Will Obama Be a Slam Dunk President?

A long time friend and fellow memo reader responded to my memo about what the Republican need to do to get back in the game. I agree that a big tent implies attracting those with a variety of ideas but I do not believe abortion should be the high profile issue it has become because I do believe it has defined the Party and consequently turned off a significant amount of voters. The Republican base, has shrunk because of Iraq, the current economic state of affairs and an unpopular president.

McCain's selection of Palin might have played to his base but it probably cost him a good bit of the undecided and I speak as one who was delighted with her. Match her against Biden and Palin does not pale. In fact match her against Obama and she still comes out with high marks in my view.

Palin gave the intellectual elite a convenient way to bash McCain because they could not attack him on his military record, his independence or his integrity and basic honesty. McCain outmatched Obama in all of these departments except speechifying. (See 1 below.)

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Louise Radnofsky wrote a must read article ("Fans of The 31st President Find Hate For Hoover Greatly Depressing") about those who are trying, and have been trying, to set the record straight with respect to President Herbert Hoover. Being negative regarding Hoover might make for good political campaigning but according to these historians it is not only unfair but inaccurate.

The researchers defending Hoover's record have been laborious and concluded Hoover's efforts paved the way for Roosevelt's expanded government interventionism and claim America could not have leapt from Coolidge to Roosevelt without Hoover in between.

With respect to the Great Depression, Hoover warned about low interest rates during the 1920's and stated it would ultimately trigger a stock market crash. When, what he warned about happened, Hover created the RFC in order to push credit to banks and arranged for $300 million of loans to states to distribute as aid.

The reason I cite this article is that it conforms with my view that GW will ultimately be seen as better than he is currently perceived. It is popular for the media and press to bash him now but with the passage of time a more objective analysis of his achievements will surface. As a possible President Obama wrestles with reality his own accomplishments will become separated from his campaign rhetoric and "the messiah" image will inevitably become tarnished.

When Obama stands in the president's shoes he will have a lot of learning and catching up to contend with and he might make it but then he might not. As always, time will tell. Obama claims to be a basketball player of sorts but I do not consider him a slam dunk should he become president.

Finally, an appeal was made in the last few days to Justice Souter by a former Federal Prosecutor, a Democrat and now a lawyer in private practice, to postpone today's election. The basis for the appeal is that Obama has failed to produce his birth certificate and the argument to Souter is that according to our Constitution Obama may not be a citizen. I read the entire brief and doubted Souter would even rule on this last minute brief since he numbers himself in the liberal camp nor did I expect the appeal would get press and media coverage - it did not.

I have no way of knowing the merit of the argument but the fact that Obama has not released or presented a valid birth certificate and no one seems to care except this lonely lawyer suggests we may have another "illegitimate president" occupying the Oval Office - this time a Democrat. The lawyer had been trying under "The Freedom of Information Act" to get this document released to him and made numerable appeals to Obama, the Democrat Party etc. but to no avail and thus his last minute "hail Mary" appeal to Souter.

I find this an interesting footnote to a bizarre campaign.

Larrey Anderson makes a prediction, in fact several. (See 2 below.)

Frank Gaffney writes about The U.S.Treasury's efforts with Saudis to re-launder their dollars into U.S. investments. Maybe they will buy the Statute of Liberty! (See 3 below.)

It is election eve and polls will soon be closing in the East.

Footnote:

Congratulations and good luck President Obama. You ran a smashing and effective divide and conquer campaign against a rather inept opponent burdened by a difficult environment. You now profess you will govern as an healer along with Pelosi and Reid etc. You are smart enough to know you must swim back to the middle and thus, disavow much of what you pledged during the campaign. It will be fascinating to watch whether your various commitments and constituents will permit this.

Dick


1)Hello Dick: I agree wholeheartedly with all your points except a) I
believe there is no evidence that abortion actually hurts Republicans at
the polls, and it is (and should remain) true that Republicans actually
tolerate dissent from the party majority's position on this question (as
demonstrated by Giuliani), unlike the Democrats. Abortion is a critical
issue to many lower-income social conservatives who might otherwise see
little reason to back Republicans. These are dark days indeed. I wonder what the HUGE turnout at my voting place means


2) If Obama Wins ... or if McCain Wins
By Larrey Anderson

"Gird up your loins, son." That's what my dad used to tell me when I was facing a tough test as a kid. Well, "gird up your loins" conservatives. No matter what happens in today's election America is gonna need us.

One of two things is going to happen today. Either John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected president. Neither result looks promising for our future. Here is why.

If Obama Wins

There are three distinct possibilities of what might happen to America under an Obama administration. Believe it or not, one of them is not all that bad.

(1) Obama rules as the divisive, race baiting, wealth redistributionist that he is. This is the worst of all possible worlds. Obama will have more than willing accomplices in Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

If the Democrats move full steam ahead (what is going to stop them?) with their proposals on health care, banking, education, regulation, immigration, cap and trade, energy, and more, America will be on its way to becoming a third world country faster than you can say "sharing the wealth." This is a terrifying possibility. America is inches away from it becoming a four-year reality.

But I am less worried about the economic devastation that will result from this scenario than I am about the cultural and moral havoc that will take place in our country. We can recover from an economic crisis. We have done it before. But the retooling of our judiciary (it will be swift and it will be total) into an offshoot of the ACLU will take us decades to repair.

(2) Obama plays the moderate and he reaches across the aisle. Obama may make some gesture at reconciliation. (He has no track record for doing this -- but who knows?) He may wish to look "presidential" and throw a few crumbs to the Republicans.

This might slacken the pace of the socialization of America (and it would be a good strategy for Obama to pursue to grab that second term.) In the long run, this scenario could have even more tragic consequences for America than the "get it while the getting's good" approach that I outlined in (1).

Republicans in Congress have shown little spine. (In 1994, after the Republicans took control of Congress with the "Contract for America," for two years, and only two years, the Republicans actually governed like ... Republicans.)

There is a chance that Obama will negotiate, with the southern Democrats and the Republicans in Congress, creeping (as opposed to rampant) socialism. In short, Republicans may facilitate the downfall of America. I can already hear Republican Minority Leader John Boehner's excuse, "It's a crap sandwich, but we have agreed to nationalize the banking system at 5% a year ... instead of 10%."

(3) Here is the only glimmer of hope. Obama, like Bill Clinton, might simply decide that he enjoys being president -- and that he must do everything he can (like taking public opinion polls) to be reelected.

There is very little evidence to suggest that Obama is in this race more for his ego than for his ideology. But America's best chance for surviving an Obama administration is for Obama to fall in love with the job.

Don't get me wrong. Almost all politicians are ego driven borderline narcissists. Obama is far more full of himself than he is full of "hope and change." America's real hope for change is in the prospect that Obama will discover that he likes flying around in Air Force One more than he likes hanging with Bill Ayers.

This is, of course, a remote possibility. Obama could ride in Air Force One with Bill Ayers if he chooses.

If McCain Wins

Things look dismal for America if McCain wins too. Not as dismal. Not nearly. But bad, nevertheless.

If McCain wins in a squeaker (and winning in a squeaker appears to be the only way that McCain will win)[i] two things are all but certain: (1) The Democrats will control both Houses of Congress. (2) The left in this country will be seething.

If this is the outcome of today's election, from a conservative standpoint, John McCain will have been the worst possible Republican nominee (of all of the top tier primary contenders) that the Party could have chosen.

President Bush bragged about his ability to compromise with the Democrats when he was Governor of Texas. McCain is obsessed with compromise -- far more than Bush. Should McCain win in a close election he will not only be inclined to "reach across the aisle" -- he will feel duty bound.

He will also be pressured. The mainstream media, and a host of this country's intellectuals (including many conservative elites), will hound McCain with the notion that it was his status as a "maverick" that won him the race.

They will insist that "middle of the road" voters put him into office because of his stands on MMGW, immigration, and his "courageous" efforts to help pass the trillion dollar bailout bill. And McCain will want to believe them. He is, after all, human like the rest of us. In his mind his "maverick" (left leaning) idiosyncratic Republicanism will be fully vindicated.

America will need two things after this election. First, America as a culture will need healing. Barack Obama has divided this country along racial and economic lines. It will be John McCain's duty as president to fix Barack Obama's mess.

Second, just as important, America's economic and governmental institutions will need tough love. America has put off meeting our energy needs, fixing our broken retirement system and our semi-nationalized and bankrupt medical system for far too long. It would be all but impossible for the greatest of statesmen to both heal the culture and also enforce long ignored fiscal discipline on the federal government. John McCain will start with the healing first. He will have no other choice. I fear that the tough love McCain has promised to finally bring to the White House will be lost in this healing process and in the “necessary” political compromises that the left will demand of McCain as part of the payment for that healing.

Once again, the thing that worries me the most is not the economic crisis that we are facing (under either McCain or Obama), it is the moral one. McCain is a decent man. He has promised to appoint decent judges. But the Democrats will see to it that this does not happen.

McCain said, as a senator, that he had "serious reservations" about voting for a strict constructionist like Justice Alito. He will not fight to appoint another Supreme Court justice in that mold. Under a President McCain our federal judiciary is likely to slide (however slowly) to the left.

I am known as the skeptic (I am called "the cynic" -- sometimes worse) here at American Thinker. I have never thought (or written) that John McCain was a good choice for conservatives.

But I am voting for him. So should you. Obama cannot be given control of this government. We will regret it. Our children will pay for it.

In fact, we must vote for John McCain even if he loses. Even if we know he has already lost as we (on the West coast) step into the ballot booth.

Here is why: Should Obama win the Electoral College, we must not give him a popular mandate. The only chance we have of helping Obama choose (3) -- that is making sure he thinks more about the trappings of the president than the power of the president -- is to minimize his claims to a mandate.

We can do this. No matter which state you live in, no matter how large the majority of the vote in your state is for either McCain or Obama, conservatives must vote for John McCain.


[i] McCain could win in a landslide and bring Republican majorities to both Houses of Congress with him on his huge coattails. But I am not going to discuss that possibility in this article. I could win the lottery 50 times in a row.
46 Comments on "If Obama Wins ... or if McCain I wonder

3) Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr

The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah --- the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.


As reported in this space last week, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.


Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."


"Islamic banking" is a euphemism for a practice better known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance (SFC)." And it turns out that this week the Treasury will be taking officials from various federal agencies literally to school on SFC.


The department is hosting a half-day course entitled "Islamic Finance 101" on Thursday at its headquarters building. Treasury's self-described "seminar for the policy community" is co-sponsored with the leading academic promoters of Shariah and SCF in the United States: Harvard University Law School's Project on Islamic Finance. At the very least, the U.S. government evidently hopes to emulate Harvard's success in securing immense amounts of Wahhabi money in exchange for conforming to the Islamists' agenda. Like Harvard, Treasury seems utterly disinterested in what Shariah actually is, and portends.


Unfortunately, such submission - the literal meaning of "Islam" - is not likely to remain confined long to the Treasury or its sister agencies. Thanks to the extraordinary authority conferred on Treasury since September, backed by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the department is now in a position to impose its embrace of Shariah on the U.S. financial sector. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury's purchase of - at last count - 17 banks and the ability to provide, or withhold, funds from its new slush-fund can translate into unprecedented coercive power.


Concerns in this regard are only heightened by the prominent role Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari will be playing in "Islamic Finance 101." Mr. Kashkari, the official charged with administering the TARP fund, will provide welcoming remarks to participants. Presumably, in the process, he will convey the enthusiasm about Shariah-Compliant Finance that appears to be the current party line at Treasury.


As this enthusiasm for SCF ramps up in Washington officialdom, it is worth recalling a lesson from "across the pond." Earlier this year, the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, provoked a brief but intense firestorm of controversy with his declaration that it was "unavoidable" that Shariah would be practiced in Britain. Largely unremarked was the reason he gave for such an ominous forecast: The U.K. had already accommodated itself to Shariah-Compliant Finance.


This statement provides an important insight for the incumbent U.S. administration and whomever succeeds it: Shariah-Compliant Finance serves as a leading edge of the spear for those seeking to insinuate Shariah into Western societies.


Regrettably, SCF is not the only instrument of the stealth jihad by which Shariah-promoting Islamists are seeking to achieve "parallel societies" here and elsewhere in the West. The British experience is instructive on this score, too. Her Majesty's government has allowed the establishment of at least five Shariah courts to hear (initially) family law cases. Polygamists in the U.K. can get welfare for each of their wives (as long as all the marriages beyond the first were performed overseas).


Thus far, we in this country may not have reached the point where evidence of this sort of creeping Shariah is so manifest. But Treasury's accommodation to SCF demonstrates that we are on the same trajectory - the one ordained and demanded by the promoters of Shariah, one to which we serially accommodate ourselves at our extreme peril.


After all, the object of Shariah is the supplanting of our government and Constitution, through violent means if possible and, until then, through stealthy ones. Islamists, having secured footholds via their parallel societies, inevitably use those to extend their influence over Muslims who have no more interest in living under authoritative Islam's Shariah than the rest of us do. Inexorably, it becomes the turn of non-Muslims to accommodate themselves to ever more intrusive demands from the Islamists. It is known as submission, or dhimmitude.


Soon - possibly as early as this Wednesday - the Treasury Department and the other federal agencies will be taking orders from representatives of Barack Obama or John McCain. It may be that the outgoing administration's determination to advance the Islamist agenda via "Islamic Finance 101," and what flows from it, may be the first, far-reaching policy decision inherited by the new president-elect. If he does not want to have his transition saddled with an implicit endorsement of submission to Shariah, the winner of the White House sweepstakes would be well-advised to pull the plug on Thursday's indoctrination program and the insidious industry it is meant to foist on the "policy community," our capital markets and our country.