's a sign he's losing the argument. Obama seems to have let the House Democrats overplay their hand. He ignored the fact that in our system neither party ever has all the advantages.

from the American Spectator, 2009-Aug-24, by Matthew Vadum:

Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

The administration's plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group's senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.

Yearwood, who uses the honorific "Reverend" before his name, has been in the news in recent years, usually for getting arrested. After Democrats took back Congress, the rowdy activist was handcuffed outside a congressional hearing in September 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus was to testify. Yearwood told the "Democracy Now" radio program that he wanted to attend the hearing to hear Petraeus give his report. "I knew that when officers lie, soldiers die," he said.

On the Aug. 11 call, Yearwood and other leaders kept saying repeatedly that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something "positive," "forward-leaning," and "productive," said a source with knowledge of the teleconference.

The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."

A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.

Color of Change is the extremist racial grievance group that isn't happy that TV's Glenn Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, the self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" who became the president's green jobs czar after jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. The White House may be behind a push to destroy Beck by convincing advertisers to stop buying time on his show. Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. The group has acknowledged that it dictated parts of the February stimulus bill to Congress.

With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.

"The organizing term is to 'go dark.' You don't tell the press, don't tell people you think will tell the press," said the source.

Of course, the annual commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks belongs to the entire nation, but President Obama and the activist left don't see it that way. They view the nationwide remembrance of the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamic totalitarians as an obstacle to winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.

"When you criticize them, they are prepared to say, 'Did you want 9/11 to be another day of selling mattresses, like Presidents Day?" the source said. "They are truly trying to change the American mindset."

They view Sept. 11 as a "Republican" day because it focuses the public on supposedly "Republican" issues like patriotism, national security, and terrorism. According to liberals, 9/11 was long ago hijacked by Republicans and their enablers and unfairly used to bludgeon helpless Democrats at election time.

MSNBC's foremost left-wing bloviator, Keith Olbermann, summed up this ugly perspective the week after the Republican Party convention last year:

But 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo. "9/11 TM" has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without -- literally -- any visible means of support. "9/11 TM" has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation's history.

On Aug. 4, the White House offered a glimpse into its plans to desecrate 9/11 for political advantage. Jones appeared in a largely ignored 33-minute video posted on the official blog of the White House to discuss the administration's plan to flush 9/11 down the memory hole just as it has tried to do by rechristening the Global War on Terror the "Overseas Contingency Operations."

Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little except that it will be a great opportunity "for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America."

On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At it, Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be "the first milestone" of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.

"From policy creation to community implementation, the Green the Block campaign wants to see access and opportunity created for all Americans, to build prosperity and a healthier planet for future generations," Yearwood said.

At no time does anyone explain why this National Day of Service has to be held -- of all the 365 days in a year -- on Sept. 11.

Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jul-20, by William McGurn:

Let's Face It: Obama Is No Post-Partisan

Only last summer we were told that Barack Obama's political appeal rested on his vision for a “post-partisan future.” The post-partisan future was one of the press corps' favorite phrases. It served as shorthand for the candidate's repeated references to “unity of purpose,” looking beyond a red or blue America, and so on.

Six months into the president's term, you don't read much about this post-partisan future anymore. It may be because on almost every big-ticket legislative item (the stimulus, climate change, and now health care), Mr. Obama has been pushing a highly ideological agenda with little (and in some cases zero) support from across the aisle. Yet far from stating the obvious—that sitting in the Oval Office is a very partisan president—the press corps is allowing Mr. Obama to evade the issue by coming up with novel redefinitions.

The redefinition started during the stimulus debate, but it really picked up steam late last month with David Axelrod's appearance on ABC's “This Week.” There the president's chief strategist explained that a bill didn't need Republican votes to be “bipartisan”; it was enough if Republican “ideas” were included. A few days earlier, Rahm Emanuel had offered reporters another redefinition, suggesting that a bill was bipartisan if people merely “saw the president trying” to get Republicans on board.

The president himself endorsed this redefinition during Rose Garden remarks delivered after a Senate committee passed a health-care bill on a strictly party-line vote. Perhaps only someone who truly embraces “the audacity of hope” could see healthy bipartisanship at work in the complete lack of GOP votes. Here's how he put it: “It's a plan that was debated for more than 50 hours and that, by the way, includes 160 Republican amendments—a hopeful sign of bipartisan support for the final product.”

Let's leave aside specific complaints from Republicans, who note that the “Republican” amendments the president cited are mostly technical in nature. The larger point is that the White House's new definitions of bipartisanship are just like the fake “jobs saved or created” numbers Mr. Obama used to justify the stimulus at a time when the economy was in fact shedding tens of thousands of jobs. And the press should call him on it.

Honest reporting would seem especially important at a time when the future of a large and vital segment of the American economy is at stake. In addition to higher costs, other Republican objections to the president's health-care proposal include the establishment of a government-run insurance plan that will compete with private insurers—and the refusal to equalize the tax treatment between individually purchased and employer-provided health insurance. In all these areas, the president has shown no interest in compromise.

The president's inflexibility is having an interesting effect—on Democrats. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus (D., Mont.), believes he would attract Republican votes if the bill helped pay for the expanded health care by subjecting employer-provided health benefits to the same taxes imposed on individual plans. He has also complained that the president is “making it difficult” to get a bill through. Surely it says something about Mr. Obama's partisanship that this complaint issues from the one Democratic leader committed to producing a bipartisan health-care bill.

Mr. Baucus is not the only one. Other Democratic pols, especially those from the more conservative states, do not relish the prospect of being on the hook for a health-care package that even the Congressional Budget Office says will raise health costs rather than lower them. Nor do they appreciate the ads the president is now running in their states via the Democratic National Committee. These ads target moderate Democrats in an effort to pressure them into passing the president's health-care proposal quickly.

Back when George W. Bush was in the Oval Office, the press routinely characterized almost everything he and the GOP Congress did as partisan. While it's true that some parts of his agenda were passed on a purely partisan basis—most notably, the 2003 tax cuts pushed through the Senate with the deciding vote cast by Vice President Dick Cheney—this was the exception rather than the rule. In fact, many of the most far-reaching bills pushed by President Bush—the Patriot Act, the war-funding bills, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare drug benefit, etc.—were in the end passed with a healthy number of Democratic votes.

In itself, of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with opting to forgo bipartisanship support for the sake of getting your ideas through. That, however, is not what Candidate Obama promised. And just think how the debate would change if the press were to begin describing Mr. Obama in a way that seems reserved for Republicans: a highly partisan president pursuing a narrow partisan agenda.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jul-20, by Fred Barnes:

The Obama Agenda Bogs Down
Democrats got what they wanted in the stimulus bill. The public knows it.

It usually doesn't happen this quickly in Washington. But President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are finding that the old maxim that what goes around, comes around applies to them, too. Less than six months into his term, Mr. Obama's top initiatives -- health-care reform and "cap and trade" energy legislation -- are in serious jeopardy and he has himself and his congressional allies to blame.

Their high-pressure tactics in promoting and passing legislation, most notably the economic "stimulus" enacted in February, have backfired. Those tactics include unbridled partisanship, procedural short cuts, demands for swift passage of bills, and promises of quick results.

With large majorities in Congress and an obsequious press corps, Mr. Obama was smitten with the idea of emulating President Franklin Roosevelt's First 100 Days of legislative success in 1933. Like FDR, Mr. Obama tried to push as many liberal bills through Congress in as brief a time as possible.

He made a rookie mistake early on. He let congressional Democrats draft the bills. They're as partisan as any group that has ever controlled Congress, and as impatient. They have little interest in the compromises needed to attract Republican support. As a consequence, what they passed -- especially the $787 billion stimulus -- belongs to Democrats alone. They own the stimulus outright.

That makes them accountable for the hopes of a prompt economic recovery now being dashed. With the economy still faltering and jobs still being lost, Mr. Obama's credibility is sinking and his job approval rating is declining along with the popularity of his initiatives. Republicans, who had insisted the stimulus was wasteful and wouldn't work, are being vindicated.

The political fallout that mattered most, however, has been among Democrats in the House who will face tough re-election fights next year. They're in a state of near-panic over the lingering recession. Their confidence in Mr. Obama is fading, and they no longer believe in quickly passing the president's agenda. Cap and trade has been put off until the fall and health-care reform is starting to stall.

For Mr. Obama, this is all a potentially disastrous turn of events. On Capitol Hill, delay favors the opposition and tends to lead to defeat. The longer a bill sits around, the more its contents are dissected and the less likely it is to pass. Mr. Obama realizes this fact, which is why he is pressing for a quick vote on his health-care reform.

His plan has been to exploit the economic downturn to enact his entire agenda, not just the stimulus. The president's position, which he repeated again this week, is that his health, energy and education reforms are necessary to create a sustainable economic recovery. It's a clever political argument, but it makes little economic sense and few people buy it.

That's not all. The stimulus is such a large increase in spending that it turned the deficit into a political issue. There is a growing national wariness to adding billions (or trillions) to the budget, even for a relatively popular cause like health care.

Had Mr. Obama and Democrats proceeded differently, they'd have better odds now for enacting their agenda. They are victims of their own tactics.

Republicans hold 41% of the seats in Congress. That's a position of weakness, but not completely powerlessness. Rather than ignoring GOP proposals, Democrats might have been better off giving Republicans 20% of the stimulus funds to spend. Republicans probably would have spent it on tax reforms that encourage economic growth. Had that happened, the stimulus might have provided a mild boost to the economy by now.

Or what if Democrats had heeded Republican advice and trimmed the size of the stimulus? The economy wouldn't be any worse for it, but the deficit and public fear of it would be smaller.

During the presidential campaign last year, Mr. Obama said he was committed to bipartisanship. But congressional Democrats aren't, as he surely knew. They rejected input from House Republicans on the stimulus -- without a peep of protest from the president. Minor concessions to three Republicans gave them the 60 votes to pass the bill in the Senate.

The president's vow of bipartisanship wasn't the only promise to crumble. Democrats said they'd give Republicans (and the public) 48 hours to read a bill before a vote. But the final version of the 1,071-page stimulus package was unveiled in the House at 1 a.m. on Feb. 13 and passed later that day after one hour of substantive debate. Every Republican voted no. The Senate vote came 16 hours after the three renegade Republicans agreed to an amended version of the stimulus.

In urging fast action, Mr. Obama sounded apocalyptic: "If we do not move swiftly to sign the [stimulus] into law, an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe. . . . Millions more Americans will lose their jobs. Homes will be lost. Families will go without health care."

Once the stimulus passed, Democrats said the impact would be practically instant. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) predicted "an immediate jolt." Economic adviser Larry Summers said, "You'll see the effects almost immediately." White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said it would "take only weeks or months" to be felt.

A similar sequence of appeals, claims, promises and a speedy vote was followed when the cap and trade bill, which would put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions, came before the House on June 28. The bill's architect, Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), presented a crucial 300-page amendment at 3 a.m. It passed 16 hours later.

But even that was not fast enough. Mr. Waxman was irritated by House Republican leader John Boehner's hour-long address in opposition. As Mr. Boehner spoke, Mr. Waxman demanded he be cut off. He wasn't, but after Mr. Boehner finished, Mr. Waxman asked the presiding officer, who was then Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D., Calif.), how long the "two minute speech" had lasted. "The customary amount of time" for the minority leader, she replied.

Mr. Waxman's testiness won't make final passage of cap and trade easier. Nor will the Obama administration gain from its crude attempt last week to punish -- and silence -- Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) for saying the stimulus should be cancelled. Four cabinet members wrote to his governor, Republican Jan Brewer, to ask if she wanted to forfeit stimulus money for her state.

Mr. Obama's health-care and energy initiatives, the core of his far-reaching agenda, were bound to face serious opposition in Congress in any case. Hardball tactics and false promises have only made the hill he has to climb steeper. Now he may lose on both. The president and his congressional allies should have known better.

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.

from US News & World Report, 2009-May-15, by Dan Gilgoff:

Gallup Poll: Most Americans Call Themselves 'Pro-Life'

A new Gallup Poll finds that most Americans are identifying themselves as "pro-life" for the first time since the firm starting asking the question in 1995. Fifty-one percent of Americans now call themselves "pro-life" on abortion, compared with 42 percent who consider themselves "pro-choice."

That's a major change from a year ago, when 50 percent of Americans called themselves pro-choice and 44 percent said they were pro-life.

This graph illustrates the dramatic shift:

The poll finds that while support is about even for the extreme abortion positions—23 percent of Americans believe abortion should always be illegal, and 23 percent say it should always be legal—most take a more nuanced stance. Fifty-three percent say abortion should be legal in certain circumstances.

Drilling down further, however, Gallup finds that 60 percent think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances or legal in only a few circumstances. Just 37 percent want abortion legal in all or most circumstances.

What explains the spike in the number of pro-life Americans? Gallup says it's a reaction to the Obama era:

With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation's policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans—and, in particular, Republicans—seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position. However, the retreat is evident among political moderates as well as conservatives.

It is possible that, through his abortion policies, Obama has pushed the public's understanding of what it means to be "pro-choice" slightly to the left, politically. While Democrats may support that, as they generally support everything Obama is doing as president, it may be driving others in the opposite direction.

The clear shift in public opinion puts more pressure on President Obama to make good on abortion reduction—and will make it more difficult to rescind Bush-ordered "conscience" protections for healthcare workers.

from Commentary Magazine online, 2009-Apr-24, by Abe Greenwald:

Obama and the Angry Mob

Unlike candidate Barack Obama, President Barack Obama has been unable to use mob anger to his advantage. The White House position on a comprehensive release of terrorist interrogation materials and on potential prosecution of Bush administration officials is incoherent and stultifying. Casting himself as restorer of national decency, Obama first denounced tough interrogations as a betrayal of American ideals. Yet he recommended “reflection, not retribution,” vowing to “move forward” and not prosecute interrogators because “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” However, days later, he decided that laying blame for the past is actually up to the discretion of the attorney general and it was therefore best the president not “pre-judge” the matter.

The salivating hordes pounced. But criminal proceedings risk tearing the country apart, vindicating those who were casually defamed, and even redounding poorly upon Obama intimates and other Democrats. A more thorough airing of details around CIA interrogations has revealed that controversial methods were both effective and widely encouraged by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The Obama administration suddenly became less keen on exposing gory details. On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton called Dick Cheney a liar on the topic yet denied him the means to defend himself through the full release of documentation. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs implied that Obama was against Bush administration prosecutions after all. “The president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case,” Gibbs said. Also on Thursday, Obama advised congressional leaders not to pursue Bush officials through truth commissions.

The administration spent the week stuck somewhere between the president's original admonition that we “come together on behalf of our common future” and feeding the Bushies to the lions.

The interrogations affair is not the first time President Obama has proved unable to make the livid multitudes work for him. His attempt to lead the have-nots in the AIG-bonus class war delivered populist rage right to the White House doorstep when it was discovered that his administration was responsible for the $160 million loophole that allowed for executive bonuses. Another instance of anti-Bush policy gone wrong may be developing in regard to the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. On Thursday, an anonymous administration official told the New York Times, “We're at a complete impasse,” on how to relocate prisoners, and added, “I don't know that there's a viable `Plan B.'”

But the real problem was the viability of Plan A. Or the viability of all the Plan A's that attempted to turn reckless mob passion into constructive policy. It's not that Obama can't charm a crowd. During the presidential election he courted millions with eerie success. But consummating a national courtship on Election Day is different from elevating the will of the mob into a sustained course of action. Obama can feed the mob red meat, but he can't train it to suspend its fervor for the sake of practicality. He can fan the flames of populism or Bush hatred, but he can't adjust the heat to his own governing needs. When the pitchforks are raised, Obama walks back his call for action.

Obama cannot capitalize on public hysteria because there is no orderly way to capitalize on public hysteria. It won't behave; it won't accept limits. There is no wisdom to the mob. You can't satisfy it with a gesture and a follow-up call for reflection. You can't make what the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich called “the mass psychology of fascism” work for you surgically or as the collective conscience of democracy. Crowds want blood, not memos. They want executives ruined, not protected. They want prisoners liberated, not shuffled around. Barack Obama is finding out that mobs can't be organized as if they were communities.

There is one way to make the mob work for you, and that is to share its appetites and goals. Leaders with the pathological capacity to shepherd the mob simply deliver the bodies. That's the story of demagogic regimes throughout history. The Communists purged; the Nazis exterminated. The strength of today's theocrats is derived from their promise to eradicate Israel. The mass psychology of fascism can only be used to achieve the political reality of fascism.

In America, we don't deliver the bodies. Administrations don't feed their predecessors to the public. The danger in playing on mob sentiment is great. While Obama doesn't want, in the end, what the mob wants, he wants to convince them that he does. He whets their appetites and raises their destructive hopes.

Last October, Fouad Ajami noted in the Wall Street Journal: “the tragedy of Arab political culture has been the unending expectation of the crowd -- the street, we call it -- in the redeemer who will put an end to the decline, who will restore faded splendor and greatness.” The brilliance of American political culture has been our unstinting faith in the empowerment of individual citizens. To flirt with an America that seeks redemption from a leader of crowds is to risk bringing the whole glorious experiment to an end.

from the Detroit Free Press, 2009-May-3, by Laura Varon Brown:

Obama criticism shuts down conversation

Parties were more fun when George W. Bush was president. You could debate, argue even, praise and condemn, throw darts and laurels and solve the world's problems over a bottle of wine.

No more. At least not in my circles. If you want to stop a conversation in its tracks, just question something President Barack Obama has said or done. It's not open to debate -- and I don't think that's healthy, for the country or the president.

It's especially unsettling for a free speech girl like me. The First Amendment is important -- but lately, it feels like my right of self-expression is being squashed.

One example: Obama's comment to Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show," comparing his bowling abilities to someone in the Special Olympics.

Can you imagine the uproar had Bush said that? He'd be banished from bowling alleys for eternity. His bowling average and IQ would have immediately been compared in Twitter messages demanding his resignation.

But instead, media and water cooler conversations the next day were about bowling scores and how tough the game can be. Anyone bringing up the insensitivity of the president's remark heard, "Come on, give the guy a chance. So he said one thing wrong. Anyone could have said something like that." End of discussion.

Anyone remember poor Dan Quayle, the vice president who misspelled "potato" at a school spelling bee in 1992? No second chance for a Republican. Five months after the resulting media field day, Quayle and the first President Bush were voted out of office.

And doesn't anyone want to debate the wisdom of Obama's people allowing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who derides the "imperialist United States," to hand the president a book in an embarrassing publicity stunt that rocketed the leftist tome, "The Open Veins of Latin America" to the top of the best-seller lists? A couple of months ago, we were refusing to buy Venezuelan gas; now we're rushing out to buy copies of an anti-American book. This is certainly fair game for party talk.

Don't get me wrong, there is a whole lot to like about Obama. I want his smart ideas and policies to work. I love his youth, his inclusiveness and the way he cuts through the minutiae of public policy. But when auto execs get the boot, foreign meanies mock us and Special Olympians are insulted, I'm sorry, he rates some disapproving chatter.

Of course, if you move in circles with disaffected conservatives who are feeling powerless these days, I suppose mentioning Obama in a favorable way risks drawing the wrath of those who can't wait to tell you that socialism is upon us.

Hey, this is OK. We need to hear both sides. We must hear both sides. But we ought to be listening to each other, not waiting to pounce and then closing down the conversation.

The point is, whatever side you come from, you have the right to talk -- which comes with an obligation to listen.

We have changed leaders and yes, probably for the better, yet we seem to remain as polarized as ever. Half the country wants to argue and the other half doesn't want to talk about it. That's not progress. And certainly not the progress Obama talks about wanting.

Not to mention it makes parties a lot less interesting.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-23:

Presidential Poison
His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama's Presidency.

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.

"Your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of 'chatter' equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks," wrote Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, in his August 1, 2002 memo. "In light of the information you believe [detainee Abu] Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described as an 'increased pressure phase.'"

So the CIA requests a legal review at a moment of heightened danger, the Justice Department obliges with an exceedingly detailed analysis of the law and interrogation practices -- and, seven years later, Mr. Obama says only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. The political convenience of this distinction for Mr. Obama betrays its basic injustice. And by the way, everyone agrees that senior officials, including President Bush, approved these interrogations. Is this President going to put his predecessor in the dock too?

Mr. Obama seemed to understand the peril of such an exercise when he said, before his inauguration, that he wanted to "look forward" and beyond the antiterror debates of the Bush years. As recently as Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said no prosecutions were contemplated and now is not a time for "anger and retribution." Two days later the President disavowed his own chief of staff. Yet nothing had changed except that Mr. Obama's decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.

Just as with the AIG bonuses, he is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it -- only to encourage it more. Within hours of Mr. Obama's Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The demands for a "special counsel" at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe's left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.

Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.

Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow. And speaking of which, when will the GOP Members of Congress begin to denounce this partisan scapegoating? Senior Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter have hardly been profiles in courage.

Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

from National Review online, 2009-May-22, by Rich Lowry:

President Above-It-All
There Obama stands, bravely holding his flanks against straw men on all sides.

Put Barack Obama in front of a teleprompter and one thing is certain — he'll make himself appear the most reasonable person in the room.

Rhetorically, he is in the middle of any debate, perpetually surrounded by finger-pointing extremists who can't get over their reflexive combativeness and ideological fixations to acknowledge his surpassing thoughtfulness and grace.

This is how Obama, whose position on abortion is indistinguishable from NARAL's, can speechify on abortion at Notre Dame and come away sounding like a pitch-perfect centrist. It's natural, then, that his speech at the National Archives on national security should superficially sound soothing, reasonable, and even a little put-upon (oh, what President Obama has to endure from all those finger-pointing extremists).

But beneath its surface, the speech — given heavy play in the press as an implicit debate with former Vice President Dick Cheney, who spoke on the same topic at a different venue immediately afterward — revealed something else: a president who has great difficulty admitting error, who can't discuss the position of his opponents without resorting to rank caricature, and who adopts an off-putting pose of above-it-all self-righteousness.

Obama has reversed himself since becoming president on detaining terrorists indefinitely and on trying them before military commissions. Once upon a time, these policies were blots on our honor; now they are simple necessities. Between the primary and the general election, candidate Obama changed his mind and embraced Pres. George W. Bush's terrorist-surveillance program. In recent weeks, he countermanded his own Justice Department's decision not to contest a court decision that would have led to the release of photos of detainee abuse.

A less self-consciously grandiose figure might feel the need to reflect on the fact that his simplistic prior positions had not fully taken account of the difficulties inherent in fighting the War on Terror. Not Obama. On the commissions, he explicitly denied changing his view, instead trumpeting cosmetic changes he's proposed as major reforms that will bring them in line “with the rule of law.”

For all his championing of nuance, Obama comes back to one source for every dilemma: Bush, as though without his predecessor every question about how a nation of laws protects itself from a lawless enemy would be easy. Under Bush, according to Obama, we set our “principles aside as luxuries we could no longer afford.” Even now, there are those — are you listening, Mr. Former V.P.? — “who think that America's safety and success require us to walk away from the sacred principles enshrined in this building.” What a shoddy smear.

Consider Obama's breaks with Bush: We have stopped using enhanced interrogation techniques for now, but Obama reserves the right to use them again; we will have military commissions but with four procedural changes; we're going to close Gitmo but find some equivalent detention facility for that category of detainees who, Obama says, are dangerous but can't be tried or released. These are matters of degree and therefore questions of prudence, not principle. If Bush violated our fundamental beliefs, then Obama is violating them, too, only a little less so.

Excoriating Bush is good politics for Obama, which is what makes his repeated exhortations to look ahead so disingenuous. In his speech, he rued that “we have a return of the politicization of these issues.” In other words: Dick Cheney, please shut up. But when did the politicization of these issues end? Has the Left ever stopped braying about Bush's war crimes?

Obama bracingly politicized these very issues on the stump, staking out unsustainably purist positions because they suited his momentary political interest. Now that's he's president, he wants the debate to end. He's above the grubbily disputatious culture of partisans and journalists. And he's above contradiction because, as ever, he occupies the middle ground, one “obscured by two opposite and absolutist” sides: those who recognize no terrorist threat and those who recognize no limits to executive power.

And there Obama stands, bravely holding his flanks against straw men on all sides.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-May-21, by Karl Rove:

Flip-Flops and Governance
Our president isn't quite as advertised.

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.

For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush's military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an "enormous failure" and a "legal black hole." His campaign claimed last summer that "court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists." Upon entering office, he found out they aren't.

He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate "consequences" for "a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones" on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now's he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a "quagmire" and ordered more troops to that country. He isn't calling it a "surge" but that's what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.

These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.

Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."

Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-May-15, p.A13, by Karl Rove:

Congress and Waterboarding
Nancy Pelosi was an accomplice to 'torture.'

Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her.

Here's what we know. On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee's ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn't comment for the record about precisely what she was told. At the time the Washington Post spoke with a "congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter" and summarized that person's comments this way: "The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."

When questions were raised last month about these statements, Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA "did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true." She had earlier said on TV, "I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used."

The Obama administration's CIA director, Leon Panetta, and Mr. Goss have both disputed Mrs. Pelosi's account.

In a report to Congress on May 5, Mr. Panetta described the CIA's 2002 meeting with Mrs. Pelosi as "Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed." Note the past tense -- "had been employed."

Mr. Goss says he and Mrs. Pelosi were told at the 2002 briefing about the use of the EITs and "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission." He is backed by CIA sources who say Mr. Goss and Mrs. Pelosi "questioned whether we were doing enough" to extract information.

We also know that Michael Sheehy, then Mrs. Pelosi's top aide on the Intelligence Committee and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded. Mr. Sheehy was almost certain to have told Mrs. Pelosi. He has not commented publicly about the 2002 or the 2003 meetings.

So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?

If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn't she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA's use of them? If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy wants an independent investigation of Bush administration officials. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers feels the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture. Are these and other similarly minded Democrats willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into their stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?

It is clear that after the 9/11 attacks Mrs. Pelosi was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques and the valuable information they produced. She not only agreed with what was being done, she apparently pressed the CIA to do more.

But when political winds shifted, Mrs. Pelosi seems to have decided to use enhanced interrogation as an issue to attack Republicans. It is disgraceful that Democrats who discovered their outrage years after the fact are now braying for disbarment of the government lawyers who justified EITs and the prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized them. Mrs. Pelosi is hip-deep in dangerous waters, and they are rapidly rising.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

from the Associated Press, 2009-May-16, by Liz Sidoti:

Analysis: Democrats' security feud may cost them

WASHINGTON — Democrats just can't seem to get on the same page on national security — and it could cost them dearly on an issue Republicans have dominated for decades.

Increasingly, President Barack Obama and Democrats who run Congress are being pulled between the competing interests of party liberals and the rest of the country on Bush-era wartime matters of torture, detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

The Democratic Party's struggle over how to position itself on these issues is threatening to overshadow Obama's ambitious plans for energy, education and health care. It's also keeping the country looking backward on the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, much to the chagrin of the new White House. And, it's creating an opening for an out-of-power GOP in an area where Democrats have made inroads.

Governing from the center and backtracking on a previous position, Obama decided this past week to fight the release of photos that show U.S. troops abusing prisoners. The president said he feared the pictures would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then he decided to resume military tribunals for some Guantanamo detainees after a temporary suspension. "This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values," he said.

The developments riled liberals who are important campaign-year foot soldiers and fundraisers.

"These recent decisions are disheartening," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. "He has shown backbone on some issues and not on others."

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi protected the party's left flank by accusing the CIA of lying to her about the agency's use of a form of simulated drowning on suspected terrorists. "We were told that waterboarding was not being used," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "And we now know that earlier they were." The CIA disputes Pelosi's account.

As Democrats splintered, Republicans watched with glee.

The irony is these are the same wartime issues created by Bush and the GOP-led Congress that Democrats successfully campaigned against in 2006 and 2008. The conflicting Democratic positions threaten to undercut the party's gains on national security; polls last fall showed Democrats had drawn even on national security issues long dominated by the GOP.

The White House desperately wants to get Democrats in Congress focused on the president's priorities. Obama's team has made it clear it's not eager to retread the past. But House and Senate liberals, prodded by a vocal and active network of grass-roots and "netroots" supporters, relish doing just that, seemingly fixated on how Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney handled Iraq and terrorism.

And it's the popular new president who may have the most to lose.

Obama is facing the same predicament that confronted and confounded other recent Democratic presidents. While governing as centrists, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter bent over backward on issues of war and peace, working to appease the party's left wing without being held hostage by it.

Defeated Democratic nominees — John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000, Michael Dukakis in 1988 — lost in part because Republicans successfully tagged them as soft on security.

Obama appears to be trying for a balance between keeping campaign promises to reverse Bush policies and protecting national security.

Overall, Obama seems less willing to systematically overturn Bush's national security positions than his domestic policies.

There are signs that making good on his promise to close Guantanamo in his first year is proving exceedingly difficult. Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder reassured lawmakers that the administration would not release Guantanamo prisoners into U.S. neighborhoods.

In blogs and on cable TV, Democratic critics griped that Obama was appearing more like Bush than the Democrat who won the nomination by rallying liberals around his pledge to end the Iraq war quickly.

Answering liberal complaints, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said: "First and foremost, the president does what is in the best security interest of the United States."

Obama is betting that liberals will forgive him for changing course on these issues. He does have several years to make it up to them before his likely re-election campaign.

Conversely, Obama may have further endeared himself to moderates and independents who are more hawkish on national security and are important to his winning coalition. It's also possible that conservative Republicans may now be more open to dealing with him because of his moves on security issues.

With those actions, Obama may have undercut Cheney's complaint that the Democrat's policies were endangering the country. The president also may have insulated himself from further weak-on-security attacks following a campaign during which skeptics questioned his readiness to lead the military in wartime.

from the Associated Press, 2009-May-10, by Michael J. Sniffen:

Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell on GOP future

WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney made clear Sunday he'd rather follow firebrand broadcaster Rush Limbaugh than former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell into political battle over the future of the Republican Party.

Even as Cheney embraced efforts to expand the party by ex-Govs. Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and the House's No. 2 Republican, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the former vice president appeared to write his one-time colleague Powell out of the GOP.

Asked about recent verbal broadsides between Limbaugh and Powell, Cheney said, "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

Powell, who was secretary of state under President George W. Bush and held the nation's top military post under President George H.W. Bush, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president last year. Nonetheless, since the election he has described himself as a Republican and a right-of-center conservative, though "not as right as others would like."

Cheney, citing Powell's backing of Obama over Republican nominee John McCain, said, "I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interests."

Cheney's remarks on CBS' "Face the Nation" were the latest step in his slow-motion estrangement from Powell since the two worked closely together to manage the Persian Gulf war in 1991 — Powell as the Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Cheney as defense secretary for the elder Bush.

Under the younger Bush, Powell initially backed action against Iraq's Saddam Hussein and delivered a famous U.N. speech laying out the U.S. case. But Powell and Cheney increasingly parted ways over the Bush administration's policies on the war and terrorism, with Cheney usually prevailing. Powell left the administration after Bush's first term.

Wading into the debate over the GOP's future, Cheney called efforts by George W. Bush's brother Jeb, along with Cantor and Romney, as "a good thing to do," but set a limit on how far the party should go.

"The suggestion our Democratic friends always make is somehow if you Republicans were just more like Democrats, you'd win elections," Cheney said. "Well, I don't buy that. We win elections when we have good solid conservative principles to run upon."

Powell has argued the Republican Party needs to move toward the center and reach out to growing black, Hispanic and Asian communities, but instead has been shrinking because it hasn't changed as the country changed in the face of economic distress. "Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less," Powell said last week.

For months, Powell has urged the party to turn away from the acid-tongued Limbaugh. "I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without," Powell said.

"Colin Powell is just another liberal," Limbaugh retorted. "What Colin Powell needs to do is close the loop and become a Democrat." Limbaugh said Powell is "just mad at me because I'm the one person in the country that had the guts to explain his endorsement of Obama. It was purely and solely based on race." Both Powell and Obama are black.

On other topics on the CBS interview, Cheney:

• said transferring suspected terrorists from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States would be a bad idea that would enlarge their legal rights. Obama's national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James Jones, told ABC's "This Week" the White House isn't going to do that if it would make Americans less safe.

• reiterated his belief the U.S. has become more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration renounced harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, that Cheney said provided good intelligence. Jones said he didn't believe the nation was at greater risk and that even some in the Bush administration disagreed with Cheney on that score.

• renewed his call for the administration to release two CIA memos he said list successes derived from those interrogations, including "attack planning that was under way and how it was stopped." The Obama administration is reviewing Cheney's request. Obama has said the memos are not so clear-cut and do not address whether the information could have been obtained without such methods.

• said he has been speaking out about the Obama administration although George W. Bush remains silent, because if he didn't, "then the critics have free run, and there isn't anybody there on the other side to tell the truth."

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Apr-29, by John Fund:

And the Food Was Bad Too

The White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday night featured President Obama's debut as a stand-up comic. He did well, throwing out equal opportunity zingers about himself, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and House Republican leader John Boehner.

But the evening was marred after the president sat down when comic Wanda Sykes took the stage. Ms. Sykes broke with the traditional spirit of the annual event in which comedy is directed at the incumbent president. She at most tweaked him affectionately, then turned her fire on the president's out-of-power critics such as former Vice President Dick Cheney. But her real over-the-top bit concerned Rush Limbaugh. She noted the talk show host's statement that he hoped President Obama would fail to enact his policies. She said that, to her, the statement was "treason" because it meant he wanted the country to fail.

"He's not saying anything differently than Osama bin Laden is saying," she told the black-tie audience. "You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight." She added that she hoped Mr. Limbaugh's "kidneys fail" and suggested that "he needs a waterboarding."

Lawrence O'Donnell, an MSNBC analyst and proud liberal, says he was uncomfortable with the harshness of Ms. Sykes' routine. He told the Washington Times he found her "not funny" and her remarks distasteful: "I don't think Wanda's writers did a very good job." Eleanor Clift of TV's McLaughlin Group also criticized the comic, saying "I think she went over the top."

President Obama had nothing to do with Ms. Sykes' remarks, but it was still disappointing to see him laugh and smile throughout her Limbaugh "jokes." The new president came to town promising to "change the tone" away from bitter partisan attacks and vitriolic criticism. Saturday's dinner only made Washington appear a coarser and nastier place.

If the president really wants to change the tone, he should issue a statement saying he hopes the comedian selected for next year's correspondent's dinner sets a higher standard and really does "change the tone."

from USA Today, 2009-Apr-23, by Susan Page:

Poll: Public thinks highly of Obama

WASHINGTON — His opening months in the Oval Office have fortified Barack Obama's standing with the American public, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, giving him political capital for battles ahead.

As his 100th day as president approaches next Wednesday, the survey shows Obama has not only maintained robust approval ratings but also bolstered the sense that he is a strong and decisive leader who can manage the government effectively during a time of economic crisis.

"A lot of things were ignored over the last eight years, and I think it's all coming home to roost," says Benjamin Bleadon, 51, an insurance broker from Skokie, Ill., who was among those surveyed. "He has given the perception that he understands the issues and that he has taken control … and we'll just have to wait and see if it works."

Since October, the percentage who see Obama as a "strong and decisive leader" has jumped 12 percentage points, and his image as an effective manager has gone up 11 points.

Now, 56% say he has done an "excellent" or "good" job as president vs. 20% who rate him as "poor" or "terrible." An additional 23% say he has done "just OK."

His excellent/good rating on national security is 53%. On the economy, it is 48%.

"He is seen as someone who was handed a large array of challenges and is dealing with them in a sensible way," adviser David Axelrod says.

There are sharp partisan divisions over that, however. Nearly nine of 10 Democrats and half of independents say Obama has done an excellent or good job. One in four Republicans agree.

And while Obama's ratings are high, there is concern about the course he is charting. Four in 10 say he is "relying too much on the federal government to solve the country's problems." When asked to name the "worst thing" he has done as president, three in 10 cite big spending and bailout plans.

"He's throwing money at the automobile makers and all these companies," says Kelsey Maliszewski, 26, of Ocala, Fla., one of those polled.

At the top of the list of "best things" Obama has done is improving U.S. image in the world.

By more than 2-to-1, those surveyed credit Obama with keeping the promises he made during the campaign and making a sincere effort to work with congressional Republicans. In contrast, by 56%-38% they say congressional Republicans haven't made a sincere effort to work with him.

The poll of 1,051 adults, taken Monday and Tuesday, has a margin of error of +/—3 percentage points.

G. Calvin Mackenzie, a Colby College government professor, says Obama is benefiting from Americans' economic anxiety. "People are just wanting the government to find a way out of this mess and wanting Barack Obama to succeed," he says.

What about the new White House dog, Bo?

Two percent say getting the dog was the best thing Obama has done as president; 1% call it the worst. "Those people are cats," Axelrod counters.

from the Associated Press, 2009-Jul-20, by Hope Yen:

Voting rate dips in 2008 as older whites stay home

WASHINGTON — For all the attention generated by Barack Obama's candidacy, the share of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in November declined for the first time in a dozen years. The reason: Older whites with little interest in backing either Barack Obama or John McCain stayed home.

Census figures released Monday show about 63.6 percent of all U.S. citizens ages 18 and older, or 131.1 million people, voted last November.

Although that represented an increase of 5 million voters — virtually all of them minorities — the turnout relative to the population of eligible voters was a decrease from 63.8 percent in 2004.

Ohio and Pennsylvania were among those showing declines in white voters, helping Obama carry those battleground states.

"While the significance of minority votes for Obama is clearly key, it cannot be overlooked that reduced white support for a Republican candidate allowed minorities to tip the balance in many slow-growing 'purple' states," said William H. Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution, referring to key battleground states that don't notably tilt Democrat or Republican.

"The question I would ask is if a continuing stagnating economy could change that," he said.

According to census data, 66 percent of whites voted last November, down 1 percentage point from 2004. Blacks increased their turnout by 5 percentage points to 65 percent, nearly matching whites. Hispanics improved turnout by 3 percentage points, and Asians by 3.5 percentage points, each reaching a turnout of nearly 50 percent. In all, minorities made up nearly 1 in 4 voters in 2008, the most diverse electorate ever.

By age, voters 18-to-24 were the only group to show a statistically significant increase in turnout, with 49 percent casting ballots, compared with 47 percent in 2004.

Blacks had the highest turnout rate among this age group — 55 percent, or an 8 percentage point jump from 2004. In contrast, turnout for whites 18-24 was basically flat at 49 percent. Asians and Hispanics in that age group increased to 41 percent and 39 percent, respectively.

Among whites 45 and older, turnout fell 1.5 percentage point to just under 72 percent.

Asked to identify their reasons for not voting, 46 percent of all whites said they didn't like the candidates, weren't interested or had better things to do, up from 41 percent in 2004. Hispanics had similar numbers for both years.

Not surprisingly, blacks showed a sharp increase in interest.

Among the blacks who failed to vote last fall most cited problems such as illness, being out of town or transportation issues. Just 16 percent of nonvoting blacks cited disinterest, down from 37 percent in 2004.

Among other findings:

• The decline in percentage turnout was the first in a presidential election since 1996. At that time, voter participation fell to 58.4 percent — the lowest in decades — as Democrat Bill Clinton won an easy re-election over Republican Bob Dole amid a strong economy.

• The voting rate in 2008 was highest in the Midwest (66 percent). The other regions were about 63 percent each.

• Minnesota and the District of Columbia had the highest turnout, each with 75 percent. Utah and Hawaii — Obama's birth state — were among the lowest, each with 52 percent.

The figures are the latest to highlight a generational rift between younger, increasingly minority voters and an older white population.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found almost 8 in 10 people believe there is a major difference in the point of view of younger and older people today, mostly over social values. It was the largest generation gap since divisions 40 years ago over Vietnam, civil rights and women's liberation.

Last November, voters under 30 cast ballots for Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio. Still, because of their smaller numbers — in population and turnout — young voters weren't critical to the overall outcome and only made a difference in North Carolina and Indiana, according to Scott Keeter, Pew's director of survey research.

The census figures are based on the Current Population Survey, which asked respondents after Election Day about their turnout. The figures for "white" refer to the whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.

from the Associated Press, 2009-Apr-28, by David Espo:

Specter switch puts Dems near unbeatable majority

WASHINGTON — Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties Tuesday with a suddenness that stunned the Senate, a moderate's defection that left Democrats one seat shy of a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority with many of President Barack Obama's key legislative priorities on the horizon.

Specter, 79 and seeking a sixth term in 2010, conceded bluntly that his chances of winning a Pennsylvania Republican primary next year were bleak in a party grown increasingly conservative. But he cast his decision as one of principle, rather than fueled by political ambition as spurned GOP leaders alleged.

"I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party," he said at a news conference. He added, "I am not prepared to have my 29 years' record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate."

Not long after Specter met privately with Republican senators to explain his decision, the party's leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, said the switch posed a "threat to the country." The issue, he said, "really relates to ... whether or not in the United States of America our people want the majority party to have whatever it wants, without restraint, without a check or balance."

As a result of last fall's elections, Democrats control the White House and have a large majority in the House. Specter's switch leaves them with 59 Senate seats. Democrat Al Franken is ahead in a marathon recount in Minnesota. If he ultimately defeats Republican Norm Coleman, he would become the party's 60th vote — the number needed to overcome a filibuster.

Specter, who has a lifelong record of independence, told reporters, "I will not be an automatic 60th vote." As evidence, he pointed out he opposes legislation to make it easier for workers to form unions, a bill that is organized labor's top priority this year.

from the Los Angeles Times, 2009-Apr-28, by Peter Nicholas:

Specter condemned Jim Jeffords' party switch in 2001

When the Vermont Republican became an independent, Specter lost a committee chairmanship in the Senate's resulting power shift. An angry Specter proposed a ban on such party switches.

Reporting from Washington -- When a Senate Republican left his party in 2001, elevating the Democrats to majority status, one member of the GOP was especially vocal about his displeasure: Arlen Specter.

Specter said then- Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords' decision to become an independent was disruptive to the functioning of Congress. He proposed a rule forbidding party switches that had the effect of vaulting the minority to majority status in the middle of a congressional session.

"If somebody wants to change parties, they can do that," Specter said at the time. "But that kind of instability is not good for governance of the country and the Senate."

Now it is Specter switching parties, proclaiming himself a Democrat. While the move won't throw one party out of power, it could potentially hand the Democrats a 60-vote majority and deprive the GOP of the ability to block legislation through a filibuster.

Eight years ago, Jeffords' decision cost Specter his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee. Specter said at the time that he wanted the rule change to prevent a party switch that could decisively swing the balance of power in the Senate overnight, disrupting U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

He also said that Jeffords' move would put Senate staff members out of work as committee chairmanships changed hands, and that he had already seen "a lot of crying" among staff members worried about their future.

Donald Ritchie, associate Senate historian, said in an interview Tuesday that the Jeffords move "was terrifically disruptive. People had to move out of their offices and staffs had to change."

But Specter's proposal quickly ran into opposition. Democrats balked. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) called the proposal unconstitutional. (Lieberman would later leave the Democratic Party to become an independent.) The proposal was never adopted.

Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said the rule would have "deprived a senator of the free will to make a decision."

Specter's proposal, Baker said, was intended "to ingratiate himself with colleagues with whom [Specter] was on the outs" -- the Republicans. "That was one way he could do it. And it was received with the coldness it deserved."

In a statement today, Specter sought to draw a distinction between his party change and that of Jeffords, who did not seek reelection in 2006. Specter said that he would not necessarily vote in lock step with the Democrats.

"My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats than I have been for the Republicans," he said. "Unlike Sen. Jeffords' switch, which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote."

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Apr-29, by John Fund:

Everyone Loves Arlen

To his friends, Arlen Specter is adaptable. "He doesn't suffer from a desperate desire to be popular," the late Thacher Longstreth, who ran for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1970s with Mr. Specter as his campaign manager, said once. "He suffers from a desperate desire to be elected."

To his critics, Mr. Specter is a rank opportunist. His party switch yesterday was a shock to few. After all, he was a Democrat until age 35. He only became a Republican in 1965 when the Democratic machine in Philadelphia turned down his request that he be nominated for district attorney. The GOP nomination was his for the asking, but he also covered his bases: He changed his party registration only after he had won.

Mr. Specter finds such tactical nimbleness useful because his personality is so notoriously off-putting, leading him to be dubbed by various Senate colleagues as "Snarlin' Arlen" or "The Arlenator." Mr. Specter himself has recognized his deficit in human relations. After he once narrowly lost a race for mayor of Philadelphia, a friend advised him that he needed more warmth. "Okay, I'll get some," he replied.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-May-6, by John Fund:

Nobody Likes a Turncoat

Senate Democrats finally found an entitlement program they dislike so much that they voted to eliminate it last night. No, it wasn't a budget vote to shrink the size of government. It was the deal that Senator Arlen Specter cut with Majority Leader Harry Reid to preserve Mr. Specter's committee seniority despite his move from the Republican Party to Democratic Party. On NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Mr. Specter had called his seniority an "entitlement" he deserved.

"I was elected in 1980. I think [keeping my seniority] is not a bribe or a give for something extraordinary," he said. "I'll be treated as a Democrat as if I was elected as a Democrat."

Not so fast. Resentful Democrats went on the warpath against Mr. Reid's offer to treat Mr. Specter as if he had been a Democrat since 1980 -- an arrangement that could make Mr. Specter a committee chairman if he wins re-election next year. Senate Democrats effectively agreed in a voice vote last night to strip Mr. Specter of his seniority -- avoiding a roll-call vote that would have revealed exactly who his adversaries inside the Democratic caucus are. Mr. Specter will now be listed as the most junior member on the Judiciary Committee, meaning he'll be last in line for questioning whomever President Obama appoints to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. That's a big comedown from his role as chairman during the confirmation battles surrounding John Roberts and Sam Alito in 2005.

With the loss of seniority, there is almost no way Mr. Specter can become even a subcommittee chairman assuming he wins a sixth term next year. It robs him of a major selling point he was planning to use to convince Pennsylvania voters to return him to office. Mr. Specter will argue that Democrats could always revisit the issue of his seniority after the 2010 elections, but the precedents aren't good. In 2003, Democrats enticed former Senator Frank Lautenberg back into public life to save the New Jersey seat held by scandal-tarred Bob Torricelli. Mr. Lautenberg kept the seat for his party as the last-minute Democratic nominee, but was relegated to junior roles on committees even though he had 18 years of prior service in the Senate.

It seems that Mr. Specter, a master political operator and opportunist, has been outfoxed. He may have an easier time winning renomination in a Democratic primary, but his new party has now stripped him of his most precious Senate asset -- his seniority.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-29, by Fred Barnes:

What Specter's Defection Means
Republican ability to block the Obama agenda is crippled, at least until 2010.

My one rule of politics is that the future is never a straight line projection of the present. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's unexpected decision to switch parties and run for re-election in 2010 as a Democrat proves the rule. Mr. Specter often votes for liberal Democratic initiatives and infuriates conservative Republicans. Still, his surprise defection was a crushing setback for the GOP, instantly reducing what limited power Republicans have in the Senate. The GOP's ability to stop liberal legislation is now weakened if not eliminated in some instances.

Mr. Specter's jump across the aisle significantly adds to the heavy Republican burden in Senate races next year. True, the political climate then may be more favorable for Republican gains; the economy probably won't be booming and the president's popularity won't be sky-high. But there's a problem: the map.

The states with Senate races in 2010 do not favor Republicans. They must defend 19 seats, six in states won handily by Barack Obama. In three -- New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio -- Democrats also have a built-in, blue-state edge. Indeed it was the strong Democratic advantage in Pennsylvania that prompted Mr. Specter's switch. In two other states -- Florida and North Carolina -- Republican chances are no better than fair. Only in Iowa, with incumbent Chuck Grassley a shoo-in for re-election, are Republicans assured of holding on in Obamaland.

Losing one or two or three Senate seats on the heels of Mr. Specter's departure would be devastating for Republicans. Already his defection has robbed them of their most reliable weapon in blocking President Obama's liberal proposals. If the 60 Democrats (counting Mr. Specter and Al Franken) stick together, they can keep Republicans from getting the 41 votes for a successful filibuster.

For now, Republicans will need to recruit one or more Democratic dissenters to block the Obama agenda. This is difficult though not impossible. Several major bills are in serious trouble because a handful of Senate Democrats have misgivings. Example: card check, which would gut secret ballots in union organizing elections. Another example is "cap and trade" to limit carbon emissions. But should these measures fail this year or next, gains in the 2010 election would give Democrats a second chance to pass them.

Republicans do have takeover opportunities in the Senate, just not many. Connecticut's Chris Dodd is the most assailable Democrat, having been exposed in "sweetheart" deals for a home mortgage and the sale of a house in Ireland. A recent poll gave former Republican congressman Rob Simmons a 16-point lead over Mr. Dodd.

In Illinois, the Blagojevich scandal and Democratic Sen. Roland Burris's role in it have damaged Democrats. Mr. Burris faces a contested primary should he run in 2010 and, for a change, Republicans have a top-notch opponent, Rep. Mark Kirk, who hasn't announced but appears ready to.

In Ohio, Rob Portman, a former House member and a Bush administration official, has a clear path to the Republican nomination, while two Democrats are headed for a bitter primary struggle. In Missouri, if former House Republican whip Roy Blunt wins the primary, he may be able to defeat Democrat Robin Carnahan, whose father was governor and mother a senator.

In Florida, a Senate bid by Gov. Charlie Crist may be a Republican necessity. Without him, Republicans have a 50-50 chance of keeping the Florida seat held by retiring Sen. Mel Martinez. With him, it's 90-10. The good news for Republicans is Mr. Crist appears eager to run.

Two Democrats -- Byron Dorgan in North Dakota and Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas -- are running for re-election in overwhelmingly McCain states. But Sen. John Cornyn of Texas -- head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee -- hasn't persuaded Republican Gov. John Hoeven to run against Mr. Dorgan. Nor have overtures to former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to oppose Ms. Lincoln gotten anywhere. Mr. Dorgan and Ms. Lincoln are safe bets for re-election.

In Delaware, the state's lone House member, Republican Mike Castle, would have a better-than-even chance of winning the open Democratic seat, even if Vice President Joe Biden's son Beau is the Democratic candidate. Mr. Castle hasn't decided to run. In Colorado, newly appointed Sen. Michael Bennet is vulnerable, but the big-name Republicans -- ex-Sens. Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown and former governor Bill Owens -- have retired from electoral politics. No obvious GOP candidate has emerged to fill the vacuum.

The same is true in New Hampshire, once a GOP stronghold. Incumbent Republican Judd Gregg is the best candidate to hold the Senate seat. But he is retiring.

Mr. Specter had been regarded by Mr. Cornyn's team as the only Republican who could hold the Pennsylvania seat. Mr. Specter disagreed. Explaining his party switch yesterday, he said he didn't think he could win re-election as a Republican. In a letter to Pennsylvania Republicans last month, Mr. Cornyn had defended Mr. Specter in crass political terms as "a vote for denying Harry Reid and the Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate." Now Mr. Reid may have unfettered control of the Senate. Republicans face a tougher election in Pennsylvania with conservative Pat Toomey, who nearly defeated the liberal-leaning Mr. Specter in the 2004 primary, as the likely GOP nominee.

In Kentucky, two-term Sen. Jim Bunning is a certain loser in 2010, according to GOP leaders in Washington. They want him to defer to Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a rising star in Kentucky politics. But Mr. Bunning told me he is running. Mr. Grayson has said he won't run unless Mr. Bunning retires. This is not a happy circumstance for Republicans, who can't afford to lose Kentucky.

The last time Republicans had as few as 40 senators was following the 1976 election. Two years later, they won five seats. And in the 1980 election, with Ronald Reagan leading the ticket, they captured 12 seats and won a Senate majority. The Republican dream scenario is a repeat of 1980 in 2010. "We need to be prepared for a good political wave," says Rob Jesmer, Mr. Cornyn's top aide. "We need to set the table" with strong candidates and good issues.

But the political circumstances are different today. Thirty years ago, the vulnerable senators were liberal Democrats. In the 2010 election, Democrats will have structural advantages in organization, money, and friendly media they didn't in 1980. And they'll have a re-electable incumbent in Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter.

Still, there's my rule. The political situation next year won't be the same as now. If Republicans win two or three seats, their ability to defeat legislation may be restored. If they don't, the liberal heyday will go on.

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-22, by Peter Hoekstra:

Congress Knew About the Interrogations
Obama should release the memo on the attacks prevented.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair got it right last week when he noted how easy it is to condemn the enhanced interrogation program "on a bright sunny day in April 2009." Reactions to this former CIA program, which was used against senior al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003, are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation.

George Tenet, who served as CIA director under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, believes the enhanced interrogations program saved lives. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" in April 2007: "I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

Last week, Mr. Blair made a similar statement in an internal memo to his staff when he wrote that "[h]igh value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country."

Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.

It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.

Last week, Mr. Obama argued that those who implemented this program should not be prosecuted -- even though the release of the memos still places many individuals at other forms of unfair legal risk. It appeared that Mr. Obama understood it would be unfair to prosecute U.S. government employees for carrying out a policy that had been fully vetted and approved by the executive branch and Congress. The president explained this decision with these gracious words: "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." I agreed.

Unfortunately, on April 21, Mr. Obama backtracked and opened the door to possible prosecution of Justice Department attorneys who provided legal advice with respect to the enhanced interrogations program. The president also signaled that he may support some kind of independent inquiry into the program. It seems that he has capitulated to left-wing groups and some in Congress who are demanding show trials over this program.

Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can't be a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program. I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Any investigation must include this information as part of a review of those in Congress and the Bush administration who reviewed and supported this program. To get a complete picture of the enhanced interrogation program, a fair investigation will also require that the Obama administration release the memos requested by former Vice President Dick Cheney on the successes of this program.

An honest and thorough review of the enhanced interrogation program must also assess the likely damage done to U.S. national security by Mr. Obama's decision to release the memos over the objections of Mr. Panetta and four of his predecessors. Such a review should assess what this decision communicated to our enemies, and also whether it will discourage intelligence professionals from offering their frank opinions in sensitive counterterrorist cases for fear that they will be prosecuted by a future administration.

Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001.

Mr. Hoekstra, a congressman from Michigan, is ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Apr-19, web-posted 2009-Apr-17, by Dana Milbank:

Next Choler, Please

Dear Reader:

I wish to apologize to you for my behavior last week.

On Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am typical of the right wing. I am why newspapers are going broke. I write garbage. I am angry with Barack Obama. I misquote Obama. I am bitter. I am a certified idiot. I am lame. I am a Republican flack.

On Thursday, I realized that I am a media pimp with my lips on Obama's butt. I am a bleeding-heart liberal who wants nothing more than for the right to fall on its face. I am part of the ObamaMedia. I am pimping for the left. I am carrying water for Obama. Lord, am I an idiot.

I discovered all this from the helpful feedback provided to me in the "reader comments" section at the end of my past four columns on washingtonpost.com. I undertook this exercise on the advice of former washingtonpost.com editor Doug Feaver, who wrote on these pages recently that journalists need to take the comments seriously ["Listening to the Dot-Comments," op-ed, April 9]. Further, he added in his blog, "those who don't are making a mistake."

Now, I may be a pimp and an idiot -- but I did not want to make a mistake. So I reviewed all 1,800 comments posted on my columns over the course of a week. As a sociological experiment, it was fascinating.

The comments are naturally an unscientific indicator, but the impression I got is consistent with what I've heard from colleagues: The vitriol of last year's presidential campaign has outlasted the election. For the right, this isn't terribly surprising; their guys lost the White House in 2008 and control of both chambers of Congress in 2006, so lashing out in frustration is to be expected. The left, however, is more difficult to explain. It made sense for them to be angry when George W. Bush was in the White House. But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.

A reader in an online chat brought this to my attention a couple of months ago, noting the animosity in the comments following a column. "Did you torture their cats and grandmothers? Most of the truly unhinged comments appear to come from Democrats, who apparently think you're Cindy McCain in reverse drag."

I replied that, to keep my blood pressure under control, I don't read the comments, and that I did, in fact, torture their cats.

Well, last week I read the comments. On April 10, I wrote a column about an Obama appearance urging Americans to refinance their mortgages -- a fairly gentle piece pointing out that the president sounded like a LendingTree.com pitchman. The comments compared me to Bernard Goldberg and Glenn Beck. One complained that "I gave Bush and the Republicans a pass."

Actually, a National Review column called me "the most anti-Bush reporter" in the White House press corps, but never mind that. "Uh oh, Milbank," wrote commenter "farfalle44." "Now the Obamabots have labeled you an Obama hater -- watch out!"

For Thursday's column, I criticized the "tea party" outside the White House. Conservatives left hundreds of indignant comments -- I was an Obama "lap dog" and "licking Obama's shoes" -- but that didn't buy me credibility with the left. "You do a real good job of attracting all the ill-informed, mathematically challenged, left-wing haters," said one reader. "I bet ya mom's really proud!"

So why is the left so angry? I don't know (I'm an idiot), so I put the question to the readers in my weekly online chat on Friday.

A reader from Rockville described it as a "sore winner" phenomenon. "People get used to being angry and when things change, they don't. So they find stuff to be mad about." Another said that some on the left "feel obligated to stay in the fight" because of the harsh treatment of Obama by the right.

But many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama's centrism -- his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture, for example. "I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site," one wrote. A reader in Evanston, Ill., took a similar view, that true believers on the left don't want "b.s. rhetoric about looking forward." Okay, but why wouldn't this be directed at Obama? Readers explained that some of it is. But, "if we yell obscenities at Obama," replied a reader in Dunnellon, Fla., "we get a visit from the Secret Service. Yelling them at you is worry-free."

So the angry left should thank me: I'm taking one for the team.

from the Economist, 2009-Apr-16:

Obama derangement syndrome
The president is driving some people mad. That may be to his advantage in the short term

BY MOST people's standards Barack Obama has had an excellent week. He enjoyed a counter-Carter moment when navy commandos rescued an American hostage, leaving three kidnappers dead. He gave a measured speech on the economy. And, to cap it all, he gave his daughters a Portuguese water dog named “Bo”. What's not to like?

Plenty, according to some people. Mr Obama may be widely admired both at home and abroad. But there are millions of Americans who do not like the cut of his jib—and a few whose dislike boils over into white-hot hatred. The American Spectator, which came of age demonising the Clintons, has run an article on its website on Mr Obama entitled “Il Duce, Redux?” The internet crackles with comparisons between Mr Obama and various dictators (Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini) or assorted psychotics (Charles Manson and David Koresh). When Jonah Goldberg, a conservative pundit, praised Mr Obama over the dispatching of the Somali pirates, his e-mail inbox immediately overflowed, he said, with “snark and bile”.

A recent Pew poll showed that public opinion about Mr Obama is sharply divided along party lines. Some 88% of Democrats approve of the job that he is doing compared with only 27% of Republicans. The approval gap between the two parties is actually bigger than it was for George Bush in April 2001. Bush loyalists, led by Karl Rove, have duly over-interpreted this poll in order to soften their former boss's reputation as America's most divisive president. Today's Republican base is significantly smaller than the Democratic base was in 2001, so surviving Republicans are more likely to have hard-core views. But there are nevertheless enough people out there who dislike the president to constitute a significant force in political life.

As The Economist went to press, the bestselling book in the United States was Mark Levin's “Liberty and Tyranny”. Mr Levin frequently denounces Mr Obama on his radio show as an exponent of the second of those two qualities. The new sensation in the world of cable is Fox News's Glenn Beck, who has already attracted 2.2m regular viewers since his show was launched in January. Mr Beck recently apologised to his viewers for saying that Mr Obama's America is on the path to “socialism” when it is really on the march to fascism. Media Matters, a left-wing organisation that monitors the media, reports that, since the inauguration, “there have been over 3,000 references to socialism, fascism or communism” in describing the president.

Rush Limbaugh claims that he has seen an uptick in his audience since he announced that he hopes that Mr Obama fails. He has no time for the idea that all Americans should wish their president well (“We are being told that we have to hope Obama succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles…because his father was black”). Mr Limbaugh is not the ankle-grabbing type. He has also added Robert Mugabe to the list of people to whom Mr Obama can be likened.

Why are some people so angry? For all his emollient manner and talk of “post partisanship”, Mr Obama is just as much an embodiment of liberal America as Mr Bush was of conservative America—an Ivy League-educated lawyer who became a community organiser before launching a political career in one of America's most cosmopolitan and corrupt big cities, Chicago. Mr Obama almost lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton because of his lack of rapport with white working-class voters. In the general election he did worse than Michael Dukakis in the Appalachian states of Kentucky and West Virginia. Tough times make for tougher talk

The economic crisis has transformed this cultural suspicion into a much more potent political force. It is true that Mr Obama's solution to the recession—spending public money in order to stimulate demand and trying to prevent a run on the banks—is supported by most economists. Mr Bush would have done much the same thing. But it is nevertheless driving many Americans crazy. April 15th—the last day on which Americans can perform the melancholy duty of filing their tax returns—saw rallies (dubbed “tea parties” after the Boston one) in every state, 500 or so in all. The protesters, some of whom dressed in three-cornered hats and waved “Don't tread on me” flags, repeated a litany of criticisms that has been mounting since Mr Obama won the election—that he is a big government socialist (or fascist) who wants to take people's money away and crush their freedoms.

It is hard to judge so early in the game what the rise of anti-Obama sentiment means for the Obama presidency. Bush-hatred eventually spread from a molten core of leftists to set the cultural tone of the country. But Obama-hatred could just as easily do the opposite and brand all conservatives as a bunch of Obama-hating cranks.

What is clear is that the rapid replacement of Bush-hatred with Obama-hatred is not healthy for American politics, particularly given the president's dual role as leader of his party and head of state. A majority of Republicans (56%) approved of Jimmy Carter's job performance in late March 1977. A majority of Democrats (55%) approved of Richard Nixon's job performance at a comparable point in his first term. But today polarisation is almost instant, thanks in part to the growing role of non-negotiable issues such as abortion in American politics, in part to the rise of a media industry based on outrage, and in part to a cycle of tit-for-tat demonisation. This is not only poisoning American political life. It is making it ever harder to solve problems that require cross-party collaboration such as reforming America's health-care system or its pensions. Unfortunately, the Glenn Becks of this world are more than just a joke.

from the Washington Post via RealClearPolitics.com, 2009-Mar-13, by Michael Gerson:

Wrong Move: Obama's Liberal Agenda

WASHINGTON -- In Mark Strand's pleasingly odd poem "The Tunnel," the author is tormented by a persistent, moaning man in front of his house. The narrator vainly orders him to leave, makes obscene gestures through the window and destroys the living room furniture "to prove I own nothing of value." Finally, the author takes refuge in his basement and digs a tunnel to escape -- only to emerge moaning outside a house, where "I have been waiting for days."

Against all my expectations, President Barack Obama is having this effect on me.

Following Obama during the New Hampshire primary, I saw a candidate who -- though I disagreed with him on many issues -- defended idealism and rhetoric against the supremely cynical Clinton machine, who brought a religious sensibility to matters of social justice, who took care to understand and accommodate the arguments of others, who provided a temperamental contrast to culture war politics.

After just weeks of governing, that image seems like a brittle, yellowed photograph, buried at the back of a drawer.

Obama's proposed budget shows all the vision, restraint and grace of a grasping committee chairman, using the cover of a still-unresolved banking crisis to push through a broad liberal wish list before anyone notices its costs and complications. The pledge of "responsibility" has become the massive expansion of debt, the constant allocation of blame to others and the childish cultivation of controversy with conservative media figures to favorably polarize the electorate. The pledge of "honesty" and "sacrifice" has become the deceptive guarantee of apparently limitless public benefits at the expense of a very few. The pledge of "bipartisan" cooperation has become an attempt to shove Republicans until their backs reach some wall of outrage and humiliation.

None of this is new or exceptional -- which is the point. It is exactly the way things have always been done.

Obama's stem cell decision was worse, because it is a thing that has never been done before. "Obama," explains Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, "is willfully ignoring the moral complexity of the subject. He says he understands the views of his opponents, but he never addresses or answers them. He seems to have adopted the premise that the stem cell debate presents a choice between science and ignorance, when in fact the debate requires the kind of weighing of competing goods which we elect presidents to contend with."

Obama's approach is ethically simplistic -- the kind of argument that gets nods at a fashionable cocktail party instead of engaging and respecting serious disagreement.

One tragedy of these polarizing moves is that they obscure elements of Obama's agenda that deserve praise and support. It makes perfect moral and economic sense to expand child nutrition programs, ensuring that low-income children get breakfast and lunch during a time of economic stress. Also, to expand rental assistance to low-income families. To fully fund the Second Chance Act, which helps ex-prisoners reintegrate into society. To increase funding for domestic AIDS treatment, especially in African-American and Latino communities. To make the child tax credit at least partially refundable. To limit farm subsidies that distort global food markets and hurt the poor. To provide additional support to strained food banks. To make the saver's credit refundable, encouraging low-income Americans to build assets. To maintain life-saving commitments promoting global health and development.

These should be common-ground issues in our politics -- safe havens on the ideological battlefield and sources of genuine consensus. But these issues have been roundly ignored during the ideological death match Obama has encouraged -- a partisan struggle that has made congressional Republicans less likely to support his best initiatives. Obama's overall budget is praised by economist Robert Reich as driving "a nail in the coffin of Reaganomics." Republicans attack the budget for the same reason. And both are correct in their analysis. It is not a sign of post-partisanship when liberals swoon and conservatives seethe for exactly the same reason. It is a sign that our differences have been exploited and deepened.

Some relish this kind of politics. But the false dawn of post-partisanship is no reason for celebration. Ideological war creates an atmosphere in which the angry predominate -- and it can cause anger to rise unbidden within all of us. While in government, I saw the persistent, moaning critics outside the window. Now I have dug my tunnel and joined them. It is not where I want to be -- or where American politics might have been.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-8, by Karl Rove:

The President Has Become a Divisive Figure
Compare his start with George W. Bush's.

The Pew Research Center reported last week that President Barack Obama "has the most polarized early job approval of any president" since surveys began tracking this 40 years ago. The gap between Mr. Obama's approval rating among Democrats (88%) and Republicans (27%) is 61 points. This "approval gap" is 10 points bigger than George W. Bush's at this point in his presidency, despite Mr. Bush winning a bitterly contested election.

Part of Mr. Obama's polarized standing can be attributed to a long-term trend. University of Missouri political scientist John Petrocik points out that since 1980, each successive first term president has had more polarized support than his predecessor with the exception of 1989, when George H.W. Bush enjoyed a modest improvement over Ronald Reagan's 1981 standing.

But rather than end or ameliorate that trend, Mr. Obama's actions and rhetoric have accelerated it. His campaign promised post-partisanship, but since taking office Mr. Obama has frozen Republicans out of the deliberative process, and his response to their suggestions has been a brusque dismissal that "I won."

Compare this with Mr. Bush's actions in the aftermath of his election. Among his first appointments were Democratic judicial nominees who had been blocked by Republicans under President Bill Clinton. The Bush White House joined with Democratic and Republican leaders to draft education reform legislation. And Mr. Bush worked with Republican Chuck Grassley to cut a deal with Democrat Max Baucus to win bipartisan passage of a big tax cut in a Senate split 50-50 after the 2000 election.

Mr. Obama has hastened the decline of Republican support with petty attacks on his critics and predecessor. For a person who promised hope and civility in politics, Mr. Obama has shown a borderline obsessiveness in blaming Mr. Bush. Starting with his inaugural address and continuing through this week's overseas trip, the new president's jabs at Mr. Bush have been unceasing, unfair and unhelpful. They have also diminished Mr. Obama by showing him to be another conventional politician. Rather than ending "the blame game," he is personifying it.

The question that will worry the Obama West Wing is whether the views of independents come to look more like Democrats or Republicans. Recent opinion surveys show that support for his policies among independents is slipping.

On both Mr. Obama's performance and policies, independents are starting to look more like Republicans. For example, the most recent Fox News poll (taken March 31 to April 1) found that Mr. Obama's job approval among independents has fallen to 52%, down nine points from the start of March and down 12 points from late January. Over the same period, the number of independents who disapprove of Mr. Obama's performance has doubled to 32% from 16%.

The same poll also found that 76% of independents worry that government will spend too much to help the economy; only 12% worry it will spend too little. Independents oppose Mr. Obama's proposed budget by a 55%-37% margin.

If independents continue looking more like Republicans, especially on deficits, spending and the economy, Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats could be in for a rough ride.

It was the concern of independents and "soft partisans" about national debt and spending that gave rise to Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election. More significantly, independents angry about deficits and spending were the key swing bloc in the 1994 congressional races, where Republicans picked up eight Senate seats and 54 House seats, winning their first House majority since 1955.

Declining support for the Obama agenda among independents may further unnerve congressional Democrats, especially in the House. Sixty-nine Democratic congressmen represent districts carried by Mr. Bush or John McCain in two of the last three presidential contests. Forty-eight of these districts were carried by Mr. McCain last election. If independent support continues slipping, many of these Democrats will be fingering worry beads as the mid-term election approaches.

Perhaps that's why 20 House Democrats voted no or abstained on the president's budget resolution, joining all 198 Republicans in not supporting Mr. Obama's budget framework. Nineteen represent GOP-leaning districts -- and at least 16 are vulnerable to Republican challengers, including 14 freshmen or sophomore congressmen.

We don't yet know the price Democrats will pay for Mr. Obama's fiscal radicalism. But we do know that no presidential hopeful in our lifetime has made bipartisanship more central to his candidacy and few presidents have devoted as many eloquent words to its importance. Yet no president in the past 40 years has done more to polarize America so much, so quickly. Mr. Obama has not come close to living up to his own standards. It took him less than 11 weeks to achieve the very opposite of what he promised. That, in its own regrettable way, is quite an achievement.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-Apr-16, by John Fund:

Who Knew Tea Was So Popular?

The 750 or so anti-tax "Tea Bag" rallies went off peacefully yesterday, with crowds totaling several hundred thousand people. Even the liberal blogger and polling expert Nate Silver called the outpouring "reasonably impressive," although he noted that Barack Obama's rallies last year dwarfed the turnout seen yesterday.

So how did the leading potential players in the 2012 presidential election handle the rallies? Some played it safe and stayed home, including Mitt Romney and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Some jumped in with both feet, such as South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who both addressed the rally in Columbia, S.C. Newt Gingrich, whom many see as a potential 2012 candidate, was the featured speaker at a rally in media-centric New York City.

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana was in New York as well yesterday so didn't participate in any of the rallies back in his home state. But he sent an email to supporters calling the tea parties a welcome revolt against "the Washington attitude that we can just continue to print money or borrow from China."

As for President Obama, his office decided to pretend the rallies didn't exist. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties and will hold his own event today," reported ABC News yesterday morning. Sure enough, about noon Mr. Obama emerged to make a brief statement calling the current tax code "monstrous" and vowing to simplify it. He conveniently ignored the fact that his stimulus bill loaded the code with new tax credits and other complications that have made the tax rules even less comprehensible to the average taxpayer.

from Commentary's Contentions blog, 2009-Apr-17, by Jennifer Rubin:

Who's in the Mainstream?

Much of the punditocracy has snubbed the Tea Party attendees as a bunch of ill-informed rubes… Angry malcontents! Out of touch! But perhaps they are representative of the country’s majority on key issues. Bill Schneider writes:

In a CNN poll taken this month by Opinion Research, more than three-quarters of Americans said that if GM and Chrysler need more government money, Washington should rebuff them. In other words, let’em go bankrupt. That is the same thing most of the public is saying about banks and financial institutions: No more bailouts.

That was perhaps the most widely heard complaint at the rallies: no more bailouts, let the chips fall where they may and get back to personal responsibility. And although Robert Reich derided the protesters, he shares their view that corporate welfare and bailouts should end. So perhaps the Tea Party protesters are right where the public is — which places the Obama bailout policies on thin ice, politically.

Another source of ire from the attendees: the Fed running financial policy outside of any appropriated funding by Congress. (Yes, the rubes are quite concerned with the Constitution and keep referring to it on signs and in speeches and interviews. Apparently the nation’s educational system isn’t a complete failure yet.) Some fairly well-school people on the Left take exactly the same view, especially with regard to the toxic asset purchase plan. Once again, the Tea Party folks seem to have seen through the financial and constitutional thicket to discover that Tim Geithner’s plan is a gift to a select few, delivered at the taxpayers’ expense and specifically designed to avoid congressional — and hence public — input.

So perhaps there is a popular majority for at least some of what brought out hundreds of thousands of protesters. Whether it will have any influence on the Obama administration remains to be seen. But it might impact those 435 congressmen and 1/3 of the Senate that have to face voters in nineteen months.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-14, by Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

Tax Day Becomes Protest Day
How the tea parties could change American politics.

Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies -- dubbed "tea parties" -- to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.

So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing "flash crowds" -- groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don't know each other.

In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves.

We saw a bit of this in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, with things like Howard Dean's use of Meetup, and Barack Obama's use of Facebook. But this was still social-networking in support of an existing organization or campaign. The tea-party protest movement is organizing itself, on its own behalf. Some existing organizations, like Newt Gingrich's American Solutions and FreedomWorks, have gotten involved. But they're involved as followers and facilitators, not leaders. The leaders are appearing on their own, and reaching out to others through blogs, Facebook, chat boards and alternative media.

The protests began with bloggers in Seattle, Wash., who organized a demonstration on Feb. 16. As word of this spread, rallies in Denver and Mesa, Ariz., were quickly organized for the next day. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli's Feb. 19 "rant heard round the world" in which he called for a "Chicago tea party" on July Fourth. The tea-party moniker stuck, but angry taxpayers weren't willing to wait until July. Soon, tea-party protests were appearing in one city after another, drawing at first hundreds, and then thousands, to marches in cities from Orlando to Kansas City to Cincinnati.

As word spread, people got interested in picking a common date for nationwide protests, and decided on today, Tax Day, as the date. As I write this, various Web sites tracking tea parties are predicting anywhere between 300 and 500 protests at cities around the world. A Google Map tracking planned events, maintained at the FreedomWorks.org Web site, shows the United States covered by red circles, with new events being added every day.

The movement grew so fast that some bloggers at the Playboy Web site -- apparently unaware that we've entered the 21st century -- suggested that some secret organization must be behind all of this. But, in fact, today's technology means you don't need an organization, secret or otherwise, to get organized. After considerable ridicule, the claim was withdrawn, but that hasn't stopped other media outlets from echoing it.

There's good news and bad news in this phenomenon for establishment politicians. The good news for Republicans is that, while the Republican Party flounders in its response to the Obama presidency and its programs, millions of Americans are getting organized on their own. The bad news is that those Americans, despite their opposition to President Obama's policies, aren't especially friendly to the GOP. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele asked to speak at the Chicago tea party, his request was politely refused by the organizers: "With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steele that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."

Likewise, I spoke to an organizer for the Knoxville tea party who said that no "professional politicians" were going to be allowed to speak, and he made a big point of saying that the protest wasn't an anti-Obama protest, it was an anti-establishment protest. I've heard similar things from tea-party organizers in other cities, too. Though critics will probably try to write the tea parties off as partisan publicity stunts, they're really a post-partisan expression of outrage.

Of course, it won't be the same everywhere. There are no national rules, and organizers of each protest are doing things the way they want. And that's the good news and the bad news for Democrats. It's not a big Republican effort. It's a big popular effort. But a mass movement of ordinary people who don't feel that their voices are being heard doesn't bode well for the party that positioned itself as the organ of hope and change.

Will these flash crowds be a flash in the pan? It's possible that people who demonstrate today will find that experience cathartic enough -- or exhausting enough -- that that will be it. But it's more likely that the tea-party movement will have an impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections, and perhaps beyond.

What's most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven't ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.

Cincinnati organizer Mike Wilson, a novice organizer who drew 5,000 people to a rally on March 15, is now planning to create a political action committee and a permanent political organization to press for lower taxes and reduced spending. Tucson tea party organizer Robert Mayer told me that his organization will focus on city council elections in the fall as its next priority. And there's lots of Internet chatter about ways of taking things further after today's protests.

This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.

Mr. Reynolds is the author of "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths" (Thomas Nelson, 2006). He will be covering the tea party protests today at PJTV.com.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-16, by Karl Rove:

Republicans and the Tea Parties
The U.S. went 15 years without a federal tax increase.

Yesterday was Tax Day, and it was marked by large numbers of Americans turning out for an estimated 2,000 tea parties across the country. This movement is significant.

In 1978, California voters enacted Prop. 13 in reaction to steep property taxes. That marked the start of a tax-cutting movement that culminated in Ronald Reagan slashing high national income taxes in the 1980s. Now Americans are reacting to runaway government spending that they were not told about before last year's election, and which Americans are growing to resent.

Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill. If it has a father it is CNBC's Rick Santelli, who called for holding a tea party in Chicago on July 4. Yesterday's gatherings were made up of people who may never meet again (there's no central collection point for email addresses). But the concerns driving people to tea parties are real, growing and powerful. Politicians ignore them at their peril.

One concern is the rise of state and local taxes. New York and California passed multibillion-dollar tax increases this year. Other states are considering significant tax hikes or have enacted tax increases in recent years. The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration is angering voters.

If that anger persists, it may give Republicans a leg up in the 38 gubernatorial elections over the next two years, as well as in key state legislative races that will determine which party redraws congressional and state legislative districts after the 2010 census. Expect voters to hear a lot about jobs being created in low-tax states in the coming years.

But the center of the debate is in Washington, not the states. The fear of future federal tax hikes is fueling the tea-party movement.

This is an important development. In 2008, voters were less worried about taxes than they had been in previous elections. Why? Because the 15 years between President Bill Clinton's 1993 tax hike and Barack Obama's increase in cigarette taxes in February was the longest stretch in U.S. history without a federal tax increase. President George W. Bush's tax cuts also cut 13 million people on the lower-end of the income scale from the income tax rolls -- people who don't pay taxes aren't worried about the tax burden.

So far, Mr. Obama has decided to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 and avoid forcing Democrats to take a tough vote. But the tea parties reveal how hard it will be for the president to hide the Democrats' tax-and-spend tendencies from voters.

Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25% while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.

It hasn't gotten a ton of attention, but people are fed up with the complexity of their tax code and ready to do something about it. The Tax Foundation's 2009 Annual Tax Attitudes (which was conducted Feb. 18-27, by Harris) shows us that many Americans are willing to trade popular deductions for lower rates and a simpler code. There's also been a flurry of interest among Americans in replacing the current system with a national sales tax or a flat tax.

The open question is whether Republicans will be boosted by the nascent tea-party movement. House Republicans smartly offered a proposed spending plan this year that would freeze nondefense discretionary spending, suspend earmarks for five years, and reform entitlements. But cutting spending won't be enough. Taxes matter -- and will matter more in the coming years.

The 2009 Tax Foundation survey found that Americans believe that taxes should, on average, take just 15.6% of a person's wages. And 88% of Americans in the same poll believe that there should be a cap on all federal, state, and local taxes of 29% or less -- there is still a constituency out there that will favor tax cutting politicians.

But to tap into that constituency Republicans will have to link lower taxes to money in voters' pockets, and economic growth and jobs. They must explain why the GOP approach will lead to greater prosperity. Such arguments are not self-executing. They require leaders to make them, time and again, as Reagan once did.

Some liberals believe that the recession has made tax-and-spend issues passé. But political movements are often a reaction against aggressive overreach by those in power. Mr. Obama's response to the financial crisis -- a government power grab and budget explosion -- has put spending and taxes back on the front burner. The tea parties are an early manifestation of that. More is sure to follow.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

from the Associated Press via the Houston Chronicle, 2009-Apr-15, by Kelley Shannon:

Perry fires up anti-tax crowd

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax "tea party" Wednesday with his stance against the federal government and for states' rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, "Secede!"

An animated Perry told the crowd at Austin City Hall — one of three tea parties he was attending across the state — that officials in Washington have abandoned the country's founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt.

Perry repeated his running theme that Texas' economy is in relatively good shape compared with other states and with the "federal budget mess." Many in the crowd held signs deriding President Barack Obama and the $786 billion federal economic stimulus package.

Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters' questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that.

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede.

Texas did secede in 1861, but the North's victory in the Civil War put an end to that.

Perry is running for re-election against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a fellow Republican. His anti-Washington remarks have become more strident the past few weeks as that 2010 race gets going and since Perry rejected $550 million in federal economic stimulus money slated to help Texas' unemployment trust fund.

Perry said the stimulus money would come with strings attached that would leave Texas paying the bill once the federal money ran out.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, also Republicans, have been outspoken against the federal economic stimulus spending and were supportive of tea parties in their states. The protests were being held throughout the country on federal income tax deadline day to imitate the original Boston Tea Party of American revolutionary times.

In an appearance at the Texas Capitol last week, Perry joined state lawmakers in pushing a resolution that supports states' rights protected in the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He said the federal government has become oppressive in its size and interference with states.

Since then, Perry has been featured on the online Drudge Report, and other conservative commentators and citizens have latched on to his words.

After praising veterans in the cheering crowd Wednesday, he said: "I'm just not real sure you're a bunch of right-wing extremists. But if you are, we're with you."

Perry said he believes he could be at the center of a national movement that is coordinated and focused in its opposition to the actions of the federal government.

"It's a very organic thing," he said. "It is a very powerful moment, I think, in American history."

For her part, Hutchison issued a newspaper opinion piece Wednesday criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for spending on the stimulus bill and the $1 trillion appropriations bill.

"On April 15 — Tax Day — some in Congress may need a reminder of just who is underwriting this spending: the American taxpayer. I am deeply concerned over the swelling tax burden that will be imposed on all Texas families," she wrote.

The crowd at the Austin tea party appeared to be decidedly anti-Democrat. Many of the speakers were Republicans and Libertarians.

One placard said, "Stop Obama's Socialism." Another read, "Some Pirates Are in America," and it showed photographs of Obama, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wearing pirate hats.

Rebecca Knowlton, 45, of Smithville, said she took the day off of home-schooling her three children and brought them to the rally to teach them about civic duty. Knowlton, a critic of the Social Security system and the United Nations, said she felt camaraderie at the demonstration.

"The movement is growing stronger," she said. "You're not alone."

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Apr-3, by Kimberley A. Strassel:

Obama's Attack Machine

The thing about fear is that you can see it. For an insight as to what the left today fears most, witness its attempted political assassination of Eric Cantor.

The 45-year-old Virginia congressman came to Washington in 2001, and by last year had been unanimously elected Republican Whip, under Minority Leader John Boehner. In recent months, Mr. Cantor has helped unify the GOP against much of President Barack Obama's agenda, in particular his blowout $787 billion stimulus, and yesterday, his blowout $3.6 trillion budget.

He's also one of the GOP's up-and-coming talents. Along with Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, or California's Kevin McCarthy, he represents a new guard, one that's sworn off earmarks and brought the conversation back to fiscal responsibility and economic opportunity. They've focused on party outreach, and are popular with younger voters and independents. They are big fund-raisers, part of a drive to recruit and elect more reformers. And they are on the rise.

All of which threatens the left. Democrats know their current dominance in Washington is in no small part due to public disillusionment with the GOP. They are also aware that their current tax-and-spend governance is creating plenty of opportunities for that opposition to remake itself. Thus the furious campaign -- waged by every blog, pundit, union, 527, and even the White House -- to kneecap Republicans who might help lead a makeover. Mr. Cantor is the top target.

This kicked off after the GOP's unanimous vote against the stimulus, which Democrats saw as an opening to brand Mr. Cantor as the public face of partisan opposition to the "bipartisan" president. The Virginian has in fact publicly reached out to the White House, and has been deeply involved in producing alternatives to administration policies. But never let the facts get in the way of a good smear.

Within days of the vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was up with radio ads targeting 28 Republicans who'd voted no. Mr. Cantor was the only member of the House GOP leadership to get hit. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the big union, and Americans United for Change, the pro-Obama group, launched their own ads against 18 members, again singling out Mr. Cantor. The groups also ran a national TV spot sporting a picture of the whip with text that read "just saying no" -- which earned Mr. Cantor a new liberal nickname: Dr. No.

Mr. Obama joined in at his Fiscal Responsibility Summit. As the TV cameras rolled, he deliberately turned to the whip to say: "I'm going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor. Some day, sooner or later, he's going to say 'Boy, Obama had a good idea.'"

The Rush Limbaugh flap inspired a new AFSCME and American United for Change ad, accompanied by a statement that when Rush says jump, "Eric Cantor and other Republicans say 'how high.'" At nearly the precise moment Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made Sunday news by claiming Mr. Limbaugh was rooting for Obama "failure," George Stephanopoulos (who, take note, has daily calls with Mr. Emanuel) demanded on his own show that Mr. Cantor tell him if this was indeed the GOP strategy. David Plouffe, the president's campaign wizard, followed up with an anti-Limbaugh screed for the Washington Post, zeroing in on that "new Republican quarterback Eric Cantor, who says "the GOP's strategy will be to 'Just Say No.'"

And then there's the echo chamber. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is so obsessed with Mr. Cantor, he can barely find time to be indignant about anything else. Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, Think Progress and other leading liberal blogs are today all-anti-Cantor-all-the-time.

But the real ugly was unleashed a few weeks ago, when the goon squad set on Mr. Cantor's wife. An outfit called Working Families Win began running robocalls in five districts noting that Diana Cantor was a "top executive" at a bank that had received bailout funds -- the clear implication being that Mr. Cantor's vote for said bailout hinged on this fact. "In the middle of the AIG scandal, our congressman [fill in the blank] voted to make Virginia Republican, Eric Cantor, the conservative leader in Congress," it droned (incoherently and incorrectly), before demanding voters oppose the "Cantor Family Bank bailout."

At least when Chuck Schumer ran ads targeting Republicans for voting for a "bailout" that his own party brought to the floor -- and passed -- he kept his attacks on the members. And the last anyone looked, the AIG intervention was being overseen by the Obama administration, not the House minority whip. This may set a new political low, not the least because Mrs. Cantor in fact works at a subsidiary of the bank in question. Not to mention that Mr. Cantor led the initial GOP revolt against the "bailout."

The Virginian has a new, high-profile job, and that means taking some knocks. Mr. Cantor is also where he is for a reason, and has so far weathered the onslaught. But the coordinated takedown attempt is yet more proof that the Obama-led Democrats aren't nearly as interested in changing the "tone" as they are in holding on to power.

Read Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, released 2009-Apr-7 for national dissemination to law enforcement bodies by the US Department of Homeland Security.

from the Washington Times, 2009-Apr-15, by Audrey Hudson:

Top Dem 'dumbfounded' by 'extremism' report

The top House Democrat overseeing the Department of Homeland Security is demanding that officials there explain how and why they wrote and released a controversial report identifying veterans as potential terrorist threats.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that he was "dumbfounded" such a report would be issued.

"This report appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans -- including war veterans," Mr. Thompson said in the letter sent Tuesday.

"As I am certain you agree, freedom of association and freedom of speech are guaranteed to all Americans -- whether a person's beliefs, whatever their political orientation, are 'extremist' or not," Mr. Thompson said.

The report "blurred the line," and Mr. Thompson said he is "disappointed and surprised that the department would allow this report to be disseminated" to law enforcement officials nationwide.

Also Wednesday, Ms. Napolitano issued a statement standing by the report, which she personally had reviewed before it was issued. She insisted that DHS never would investigate based on political ideology and agreed to meet the head of the American Legion, who already had expressed anger over the report.

The Washington Times reported Tuesday that the department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) released a report titled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment on April 7. It identified as potential terrorist threats people who collect guns, veterans, supporters of border control, and pro-life advocates.

"I am particularly struck by the report's conclusion which states that I&A 'will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization,'" Mr. Thompson said, demanding to know what types of activities DHS had planned for "the next several months."

from US News & World Report, 2009-Apr-15, by Peter Roff:

The New McCarthyism: DHS Reports on Right-Wing Extremism

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose Orwellian turns of phrase have helped transform the war on terror into a series of "overseas contingency operations," may want to rethink her qualifications for her current job.

During her confirmation hearings, Napolitano told a Senate committee she preferred to use the term "man-caused disasters" in lieu of "terrorism" to describe the threats and potential threats with which her department must deal. "That is perhaps only a nuance," she told the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, "but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur."

So far, so good I guess. But then comes the news that Napolitano's department prepared a report for state and local police officials titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Little more than a nine-page screed against phantoms, the report purports to address potential threats from religious and racial hate groups as well as "those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely." The report also singles out for special consideration anti-abortion activists, gun owners, immigration opponents and, with allusion to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, returning veterans.

So much for rejecting the "politics of fear." 

Napolitano says she was briefed on the topic of the report and is standing by it. "Let me be very clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States," she said in a statement. "We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence." So much for eschewing the use of the word "terrorism" now that the focus of the discussion is so-called threats coming from within the United States.

There are a lot of people who are unhappy about the report, perhaps none more than David Rehbein, national commander of the American Legion.

In a letter that can charitably be described as strongly worded, Rehbein attacks Napolitano's department's assertion that returning veterans need to be watched with care by federal, state, and local police officials.

"The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during the Oklahoma City bombing," Rehbein writes, "but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42 million veterans who have worn this nation's uniform during wartime. To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical 'disgruntled military veteran' is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam."

Rehbein closes his letter by stating, "I think it is important for all of us to remember that Americans are not the enemy. The terrorists are." I could not have said it better myself.

Secretary Napolitano needs to understand the damage this report has done, rather than continue to stand by it. It smacks of the worst kind of McCarthyite guilt-by-association, slandering tens of thousands of honest, hardworking, patriotic, taxpaying Americans who hold political opinions the Department of Homeland Security have now decided are fertile ground for recruiting homegrown terrorists, excuse me, homegrown perpetrators of man-made disasters.

The report needs to be recalled, the person who oversaw its production reassigned or fired and the total amount of money spent on the project—from staff time to production costs to the postage used to mail it—needs to be returned to the U.S. Treasury out of the budget of the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security. As we have been told time and again, it is no small matter when the U.S. government, as an official matter, questions someone's loyalty. The consequences for this catastrophic misuse of taxpayer dollars needs to be severe for all those involved.

Peter Roff, a senior fellow with the Institute for Liberty, is a veteran Washington political operative and journalist. A former political director for Newt Gingrich's GOPAC he was, for five years, the senior political writer for United Press International, the venerable wire service in operation for more than 100 years.

from FOXNews.com, 2009-Apr-15, by anonymous with Joshua Rhett Miller and Mike Majchrowitz:

Chorus of Protest Grows Over Report Warning of Right Wing Radicalization
Conservative groups are up in arms following a recent Department of Homeland Security report that warns of the possible radicalization of right-wing extremists.

The government considers you a terrorist threat if you oppose abortion, own a gun or are a returning war veteran.

That's what House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said Wednesday in response to a Department of Homeland Security report warning of the rise of right-wing extremist groups.

Smith, who said the report on "right-wing extremism" amounts to "political profiling," said that DHS is "using people's political views to assess an individual's susceptibility to terror recruitment." He joins a growing chorus of protest from irate conservative groups that are protesting the report's findings.

The report, titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," released last week by DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said while there is no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are planning acts of violence, it suggests acts of violence could come from unnamed "rightwing extremists" concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions on firearms -- and it singles out returning war veterans as susceptible to recruitment.

A senior Republican Judiciary Committee aide tells FOX News that the Obama administration "should immediately retract the report and apologize," saying that according to the report, pro-lifers, anyone who lost their jobs or are one of the thousands of military veterans who have fought to prevent another 9/11 could be suspect.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report Wednesday, saying it is part of an ongoing series of assessments to provide information to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies on "violent radicalization" in the United States.

"Let me be clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States," Napolitano said in a statement. "We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence."

The report follows a similar report released in January by DHS that detailed left-wing threats, focusing on cyberattacks and radical "eco-terrorist" groups like Earth Liberation Front, accused of firebombing construction sites, logging companies, car dealerships and food science labs. The report notes that left-wing extremists prefer economic damage on businesses to get the message across.

"Their leftwing assessment identifies actual terrorist organizations, like the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. The rightwing report uses broad generalizations about veterans, pro-life groups, federalists and supporters of gun rights," said Smith. "That's like saying if you love puppies you might be susceptible to recruitment by the Animal Liberation Front. It is ridiculous and deeply offensive to millions of Americans."

U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-FL, told FOX News he was "offended" by the report's suggestion that returning troops could be potential targets for extremist groups.

"I am very offended and really disturbed that they would even say our military veterans, our returning war heroes would be capable of committing any terrorist acts," he said. "Where do they get off doing that? I demand an apology from [Napolitano] and even the President of the United States."

Veterans' groups are also taking issue with the report, which says disgruntled vets are considered coveted recruits for groups looking for "combat skills and experience."

"Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists," the report reads. "[DHS] is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities."

Pete Hegseth, chairman of Vets for Freedom, said the report represents a "gross misunderstanding and oversimplification" of the country's service members.

"It's amazing they would single out veterans as a threat to this country," said Hegseth, an Army veteran who served in Iraq. "It underscores a pervasive belief that some are trying to spread that veterans are victims and we're coming home as damaged goods that need to be coddled instead of celebrated."

The report prompted a harsh and swift reaction for the American Legion on Tuesday. In a letter to Napolitano, American Legion National Commander David Rehbein blasted the report as incomplete and politically-biased.

"The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during the Oklahoma City bombing, but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42 million veterans who have worn this nation's uniform during wartime," Rehbein wrote. "To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical 'disgruntled military veteran' is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam."

Napolitano said in her statement on Wednesday that she was aware of the letter, and plans to meet with Rehbein sometime next week.

"I will tell him face-to-face that we honor veterans at DHS and employ thousands across the department, up to and including the Deputy Secretary."

"We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not nor will we ever monitor ideology or political beliefs," read Napolitano's statement. "We take seriously our responsibility to protect civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources."

Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said DHS' latest report "clearly appears to censor right-wing opinion," while its earlier assessment of left-wing extremists does not.

"I must say it's chilling, it worries me a great deal," London said. "I never have encountered a time in American life when condemnation of a president is not permitted. This really did strike me as odd, indeed."

London called on President Obama to repudiate the right-wing report.

"What is the message here? That conservative organizations are not permitted to engage in any language that might be described as unfavorable to the president," London said. "Keep in mind this is entirely subjective to begin with."

from the Times of London, 2009-Mar-22, web-posted 2009-Mar-21, by Tony Allen-Mills:

Democrat anger at Obama overkill
Concern is mounting at the president's tactics

WHEN the White House announced last week that President Barack Obama will be returning to the nation's television screens on Tuesday for a prime-time press conference that will postpone the latest episode of American Idol - the talent show watched by 25m viewers - fans of the programme were quick to respond.

“Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can't take much more,” one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. “Not again!” complained another. “It's the same speech he's been giving for the past year.”

There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno's popular late-night chat show, Obama was “just like Fidel Castro [of Cuba] and Hugo Chavez [of Venezuela] - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing”.

The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama's economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government's trillion-dollar bailout programme.

White House aides remain outwardly confident that Obama's telegenic appeal will reassure Americans who were appalled by last week's Wall Street bonus fiasco and who are becoming increasingly sceptical about the president's so-called “Big Bang” approach to reviving a shattered economy.

Sceptics were scarcely encouraged on Friday when the main US budgetary watchdog reported that Obama's proposals would generate far greater budget deficits than the administration had predicted. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prompted consternation with an estimate that deficits over the next decade would total $9.3 trillion (£6.4 trillion).

The deficit revelations followed the administration's much-criticised handling of multi-million-dollar bonuses handed out to employees of the crippled American International Group (AIG) - the insurance behemoth laid low by reckless investments and propped up by taxpayers. The growing fiscal and political doubts about Obama's stimulus programme have exposed alarming cracks in Democratic ranks only two months after he took office.

It was not just that the White House misread popular outrage at the Wall Street hot-shots rewarded for running their company into the ground; there were rumblings of discontent from a wide range of disillusioned Obama supporters complaining about everything from his lack of support for gays to his plans for a new military “surge” in Afghanistan.

Among the prominent Democrats who took issue with the White House over its failure to head off the bonus crisis was Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who tried several weeks ago to block bonus payments by firms receiving bailout funds, but failed to persuade administration officials to take the potential problem seriously.

Despite strong words about bonuses from Obama himself, the president seemed to undermine their impact when he coughed during a White House event and joked that he was “choked up with anger”. Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, was quoted as saying the president regarded the AIG scandal as merely “a big distraction”.

The suggestion that the White House never took seriously an issue that infuriated millions of Americans was supported by Senator Robert Men-endez, a New Jersey Democrat who claimed that several weeks earlier he warned Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, that AIG was planning to use taxpayer funds to pay out $165m in bonuses.

Geithner's failure to block the payments has sparked speculation that Obama will have to replace him, despite the president's insistence to Leno that he is doing “an outstanding job”. James Carville, the Democratic strategist, suggested Obama needed to “give a sense that there's much more accountability coming than we see”.

Obama said he would not accept Geithner's resignation if it was offered. In a CBS televi-sion interview to be broadcast today the president says he would tell him: “Sorry buddy – you've still got the job.”

Stung by popular anger over the AIG saga, several other Democratic senators have been quietly distancing themselves from the Obama team, suggesting it may have bitten off more than it can chew. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, chairman of the appropriations committee, said: “To maintain a schedule like the one we've got at this moment, throughout the year, I don't know if it will be healthy.” Even Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, was obliged to concede that the CBO-projected deficits, if accurate, were “ultimately not sustainable”.

Obama insisted yesterday that he would stick to the big-ticket items in his budget proposals, but analysts speculated that he would have little choice but to slash his spending plans and is likely to arrive close to empty-handed at the G20 economic summit in London next month, where Gordon Brown is hoping for coordinated action to stimulate economic growth.

While Obama is still greeted everywhere he goes by raucous crowds thrilled by his historic election, his poll numbers have begun to slide. A survey from the key battlefield state of Ohio last week showed his approval rating had slipped to 57%, down 10 points from February.

“Here we are six months after the Wall Street bailout began and it's still the case that almost no loans are being made to [ordinary people on] main street,” said Robert Reich, a prominent liberal academic and former labour secretary under President Bill Clinton.

“The Wall Street bailout is beginning to look like the most expensive tax-supported fiasco in history,” Reich added. “The president cannot afford to lose the public's confidence that his administration is a careful steward of the public's money.”

For Howard Zinn, a popular historian, antiwar activist and early Obama supporter, an equal concern is the president's failure to reverse George W Bush's military policies. Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, said: “We should be informing Obama that we expect more from him than he has done so far. He shows no sign of departing from the traditional militarism of the Democratic and Republican parties. The idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan is disastrous, really absurd.”

Many of Obama's critics recognise that the president has his hands full with an economic crisis that was not of his making and that some of his campaign promises - notably on healthcare and schools - may be receding dreams.

Yet the White House appears to be banking on Obama's still-potent aura of promise and integrity to overcome doubts that he can pull off an economic miracle. “There are those who say these plans are too ambitious,” Obama said of his sweeping budget proposals during a visit to California last week. “They say, `Obama's trying to do too much', well, I say our challenges are too large to ignore.”

The dangers of his reliance on populist appeal were laid bare during his Leno appearance, where the easy questions lobbed up by his comedian host yielded few clues to future policy but caused a rare Obama stumble.

Deprived of the teleprompter that has become his regular travelling companion, Obama answered a question about his ten-pin bowling prowess by saying “it was like the Special Olympics” for disabled athletes. He apologised even before the recorded programme was broadcast and much of the cheerful benefit of his relaxed appearance was overshadowed by the ensuing fuss over his lapse into political incorrectness.

This week Obama takes another risk by monopolising TV screens in place of American Idol. The same programme was bumped by his State of the Union address last month and it was not only Republicans who complained they were seeing too much of their president.

“In the sucky economic climate we're in now, I like having TV to cheer me up,” said Rose Tyler, a disappointed Idol fan.

“He has not made the transition from campaigning to being the actual president,” complained another viewer.

“Good time to clean out the sock drawer,” said a third.

Congress sets its own agenda

The 9,000 pet projects inserted in the budget by Congress include:

- Removing tattoos from gang members (California): $200,000

- Polynesian Voyaging Society (Hawaii): $238,000

- Swine odour and manure management (Iowa): $2m

- Preserving Lahontan cut-throat trout (Nevada): $250,000

- Stable fly control (Nebraska): $866,000

- Blackbird management (North Dakota): $265,000

- Encouraging teenagers to abstain from sex (Pennsylvania): $24,000

from Washington Post Writers Group via RealClearPolitics.com, 2009-Mar-9, by Robert Samuelson:

Obama is a Great Pretender

WASHINGTON -- To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician -- more honest, more courageous -- please don't examine his administration's budget. If you do, you may sadly conclude that he resembles presidents stretching back to John Kennedy in one crucial respect. He won't tax voters for all the government services they want. That's the main reason we've run budget deficits in 43 of the past 48 years.

Obama is a great pretender. He repeatedly says he's doing things that he isn't, trusting his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made "responsibility" a personal theme; the budget's cover line is "A New Era of Responsibility." He says the budget begins "making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline." It doesn't.

With today's depressed economy, big deficits are unavoidable for some years. But let's assume that Obama wins re-election. By his last year, 2016, the economy presumably will have long recovered. What does his final budget look like? Well, it runs a $637 billion deficit, equal to 3.2 percent of the economy (gross domestic product), projects Obama's Office of Management and Budget. That would match Ronald Reagan's last deficit, 3.1 percent of GDP in 1988, so fiercely criticized by Democrats.

As a society, we should pay in taxes what it costs government to provide desired services. If benefits don't seem equal to burdens, then the spending isn't worth having (exceptions: deficits in wartime and economic slumps).

If Obama were "responsible," he would conduct a candid conversation about the role of government. Who deserves support and why? How big can government grow before higher taxes and deficits harm economic growth? Although Obama claims to be doing this, he hasn't confronted entitlement psychology -- the belief that government benefits once conferred should never be revoked.

Is it in the public interest for the well-off elderly (say, a couple with $125,000 of income) to be subsidized, through Social Security and Medicare, by poorer young and middle-aged workers? Are any farm subsidies justified when they aren't essential for food production? We wouldn't starve without them.

Given an aging America, government faces huge conflicts between spending on the elderly and spending on everything else. But even before most of baby boomers retire (in 2016, only a quarter will have reached 65), Obama's government would have grown. In 2016, federal spending is projected to be 22.4 percent of GDP, up from 21 percent in 2008; federal taxes, 19.2 percent of GDP, up from 17.7 percent.

It would also be "responsible" for Obama to acknowledge the big gamble in his budget. National security has long been government's first job. In his budget, defense spending drops from 20 percent of the total in 2008 to 14 percent in 2016, the smallest share since the 1930s. The decline presumes a much safer world. If the world doesn't cooperate, deficits would grow.

The gap between Obama rhetoric and Obama reality transcends the budget, as do the consequences. In 2009, the stock market has declined 23.78 percent (through March 5), says Wilshire Associates. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page blames Obama's policies for all the fall. That's unfair; the economy's deterioration was a big cause. Still, Obama isn't blameless.

Confidence (too little) and uncertainty (too much) define this crisis. Obama's double talk reduces the first and raises the second. He says he's focused on reviving the economy, but he's also using the crisis to advance an ambitious long-term agenda. The two sometimes collide. The $787 billion "stimulus" is weaker than necessary, because almost $200 billion for extended projects (high-speed rail, computerized medical records) take effect after 2010. When Congress debates Obama's sweeping health care and energy proposals, industries, regions and governmental philosophies will clash. Will this improve confidence? Reduce uncertainty?

A prudent president would have made a "tough choice" -- concentrated on the economy; deferred his more contentious agenda. Similarly, Obama claims to seek bipartisanship but, in reality, doesn't. His bipartisanship consists of including a few Republicans in his Cabinet and inviting some Republican congressmen to the White House for the Super Bowl. It does not consist of fashioning proposals that would attract bipartisan support on their merits. Instead, he clings to dubious, partisan policies (mortgage cramdown, union check-off) that arouse fierce opposition.

Obama thinks he can ignore these blatant inconsistencies. Like many smart people, he believes he can talk his way around problems. Maybe. He's helped by much of the media, who seem so enthralled with him that they don't see glaring contradictions. During the campaign, Obama said he would change Washington's petty partisanship; he also advocated a highly partisan agenda. Both claims could not be true. The media barely noticed; the same obliviousness persists. But Obama still runs a risk: that his overworked rhetoric loses its power and boomerangs on him.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Mar-13, by Douglas E. Schoen and Scott Rasmussen:

Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth

It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced.

Polling data show that Mr. Obama's approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama's net presidential approval rating -- which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve -- is just six, his lowest rating to date.

Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president's performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration's policies and their impact on peoples' lives.

There is also a clear sense in the polling that taxes will increase for all Americans because of the stimulus, notwithstanding what the president has said about taxes going down for 95% of Americans. Close to three-quarters expect that government spending will grow under this administration.

Recent Gallup data echo these concerns. That polling shows that there are deep-seated, underlying economic concerns. Eighty-three percent say they are worried that the steps Mr. Obama is taking to fix the economy may not work and the economy will get worse. Eighty-two percent say they are worried about the amount of money being added to the deficit. Seventy-eight percent are worried about inflation growing, and 69% say they are worried about the increasing role of the government in the U.S. economy.

When Gallup asked whether we should be spending more or less in the economic stimulus, by close to 3-to-1 margin voters said it is better to have spent less than to have spent more. When asked whether we are adding too much to the deficit or spending too little to improve the economy, by close to a 3-to-2 margin voters said that we are adding too much to the deficit.

Support for the stimulus package is dropping from narrow majority support to below that. There is no sense that the stimulus package itself will work quickly, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, close to 60% said it would make only a marginal difference in the next two to four years. Rasmussen data shows that people now actually oppose Mr. Obama's budget, 46% to 41%. Three-quarters take this position because it will lead to too much spending. And by 2-to-1, voters reject House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call for a second stimulus package.

While over two-thirds support the plan to help homeowners refinance their mortgage, a 48%-36% plurality said that it will unfairly benefit those who have been irresponsible, echoing Rick Santelli's call to arms on CNBC.

And although a narrow majority remains confident in Mr. Obama's goals and overall direction, 45% say they do not have confidence, a number that has been growing since the inauguration less than two months ago. With three-quarters saying that they expect the economy to get worse, it is hard to see these numbers improving substantially.

There is no real appetite for increasing taxes to pay for an expanded health-insurance program. Less than half would support such an idea, which is 17% less than the percentage that supported government health insurance when Bill Clinton first considered it in March of 1993.

While voters blame Republicans for the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, the fact is that they do not believe Mr. Obama has made any progress in improving the impulse towards cooperation between the two parties. Further, nearly half of voters say that politics in Washington will be more partisan over the next year.

Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose giving bankers any additional government money or any guarantees backed by the government. Two-thirds say Wall Street will benefit more than the average taxpayer from the new bank bailout plan. This represents a jump in opposition to the first plan passed last October. At that time, 45% opposed the bailout and 30% supported it. Now a solid majority opposes the bank bailout, and 20% think it was a good idea. A majority believes that Mr. Obama will not be able to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term.

Only less than a quarter of Americans believe that the federal government truly reflects the will of the people. Almost half disagree with the idea that no one can earn a living or live "an American life" without protection and empowerment by the government, while only one-third agree.

Despite the economic stimulus that Congress just passed and the budget and financial and mortgage bailouts that Congress is now debating, just 19% of voters believe that Congress has passed any significant legislation to improve their lives. While Congress's approval has increased, it still stands at only 18%. Over two-thirds of voters believe members of Congress are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping the American people. When it comes to the nation's economic issues, two-thirds of voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.

Finally, what probably accounts for a good measure of the confidence and support the Obama administration has enjoyed is the fact that they are not Republicans. Virtually all Americans, more than eight in 10, blame Republicans for the current economic woes, and the only two leaders with lower approval ratings than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

All of this is not just a subject for pollsters and analysts to debate. It shows fundamentally that public confidence in government remains low and is slipping. We face the possibility of substantial gridlock along with an absolute absence of public confidence that could come to mirror the lack of confidence in the American economy that the Dow and the S&P are currently showing.

Mr. Schoen, formerly a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is the author of "Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two Party System" (Random House, 2008). Mr. Rasmussen is president of Rasmussen Reports, an independent national polling company.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Mar-14, p.A1, by Scott Wilson, with Alice Crites contributing research:

Obama's New Tack: Blaming Bush
President Points to 'Inherited' Economy

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return -- or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome "inheritance" of its predecessor.

Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The "deepening economic crisis" that the president described six days after taking office became "a big mess" in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.

"By any measure," he said during a March 4 event calling for government-contracting reform, "my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster."

Obama's more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president's policies are compounding the nation's economic problems.

Obama had initially been content to leave partisan defense strategy to his proxies, but as the fiscal picture has continued to darken, he has appeared more willing to risk his image as a politician who is above petty partisanship to personally remind the public of Bush's legacy.

His approval ratings remain strong -- above 60 percent, according to the most recent Gallup poll -- but have dropped from their highs almost entirely because of falling support among Republicans since he took office.

Upon entering the White House in 2001, Bush pinned the lackluster economy on his predecessor, using the "Clinton recession" to successfully argue in favor of tax cuts that won some Democratic support. But for Obama, who built his candidacy on a promise to rise above Washington's divisive partisan traditions -- winning over many independent voters and moderate Republicans in the process -- blaming his predecessor holds special risks.

He will need support beyond his Democratic base as he begins lobbying for his $3.6 trillion budget, which proposes sweeping changes in health care, the energy sector and the public education system. The president did not receive a single House Republican vote for his stimulus plan, prompting some in his administration to view his bipartisan outreach efforts as having little hope of success.

And Republicans have seemed only more emboldened in their rhetoric. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), for example, recently called the borrowing needed to fund the president's economic recovery plans "generational theft."

"What the administration is involved in now is the politics of attribution," said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. "Each week that goes by with falling job numbers and Republican criticism of the administration's flaws means falling approval ratings. What's the antidote? That the guilty party is George Bush."

"The trick," Jacobs said, "is how do you shift blame to George Bush and retain any credibility on the idea that you are looking past partisan warfare? This looks like a doubling down on a very partisan approach."

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, denied that the president has changed his tone toward the previous administration. He said Obama is "not trying to place blame, but he is trying to say clearly: Here's what we've got and here's our way out of it. He's offered a positive alternative to their criticism."

"The truth is that 98 percent of his speeches are about the future, and 2 percent are about inheritance," Emanuel said. "Whereas I think for Republicans it's 2 percent about the future, and 98 percent hope that the people have amnesia."

Until recently, the job of reminding the country of the Bush-era legacy had been left mostly to senior administration officials, and it sometimes ranged beyond economic matters. Referring to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Vice President Biden said soon after the inauguration that "we're trying to figure out exactly what we've inherited here."

In early February, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that "after I accepted the position, I began looking at the broad array of problems that we were going to inherit," citing the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan in particular.

But most of the Bush-era blame has focused on the economy and the dismal state of the government's finances. Bush's spokesman, Rob Saliterman, declined to comment for this article.

Obama has strengthened his rhetoric gradually. Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said the administration's "sharpened language is a response to the Republican argument against Obama based on huge deficits and big spending."

Six days after taking office, Obama kicked off an event on jobs, energy reform and climate change with "a few words about the deepening economic crisis that we've inherited." He lamented announced job cuts at such economic mainstays as Microsoft, Intel, Home Depot and Caterpillar, among others.

Just over a week later, Obama, arguing for his stimulus plan, said that "we've inherited a terrible mess," and a few days after that, in the economically depressed city of Elkhart, Ind., he told the audience, "We've inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the Great Depression."

During a prime-time news conference later that day, he used "inherited" twice in the same sentence to describe the deficit and "the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression."

This month, Obama has described inheriting "a fiscal disaster" and "a real mess," as administration officials emphasized that the effects of the stimulus package have yet to be seen in paychecks and job-creating public-works projects.

"There's a fascinating behind-the-scenes trend taking place for someone who remains a very popular president," said Ari Fleischer, a former Bush press secretary, describing the decline in Obama's approval ratings and an increase in disapproval numbers. "His response to that trend is to turn up the blame on George Bush and everything that came before him. And he was the one who talked about getting past partisanship."

The economy continues to shed jobs -- 651,000 in February alone -- and the Dow Jones index is roughly 12 percent lower than when the market opened on the day of Obama's inauguration. Perhaps most damaging has been the uncertainty surrounding Obama's strategy to rescue the banking sector, a plan that has been criticized for lacking detail.

Host Chris Wallace asked on "Fox News Sunday" this month, "Can this now fairly be called the Obama bear market?"

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) said, "I want to take the president at his word that he wants to work on these problems plaguing American families," adding that "people are looking for leadership."

"It is the Obama economy and the Obama stock market," Cantor said. "This is about today, and he's assumed his post."

from Newsweek, 2009-Mar-16, web-posted 2009-Mar-7, by David Frum:

Why Rush is Wrong
The party of Buckley and Reagan is now bereft and dominated by the politics of Limbaugh. A conservative's lament.

It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz."

Now, of course, Mark Levin knows perfectly well where I come from. We've known each other for years, had dinner together. I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the "Read My Lips" Bush, the "Axis of Evil" Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I mention all this not because I expect you to be fascinated with my life story, but to establish some bona fides. In the conservative world, we have a tendency to dismiss unwelcome realities. When one of us looks up and murmurs, "Hey, guys, there seems to be an avalanche heading our way," the others tend to shrug and say, he's a "squish" or a RINO—Republican in Name Only.

Levin had been provoked by a blog entry I'd posted the day before on my site, NewMajority.com. Here's what I wrote: President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party.

Here's Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation yesterday: "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party." What a great endorsement for Rush! … But what about the rest of the party? Here's the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.

All of this began even before Obama took office. In his broadcast on Jan. 16, Limbaugh told listeners he had been asked by a major publication for a 400-word statement about his hopes for the new administration:

I'm thinking of replying to the guy, "OK, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words. I need four: I hope he fails." … See, here's the point: everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff: "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here … I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it.

Notice that Limbaugh did not say: "I hope the administration's liberal plans fail." Or (better): "I know the administration's liberal plans will fail." Or (best): "I fear that this administration's liberal plans will fail, as liberal plans usually do." If it had been phrased that way, nobody could have used Limbaugh's words to misrepresent conservatives as clueless, indifferent or gleeful in the face of the most painful economic crisis in a generation. But then, if it had been phrased that way, nobody would have quoted his words at all—and as Limbaugh himself said, being "headlined" was the point of the exercise. If it had been phrased that way, Limbaugh's face would not now be adorning the covers of magazines. He phrased his hope in a way that drew maximum attention to himself, offered maximum benefit to the administration and did maximum harm to the party he claims to support.

Then, exacerbating the wound, Limbaugh added this in an interview on Sean Hannity's Jan. 21 show on Fox News: "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president." Limbaugh would repeat some variant of this remark at least four more times in the next month and a half. Really, President Obama could not have asked for more: Limbaugh gets an audience, Obama gets a target and Republicans get the blame.

Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach. Forty-one percent of independents have an unfavorable opinion of him, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: his audience is 72 percent male, according to Pew Research. Limbaugh himself acknowledges his unpopularity among women. On his Feb. 24 broadcast, he said with a chuckle: "Thirty-one-point gender gaps don't come along all that often … Given this massive gender gap in my personal approval numbers … it seems reasonable for me to convene a summit."

Limbaugh was kidding about the summit. But his quip acknowledged something that eludes many of those who would make him the arbiter of Republican authenticity: from a political point of view, Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally. No Republican official will say that; Limbaugh demands absolute deference from the conservative world, and he generally gets it. When offended, he can extract apologies from Republican members of Congress, even the chairman of the Republican National Committee. And Rush is very easily offended.

Through 2008 Rush was offended by the tendency among conservative writers to suggest that the ideas and policies developed in the 1970s needed to change and adapt to the very different world of the 21st century. Here's what he had to say about this subject in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 28:

Sometimes I get livid and angry … We've got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it, and, worst of all, to redefine it. Well, the Constitution doesn't need to be redefined. Conservative intellectuals, the Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined, and neither does conservatism. Conservatism is what it is, and it is forever. It's not something you can bend and shape and flake and form … I cringed—it might have been 2007, late 2007 or sometime during 2008, but a couple of prominent, conservative, Beltway, establishment media types began to write on the concept that the era of Reagan is over. And that we needed to adapt our appeal, because, after all, what's important in politics is winning elections. And so we have to understand that the American people, they want big government. We just have to find a way to tell them we're no longer opposed to that. We will come up with our own version of it that is wiser and smarter, but we've got to go get the Wal-Mart voter, and we've got to get the Hispanic voter, and we've got to get the recalcitrant independent women. And I'm listening to this and I am just apoplectic: the era of Reagan is over? … We have got to stamp this out …

Here is an example of the writing Limbaugh was complaining about: The conservatism we know evolved in the 1970s to meet a very specific set of dangers and challenges: inflation, slow growth, energy shortages, unemployment, rising welfare dependency. In every one of those problems, big government was the direct and immediate culprit. Roll back government, and you solved the problem.

Government is implicated in many of today's top domestic concerns as well … But the connection between big government and today's most pressing problems is not as close or as pressing as it was 27 years ago. So, unsurprisingly, the anti-big-government message does not mobilize the public the way it once did.

Of course, we can keep repeating our old lines all the same, just the way Tip O'Neill kept exhorting the American middle class to show more gratitude to the New Deal. But politicians who talk that way soon sound old, tired, and cranky. I wish somebody at the … GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library had said: "Ronald Reagan was a great leader and a great president because he addressed the problems of his time. But we have very different problems—and we need very different answers. Here are mine."

I wrote that in spring 2007. But you can hear similar words from bright young conservative writers like Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, and from veteran Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich. Gingrich told George Stephanopoulos on Jan. 13, 2008: "We are at the end of the Reagan era. We're at a point in time when we're about to start redefining … the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs."

Even before the November 2008 defeat—even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006—it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help).

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

We lost the presidency in 2008. In 2006 and 2008, together, we lost 51 seats in the House and 14 in the Senate. Even in 2004, President Bush won reelection by the narrowest margin of any reelected president in American history.

The trends below those vote totals were even more alarming. Republicans have never done well among the poor and the nonwhite—and as the country's Hispanic population grows, so, too, do those groups. More ominously, Republicans are losing their appeal to voters with whom they've historically done well.

In 1988 George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis among college graduates by 25 points. Nothing unusual there: Republicans have owned the college-graduate vote. But in 1992 Ross Perot led an exodus of the college-educated out of the GOP, and they never fully returned. In 2008 Obama beat John McCain among college graduates by 8 points, the first Democratic win among B.A. holders since exit polling began.

Political strategists used to talk about a GOP "lock" on the presidency because of the Republican hold on the big Sun Belt states: California, Texas, Florida. Republicans won California in every presidential election from 1952 through 1988 (except the Goldwater disaster of 1964). Democrats have won California in the five consecutive presidential elections since 1988.

In 1984 Reagan won young voters by 20 points; the elder Bush won voters under 30 again in 1988. Since that year, the Democrats have won the under-30 vote in five consecutive presidential elections. Voters who turned 20 between 2000 and 2005 are the most lopsidedly Democratic age cohort in the electorate. If they eat right, exercise and wear seat belts, they will be voting against George W. Bush well into the 2060s.

Between 2004 and 2008, Democrats more than doubled their party-identification advantage in Pennsylvania. A survey of party switchers in the state found that a majority of the reaffiliating voters had belonged to the GOP for 20 years or more. They were educated and affluent. More than half of those who left stated that the GOP had become too extreme.

Look at America's public-policy problems, look at voting trends, and it's inescapably obvious that the Republican Party needs to evolve. We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message. It's health-care costs that are crushing middle-class incomes. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount that employers paid for labor rose substantially. Employees got none of that money; all of it was absorbed by rising health-care costs. Meanwhile, the income-tax cuts offered by Republicans interest fewer and fewer people: before the recession, two thirds of American workers paid more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.

We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison—modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice.

We need an environmental message. You don't have to accept Al Gore's predictions of imminent gloom to accept that it cannot be healthy to pump gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We are rightly mistrustful of liberal environmentalist disrespect for property rights. But property owners also care about property values, about conservation, and as a party of property owners we should be taking those values more seriously.

Above all, we need to take governing seriously again. Voters have long associated Democrats with corrupt urban machines, Republicans with personal integrity and fiscal responsibility. Even ultraliberal states like Massachusetts would elect Republican governors like Frank Sargent, Leverett Saltonstall, William Weld and Mitt Romney precisely to keep an austere eye on the depredations of Democratic legislators. After Iraq, Katrina and Harriet Miers, Democrats surged to a five-to-three advantage on the competence and ethics questions. And that was before we put Sarah Palin on our national ticket.

Every day, Rush Limbaugh reassures millions of core Republican voters that no change is needed: if people don't appreciate what we are saying, then say it louder. Isn't that what happened in 1994? Certainly this is a good approach for Rush himself. He claims 20 million listeners per week, and that suffices to make him a very wealthy man. And if another 100 million people cannot stand him, what does he care? What can they do to him other than … not listen? It's not as if they can vote against him.

But they can vote against Republican candidates for Congress. They can vote against Republican nominees for president. And if we allow ourselves to be overidentified with somebody who earns his fortune by giving offense, they will vote against us. Two months into 2009, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have already enacted into law the most ambitious liberal program since the mid-1960s. More, much more is to come. Through this burst of activism, the Republican Party has been flat on its back.

Decisions that will haunt American taxpayers for generations have been made with hardly a debate. The federal government will pay more of the cost for Medicaid, it will expand the SCHIP program for young children, it will borrow trillions of dollars to expand the national debt to levels unseen since WWII. To stem this onrush of disastrous improvisations, conservatives need every resource of mind and heart, every good argument, every creative alternative and every bit of compassionate sympathy for the distress that is pushing Americans in the wrong direction. Instead we are accepting the leadership of a man with an ego-driven agenda of his own, who looms largest when his causes fare worst.

In the days since I stumbled into this controversy, I've received a great deal of e-mail. (Most of it on days when Levin or Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Limbaugh himself has had something especially disobliging to say about me.) Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don't agree with Rush, quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There's the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don't care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That's not the language of politics. It's the language of a cult.

I'm a pretty conservative guy. On most issues, I doubt Limbaugh and I even disagree very much. But the issues on which we do disagree are maybe the most important to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party: Should conservatives be trying to provoke or persuade? To narrow our coalition or enlarge it? To enflame or govern? And finally (and above all): to profit—or to serve?

Frum, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of NewMajority.com.

from NewsMax.com, 2009-Mar-8:

Gingrich: Obama's Bipartisan Sham

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh is nothing more than a political maneuver orchestrated by the Obama White House to distract from its economic failures.

It is "a deliberate strategy by the White House," to distract from the massive, $410 billion Congressional spending bill laden with 9,000 earmarks, Gingrich said. He specifically cited the "intense partisanship" of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as the mastermind of the Limbaugh/GOP attack. Earlier in the week, Gingrich compared Emanuel to the dirty tricksters who ran the Nixon White House.

"I think what they did with the whole Rush Limbaugh thing - they can't defend signing the 9,000 earmarks, they can't defend an energy-tax increase, they can't defend [Treasury Secretary Timothy F.] Geithner's failure to pay his income taxes, so they decide, 'Let's have a fight over Rush Limbaugh.' It is the exact opposite of what the president promised ... to focus on large things, not small things," Gingrich said.

“The president promised to focus on large things, not small things; he promised to bring us together, not divide us,” Gingrich continued. “… It has to trouble you to have that level of intense partisanship as chief of staff if we're going to in fact come together as a country. And I just think either Emanuel's got to change, or the president's got to understand he is--he is going to have a very partisan regime.”

Gingrich said that Limbaugh is not the head of the Republican Party; he's a radio personality.

“No, it's like saying does Chris Matthews help or hurt the Democratic Party? The fact is he has a large audience, he--the audience believes him, the audience calls their members, the audience has an effect,'' Gingrich said. “He's (Limbaugh) not the leader of the Republican party. And Michael Steele's one of the leaders. Bobby Jindal, who you had on recently, is one of the leaders. Sarah Palin's one of the leaders. Eric Cantor's a rising new leader. Paul Ryan's a--I mean, there are tons of leaders in the Republican Party. It is a deliberate strategy by the White House.”

from FOXNews.com, 2009-Mar-6:

Fight Brewing Within GOP Over Soul, Future of Party

This week's dustup between GOP chief Michael Steele and influential radio host Rush Limbaugh underscored the struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party.

While congressional Republicans spar with Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill over spending and economic relief plans, another struggle is under way within the Republican Party over how it can reclaim its former dominance without sacrificing its principles.

This week's dustup between Michael Steele, the new national GOP chairman, and influential conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh underscored the competing dynamics at play as Steele pushes to expand the party beyond its traditional base and Limbaugh warns that base not to stray from conservative ideals.

As a result, many prominent people in the party are laying low, waiting to see whether a unifying voice will emerge to lead the GOP forward.

Some say the spat over Limbaugh's speech last weekend at a conservative conference didn't help. Steele called Limbaugh a mere "entertainer" who is sometimes "incendiary" and "ugly," comments for which Steele later apologized.

"Steele has been M.I.A. on his first month on the job and then he pulled a hand grenade on himself," a GOP strategist, who asked not to be identified for fear of antagonizing party leaders, told FOXNews.com. "Republicans are scratching their heads and wondering is this the person who's supposed to be leading the rebuilding of our party?

"When you completely implode in your first month and you haven't hired anyone, you start to look incompetent," the strategist added.

One member of the Republican National Committee even has called for Steele to resign. Dr. Ada Fisher, North Carolina's national committeewoman, reportedly e-mailed fellow RNC members that Steele is "eroding confidence" in the GOP and that members of his transition team should encourage him to step aside.

"I don't want to hear anymore language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn't going to win us any votes and make us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish," wrote Fisher, who is one of three black national GOP committee members.

Curt Anderson, a spokesman for Steele, said the controversy surrounding the chairman has been mostly hype, and he claimed that Fisher has an ax to grind against Steele.

"This chairman has said he's made inartful comments and made some mistakes. He said that," Anderson said. "The other thing, he promised in terms of the transition process, there would be major changes. Change is hard and a lot of people don't like it."

Anderson said part of the change was firing most of the staff. He said the RNC has received 1,400 resumes for positions.

"In some ways, this election was a changing of the guard and some of the old guard is not happy," he said.

Brent Woodcox, a spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, said the state GOP chairwoman did not agree with Fisher.

"It's far too early to judge Michael Steele on his tenure so far," Woodcox said, before he offered his own assessment.

"I think that he's brought a fresh perspective to the party, one that is looking to broaden the base, not by compromising its values but by going into the communities. I think the chairman is on the right course and if we can stop being distracted by things that don't matter, then we can be in a place where the Republican party can be strong again."

Democrats have reacted with glee to talk of the GOP imploding.

"It seems no one gets honeymoons anymore," said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh, a former adviser to Sen. John Kerry.

Marsh said Steele made a mistake by showing how he would expand the base without first shoring up the base. But, she said, Steele can learn from former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean, who also made some missteps at the beginning of his tenure before pulling back from the media glare and focusing on rebuilding the party infrastructure.

Anderson said the challenge for the RNC under Steele is making the party more relevant and producing solutions that work.

"I can't emphasize enough we like where the transition is right now," he said. "We understand when you win a close election, you have people within the Beltway waiting for you to make a mistake and kick you. We'll get through that. We think outside the Beltway there's a greater sense of optimism."

from Politico.com, 2009-Mar-23, by James Kirchick:

The GOP's burgeoning civil war

Watching the various spats among conservatives, it's difficult to tell whether one is witnessing a series of lively political disagreements or an episode of “Monday Night Raw.”

In one corner, there's former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum versus talk radio king Rush Limbaugh. In another ring, Limbaugh is taking on former House speaker-turned-conservative guru Newt Gingrich. And in the Royal Rumble, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is battling, well, pretty much everybody in the GOP.

Liberals have shown no small measure of delight in this fracas, and understandably so. Taking political advantage of conservative fratricide makes perfect sense, as it's the strategic execution of Henry Kissinger's observation about the Iran-Iraq War: “It's a pity both sides can't lose.” Fueling the intra-party fire weakens the GOP from within. Even the White House has gotten in on the act with senior figures like spokesperson Robert Gibbs and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launching attacks on administration critics ranging from Limbaugh to CNBC personalities Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.

But as liberals engage in multiple rounds of schadenfreude over conservative wrangling, what's noticeable is that the burgeoning civil war we're witnessing on the right could not play out on the left, at least not rise to the level of gravity that would attract front-page articles in Newsweek or the instigation of partisans on the other side. And that's because liberals — unlike conservatives — do not have a “movement” over which to fight.

Given the Barack Obama phenomenon, the rise of the liberal blogosphere and overwhelming Democratic congressional majorities, the proposition that liberals lack a movement might sound strange. But while the Republican Party comprises three steadfast pillars (free marketers, defense hawks and the religious right), the Democratic Party remains a coalition of a vast and diverse assemblage of interest groups (minorities, labor unions, academics, trial lawyers, etc.) rather than an ideological enterprise. As such, the Democrats, up until very recently, have long had more intense internal squabbling than the Republicans, whose various factions learned to reconcile.

The conservative movement began to take form in the 1950s as a reaction to the then-regnant statist consensus. It was firmly anti-communist, opposed the New Deal and the further expansion of government programs, and later launched a harsh critique on many of the social changes that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. What further distinguishes the conservative movement from the liberal coalition is that conservatives built an array of institutions to sustain their ideological apparatus. In Washington and across the country, there exists a constellation of think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. In the 1980s, conservatives took to the airwaves and now attract tens of millions of listeners every day on talk radio. Perhaps the most important feature of the movement was its recruitment of young people through organizations like Young America's Foundation, which identifies and trains conservative students on campuses across the country.

To see the vitality — if not reasonableness — of the movement, one only had to visit last month's Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual ritual that attracts conservative activists, politicians and celebrities from across the country. There is no liberal equivalent of this confab. Indeed, the relative influence of the conservative movement on the GOP versus any liberal parallel on the Democratic Party can be seen in the vast number of Republican politicians who proudly call themselves “conservative.” By contrast, few Democrats publicly identify themselves as “liberal,” opting for the more vague and voguish “progressive,” if at all.

Liberals are belatedly constructing themselves a movement akin to the one crafted by their ideological adversaries. In 2003, John Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, a partisan think tank explicitly modeled on Heritage. Media Matters aggressively attacks any perceived anti-liberal media bias in the same way that conservative watchdog groups have been monitoring the mainstream press since the 1980s. POLITICO's Ben Smith has reported on the daily conference call in which the heads of more than 20 major liberal interest groups participate to shape a coherent message for the day, as well as Unity '09, a coalition of groups ranging from MoveOn.org to the American Civil Liberties Union “aimed at helping President Obama push his agenda through Congress.” Never before have the disparate organizations of the American left been so well-coordinated.

Does the nascent liberal movement portend good or ill? Judging that question depends in part upon whether or not one agrees with the agenda. If scaling back American commitments overseas, increasing the power of unions, and building a more left-leaning Supreme Court, among other goals, of course, are your thing, then the means by which these ends are achieved will presumably matter less than their attainment.

But the answer also lies in whether or not movement politics is itself a healthy feature of the American electoral system. There is something ironic in the tendency of liberals to denounce the staleness and conformity of the conservative movement and relish in its apparent demise while constructing something of their own that is just as ideologically rigid.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Feb-27, by Joel Kotkin:

The Democratic Party Could Face an Internal Civil War
'Gentry' and 'populist' factions square off on energy and the environment.

This is the Democratic Party's moment, its power now greater than any time since the mid-1960s. But do not expect smooth sailing. The party is a fractious group divided by competing interests, factions and constituencies that could explode into a civil war, especially when it comes to energy and the environment.

Broadly speaking, there is a long-standing conflict inside the Democratic Party between gentry liberals and populists. This division is not the same as in the 1960s, when the major conflicts revolved around culture and race as well as on foreign policy. Today the emerging fault-lines follow mostly regional, geographical and, most importantly, class differences.

Gentry liberals cluster largely in cities, wealthy suburbs and college towns. They include disproportionately those with graduate educations and people living on the coasts. Populists tend to be located more in middle- and working-class suburbs, the Great Plains and industrial Midwest. They include a wider spectrum of Americans, including many whose political views are somewhat changeable and less subject to ideological rigor.

In the post-World War II era, the gentry's model candidate was a man such as Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee who lost twice to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson was a svelte intellectual who, like Barack Obama, was backed by the brute power of the Chicago machine. After Stevenson, the gentry supported candidates such as John Kennedy -- who did appeal to Catholic working class voters -- but also men with limited appeal outside the gentry class, including Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas and John Kerry.

Hubert Humphrey, a populist heir to the lunch-pail liberalism of Harry Truman (and who was despised by gentry intellectuals) missed the presidency by a hair in 1968. But populists in the party later backed lackluster candidates such as Walter Mondale and Dick Gephardt.

Bill Clinton revived the lunch-pail Democratic tradition; and the final stages of last year's presidential primaries represented yet another classic gentry versus populist conflict. Hillary Clinton could not match Barack Obama's appeal to the gentry. Driven to desperation, she ended up running a spirited populist campaign.

Although peace now reigns between the Clintons and the new president, the broader gentry-populist split seems certain to fester at both the congressional and local levels -- and President Obama will be hard-pressed to negotiate this divide. Gentry liberals are very "progressive" when it comes to issues such as affirmative action, gay rights, the environment and energy policy, but are not generally well disposed to protectionism or auto-industry bailouts, which appeal to populists. Populists, meanwhile, hated the initial bailout of Wall Street -- despite its endorsement by Mr. Obama and the congressional leadership.

Geography is clearly a determining factor here. Standout antifinancial bailout senators included Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Jon Tester of Montana. On the House side, the antibailout faction came largely from places like the Great Plains and Appalachia, as well as from the suburbs and exurbs, including places like Arizona and interior California.

Gentry liberals, despite occasional tut-tutting, fell lockstep for the bailout. Not one Northeastern or California Democratic senator opposed it. In the House, "progressives" such as Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank who supported the financial bailout represent districts with a large concentration of affluent liberals, venture capitalists and other financial interests for whom the bailout was very much a matter of preserving accumulated (and often inherited) wealth.

Energy and the environment are potentially even more explosive issues. Gentry politicians tend to favor developing only alternative fuels and oppose expanding coal, oil or nuclear energy. Populists represent areas, such as the Great Lakes region, where manufacturing still plays a critical role and remains heavily dependent on coal-based electricity. They also tend to have ties to economies, such as in the Great Plains, Appalachia and the Intermountain West, where smacking down all new fossil-fuel production threatens lots of jobs -- and where a single-minded focus on alternative fuels may drive up total energy costs on the farm, make life miserable again for truckers, and put American industrial firms at even greater disadvantage against foreign competitors.

In the coming years, Mr. Obama's "green agenda" may be a key fault line. Unlike his notably mainstream appointments in foreign policy and economics, he's tilted fairly far afield on the environment with individuals such as John Holdren, a longtime acolyte of the discredited neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich, and Carol Browner, who was Bill Clinton's hard-line EPA administrator.

These appointments could presage an environmental jihad throughout the regulatory apparat. Early examples could mean such things as strict restrictions on greenhouse gases, including bans on new drilling and higher prices through carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade regime.

Another critical front, not well understood by the public, could develop on land use -- with the adoption of policies that favor dense cities over suburbs and small towns. This trend can be observed most obviously in California, but also in states such as Oregon where suburban growth has long been frowned upon. Emboldened greens in government could use their new power to drive infrastructure spending away from badly needed projects such as new roads, bridges and port facilities, and toward projects such as light rail lines. These lines are sometimes useful, but largely impractical outside a few heavily traveled urban corridors. Essentially it means a transfer of subsidies from those who must drive cars to the relative handful for whom mass transit remains a viable alternative.

Priorities such as these may win plaudits in urban enclaves in New York, Boston and San Francisco -- bastions of the gentry class and of under-35, childless professionals -- but they might not be so widely appreciated in the car- and truck-driving Great Plains and the vast suburban archipelago, where half the nation's population lives.

If he wishes to enhance his power and keep the Democrats together, Mr. Obama will have to figure out how to placate both his gentry base and those Democrats who still see their party's mission in terms that Harry Truman would have understood.

Mr. Kotkin is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive editor of www.newgeography.com. He is finishing a book on the American future.

from the New York Times via the International Herald Tribune, 2009-Feb-26, by Jim Rutenberg:

Bloggers and unions form group to push Democrats to the left

WASHINGTON: A group of liberal bloggers said it is teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party farther to the left.

Soliciting donations from their readers, the bloggers said they are planning to recruit liberal candidates for challenges against more centrist Democrats currently in Congress.

The formation of the group marks another step in the evolution of the blogosphere, which has proved effective at motivating party activists to give money and time to political campaigns, especially in local races.

But it also illuminates a deepening wrinkle for President Barack Obama, whose attempt to build a broad governing coalition — often by tempering some of his more liberal previous positions — has already angered some of his supporters on the left.

The new organization is in many ways the liberal equivalent of the Club for Growth, a conservative group that has financed primary challenges against Republicans it deems insufficiently dedicated to tax cuts and small government.

Organizers of the new group, to be called Accountability Now, said their intention is to enable Obama to seek more liberal policies without fear of losing support from the more conservative members of his party serving in Congress. But they did not rule out occasional friction with Obama, as well.

"We're going to be about targeting incumbents to make space for Obama to be more progressive," said Glen Greenwald, a liberal blogger with Salon who is part of the effort. "There may be other times when the Democratic Party, as led by Obama, is being unresponsive, so yeah, we have the potential to push back against that, as well."

Another founder of the group, Jane Hamsher, of Firedog Lake, said the group may also involve itself in Republican primary contests, though the focus for now seems to be primarily on the Democratic side.

Left-leaning bloggers have already proven themselves influential in congressional races, most notably providing muscle for the movement that helped Ned Lamont defeat Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary in 2006. ( Lieberman went on to retain his seat after running in the general election as an independent.)

But organizers of the new effort said the new political action committee will mark the start of a more organized and concentrated approach.

Hamsher said Accountability Now — which will also have support from the Service Employees International Union and DailyKos — would concentrate more fully on candidate recruitment in the states.

"We've gone out to the state blogs asking them to put together research on people who they think are good candidates who should be on our radar," she said. "We're not just parachuting in."

She added that the group had not yet settled on specific races.

The political action committee will formally start up on Friday. Organizers said they already had a bank account of $500,000, which they raised over a short period in September when several blogs solicited donations. Organizers said they expected to collect far more than that when they start fundraising in earnest this month.

from the Wall Street Journal's Political Diary, 2009-May-14, by John Fund:

Mr. Mismeasure

On Friday, Robert Groves, President Obama's choice to head the Census Bureau, will have his Senate confirmation hearing. His hearing is important because next year's Census has big political and economic ramifications, not only determining how House seats will be allocated among the states but also setting the formulas that determine how huge amounts of federal dollars will flow.

That's why it's critical that Senators express clearly on the record concerns about the Census being politicized through questionable statistical manipulation. Recall the furor when GOP Senator Judd Gregg withdrew his nomination for Commerce Secretary after it became clear the White House would be exercising "oversight" over how the Census Bureau he would have supervised did its work. A continuing battle has concerned attempts to inject dubious statistical theories into the count. Mr. Groves, now a professor at the University of Michigan, himself unsuccessfully advocated statistically adjusting the Census when he was at the Census Bureau in 1990. He advised employing sampling techniques to create data for "missing" groups of people not picked up in the actual count.

The problem is that a 2003 study by the Census Bureau found that using "sampling" models to draw conclusions about "missing" people only subjected the Census to greater inaccuracy. Fears were raised that it would also encourage public distrust of the Census Bureau and its army of field examiners. The idea was scrapped, but many in the Democratic Party are keen to revive it. Mr. Groves should be vigorously questioned about his current views on the use of sampling.

In 1999, the Supreme Court determined that current law -- the 1980 Census Act -- prohibits use of sampling or statistical adjustment for reapportioning House seats among the states. However, the Court did not determine whether sampling is permitted under the Constitution, which it would be asked to do if Democrats amend the 1980 law, as many experts expect them to. Mr. Groves should be asked his opinion about changing existing law relating to the Census less than a year before it's scheduled to be taken.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-May-15, by Timothy J. Alberta:

Census Nominee Rules Out Statistical Sampling in 2010

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Census Bureau on Friday ruled out using statistical sampling to adjust the results of the 2010 census, quelling Republican concerns and making his confirmation likely next week.

Robert Groves, director of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center and a former Census Bureau official, is an expert on statistical sampling, the practice of extrapolating a larger population from a smaller slice of it. Proponents of sampling say it helps produce a more accurate tally of the population, especially when it comes to traditionally undercounted groups, such as minorities living in urban areas.

But many Republican lawmakers insist that sampling violates the Constitution, which calls for an "actual Enumeration" of the population every 10 years. Critics also say the use of sampling would politicize the traditionally nonpolitical Census Bureau.

Dr. Groves, during his confirmation hearing Friday, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he wouldn't use sampling to adjust the 2010 count. Asked whether he would consider using it in a future census, he said: "There are no plans to do that for 2020."

Dr. Groves faced minimal opposition at the hearing.

Only three senators were present for the twice-postponed hearing, a sign that many of the lawmakers initially concerned over his nomination were satisfied by the answers he provided earlier in a 41-page questionnaire and in meetings with lawmakers ahead of the hearing. Dr. Groves is likely to be confirmed by the full Senate before Congress recesses ahead of Memorial Day.

As the bureau's associate director of statistical design from 1990 to 1992, Dr. Groves got caught up in an earlier political debate over sampling. He was among a group of bureau officials who advocated its use after it became evident that the 1990 census had failed to count nearly five million people. That effort was blocked by the George H. W. Bush administration.

President Bill Clinton planned on using sampling in the 2000 census, but the Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that sampling could not "under any circumstances" be used to reapportion U.S. House seats—a major victory for Republicans. The court left open the possibility that sampling could be used for other purposes, such as redrawing state legislative districts or allocating federal funds to cities and states.

The debate eased after the 2000 census made significant progress in reducing the undercount, but last month's nomination of Dr. Groves resurrected the issue because of his past advocacy of using sampling to adjust census results.

from FoxNews.com, 2009-Mar-18, by Cristina Corbin:

ACORN to Play Role in 2010 Census

The U.S. Census Bureau is working with several national organizations to help recruit 1.4 million workers to produce the country's 2010 census, including one with a history of voter fraud charges: ACORN.

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States -- currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census "sell sheet," an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN "play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful," including by "help[ing] recruit census workers."

The bureau is currently employing help from more than 250 national partners, including TARGET and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to assist in the hiring effort.

But ACORN's partnership with the 2010 Census is worrisome to lawmakers who say past allegations of fraud should raise concerns about the organization.

"It's a concern, especially when you look at all the different charges of voter fraud. And it's not just the lawmakers' concern. It should be the concern of every citizen in the country," Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., vice ranking member of the subcommittee for the U.S. Census, told FOXNews.com. "We want an enumeration. We don't want to have any false numbers."

ACORN, which claims to be a non-partisan grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people, came under fire in 2007 when Washington State filed felony charges against several paid ACORN employees and supervisors for more than 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations. In March 2008, an ACORN worker in Pennsylvania was sentenced for making 29 phony voter registration forms. The group's activities were frequently questioned in the 2008 presidential election.

ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson told FOXNews.com that "ACORN as an organization has not been charged with any crime." He added that fears that the organization will unfairly influence the census are unfounded.

"It will be the Census Bureau that determines the role and scope of its 300 national partners. ACORN is committed to a fair and accurate count," Levenson said.

The census is an official count of the country's population mandated by the U.S. Constitution. It is used to determine distribution of taxpayer money through grants and appropriations and the apportionment of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Every U.S. household unit, including those occupied by non-citizens and illegal immigrants, must be counted.

Westmoreland and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House census subcommittee, said the panel has held hearings to make sure the penalties for census takers committing fraud are clearly defined.

"I feel fairly confident that the penalties for an individual manipulating the count are pretty severe," Chaffetz said. The penalty for any fraudulent activity can be up to five years in jail.

Westmoreland said he hopes the Census Bureau will maintain its measures to ensure an accurate report.

"I feel comfortable right now with the people at the census department that they're going to put forth their best effort to have a fair count," he said.

The U.S. Census Bureau has refuted any suggestions that ACORN or any other groups will fraudulently and unduly influence the results of the census.

"The Census (Bureau) is a nonpartisan, non-political agency and we're very dedicated to an accurate account," bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner told FOXNews.com. "We have a lot of quality controls in place to keep any kind of systemic error or fraudulent behavior to affect the counts."

Buckner said the bureau received an overwhelming number of qualified applicants -- more than 1 million -- for the 140,000 census taker jobs filled to complete the first phase of the effort. Each applicant, he said, must take a basic skills exam, which includes reading a map and entering data into a handheld computer. Applicants are also subject to an FBI background check, he said.

But Buckner acknowledged that it is difficult to track an applicant's political background.

"I have no way of tracking any of that information," he said. "If somebody comes in to a position with a political agenda and their work exhibits that, there are rules against that," he said.

Buckner stressed the need for organizations like ACORN to assist in the effort, saying that "any group that has a grassroots organization that can help get the word out that we have jobs" is helpful.

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau had 140,000 partnerships from "national organizations to local and community organizations to elected officials," he said. "The list is as broad as the phone book."

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Feb-10, by John Fund:

Why Obama Wants Control of the Census
Counting citizens is a powerful political tool.

President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to "restore science to its rightful place" in government. That's a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn't think it would mean having the director of next year's Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. "There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement," a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. "And it's called politics, not science."

The decision was made last week after California Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Hispanic groups complained to the White House that Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire slated to head Commerce, couldn't be trusted to conduct a complete Census. The National Association of Latino Officials said it had "serious questions about his willingness to ensure that the 2010 Census produces the most accurate possible count."

Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. "If the original numbers aren't as hard as possible, the uses they're put to get fuzzier and fuzzier," says Bruce Chapman, who was director of the Census in the 1980s.

Mr. Chapman worries about a revival of the effort led by minority groups after the 2000 Census to adjust the totals for states and cities using statistical sampling and computer models. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Department of Commerce v. U.S. House that sampling could not be used to reapportion congressional seats. But it left open the possibility that sampling could be used to redraw political boundaries within the states.

Such a move would prove controversial. "Sampling potentially has the kind of margin of error an opinion poll has and the same subjectivity a voter-intent standard in a recount has," says Mr. Chapman.

Starting in 2000, the Census Bureau conducted three years of studies with the help of many outside statistical experts. According to then Census director Louis Kincannon, the Bureau concluded that "adjustment based on sampling didn't produce improved figures" and could damage Census credibility.

The reason? In theory, statisticians can identify general numbers of people missed in a head count. But it cannot then place those abstract "missing people" into specific neighborhoods, let alone blocks. And anyone could go door to door and find out such people don't exist. There can be other anomalies. "The adjusted numbers told us the head count had overcounted the number of Indians on reservations," Mr. Kincannon told me. "That made no sense."

The problem of counting minorities and the homeless has long been known. Census Bureau statisticians believe that a vigorous hard count, supplemented by adding in the names of actual people missed by head counters but still found in public records, is likely to lead to a far more defensible count than sampling-based adjustment.

The larger debate prompted seven former Census directors -- serving every president from Nixon to George W. Bush -- to sign a letter last year supporting a bill to turn the Census Bureau into an independent agency after the 2010 Census. "It is vitally important that the American public have confidence that the census results have been produced by an independent, non-partisan, apolitical, and scientific Census Bureau," it read.

The directors also noted that "each of us experienced times when we could have made much more timely and thorough responses to Congressional requests and oversight if we had dealt directly with Congress." The bill's chief sponsor is New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents Manhattan's Upper East Side.

"The real issue is who directs the Census, the pros or the pols," says Mr. Chapman. "You would think an administration that's thumping its chest about respecting science would show a little respect for scientists in the statistical field." He worries that a Census director reporting to a hyperpartisan such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel increases the chances of a presidential order that would override the consensus of statisticians.

The Obama administration is downplaying how closely the White House will oversee the Census Bureau. But Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insists there is "historical precedent" for the Census director to be "working closely with the White House."

It would be nice to know what Sen. Gregg thinks about all this, but he's refusing comment. And that, says Mr. Chapman, the former Census director, is damaging his credibility. "He will look neutered with oversight of the most important function of his department over the next two years shipped over to the West Wing," he says. "If I were him, I wouldn't take the job unless I had that changed."

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jan-31, by Peter Berkowitz:

Bush Hatred and Obama Euphoria Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

Now that George W. Bush has left the harsh glare of the White House and Barack Obama has settled into the highest office in the land, it might be reasonable to suppose that Bush hatred and Obama euphoria will begin to subside. Unfortunately, there is good reason to doubt that the common sources that have nourished these dangerous political passions will soon lose their potency.

At first glance, Bush hatred and Obama euphoria could not be more different. Hatred of Mr. Bush went well beyond the partisan broadsides typical of democratic politics. For years it disfigured its victims with open, indeed proud, loathing for the very manner in which Mr. Bush walked and talked. It compelled them to denounce the president and his policies as not merely foolish or wrong or contrary to the national interest, but as anathema to everything that made America great.

In contrast, the euphoria surrounding Mr. Obama's run for president conferred upon the candidate immunity from criticism despite his newness to national politics and lack of executive experience, and regardless of how empty his calls for change. At the same time, it inspired those in its grips, repeatedly bringing them tears of joy throughout the long election season. With Mr. Obama's victory in November and his inauguration last week, it suffused them with a sense that not only had the promise of America at last been redeemed but that the world could now be transfigured.

In fact, Bush hatred and Obama euphoria -- which tend to reveal more about those who feel them than the men at which they are directed -- are opposite sides of the same coin. Both represent the triumph of passion over reason. Both are intolerant of dissent. Those wallowing in Bush hatred and those reveling in Obama euphoria frequently regard those who do not share their passion as contemptible and beyond the reach of civilized discussion. Bush hatred and Obama euphoria typically coexist in the same soul. And it is disproportionately members of the intellectual and political class in whose souls they flourish.

To be sure, democratic debate has always been a messy affair in which passion threatens to overwhelm reason. So long as citizens remain free and endowed with a diversity of interests and talents, it will remain so.

In October 1787, amid economic crisis and widespread fears about the new nation's ability to defend itself, Alexander Hamilton, in the first installment of what was to become the Federalist Papers, surveyed the formidable obstacles to giving the newly crafted Constitution a fair hearing. Some would oppose it, Hamilton observed, out of fear that ratification would diminish their wealth and power. Others would reject it because they hoped to profit from the political disarray that would ensue. The opposition of still others was rooted in "the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears."

Indeed, the best of men, Hamilton acknowledged, were themselves all-too-vulnerable to forming ill-considered political opinions: "So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes, which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions, of the first magnitude to society."

In surveying the impediments to bringing reason to bear in politics, it was not Hamilton's aim to encourage despair over democracy's prospects but to refine political expectations. "This circumstance, if duly attended to," he counseled, "would furnish a lesson of moderation to those, who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right, in any controversy."

As Hamilton would have supposed, the susceptibility of political judgment to corruption by interest and ambition is as operative in our time as it was in his. What has changed is that those who, by virtue of their education and professional training, would have once been the first to grasp Hamilton's lesson of moderation are today the leading fomenters of immoderation.

Bush hatred and Obama euphoria are particularly toxic because they thrive in and have been promoted by the news media, whose professional responsibility, it has long been thought, is to gather the facts and analyze their significance, and by the academy, whose scholarly training, it is commonly assumed, reflects an aptitude for and dedication to systematic study and impartial inquiry.

From the avalanche of vehement and ignorant attacks on Bush v. Gore and the oft-made and oft-refuted allegation that the Bush administration lied about WMD in Iraq, to the remarkable lack of interest in Mr. Obama's career in Illinois politics and the determined indifference to his wrongness about the surge, wide swaths of the media and the academy have concentrated on stoking passions rather than appealing to reason.

Some will speculate that the outbreak of hatred and euphoria in our politics is the result of the transformation of left-liberalism into a religion, its promulgation as dogma by our universities, and students' absorption of their professors' lesson of immoderation. This is unfair to religion.

At least it's unfair to those forms of biblical faith that teach that God's ways are hidden and mysterious, that all human beings are both deserving of respect and inherently flawed, and that it is idolatry to invest things of this world -- certainly the goods that can be achieved through politics -- with absolute value. Through these teachings, biblical faith encourages skepticism about grand claims to moral and political authority and an appreciation of the limits of one's knowledge, both of which well serve liberal democracy.

In contrast, by assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life. It is not that our universities invest the fundamental principles of liberalism with religious meaning -- after all the Declaration of Independence identifies a religious root of our freedom and equality. Rather, they infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers.

Consequently, though Bush hatred may weaken as the 43rd president minds his business back home in Texas, and while Obama euphoria may fade as the 44th president is compelled to immerse himself in the daunting ambiguities of power, our universities will continue to educate students to believe that hatred and euphoria reflect political wisdom. Urgent though the problem is, not even the efficient and responsible spending of a $1 trillion stimulus package would begin to address it.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jan-15, by Daniel Henninger:

Bush and the Libby Pardon

As the curtain closes on the presidency of George W. Bush, the one loose end dangling is the pardon of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. In 2007 Mr. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Let us be clear about the Bush legacy. After September 11, not a year into Mr. Bush's term, his became a war presidency. George Bush's place in history will turn on what becomes of Iraq and al Qaeda. If Iraq fails, history will mark down the Bush presidency. If by fits and starts Iraq grows into the Middle East's first large, functioning democratic republic, a more likely result, the Bush presidency will be one of the great building blocks of the new century's political order.

In his final press conference Monday, Mr. Bush described the disarray after the airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field: "People were hauled in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, 'How come you didn't know this that or the other?'"

The Bush team righted itself and assembled a tough response to the attack: the assault on the terror strongholds of Afghanistan and the Patriot Act. Then, in astonishingly short order, the political unity of 9/11 dissolved. Mr. Bush and his team found themselves embattled by the opposition party, much of the Beltway press corps and a leaking national-security bureaucracy. The goal of the domestic opposition was to thwart the Bush antiterror policy, or take down the people shaping it.

Scooter Libby is the most notable casualty of the domestic war that ran alongside the global war on terror.

In my many years of writing about Washington's politics, I thought that the Plame affair, its long, mad hunt for the leaker, and then the Libby trial, was one of the most fantastic, preposterous events I've ever watched.

A Washington press corps for whom leaks have become the oxygen of life spent three years writing about who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak. Of all the serious and genuinely damaging leaks during the Bush presidency, this was the only one the press chased. Why? This one was different. This leaker was thought to be a top Bush aide, perhaps even the vice president. Once named, this aide could be demolished by a prosecution.

That proved true. Scooter Libby was demolished.

Nominally the legal case was about the wheels of a prosecution in motion. Indeed by its end the details of the case against Mr. Libby had burned down to a travesty. But make no mistake. The effort that went into keeping the Plame affair alive was about discrediting the war effort in Iraq and the Bush antiterror program.

To the extent the Libby prosecution distracted the White House staff, consumed its working hours, eroded personal savings on lawyers, and inevitably pitted the president's aides against each other, the strategy worked. The domestic opposition didn't deter George Bush. But like any tireless pack, it hurt him and it hurt his goals.

I often wonder what the Bush presidency would have been like without 9/11. I wonder as well about the unhinged antipathy that grew against this president. For his own part, Mr. Bush clearly decided that his obligation was to exercise the powers of the presidency with as much will and wisdom as he could muster after that murderous attack.

The president's pardon authority is embedded with clarity in our spare Constitution. Alexander Hamilton argued it should reside with "a single man of prudence and good sense."

I think there is a good legal argument for the Libby pardon, but others have done that well, making a credible case that he in fact is innocent. But there is another dimension to this that deserves consideration.

Washington is on thin ice. The American people could not be more disgusted than they are with the tenor and conduct of politics in Washington. The long Libby case was more muck. When the vice president's chief of staff was convicted, financially ruined and professionally destroyed on the basis of a conversation, my first thought was, this is going to make it hard to attract the best people to serve in Washington.

Why wouldn't the spouse of anyone offered a similar job argue that if the system can let a Scooter Libby wash over the falls for this, the price is just too high. "You aren't going to put our family's future at this much risk. We won't serve. We can't."

Yes, a pardon would set the anti-Bush chorus to howling. So? They've done plenty to turn the city into a viper's nest.

George Washington, in his farewell address, warned against the destructive force of party rancor. Something like that is at stake here again. Serious people in our politics, Republicans and Democrats, would understand that a Bush pardon of Scooter Libby is mainly about closing some of the worst wounds of these long war years. And about giving the nation a chance at refinding that lost unity.

These were hard years, and required hard decisions. It's time to let Scooter Libby get back to work. Like the rest of Washington.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Jan-29, by Daniel Henninger:

The Geithner Exception

Had he been judged under the current code of political justice, Timothy Geithner would be home in New York, phoning old IMF friends for a job. Instead, the former tax scofflaw is U.S. Treasury Secretary. Call it the Geithner Exception. I'm for it. Before it fades from memory, Mr. Geithner's near-death experience deserves a closer look.

Working inside American politics is coming to resemble Stalinist Russia. In good standing one day, party loyalists or public officials can find themselves the next day taking a random bullet. How low the bar has fallen for summary execution became apparent during the presidential campaign.

In March, Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power was quoted by a newspaper in nearby Scotland calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." The Obama campaign immediately threw her out the window. Cowed and numbed, no one in politics raised an objecting peep at the absurd disproportion.

Next, Mrs. Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn was put on a train to the gulag. Remember why? Time's up. For going to a meeting at the Colombia Embassy in his role as head of Burson-Marsteller. Under Washington rules, this was sufficient to decapitate the Clinton campaign.

More serious was the elimination of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. After a media show trial that lasted several weeks, Mr. Wolfowitz lost his job running the Bank because apparatchiks inside concocted an ethics violation.

Judged by standards such as these, Tim Geithner -- a non-taxpaying Treasury Secretary -- should be toast.

Beyond these mockeries of useful standards lies Washington's double standard. Mr. Geithner is being waved through even as Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Carl Levin push their Orwellian "truth commissions" to put high Bush administration officials in the criminal dock. At this level of the game, an official doesn't just lose his job, comrade; he loses everything.

The just-issued Conyers report on "Reining in the Imperial Presidency" calls on the new Obama administration to "begin an independent criminal review (my emphasis) of activities of the outgoing administration, such as enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and domestic warrantless surveillance." As prelude, the House last February voted contempt of Congress against Bush White House officials Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers and referred them for prosecution.

Some may argue that a Tim Geithner or Eric Holder deserves no more quarter than the Democratic opposition has given former Justice Department official John Yoo or the other targets of the Democrats' calls for "criminal" prosecution of former government officials and CIA interrogators.

Others will say this is the normal rough and tumble of politics. It is not. It is more insidious than that. The system is on a downward spiral in which the notion that a sitting American government should be able to function is irrelevant.

Washington is falling to the level of a Web-based video game. Everyone is expendable. Treasury secretaries and presidential advisers are a dime a dozen. Put differently: The job-protected and gerrymandered lifers are driving out the competition. More often than not, Washington's worst people are destroying its better people.

In his report, Mr. Conyers cites a catalogue of good-government laws that flowed out of Richard Nixon's impeachment: the Federal Campaign Finance Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Independent Counsel Act, the Ethics in Government Act, and the Presidential Records Act.

Whatever the original rationale for such laws, the rankest impulses in politics soon turned them into weapons to take down officials in a government one can't overthrow by other means. You could fill the whole House chamber with men and women who since Watergate have been driven out and bankrupted by them. Criminalizing policy differences has become the modern version of bills of attainder.

President Obama has to decide whether to pursue prosecutions of former Bush officials, especially the CIA's terror interrogators. He must realize that the exterminating angels, who come in two colors -- blue and red -- are ready to chase down him and his appointees.

Thus arrives the Geithner Exception. Getting to be Treasury secretary may be more than Mr. Geithner deserves. This is an opportunity, though, to admit that giving someone's government a chance to function, assuming that's any longer possible, is a greater public good than witch-burning. Amid an economic crisis, the new president said Mr. Geithner had his confidence. Now he has him. Let voters and the markets judge their performance, not the phony and ruinous moral outrage of the Beltway.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Nov-17, by Bret Stephens:

'No Excuses' for Liberals

"I make no excuses, I only wear them." Remember that? It was the pitch made by Donna Rice for a pair of tight-fitting stonewashed jeans some 20 years ago. Too bad the brand is long gone, since we're at yet another No Excuses moment in American politics.

Specifically: a liberal No Excuses moment. With the election of Barack Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress, liberals must now practice something other than the politics of nostalgia and what-if.

This is a politics that has been in the making since at least 1968, though its real origins probably go back to 1944 and the first great liberal what-if: What if an ailing FDR had died nine months earlier, and been succeeded by the great progressive icon and polymath (and original moonbeam), then Vice President Henry Wallace?

In that case, perhaps, desegregation would have happened sooner, universal health care would be with us today, and the "century of fear" that Wallace predicted as the outcome of the Truman Doctrine would have been avoided by means of a more conciliatory policy toward the Soviet Union.

From that moment on, the liberal what-ifs multiply in dizzying profusion. What if John F. Kennedy had dodged the bullet in Dallas and lived to get the U.S. out of Vietnam before it fully got into it? What if Robert F. Kennedy had dodged the bullet in L.A. five years later? What if Jimmy Carter hadn't been so earnest, truthful and unlucky? What if Ronald Reagan hadn't proved such an adept political mythmaker? What if Donna Rice hadn't been pictured on Gary Hart's lap? What if Willie Horton hadn't been given a furlough? What if Bill Clinton hadn't squandered his political gifts with cheap trysts? What if Bush v. Gore had gone 5-4 the other way? What if 9/11 hadn't intervened to give the Bush administration its mandate for another bout of the politics of fear? What if John Kerry hadn't been sandbagged by Osama bin Laden's last-minute video intervention?

This liberal narrative of its own near-misses, bad luck and tragic interventions of fate is supplemented by a parallel liberal tale of unbridled conservative malevolence. Republicans may be the stupid party, but they've been fortunate in their evil political geniuses -- Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove -- all of whom have succeeded in bamboozling the public into voting against its own economic interests.

As for conservative electoral successes, these are explained almost entirely as a function of political dirty tricks (cf. "October Surprise") jingoism (Star Wars, Grenada et al.) and racism ("Southern strategy"). "The legacy of slavery, America's original sin, is the reason we're the only advanced economy that doesn't guarantee health care to our citizens," writes Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in "The Conscience of a Liberal." Who knew that a straight line connects the ideas of Jefferson Davis and Milton Friedman?

(Only lately has this history been turned on its head, so that liberal pundits now bemoan the passing of those great conservative ideas men who presumably are crying tears in heaven over the GOP's capture by the likes of Sarah Palin.)

The upshot of all this has been an amazing lack of introspection among the frequently wronged, but never wrong, liberal American hard core. Politically, this hasn't yielded such great results: The number of Americans who self-identify as liberals continues to fall, to 21% in 2008 from 22% in 2004, according to CNN. (The number of self-identified conservatives held steady at 34%.) Then again, without that hard core Mr. Obama's primary triumphs would never have been possible.

Now the long wait is over, and the liberal ship has come in. In Mr. Obama, liberals have a president who seems to have stepped out of the last episodes of the West Wing. He has the Congress in his left pocket, the news media in his right pocket (or is it the other way around?), and he floats on a tide of unprecedented international enthusiasm. The Republican Party has no obvious standard-bearer, as it did in Ronald Reagan after Gerald Ford's defeat in 1976. It could well spend the next four years, or eight, tearing itself to pieces.

Instead, the only things that stand in Mr. Obama's path are what Marxists like to call "objective factors": the financial crisis, the mess in Detroit, the disposing of Guantanamo detainees, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russian hostility, Chinese assertiveness, maybe the disintegration of Pakistan.

Mr. Obama will get, and deserves, a period of political grace. Let's say a year. After that, it will become increasingly difficult to attribute whatever mistakes he makes to the legacy of his predecessor. American liberalism, such as it is, is finally being put to the test that fate has denied it these last many decades. Succeed or fail, this time there can be no excuses.

from Zogby International, 2008-Nov-18:

Zogby Poll: Almost No Obama Voters Ace Election Test

Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden

UTICA, New York -- Just 2% of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Only 54% of Obama voters were able to answer at least half or more of the questions correctly.

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film "Blocking the Path to 9/11" and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.

"We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion." - John Zogby

"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign. An answer of "none" or "Palin" was counted as a correct answer on the test, given that the statement was associated with a characterization of Palin.

Obama voters did not fare nearly as well overall when asked to answer questions about statements or stories associated with Obama or Biden -- 83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President.

In addition to questions regarding statements and scandals associated with the campaigns, the 12-question, multiple-choice survey also included a question asking which political party controlled both houses of Congress leading up to the election -- 57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

For content, contact: John Ziegler at talktozig@aol.com.

For more information on Ziegler's upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected, please visit www.HowObamaGotElected.com, where there is a video of Obama voters on election day being asked many of the same questions.

For methodology, contact: Fritz Wenzel, 315-624-0200 ext. 229 or 419-205-0287 or fritz@zogby.com.

To view the survey results, please visit http://www.zogby.com/news/wf-dfs.pdf.

(11/18/2008)

from NewsBusters, 2008-Nov-14, by Scott Whitlock:

ABC's Chris Cuomo Hits Ayers on Bombings; Skips Specific Victims

In part two of "Good Morning America's" Friday interview with former bomber William Ayers, news anchor Chris Cuomo did challenge the ex-'60s radical on whether or not he was a terrorist. But after Ayers contended, "It's not terrorism because it doesn't target people. It doesn't target people to either kill or injure," the journalist failed to offer specifics that would refute that point. [And even this NewsBusters article fails to point out the absurdity of the premise that political violence can't be called “terrorism” if it's restricted to destruction of property. -AMPP Ed.] Cuomo could have easily cited the example of John Murtagh. He was a child in 1970 when the Weather Underground, founded by Mr. Ayers, placed multiple bombs, one underneath the gas tank of the family car, at the home of his New York judge father.

In a New York Daily News op-ed on April 30, 2008, Murtagh wrote, "I was only 9 then, the year Ayers' Weathermen tried to murder me." However, while not pressing Ayers on specific victims, he did skeptically wonder, "How can a sophisticated academic like yourself believe that the inherent recklessness of exploding bombs that you know too well killed three of your own- you know the potential for deadliness there."

Although he didn't press the point that the Weather Underground tried to harm specific people, Cuomo should be credited for grilling Ayers over the bomber's insistence that he's not a terrorist. At one point, Cuomo retorted, "How is what you did there, blowing up, detonating a bomb in the Pentagon, the New York Police Department headquarters, trying to target the Capitol. How is that not terrorism?"

Finally, Cuomo actually addressed the fact that the Weather Underground dedicated its 1974 manifesto "The Prairie Fire" to Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Cuomo questioned, "I mean, what message does that send? Especially if you don't reject it today and say, 'We praised Sirhan Sirhan. We should not have.'" This prompted Ayers to admit, "I reject that. Absolutely."

An analysis of part one of Cuomo's interview can be found here.

A transcript of part two of the interview, which aired at 7:42am on November 14, follows:

ROBIN ROBERTS: Also this morning, we have more of Chris's exclusive interview with Bill Ayers, the '60s radical who Republicans once called Barack Obama's terrorist pal. We will have more of that interview straight ahead.

SAWYER: That's right. He is speaking out this morning. And in this half hour, talking about some of the statements that were attributed to him that created such polarized and angry reactions.

7:42

CHRIS CUOMO: We are joined again now by William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, a group that during the '70s claimed responsibility for at least a dozen bombings, including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. His relationship with President-elect Barack Obama, of course, became an issue during the campaign. He is the author of "Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist" which has just been reissued with a new afterword in paperback. There it is. Mr. Ayers, thanks for joining us again. Why re-release "Fugitive Days" now?

WILLIAM AYERS: You know, that's really a publisher's decision, not my decision. But, I wrote the book eight years ago and I wrote it in part to try to understand what it meant to be a young person set down in that historic period, a person from tremendous privilege and making my way through the world and, kind of, the choices I made.

CUOMO: But the timing becomes relevant. You know, because-

AYERS: I'm sorry?

CUOMO: The timing becomes relevant coming out of the election. You didn't want to come out during the election?

AYERS: Well, no one predicted the attention I would get in the election. I mean, this was not a decision based on that at all.

CUOMO: But you talk about the issues that happen there in the new afterward of the book. Do you regret not coming out during the election and saying, "There's nothing here?"

AYERS: Well, the premise of the whole come-on to this segment, that I've been silent is just not true. I've been teaching. I've been writing. I've been doing all the things I always do. But I did decide not to comment to the media on the presidential campaign, because, again, I felt that I would be feeding a profoundly dishonest narrative and I didn't really want to participate in that. So, I didn't see any way to interrupt it. And since I couldn't interrupt it, I decided to just wait until it passed. And, you know, I think that the dishonesty of it kind of runs to the point of, like, I was somehow in hiding. One of my sons sent me a segment from some 24 hour news outfit and they acted as if they had stalked me down and found me in hiding. Just not true. I was doing the things I always do.

CUOMO: Now, this book, the ideas in it, with perspective on Barack Obama. You ever talk to him about what's in "Fugitive Days."

AYERS: Never.

CUOMO: He ever ask you about it?

AYERS: Never.

CUOMO: Is that unusual for you that being William Ayers and being in the Chicago area that somebody talks to you and doesn't talk to you about your past?

AYERS: I've written seven books. I've edited another 13 and mostly what I talk about is schools and kids and juvenile justice as you know. And those are the things that my work focuses on. And the fact that I have this past is of little interest. And when you say the fact that you're Bill Ayers, that character was created in this election.

CUOMO: Well, he exists because of what happened. I mean, one of the interesting things about this book is that while it provides perspective about that period in history, dismisses the notion that your actions were heroic, expresses your doubts but not an apology or a complete rejection of what happened during those years, the bombings.

AYERS: Well, you know, again, I think you have to read this as a memoir, not as a manifesto, not even as a history. But the reason that I undertook it actually was because- and, remember, I wrote it- it was published in 2001, so I wrote it in the two years leading up to it. But, I had enough distance from it that I felt that I could say something about it. But I wrote it as a memoir, as a way of, kind of, understanding a ten year period in our history. And I thought it was relevant then. I think it's more relevant now and the reason it is, is because we are once again bogged down in two wars. And if you add Israel/Palestine, that's a third major conflict. And, and we don't seem to as a democracy-we don't seem to be able to figure out how to assert the public will and bring these things to an end. I think people want these wars to end. And I think they should.

CUOMO: Isn't that all the more reason for you to take a look back and reject what the Weather Underground is?

AYERS: Well, there's nothing in there that's- there's an attempt to understand the things we did. You know, here we were in a situation where, really, a violent terrorist war was being waged against an entire population. We objected. We tried to end that war. And in trying to end it, we did cross lines of propriety, of legality, maybe even of common sense. But we never committed terror.

CUOMO: Why not? I really- I have a tough time understanding this. How is what you did there, blowing up, detonating a bomb in the Pentagon, the New York Police Department headquarters, trying to target the Capitol. How is that not terrorism?

AYERS: It's not terrorism because it doesn't target people. It doesn't target people to either kill or injure. What it does is- You could call it-

CUOMO: How can a sophisticated academic like yourself believe that the inherent recklessness of exploding bombs that you know too well killed three of your own- you know the potential for deadliness there.

AYERS: Right. It was definitely over lots of lines. Definitely dangerous and had we killed or injured anyone, I'm sure it would have been devastating for everyone. Them and us. But my point is that in a period when 2000 people a week are being murdered, how do you end that? What do you do? And, frankly, in those ten years of that war, I was arrested many times. I took direct, non-violent action again and again. But, the question comes, after 70 percent of America oppose the war, after the war has been virtually lost, how do you end it? What do you do? And there's nothing in the book that says what we did was either brilliant or heroic or wonderful. It tries to understand, as memoirs do, the context in which that actor was acting.

CUOMO: But you would think that looking forward, you would want to set a table for people in addressing the current situations that didn't expose the violence. I mean, even looking back in the 1974 manifesto of "The Prairie Fire," of the Weather Underground, one of the people you dedicate this book to is Sirhan Sirhan. I mean, what message does that send? Especially if you don't reject it today and say, "We praised Sirhan Sirhan. We should not have."

AYERS: I reject that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

CUOMO: "We did these things. We should not have." The 9/11 quote. We should have done more. We should not have. It's wrong. It's bad."

AYERS: No, no. I disagree on the question of we should not have- we should have done more. What I'm saying there and I've said it very clearly is that no one did enough in this country to end the war. We knew it was wrong. We knew it was illegal. We knew it was immoral.

CUOMO: But going that route- but going that route, violence-

AYERS: Again, I don't defend the route we went and I really urge people to participate in resistance, non-violent direct action to these wars. I don't urge violence at all. But, let's admit that we live, often, in a sewer of violence and opposing that violence is key.

CUOMO: Mr. Ayers, thank you very much for taking the opportunity today. The book is "Fugitive Days."

—Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center.

from Agence France-Presse, 2008-Oct-25:

Anti abortion bombs not terrorism: Palin

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has accused Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists", has refused to call people who bomb abortion clinics by the same name.

When asked by NBC television presenter Brian Williams whether an abortion clinic bomber was a terrorist, Palin heaved a sigh and, at first, circumvented the question.

"There's no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist," Palin said, referring to a 1960s leftist who founded a radical violent gang dubbed the "Weathermen" - and who years later supported Obama's first run for public office in the state of Illinois.

"Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to ... I don't know if you're gonna use the word 'terrorist' there," the ardently pro-life running mate of John McCain said.

Early this month, after the New York Times ran an article highlighting the ties between Obama and Ayers, Palin told a campaign rally in Colorado that Obama "sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country".

Attacks on doctors who practice abortion and on family planning clinics in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s left several people dead and scores wounded.

Eric Rudolph, the extreme right winger who planted a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, which killed one person, was sentenced three years ago to two life terms in jail for an abortion clinic bombing in Alabama in which a policeman was killed.

from the ATF, 2008-Dec-15:

PRESS RELEASE

ATF Joins Church Arson Investigation

WASILLA, Ala., Dec 15, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Acting Special Agent in Charge Douglas R. Dawson, Seattle Field Division, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) today announced that agents from the Anchorage Field Office joined the Wasilla Bible Church arson investigation.

On Dec. 13, 2008, the Central Mat-Su Fire Department and the Alaska State Fire Marshals Office contacted ATF Anchorage Field Office and requested assistance in investigating the fire that occurred on Dec. 12. The on-site investigation revealed an ignitable accelerant that had been poured on and around the exterior of the church in multiple locations, to include the entrances and exits. Evidence recovered from the fire scene was collected and retained by members of the Alaska State Crime Laboratory. The initial damage to the structure is estimated at about $500,000. No injuries have been reported.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been known to attend this church in the past. Governor Palin and her family attended the church the Sunday before her selection as the Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate.

"ATF will continue to work diligently alongside our local partners and will make every effort to find the person or persons responsible for this fire," said Dawson. "Most importantly, there were no injuries or deaths related to this incident."

This is an ongoing, joint investigation with the Central Mat-Su Fire Department, the Anchorage Fire Department, the Wasilla Police Department and the State Fire Marshals Office.

More information on ATF and its programs can be found at www.atf.gov.
CONTACT: SA Nick Starcevic, PIO, +1-206-389-5904
SOURCE Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

http://www.atf.gov

from the Chicago Tribune, 2008-Nov-13, by John Kass:

Tolerance fails T-shirt test

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

"Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said.

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment.

"I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said.

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

That's when you know America is truly supportive of diversity of opinion, when children must whisper for fear of being ostracized, heckled and crucifixed.

The next day, in part 2 of The Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment, she wore another T-shirt, this one with "Obama Girl" written in blue. And an amazing thing happened.

Catherine wasn't very stupid anymore. She grew brains.

"People liked my shirt. They said things like my brain had come back, and I had put the right shirt on today," Catherine said.

Some students accused her of playing both sides.

"A lot of people liked it. But some people told me I was a flip-flopper," she said. "They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "

But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."

Catherine never told us which candidate she would have voted for if she weren't an 8th grader. But she said she learned what it was like to be in the minority.

"Just being on the outside, how it felt, it was not fun at all," she said.

Don't ever feel as if you must conform, Catherine. Being on the outside isn't so bad. Trust me.

from the Chicago Tribune, 2008-Nov-14, by John Kass:

Girl's lesson: Bias, like shirts, picked out at home

Catherine Vogt—the brave 8th grader who used a T-shirt test to find out about political tolerance in Obamaland—is something of a celebrity now, thanks to you readers of this column.

By the time you read this, she will have already finished a round of TV and radio interviews, including a PBS spot for a Philadelphia station. It's all somewhat unsettling for a 14-year-old girl who had important high school entrance exams Thursday and a tryout for "The Music Man" at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School in Oak Park.

"Well, a lot of people came up to me and told me that they saw me in the paper, and my teacher told me that a lot of people were telling her 'Way to go, way to support your student' and everything," Catherine told me Thursday. "It's been very exciting and hectic too."

The Catherine Vogt Experiment on Diversity of Thought took place before the presidential election. She shared her idea secretly with her history teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney.

Catherine wore a McCain shirt one day and secretly recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The next day, she wore an Obama shirt and also recorded the comments.

Her findings?

When she wore the McCain shirt, she was stupid and was told to go die. One kid said she should be "crucifixed," which should prompt outrage from that student's grammar/lit teacher. Crucifixed?

One student whispered—perhaps like Winston Smith in "1984"—"I really like your shirt." But she said it quietly so no one else would hear and denounce her.

And when Catherine wore the Obama shirt? Her brains grew back and she was smart again and welcomed into polite society.

Since many liberal journalists live in Oak Park, I expect to receive many snarky reviews. My crime? I dared to illustrate, through the actions of a brave 8th-grade girl, that even high-minded liberal communities can be intolerant, no matter how many times parents gush on about "diversity" at their cocktail parties.

So much for the audacity of hope.

But it's also true that if Catherine lived in a beet-red community and wore an Obama shirt, she'd get a similar negative, intolerant and ugly reaction. And certainly some Republican children would outrage their grammar/lit teachers by wanting her crucifixed as well.

All such outrage is predictable. Whether red or blue or right or left, many adults don't get it. But Catherine Vogt sure gets it: Children learn their politics from their parents.

A kid doesn't learn to love Democrats or hate Republicans or vice versa by reading editorials. You can't blame this one on bloggers or "Grand Theft Auto." You can't even blame Fitty Cent or however he incorrectly spells his own stage name.

Many parents in Oak Park and elsewhere want their kids to figure out things for themselves. Others only want a mirror for their own tribalism. Parents, Catherine told me, "are actually a pretty big influence on kids. They take a lot of what's home to school."

At school Thursday in Ms. Cassin-Pountney's class, they discussed Catherine's experiment and my column.

"The students were mostly shocked because when they read it they kind of figured it out. They were like, 'Oh, I actually said that thing to her and now—I'm not mentioned—but I'm actually in the paper for saying something mean?' "

She said her classmates tried to determine whether she cracked and gave up their names to me, but because she's not a Chicago machine politician under federal indictment, she didn't have to name names.

"They were all like, 'So who did you mention and what did you say?' But I didn't give out any names," she said.

There were some rough patches on Thursday. The phone rang off the hook at home. She had her big tests and that tryout. And her parents—liberal Democratic mom and conservative Republican dad—had to run down to school to stave off an impromptu imposition of the Fairness Doctrine.

"Some parents were upset that one teacher remarked about her shirt. And other parents were upset that the experiment was conducted in the first place, and didn't go through 'proper channels,' " said Catherine's mom, Pamela Webster.

"So we rushed down to school to say we were backing the principal and all the teachers and not to make a big thing of it," she said. "It was just crazy. There was no crime committed here."

Not even a thought crime?

"No," she said. "We support the principal and the school. Let this be a way for students and teachers to discuss the issue. That's what we want in our home, not indoctrination but discussion."

Catherine still won't say whether she's a Democrat or a Republican.

"I still have four years to pick a guy or a woman," she said of the presidential election in 2012, which will be her first. "I've still got four more years. Then I can decide."

Catherine says she doesn't want to become a lawyer, but perhaps a surgeon. Either way, this week, she was a great teacher.

Thank you, Catherine.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Nov-5, by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro:

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace
What must our enemies be thinking?

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

from the Daily Mail of London, 2008-Nov-1, by Peter Hitchens:

The Zombie and the Third-World Marxist ... How the American West views the presidential race

Moscow, Idaho -- They tell me that about one person in 50 on the streets of Moscow, Idaho, is legally carrying a concealed pistol. A lot more have them in their cars. I rather approve of this, though I don't think I'll join in.

Many of those packing heat are women combining a hard, practical feminism with a conservative view of the right to bear arms.

The important thing is that you don't know who is armed and who isn't, and nor do potential rapists and muggers. I am sure this arrangement improves everyone's manners no end.

It is certainly a very polite place and shoot-outs here are a good deal rarer than they are in gun-controlled London or Manchester.

As America approaches her most momentous presidential election for decades, I am in the True (but not specially Wild) West, the top left-hand corner of the United States, a hard-core Republican state that most visitors only fly over.

They think it's dull. How wrong they are.

This extraordinary, divided little city, enfolded in low, fertile hills, is America in miniature - split down the middle, Left versus Right, Christian versus secular, gun-owner versus gun-hater, abortion advocate versus big-family home-schooling Bible-walloper, cyclist versus gas-guzzler, Obama versus McCain - and some interesting stations both in between and beyond.

Some local liberals fear that a powerful Calvinist Church plans to turn Moscow into America's version of Iran's Holy City of Qom.

All around, in the farm and logging countryside, self-sufficient, taciturn men in pick-up trucks would rather have a head-on collision with a freight train than vote for Barack Obama.

Out in the forests and the fields of wheat, peas and lentils, Democrats are so rare they ought to be a protected species.

In Moscow - which is actually named after Moscow, Pennsylvania, not the one in Russia - there is at least a more or less evenly matched argument. But it is mostly a dialogue of the deaf.

The great Obama cult that has engulfed the Left is a sinister mystery to the other side. The Left regard their devout neighbours as glowering, fanatical ayatollahs. Yet they pass each other daily in the street, share the city council and, when the liberals aren't boycotting the conservatives, buy from each other's stores.

Well, up to a point.

From the well-stocked firearm shop on the Pullman Road, which sells everything you might need for hunting elk, felling burglars or discouraging rapists, it is a surprisingly short distance to the excellent French restaurant on Main Street, which confusingly just happens to be run by an Evangelical Christian pastor and superb cook.

The two businesses share few clients. Rigs with gun racks tend not to be clustered here but near the burger and Mexican joints further out.

On a rise overlooking the city stands this Moscow's Kremlin, the almost wholly Left-liberal University of Idaho, a tree-girt fortress of Obama-worship and political correctness. You can be pretty sure that nobody up there is carrying anything deadlier than a Marxist theory.

This institution's advertising slogan used to be: 'You can go anywhere from here.' Which is quite funny because the student who went furthest from here was Sarah Palin, the Lipsticked Pitbull herself.

And the university, which you might think would rejoice in this success, is rather quiet and shifty about her. I asked to interview the university president about his distinguished journalism-school graduate and he was politely unavailable.

But one student paraded through town last week with a placard declaring 'Sarah Palin, embarrassing Idaho University since 1987', which I suspect is a more candid expression of what the liberal professors think.

Roy Atwood, once a senior lecturer at the university, recently defected to take charge of the rival, highly conservative New St Andrew's College. He says: 'My guess is that the university is deeply embarrassed, even though she is the most important person ever to have emerged from there.'

As it happens, Roy Atwood is also the only person in Moscow who can even faintly recall the future Sarah Barracuda when she was plain Sarah Heath - he was her academic adviser.

He admits he cannot remember much. She showed few signs of what was to come.

'She was a cute little co-ed, a fresh-faced undergraduate student. She was a typical conservative student at the university in those days,' says Roy.

You might think that Mrs Palin is as beloved among Moscow conservatives as she is loathed and despised among the Left-wingers. But it is not quite like that.

The town has its share of straight-down-the-line McCainites, believers in lower taxes, military strength and even in George W. Bush, who would vote Republican even if the skies fell. And the skies are creaking, if not actually falling.

Many people here are deeply worried about retirement. Americans live closer to hard financial reality than we do in Britain. They know they must provide for themselves.

They save, invest and hope this will keep them in old age. But the Wall Street collapse has devastated their funds, visibly, immediately and painfully.

For men such as Walter Steed, an Idaho delegate to the Republican convention, the thing is to overcome their doubts and sorrows about the Bush years, from Baghdad to the bank crisis.

He admits to disappointment with John McCain: 'I wonder if he has the fire in him.'

But that doesn't matter when he is set against the alternative. 'I really don't want Obama elected. I think he is scary,' Mr Steed says, citing the many mysteries and vagueness about Obama's past.

He also made the only reference to race I heard from any Obama opponent. But it was aimed at Mrs Obama, who famously said she had not been proud of her country until her husband was successful in politics.

Mr Steed said, in words that made me sit bolt-upright: 'His wife is a very angry black woman.'

You have to wonder how many conservative whites fear in their hearts that an Obama presidency might be a sort of racial reckoning, despite Obama's carefully groomed image as a man at ease with himself and above that sort of thing.

America remains a country divided by an unofficial but potent apartheid, even 40 years after the civil-rights marches. Racial division, fear, mistrust, resentment and unresolved injustice are in the bones of this country.

Mr Steed is really an old-fashioned businessman-Republican. He is suspicious of the moral campaigns about such things as abortion (a scourge that has touched his own extended family). That is why he is reasonably content with McCain, who has never really got on with the Moral Majority.

But then, the Moral Majority don't get on with him. The Christian conservatives have begun to feel more than a little used by the Republican Party, which woos them like mad at election time and then spits on them from a great height once it is in power.

I was shocked when a respectable, conservative, professional woman suddenly snapped out the cruel, dismissive words 'John McCain is a zombie' in what had until then been a light-hearted chat about politics.

Some of the churchgoers here will vote for McCain only because he has picked Palin, whom they regard as more or less one of them. But others won't.

John Harrell, a computer expert who describes himself as a 'Biblical Conservative', thinks the Republican Party has betrayed and ignored the country's Christian constitution and is inviting divine wrath by doing so.

I was reminded when talking to him that most of England's fierce revolutionary Protestants emigrated to America centuries ago, which is why this sort of language seems strange to us, though Oliver Cromwell would have found it quite familiar.

Mr Harrell was militantly scornful of the Evangelical worshippers who continue to vote for McCain because of Sarah Palin, dismissing them as 'Evanjellyfish' and their churches as 'Girly Man Churches'.

I had a similar message from Larry Cernik, a builder and small farmer with a majestic set of whiskers, who is one of Moscow's concealed gun carriers.

He said he was tired of Republican duplicity and excuse-making. Yet he loathes Barack Obama, saying: 'He has the politics of a Third-World Marxist.'

While he personally sees McCain as a hopeless compromiser, he admits that many others like him have been charmed back into voting Republican by Palin.

He says: 'Conservative Republicans will come home to the Republican Party because of her. If McCain wins it will be because conservative Christians think there's nowhere else to go, and Obama is so bad that they will take McCain over Obama, and that will largely be thanks to Sarah Palin.'

This is presumably what McCain intended when he chose the governor of Alaska as his running mate. Such voters, themselves uninterested in policy detail or foreign affairs, are unmoved by Palin's embarrassing performance in searching interviews or the revelations about her costly wardrobe.

She is one of them and the liberal East Coast media have it in for her, which is a big point in her favour. They quite reasonably point out that while Palin is subjected to fearsome microscopic scrutiny, Obama is almost completely unknown.

And, as I find out, he is specially unknown by his own supporters. These are in general nice, civilised, organic, free-range people who speak in a political language much more like Britain's.

One such is Nels Reece, whose tastefully restored Victorian house, built by a banker in the days when banks were solid, stands on a busy corner in Moscow's idyllic middle-class suburbs.

Mr Reece, a courtly retired academic-with a Colonel Sanders moustache and Danish ancestry, has Moscow's biggest concentration of posters backing Obama sprouting on his front lawn. He usually displays a good crop of placards at election times but admits that he has never put up so many before.

He estimates that 5,000 people - a quarter of the city's population - drive or ride bikes past his house every day and the Obama campaign is specially grateful for his support.

Long ago he voted for the foredoomed, far-out Republican Barry Goldwater (who campaigned on the slogan 'In your heart, you know he's right' - to which his opponents countered 'In your guts, you know he's nuts').

But not now. Changed by many travels abroad, he regards Idaho as 'an outback place' and is dismissive about 'Joe Six-Pack', the mythical, beer-guzzling voter Sarah Palin seeks to win over.

Interestingly, the smallest and poorest house in this district (does Mr Six-Pack live there?) is the only one to display a McCain poster, alongside a placard urging 'God Bless Our Troops'.

In Moscow, the Democrats are emphatically the party of the well-off and the Republicans the party of the poor.

Mr Reece's language about Obama is almost religious. He uses words such as 'visionary' and 'inspiration'. He also says, rather frankly, that Obama is 'not too black'. But he knows little about him.

He has never heard of Tony Rezko, the Chicago businessman recently convicted of fraud and corruption, who seems to have helped Obama buy his house, and whom Obama lobbied for.

He has also never heard of John Stroger, a dreary business-as-usual Chicago machine politician whom Obama backed against a reform candidate, rather undermining his claim to be the apostle of change, and to be much of a visionary.

But he has heard of David Axelrod, the ruthless propaganda wizard, fixer and spin doctor who has been on hand during many of Obama's successes.

This knowledge puts him ahead of another deeply civilised Obama fan, Tom Lamar, a liberal member of the City Council and head of a not-for-profit environmental institute.

He hasn't heard of any of these unattractive and unvisionary figures in Obama's past and present. But despite being so weakly informed about his hero, he is an unshiftable supporter.

When I put it to him that Obama has been handled softly by the American media, Mr Lamar responded: 'I haven't really noticed any free pass. I don't feel that he is untested and unexamined.'

He even suggested that Obama had been treated worse than he would have been if he had been white.

But he was stuck for an answer when I pointed out that an effigy of Sarah Palin, complete with glasses, red dress and beehive hair, had been suspended by the neck from a noose in a Hollywood street as part of a Hallowe'en display.

Police have described this as a legitimate expression of opinion. Perhaps. Yet it is quite clear that if anyone hanged Obama in effigy, especially in the Lynching Belt of the Deep South, it would ignite a huge explosion of rage, and not be treated as 'legitimate'.

Mr Lamar retorted that McCain and Palin had wrongly whipped up mistrust of Obama at their rallies. But these were not racist attacks. In fact, they have centred largely on Obama's connection with former terrorist William Ayers - a connection first publicised by me in The Mail on Sunday in February, and mostly ignored by the pro-Obama American media for months afterwards.

Mr Lamar compared the atmosphere surrounding Obama with the fervent passion that gathered around John Kennedy in 1960. Many do.

But that, too, ended in a hundred different types of disillusion. It would have done even if Kennedy had not had a furtive and sexually greedy private life, if he had not had so many disreputable associates, if he hadn't bungled an invasion of Cuba or stumbled into the missile crisis that nearly killed everyone. No human could have borne the load of hope laid on Kennedy's shoulders.

Nor can Obama bear the burden placed on him by the swooning multitudes who chant 'Yes, we can' and prate meaninglessly about 'change'.

It is odd that politicians who have so little real power to alter or control events are so keen to promise change. Change of a bad kind is coming unstoppably anyway, as the United States reluctantly accustoms itself to its diminished status after Iraq, and its humiliating position as a debtor nation in hock to China.

As I write this, all polling suggests that Obama will win this election. It could be wrong. I have seen many Democrats mistakenly declared winners by America's Left-wing media (and their equivalents in Britain).

But I suspect that this time the polls are right. If they are, I think it will be mainly because so many Americans are aching to feel good about themselves after years of being despised for the Iraq War and the Bush follies.

They have seen in Obama's sonorous but deeply phoney rhetoric a snake-oil cure for their sickness of heart. Against all evidence and experience, they want this cure to work. So they are passionately uninterested in - and often hostile to - anyone who delves into Obama's real past.

On Tuesday we shall see a festival of self-deception, which will last for as long as it takes for this curious mass delusion to come into cold contact with the real world.

Then there will be disappointment as vast as the hope that bred it, and yet another great bruising blow to the whole idea of government for, of and by the people.

from PajamasMedia.com, 2008-Oct-31, by Phyllis Chesler:

Fonda Is Weeping, Jong Is In Spasm: Pre-Election Psycho-Somatic Hysteria.

I have gone on record as an author, a therapist, a professor, an expert courtroom witness–and an activist to document and oppose the ways in which false psychiatric diagnoses are used to stigmatize, even demonize people. But, I’ve never denied that mental illness exists. On the contrary. It is a formidable enemy and causes great human suffering.

Still, I am uncertain about how to describe certain political “crowd” behaviors that might be characterized as “mad,” cult-like, hysterical. In the Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami, quotes Elias Cannetti’s 1960 work about Crowds and Power. Cannetti believes that marching together gives people the “illusion of equality.” But Ajami views American pro-Obama crowds as behaving more and more like crowds on the Arab Street, with huge emotionality and faith in a Great Leader. Ajami states that the “politics of charisma wrecked Arab and Muslim societies.”

There are important reasons to vote for Obama and important reasons to vote for McCain. Neither candidate thrills me, both frighten me but for different reasons. But, what worries me even more than the candidates is the way in which so many Americans seem to have lost both their gravity and their sanity. They are behaving like drunken soccer fans or like ecstatic True Believers undergoing a religious transformation. During Obama’s acceptance speech 100 years ago in Denver, I saw people of all ages, both genders, and of every color, weeping, trembling, transfixed.

Pro-Obama grandmothers are behaving just like “bobby-soxers” once did at a Frank Sinatra or Elvis concert.

McCain-Palin supporters do not seem to be behaving in this way. Perhaps that is because they do not view McCain or Palin as Messiahs. I am not saying that Republican supporters are free of weird and tragic behaviors. Au contraire. A week ago today, I wrote about the young woman (a McCain supporter) who’d claimed she’d been attacked and mutilated by an angry, black, pro-Obama supporter. It was all a hoax, the woman clearly had “problems.”

But this was one individual, it was not an entire crowd; this was a young and powerless individual, not a successful and powerful one.

So, what are we to make of someone like my friend and colleague, the accomplished and hard-working Erica Jong, when she tells the Italian media that she has begun to somatize the election? Insomnia, back spasms and all? I’ve emailed her to find out if she really, honestly said this but as yet, have heard nothing back.

According to Jason Horowitz in the New York Observer, Jong told Corriere della Sera that an “Obama loss will spark the second American Civil War. Blood Will Run in the Streets.” Now where did I read something like that before? Oh yes, on September 5, 2008, nearly two months ago, I wrote about The Coming Civil War in America right here at Pajamas. I guess the piece has its secret admirers.

Jong allegedly told Corriere della Sera that her “fear that Obama might lose the election has become an obsession. A paralyzing terror. An anxious fever that keeps you awake at night.” She also mentions that her friends Naomi Wolf and Jane Fonda are “extremely worried that Obama will be sabotaged by Republican dirty tricks” and that it will lead to a “second American Civil War.”

Il Foglio’s New York based correspondent, Christian Rocca, has translated parts of the Jong interview into English. What is going on when Jong and her equally creative, accomplished, and wealthy friends (Ken Follett, Susan Cheever, Wolf, Fonda, Michael Chabon) claim that the Republican Party is causing a psycho-somatic “meltdown?”

According to Jong, Fonda says that she “cried all night and can’t cure (her) ailing back for all the stress.” Jong herself is also suffering from “back spasms” and has had to turn to “acupuncture and valium.” Jong is quoted as saying:

“It’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets…Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.”

Oh, Erica, say it isn’t so, tell me you were quoted out of context, tell me you took too much valium, tell me anything. What can it mean when smart, feminist women start acting like hysterical nineteenth century heroines? When they feel “victimized” even as their candidate appears to be winning?

Torture is what Muslim dictators do to Muslim dissidents, day in and day out. Reporters are routinely imprisoned or shot in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Iran –not in America. Muslim dissidents view their last, best hope as right here in the West, especially in America.

So, while I respect anyone’s right to vote and campaign for Obama it is important to keep gravitas alive.

Oh, and remember to keep the aspidistra flying as well.

from the New York Daily News, 2008-Oct-29, by John Stossel:

Some Americans should stay home on Election Day

I keep hearing how important it is for everyone to vote.

Let me be politically incorrect and say that maybe some people shouldn't vote.

I know I'm swimming against the tide. Get-out the-vote groups now register young people at rockconcerts. HeadCount (www.headcount.org) co-founder Andy Bernstein told me: "We registered over 100,000 people. It is so imperative that this generation's voice is heard."

But wait. Is that really a good idea? Many kids don't know much. HeadCount volunteers were registering young voters at a music festival in New York, and "20/20" asked some future voters, "How many senators are there?" One said 12, another 16, and another 64. One girl guessed, "50 per state."

Most kids didn't know what Roe vs. Wade was about. "Roe vs. Wayne?" asked one. "Segregation, maybe?"

HeadCount's Marc Brownstein concedes, "There's a lot of uninformed voters out there." But he argued: "Democracy is not about taking the most educated portion of the society and having them decide who's going to run the entire society."

I suggested that when people don't know anything, maybe it's their civic duty not to vote.

"It's an argument that really, really smacks against everything we hold dear as Americans," Bernstein replied.

Maybe it was unfair to pick on kids at a rock concert. I went to Washington and showed people pictures of prominent Americans. I'm happy to say that everyone recognized Barack Obama and John McCain.

But only about half recognized Sarah Palin, and most didn't know Joe Biden. Few people recognized Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but everyone identified TV's Judge Judy.

Economist Bryan Caplan, author of "The Myth of the Rational Voter," points out, "The public's knowledge of politics is shockingly low." He scoffs at the idea that "it's everyone's civic duty to vote."

"This is very much like saying, it's our civic duty to give surgery advice," Caplan said. "We like to think that political issues are much less complicated than brain surgery, but many of them are pretty hard. If someone doesn't know what he's talking about, it really is better if they say, Look, I'm going to leave this in wiser hands."

Isn't it elitist to say only some people should vote?

Says Caplan: "If you don't know what you're doing, you are not doing the country a favor by voting."

My ABC "20/20" segment about this enraged some viewers.

One said: "I wonder if the quality of the information in our society has anything to do with hackery like yours infesting the airwaves."

Another wrote: "You are a decrepit journalist and a poor excuse of a patriot."

And still another: "Democracy is defined by citizen participation. So you are undermining democracy. Thanks."

Clearly, not everyone understood what I was saying.

"You sit there on television and ignorantly say that all youth should not vote ... wow."

That's not what I said. I hope that informed young people do vote.

I just don't think it's so wonderful when famous people drag uninformed and uninterested people to the polls.

One viewer raised a fair point: "You simply cannot create a litmus test for voters. At what point does a voter become satisfactorily 'informed'? Do they have to know the name of the President, vice president, both their senators? This is the problem with your argument; you don't state how informed a voter should be, just that they should be. This is a very slippery slope."

But I'm not saying that the government should impose a litmus test. God forbid. I just want clueless people to find something else to do on Nov. 4.

Voting is serious business. It works best when people educate themselves.

If uninformed people stay home on Election Day, good.

That doesn't include you.

Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20" and the author of "Myth, Lies,and Downright Stupidity." His weekly column is distributed by Creators Syndicate.

The following item is a discussion of this segment produced by the Howard Stern Show.

from the Suffolk News-Herald of Suffolk Virginia, 2008-Oct-25, by Jesse Lindsey:

U.S. voters should know the issues

With only a few days remaining until one of the biggest elections in history, the passion of supporters on both sides of the political divide seems to exceed that of any election in recent memory. Political volunteers are canvassing Suffolk's neighborhoods like never before, and voters are hoping that whatever happens on Election Day, the economy will revert back to the good ol' days.

I'd like to think at this stage that most people are well informed about the candidates in races from the School Board all the way up to the presidential level. But I'm not confident that's the case.

In fact, radio shock-jock Howard Stern, who is perhaps better known for his occasionally obscene on-air antics, set out recently to find out whether people vote on the basis of appearance, notoriety or allegiance to a party, rather than aligning themselves with a candidate's platforms and stands on the issues.

Stern sent a reporter to Harlem to gauge who would get its residents' support in the presidential election. The reporter asked random people on the streets whom they were voting for, and almost all those asked quickly responded that Obama was their man.

But then the reporter decided to see how much these potential voters knew about their candidate. “So do you support Obama and his pro-life stance?” he asked. “Oh yeah, we do,” the interviewees answered. The reporter continued the questions. “So are you glad that Obama chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee?” the reporter asked. “Oh yeah, we love Sarah, Go Obama!”

The questions went on and on, but you get the point. People who were asked had no clue what the issues were. Instead, they were 100 percent convinced that Obama was their man based on his appearance and perhaps due to race or allegiance to the Democratic Party. Whatever the case may be, it proved that one can garner support by reasons other than what he claims to do once in office.

It reminds me of the movie “The Distinguished Gentleman,” starring Eddie Murphy. Murphy had the same name as a former state legislator and decided to run for office on name recognition alone. Murphy made no public appearances, but because his name was well recognized, he received enough votes to win the election. That may be extreme, but one moral is that you don't need the best plans to win office, rather the best campaign.

To be fair, let's not leave out Sen. John McCain's Republican party. I'm sure Sarah Palin will win the McCain/Palin ticket some votes solely because she is a woman and a small-town girl. Right or wrong, that is how politics works.

Let's hope that Suffolk voters are more politically aware than the ones Stern featured. A city needs a leader who can lead and has the understanding to get things done in office. The same is true for our country. Voting for a person because of color, fame and the like just spells trouble.

from the New York Times, 2008-Nov-3, by Bill Kristol:

Hey Liberals, Don't Worry

Barack Obama will probably win the 2008 presidential election. If he does, we conservatives will greet the news with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism. Being conservative means never being too surprised by disappointment.

But what if John McCain pulls off an upset?

I'm worried about my compatriots on the left. Michael Powell reports in Saturday's New York Times that even the possibility of an Obama defeat has driven many liberals into in a state of high anxiety. And then there's a young woman from Denver who “told her boyfriend that their love life was on hold while she sweated out Mr. Obama's performance in Colorado.” Well, what if Obama loses Colorado? Or the presidency? As a compassionate conservative, I'm concerned about the well-being of that boyfriend — and of others who might be similarly situated. I feel an obligation to help.

So let me tell liberals why they should be cheerful if McCain happens to win.

1. It would be a victory for an underdog. Liberals are supposed to like underdogs. McCain is a lonely guy standing up against an unprecedentedly well-financed, superorganized, ExxonMobil-like Obama juggernaut. A McCain upset victory would be a classic liberal happy ending.

2. It would be a defeat for the establishment. Obama's most recent high-profile Republican endorser was D.C. insider Kenneth Duberstein. Liberals should be on the side of hard-working plumbers, not big-shot lobbyists — oops, sorry, big-shot strategic advisers and consultants. And Duberstein said that Colin Powell's endorsement was “the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on Barack Obama.” Doesn't that comment embody everything that liberals (and many conservatives, including me) find creepy about smug establishment back-scratching and gatekeeping in America?

3. It would be a victory for the future. With President Bush's approval rating at about 25 percent, a McCain triumph would mean Americans were making a judgment on two future alternatives, not merely voting on the basis of their resentment at the past performance of George W. Bush. It would mean voters were looking ahead, not back. Liberals should therefore welcome a McCain win as a triumph of hope over fear, of the future over the past.

4. It would be a victory for freedom. Obama supporter Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic writes that “tyrants and génocidaires would sleep less soundly during a McCain presidency.” Liberals should be opposed to tyranny and genocide. Wieseltier also acknowledges that McCain “was splendidly right about the surge, which is not a small thing; and the grudging way Obama treats the reversal in Iraq, when he treats it at all, is disgraceful.” The surge advanced not only our national security but the cause of freedom in the world. Liberals should be votaries of freedom.

5. A McCain victory would be good for liberalism. Look at recent history. Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress begat Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress produced Newt Gingrich. Who knows what would follow a President Obama and a Democratic Congress? Here's one possibility: President Sarah Palin.

So liberals shouldn't be too upset at the idea of McCain winning. Could it happen?

It's possible. What if the polls, for various reasons, are overstating Obama's support by a couple points? And what if the late deciders break overwhelmingly against Obama, as they did in the Democratic primaries? McCain could then thread the Electoral College needle.

McCain would have to win every state where he now leads or is effectively even in the polls (including North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri). He'd have to take Florida and Ohio, where he's about four points down but where operatives on the ground give him a pretty good shot. That gets him to 247 of the 270 votes needed.

McCain's path to victory is then to snatch Pennsylvania (which gets him to 268), and win either Virginia, Colorado, Nevada or New Mexico (states where he trails by about four to seven points) — or New Hampshire, where he's 10 points behind but twice won dramatic primary victories.

As for Pennsylvania, two recent polls have McCain closing to within four points. Pennsylvania is the state whose small-town residents were famously patronized by Obama as “bitter.” One of Pennsylvania's Democratic congressmen, John Murtha, recently accused many of his western Pennsylvania constituents of being racist. Perhaps Pennsylvanians will want to send a little message to the Democratic Party. And that could tip the election to McCain.

It's an inside straight. But I've seen gamblers draw them.

If McCain wins, think of this column as a modest contribution to cheering up distraught liberals. If Obama prevails, I'm confident there are some compassionate liberals out there who will do the same for hapless conservatives as they hobble out to the wilderness.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Oct-23, by Dan Henninger:

Hatin' Palin
She's not the reason Americans can't stand their politicians.

The abuse being heaped on Sarah Palin is such a cheap shot.

The complaint against the Alaska governor, at its most basic, is that she doesn't qualify for admission to the national political fraternity. Boy, that's rich. Behold the shabby frat house that says it's above her pay grade.

Congress has the lowest approval rating ever registered in the history of polling (12%!). She isn't the reason polls are showing people want the entire Congress fired, with many telling pollsters they themselves could do a better job.

Sarah Palin didn't design a system of presidential primaries whose length and cost ensures that only the most obsessional personalities will run the gauntlet, while a long list of effective governors don't run.

These rules have wasted the electorate's time the past three presidential elections, by filling the debates with such zero-support candidates as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Al Sharpton, Duncan Hunter, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden (8,000 total votes), Wesley Clark and Alan Keyes.

Out of this process has fallen a Democratic nominee who entered the U.S. Senate in 2005 fresh off a stint in the Illinois state legislature, with next to no record of political accomplishment. He may be elected mainly because, in Colin Powell's word, he is thought to be "transformational." One may hope so.

By not bothering to look very deeply at the details beneath either candidate's governing proposals, the media have created a lot of downtime to take free kicks at Gov. Palin. My former colleague, Tunku Varadarajan, has compiled a glossary of Palin invective, and I've added a few: "Republican blow-up doll," "idiot," "Christian Stepford wife," "Jesus freak," "Caribou Barbie," "a dope," "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party," "liar," "a national disgrace" and "her pretense that she is a woman."

If American politics is at low ebb, it is because so many of its observers enjoy working in its fetid backwash.

The primary discomfort with Gov. Palin is the notion that she doesn't have sufficient experience to be president, that Sen. McCain should have picked a Washington hand seasoned in the ways of the world. Such as? Here's an opinion poll question:

If as Joe Biden suggests the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter or Sarah Palin?

My pick? Gov. Palin, surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians.

The established political pros let the selection process come to this. Presidential candidates such as John McCain and Barack Obama have become untethered from the discipline of party institutions, largely because the parties have lost coherence. So we get celebrity candidates made famous, fundable and electable by dint of their access to the Beltway media. For voters, this election is a national Hail Mary.

For nearly two years, all the major candidates have rotated through our lives as solitary personalities attended by careerist campaign professionals. Barack, Hillary, Rudy, Mitt, Mike, McCain. When the moment arrived to pick a running mate, input from the parties was minimal. That famous party boss, Caroline Kennedy, advised Barack Obama. They picked a three-decade denizen of the Senate. John McCain's obligation was himself and his endless slog to this big chance.

The quick surge of party-wide excitement and campaign contributions after his selection of Sarah Palin made clear that the McCain candidacy was moribund and headed for a low-turnout debacle. If he had picked any of the plain-vanilla men on his veep short list -- Pawlenty, Sanford, Romney or Lieberman -- they'd have won approval from the media's college of cardinals, and killed his campaign.

The stoning of Sarah Palin has exposed enough cultural fissures in American politics to occupy strategists full-time until 2012. We now see there is a left-to-right elite centered in New York, Washington, Hollywood and Silicon Valley who hand down judgments of the nation's mortals from their perch atop the Bell Curve.

It seems only yesterday that the most critical skill in presidential politics was being able to connect to people in places like Bronko's bar or Saddleback Church. When Gov. Palin showed she excelled at that, the goal posts suddenly moved and the new game was being able to talk the talk in London, Paris, Tehran or Moscow. She looks about a half-step behind Sen. Obama on that learning curve.

Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," lives on the forward wave of American life. This week he gave his view of Sarah Palin to EW.com: "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."

Uh-oh. Sounds like the cancer could be in remission.

from RealClearPolitics, 2008-Oct-13, by Victor Davis Hanson:

Jumping Ship...

This is becoming a very strange campaign.

On CNN last evening both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the "old" noble McCain is gone-and a "new" nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops.

Recently Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama, likewise lamenting the loss of the old noble McCain. New York Times columnist David Brooks dubbed Palin a "cancer," and he suggested that Obama's instant recall of Niehbuhr sent a tingle up his leg as Obama once did to Chris Matthews as well.

A couple of thoughts: the George Bush, Sr. / Willie Horton campaign was far tougher; so were the Bush 2000/2004 efforts. If anything, McCain's campaign is subdued in comparison to what we've seen on both sides in past years. Indeed, McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but, again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run, via appendages, the far more vicious race.

Obama and his surrogates have repeatedly engaged in racial politics (as Bill Clinton lamented when in fury he denounced the "race card"). When there was never evidence that McCain was using race as a wedge issue, it was clear Obama most surely was--preemptively, on at least two occasions--warning Americans he would soon be the victim of opposition racial stereotyping.

His surrogates like Biden and those in the Senate continue to link legitimate worries about Obama's past with racism. Second, for about 3 months all we've heard are references to McCain's age, with adjectives and phrases like confused, can't remember any more, disturbed, lost his bearings, etc.

Moreover, so far, McCain supporters have not broken into Biden's email, or accused Biden of being a Nazi, or accused anyone of not bearing one of their own children, or photo-shopped grotesque pictures of Obama on the Internet (as in the Atlantic magazine case). I don't think deranged McCain supporters in Hollywood or television almost daily are quoted as damning Obama in unusually crude terms. Nor are white racist ministers calling McCain a 'messiah' or McCain operatives fraudulently swarming voter registration centers. And on and on.

Instead I think what we are seeing again is an interesting phenomenon of the old nice/now mean McCain. A great many moderates and conservatives are worn out and tired of Bush and Bush hatred, the European furor, serial charges of racism and illiberalism, and finally, in their weariness, think that Obama will, in a variety of ways, just make all the ickiness go away-as if he will make all of us be liked abroad and end racial and red/blue fighting at home. They should ask themselves whether Jimmy Carter restored American popularity with his human rights campaigns, praise of left-wing dictators, dialogue during the hostage crisis (cf. "The Great Satan"), boasts of no more inordinate fear of communism, etc., or whether Obama, in his Trinity/Acorn/Pfleger years, brought racial healing and understanding to Chicago.

Second, with Obama now with an 6-8 point lead, some in the DC/NY corridor these last three weeks figure it's time now to jump or at least sort of jump, since the train they think is leaving the station and there might be still be some space at the dinner table on the caboose. They also believe as intellectuals that the similarly astute Obamians may on occasion inspire, or admire them as the like-minded who cultivate the life of the mind-in contrast to the "cancer" Sarah Palin, who, with her husband Todd, could hardly discuss Proust with them or could offer little if any sophisticated table-talk other than the proper chokes on shotguns or optimum RPMs on snow-machines.

And third, a lot of moderates who would not vote for McCain liked him when he was a sophisticated, ironic maverick loser scoring points against the simplistic Bush and other cardboard-cut-out conservatives. Now he has the onus of winning a campaign and can't be a noble, tragic loser; so it is easy to say he is no good since he is less than perfect. The sure iconoclastic loser has an attraction that the mainstream conservative possible winner does not.

Obama, as I have said ad nauseam, has brilliantly prepped the battlefield to such a degree that a Farrakhan endorsement or surrogates calling Palin a quasi-Nazi or a bimbo, or smearing McCain as near senile is irrelevant; yet one screamer in a crowd of tens of thousands is proof of McCain's and Palin's racism and hatred.

Again, most conservatives know this paradox, but for some being outraged, as the conservative voice of reason, at McCain's supposed low road ensures a CNN spot, or some future rehabilitation during the expected Obama regnum of the next eight years. I think should I write a column suddenly taking the "high road", praising Obama's wit, taste in books, and metrosexuality, I would be dubbed principled rather than cynical, 'even-handed' rather than self-serving, and a maverick rather than toadish.

Yet for a self-acclaimed conservative to vote Obama would mean that higher taxes, larger government, more entitlements, more of a UN-centered foreign policy, dialogue with an Iran, less coal,oil, and nuclear energy production at home, more "oppression" studies and "reparations", leftish Supreme Court judges, open borders (I could go on) were the truly conservative positions, or perhaps suddenly truly the 'right' positions. And as far as ethics go, in fact, a cursory review of the past Obama campaigns would reveal a ruthlessness never seen in any of McCain's efforts. Obama's record is far more left than McCain's is far right. Obama the healer has proven to be the most partisan in the Senate, McCain one of the most bipartisan.

Yet to believe that truth would be--if we remember that scene in Tolkien's The Two Towers--to trust the grating harsh voice of Gandalf detailing the dangers of Saruman rather than the mellifluous charm of the latter who in soothing tones outlines his own victimhood.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

from the Wall Street Journal, excerpted from Best of the Web, 2008-Oct-10, by James Taranto:

The Angry Right
Some disturbing--and embarrassing--behavior by McCain supporters.

A front-page story in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle describes "a recent stream of attacks" on Barack Obama:

Then there have been the speakers at McCain-Palin rallies who continue, unchecked by the candidates, to refer to "Barack Hussein Obama"--the emphasis on his middle name is an implication that Obama, who is a Christian, is Muslim. The latest occurred Wednesday in Pennsylvania, when Bill Platt, the Lehigh County Republican chairman, mentioned Obama's former reluctance to wear an American flag lapel pin and said: "Think about how you'll feel on Nov. 5 if you see the news that Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, is president of the United States."

McCain-Palin spokesman Paul Lindsay said, "We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric, which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November."

Regardless, some attending McCain-Palin rallies are responding to this kind of incitement. The Secret Service is investigating press reports that someone might have said "kill him" after Palin tried to connect Obama to former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. Some attending McCain's rally Wednesday in Pennsylvania interrupted him with shouts of "socialist," "terrorist" and "liar."

Politico's Jonathan Martin reports on the same phenomenon, which he describes as reflecting "the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic." He notes a decided change in tone from the previous two Republican presidential campaigns:

Such contempt for Democrats is, of course, nothing new from conservative activists. But in 2000 and 2004, the Republican rank and file was more apt to ridicule Gore as a stiff fabulist or Kerry as an effete weather vane of a politician.

"Flip-flop, flip-flop," went the cry at Republican rallies four years ago, often with footwear to match the chant.

Now, though, the emotion on display is unadulterated anger rather than mocking.

For years this column has chronicled the follies and outrages of the Angry Left. If we are now seeing the emergence of an Angry Right, that is not a good sign for either the country or those on the conservative and Republican sides of the ideological and partisan divides.

Political hatred is not only wrong, it is counterproductive. As we observed in 2005, "one reason Democrats failed to unseat President Bush was that they were blinded by their hatred for him. This made them overconfident, as they mistook their emotions for facts."

Furthermore, expressions of hatred are unattractive to those who do not share the feeling--a category that presumably includes almost all of the independent and undecided voters who will end up deciding the election. For the Obama campaign and its allies in the media, then, the Angry Right's behavior is an opportunity: a chance to make the other side--including the McCain campaign itself--look like a bunch of scary wackos.

Thus, this afternoon we got an email from good old John Kerry titled "John McCain's ugly campaign":

The reports are piling up of ugliness at the campaign rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Audience members hurl insults and racial epithets, call out "Kill Him!" and "Off With His Head," and yell "treason" when Senator Obama's name is mentioned. I strongly condemn language like this which can only be described as hate-filled.

According to reports, every ad paid for by the John McCain campaign is now a negative ad--every single one!

Similarly, the San Francisco Chronicle piece we quoted portrays the entire McCain campaign as racist. "Veiled Racism Seen in New Attacks on Obama," the headline declares, adopting the passive-aggressive voice. The argument is weak. It conflates legitimate criticism of Obama with hateful slander, and it doubtless reflects the author's own prejudices. But the behavior of the Angry Right is the best evidence that there is something to those prejudices.

If Barack Obama is elected president, we fear the Angry Right will become angrier and less inhibited, just as the Angry Left did when President Bush and the Republicans were ascendant. It will be an embarrassing time to be a conservative--and Obama, like other presidents who were widely hated by the opposite side (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush), may find himself a favorite for re-election as a result.

Yet there is a danger in all this for a President Obama as well. In retrospect it seems to us that the Angry Left helped drown out intelligent, and potentially constructive, criticism of the Bush administration and its policies. This produced its own sort of overconfidence.

Hurricane Katrina was surely the turning point. The things the left said about the administration's handling of the disaster were absurdly over the top, as this column noted repeatedly at the time. But that did not mean the administration conducted itself well or even adequately--and that is the standard to which the public holds its leaders. In politics, a stupid opposition can be a curse as well as a blessing.

from the Akron Beacon Journal, 2008-Oct-14, by Stephanie Warsmith:

Poll workers clash at Falls nursing home
Police, elections board investigate alleged assault over marked ballot

Poll workers from opposing sides in the presidential race apparently clashed in a physical altercation Friday at a Cuyahoga Falls nursing home when one accused the other of improperly marking a ballot.

George Manos, the 75-year-old Republican, told police that Edith Walker, the 73-year-old Democrat, jumped on his back and struck him in the head three to four times with her fists. Manos said two other elections workers had to pull Walker off his back, according to a report filed with Cuyahoga Falls police.

Manos said it happened after he accused Walker of ballot tampering, and he wants to prosecute.

The incident, which occurred about noon at Gardens of Western Reserve nursing home, is being investigated by both the police and the Summit County elections board. The board probe could lead to a closer examination of the other votes with which Walker was involved.

The alleged assault piqued the interest of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign — as the voter in question reportedly wanted to vote for McCain but her ballot was initially marked for Sen. Barack Obama.

''This is a troubling report that emphasizes the importance of having a transparent and open process in every voting place in Ohio,'' said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for McCain's campaign.

The elections board sent two teams of poll workers, each with one Democrat and one Republican, to the nursing home to assist residents who otherwise would be unable to go to the polls. Such early voting is a routine service offered by elections boards to nursing homes.

Board officials said they have received conflicting accounts — and are trying to sort out what happened — as Manos and Walker were attempting to assist a female nursing home resident with her ballot. Until they do, Walker won't be involved with voting.

''Any type of disagreement at a voting center is not appropriate,'' said Tim Gorbach, a Democratic member of the elections board. ''We need to find out exactly what happened and will take action.''

The voter was able to cast a new, correct ballot with her desired choices, according to elections board officials.

Workers finish vote

After the incident, Manos and Walker were asked to return to the elections board and the remaining team of poll workers finished the voting at the nursing home.

Manos, Walker and the two other poll workers gave written accounts to the board.

Walker said in her statement that Manos tried to grab the ballot in question out of her hand. She said he accused her of marking the ballot wrong and she ''apologized to him if I did do it, but he was very mean to me.''

Manos' written statement is similar to what he told police. He also said Walker initially refused to show him the ballot, then marked it a second time.

Richard Bader, a Republican poll worker at the nursing home, wrote that he forced his way between Walker and Manos and ''she tried to strong-arm me out of the way, but I held my ground.'' Bader said the incident drew a crowd of six to 10 people.

Robert Dengle, a Democratic poll worker who witnessed the incident, wrote that Manos grabbed the ballot out of Walker's hand and she went after him to get it back. When they ultimately reviewed the ballot, he said, it was marked both for Obama and McCain.

New rules suggested

Bryan Williams, the board's deputy director, sent the statements to elections board members Monday, along with suggested new nursing home guidelines for elections board staff. If the board approve the rules, he said, the staff will be retrained before voting resumes at area nursing homes today.

Among the recommendations are that both the Democrat and Republican poll worker review each vote on a ballot as it is marked and that — when reviewing the choices — a poll worker will say them aloud so the voter can hear them.

Brian Daley, a Republican member of the elections board, said he thinks the board should have a hearing on the incident. He said the board may need to examine the other votes Walker was involved with to make sure they were properly marked.

''If it results in looking at the others, so be it,'' he said. ''The facts as they unfold will dictate where we go with it.''

Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at 330-996-3705 or swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com.

Poll workers from opposing sides in the presidential race apparently clashed in a physical altercation Friday at a Cuyahoga Falls nursing home when one accused the other of improperly marking a ballot.

George Manos, the 75-year-old Republican, told police that Edith Walker, the 73-year-old Democrat, jumped on his back and struck him in the head three to four times with her fists. Manos said two other elections workers had to pull Walker off his back, according to a report filed with Cuyahoga Falls police.

Manos said it happened after he accused Walker of ballot tampering, and he wants to prosecute.

The incident, which occurred about noon at Gardens of Western Reserve nursing home, is being investigated by both the police and the Summit County elections board. The board probe could lead to a closer examination of the other votes with which Walker was involved.

The alleged assault piqued the interest of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign — as the voter in question reportedly wanted to vote for McCain but her ballot was initially marked for Sen. Barack Obama.

''This is a troubling report that emphasizes the importance of having a transparent and open process in every voting place in Ohio,'' said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for McCain's campaign.

The elections board sent two teams of poll workers, each with one Democrat and one Republican, to the nursing home to assist residents who otherwise would be unable to go to the polls. Such early voting is a routine service offered by elections boards to nursing homes.

Board officials said they have received conflicting accounts — and are trying to sort out what happened — as Manos and Walker were attempting to assist a female nursing home resident with her ballot. Until they do, Walker won't be involved with voting.

''Any type of disagreement at a voting center is not appropriate,'' said Tim Gorbach, a Democratic member of the elections board. ''We need to find out exactly what happened and will take action.''

The voter was able to cast a new, correct ballot with her desired choices, according to elections board officials.

Workers finish vote

After the incident, Manos and Walker were asked to return to the elections board and the remaining team of poll workers finished the voting at the nursing home.

Manos, Walker and the two other poll workers gave written accounts to the board.

Walker said in her statement that Manos tried to grab the ballot in question out of her hand. She said he accused her of marking the ballot wrong and she ''apologized to him if I did do it, but he was very mean to me.''

Manos' written statement is similar to what he told police. He also said Walker initially refused to show him the ballot, then marked it a second time.

Richard Bader, a Republican poll worker at the nursing home, wrote that he forced his way between Walker and Manos and ''she tried to strong-arm me out of the way, but I held my ground.'' Bader said the incident drew a crowd of six to 10 people.

Robert Dengle, a Democratic poll worker who witnessed the incident, wrote that Manos grabbed the ballot out of Walker's hand and she went after him to get it back. When they ultimately reviewed the ballot, he said, it was marked both for Obama and McCain.

New rules suggested

Bryan Williams, the board's deputy director, sent the statements to elections board members Monday, along with suggested new nursing home guidelines for elections board staff. If the board approve the rules, he said, the staff will be retrained before voting resumes at area nursing homes today.

Among the recommendations are that both the Democrat and Republican poll worker review each vote on a ballot as it is marked and that — when reviewing the choices — a poll worker will say them aloud so the voter can hear them.

Brian Daley, a Republican member of the elections board, said he thinks the board should have a hearing on the incident. He said the board may need to examine the other votes Walker was involved with to make sure they were properly marked.

''If it results in looking at the others, so be it,'' he said. ''The facts as they unfold will dictate where we go with it.''

from the Associated Press, 2008-Oct-24, by Joe Mandak:

Police: McCain volunteer made up robbery story

PITTSBURGH - A McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack, police said Friday.

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false and was being charged with making a false report to police, said Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division. Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

Todd, who is white, told police she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night.

She now can't explain why she invented the story, Bryant said. Todd also told police she believes she cut the backward "B" onto her own cheek, but did not provide an explanation of how or why, Bryant said.

Todd initially told investigators she was attempting to use a bank branch ATM when the man approached her from behind, put a knife with a 4- to 5-inch blade to her throat and demanded money. She told police she handed the assailant $60 and walked away.

Todd told investigators that she suspected the man then noticed a John McCain sticker on her car, became angry and punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground and telling her "you are going to be a Barack supporter," police said.

She said he continued to punch and kick her while threatening "to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter," police said. She said he then sat on her chest, pinned her hands down with his knees and scratched a backward letter "B" into her face with a dull knife.

Todd told police she didn't seek medical attention, but instead went to a friend's apartment nearby and called police about 45 minutes later.

The Associated Press could not immediately locate Todd's family.

Bryant said somebody charged with making a false report would typically be cited and sent a summons. But because police have concerns about Todd's mental health, they are consulting with the Allegheny County District Attorney. She remained in custody and was awaiting arraignment.

Todd worked in New York for the College Republican National Committee before moving two weeks ago to Pennsylvania, where her duties included recruiting college students, the committee's executive director, Ethan Eilon, has said.

Eilon declined to comment on the investigation Friday or to help The Associated Press contact Todd.

Earlier Friday, police said they had found inconsistencies in Todd's story. They gave her a lie-detector test, but wouldn't release the polygraph results. Investigators also said bank surveillance photos did not back up the woman's initial story of being attacked at an ATM.

Police interviewed Todd after she contacted police Wednesday night and again on Thursday, Bryant said. They asked her to come back Friday, ostensibly to help police put together a sketch of the man. Instead, detectives began interviewing her.

"They just started talking to her and she just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant said.

Bryant said it doesn't appear that anyone else put the woman up to the false report.

Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the "B" was backward, Bryant said.

"We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that," Bryant said. "They just take the money and run."

from the Associated Press, 2008-Oct-22:

Protester in SF attempts to handcuff Karl Rove

SAN FRANCISCO — An anti-war protester confronted former Bush administration aide Karl Rove while he spoke at a San Francisco mortgage bankers' meeting.

A statement by the group Code Pink identified the woman as 58-year-old Janine Boneparth, who tried to handcuff Rove in what she called a citizen's arrest for "treason."

Rove, who was speaking Tuesday at the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention, elbowed Boneparth away as she was escorted off the stage.

In total, five Code Pink members were removed from the hall during Rove's appearance. The organization says none of the five women were charged.

from City Journal online, 2008-Oct-13, by Heather Mac Donald:

Gettin’ All Mavericky
Conservatives should not sacrifice standards for political advantage.

I’m, like, man, I really don’t know if I’m ready for a vice president who goes: “My son’s, like: ‘Mom, I’m in the army now,’ and I’m, like: ‘I’m so proud.’” And who’s, like, “And [my son] goes, ‘O.K., well I’ll be praying.’ I’m like—total role reversal here, that’s what I’ve been telling him for 19 years.’” Or who goes, “This is a time when, man, politics have got to be put aside.” (As Alaska governor Sarah Palin told Sean Hannity, William Kristol, and Katie Couric.)

I know, it’s elitist to expect a candidate for president or vice president to speak like an adult. Sure, there are parents out there battling the “like” epidemic who might not appreciate having someone in the White House validating their 15-year-olds’ speech habits. But, hey: “Total role reversal here.” (Palin, of course, can sound adolescent even when she uses the right verbs, as when she disingenuously denied her snarky put-down of Joe Biden’s age while lauding herself as “you know, . . . the new energy, the new face, the new ideas.”) It’s even more elitist to expect a vice president to put together sentences that cohere into a minimally logical progression of thought. There was a time, however, when conservatives upheld adult standards—such as clarity of speech and thought—without apology, even in the face of the relentless downward pull of adolescent culture. But now, when a vice-presidential candidate talks like a teenager, mugs like an American Idol contestant, and traffics in syntactical dead-ends and non sequiturs, we are supposed to find her charming and authentic.

Palin’s defenders only indirectly acknowledge her awkward linguistic skills when they denounce “gotcha journalism.” They dismiss a by-now classic Palin paragraph as the product of Katie Couric’s unfair questioning. Couric had asked Palin whether, instead of buying up bad debt on Wall Street, government should help Americans pay their mortgages. To a Palinite, here was a true “gotcha” moment. The candidate responded:

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that this free-association spree is simply the effect of a predatory liberal reporter and does not reflect Palin’s financial ignorance or muddled thinking. But many of Palin’s utterances in her softball debate with Senator Joe Biden were also disjointed and strange. That many on the right (and even some in the media) greeted her debate performance as a triumph had more to do with her bravura self-confidence—telegraphed by her cringe-making winks and grins—than with the quality of her arguments. Following Biden’s claim that Bush’s policies have favored the wealthy, Palin seized the occasion to ladle out some canned and non-responsive Reaganesque folksiness:

Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. . . . Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. . . . We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line.

To be sure, most of us would take vows of silence if forced to read transcriptions of our speech. And Biden also let forth impenetrable utterances during the debate. But Palin’s elisions and U-turns take ordinary inarticulateness to a new level. Asked who was at fault in the subprime meltdown, for example, Palin answered:

One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say “Never Again.” Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those managing our money and loaning us these dollars.

At another point, she noted that “96 percent of [Obama’s] votes have been solely along party line, not having that proof for the American people to know that his commitment, too, is, you know, put the partisanship, put the special interests aside, and get down to getting business done for the people of America.”

Palin favors relative clauses that hang precariously at the end of sentences: “I am [interested in defending McCain’s health care plan] because he’s got a good health care plan that is detailed.” Or: “I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you.” Her speech differs somewhat from the verbal knots into which George W. Bush so often tied himself. She is less given to malapropisms; apart from her teen mannerisms, her linguistic oddness is more subtle, and seems more often driven by a failure to grasp subject matter.

Nevertheless, Palin’s verbal hodgepodge may say nothing about her qualifications for the vice presidency. Judgment and political acumen could well rest on different mental capacities than the ability to order thoughts into smooth sentences. But the inability to answer a straightforward question about economic policy without becoming tangled in words suggests either ignorance about the subject matter or a difficulty connecting between ideas. Neither explanation is reassuring.

The Palin nomination has unleashed among Republican pundits and voters a great roar of pent-up rage against liberal elites, much of it warranted. But the conservative embrace of Palin comes at considerable cost to conservative principles. The populist identity politics that Republicans are now playing with such gusto may come back to haunt them in the future. Palin gave a typically incoherent summation of that populist conceit during the vice-presidential debate:

But it wasn’t just that experience tapped into, it was my connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills? About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn’t have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We’ve been there also so that connection was important.

Having trouble paying for health insurance has no bearing on whether one understands how to lower its costs, however. Someone who has never had to worry about his credit card bill may nevertheless possess unmatched ability to manage and explain economic policy. Yet such a potential candidate will be forced into the usual embarrassing protestations of his own economic insecurity, if he is allowed onto the final political stage at all. Enough. Conservatives should stand for excellence and merit, period. Middle-class status is neither a qualification nor a disqualification; the same goes for economic success.

Conservatives will also have a hard time backpedaling from the hypocrisy they displayed regarding Palin’s family situation. Pundits and talk radio hosts rushed to explain why the pregnancy of Governor Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was a wonderful thing. Answer: because the baby would not be aborted. But every born baby of a teen parent has not been aborted, by definition. While from a pro-life perspective, the decision to carry any child to term is laudable, the celebration of Bristol's decision became difficult to distinguish from a celebration of teen motherhood itself. In the past, conservatives have not flinched from pointing out the social and economic costs of teen pregnancy; taking up that theme again, after the happy family-values face put on Bristol’s imminent motherhood, is going to be awkward, to say the least.

Conservatives once insisted that women can’t always have it all: raising a child requires certain unavoidable trade-offs between family and career. A mother, a father, and day care are not fungible, particularly for very young children. Yet now comes Sarah Palin, with a disabled baby who will be barely a year old when the next president and vice president take their oaths of office, and conservative pundits suggest that only the fear of strong women could lead someone to question whether a mother with such a young, needy child can serve both her oath of office and her family as each deserve.

Liberal hypocrisy on Palin’s family dilemmas has matched the conservative turnaround with perfect symmetry, of course. And perhaps both sides will blithely and unapologetically switch places yet again as soon as circumstances allow. Still, the conservative position on the family happens to be the right one. So, too, was the erstwhile conservative defense of articulateness, knowledge, and uncommon achievement. It’s a shame to have sacrificed these ideas, even temporarily, in the quest for political advantage.

Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her latest book, coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, is The Immigration Solution.

from City Journal online, 2008-Oct-9, by John Leo:

The Power of One
Liberal media transforms a single bigot at a Sarah Palin rally into a racist mob.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers.

Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to the dismal interview. The Tampa Tribune, for example, reported that she said: “I shoulda told them I was just trying to keep Tina Fey in business.”

But Milbank’s report triggered Democratic rage across the Internet with his charge that “Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness.” Some in the Clearwater crowd, he wrote, shouted abuse at reporters. Someone yelled “Kill him,” apparently a reference to Ayers; and one person shouted an epithet at a network sound man (apparently the N-word, though Milbank didn’t say) and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

Two shouting extremists in a crowd of 4,500 are two too many, of course. The question is whether these outliers offer sufficient evidence for a clearly hostile reporter to demonstrate that Palin’s rallies have gotten ugly. Florida reporters did not see the event that way. The St. Petersburg Times ran a benign story on the Palin speech. William March of the Tampa Tribune told me, “They booed Obama and the press, but that just makes it a normal Republican rally.” March admitted that he was standing further from the speaker’s stand than national press reporters, and therefore heard less, but he maintains that the rally was no hate-fest.

An early web version of Milbank’s column was headlined, “In Fla., Palin Goes for the Rough Stuff as Audience Boos Obama.” Rough stuff? There’s no evidence that Palin did anything more than challenge Obama on Ayers. In the short TV clip available at the Huffington Post, the crowd booed in response to Palin’s litany of Obama’s liberal votes in the Senate. This is pretty standard campaign behavior.

Milbank’s lone racist at the rally soon became a group (or a mob) of people shouting racial epithets. A New York Times editorial Tuesday (“The Politics of Attack”) misquoted Milbank’s Post column, claiming that one person shouted “Kill him” and “others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.” Many blogs followed suit: “Crowd at Palin Rally Hurled Racial Epithets at African American on News Crew,” read the headline at Pensito Review. This was too much for Bob Somerby, the left-leaning blogger at the Daily Howler. Calling Milbank “a highly unreliable chronicler,” Somerby taunted the Times for multiplying racists at the rally: “It’s the power of pluralization!...One example becomes much more powerful when we stick an ‘s’ on the end. In this case, one epithet-shouter turns into a group. How many people were shouting those epithets? The editors let you imagine.”

At the Huffington Post, the “Kill him” shout directed at Ayers was interpreted as an assassination threat against Obama. Another Huffington piece asked, “Is Palin Trying to Incite Violence Against Obama?” As the misreporting gathered steam on the Internet, writers became ever angrier. “The event sounds like the precursor to a lynching,” wrote a Daily Kos blogger. Another opined: “There is a time to start feeling fear.” Former New York Times reporter Adam Clymer compared Palin events with George Wallace speeches, though he gracefully conceded that “lots of journalists have worked in situations more menacing than covering Sarah Palin.”

This was a disastrous outing for the Post, the Times, and bloggers determined to view Palin appearances as brownshirt rallies. If the atmosphere is so hate-filled and racist at these events, why does the evidence come down to one shouter at one rally?

John Leo edits the Manhattan Institute website Minding the Campus.

from the Washington Times, 2008-Sep-15, by Stephen Dinan:

Records show McCain more bipartisan

Sen. John McCain's record of working with Democrats easily outstrips Sen. Barack Obama's efforts with Republicans, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of their legislative records.

Whether looking at bills they have led on or bills they have signed onto, Mr. McCain has reached across the aisle far more frequently and with more members than Mr. Obama since the latter came to the Senate in 2005.

In fact, by several measures, Mr. McCain has been more likely to team up with Democrats than with members of his own party. Democrats made up 55 percent of his political partners over the last two Congresses, including on the tough issues of campaign finance and global warming. For Mr. Obama, Republicans were only 13 percent of his co-sponsors during his time in the Senate, and he had his biggest bipartisan successes on noncontroversial measures, such as issuing a postage stamp in honor of civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

With calls for change in Washington dominating the campaign, both Mr. Obama, the Democrats' presidential nominee, and Mr. McCain, his Republican opponent, have claimed the mantle of bipartisanship.

But since 2005, Mr. McCain has led as chief sponsor of 82 bills, on which he had 120 Democratic co-sponsors out of 220 total, for an average of 55 percent. He worked with Democrats on 50 of his bills, and of those, 37 times Democrats outnumber Republicans as co-sponsors.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, sponsored 120 bills, of which Republicans co-sponsored just 26, and on only five bills did Republicans outnumber Democrats. Mr. Obama gained 522 total Democratic co-sponsors but only 75 Republicans, for an average of 13 percent of his co-sponsors.

An Obama campaign spokesman declined to comment on The Times analysis.

McCain campaign surrogate Sen. Lindsey Graham, though, said the numbers expose a difference between the two candidates.

"The number - 55 and 13 - probably shows that one has been more desirous to find common ground than the other. The legislative record of Senator Obama is very thin," said Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican, who has teamed up with Mr. McCain probably more than any other senator.

The Times study looked at the bills each man introduced as the chief sponsor, and at the bills sponsored by other senators that each man signed onto. The study excluded resolutions and amendments, focusing instead on measures that each man authored and put into the normal legislative process.

Former Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, all independents, were grouped with Democrats because each caucused with Democrats during the time under study.

Bipartisanship is a frequent issue on the campaign trail, with the McCain camp and surrogates such as Mr. Graham arguing the standard is how often someone takes leadership on an issue in defiance of his own party - a measure by which Mr. Obama falls short and Mr. McCain clearly excels.

He even revels in his stances, telling the audience at a values forum at Saddleback Church in California last month his list is extensive: "Climate change, out-of-control spending, torture." He could have added campaign-finance overhaul, immigration, a patients' bill of rights, gun control and tax cuts as other areas on which he's broken with the majority of his party.

At the same forum, Mr. Obama said his major break with Democrats came on congressional ethics, when he sponsored a bill to curb meals and gifts from lobbyists.

In a memo to reporters, his campaign points to bills he worked on that gained near-unanimous support from both parties, including a bill more than a third of the Senate signed onto, sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, pushing peace initiatives in Sudan, and a bill sponsored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, on charitable contributions that passed by a voice vote in each chamber.

But foremost, his campaign cites his work teaming up in 2006 with Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, on the Cooperative Proliferation Detection Act, a noncontroversial measure to secure weapons of mass destruction, and with Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to force the administration to create a searchable database to track federal spending grants.

Speaking to reporters during the Republican National Convention earlier this month Obama aide Robert Gibbs said Mr. Lugar and Mr. Coburn would back up Mr. Obama's bipartisanship claims.

Mr. Lugar's spokesman said the senator is not doing interviews on the subject. Mr. Coburn, in an interview, said Mr. Obama is a good senator to work with, but said there's no comparison to Mr. McCain's long record.

"Barack is a great guy, a nice guy, he's a good friend of mine. He has passed two pieces of legislation since he's been in the Senate - had his name on two," Mr. Coburn said. He praised Mr. Obama's staff for the work they did on the spending grants bill, but he said Mr. Obama hasn't gone head-to-head against his leadership when it mattered: "Where have you seen him challenge the status quo?"

Mr. McCain on the campaign trail cites his own frequent Democratic legislative allies such as Mr. Lieberman, with whom he's worked on gun control and global warming; Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was his partner for immigration and patients' rights; Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, who worked with him on campaign finance; and Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who was the top Democrat on the Indian Affairs Committee when Mr. McCain was chairman.

Mr. Feingold, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Kennedy didn't respond or declined through spokesmen to talk about the issue. Mr. Lieberman, however, has gone in the opposite direction, endorsing Mr. McCain for office and hitting Mr. Obama for failing to live up to his bipartisan claims.

Mr. Graham said it was unfortunate people weren't recognizing their work with Mr. McCain.

"What you've got now is, you've got some people who are afraid to recognize John's bipartisanship because of the nature of the election," Mr. Graham said.

Mr. Graham has teamed up with Mr. McCain on some of his most contentious bills, including the immigration and campaign-finance fights, and said they both have "the scars to prove" they were in the fights.

"I have experienced the price that's been paid to help John do some difficult things since 2004," he said.

Those fights are part of the reason Mr. McCain had trouble securing the Republican presidential nomination, including winning less than 50 percent of Republican primary voters' support, despite clearing the field less than halfway through the primaries.

The Times analysis found Mr. McCain's most frequent Democratic teammates are Mr. Dorgan, with whom he shared leadership of the Indian Affairs Committee and who co-sponsored 23 of Mr. McCain's bills, and Mr. Lieberman, who signed onto 15 McCain bills.

Mr. Obama's most frequent Republican partners were Mr. Lugar, who co-sponsored nine Obama bills, and Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, who signed on to eight of Mr. Obama's measures.

The bill on which Mr. McCain attracted the most support in the past few years was his plan to combat greenhouse-gas emissions. That bill garnered 16 co-sponsors, 14 of whom were Democrats, including Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrats' vice-presidential nominee. Mr. Obama himself signed onto another of Mr. McCain's global-warming bills.

Mr. Obama's best successes in attracting co-sponsors came on a bill to boost the union's bargaining power with the Federal Aviation Administration, on which all 38 co-sponsors were Democrats, and a bill to issue a postage stamp honoring Mrs. Parks, which garnered 24 Democrats and 14 Republicans.

The Times study didn't look at voting, but Congressional Quarterly conducts annual studies of senators' voting records.

Over his Senate career, Mr. McCain has voted with the majority of Senate Republicans about 85 percent of the time, while in his three years in the Senate Mr. Obama has voted with his party 97 percent of the time.

from the Atlantic Monthly online, 2008-Jul-14, by Marc Ambinder:

Enough With The Outrage

Having had the chance to read some of the hyperbolic news and opinion coverage of the New Yorker's latest cover, permit an editorial comment.

There really is a politics of outrage, and it has spread like a cancer throughout the body politic. It's become the default currency of political conversation.

Outrage is supposed to be extreme anger about an extreme and dignity-damaging insult. It has instead become the quotidian autonomic emotional register of most species of political actors, including partisans, campaign operatives and pundits. Hence: what used to be normal is now considered extreme.

Outrage is the easiest type of story for journalists to write about. We create crises when we report on aggrieved and outrage parties. and then we cover the reaction to the stories we write about.

Art work, YouTubes, e-mail rumors -- all trigger expressions of outrage from campaign spokespeople and partisans and pundits. So much outrage, that we often look for something more... I know you're outraged, but are you are [sic -AMPP Ed.] also "bewildered" and outraged?

Outrage is often phony; major campaigns contrive their outrage precisely for effect. (When I ask about these contrivances, I am told that they are "part of the game.") But outrage is often phony even if it seems real. Phony outrage is outrage for the sake of feeling outraged; it's a comfortable outrage, an outrage that serves to reinforce feelings of solidarity and get rid of feelings of dissonance. Outrage is a covering emotion, like its close cousin, self-righteousness. We love to be offended. We love to feel affronted.

Everyone is so outraged, outraged, outraged all the time that we're defining outrage down. If our outrage meter hits 10 at every conceivable sleight or remark, then when something really outrageous happens -- something truly morally despicable or cowardly takes place -- we're numb. Outrage moves votes and changes opinion. But if everything's outrageous, then nothing is.

And that's outrageous.

from the Financial Times of London, 2008-Jul-19, by Christopher Caldwell:

Hear the one about Obama?

As Barack Obama prepared to leave for Europe this week, Americans fretted over why they can't seem to make jokes about him. One explanation is that he's just too wonderful - "not buffoonish in any way", as one tongue-tied comedian put it in a press account. But surely that can be fixed. What is the internet for, after all, if not to humiliate public figures who have done nothing to deserve it? Another explanation is that Mr Obama is lucky to be black at a time when white people are skittish about cracking racial jokes. True enough, but Mr Obama is more than just a black person.

He is also, for example, a stingy person, according to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. How stingy is he? Why, he's so stingy that, in campaign headquarters, the first time you put your hand under the electric towel dispenser you get a towel. The second time, you get a message to go see David Plouffe, the tight-fisted campaign manager. Or so the joke goes. Are you laughing? No? Not even a tiny bit? Then we are getting closer to the real problem: there are plenty of jokes about Barack Obama; there just aren't any good jokes about Barack Obama. And that is because of the obstacles that partisanship has raised to political humour.

The occasion for America's comedic soul-searching was the latest dud joke, a New Yorker cover that aimed to elicit a partisan chuckle against Mr Obama's foes. In it, Mr Obama and his wife Michelle are pictured in the Oval Office, he wearing a turban, she in combat fatigues, both of them warmed by an American flag burning in the fireplace. It has infuriated Obama supporters without titillating anybody else. "I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive," candidate John McCain was quick to say. That was the gracious and decent thing to say, of course, but it was also exactly what Machiavelli would have said. The cartoon is offensive only to the extent that it is thought plausible.

The problem with the cartoon is not that it violated the amour propre of the Obama camp or bumped up against any taboos about race but that it was an artistic failure. First, its message was alien to its genre. The cartoonist, Barry Blitt, assured readers he was mocking certain "ridiculous" paranoid attitudes about the Obamas, not the Obamas themselves. But a picture cannot convey the mental states of people who are not in it, any more than a sculpture can rhyme.

Second, the visual cues Mr Blitt used were ambiguous. The Somali turban he drew on Mr Obama was the one he'd worn in a 2006 photo of an African visit, reportedly released by the Hillary Clinton campaign to embarrass him. Is Mrs Clinton one of the paranoids assailed? Is it just Republicans? Or is it an attack on gullible Middle Americans of all descriptions? As Wolf Blitzer, the CNN reporter, put it: "There are going to be a lot of people who are not sophisticated New Yorker magazine readers who don't necessarily appreciate the satire."

Understanding the cartoon requires sharing the New Yorker's prejudices, not its sophistication. Without a prior understanding that the magazine is hostile to the paranoid style in American politics and well-disposed towards the Obamas, the cartoon is unintelligible. This problem would never have come up 20 years ago, when the only people who read the New Yorker were subscribers. But today, billions of people are a mouse-click away from being New Yorker "readers". Enough clicks and the cartoon begins to convey the opposite of what it meant to. Under the influence of a hyperdemocratic medium like the internet, you can't say anything to anyone that won't be heard by everyone.

The overthrow of "elite" media makes humour harder to practise, because humour is always a collusion of some people against others - "an understanding, almost a complicity, with other laughers", as Henri Bergson wrote in 1899. Through the fear it inspires, laughter represses eccentricities. It breaks up pockets of resistance to the social consensus. Something is comic when it is rigid, inflexible, mechanical, at odds with the social graces. "And laughter," Bergson wrote, "is its punishment."

Comedy resembles politics more than we think - it provides people with identities by providing them with enemies. And it is scurrilous, defamatory politics that comedy resembles most. As politics grows more partisan, the line between humour and sloganeering blurs. During the primaries, the comedy show Saturday Night Live did an oppressively unfunny skit that showed debate moderators favouring Mr Obama. It became well-known when Mrs Clinton crowed about it in a debate. In other words, it failed as a joke but succeeded as propaganda and few Americans could tell the difference. Mrs Clinton then tried to accuse Mr Obama of borrowing oratory from the Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, saying what he offered was "not change you can believe in, it's change you can xerox". Drum roll! Mrs Clinton delivered the line during a debate as if she were some Borscht Belt stand-up comic and she was booed like one, too. The comedian Jon Stewart recently spoke about "resistance" from audiences when people make Obama jokes.

In a partisan climate, any joke that rises above mere jeering will miss its mark. For half the country, the target is too decent to ridicule; for the other half, he is beneath contempt. On the eve of the primaries, 39 per cent of young Americans told the Pew Research Center they got most of their news through late-night comedy shows. So comedy has never been more important to American politics. Perhaps as a consequence, it has never been less funny.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

from the Jerusalem Post, 2008-Mar-3, by Abraham Katsman:

Obama-mania and cult of self-esteem

The phenomenon of Senator Barack Obama's campaign is astounding. He has packaged policies largely indistinguishable from those of John Edwards or Hillary Clinton in airy platitudes about "change" and "hope," and suddenly he's a rock star - complete with swooning and fainting fans at his huge campaign rallies. He can do no wrong, applauded wildly for everything from interrupting his speeches to give out water bottles to fans overcome by his presence to-no joke-blowing his nose onstage.

His spokesmen on national TV are flummoxed when asked to identify a single accomplishment in Obama's political career, yet it doesn't make the slightest dent in his support. Conventional wisdom says this adulation and intensity level cannot last. But conventional wisdom may be missing something fundamental.

His evident charisma aside, a clue to the source of Obama-mania may be found in the demographics of his support: he is far and away the favorite of younger voters and college students, routinely winning over 75% of the votes of Democrats under 30. Obama has tapped into is the first generation educated in schools focused on "self-esteem." Now, the products of self-esteem education have come of political age in substantial numbers, perhaps with profound implications for this and future elections.

For the past two decades, America's educational establishment has stressed the inculcation of self-esteem as the supreme educational goal. Self-respect - the product of struggle and achievement - is out; self-esteem - the entitlement tofeel great self-worth regardless of actual accomplishment - is in.

Strict correction of misspelling or of wrong answers to math problems is discouraged. Competition is a big no-no: many youth sports leagues forbid keeping score, lest any child's self-esteem suffer from the indignity of losing. Posting honor rolls is discouraged, as it might injure the self-esteem of those who did not make the grade.

Grade inflation is rampant in schools: according to one recent study, about half of today's college freshman had an "A" average in high school compared to under 20% in the late 1960s, even though SAT scores have tanked over the same period. The focus on self-esteem has, in a sense, been a huge success.

For example, American students have very high scores when asked to assess how good they are at math. Unfortunately, they have low/mediocre scores in actual math performance, routinely being outscored by students in most other developed countries.

Inevitably, however, such over-indulgence of students leads to increased narcissism, self-absorption, and sense of entitlement. Those with self-esteem disproportionate to their achievement tend to be less willing to take responsibility for their own failures, shortcomings, or bad behavior.

Coddled children raised to believe that any dream is not only attainable, but an entitlement granted regardless of actual effort and accomplishment are increasingly growing into depressed and stressed young adults as they rudely discover that the post-school world is not so cooperative and doesn't really care about their dreams or their feelings. In the real world, they keep score.

But not in Obama-world. That is a world of Hope; of Action; of Change You Can Believe In; of Yes We Can; of Coming Together; of Moving Forward Into the Future, and of other banalities that can mean absolutely anything to anyone. "I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations." It's all about us and our good feelings of youth and unity. Nothing so difficult as spelling out tough policy choices or arguing about a particular program's merits or ramifications is involved.

Why, that might instigate analysis, or arguments about right or wrong answers, which would divide us; that would interfere with our focus on how good we feel about ourselves and the restoration of the soft, fuzzy future which once belonged to us. "I intend to lead the party of tomorrow, not the party of yesterday." Unification for "change," "hope," and "the future" is perfect for Obama's young, esteem-fueled supporters: just as their academic self-esteem was divorced from actual achievement, and their competitive self-esteem was insulated from scorekeeping, Obama-supplied political self-esteem is disconnected from any actual opinions, policies or analyses.

Notably, Obama's rhetorical flourishes never involve policy choices or the big, bad, complex world outside the campaign rally. "In the face of change lies hope, and in the face of hope lies change." Brilliant! Dreams are restored! We're all 14 again! Just close our eyes and hope a perfect future into existence. Problems with the genocidal Iranian neighborhood bully? Simple, we'll use our seventh-grade conflict resolution methods on Ahmedinijad. Those pesky student loans and subprime mortgages we took out? No worries, Obama will make someone else pay for them. Israeli-Arab conflicts and daily missile barrages on civilian populations? No problem, everyone just come together -Obama's very presence will melt hardened hearts and pacify Hamas and Hizbullah. There. Problems solved. No need to think about all that anymore.

Now, let's focus again on us, brimming anew with all the virtue and youthful innocence and self-love in which we were immersed in our school years, as newly bestowed by Obama's incantations. "We are the ones we've been waiting for!" What about actually defining a political course to follow, or weighing the specific national security implications of competing approaches to the Middle East and Islamic terror? How irrelevant to our feelings. How yesterday. How... Republican. We'd much rather just "believe in ourselves to do the things we believe we can do!" We are the future. We can do anything. This feels great. Self-esteem rocks.

One gets the distinct impression that these Obama supporters really couldn't care less what policies he advocates. How many of them can explain how his prescription for Iraq differs from Hillary Clinton's? Or how his fiscal policy differs from John McCain's? Would it matter to these supporters if each of those policies were the opposite? Would they even notice?

Which brings us to the question of sustainability - will the movement last? It certainly could. By bolstering voters' sense of self-satisfaction, Obama has unleashed a wave of heady feelings of unity, purpose, and enthusiasm - but all for the man who makes them feel this way, not for any particular policies. No one, after all, is fainting at the thought of Obama's position on health insurance. Thus, nothing any opponent can say or do will likely get between Obama and his worshipers to undermine those feelings. And if that's not enough to carry him to the White House this year, keep in mind 2012, when America's self-esteem obsessed schools will have churned out four more graduating classes of swooning Obama voters.

Abe Katsman, an attorney, has worked on several political campaigns, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani's first successful run for mayor and President Bush's 2004 re-election. He will be assuming a major role in Republicans Abroad Israel.

from Rasmussen Reports, 2008-Jul-8:

Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits for First Time Ever

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

Last month, 11% of voters gave the legislature good or excellent ratings. Congress has not received higher than a 15% approval rating since the beginning of 2008.

The percentage of Democrats who give Congress positive ratings fell from 17% last month to 13% this month. The number of Democrats who give Congress a poor rating remained unchanged. Among Republicans, 8% give Congress good or excellent ratings, up just a point from last month. Sixty-five percent (65%) of GOP voters say Congress is doing a poor job, down a single point from last month.

Voters not affiliated with either party are the most critical of Congressional performance. Just 3% of those voters give Congress positive ratings, down from 6% last month. Sixty-three percent (63%) believe Congress is doing a poor job, up from 57% last month.

Just 12% of voters think Congress has passed any legislation to improve life in this country over the past six months. That number has ranged from 11% to 13% throughout 2008. The majority of voters (62%) say Congress has not passed any legislation to improve life in America.

Voters hold little positive sentiment about the future. Just 41% find it at least somewhat likely that Congress will address important problems facing our nation in the near future, while 55% find this unlikely.

Despite these negative attitudes towards Congress, Democrats continue to enjoy a double digit lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot. Also, Barack Obama holds a modest lead over John McCain in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Other key stats on Election 2008 can be found at Obama-McCain: By the Numbers.

Most voters (72%) think most members of Congress are more interested in furthering their own political careers. Just 14% believe members are genuinely interested in helping people.

A separate Rasmussen survey found that half of all voters believe America's best days are in the past. However, another survey found that 64% of voters also believe that the world would be a better place if more countries were similar to the United States.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it's free)… let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Jun-13, p.A15, by Gregg Easterbrook:

Life Is Good, So Why Do We Feel So Bad?

The Democratic National Committee recently ran an ad blasting John McCain for saying the country is "better off" than in 2000. Yet, arguably, except as regards the Iraq war, Mr. McCain's statement is true. In turn, Mr. McCain is blasting Barack Obama for suggesting that international tensions are not as bad as they've been made to seem. Yet, arguably, Mr. Obama is right.

Democratic attacks on Mr. McCain and Republican attacks on Mr. Obama both seek to punish impermissibly positive thoughts. At a time when there exists a sense of crisis over the economy, fuel prices and many other issues, this reinforces the odd, two realities of life in the United States today: The way we are, and the way we think we are. The way we are could use some work, but overall, is pretty good. The way we think we are is terrible, horrible, awful. Possibly worse.

The case that things are basically pretty good? Unemployment is 5.5%, low by historical standards; income is rising slightly ahead of inflation; housing prices are down, but the typical house is still worth a third more than in 2000; 94% of Americans do not have threatened mortgages, and of those who do, most will keep their homes.

Inflation was up in 2007, but this stands out because the 16 previous years were close to inflation-free; living standards are the highest they have ever been, including living standards for the middle class and for the poor.

All forms of pollution other than greenhouse gases are in decline; cancer, heart disease and stroke incidence are declining; crime is in a long-term cycle of significant decline; education levels are at all-time highs.

Sure, gas prices are up, the dollar is weak and credit is tight – but these are complaints at the margin of a mainly healthy society.

Yet the mood of public discourse is four-alarm panic. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll showed "Americans' views on the economy and the general state of the country have hit an all-time low," with 81% saying the nation is on the "wrong track" – the worst-ever number for this barometer. Some 78% told pollsters the U.S. is worse off today than five years ago, the highest percentage to say this since the CBS News/New York Times survey began tracking the question in 1986. Watch any news channel, listen to any political debate, read any pundit. The consensus is we're headed to hell in a handbasket.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania in April, Hillary Clinton said "We need to go back to the prosperity of the 1990s," a comment that drew loud, enthusiastic applause. Converted to today's dollars, per-capita income in the Keystone State is 23% higher than in 1990. People may think Pennsylvania was more prosperous in the past, but the state is better off today. The same can be said for most (needless to say, not all) parts of the country and most demographics. Most are, right now, the best-off they have ever been.

Some of the current gloom-and-doom may be explained by the human propensity to romanticize the past. Just what past would we return to, anyway? The 1950s, when there was systemic prejudice against African-Americans, women and gays? The 1960s, when inflation-adjusted per capita income was far lower than today? The 1970s, when high inflation rates wiped out paychecks and high interest rates made home buying difficult? The 1980s, when investors and people with pension funds were rooting for the Dow Jones to break 2000?

Of course a long, bloody and costly war being fought for no clear purpose depresses the national mood – as it should. The rest of the negativity is hard to fathom. Economic growth is slow, but even if a recession has begun, occasional cycles of slow or no growth are the price we pay for the much longer cycles of boom. Since 1992, the percentage of Americans who tell pollsters of the Pew Research Center they "can afford what they want" has risen steadily – from 39% in 1992 to 52% today, the highest ever. So why do we think the economy is failing?

Increasing pessimism from the news media is surely a factor – and the media grow ever-better at giving negative impressions. Now we don't just hear about threats or natural disasters, we see immediate live footage, creating the impression that threats and disasters are everywhere.

Whatever goes wrong in the country or around the world is telecast 24/7, making us think the world is falling to pieces – even when most things are getting better for most people, even in developing nations. If a factory closes, that's news. If a factory opens, that's not a story. You've heard about the factories Ford and General Motors have closed in this decade. Have you heard about the factories Toyota, Honda and other automakers opened in the U.S. in the same period? The jobs there have solid, long-term prospects.

The relentlessly negative impressions of American life presented by the media, including the entertainment media, explain something otherwise puzzling that shows up in psychological data. When asked about the country's economy, schools, health care or community spirit, Americans tell pollsters the situation is dreadful. But when asked about their own jobs, schools, doctors and communities, people tell pollsters the situation is good. Our impressions of ourselves and our neighbors come from personal experience. Our impressions of the nation as a whole come from the media and from political blather, which both exaggerate the negative.

The latter has never been thicker. Democrats insist Republicans are ruining domestic policy, Republicans insist Democrats are ruining foreign policy. Neither claim is true, but both reflect what we've been conditioned to believe: that America is in much worse circumstances than it actually is.

Mr. Easterbrook, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, is author, most recently, of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" (Random House, 2004).

from the Wall Street Journal, 2008-Jun-26, p.A13, by Dan Henninger:

Is Sour News Good News for the Dems?

It is written everywhere that the public is in a sour mood. Further, that a sour nation is swell news for the election chances of Barack Obama and the Democrats. Hard to disagree.

Gas and food prices are high, the president's approval is impossibly low, housing is a national nightmare and consumer confidence is at levels not seen since 1967. With Hillary defeated, Republicans are too despondent to vote. Worse, many of their own representatives, forced to choose between killing earmarks or blowing up their control of Congress, chose spending money over holding power – the definition of a loser.

This column is not about to argue that the sour-mood hypothesis is wrong and that John McCain and the GOP will shock the world. This glum summer, the conventional wisdom is looking good.

That said . . .

Put down your buttermilk martini for a moment and check the chart below. Late last week, Gallup published its annual survey of public confidence in U.S. institutions.

At the top, with an impressive combined "great" or "a lot" approval of 71% sits the military, described since 2003 as presiding over a "failure" in Iraq.

At the bottom of the heap, displacing HMOs as our worst institution, one finds the second branch of government, our Congress, at 12%. The Gallup folks noted it is "the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question." Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, come on down! You've made history.

For my currently dwindling money, this chart says more about the real source of Americans' bad mood than the cycles of the economy. Markets come and go, but most people expect the nation's major institutions to serve as reliable bedrock. No longer, and that is what really has people down.

Voters this year may toss Republicans off the Capitol dome, but Democrats have next-to-no reason to think this is a vote "for" them. For what? The same dark tides could float Democrats back to sea in 2010's off-year election.

Americans desperately want their institutions to function, and it must appall them to see confidence in public schools at 33%, the ever-divided Supreme Court at 32%, and the courts with what is essentially a vote of no confidence at 20%.

Hard to miss as well is that just below the military's high-confidence interval comes, of all things, the cops. Alfred Hitchcock once said, "I'm not against the police, I'm just afraid of them." No longer. What the U.S. military and the police have in common is successful self-reform of their institutions. It helps that self-discipline, largely dying at every level of society (such as the 12% Congress), is a primary job requirement.

The bad economy may put Barack Obama in the White House. The remarkable enthusiasm for him, though, has more to do with the demoralizing loss of confidence in major institutions. This, more than his fairly conventional policy ideas, is the appeal of his "change" candidacy. Barack Obama is the Hey-Jude candidate, the man who somehow will "make it better."

Earth to Obama belief system: Don't hold your breath.

The reason Congress doesn't perform is that the two parties have drifted into basic ideological disagreement on the way the world should work. So has much of the electorate. Roughly, the Democrats, with the decline of the industrial unions, are now the party of the public sector. The GOP, fitfully but without doubt, is the party of the private sector.

Case study: At the bottom of that confidence chart lie two nonperforming American assets, HMOs and Congress. This is about health insurance. The public wants Congress to fix it. It isn't happening.

Republicans, for example, have promoted private health savings accounts and private-sector competition. Democrats, from Hillary to Obama, want health insurance federally managed and subsidized. The parties aren't close here or on much else.

The sour mood in search of better is real enough. But the belief that Barack Obama has come among us as the angel of change looks to be a mile wide in intensity and a quarter-inch deep in reality. Many institutions are caught between a divided politics pulling hard at opposite ends of the rope. The public's sourness is just a symptom of this tension. Peace of mind – assuming people truly want that – won't come until voters decide whether the future direction of their country should be set mainly by the institutions of the private sector or by institutions of the public sector.

from RealClearPolitics.com via OpinionJournal.com, 2007-Aug-22, by Jay Cost:

The Partisan Worldview
Why Democrats demonize Rove and Republicans demonize Mrs. Clinton.

Last week I wrote an essay analyzing the legacy of Karl Rove. My argument was that one of Mr. Rove's biggest problems--and indeed a major failure of this White House--was the failure to do all that could be done to control his and his boss' image.

I received more than a few emails in response to the essay. Many of them echoed the thoughts of this emailer:

I'm in direct disagreement with your attempt to present Karl Rove as a normal guy. Rove has a serious lack of ethics. He doesn't have sense of right or wrong as much as some ideas about the limitations of his power. With Rove the end has always justified the means. Ethically he is a mirror image of Richard Nixon. God help us if he is the common denominator of our society. Do you really believe that we have sunk so low? The best adjectives to describe Rove might be capable, vindictive and mean-spirited. He has screamed at people that he would crush them if they failed to do his bidding, he has boasted of spying on other campaigns, and he has run dirty campaigns such as the one which discredited John McCain. And apparently he has been undone by the nature of his character or he wouldn't be leaving in such a quick manner with little or no explanation.

I quote this at length not for its analytical insight. It is pretty much standard anti-Bush boilerplate. Rather, I quote it as a way to contrast this line of thinking with my own methodology.

On my blog, I endeavor to adhere to what I call a "good faith assumption." What I mean by that is the following. It is, I think, impossible to draw inferences about a human being's character based upon his public persona, i.e., the set of data points that come to us through the media. We just cannot do it. We only get a tiny glimpse of a human being via the news. And, what is more, there are good reasons to believe that the person we see on TV or read about in the newspapers is quite different from the person who exists when cameras or tape recorders are not in front of him. And so, we cannot draw conclusions about a person's soul from the data that we glean from press reports.

So, where does that leave us? Well, I think it leaves us with the good faith assumption. I'll describe it this way. Most people with whom I am well acquainted are people who act in good faith most of the time. This is true even of the people that I do not like. Those people may have acted wickedly in an instance that has aroused my anger. They may even have some real moral flaws--but that does not mean that they do not generally try to do right by other people. It's the same for all of us. All of us are indeed capable of genuinely evil deeds from time to time. But most of the time we act in good faith in our dealings with other people.

Because I know this about people whom I know personally, it stands to reason that the same is true of people I do not know personally--in this case, political actors. Political actors might be less likely to act in good faith than, say, nurses. I am not sure--though I do know that the public has an unnecessarily skeptical view of politicians and their attendants. However, even if we were to agree that politicians are less likely to act in good faith than the average non-politician, we would still have to admit that most of the time they--just like everybody else--are acting in good faith.

Combining these two facts--limited data plus a priori knowledge of good faith--gives rise to the good faith assumption. Not only do I have good reasons to believe that politicos, just like almost everybody I know, are acting in good faith most of the time, I also lack a reliable dataset that speaks to their intentions. Thus, I should assume that, in whatever actions I observe (via the media) them do, they have acted in good faith. Surely, sometimes they do not. But, because my knowledge of them is strictly mediated, I have no way to differentiate good faith actions from bad faith actions. And I know a priori that most of their actions are in good faith. Thus, I should assume that all observed actions are in good faith unless I have compelling evidence to the contrary.

---

This is why the argument I quoted above does not do it for me. There is nothing more than whispers and innuendo masquerading as evidence in the emailer's excerpt. This is not enough. The good faith assumption means that people I do not know get the benefit of my doubt. They get this because I know, a priori, that most people are deserving of this doubt. And so, if my goal is to analyze political actors as accurately as I am able, I should assume that people I do not know are similarly deserving unless there is clear and compelling evidence otherwise. A few pseudodocumentaries occasionally run on the Sundance Channel are insufficient evidence in the face of this assumption.

Don't get me wrong, mind you. I am not being Pollyannaish. The good faith assumption does not mean that I go into a situation assuming that all and sundry are angels. Not at all! For my analysis of Karl Rove, the good faith assumption means the following: I assume that Karl Rove is a political operative--nothing more and nothing less. Politics is a messy business--one that Americans inherently dislike. Mr. Rove is a partisan political operative who was engaging in the timeless tradition of American politicking. If he were a Democrat, Republicans would be screaming bloody murder about him just as Democrats are now. The reason, ultimately, is that Democrats think that only Republicans politick and Republicans think that only Democrats politick. Both sides are half right. Just like many professional Democrats, Karl Rove has been politicking lo these many years--not, I assume, undermining the very institutions of our republican democracy, etc. This is what one side always says when it observes the other side politicking.

I think that this, ultimately, points to why one needs to dislodge oneself of the psychological hold of political partisanship if one wishes to understand how our system actually works. This is not to say that one needs to stop voting, or that one needs to start splitting one's ticket. Both parties offer us reasonably clear and divergent policy alternatives. If one or the other suits you better, go with it. I do. This is also not to say that there is no such thing as right and wrong in politics. Dislodging oneself of the partisan worldview does not necessitate political nihilism.

Rather, it implies the following: Both political parties offer us a ready-made worldview, a lens through which we can look at our political environment and make sense of it. I take these worldviews to be the creations of electorally ambitious political actors whose goals are to acquire half plus one of the votes in the next election. These partisan worldviews are a means to these ends. Thus, they are explicitly crafted to induce us to political action. One way that we can be induced to political action (especially in a system, such as ours, that is usually "rigged" to prevent any single election from producing significant policy results) is if we believe that our political universe contains heroes and, of course, villains. The demonization of Karl Rove (and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton) is therefore part and parcel of a partisan worldview. Like I said, its purpose is to induce a response from us. It makes us mad. It gives us a sense of righteousness. And so on. That makes us more reliable party voters, or more generous party donors.

The problem with these worldviews is that they are morally and philosophically simplistic. Here, I am not talking about liberalism and conservatism--the two great American political philosophies. Rather, I am talking about "Republicanism" and "Democratism." These are philosophies as well. Both boil down to the idea that, in the great march of American history, our side is in the right and their side is in the wrong. Our side grasps the Truth--and the other side is filled with the ignorant who do not understand It, or the evil who deny It. Like I said, morally and philosophically simplistic. Accepting a partisan worldview gives us a ready-made answer to any and all political questions we might think to ask ourselves. However, it does not mean that those answers have much grounding in the complicated reality that is American political life.

If you're a partisan Democrat (i.e. one who embraces what I call "Democratism")--ask yourself if you know anybody in your personal life who is as evil as you think Karl Rove is. Or, ask yourself whether, when you got to know somebody you thought was that evil, you found out that he wasn't that bad after all. Maybe these are signs that people aren't really that evil, and that you have been offered and have accepted a worldview that really does not square with the world as you know it outside the time you spend consuming political information. Republicans can do the same, as I said, with Hillary Clinton. Really, do they make people that evil?

---

I would suggest that, when we start to embrace what I have been calling the good faith assumption, we start to see politics differently. Rather than an epic struggle of good versus evil (with our side, of course, being the good guys), it starts to look like a conflict between competing interests that is managed by a federated system that is animated by duly constituted elections that are fought over by political actors who do what political actors do: politick.

In other words, the good faith assumption is a step towards appreciating more fully exactly what Madison was on about when he wrote the following:

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. . . . The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

What we see as the great moral march of just crusaders led by our fearless party leaders against the evil and/or ignorant opposition, Madison seems to think of as a faction that, if left unchecked, would lead to the demise of true republican government. We should think about that when we get so frothy-mouthed by our partisan worldviews. Madison imagined us getting frothy-mouthed, and resolved himself to divide political power six ways from Sunday to stop us from ruining our fragile republican experiment amidst our frothy furor. What does that tell us?

The psychological embrace of a partisan worldview is easy and satisfying. Both partisan narratives are easy to understand. Each helps us make judgments about a whole host of things for which we lack direct referents. Each is psychologically satisfying. Few things in life are more pleasurable than righteous anger. However, neither is all that valid on an empirical level. Embracing one might enable us to identify one actor as good and another as evil. It might allow us to feel good about ourselves. But it will not move us any closer to the reality of our politics. In fact, it will move us further from it.

Mr. Cost writes the Horse Race Blog for RealClearPolitics.com.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2007-Jul-30, by John Fund:

Whose Ox Is Gored
After Bush's victory, liberals shouted "Voter fraud!" Why have they changed their tune?

When Republicans win elections, liberals are quick to cry fraud. But when actual fraud is found, they are just as quick to deny it, if Democrats are the ones who benefit.

Just before the 2004 election, the influential blog DailyKos.com warned of a "nationwide" wave of voter fraud against John Kerry. After the election, liberal blogger Josh Marshall urged Mr. Kerry not to concede because the election had been "too marred with voter suppression, dirty tricks and other unspeakable antics not to press every last possibility" of changing the outcome. When Congress met in January 2005 to certify the election results, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D., Ohio) challenged Mr. Bush's victory and forced Congress to debate the issue. Months later, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean maintained that blacks had been the victims of "massive voter suppression" in Ohio.

But now liberals are accusing the Bush Justice Department of cooking up spurious claims of voter fraud in the 2006 elections and creating what the New York Times calls a "fantasy" that voter fraud is a problem. Last week Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, claimed that the administration fired eight U.S. attorneys last year in order to pressure prosecutors "to bring cases of voter fraud to try to influence elections." He said one replacement U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo., was a "partisan operative" sent "to file charges on the eve of an election in violation of Justice Department guidelines." But the Kansas City prosecution was approved by career Justice lawyers, and the guidelines in question have since been rewritten by career lawyers in the Public Integrity section of Justice.

But last week also brought fresh evidence that voter fraud is a real problem and could even branch out into cyberspace:

• California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a Democrat, reported that state-approved hackers had been "able to bypass physical and software security in every [voting] machine they tested," although she admitted that the hackers had access to internal security information and source codes that vote thieves wouldn't normally have.

• The Florida secretary of state's office reported it had found "legally sufficient" evidence that some 60 people in Palm Beach County had committed voter fraud by voting both there and in New York state. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has launched a formal probe. In 2004, New York's Daily News found that 46,000 people were illegally registered to vote in both New York and Florida.

• Prosecutors in Hoboken, N.J., last week announced they are investigating a vagrant who was part of a group of voters observed to be acting suspiciously outside a polling place in an election last month. After he signed a voting register in the name of another man, he was confronted by a campaign worker and fled the scene. He later admitted to cops that he had been paid $10 to vote.

• Last week the U.S. Department of Justice recommended that an outside party be appointed to oversee Democratic primary elections in Noxubee County, Miss. In June, federal district judge Tom Lee found that Ike Brown, the Democratic political boss of Noxubee, had paid notaries public to visit voters and illegally mark their absentee ballots, imported illegal candidates to run for county office and manipulated the registration rolls.

---

But the most interesting news came out of Seattle, where on Thursday local prosecutors indicted seven workers for Acorn, a union-backed activist group that last year registered more than 540,000 low-income and minority voters nationwide and deployed more than 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers. The Acorn defendants stand accused of submitting phony forms in what Secretary of State Sam Reed says is the "worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history" of the state.

The list of "voters" registered in Washington state included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Tom Friedman, actress Katie Holmes and nonexistent people with nonsensical names such as Stormi Bays and Fruto Boy. The addresses used for the fake names were local homeless shelters. Given that the state doesn't require the showing of any identification before voting, it is entirely possible people could have illegally voted using those names.

Local officials refused to accept the registrations because they had been delivered after last year's Oct. 7 registration deadline. Initially, Acorn officials demanded the registrations be accepted and threatened to sue King County (Seattle) officials if they were tossed out. But just after four Acorn registration workers were indicted in Kansas City, Mo., on similar charges of fraud, the group reversed its position and said the registrations should be rejected. But by then, local election workers had had a reason to carefully scrutinize the forms and uncovered the fraud. Of the 1,805 names submitted by Acorn, only nine have been confirmed as valid, and another 34 are still being investigated. The rest--over 97%--were fake.

In Kansas City, where two Acorn workers have pleaded guilty to committing registration fraud last year while two others await trial, only 40% of the 35,000 registrations submitted by the group turned out to be bogus. But Melody Powell, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Elections, says Acorn's claim that it brought the fraud in her city to light is "seriously misleading." She says her staff first took the evidence to the FBI, and only then Acorn helped identify the perpetrators. "It's a potential recipe for fraud," she says, noting that "anyone can find a voter card mailed to a false apartment building address lying around a lobby and use it to vote." Ms. Powell also worries that legitimate voters who were registered a second time by someone else under a false address might find it difficult to vote.

In Washington state, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said that in lieu of charging Acorn itself as part of the registration fraud case, he had worked out an agreement by which the group will pay $25,000 to reimburse the costs of the investigation and formally agree to tighten supervision of its activities, which Mr. Satterberg said were rife with "lax oversight."

Last year several Acorn employees told me that the Acorn scandals that have cropped up around the country are no accident. "There's no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances," says Nate Toler, who was head of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California until late last year, when Acorn fired him for speaking to me.

Loretta Barton, another former community organizer for Acorn, told me that "all Acorn wanted from registration drives was results." Ironically, given Acorn's strong backing from unions, Ms. Barton alleges that when she and her co-workers asked about forming a union, they were slapped down: "We were told if you get a union, you won't have a job." There is some history here: In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Acorn to rehire and pay restitution to three employees it had illegally fired for trying to organize a union.

Acorn president John James told reporters last week that his group will cooperate with election officials to make sure "no one is trying to pull a fast one on us." "We are looking to the future," he said in a statement. "Voter participation is a vital part of our work to increase civic participation."

---

But the Acorn case points up just how difficult it is to convince prosecutors to bring voter fraud cases. Donald Washington, a former U.S. attorney for northern Louisiana, admits that "most of the time, we can't do much of anything [about fraud] until the election is over. And the closer we get to the election, the less willing we are to get involved because of just the appearance of impropriety, just the appearance of the federal government somehow shading how this election ought to occur." Several prosecutors told me they feared charges of racism or of a return to Jim Crow voter suppression tactics if they pursued touchy voter fraud cases--as indeed is now happening as part of the reaction to the U.S. attorney firings.

Take Washington state, where former U.S. attorney John McKay declined to pursue allegations of voter fraud after that state's hotly contested 2004 governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 133 votes on a third recount. As the Seattle media widely reported, some "voters" were deceased, others were registered in storage lockers, and still others were ineligible felons. Extra ballots were "found" and declared valid 10 times during the vote count and recount. In some precincts, more votes were cast than voters showed up at the polls.

Mr. McKay insists he left "no stone unturned" in investigating allegations of fraud in the governor's race but found no evidence of a crime. But in an interview with Stefan Sharkansky of SoundPolitics.com in May, Mr. McKay admitted that he "didn't like the way the election was handled" and that it had "smelled really, really bad." His decision not to prosecute was apparently based on the threshold of evidence he insisted be met before he would even deploy FBI agents to investigate: a firsthand account of a conspiracy to alter the outcome of the election.

But Mr. McKay is incorrect in saying that he had to find a conspiracy in order to reach the federal threshold for election crimes. In Milwaukee, after the 2004 election U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic investigated many of the same problems that were found in Seattle: felons voting, double-voting and more votes cast than voters who signed poll books. In 2005 Mr. Biskupic concluded that he had found nothing that "has shown a plot to try to tip an election," but he nonetheless prosecuted and won six convictions for felon voting and double-voting.

Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association in Washington state, says he is pleased that the evidence his group compiled was helpful in securing the indictments of the seven Acorn workers last week. But he can't help but wonder if the Acorn workers who forged registrations last year were part of the cadre of election workers who were allowed by a local judge after the 2004 governor's election to seek out voters who had given problematic signatures on their voter-registration cards and helped them "revise" their registrations in order to make their votes valid. "We may never know whether Acorn workers forged signatures in 2004, but we know they did in 2006," he says. "Those who think voter fraud isn't an ongoing problem should come to Washington state."

Instead, Sen. Leahy and other liberals are busy dismissing concerns about voter fraud, no doubt in an effort to make certain the Justice Department drops the issue as a priority before the 2008 election. But the blunders and politicization of parts of the Bush Justice Department notwithstanding, voter fraud deserves to be investigated and prosecuted. The Justice Department may be dysfunctional and poorly led, but the Democratic Congress seems more interested in paralyzing its activities than helping to fix the problem.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2007-May-8, by Michael Barone:

The Realignment of America
The native-born are leaving "hip" cities for the heartland.

In 1950, when I was in kindergarten in Detroit, the city had a population of (rounded off) 1,850,000. Today the latest census estimate for Detroit is 886,000, less than half as many. In 1950, the population of the U.S. was 150 million. Today the latest census estimate for the nation is 301 million, more than twice as many. People in America move around. But not just randomly.

It has become a commonplace to say that population has been flowing from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt, from an industrially ailing East and Midwest to an economically vibrant West and South. But the actual picture of recent growth, as measured by the 2000 Census and the census estimates for 2006, is more complicated. Recently I looked at the census estimates for 50 metropolitan areas with more than one million people in 2006, where 54% of Americans live. (I cheated a bit on definitions, adding Durham to Raleigh and combining San Francisco and San Jose.) What I found is that you can separate them into four different categories, with different degrees and different sources of population growth or decline. And I found some interesting surprises.

Start with the Coastal Megalopolises: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago (on the coast of Lake Michigan), Miami, Washington and Boston. Here is a pattern you don't find in other big cities: Americans moving out and immigrants moving in, in very large numbers, with low overall population growth. Los Angeles, defined by the Census Bureau as Los Angeles and Orange Counties, had a domestic outflow of 6% of 2000 population in six years--balanced by an immigrant inflow of 6%. The numbers are the same for these eight metro areas as a whole.

There are some variations. New York had a domestic outflow of 8% and an immigrant inflow of 6%; San Francisco a whopping domestic outflow of 10% (the bursting of the tech bubble hurt) and an immigrant inflow of 7%. Miami and Washington had domestic outflows of only 2%, overshadowed by immigrant inflows of 8% and 5%, respectively.

This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they're moving out of our largest metro areas. They're fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they're moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations--these are driving many Americans elsewhere.

The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo.

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Democratic politicians like to decry what they describe as a widening economic gap in the nation. But the part of the nation where it is widening most visibly is their home turf, the place where they win their biggest margins (these metro areas voted 61% for John Kerry) and where, in exquisitely decorated Park Avenue apartments and Beverly Hills mansions with immigrant servants passing the hors d'oeuvres, they raise most of their money.

The bad news for them is that the Coastal Megalopolises grew only 4% in 2000-06, while the nation grew 6%. Coastal Megalopolitan states--New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois--are projected to lose five House seats in the 2010 Census, while California, which has gained seats in every census since it was admitted to the Union in 1850, is projected to pick up none.

You see an entirely different picture in the 16 metro areas I call the Interior Boomtowns (none touches the Atlantic or Pacific coasts). Their population has grown 18% in six years. They've had considerable immigrant inflow, 4%, but with the exceptions of Dallas and Houston, this immigrant inflow has been dwarfed by a much larger domestic inflow--three million to 1.5 million overall.

Domestic inflow has been a whopping 19% in Las Vegas, 15% in the Inland Empire (California's Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, where much of the outflow from Los Angeles has gone), 13% in Orlando and Charlotte, 12% in Phoenix, 10% in Tampa, 9% in Jacksonville. Domestic inflow was over 200,000 in the Inland Empire, Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Orlando. These are economic dynamos that are driving much of America's growth. There's much less economic polarization here than in the Coastal Megalopolises, and a higher percentage of traditional families: Natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) in the Interior Boomtowns is 6%, well above the 4% in the Coastal Megalopolises.

The nation's center of gravity is shifting: Dallas is now larger than San Francisco, Houston is now larger than Detroit, Atlanta is now larger than Boston, Charlotte is now larger than Milwaukee. State capitals that were just medium-sized cities dominated by government employees in the 1950s--Sacramento, Austin, Raleigh, Nashville, Richmond--are now booming centers of high-tech and other growing private-sector businesses. San Antonio has more domestic than immigrant inflow even though the border is only three hours' drive away. The Interior Boomtowns generated 38% of the nation's population growth in 2000-06.

This is another political world from the Coastal Megalopolises: the Interior Boomtowns voted 56% for George W. Bush in 2004. Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Nevada--states dominated by Interior Boomtowns--are projected to pick up 10 House seats in the 2010 Census.

What about the old Rust Belt, which suffered so in the 1980s? The six metro areas here--Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Rochester--have lost population since 2000. Their domestic outflow of 4% has been only partially offset by an immigrant inflow of 1%. If the outflow seems smaller than in the 1980s, it's because so many young people have already left. Natural increase is only 2%, lower than in Orlando or Jacksonville in supposedly elderly Florida. Their economies are ailing, more of a drag on, than an engine for, the nation. They're not the source of dynamism they were 80 or 100 years ago. They continue to vote Democratic, but their 54% for John Kerry was much lower than the Coastal Megalopolis's 61%. Their states are projected to lose six House seats in the 2010 Census.

The fourth category is what I call the Static Cities. These are 18 metropolitan areas with immigrant inflow between zero and 4%, with domestic inflow up to 3% and domestic outflow no higher than 1%. They seem to be holding their own economically, but are not surging ahead and some are in danger of falling back. Philadelphia makes the list, and so do Baltimore, Hartford and Providence in the East.

Surprisingly, some Western cities that boomed in the 1990s are in this category too: Seattle (the tech bust again), Denver, Portland. In the Midwest, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Columbus and Indianapolis are doing better than their Rust Belt neighbors and make the list. In the South, Norfolk, Memphis, Louisville, Oklahoma City and Birmingham are lagging enough behind the Interior Boomtowns to do so. Overall the Static Cities had a domestic inflow of just 18,000 people (.048%) and an immigrant inflow of 2%. Politically, they're a mixed bag, a bit more Democratic than the nation as a whole: 52% for Kerry, 47% for Bush.

I have left two atypical metro areas out, because they stand alone. One is New Orleans, with a 25% domestic outflow; it was already losing population and attracting almost no immigrants before Katrina. The other is Salt Lake City, which demographically looks a lot like the America of the 1950s. In 2000-2006 its population grew a robust 10%. But it had a domestic outflow of 4% (young Mormons going off on their missions?), balanced by an immigrant inflow of 4%. The chief driver of population growth there is kids: Salt Lake City's natural increase was 9%, the largest of any of our metro areas, hugely greater than San Francisco's 3% or Pittsburgh's minus 1%. Politically, New Orleans was split down the middle in 2004, with Bush leading 50% to 49%, while Salt Lake City, the least Republican part of Utah, was still 60% for Bush.

What of the rest of the nation? You can find a few smaller metro areas that look like the Coastal Megalopolises (Santa Barbara, university towns like Iowa City), many that resemble the Interior Boomtowns (Fort Myers, Tucson) and the Rust Belt (Canton, Muncie). You can find rural counties that are losing population (as are most counties in North Dakota) and, even amid them, towns that have solid growth (Fargo, Bismarck).

But overall the nation beyond these 49 metro areas looks like the Static Cities: 1% domestic inflow, 1% immigrant inflow, 4% population growth. But politically it is more Republican, taking in as it does large swathes of the South, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, and in line with the historical record of non-metropolitan areas being less Democratic than metro areas: 56% for Bush, 42% for Kerry.

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Twenty years ago political analysts grasped the implications of the vast movement from Rust Belt to Sun Belt, a tilting of the table on balance toward Republicans; but with California leaning heavily to Democrats, that paradigm seems obsolete. What's now in store is a shifting of political weight from a small Rust Belt which leans Democratic and from the much larger Coastal Megalopolises, where both secular top earners and immigrant low earners vote heavily Democratic, toward the Interior Megalopolises, where most voters are private-sector religious Republicans but where significant immigrant populations lean to the Democrats. House seats and electoral votes will shift from New York, New Jersey and Illinois to Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada; within California, House seats will shift from the Democratic coast to the Republican Inland Empire and Central Valley.

Demography is destiny. When I was in kindergarten in 1950, Detroit was the nation's fifth largest metro area, with 3,170,000 people. Now it ranks 11th and is soon to be overtaken by Phoenix, which had 331,000 people in 1950. In the close 1960 election, in which electoral votes were based on the 1950 Census, Michigan cast 20 votes for John Kennedy and Arizona cast four votes for Richard Nixon; New York cast 45 votes for Kennedy and Florida cast 10 votes for Nixon. In 2012, Michigan will likely have 16 electoral votes and Arizona 12; New York will have 29 votes and Florida 29. That's the kind of political change demographics makes over the years.

Mr. Barone is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and author of "Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers," published this month by Crown.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2006-Nov-8, by John Ellis:

All Slander All the Time
Politicians spend $1 billion to convince you that politicians are no good.

Glad it's over? You're not the only one. Voters in six states with closely contested U.S. Senate races were recently asked by the Gallup Organization their opinion of the political advertising they'd seen this year. The vast majority, in every state surveyed, described it as either "somewhat negative," "very negative" or "extremely negative." Roughly a third of those surveyed in each state said "extremely negative."

According to Advertising Age magazine, the total amount spent this year on political advertising will reach $2 billion, a hefty increase over 2004. If one conservatively estimates that at least half of all political advertising can be fairly described as "negative," then 2006 will be the first year that negative political advertising expenditures reached the $1 billion mark. That's a dollar amount greater than all of the television, radio and print advertising buys done by Anheuser-Busch (estimated by Ad Age to be $919 million) in 2005.

Imagine, if you will, what your taste for Miller beer would be if Anheuser-Busch spent half of its annual advertising budget describing all of the various Miller brands in the most unsavory terms. Or, what your taste for a Budweiser would be if the lads at Miller unleashed a $500 million negative ad campaign against "the King of Beers." Imagine both at the same time and you get some idea of what domestic politics is like for most Americans.

Look through the list of the major advertisers in the U.S. and what strikes you is that all of them spend vast sums of money building and strengthening brands. The nation's leading advertiser, Proctor & Gamble, spends over $4.5 billion annually doing just that. P&G spends not one dime on negative advertising because they understand that it is ultimately self-destructive.

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What makes our politics so sensationally awful is not just the amount of money spent denigrating the category and the profession, but the equally stunning amount of energy that is expended by party apparatchiks to amplify the negative in news-media coverage of politics. And the news media are only too happy to comply. The truth is they can't get enough of it.

The net effect of this constant and unrelenting assault on politicians and the political process is voter resignation and ultimately a kind of doomed acceptance. It must be true. They must all be hypocrites, fools, thieves and scoundrels. They're talking about themselves, after all. It's $1 billion of self-portraiture.

A general rule of politics is: It's not the action, it's the reaction. The reaction to the onslaught is aversion; qualified, capable people avoid politics and the political process at all costs, thus diminishing the talent pool. The New York Republican Party was unable to recruit a qualified candidate for state comptroller, even though the race was there for the taking, because they literally couldn't find a qualified candidate to run. Nor could the Republican Party find a qualified candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. No sensible person would do it. Part of corporate advertising contains a subtextual message; come work for us, we're in an exciting business. We're growing and it will only get better. The subtextual message of political advertising is: You'd be crazy to get involved. It's bad and it's only going to get worse.

One would think that the major parties would grasp the concept that they are destroying the very profession they purport to love, and act accordingly. In the midst of all these negative messages, one would expect to find a broad, thematic campaign that aspired to something bigger than "he voted for toxic waste dumps and against your unborn child." When the Labour Party in Britain finally got tired of losing elections to Maggie Thatcher's Tories, they hired the best advertising minds in that nation to relaunch the Labour Party brand. The results were impressive. Tony Blair rose to power and rules to this day.

But in America, the major parties don't ever think in broad, national terms. They're all tactics and no strategy. They don't advertise themselves at all. Instead, they spend the hundreds of millions of dollars they raise microtargeting supposedly single-issue voters and bombarding them with negative messages about the opposite party's alleged disdain for those concerns. Put more simply, they send you junk mail you don't open, and leave robo-calls on your answering machine that you immediately erase.

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Ultimately, the reaction to this ceaseless negative barrage, if it continues unchecked, will be the rejection of both major political parties. As more and more people are repulsed by the political process, their number will at some point reach a critical mass. Americans share two overriding beliefs: Tomorrow will be a better day and the idea of America is fundamentally important. That critical mass will eventually embrace a party of hope and mission. A new political party that speaks to those beliefs will emerge. The alternative, after all, is a new record every two years--$2 billion of negative advertising, then $4 billion, then $8 billion. All slander all the time eventually collapses of its own foul weight.

Mr. Ellis, a former columnist for the Boston Globe, is a partner in Sand Hill Partners, a venture-capital firm.

from the New York Times, 2006-Oct-29, by Anne E. Kornblut:

The Elephant in the Room

FOR years, Sheri Langham looked at the Republican politics of her parents as a tolerable quirk, one she could roll her eyes at and turn away from when the disagreements grew a bit deep.

But earlier this year, Ms. Langham, 37, an ardent Democrat, found herself suddenly unable even to speak to her 65-year-old mother, a retiree in Arizona who, as an enthusiastic supporter of President Bush, “became the face of the enemy,” she said.

“Things were getting to me, and it became such a moral litmus test that all I could think about was, ‘How can she support these people?’ ” said Ms. Langham, a stay-at-home mother in suburban Virginia.

The mother and daughter had been close, but suddenly they stopped talking and exchanging e-mail messages. The freeze lasted almost a month.

“Finally, it hit me that if one of us got hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t want my final thought to be, ‘She supports George Bush,’ ” Ms. Langham said. They resumed contact, but have agreed not to discuss the administration and the war, or even forward each other humorous political e-mail messages.

With Iraq locked in seemingly endless violence and a contentious midterm election just weeks away, a similar silent treatment seems to be spreading across certain corners of society. People who once feistily shared their convictions about politics now report biting their tongues around — or even completely avoiding — friends and relatives who disagree, trying to avoid fights over the Bush administration and, specifically, the war.

The simple image of a “polarized nation,” with a great divide between entirely red and entirely blue states, was never quite accurate: Many metropolitan areas, in particular, support a mix of both parties, with Republicans and Democrats living and working peacefully, for the most part, side by side. Those people have always car-pooled, had play groups, and shared elevator rides and adjoining cubicles, often forming friendships through bonds that have nothing to do with politics.

But as the fissures that opened after the 2000 election have become more extreme over the last six years, the divisions are playing out in small and personal ways, influencing friendships, acquaintances and even family dynamics. In some cases, the divisions have caused painful rifts. In others, they have simply produced a wary quiet.

Many people said they are simply tired of debating the policies that have split the country so thoroughly. They know where they stand; they know where their friends, neighbors and colleagues stand. Rather than shift their views or even play along in a show of tolerance, many said they have opted for retreat and the safe harbor of friends who agree.

That instinct for self-selection has created a certain awkwardness in some environments, as people tread carefully on the subject of politics for fear of discovering that a neighbor is of another stripe. One result, said political experts, is that public discourse seems to be dimming, with people returning to the manners of an earlier time when discussing politics was considered rude rather than enlightening.

"Over 40 years ago, when I was a sorority girl at the University of Wisconsin, there were three things you didn’t talk about in rush, and those were religion, sex and politics,” said Charlene Bramson, a personal shopper in Chicago. “And then I went through 40 years of my life where those were dinner party conversations. And now I think there’s a lot of talk about politics, but you know who you’re talking to before you start to have the conversation. You are having the conversation with people you agree with, not people you disagree with."

Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who conducts focus groups nationwide, agreed, saying, “In most parts of this country it is very difficult to have a civilized conversation between two people that fundamentally disagree.”

Which, while perhaps invigorating for television ratings, is proving less so for the nation’s social fabric.

Silvy Brookby, an algebra teacher in Kansas City, Mo., was once amused by the liberal banter she heard at the school lunch table from her colleagues, and often countered with a Republican perspective of her own. But as the debate has worn on — and, in Missouri, has grown more fierce against the backdrop of a fiercely contested Senate race — Dr. Brookby, 35, said she has grown tired of it. “Recently, I have withdrawn,” she said. “I’ve been like: ‘I can’t do it anymore. Let me sit here and eat my chicken tetrazzini.’ ”

That, she said, is a dramatic change for her. “I used to stand up for myself and fight it,” said Dr. Brookby, who still supports the Bush administration over the war in Iraq. “Now that there’s no one in my corner, I don’t anymore. I just let them talk, and I just let it go.”

She said she is grateful that her young son has made friends with a child whose parents are also Republicans, just so she can talk politics over playtime in relative comfort.

Bob Schwartz, a Democrat in Columbus, has had a similar, visceral reaction to his Republican friends. He recently quit his monthly poker game after 25 years, he had become so fed up with hearing his Republican partners praise President Bush at every gathering.

“It finally got to the point where it was me and another guy who were the only Democrats in there, and we said ‘That’s it, folks, we don’t want to play anymore,’ ” said Mr. Schwartz, 68, who is a retired electrical contractor.

The narrative is playing itself out over and over: Susan Freed, 32, a Democrat and a lawyer at a major firm in Des Moines, said she no longer raises politics at dinner parties where she does not know the other guests well because it “can be so touchy.”

Jim Coffman, 40, a Democrat in Chicago, said he and his wife have not pursued a friendship with another couple whose three children are the same ages as theirs after seeing photographs of President Bush on the other couple’s refrigerator. He said they have discussed with other friends “being so amazed that we could have so much in common, and yet be so diametrically opposed” when it comes to politics.

Chris Murphy, 32, counts himself among the few Republicans in Boston, where he works in the media relations department at Blue Cross and Blue Shield. In an environment dominated by Democrats, he said he is consistently amazed at people’s presumption that he shares their views, putting him in more than a few awkward positions.

“People just assume you’re a Democrat, and turn and look at you and say, ‘Can you believe what this nut in the White House is doing?’ ” Mr. Murphy said. “And then you can say, ‘I voted for him twice,’ or you can nod and move along.” Often, he said, he chooses the latter.

Peter Mead, a Democrat who works with Mr. Murphy, said that at a recent dinner with another couple — Republicans — at a new French restaurant in the Back Bay, the subject of Iraq arose before they had ordered the appetizer course. “A discussion began, and it wasn’t going to go to a good place, and I said: ‘I tell you what. We have so much to talk about, let’s not discuss anything they’re talking about in Washington, so we can have a great dinner,’ ” Mr. Mead, 60, said. “And we did.”

Stephen Viscusi, 46, of Manhattan, said the divide has made dating even more fraught. Mr. Viscusi, who is gay and a Republican, said he has been rejected by Democratic suitors once they learn his political views.

Where people were once amused by the marriage of the Republican consultant Mary Matalin and her Democratic husband, James Carville, now they are fairly bewildered: These days, it is almost impossible to imagine a similar union springing up in Washington, or between any two people on opposite political sides.

In the wake of hostile debates during the last few election cycles, P. M. Forni, the director of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, compiled a tip sheet of how to avoid angry confrontations with participants across the aisle. (His top three pointers: don’t assume anyone shares your views; don’t point out another person’s politics in public; don’t ask people to share their political affiliations.)

But Dr. Forni, who is the author of “Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct,” and whose institute assesses the importance of manners in society, said the dialogue has grown muted, and not necessarily for the better.

“In previous elections, there was more openness,” he said. But now, he said, “The intensity of the feelings of displeasure with one or the other end of the political spectrum is such that many people realize there is real danger in disclosure and discussion.”

The workplace, he said, is perhaps the most perilous minefield for political activists. People, he said, “don’t want to alienate their bosses, they don’t want to alienate their co-workers, and very often they are reluctant to disclose their views because they’re afraid of being tagged.” Tags, he added, that “will be with them, will survive, after the election.”

“An election season can turn into an equivalent of the office party: you will say and do things that you regret the day after,” Dr. Forni said. “And there are those who, being aware of that, simply have decided not to speak about these issues, or to do that with a very, very small circle of trusted friends, very often of the same political persuasion, in order to enforce their values, to validate their choices, because they have given up the hope that anything good will come through political confrontation.”

Ms. Langham, the stay-at-home mom, gave up hope of changing her mother’s mind well before 2006. And, she said, their cold war had as much to do with events in Iraq and the political landscape as it did with her mother’s fondness for combative conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

“There was no one precipitating event, it was just everything,” Ms. Langham said. “I’d finally had enough of the presidency, and the lies and the slants and everything.

“She was the one person I knew who still believed in these people,” Ms. Langham continued. So, she said, “for a month we didn’t call each other, didn’t e-mail, and she did sense something was wrong.”

“I had to explain to her, finally, where I was coming from,” she said. “In a way, she was relieved. But I think she probably now views me as even more of a progressive nut job than before.”

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2007-May-29, by Peter Berkowitz:

The Conservative Mind
The American right is a cauldron of debate; the left isn't.

The left prides itself on, and frequently boasts of, its superior appreciation of the complexity and depth of moral and political life. But political debate in America today tells a different story.

On a variety of issues that currently divide the nation, those to the left of center seem to be converging, their ranks increasingly untroubled by debate or dissent, except on daily tactics and long-term strategy. Meanwhile, those to the right of center are engaged in an intense intra-party struggle to balance competing principles and goods.

One source of the divisions evident today is the tension in modern conservatism between its commitment to individual liberty, and its lively appreciation of the need to preserve the beliefs, practices, associations and institutions that form citizens capable of preserving liberty. The conservative reflex to resist change must often be overcome, because prudent change is necessary to defend liberty. Yet the tension within often compels conservatives to wrestle with the consequences of change more fully than progressives--for whom change itself is often seen as good, and change that contributes to the equalization of social conditions as a very important good.

To be sure, some standard-order issues remain easy for both sides. Democrats instinctively want to repeal the Bush tax cuts, establish government supervised universal healthcare, and impose greater regulation on trade. Just as instinctively Republicans wish to extend the Bush tax cuts, find market mechanisms to broaden health care coverage and reduce limitations on trade.

But on non-standard issues--involving dramatic changes in national security and foreign affairs, the power of medicine and technology to intervene at the early stages of life, and the social meaning of marriage and family, the partisans show a clear difference: the left is more and more of one mind while divisions on the right deepen.

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Consider Iraq. The split among conservatives has widened since Saddam was toppled in the spring of 2003. Traditional realists continue to put their trust in containment, and reject nation-building on the grounds that we lack both a moral obligation and the requisite knowledge of Arabic, Iraqi culture and politics, and Islam. Supporters of the war still argue that, in an age of mega-terror, planting the seeds of liberty and democracy in the Muslim Middle East is a reasonable response to the poverty, illiteracy, authoritarianism, violence and religious fanaticism that plagues the region.

In contrast, Democrats today are nearly united in the belief that the invasion has been a fiasco and that we must withdraw promptly. Indeed, rare is the Democrat (Sen. Joe Lieberman was compelled to run as an Independent) who does not sound like a traditional realist denying both America's moral obligation to remain in Iraq and its capacity to bring order to the country.

Consider also abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research. Here too, the right is torn, with the social conservative wing opposed to both, and the small government, libertarian wing supporting both. No such major divisions are in evidence on the left. Rare is the progressive man or woman who opposes abortion rights, or who regards the destruction of embryos as the taking of human life, or even as a dangerous precedent corroding our respect for the most vulnerable among us.

And look at same-sex marriage. Again, the right is rent by serious difference of opinion. A crucial segment of those who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 think that the Constitution should be amended to protect the traditional understanding of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Another crucial segment of the Republican coalition rejects alteration of the Constitution to advance debatable social policy, preferring that states function as laboratories of innovation.

Meanwhile, on the left, despite ambivalence among the rank and file, all that remains to be decided at the elite level is how and in what ways to endorse same-sex marriage. Few doubt that presidential candidate John Kerry's opposition to same-sex marriage in 2004 was driven more by political calculation than moral conviction. And rare is the man or woman of the left who, in public debate, identifies competing principles and goods that ought to cause hesitation or doubt about same-sex marriage's justice or benefits to the nation.

This absence on the left of debate or dissent about moral and political ends has been aided and abetted by many of the party's foremost intellectuals, who have reveled in denouncing George W. Bush as a dictator, in declaring democracy in 21st-century America all but illegitimate, and in diagnosing conservatism in America as in the grips of fascist sentiments and opinions.

A few months ago, Hoover Institution research fellow Dinesh D'Souza published a highly polemical book, "The Enemy at Home," which held the cultural left responsible for causing 9/11 and contended that American conservatives should repudiate fellow citizens on the left and instead form alliances with traditional Muslims around the world. Conservatives of many stripes leapt into the fray to criticize it. But rare is the voice on the left that has criticized Boston College professor and New Republic contributing editor Alan Wolfe, former secretary of labor and Berkeley professor Robert Reich, New Republic editor-at-large and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Peter Beinart, Berkeley professor George Lakoff, and New York University law professor Ronald Dworkin--all of whom have publicly argued in the last several years that conservatives form an enemy at home.

One explanation of the unity on the left is its belief that today's divisive political questions have easy answers--but because of their illiberal opinions and aims, conservatives are unable to see this and, in a mere six years, have brought democracy in America to the brink. This explanation, however, contradicts the vital lesson of John Stuart Mill's liberalism that political questions, as opposed to mathematical questions, tend by their very nature to be many-sided. Indeed, it contradicts the left's celebration of its own appreciation of the complexity and depth of politics.

Another explanation is that blinded by rage at the Bush administration and resentment over its own lack of power, the left has betrayed its commitment to grasp the many-sidedness of politics, and, in the process, has lost appreciation of modern conservatism's distinctive contribution to the defense of a good, liberty, which the left also prizes. Indeed, the widespread ignorance among the highly educated of the conservative tradition in America is appalling.

In contrast to much European conservatism, which harks back to premodern times and the political preeminence of religion and royalty, in America--which lacked a feudal past to preserve or recover--conservatism has always revolved around the preservation of individual liberty. Of course modern conservatism generally admires virtues embodied in religious faith and the aristocratic devotion to excellence. It also tends to emphasize the weaknesses of human nature, the ironies and tragedies of history, and the limitations of reason and politics. At the same time, it wishes to put these virtues and this knowledge in liberty's service.

Balancing the claims of liberty and tradition, or showing how liberty depends on tradition, is the very essence of modern conservatism, the founding text for which was provided by Whig orator and statesman Edmund Burke in his 1790 polemic, "Reflections on the Revolution in France." The divisions within contemporary American conservatism--social conservatives, libertarians, and neoconservatives--arise from differences over which goods most urgently need to be preserved, to what extent, and with what role for government.

The varieties of conservatism are poorly understood today not only because of the bitterness of current political battles but also because the books that have played a key role in forming the several schools go largely untaught at our universities and largely unread by our professors. Indeed, perhaps one cause of the polarization that afflicts our political and intellectual class is the failure of our universities to teach, and in many cases to note the existence of, the conservative dimensions of American political thought.

Rare is the political scientist, to say nothing of other faculty, who can sketch the argument, or articulate the point of view, of such influential works as Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" (1953), F. A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" (1944) or Leo Strauss's "Natural Right and History" (1953). Yet these works, and the schools they helped launch, are essential to understanding not only where we come from but where we should head.

Kirk identified six elements that make the conservative mind: belief in a transcendent order that "rules society as well as conscience"; attachment to "the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence" as against the routinizing and leveling forces of modern society; the assumption that "civilized society requires orders and classes"; the conviction that "freedom and property are closely linked"; faith in custom and convention and consequently a "distrust of the 'sophisters, calculators, and economists' who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs"; and a wariness of innovation coupled with a recognition that "prudent innovation is the means of social preservation." The leading role in this mix that Kirk attaches to religion marks him as a social conservative; his insistence that religion provides the indispensable ground for individual liberty marks him as a modern conservative.

---

Famously, at least in libertarian circles, Hayek, an Austrian-born economist who became a British citizen and then immigrated to the U.S. in 1950, wrote a postscript to "The Constitution of Liberty" (1960), explaining why he was not a conservative. For him, "true conservatism"--which he confused with European reaction--was characterized by "opposition to drastic change" and a complacent embrace of established authority. Because his overriding goal was to preserve liberty, Hayek considered himself a liberal, but he recognized that in the face of the challenges presented mid-century by socialism, he would often find himself in alliance with conservatives. As a staunch member of the party of liberty, Hayek was keen to identify the political arrangements that would allow for "free growth" and "spontaneous change," which, he argued, brought economic prosperity and created the conditions for individual development. This meant preserving the tradition of classical liberalism, and defending limited, constitutional government against encroachments by the welfare state and paternalistic legislation.

For Strauss, what was most urgently in need in preservation was an idea, the idea of natural right. Like Kirk, Strauss believed that modern doctrines of natural right derived support from biblical faith. Like Hayek, Strauss taught that limited, constitutional government was indispensable to our freedom. But Strauss also saw that modern doctrines of natural right contained debilitating tendencies, which, increasingly, provided support for stupefying and intolerant dogmas. To arrest the decay, he turned to the classical natural right teachings of Plato and Aristotle, who were neither liberals nor democrats, but whose reflections on knowledge, politics and virtue, Strauss concluded, provided liberal democracy sturdier foundations.

There can not be a conservative soul today in the way one can speak of a liberal soul or spirit. Whereas the latter revolves around the paramount good of freedom, modern conservatives, while loving liberty, differ over its position in the hierarchy of goods most in need of preservation, and indeed differ over the paramount good. Yet the writings of Kirk, Hayek and Strauss do form a family. All developed their ideas with a view to the 20th century totalitarian temptations of fascism and communism. All agreed that liberal democracy constituted the last best hope of modern man. And all showed that defending liberty involves a delicate balancing act.

Conservatives, facing uncertainty about George W. Bush's legacy, and the reality of their own errors and excesses, have good reason just now to read and ponder Kirk, Hayek and Strauss. Progressives, too prone these days to perceive difficult moral and political questions as one-sided and too keen to characterize their allies at home in the defense of liberty as enemies, have good reason to do so themselves.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Read the full report from Pew that's discussed in the below article.

from the Washington Post, 2008-Oct-24, p.C1, by David Montgomery:

A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats And Republigrins

Now the good news for Republicans: You are happier than Democrats. You always have been, and you probably always will be.

Never mind that your presidential candidate is sinking in the polls while your president plumbs historic depths of popular scorn and your free market squeals for intervention while your investments evaporate on Wall Street. You are not just happier than the other guys, but more of you are very happy indeed, according to new survey results published yesterday by the Pew Research Center.

The pollsters were in the field asking about happiness this month, a period when economic news was gloomy for everybody and presidential campaign news seemed especially baleful for Republicans. Yet they found 37 percent of Republicans are "very happy," compared with 25 percent of Democrats; 51 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats are "pretty happy"; and 9 percent of Republicans are "not too happy," compared with 20 percent of Democrats.

The partisan happiness gap -- unbroken for nearly four decades -- is impervious to electoral ups and downs. It has something to do with worldview.

"I'm very happy," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and a Republican. "When I was 12, I realized the world was not organized around my desires and wishes. The problem with guys on the left is they never figured that out at age 12. And they're just irritated the world is not organized around their vision. This makes them grumpy."

Chris Lehane doesn't sound grumpy. The Democratic consultant is on the phone from San Francisco: "My guess is if [Pew] checked the cross tabs out in California, we're all pretty happy out here. The wine is still good, the food is fresh, the people are beautiful."

But seriously, says Lehane, if Republicans are more happy, it's because they care less.

"The typical Republican is happy coming home to a 62-inch television, pulling out a fine bottle of cognac or Scotch, putting his feet on the table and enjoying the fruits of his labor, but not caring what's going on in the world outside their living room . . . and their gated community."

Government-funded researchers identified the happiness gap in 1972. Since then, the Democrats have been comparatively more bummed out not just during the tenures of GOP presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush. They were noticeably less joyful than Republicans even during the GOP fiasco of Watergate, and during the Democratic Carter and Clinton administrations.

This year, when things seem so rosy for Democrats, the joy gulch yawns wider than ever. The fraction of very happy Republicans has never been so much larger than the very happy Democrats.

What's the Republicans' secret to feeling groovy?

"They have more money," Paul Taylor, director of the Pew Social & Demographic Trends project, writes in the new report. "They have more friends. They are more religious. They are healthier. They are more likely to be married. They like their communities better. They like their jobs more. They are more satisfied with their family life. They like the weather better."

Wow, do Democrats need to get a life?

The data, alas, do not account for those furious Republicans at McCain-Palin rallies. Are they happy in their anger?

None of this proves being Republican causes happiness, Taylor cautions. Do happy people get married, attend weekly religious services and vote for John McCain? Or does devotion to marriage, God and McCain cause them to be happy?

The study does identify a series of characteristics found in many people who call themselves happy. Good health is a key factor. Marriage and religion are big, too, and so is wealth. (If money doesn't buy happiness, it appears to help with the down payment.)

When you control for all the other variables, Taylor says, a Republican is 13 percent or 7 percent more likely to be very happy than a Democrat, depending on which regression analysis model you use.

It turns out the happiness gap is not just an American phenomenon. In country after country, happiness studies find that "conservatives" are happier than "liberals."

They seem to be two species, with differently encoded DNA. The unequal balance-of-joy conjures hoary stereotypes: The jolly conservative, self-satisfied in his success, a doer not a doubter. The angst-ridden liberal, guilty in his success, a searcher not a finder.

"The question is not whether Republicans are happier than Democrats, or conservatives are happier than liberals," says Arthur Brooks, the incoming president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America -- and How We Can Get More of It." "That's unambiguously true. The question is, why?"

Brooks says a lot hinges on the answer to this question: Do you believe that hard work and perseverance can overcome disadvantages? Conservatives are more likely to say yes.

Pew found that Democrats are more likely to say that success in life is mostly determined by outside forces. Republicans lean toward thinking that success is determined by one's own efforts.

The hypothesis: Those who think they can control their destinies are happier.

Also: Extremists are happier than moderates, Brooks has concluded. Hard-core liberals are the happiest liberals and hard-core conservatives are the happiest people on Earth. Self-certainty is like a happy pill. The bumper sticker may declare, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" -- but the guy behind the wheel is overjoyed.

The thing about happiness is how subjective it is. Happiness researchers like Taylor and Brooks don't claim to say whose worldview is more empirically correct, Norquist's or Lehane's.

Of course, being correct doesn't make you happy. But being right may help.

from LiveScience.com via Yahoo News, 2009-May-18, by Robert Roy Britt:

Happiness Is ... Being Old, Male and Republican

Americans grow happier as they age, surveys find. And a new Pew Research Center survey shows the tendency is holding up as the economy tanks.

Happiness is a complex thing. Past studies have found that happiness is partly inherited, that Republicans are happier than Democrats, and that old men tend to be happier than old women.

And even before the economy got nasty, seniors were found to be generally happier than Baby Boomers. Some of that owes to the American Dream being lived by past generations, while Boomers work two jobs and watch the dream wither.

In times like this, it's clear how age can have its advantages. While not all seniors are weathering the recession well, for many the impact is much less severe than it is for younger people.

Why? Many people 65 and older retired and downsized their lifestyles before the economy imploded, according to Pew analysts. Most aren't raising kids and many are not so worried about being laid off. Loss of income can be, of course, a source of stress and displeasure. (While money doesn't buy happiness, a study in February showed cash can help, especially when people use it to do stuff instead of buy things.)

If you're thinking that Republicans are happy just because they perhaps make more money, that does not seem to be the case. The study that found Republicans to be happier than Democrats also showed that it held true even after adjusting for income.

It's those age 50-64 who've "seen their nest eggs shrink the most and their anxieties about retirement swell the most," the Pew survey found. It also finds that younger adults (ages 18-49) "have taken the worst lumps in the job market but remain relatively upbeat about their financial future."

Not everyone in any category is blissful, of course. Other research has shown that happiness in old age depends largely on attitude factors such as optimism and coping strategies. Add financial planning to the list.

In the new Pew telephone survey, taken in March and April of 2,969 adults, here's how many respondents in each age group said they had cut back on spending in the past year:

• 18-49: 68 percent
• 50-64: 59 percent
• 65+: 36 percent.

And is the recession causing stress in your family?

• 18-49: 52 percent
• 50-64: 58 percent
• 65+: 38 percent.

Now for the good news: A study in January found that key groups of people in the United States have grown happier over the past few decades, while other have become less so. The result: Happiness inequality has decreased since the 1970s. Americans are becoming more similar to each other on the happiness scale.

Robert Roy Britt is the Editorial Director of Imaginova. In this column, >The Water Cooler, he looks at what people are talking about in the world of science and beyond.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2006-Sep-8, by Daniel Henninger:

Not Just an Empty Hole
Ground Zero bears America's broken politics.

Whatever else the homicidal Muslim gangs thought they were going to accomplish on September 11, none could have predicted that five years later the site of their attack in lower Manhattan would remain 16 empty acres.

More than nothing is happening at Ground Zero. Work has begun on the transportation hub designed by architect Santiago Calatrava. Because the hole is so deep, you have to look hard to see that the dirt floor has become busy with construction workers in orange hardhats. Most of the work is taking place below ground, preparing footings and foundations to hold the 2.6 million square-foot Freedom Tower, whose theoretical completion date is 2011.

No matter these first signs of productive life, one's eyes inevitably move to the slurry walls, the huge slabs of torn, gray concrete that ring the site. The slurry walls will come down eventually, but after five years they have burned themselves into memory as the sad, oddly dignified remnant of the event.

Ground Zero, uncompleted and broken, is an apt metaphor for the consequent events in America that came after it--the war on terror, Iraq, the fall into partisan division amid war, and the insular politics that left this awful unbuilt site. The site is an unclosed grave. It is a rebuke surely to New York's politics, but a mocking rebuke as well to a national ethos of public life that would rather wallow in problems than resolve them. Ironic it is that in our time the state of being most avidly sought after tragedy is "closure." In truth, we'd rather not.

---

Ground Zero has been the perfect storm of New York politics. Yes, politics by its nature is a slow process of extrusion. And yes, New Yorkers are famously opinionated. But in New York self-expression--the exhibiting of the glorious self--is a god worshipped many times a day. And so everything is fought over--the design of the tower, the meaning of the Memorial, the money--and no one gets to decide anything. Process, debate and not least, litigation, become the main event.

Something similar happened to our national politics through these years. It is one thing to disagree with the decision to go into Iraq, to oppose it and abhor its most painful consequences. It is something else, as some have done, especially in Congress, to withdraw and withhold support for a presidency amid war and to work to thwart virtually every aspect of its war program in Iraq and everywhere. When a Senator Lieberman partially dissents, the party purifies itself.

This is not opposition in normal political times. This is not Social Security reform; it is not a capital-gains tax cut. It is a war, or whatever euphemism one wishes to use to describe resisting the up-and-running forces that planned 9/11, London, Madrid, the foiled airline-bomb plot and all the other murders of innocent civilians whose crime was that they affronted radical Islam.

Presumably we want to succeed in this enterprise, that is, stop them. Instead, we stop ourselves--feeling it necessary to contest, at length and in the loudest public way, surveillance techniques, interrogation techniques, the rules of engagement for U.S. military personnel, the holding of prisoners.

Is it possible to see all this as the inevitable yeastiness of an active politics? Once again, yes. And yes as well that there is a point past which, as with Ground Zero, it becomes mostly egoistic self-indulgence. Wallowing.

An army that declares a ban on "hooding" and "water-boarding" prisoners, as ours did this week with the release of its new Field Manual, is an army fully engaged in the current politics of inversion. This is a politics that amid war expands prisoners' rights even as it restricts the freedom of travelers in airports at risk from the uncaught cohorts of the prisoners.

One would think that a system serious about staying steps ahead of a declared mortal enemy--whether by military means or diplomatic engagements--would prefer to do so with a nation closer together than farther apart. Not us. Our evident presumption is that we can remain deeply divided politically, work daily to deepen the divide, and still prevail. This is a novel and untested theory.

At some point in the five years of the anti-terror wars, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld should have extended their hands across the aisle to try to break the fall of our politics. Some good might have come of it. Or perhaps the offered hand would have been slapped away. We'll never know. It's too late for that. If the Democrats win the House in November, the war on terror overnight becomes a footnote in the smaller but infinitely more familiar war to win the White House.

---

September 11 and the place it left behind, Ground Zero, are entering the realm of abstraction. Oliver Stone can make a movie that transforms the event into a kind of cataclysmic natural disaster, disconnected from the politics that flew planes into the buildings 108 stories above. So be it. Ground Zero has been a zero-sum game for so long that it becomes hard to complain much when the mythmakers move in to fill the void.

So I'll offer a personal myth. Since September 11, the most uplifting thing I have seen as I walk daily to work past the 16-acre site has been the constant, truly constant, stream of people who come there year round--in the bitterest, windy days of February--to stand outside the galvanized steel fence and look in. A paradox: The failure of political will to close the wound has allowed everyone in the world who wished to see it, to see it.

And so for nearly 2,000 days, uncounted numbers of people, often families, have come to Ground Zero. Whether they arrive in a state of curiosity, anger, fear or pain, it doesn't matter. What has been available for them to see has not been renewal or designed remembrance. There is only the sight of something undeniably monstrous. All these people have looked and come to a private conclusion about what it meant.

My myth is to believe they are filling the world with more gravity and moral seriousness about September 11 than one might have guessed from the downward spiral of our politics since that day. What eventually becomes of Ground Zero isn't so important anymore. More good than one might have hoped for has walked away from it.

from Fox News, 2006-Sep-28:

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll

28 September 06

Polling was conducted by telephone September 26-27, 2006, in the
evenings. The total sample is 900 likely voters (LV) nationwide, with
a margin of error of &plusminus;3 percentage points. Past results are
of registered voters, unless otherwise noted.

23. Would you like to see the United Nations stay based in the United
States or would you like to see it moved to another country?
               Stay in     Moved
                 U.S.     elsewhere  (Don't know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV  59%         23          18
  Democrats      69%	     18		 13
  Republicans	 48%	     30		 22
  Independents	 56%	     19		 25

24. Which best describes how you feel about the United States'
participation in the United Nations?
SCALE: 1. It is worthwhile for the United States to participate 2. It
used to be worthwhile, but it isn't anymore 3. It was never worthwhile
to participate in the U.N. 4. (Don't know)

             Worthwhile to    Used to be    Never
	      participate     worthwhile  worthwhile   (DK)
26-27 Sep 06 LV    59%           68%        50%         61%
  Democrats        28            22         36          28
  Republicans	    8             6         11           6
  Independents      5             4          3           5

25. This year it is estimated that the United States will pay over five billion
dollars in dues and fees to support the United Nations and its programs. Do you
think the U.S. should continue to fund the United Nations, or would this money
be better spent elsewhere?
SCALE: 1. Continue to fund United Nations 2. Money better spent elsewhere
3. (Continue to fund but at lower level) 4. (Don't know)
               Continue to Better spent  (Fund at
                   fund     elsewhere   lower level)  (DK)
26-27 Sep 06 LV    36%         45           12         7
   Democrats       47%         37           12         4
   Republicans     27%         54           12         7
   Independents    37%         40           13        10

26. Overall, do you believe the policies of the United Nations are pro-American
or anti-American?
                Pro-American   Anti-American  (Both)     (Neither)  (Don't know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV     24%           37           12           10         17
   Democrats        33%           24           13           13         17
   Republicans      19%           54           11            6         11
   Independents     21%           34           13           12         20
7-8 Sep 04 LV       31%           40            6            8         15

27. Did you hear or read about the speeches given by the presidents of Iran and
Venezuela at the recent United Nations general assembly sessions?
                    Yes           No      (Don't know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV     62%           36            2
   Democrats        58%           41            1
   Republicans      64%           34            2
   Independents     70%           30            -

28. In speeches at the United Nations, the presidents of Iran and Venezuela
attacked the United States and the Bush administration. Did those speeches make
you more or less likely to support Bush administration policies?
                   More          Less (No difference) (Don't know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV     32%           18           38           12
   Democrats        14%           32           40           14
   Republicans      61%            2           27            9
   Independents     18%           19           52           11
   Speech watchers 39%            18           40            3

29. Do you think it is appropriate for foreign leaders to come to the United
States and criticize our president?
                    Yes           No      (Don't know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV     34%           61            5
   Democrats        43%           51            6
   Republicans      19%           78            2
   Independents     47%           51            2

30. Do you think the comments made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received
too much news coverage, too little or about the right amount?
                 Too much    Too little    About right (Don't know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV     40%            8           38           14
   Democrats        36%            8           43           12
   Republicans      47%            7           28           19
   Independents     36%            9           47            8

31. Speaking at the United Nations last week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
called President Bush "the devil" -- did this make you angry? (If yes) How
angry?
                   Very         Somewhat    Not very    No, not      (Don't
                   angry         angry        angry      angry        know)
26-27 Sep 06 LV     29%           19            8           41          4
   Democrats        15%           18           12           51          5
   Republicans      51%           22            4           19          4
   Independents     18%           19            5           55          3

from the Washington Post, 2004-Dec-5, p.B7, by David S. Broder:

A National Pledge of Party Allegiance

The more the academics and analysts explore the entrails of last month's election, the clearer and simpler the lesson becomes. As the Clinton folks might put it, "It's the partisanship, stupid."

Democrats did a first-class job of mobilizing their supporters and bringing them to the polls. But Republicans did an even better job, and that is essentially why they won.

The anatomy of the Nov. 2 voting is intriguing in itself, but its implications for the future of politics and government are even more important. It signals a protracted period of two-party competition and means that Republicans and Democrats alike will face intense pressure to keep their coalitions intact.

Democrats, who came out on the short end of the 51-48 percent presidential popular vote and lost seats for the second election in a row in both the House and Senate, cannot afford any more defections. Losses among women, minorities and what remains of their Southern base would make the task of a comeback all the more difficult.

It surely was not a coincidence that President Bush began taking steps to split that Democratic coalition with his very first appointments to his second-term administration: Condoleezza Rice, a black woman with Southern roots and a California connection, to run the State Department; Margaret Spellings, another woman and a Texan, to run the Department of Education; and two high-profile Hispanics, Alberto Gonzales and Carlos Gutierrez, to lead the Justice and Commerce departments, respectively.

But it is not only Democrats who have to worry about coalition-maintenance. Republicans and Bush in particular are equally dependent on keeping the flock intact. Bush did not beat John Kerry among independents. Kerry won almost nine out of 10 Democratic votes and prevailed narrowly among independents. Bush won only by turning out massive numbers of Republicans and capturing more than nine out of 10 of their votes.

What was true of Kerry and Bush applied almost equally to the races for the Senate, the House and governorships. If you want to understand why House Speaker Dennis Hastert was so reluctant to split the Republican conference on the issue of intelligence system reform that he pulled the bill off the floor, the answer lies in this pattern of intense partisanship in the election returns.

House Republican candidates received more than eight of 10 Republican votes, while Democratic candidates received three of four Democratic votes. It was not surprising that Hastert did not want to let Democratic lawmakers pass the president's intelligence reorganization plan over the opposition of many Republicans. To do so would alienate him from his flock and perhaps put some of them at risk with their voters.

All this is a far cry from the pattern of government and politics with which we became familiar during the Cold War. As John Kenneth White of Catholic University points out in one of the clearest and most succinct of the many post-election analyses that have crossed my desk, Republicans won the White House seven of 10 times from 1952 through 1988 but rarely were able to disturb Democratic control of Congress.

From Dwight Eisenhower through the first President Bush, the voting public generally trusted Republicans to manage international affairs, keep the communists at bay, ensure a strong defense and run the economy. Democrats in Congress were preferred to look after the down-home concerns, such as Social Security, Medicare, education and the rest.

But that pattern of divided government has been decisively broken, and the ticket-splitting that facilitated it has become much less frequent. Part of the story is the change in the South, where conservative Democrats once prevailed. Now their House and Senate seats are occupied by Republicans, and the region voted overwhelmingly for Bush in both his campaigns.

But partisans on both sides in other regions are also recognizing the genuine differences between Republicans and Democrats and are choosing sides accordingly. Some of those differences are ideological. Some are cultural, including the issues of faith and religion, which drew so much attention in the immediate aftermath of the election.

But the overwhelming factor, the one that ties it all together, is the simple pull of partisan allegiance -- the hold that each of the parties exerts on its own followers.

Where there is strong partisanship in the electorate, White reminds us, we are likely to see partisanship in government as well. "The significance of party to the 2004 vote means that compromise between the two parties-in-government is unlikely," White writes.

Keep that in mind when the next Congress begins.

from the New York Times, 2004-Dec-7, by David Brooks:

The New Red-Diaper Babies

There is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism."

All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.

They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

In a world that often makes it hard to raise large families, many are willing to move to find places that are congenial to natalist values. The fastest-growing regions of the country tend to have the highest concentrations of children. Young families move away from what they perceive as disorder, vulgarity and danger and move to places like Douglas County in Colorado (which is the fastest-growing county in the country and has one of the highest concentrations of kids). Some people see these exurbs as sprawling, materialistic wastelands, but many natalists see them as clean, orderly and affordable places where they can nurture children.

If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences.

So there are significant fertility inequalities across regions. People on the Great Plains and in the Southwest are much more fertile than people in New England or on the Pacific coast.

You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates.

In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."

Politicians will try to pander to this group. They should know this is a spiritual movement, not a political one. The people who are having big families are explicitly rejecting materialistic incentives and hyperindividualism. It costs a middle-class family upward of $200,000 to raise a child. These people are saying money and ambition will not be their gods.

Natalists resist the declining fertility trends not because of income, education or other socioeconomic characteristics. It's attitudes. People with larger families tend to attend religious services more often, and tend to have more traditional gender roles.

I draw attention to natalists because they're an important feature of our national life. Because of them, the U.S. stands out in all sorts of demographic and cultural categories. But I do it also because when we talk about the divide on values in this country, caricatured in the red and blue maps, it's important that we understand the true motive forces behind it.

Natalists are associated with red America, but they're not launching a jihad. The differences between them and people on the other side of the cultural or political divide are differences of degree, not kind. Like most Americans, but perhaps more anxiously, they try to shepherd their kids through supermarket checkouts lined with screaming Cosmo or Maxim cover lines. Like most Americans, but maybe more so, they suspect that we won't solve our social problems or see improvements in our schools as long as many kids are growing up in barely functioning families.

Like most Americans, and maybe more so because they tend to marry earlier, they find themselves confronting the consequences of divorce. Like most Americans, they wonder how we can be tolerant of diverse lifestyles while still preserving the family institutions that are under threat.

What they cherish, like most Americans, is the self-sacrificial love shown by parents. People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.

from the San Francisco Chronicle, 2006-Sep-17, p.E1, by Vicki Haddock:

Republicans' fertile future
Through the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals

If you're a liberal, here's what you can do to make Karl Rove a very happy man: Get yourself a labradoodle. Or any other kind of dog, for that matter. Even a cat will do.

Just don't have children.

That way you'll maintain a fertility gap that already is invisibly working to guarantee the political right will outnumber the left by an ever-growing margin.

Over the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals -- continuing to seed the future with their genes by filling bassinets coast to coast with tiny Future Republicans of America.

Take a randomly selected sample of 100 liberal adults and 100 conservative adults. According to an analysis of the 2004 General Social Survey -- a bible of data for social scientists -- the liberals would have had 147 kids, while the conservatives would have had 208. That's a fertility gap of 41 percent. Even adjusting for other variables like age and income, there is a gap of 19 percent.

Now superimpose this on a map of the United States. The highest fertility rate is found in the most Republican state, Utah, home to the Mormon Church. The lowest fertility belongs to Vermont, a state liberal enough to be the first to sanction gay unions.

The states with the next highest fertility rates, according to the latest National Center for Health Statistics survey, are Arizona, Alaska and Texas, otherwise known as "red states." States with the next lowest fertility rates are Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, all "blue states."

So what does it mean that the birth rate in Salt Lake City far outstrips that of liberal San Francisco (where dogs supposedly outnumber children)?

"Liberals have got a big 'baby problem,' and it risks being the death of them," contends Arthur Brooks, professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs. He reckons that unless something gives, Democratic politicians in the future may not have many babies to kiss.

"When secular-minded Americans decide to have few, or no, children, they unwittingly give a strong evolutionary advantage to the other side of the culture divide," writes Phillip Longman, senior fellow at the New America Foundation. "If 'Metros' don't start having more children, America's future is 'Retro.' "

But wait, you may say: the attitudes of the parents don't determine what ideology or political party their offspring will adopt as their own. Yet they usually do.

Political scientists have long found that 4 out of 5 people with a party preference grow up to vote the way their parents voted. In fact, while many people experience a temporary rejection of their parents' politics in very early adulthood, virtually nothing is more predictive of your political ideology than that of your parents -- it's more of a determining factor than income, education or any other societal yardstick.

There are exceptions: While only 20 percent eschew their parents' ideology, they do, after all, add up to a lot of people. And despite ample instances of Republicans in Southern states being raised by parents who once identified as Democrats, those parents were actually conservative Democrats who became Reagan Democrats and ultimately migrated to the GOP. The party labels changed, but the political ideology remains consistent from generation to generation.

"Right now this theory really applies to political parties as well as ideology, because the parties have become incredibly well sorted by ideology," says Marc Hetherington, associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who studies political identification. In other words, in 2006 a conservative is going to find a cozy home in the Republican Party, and a liberal can expect the same in the Democratic Party.

Thus Democrats will breed Democrats, and Republicans will breed Republicans -- the blue states reddening every day.

This phenomenon has prompted writer Steve Sailer to offer a prescription for ensuring a GOP majority to his readers in the American Conservative. "Because Democrats win when Americans don't marry and don't have children," he notes, "publicly label them as what they are: the party that thrives on loneliness."

In truth, it's more complicated. As far as sex goes, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats report having it with equal frequency, according to an online survey taken in November by Ken Berwitz, partner in the market research firm National Qualitative Centers Inc. Liberalism doesn't induce celibacy or frigidity, any more than conservatism can be mistaken for an aphrodisiac.

So how else to explain the fertility gap?

Limited space is one consideration. Liberals are most concentrated in cities, but such urban dwellers pay more for far less real estate than do rural dwellers -- meaning they have less money to pay for the costs of children, and fewer rooms and smaller yards in which to put them.

Religion is another factor. Some of the most ardent conservatives are religious fundamentalists who believe they have been bidden by God to go forth and multiply. These conservatives, now overwhelmingly Republican, see large families as blessings, abortion as sacrilege, birth control as potentially sinful. Indeed people who attend church weekly are twice as likely as those who seldom attend to say their ideal family size is three or more children. (This "relentlessly pro-natal" orientation, Longman contended in a recent issue of the journal Foreign Policy, threatens a not-too-distant future in which zealous Christians and radical Muslims inherit the Earth and usher in "new Dark Ages").

Conversely, other influences depress the number of children born to liberals. Liberal women are statistically more likely to delay childbirth into later years than are conservative women, and they may also be more open to abortion, although the data is unclear. Gays and lesbians, who vote Democratic by a roughly 4-1 ratio, are much less likely to have children than heterosexuals. And some on the left advocate fewer children as "socially responsible" to lessen the toll on the planet's finite resources.

When it comes to California, the wildcard is our burgeoning immigrant population. Here, the highest fertility rates are among Latinas, an ethnic group that is historically liberal on economic issues and allied with the Democratic Party. This might seem to suggest that time is on the side of liberals in the Golden State, which already has become bluer since the Reagan years.

Conversely, the highest fertility rates are among Latinas who are in the country illegally, lacking voting rights. As they move through the cycles of first-, second- and third-generation immigration, their fertility rates drop and they may become more economically conservative precisely at the time they are more likely to vote. Already they identify as conservative on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

So are their offspring destined to be liberal or conservative?

"Therein lies the interesting political question," observed Michael Alvarez, professor of political science at the California Institute of Technology. "Depending on how the political parties react to Hispanics in the near term, and the future, they could largely gravitate to one party over the other -- or they could evolve into a swing electorate."

Such uncertainties about behavior and demographics make some experts like Alvarez wary of forecasts that liberals will become an endangered species.

Demographics are, almost by definition, processes of distilling complexity into generality, messy diversity into neatly tied bundles of averages. Several caveats could belie a liberal "baby bust." Party identification could wane, or a third party emerge.

And a cataclysmic political event might shake up the sorting that makes the Democratic Party indisputably for liberals and the GOP the only choice for conservatives, prompting offspring to remain faithful to their parents' ideology while switching parties. Example: Another major terrorist attack might prompt the GOP to nominate a candidate like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is also pro-choice on abortion and a supporter of gay rights and gun control.

In the meantime, liberals might mull over their options for thwarting Rove by bridging the fertility gap. In the Italian city of Venice, vendors sell tourists wishing to feed the ubiquitous pigeons bags of birdseed surreptitiously laced with birth control. But infiltrating the water system in Salt Lake City seems a rather diabolical tactic in pursuit of political domination.

Syracuse's Brooks offers this suggestion to Democrats instead: Quit having pets.

from the New York Daily News, 2006-Jan-15, by Paul H.B. Shin:

91,700 abortions in city

For every 100 babies born in New York City, women had 74 abortions in 2004, according to newly released figures that reaffirm the city as the abortion capital of the country.

And abortions for out-of-town women performed in the city increased from 57 to 70 out of every 1,000 between 1996 and 2004, a subtle yet noticeable trend that experts say may reflect growing hurdles against the procedure in more conservative parts of the country.

The new Vital Statistics report released by the city Department of Health this month shows there were 124,100 live births, 11,700 spontaneous abortions and 91,700 induced abortions in the city in 2004.

That means 40 out of 100 pregnancies in the city ended in a planned abortion - almost double the national average of 24 of 100 pregnancies in 2002, estimated by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Manhattan-based nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.

The city's role as a haven for women seeking to end pregnancies may become more pronounced as other states continue to adopt more legal restrictions against abortions - such as laws requiring mandatory waiting periods (25 states), parental consent or notification for minors (35 states) and two visits before an abortion (six states).

"If clinics are hard to get to, or the services are just unavailable, people are going to travel to get what in my mind is a critical public health service," said Joan Malin, president of Planned Parenthood of New York City.

The organization's Margaret Sanger Center in Manhattan is the largest abortion provider in New York, with 11,000 abortions performed a year.

Out-of-towners make up less than 2% of those receiving abortions at the center, but the number has gone up more than 20% in the last year, Malin said.

But abortion opponents called the city's high rate of procedures a "tragic" result of "marketing the culture of death."

"New York City has fashioned itself as being the philosophical center of 'abortion on demand,' and it has a thriving industry to show for it," said Christina Fadden Fitch, legislative director of the New York State Right to Life Committee.

The influx into the city of women seeking abortions could become a deluge - as it was in the early 1970s - if the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortions nationwide is repealed.

"If Roe vs. Wade were overturned and some states outlawed abortions, it's certainly possible we might begin to see more of the interstate travel we saw before," said Lawrence Finer, director for domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute.

That is what abortion-rights advocates feel may happen if Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is appointed to the bench.

At his Senate confirmation hearings this week, Alito refused to describe Roe vs. Wade as a settled precedent. Under grilling from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), he also refused to distance himself from his 1985 opinion stating that women do not have a constitutional right to an abortion.

"The evidence is clear that Judge Alito opposes the constitutional right for a woman to choose an abortion, and were he to be confirmed, I would really be concerned about the future of Roe [vs. Wade] and the future of access, particularly for poor women," Malin said.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion-rights advocacy group, estimates that if Roe vs. Wade were overturned, abortions would likely be banned in 21 states, with the procedure at "medium risk" of being prohibited in another nine states.

from the Los Angeles Times, 2004-Nov-22, by Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey with Kathleen Hennessey contributing:

GOP Plants Flag on New Voting Frontier
Bush's huge victory in the fast-growing areas beyond the suburbs alters the political map.

WASHINGTON -- The center of the Republican presidential coalition is moving toward the distant edges of suburbia.

In this month's election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them "exurban" communities that are rapidly transforming farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on