Carter-Obama - Two Milquetoasts? Gov't Ferdinands?

Obama finally admits the system failed. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to remind us it was a system put in place by GW.

Since everything Obama inherited came from GW and previous presidents why has Obama continued with their implementation and use? Why has Obama not reveiwed and 'changed' everything. I thought Obama was going to bring about'change.'

Ah, but Obama believes he needs to continue blaming Bush. It worked for a few months but now every time Obama blames GW, he looks increasingly foolish and incompetent.

Criticize Obama and those who would defend him resort to attacking GW as well. It is in their DNA.

Since we chose incompetence over experience we should be happy and not surprised. After all we are being well rewarded and it did not take long either.

Meanwhile, editorial writer, Joan Walsh, defends Obama by suggesting Republicans are equally to blame and thus that evens the score.(See 1 and 1a below.)

Charles Hurt asks where is Obama's passion? Apparently Hurt does not understand Obama is too cool to breathe!

What I find depressing is when Obama explains what has happened he sounds more like he is informing himself. Most Americans understand what is going on - incompetence is not terribly hard to detect.

Obama is so far behind the curve when it comes to fighting terrorism he winds up meeting himself. Public outrage must be getting to him and his staff and screwing up his golf game!

Obama told us yesterday everything we already knew, but he must have been advised to appear more presidentially dramatic and thus used stronger language by saying that forbidden word 'catastrophic.' However, he also chose not wear a tie and promptly left to play a round of golf. Was that a way of assuring us we are safe and secure or was that president cool again. Being a Compassionate Conservative I feel guilty Obama had to disrupt his golf game to tell me what I already knew.

On another note, December has come and gone and Iran's fist still remains closed. I expect Obama will now reset the negotiation goal post. Terrorist nations do not seem overly frightened by Obama. Why? Because what they see is a milquetoast who they can roll as they did Carter.

De-ja vu all over again? (See 2 below.)

We should also feel further comfort by virue of the fact our government is taking over more and more of our economy.

Think of it this way. In virtually every sector the government sits in the middle either as an enabler, decider or arbiter and in the process is choking and/or crippling virtually everything it touches or comes in contact:

Financial sector - government - salaries, rules and regulations

Health sector - government - thousands of rules

Mortgage sector - government - home buyers (responsible and irresponsible ones)

Lobbyists - government - taxpayers

Deficits - government - taxpayers

Auto industry - government - drivers

Stimulus - government - failure

Unions - government - unemployment

Air we breath - government - soon to be taxed

Death - government - estates taxed for third time

By now I hope you get the idea.(See 3 and 3a below.)

Something to ponder. It would be nice if you could buy insurance that would protect you from costly mistakes of an existing condition of stupidity. (See 4 below.)

Steele writes far more eloquently what I have been trying to say - we have deluded ourselves into believing we see what is not there in order to expiate our feelings of historic guilt.

A fascinating article as only Steel can write. (See 5 below.

Are government bureaucrats Ferdinands? They seem to enjoy smelling the flowers but ignore the red flags. (See 6 below.)

Finally, I would feel more secure if those who work at airport security would ask these simple but critical questions:

a) Are you a terrorist?

b) Did you pack your own bomb?

c) Have you been to Yemen in the past week?

d) How many times a day do you think about killing Americans?

e) How many times were you dropped on your head when you were an infant?

f) Does your mother wear a bhurka?

g) How many virgins do you know and are you anxious to visit them?

Dick

1) Playing politics with national security: Questions about the Flight 253 attack, and what to do about Yemen, may be obscured by petty bickering over blame
By Joan Walsh


President Barack Obama speaks to the media about the recent air travel incident, Dec. 28 at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay.Yes, it's aggravating to see Republicans savaging the Obama administration over the Christmas Day bombing attempt. After all, Republicans have blocked additional funding to purchase TSA explosive-detection machines, and Sen. Jim DeMint placed a hold on the appointment of a new TSA chief because of fears the nominee is pro-union. On Monday ABC News revealed that two attack plotters had been released from Guantánamo — in November 2007, by the Bush-Cheney administration. Clearly, if Mary Matalin can claim President Bush "inherited" 9/11 from the Clinton administration, Democrats should be able to blame Bush for the actions of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The fact is, blundering the interpretation of genuine terror data, and spinning the blunders after any scary threat, is a bipartisan game. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have perfect records when it comes to keeping us safe. But the GOP is proving itself far more willing than Democrats to play politics after a terror incident, which is a shame, because it means that political ass-covering may drain energy that ought to go to national security. DeMint had the gall to blame the administration: Its allegedly "soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo — these things are not going to appease the terrorists," he said. "They’re going to keep coming after us," DeMint told Fox News, "and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security."

Even I think Obama should have spoken publicly about the incident earlier than today, but I'm relieved that, unlike press secretary Robert Gibbs and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the president didn't pretend that the security system "worked" to thwart the Christmas Day bombing attempt. He promised a review of the watch-list system, in the wake of news that Abdulmutallab's father had warned U.S. and British officials of his son's radicalization. The British were so concerned they denied him a visa and put him on their no-fly list. In the U.S., the 23-year-old Nigerian merely went on a watch list with half a million other names, so officials could investigate whether any future student visa requests could be denied. It's important to get to the bottom of why the U.S. and British responses to the information were so different.

1a)Editorial: It's time to revisit U.S. terror policy: Has President Obama's shift to a law enforcement strategy for fighting terror left the nation less safe?

President Barack Obama came into office vowing to change the tone on terrorism and swiftly set about transforming the war on terror into a law enforcement exercise that places a greater emphasis on apprehension and prosecution than it does on deterrence. After two recent terrorist attacks on the United States -- one successful, one failed -- this is a good point at which to stop and examine whether the new strategy is working to keep Americans safe.

The attempted Christmas Day bombing of a flight landing in Detroit by an al-Qaida-linked Nigerian suspect raises serious concerns about the nation's ability to deter terrorist attacks.

Despite premature declarations from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that "the system worked," the system failed miserably. Only the good fortune that the terrorist couldn't detonate his bomb kept Northwest Flight 253 from becoming a horrific holiday tragedy

Several issues must be addressed. Chief among them is why Umar Farouk Abudulmutallab was allowed to get on a flight to the United States. His name is on a list of possible terrorists, and yet his two-year U.S. tourist visa was never revoked.

The State Department shouldn't be giving visas to any of the 550,000 people worldwide identified as terror risks. Some people on that list certainly may be wrongfully named. But it's better to offend an innocent few than to risk allowing a bona-fide terrorist access to the country.

Congress should look at sharing responsibility for issuing visas between the State and Homeland Security departments, so that at least one set of eyes looks at visitor requests with the potential for terror in mind.

Better airport screening policies and equipment are also in order. If the current practices can't detect the sort of explosive device that Abudulmutallab strapped to his leg, then upgrades are needed and should be put in place as soon as possible.

But beyond procedures, Congress should have a vigorous debate about whether the administration's approach to preventing terror is valid.

The Obama administration is determined to treat terrorists as criminals. But that can limit the ability to prevent attacks. For example, Abudulmutallab was quickly charged and moved into the federal court system, where the ability to interrogate him is limited. Would more aggressive interrogation reveal whether his was an isolated attempt, or part of a broader plot? We're less likely to find out now that he's a criminal defendant, with all the rights that come with that status.

Similarly, intelligence agencies had information that should have raised suspicions about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan before he went on his rampage at Fort Hood last month. Were we less free to act in advance under the rules of a criminal investigation than we should have been?

What are the links, if any, between the Fort Hood massacre and the botched airliner bombing?

Abudulmutallab reportedly was schooled by al-Qaida in Yemen, a country of growing concern. Hasan also had connections to Yemini al-Qaida members.

The U.S. intelligence agencies are moving to get a handle on terror activity there. Should more be done?

Congress should fully air these issues and questions. Unfortunately, its ability to do so is limited by a lack of cooperation from the Obama administration.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, says that requests for the information needed to hold hearings have been rebuffed.

"We need to look at where we've drawn the line on policy and see if it's where it needs to be, or does it need to be moved," Hoekstra says.

"The only way policy can be moved is by joint action by Congress and the administration."

Obama was heavily motivated in shifting terror policy by a desire to improve the United States' standing in the international community and, in his words, to return the nation to its values.

But terrorists shouldn't be allowed to use our values against us. Nor should we make appeasing America's critics a greater priority than keeping our own people safe.

We got lucky on Christmas Day. Some would say we got a Christmas miracle.

But luck and miracles are no substitute for aggressive deterrence.

2)Passion out of fashion for O
By CHARLES HURT


Responding to the attempted terror attack on an American plane in US skies, Obama took a break from the sandy beaches and golf links of Hawaii to make his first remarks about the simple thwarting of what were supposed to be the highest security procedures.

It was three days late and Obama mailed it in.

Unaided by his trusty TelePrompTers, the president read through his statement like a school kid dutifully treading through his book report.

"Here is what we know so far: On Christmas Day, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit," he said in those monotone stanzas.

"As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire."

Allegedly? This is not a courtroom, Mr. President. Or a law school.

You are the leader of the greatest beacon of hope in a world filled with unyielding and mindless evil.

Where is your passion?

It's not like he had to come out and say something like wanting the guy "dead or alive."

But something? Anything?

As disappointing as Obama's dearth of vigor is, truly alarming is what he said a little later as he complimented the fine Americans and great passengers from other countries who stepped in and, once again, picked up where the government had colossally failed.

"This incident demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist," Obama said.

Again, this was a prepared statement that he appeared to read word for word from a sheet of paper.

This was not a slip of the tongue.

An "isolated extremist?"

Amid all of the current confusion over how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got on to a flight bound for America despite ample warning that he was planning to attack the country, one thing is clear right now: the so-called "isolated extremist" was working for al Qaeda -- a worldwide terror group.

No matter what kind of vacation Obama finds himself on right now, al Qaeda remains fully at war with America. And will remain so until every last one of them is killed.

It was almost like Obama yesterday really would have rather been surfing.


3)Is the Government Taking Over the Economy?
By Noam Scheiber

The Journal has a wide-ranging story today on the extent to which the government's role in the economy has grown. The gist of the piece is that the expansion has been significant, which is almost certainly true, at least in the short-term. (Much of the intervention will be unwound in the next few years, though some of it won't.)

Still, I'm not entirely sure this is the right question to ask. Given that the whole financial system came close to disintegrating last fall, and that the real economy nearly followed, anyone but a complete neanderthal would have expected a pretty significant government expansion. The question is whether government expanded more, less, or about as much as we would have expected. Coincidentally, the editors of our web site have re-posted the piece Frank Foer and I wrote on this subject back in May, which argues that the expansion of government under Obama isn't as significant as you might have predicted. Ditto for his ambitions going forward. We now have about eight months' more data to work with, but I think the argument still holds up reasonably well.

Relatedly, a subtext of the Journal piece is that the consequences of all the government expansion are more negative than positive at this point. Take, for example, this detail:

Bank of America Corp. also has repaid its aid, freeing itself from the condition lenders hate most about the bailouts: Treasury oversight of executive pay. Even so, it sought the Treasury's advice on a pay package before hiring a new chief executive.

The bank was considering paying $35 million to $40 million to hire Robert Kelly, CEO of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., much of it to buy out his unvested shares and options. The Bank of America board wanted to know how that would go over in Washington. Treasury paymaster Kenneth Feinberg told the bank that if it were still under his purview, he would reject the package. Around the same time, President Obama publicly bashed "fat cat" bankers.

With those two signals, the talks with Mr. Kelly fizzled, according to officials involved with the decision. The bank instead promoted an insider, Brian Moynihan, who had been working to repair the bank's reputation in Washington. ... Mr. Moynihan, by contrast, told Obama aides in October that Bank of America wanted to work with the White House to achieve U.S. policy goals in areas like small-business lending and foreclosure prevention.

I think we can all agree that, in an ideal world, a board should be able to hire the best possible candidate for a job, regardless of his political skills. But, of course, we're pretty far away from that ideal. When it comes to the financial sector, one of the things that makes the world fall far short of the ideal is the government backing (both explicit and implicit) that makes it much, much cheaper for big banks to borrow money. As Dean Baker pointed out to the Journal:

Although smaller banks have long had a higher cost of funds than big ones, the gap has widened. The gap averaged 0.03 percentage point for the first seven years of the decade, but it jumped to a 0.66-point disadvantage for smaller banks in the four quarters ended Sept. 30, estimates Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank. That suggests investors think the government would bail out big banks, but not small ones, if crisis erupted anew, he says.

The Journal holds this up as another reason to worry about government intervention, since it advantages big banks over small banks. And it clearly is. But, of course, this concern doesn't run in the same direction as the previous concern: It's not the big banks who have a problem with this; they're happy to borrow cheaply.

When executives at big banks complain about government intervention, what they're really saying is they want all the advantages of government intervention (cheap borrowing) without any of the disadvantages (like constraints on hiring decisions). But that makes no sense. Why on earth would the government provide the former without the latter? How could one even exist without the other?

I'd guess that if bank investors or board members or even executives we're being honest, they'd probably admit that the cheap borrowing is worth much more to them than the cost of not being able to hire their ideal CEO. After all, the notion that the "ideal CEO" (i.e., pure financial brilliance, political skills be damned) is ever available to a major bank is kind of ridiculous. Even before the crisis, banks benefited heavily from the presence of, say, the Fed as a lender of last resort, and the (explicit and implicit) presence of the U.S. government of a backer of their obligations. The idea that this didn't require a CEO to have some savvy in dealing with the government is pretty ludicrous, even if the banks liked to pretend that all their profits came by dint of financial savvy. So I'm just not seeing how the current reality is so different from the paradise we've ostensibly lost.


3a)On the Obama River and Headed for the Falls
By Harold Witkov

Did you ever imagine what it might be like to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? How about going over the Obama Falls?


Life has many warning markers. Some of these markers represent points of no return: where one must make a commitment so forceful that there is no turning back. The phrase "point of no return" is a poignant characterization of what is taking place politically and economically in our country today.


President Obama and his Democrat Congress are presently attempting to do away with our free-market system and the personal liberties we enjoy. Via a head-spinning series of sweeping changes and fast-paced "emergency" bills, they are doing everything they can to get us beyond the irrevocable point of political and financial no return.


In case anyone has missed it, allow me to point out the obvious. President Obama and the Democrats are taking over the banks and the auto industry. They are one step closer to government-run health care. In their sights is cap-and-trade taxing and amnesty resulting in citizenship for those here illegally. Not too far down the road will be the elimination of conservative talk radio. We have a trillion-dollar deficit balloon that is expanding and ready to burst. Our enemies abroad grow stronger and ever bolder.


Some days I feel as though the die is cast and our nation has passed the point of no return. There I am, in a barrel on the mighty Obama River, headed for the Obama Falls, with its jagged rocks awaiting me below. Of course, it's not just me, but all of us.


If this is our destiny, I think we should know that we are not the first to go over a waterfall in a barrel. There have been others. Some even survived the treacherous experience. From those exalted trailblazers, regardless of whether they lived or perished, I take inspiration.


So how did they who went before us prepare themselves? Here is what some did before going over Niagara Falls:


Annie Edson Taylor went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1901. Her preparation was a padded mattress.
Bobby Leach went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1911. His barrel was made of steel.
Charles Stephens went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1920. He tied himself to an anvil. (He, by the way, did not survive.)
Steven Trotter went over Niagara Falls in a barrel on two different occasions. In 1985, he wrapped his barrel with inner tubes. He also did it in 1995. This time, he packed lady-friend Lori Martin.


So what should we do to make ready our personal barrels so that we might survive if and when we go over the great Obama Falls? Here are some of the suggestions I have been hearing:


obtain a medical degree so you can practice medicine on yourself
stock up on a lifetime's worth of nonperishable foods
build a bomb shelter
learn to blame Israel for all the problems of the world
purchase a handgun and learn how to use it
buy gold
take your money out of your bank account and bury it
learn to speak Spanish
take your money out of the stock market and hide it
sew your jewels into your clothing
diversify, diversify, diversify
leave the country before it is too late
get a Swiss bank account
join the ACORN team
convert to Wahhabi Islam


It seems to me that we who love this great nation have but two choices. We can give up and try to protect our own personal barrels, or we can hope we have not yet reached the much-feared point of no return on the Obama River and fight for the principles that our Founding Fathers laid out.


If we have not yet reached the point of no return -- and I believe we have not -- then even slowing down health care "reform" legislation (or other bankrupting entitlement foods on the liberal plate) can be a victory in that we have bought time. And time, as they say, is of the essence as we close in upon 2010 and the next round of elections.


Too often, I hear conservatives ask, "How can we stop what seems inevitable?" Now, I could respond to this question with a number of inspirational clichés. I could say, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings"; "[We] have not yet begun to fight"; or "You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it."


Instead, the best advice I can give is, "Pray as if everything depends on God. Work as if everything depends on you."

4)Modern Day Lunacy
By Walter Williams


Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care, and Rep. Joe Courtney D-Conn., a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, have introduced the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act, which would eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions in all insurance markets. That's an Obama administration priority. I wonder whether President Obama and his congressional supporters would go a step further and protect not just patients but everyone against pre-existing condition exclusions by insurance companies. Let's look at the benefits of such a law.


A person might save quite a bit of money on fire insurance. He could wait until his home is ablaze and then walk into Nationwide and say, "Sell me a fire insurance policy so I can have my house repaired." The Nationwide salesman says, "That's lunacy!" But the person replies, "Congress says you cannot deny me insurance because of a pre-existing condition." This mandate against insurance company discrimination would not only apply to home insurance but auto insurance and life insurance as well. Instead of a wife wasting money on costly life insurance premiums, she could spend that money on jewelry, cosmetics and massages and then wait until her husband kicked the bucket to buy life insurance on him.


Insurance companies don't stay in business and prosper by being stupid. If Congress were to enact a law eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions, what might be expected? Say I'm a salesman for Nationwide and you demand that I write you an insurance policy for your house that has already gone up in flames. I send an appraiser out to your house to get an estimate how much money it would take to make you whole. Let's say it comes to $400,000. Guess how much I'm going to charge you for the policy? If you said somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000, you'd be pretty close to the right answer. You might say, "Williams, you're right. Forcing fire and auto insurance companies to sell policies for a pre-existing fire or auto accident is bizarre and stupid, but it's different with health insurance." Yes, health insurance is different from fire and auto insurance but the insurance principle remains the same.

If Congress and the president are successful in making the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act the law of the land, their treachery won't stop there. Insurance companies will attempt to charge people with pre-existing health conditions a higher price to compensate for their higher expected cost. Those people will complain to Congress. Then Congress will enact insurance premium price controls. Insurance companies might try to restrict just what treatments they will cover under such restrictions. That means Congress will play a greater role in managing what insurance companies can and cannot do.


The dilemma Congress always faces, when it messes with the economy, was aptly described in a Negro spiritual play by Marcus Cook Connelly titled "Green Pastures." In it, G0d laments to the angel Gabriel, "Every time Ah passes a miracle, Ah has to pass fo' or five mo' to ketch up wid it," adding, "Even bein G0d ain't no bed of roses." When Congress creates a miracle for one American, it creates a non-miracle for another. After that, Congress has to create a compensatory miracle. Many years ago, I used to testify before Congress, something I refuse to do now. At several of the hearings, I urged Congress to get out of the miracle business and leave miracle making up to G0d.


For a president and congressman to shamelessly propose something like the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act demonstrates just how far we've gone down the road to perdition. The most tragic thing is that most Americans have no idea that such an act violates every principle of insurance and it's something that not even yesteryear's lunatics would have thought up.

5)Obama and Our Post-Modern Race Problem
: The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol..
By SHELBY STEELE

America still has a race problem, though not the one that conventional wisdom would suggest: the racism of whites toward blacks. Old fashioned white racism has lost its legitimacy in the world and become an almost universal disgrace.

The essence of our new "post-modern" race problem can be seen in the parable of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor was told by his swindling tailors that people who could not see his new clothes were stupid and incompetent. So when his new clothes arrived and he could not see them, he put them on anyway so that no one would think him stupid and incompetent. And when he appeared before his people in these new clothes, they too—not wanting to appear stupid and incompetent—exclaimed the beauty of his wardrobe. It was finally a mere child who said, "The emperor has no clothes."

The lie of seeing clothes where there were none amounted to a sophistication—joining oneself to an obvious falsehood in order to achieve social acceptance. In such a sophistication there is an unspoken agreement not to see what one clearly sees—in this case the emperor's flagrant nakedness.

America's primary race problem today is our new "sophistication" around racial matters. Political correctness is a compendium of sophistications in which we join ourselves to obvious falsehoods ("diversity") and refuse to see obvious realities (the irrelevance of diversity to minority development). I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there—all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.

Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If "hope and change" was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.

Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency.

Our new race problem—the sophistication of seeing what isn't there rather than what is—has surprised us with a president who hides his lack of economic understanding behind a drama of scale. Hundreds of billions moving into trillions. Dramatic, history-making numbers. But where is the economic logic behind a stimulus package that doesn't fully click in for a number of years? How is every stimulus dollar spent actually going to stimulate? Why bailouts to institutions that only hoard the money? How is vast government spending simultaneously a kind of prudence that will not "add to the deficit?" How can such spending not trigger smothering levels of taxation?

Mr. Obama's economic thinking (or lack thereof) adds up to a kind of rudderless cowboyism combined with wishful thinking. You would think that in the two solid years of daily campaigning leading up to his election this nakedness would have been seen.

On the foreign front he has been given much credit for his new policy on the Afghan war, and especially for the "rational" and "earnest" way he went about arriving at the decision to surge 30,000 new troops into battle. But here also were three months of presidential equivocation for all the world to see, only to end up essentially where he started out.

And here again was the lack of a larger framework of meaning. How is this surge of a piece with America's role in the world? Are we the world's exceptional power and thereby charged with enforcing a certain balance of power, or are we now embracing European self-effacement and nonengagement? Where is the clear center in all this?

I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world.

The nature of this emptiness becomes clear in the contrast between him and Ronald Reagan. Reagan reached the White House through a great deal of what is called "individuating"—that is he took principled positions throughout his long career that jeopardized his popularity, and in so doing he came to know who he was as a man and what he truly believed.

He became Ronald Reagan through dissent, not conformity. And when he was finally elected president, it was because America at last wanted the vision that he had evolved over a lifetime of challenging conventional wisdom. By the time Reagan became president, he had fought his way to a remarkable certainty about who he was, what he believed, and where he wanted to lead the nation.

Mr. Obama's ascendancy to the presidency could not have been more different. There seems to have been very little individuation, no real argument with conventional wisdom, and no willingness to jeopardize popularity for principle. To the contrary, he has come forward in American politics by emptying himself of strong convictions, by rejecting principled stands as "ideological," and by promising to deliver us from the "tired" culture-war debates of the past. He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan," which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"—thus implying that being nothing is better than being something. He tries to make a politics out of emptiness itself.

But then Mr. Obama always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. He always wore the bargainer's mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me. Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and yes, Tiger Woods have all been superb bargainers, eliciting almost reverential support among whites for all that they were not—not angry or militant, not political, not using their moral authority as blacks to exact a wage from white guilt.

But this mask comes at a high price. When blacks become humanly visible, when their true beliefs are known, their mask shatters and their symbiotic bond with whites is broken. Think of Tiger Woods, now so humanly visible. Or think of Bill Cosby, who in recent years has challenged the politically correct view and let the world know what he truly thinks about the responsibility of blacks in their own uplift.

It doesn't matter that Mr. Woods lost his bargainer's charm through self-destructive behavior and that Mr. Cosby lost his through a courageous determination to individuate—to take public responsibility for his true convictions. The appeal of both men—as objects of white identification—was diminished as their human reality emerged. Many whites still love Mr. Cosby, but they worry now that expressing their affection openly may identify them with his ideas, thus putting them at risk of being seen as racist. Tiger Woods, of course, is now so tragically human as to have, as the Bible put it, "no name in the street."

A greater problem for our nation today is that we have a president whose benign—and therefore desirable—blackness exempted him from the political individuation process that makes for strong, clear-headed leaders. He has not had to gamble his popularity on his principles, and it is impossible to know one's true beliefs without this. In the future he may stumble now and then into a right action, but there is no hard-earned center to the man out of which he might truly lead.

And yes, white America conditioned Barack Obama to emptiness—valued him all along for his "articulate and clean" blackness, so flattering to American innocence. He is a president come to us out of our national insecurities.

Mr. Steele is a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

6)Red Flags Waved -- And Ignored
By Ruth Marcus

The more I think about the Christmas all-but-bombing, the angrier I get. At the multiple failures that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to get on the plane with explosives sewn inside his underwear. And at the Obama administration's initial, everything's-fine-everybody-move-right-along reaction.

I understand: When it comes to a terrorist attack, we live in an age of not if but when. What seems obvious in retrospect is rarely evident at the time; hindsight needs no Lasik. For every Abdulmutallab that slips through the inevitable cracks, many more are foiled. Or so we hope.

And so we have learned, because we must, to live with a new layer of risk. Like climbers adjusting to a higher altitude, we have grown so accustomed to the changed circumstances that we forget about the thinner air, the omnipresent danger. Until moments like the episode on Flight 253 yank us back to the new reality -- and, worse, to the realization that, eight long and expensive years later, not nearly enough has changed.

"Information was not shared. ... Analysis was not pooled. ... Often the handoffs of information were lost across the divide separating the foreign and domestic agencies of the government."

"Improved use of 'no-fly' and 'automatic selectee' lists should not be delayed. ... This screening function should be performed by the TSA, and it should utilize the larger set of watchlists maintained by the federal government."

"The TSA ... must give priority attention to improving the ability of screening checkpoints to detect explosives on passengers."

A trenchant analysis of the Christmas attack? No, quotes from the report of the 9/11 Commission.

As with the numerous missed opportunities to stop the 9/11 hijackers, the Abdulmutallab story that has emerged so far is an enraging litany of how-can-it-be's.

How can it be that his visa was not revoked after his own father went to U.S. authorities to report concerns about his son's radicalization? "After his father contacted the embassy recently, we coded his visa file so that, had he attempted to renew his visa months from now, it would have triggered an in-depth review of his application," one U.S. official told CNN. How reassuring.

How can it be that, after the father's alert, the most that seems to have been done was to place Abdulmutallab's name in a database so sprawling as to be nearly useless? There was, one administration official explained, "insufficient derogatory information" to bump up Abdulmutallab to a higher status of watch list. Excuse me, but how much more derogatory can you get?

How can it be that British authorities denied Abdulmutallab's request for a visa renewal -- without triggering a comparable review by U.S. officials? Was the United States not informed or did U.S. authorities simply not take action in response? Either there is a continuing problem of intergovernmental communication or a continuing problem of bureaucratic lassitude.

How can it be that an individual passenger (a) traveling from Nigeria, with its known security lapses, (b) not checking luggage and (c) purchasing a ticket with cash was not singled out for additional screening? What did he have to do: wear a sign saying, "You might want to check my underwear"?

How can it be that screening technology is so lacking so long after the 9/11 Commission called for "priority attention" to detect explosives on passengers?

How can it be that our best line of defense seems to have been a combination of incompetence and bravery -- incompetence by the attacker whose device failed to detonate properly, and bravery by passengers who acted so quickly to subdue him and put out the fire?

And how can it be, in the face of all this, that the administration's communications strategy, cooked up on a conference call, was to assure us that they were looking into things but in the meantime we should settle down?

This was not just one supposedly out-of-context stumble by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; it was the official line. Making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs resisted every effort to get him to acknowledge that something had gone seriously wrong.

The American people are not as stupid as the administration's initial approach assumed. They accept that a smart, determined terrorist can -- and eventually probably will -- slip through the best-constructed defenses. They cannot accept -- nor should they -- a system so slipshod as to let through a bungler like Abdulmutallab, with all the red flags that were waved