By basing his philosophy and policies on doing something 'good' Obama, in Steele's view, has more latitude to transgress democratic principles.
Obama began his presidency at the top in terms of his being the first black president to be elected, and Steele now sees Obama, unlike other presidents who work forward towards their legacy, working backwards into his.
I had lunch today with one of my very bright friends and we discussed Obama and the current political scene. My friend believes where the economy is at election time this year will be the overriding factor. He is of the mind the economy is progressing towards a steady, but maybe not robust, recovery. For him the critical questions is whether the economy will be sufficiently improved to sway voters at election time. He agrees with me, voters have short memories.
From a longer term view my friend also agrees with me that job prospects will remain bleak. Lack of education and the breakup of the family are permanent catastrophes which account for much of the growth in crime and anti-social behaviour. The uneducated have become increasingly unemployable in today's competitive world. Particularly is this so in our country where higher paying technology and manufacturing jobs are declining in number as we become more and more service oriented.
To his credit, my friend became positive on the market within weeks of it bottoming, he remains optimistic near term, sees little in the way of inflation this year and whatever rise occurs in interest rates believes it will be gradual and furthermore, begins from an historically low level, ie. virtually zero.
Longer term he fears an inevitable rise in inflation, is concerned about deficits, unabridged spending and their ravaging consequences.
In terms of politics he accepts the fact that independents hold the key to winning and the candidate that sticks to a consistent and believable message is most likely to capture their support. He agrees Romney though qualified on paper blew it when he went out of his way to signal how proud he was for birthing Massachusettes'health care legislation, when he was Governor.
In looking back at the last presidential election and considering the various other candidates my friend concluded Obama was meatier. I have said it differently but I do agree when compared to McCain, Obama became acceptable. Particularly since the press and media anointed Obama as their chosen and voters were caught up in that 'change' thing.
Karl Rove's last chapter of "Courage and Consequence" is entitled "Rove: The Myth" and in pp 512 - 516, Rove relates a specific encounter he had with Obama at the White House after being made aware Obama had accused Rove of saying something he never said - see page 33: "Audacity of Hope."
Rove asked Obama why he had written what he had and Obama denied it. Rove then showed Obama the actual quote in Obama's book but Obama continued to deny it meant what it clearly said. Rove ends his observation of Obama by writing while in public, Obama portrays himself as judicious, disciplined and fair minded whereas, in reality and in private Obama plays fast and loose with both facts and accusations.
I believe Rove is a pretty good judge of character.(See 1 and 1a below.)
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Baehr can't bear to see the press and media constantly closing their eyes in the case of Obama nor I. Is the Obama Seder more blatant hypocrisy?
Castigate Netanyahu, attack Israel as if it were a pariah nation, then hold a huggy huggy Seder while Jewish attendees go with their yarmulkes in their hand. Instead of a table setting the scene reminds me more of the the deck scene on the ship of fools.
I have a basic distrust of what Obama says and does because he has proven untrustworthy. He campaigned one way to get elected yet, governs another. He flips and flops, lies when it suits his purpose. Rove's assessment touches a responsive chord with me.
I would much prefer to see substance than style, an implemented policy preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear device as he committed to and a realistic approach towards Israel and the problems it faces rather than some photo op.(See 2 below.)
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I believe Obama can sell and will try to sell half loaf as being better than living up to his word because we live in a world full of feckless, flip flopping leaders and he leads the pack. (See 3 below.)
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Would that what Henninger writes be so. Taking back our nation is critical if America is to return to being what it once was - economically sound, progressive in terms of its industrial and social policies, patriotic, free spirited, willing to protect its borders and possessive of a strong currency. (See 4 below.)
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Bret Stephens responds to those who take him to task for his Lady Gaga article. (See 5 below)
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Longer term, America's growth is in decline according to this writer and I concur. Excessive and growing debt is an albatross.
Shorter term the more positive view also has some credibility. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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Dick
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1)Barack The Good : The big government liberalism that Mr. Obama uses to make himself history-making also alienates him in the center-right America of today.
By SHELBY STEELE
It has to be acknowledged that, in his battle for health-care reform, President Obama has shown real presidential mettle. He did what it took to win his way. He put every ounce of his political capital on the line, and he never blinked. For all the wrongheadedness of this reform—and the ugly backroom dealing that finally carried the day—the president himself will now enjoy a new respect at home and abroad. He will be less dismissible.
But if the old bowing and boyish president is receding, a new and more ominous president is emerging. And it is now apparent that Mr. Obama wants to be—above all else—a profoundly transformative president. He has spoken admiringly of the way Ronald Reagan changed the "trajectory" of history, and clearly he would like to launch a trajectory of his own.
But Reagan came into office as a very well-defined man with an unequivocal sense of direction. Agree with him or not, you knew what kind of society he wanted. Mr. Obama, despite his new resolve, remains rather undefined—a president happy to have others write his "transformative" legislation. As the health-care bill and the stimulus package illustrate, scale is functioning as vision. From where does it come?
Well, suppose you were the first black president of the United States and, therefore, also the first black head-of-state in the entire history of Western Civilization. You represent a human first, something entirely new under the sun. There aren't even any myths that speak directly to your circumstance, no allegorical tales of ancient black kings who ruled over white kingdoms.
If anything, you may literally experience yourself as a myth in the making. After all, you embody a heretofore unimaginable transcendence over the old human plagues of tribalism, hatred and ignorance. Standing on ground that no man has stood on before, wouldn't it be understandable if you felt pressured by the grandiosity of your circumstance? Isn't there a special—and impossible—burden on "the first" to do something that lives up to his historical originality?
Does this special burden explain Barack Obama's embrace of scale as vision (if I don't know what to do, I'll do big things)? I think it does to a degree. It means, for example, that a caretaker presidency is not an option for him. His historical significance almost demands a kind of political narcissism. For him the great appeal of massive health-care reform—when jobs are a far more pressing problem—may have been its history-making potential.
Here was a chance for Mr. Obama not just to be a part of history but to make history. Here he could have an achievement commensurate with his own historical significance. To have left off health care and taken up jobs would have left him a caretaker rather than a history-maker. So he hung in with health care and today it can be said: Barack Obama has signed the most significant piece of social legislation in 45 years—achieving something that has eluded every president since FDR.
A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, "We still have the power to shape history." But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.
Of the two great societal goals—freedom and "the good"—freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today's liberalism is focused on "the good" more than on freedom. And ideas of "the good" are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence—if not superiority—on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.
This is an old formula for power, last used effectively on the presidential level by Lyndon Johnson. But Johnson's Great Society was grasping for moral authority after the civil rights movement. I doubt any white president could use it effectively today, and even ObamaCare passed by only a three vote margin in the House and with no Republican support at all. Worse, in the end, it passed not to bring the nation better health care but to pull a flailing Democratic presidency back from the brink.
There has always been a narcissistic charge around Mr. Obama, the sense that in embracing him one was embracing something special in oneself—and possibly even a larger idea of human perfectibility. Every politician wants this capacity to attract identification. But it is also a trap. What happens when people are embarrassed for having seen themselves in you?
The old fashioned, big government liberalism that Mr. Obama uses to make himself history-making also alienates him in the center-right America of today. It makes him the most divisive president in memory—a president who elicits narcissistic identification on the one hand and an enraged tea party movement on the other. His health-care victory has renewed his narcissistic charge for the moment, but if he continues to be a 1965 liberal it will become more and more impossible for Americans to see themselves in him.
Mr. Obama's success has always been ephemeral because it was based on an illusion: that if we Americans could transcend race enough to elect a black president, we could transcend all manner of human banalities and be on our way to human perfectibility. A black president would put us in a higher human territory. And yet the poor man we elected to play out this fantasy is now torturing us with his need to reflect our grandiosity back to us.
Many presidents have been historically significant in retrospect, but Mr. Obama had historic significance on his inauguration day. His inauguration told a transcendent American story. Other presidents work forward into their legacy. Mr. Obama is working backwards into his.
Mr. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author most recently of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).
1a)Romney, Outsmarted by History: The passage of ObamaCare has dashed Mr. Romney's 2012 presidential hopes before he's even announced a bid.
By ALLYSIA FINLEY
Mitt Romney may end up being the biggest GOP casualty of ObamaCare -- his 2012 presidential hopes dashed before he's even announced a bid.
Mr. Romney has continued vociferously campaigning against ObamaCare even while defending a very similar universal health-care plan he signed into law as Massachusetts's governor in 2006. Last week, he inveighed on the National Review blog that "President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation . . . . he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends."
Critically, Republicans need to win the presidency in order to have any shot at repealing ObamaCare, as many GOPers insist should be the goal. Imagine Mr. Romney trying to carry this banner in 2012 in a debate with fellow GOP primary opponents. His Republican rivals would get plenty of mileage from a quote by MIT's Jonathan Gruber, a former Romney adviser who bragged that ObamaCare would never have happened if Mr. Romney hadn't made "the decision in 2005 to go for it. He is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform."
Mr. Romney has been frantically trying to distinguish the bills to conservatives. At Iowa State on Monday he claimed: "We solved our problem at the state level. Like it or not, it was a state solution." In Chicago last week, he said: "Our bill was carried out in a bipartisan basis." Judging by the questions he gets from audiences, voters aren't buying it. The Club for Growth has gone so far as to say that Mr. Romney's "in the wrong party."
On Tuesday, President Obama was already testing what would likely be his favorite soundbite if Mr. Romney becomes his 2012 rival. He told NBC's Matt Lauer: "A lot of commentators have said, you know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts." Probably nothing would make Democrats happier than a Romney candidacy since it would effectively put health-care repeal off the table as an issue in the 2012 presidential race.
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2)When Media Become Obama PR Agents
By Richard Baehr
The media's tongue bath for President Obama knows no bounds.
We all know that President Obama likes to play basketball. We also know his picks in the NCAA brackets and his percentile ranking among four million-plus entries after each round of the tournament on CBS's website. Harry Smith of the CBS morning program interviewed the president on the court this week while he shot baskets with CBS broadcaster and former college star Clark Kellogg.
The video will be shown during the NCAA semifinals Saturday night and again Monday night during the championship game. So 30 to 40 million folks will get this puffery delivered to them. Of course, we have already had Obama in the booth for a Georgetown basketball game this year, on Monday Night Football, and at the major league baseball All Star Game.
Sad to say for Obama, he had a good first round, but he has now slipped to the 55th percentile with his NCAA picks. Since none of his final four teams are left, he may slip to the bottom half by tournament's end. Some percentiles we will never know about the president: his SAT scores, his LSAT scores, his class rank at Columbia, his grades at Occidental (which somehow got him into Columbia as a transfer), or his class rank at Harvard Law School.
Could it be that he was outperformed in these areas by George Bush?
It has been a wonderful tournament, so don't let the political foreplay ruin it for you this weekend.
Do you recall ever hearing a story, no less multiple stories with updates, about President Bush's picks in the NCAA college basketball tournament?
President Bush was an unusually fit man for his age, by all measures in the top 1%. He jogged at a very rapid pace, and he worked out every day. He encouraged other White House staff to exercise and lose weight. Funny -- we heard almost nothing about this.
I don't recall any journalists writing about their jogs with the president (they would have been left looking like President Carter on his infamous run when he collapsed in the Maryland hills). President Bush was also a big sports fan and a former owner of a major league baseball franchise. My guess is that he filled out a bracket each year but did not choose to make it a news story.
In December 2004, my wife and I were invited to and attended the White House Hannukah Party. Try as you might, you will not easily find anything in the mainstream media to reveal that President Bush was the first president to hold such an event. His guest list included both Democrats and Republicans.
Now we have the spectacle of the White House seder, glowingly detailed on the front page of the New York Times. We also learn from the president that the meaning of Passover is that each generation must fight suffering and oppression (and presumably redistribute the wealth of the country). And I guess that if Jerusalem came up in the president's seder, as Professor Charles Lipson suggests, the line might have been: Next year in part of Jerusalem.
It is possible that a few of the herd of Jews who claim to be supporters of Israel -- and who were willing to ignore the president's history with Reverend Wright, Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, Bill Ayers, and Samantha Power; and not only vote for the great leader, but empty their wallets for him; and testify to his pro-Israel bona fides -- may be reconsidering. I emphasize "possible."
Jewish liberalism is a long-term and terminal disease. Very few can think of switching horses -- after all, liberal Jews grew up believing that liberals and Democrats care for the poor and are generous, and conservatives and Republicans are greedy. Hence, liberals and Democrats are better people. And of course, Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest hero prior to Obama, saved the Jews. Or a few of them, anyway.
With the backlash against Obama's recent outbursts and bile directed at Israel, it was time for the Times, the Torah of Jewish liberalism, to make clear that even if Obama does not love right-wing Israeli settlers, he still loves the Jews. Look -- he has a seder!
Official White House photo by Pete Souza
The President is wearing a yarmulke. Blacks and Jews are sitting together, like in the glory days of the Civil Rights Movement. Let us kvell.
Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.
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3)U.S. Softens Sanction Plan Against Iran
By DAVID CRAWFORD, RICHARD BOUDREAUX, JOE LAURIA and JAY SOLOMON
VIENNA—The U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran in order to win support from Russia and China for a new United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among provisions removed from the original draft resolution the U.S. sent to key allies last month were sanctions aimed at choking off Tehran's access to international banking services and capital markets, and closing international airspace and waters to Iran's national air cargo and shipping lines, according to the people.
The U.S. and allies are trying to force Iran to rein in a nuclear program that they worry is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Tehran says its nuclear activities are peaceful. The U.K. and Germany, concerned that Russia and China would reject the resolution outright and preferring to turn up pressure on Iran gradually, persuaded U.S. officials to drop or soften several elements, including some of the document's harshest provisions, the people said.
U.S. officials said they wouldn't comment on the day-by-day negotiations taking place among the Security Council members. But they stressed that the Obama administration is seeking the toughest measures possible against Tehran while maintaining unity among the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, which are drafting the sanctions.
"We are seeking an appropriate resolution that puts significant pressure on the government," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Wednesday. "We continue to consult with various countries, and it's our desire to maintain unanimity. It will be a strong united statement that Iran will have to pay attention to."
The disclosure of weakened proposals came as U.S. officials sought to persuade Russia and China to back measures against Iran in a conference call on Wednesday among the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, the first such meeting including China since mid-January.
Russia and China didn't endorse a draft resolution circulated by the U.S., but signaled that they were open to further discussions, people familiar with the matter said. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax news service, "We are continuing the process of comparing the approaches of the parties and considering further options."
Russia and China also have been working in tandem to press Iran to accept a United Nations-brokered proposal to send uranium abroad for enrichment, Russian officials said Wednesday. The effort is unusual, coming from the two powers usually least inclined to lean hard on Tehran. "The clouds are gathering, and the position of Iran leaves less and less space for diplomatic maneuver," a senior Russian diplomat told reporters Wednesday.
The current resolution still would target major power centers in Iran, in particular the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's elite military force, according to a person familiar with the draft. It would also stiffen a broad range of existing sanctions, including the search and seizure of suspicious cargo bound for Iran through international waters and a ban on states offering financial assistance or credits for trade with Iran. If approved, they would be the most stringent measures Iran has faced.
Yet the original U.S. draft would have gone much further. The cargo sanctions initially named Iran Air and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines and demand a blanket ban of their airplanes and ships from other countries' airspace or territorial waters. The revised version calls for interdiction only of shipments that would evade already-existing sanctions.
The earlier resolution would have made it difficult for Iran to insure imports and exports of oil and other essential commodities, by barring foreign insurers from serving international transport contracts from Iran.
The new draft calls only for unspecified "additional steps" to enforce current sanctions on insurance.
The previous draft would also have barred Iran's access to international capital markets by prohibiting foreign investment in Iranian bonds. The country hasn't traditionally relied on debt markets, but earlier this month a state-owned Iranian bank, Bank Mellat, announced an offer to sell bonds valued at €1 billion ($1.35 billion) to fund development of natural-gas field in South Pars. The new draft makes no mention of banning purchases of Iranian bonds.
The current draft notes "with serious concern the role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard" in "Iran's proliferation sensitive nuclear activities and the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems," according to a person familiar with its contents.
The U.S. Treasury Department has identified billions of dollars in assets controlled by the Revolutionary Guard in financial and commercial sectors, including at least $7 billion in the energy sector and a controlling stake in Iran's largest telecommunications and fixed-telephone-line provider, Telecommunication Company of Iran.
The draft would force an international freeze on the assets of the entire Revolutionary Guard and "any individuals or entities acting on their behalf or at their direction," and on "entities owned or controlled by them, including through illicit means," according to the person familiar with the draft.
If enforced, the proposed sanctions could force the Revolutionary Guard to divest itself of some of its holdings to prevent major disruptions in the economy.
The Revolutionary Guard's affiliation with the country's telecom operator, for example, could prompt foreign partners to stop connecting international calls.
Under previous U.N. Security Council resolutions, several named Revolutionary Guard entities with direct links to military programs and a handful of named senior commanders would be placed under sanction. The Revolutionary Guards as a whole and the companies in which they hold controlling economic interests, however, aren't currently sanctioned.
Though the sanctions under discussion would target the government, they would inevitably hit many Iranians as well, a senior European official with knowledge of the sanction preparations said. "We don't want to hurt the Iranian people," he said, but "people will be affected by the new sanctions."
U.S. officials acknowledge that there's been a tension between seeking the strongest possible sanctions at the U.N. and still maintaining consensus among such skeptical Security Council members as China, Russia and Turkey.
This balance is also playing into the timing of when the U.S. will push for a new round of penalties. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior U.S. officials have said time is essential in confronting Tehran, and have cited April as a target date. But American officials have acknowledged that it may not be possible to meet this deadline due to the continued opposition from Beijing and Ankara. Negotiations, subsequently, could drag on into the summer.
U.S. officials said they're going to follow up any new sanctions that are enacted by the U.N. with a range of new measures that will be implemented either unilaterally by Washington, or with allied countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The Obama administration has been holding meetings with so-called like-minded nations from outside the Security Council, such as Japan, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, which have extensive financial ties to Tehran.
"International pressure will be backed by steps that are taken nationally," Mr. Crowley said. "We are looking for sanctions that have bite."
China, which relies on Iran as a major supplier of oil, said last week that the standoff with Iran should be resolved through negotiations. U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that China remains the linchpin for successful sanctions being passed by the Security Council and have enlisted key Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to use their energy dealings with China as leverage to push Beijing for cooperation. "I believe in the end the Chinese will be on board," said a senior U.S. official working on drafting the sanctions.
Russia has sent mixed signals in recent weeks over its willingness to impose tougher restrictions on Tehran. Just last week Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow would assist Iran in starting a civilian nuclear reactor by July, against U.S. objections.
In a nod to Moscow, the resolution wouldn't sanction work on many existing energy projects, including the nuclear power plant Mr. Putin vowed to complete.
Russian analysts say Moscow is torn over the sanctions issue. It was blindsided last year by the disclosure of Iran's secretive nuclear work and embarrassed by Iran's subsequent rejection of the fuel-exchange proposal, which Russia had promoted. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Iran's leaders were allowing an opportunity for mutually beneficial dialogue with the West to "slip away."
Russia doesn't want to push Iran to the point of quitting the international Non-Proliferation Treaty and barring nuclear inspectors, analysts say. In addition, industrial lobbies close to the Kremlin oppose sanctions that would jeopardize their sales of weapons and nuclear energy equipment to Iran.
One of the toughest proposed sanctions in the current draft is a comprehensive international arms embargo against Iran, a longtime goal of the U.S. Despite U.S. pressure to end weapons shipments, a number of countries continue supply Iran with arms, however.
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4)Would the Founders Love ObamaCare? The resistance to ObamaCare is about a lot more than the 10th Amendment.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
The left-wing critics are right: The rage is not about health care. They are also right that similar complaints about big government were heard during the New Deal and the Great Society, and the sky didn't fall.
But what if this time the sky is falling—on them.
What if after more than a century of growth in the national government, starting with the Progressive Era, the American people are starting to push back. Not just the tea partiers or the 13 state attorneys general seeking protection under the 10th Amendment and the Commerce Clause. But something bigger than that.
That's not true. The American people can and do change the nation's collective mind on the ordering of our political system. The civil rights years of the 1960s is the most well-known modern example. (The idea that resistance to Mr. Obama's health plan is rooted in racist resentment of equal rights is beyond the pale, even by current standards of political punditry.)
Powerful political forces suddenly seem to be in motion across the U.S. What they have in common is anxiety over what government has become in the first decade of the 21st century.
The tea party movement is getting the most attention because it is the most vulnerable to the standard tool kit of mockery and ridicule. It is more difficult to mock the legitimacy of Scott Brown's overthrow of the Kennedy legacy, the election results in Virginia and New Jersey, an economic discomfort that is both generalized and specific to the disintegration of state and federal fiscs, and indeed the array of state attorneys general who filed a constitutional complaint against the new health-care law. What's going on may be getting past the reach of mere mockery.
Constitutional professors quoted in the press and across the Web explain that much about the federal government's modern authority is "settled" law. Even so, many of these legal commentators are quite close to arguing that the national government's economic and political powers are now limitless and unfettered. I wonder if Justice Kennedy believes that.
Or as David Kopel asked on the Volokh Conspiracy blog: "Is the tax power infinite?"
In a country that holds elections, that question is both legal and political. The political issue rumbling toward both the Supreme Court and the electorate is whether Washington's size and power has finally grown beyond the comfort zone of the American people. That is what lies beneath the chatter about federalism and the 10th Amendment.
Liberals will argue that government today is doing good. But government now is also unprecedentedly large and unprecedentedly expensive. Even if every challenge to ObamaCare loses in court, these anxieties will last and keep coming back to the same question: Does the Democratic left think the national government's powers are infinite?
No one in the Obama White House, asked that in public on Sunday morning, would simply say yes, no matter that the evidence of this government's actions the past year indicate they do. In his "Today Show" interview this week, Mr. Obama with his characteristic empathy acknowledged there are "folks who have legitimate concerns . . . that the federal government may be taking on too much."
My reading of the American public is that they have moved past "concerns." Somewhere inside the programmatic details of ObamaCare and the methods that the president, Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid used to pass it, something went terribly wrong. Just as something has gone terribly wrong inside the governments of states like California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts.
The 10th Amendment tumult does not mean anyone is going to secede. It doesn't mean "nullification" is coming back. We are not going to refight the Civil War or the Voting Rights Act. Richard Russell isn't rising from his Georgia grave.
It means that the current edition of the Democratic Party has disconnected itself from the average American's sense of political modesty. The party's members and theorists now defend expanding government authority with the same arrogance that brought Progressive Era reforms down upon untethered industrial interests.
In such times, this country has an honored tradition of changing direction. That time may be arriving.
Faced with corporate writedowns in response to the reality of Congress's new health plan, an apoplectic Congressman Henry Waxman commanded his economic vassals to appear before him in Washington.
Faced with a challenge to his vision last week, President Obama laughingly replied to these people: "Go for it."
They will.
As to the condescension and sniffing left-wing elitism this opposition seems to bring forth from Manhattan media castles, one must say it does recall another, earlier ancien regime
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5)About That Playboy in My Drawer . . . If America wants to tilt the balance of Muslim sentiment in its favor, it needs to stand up for its principles, its liberties and its friends—Israel, Playboy and Lady Gaga included.
By BRET STEPHENS
It's time to make a personal and professional admission: I keep a copy of the Feb. 2007 issue of Playboy in a desk drawer in my Wall Street Journal office.
This is not the sort of thing I ever thought I'd publicly confess. But I'm prompted to do so now in response to a string of online rebuttals to my Tuesday column, "Lady Gaga Versus Mideast Peace," in which I argue that Western liberalism (in its old-fashioned sense) has done far more than Israel's settlements to provoke violent Muslim anti-Americanism.
In particular, I was taken to task by Andrew Exum—the "Abu Muqawama" blogger at the Center for a New American Security—for allegedly failing to watch my share of racy Arabic-language music videos, such as those by Lebanese beauty queen and pop star Haifa Wehbe. "With music videos like this one," writes Mr. Exum, "Stephens can hardly argue that Lady Gaga is the one importing sexual provocation into the Arabic-speaking world and stirring things up, can he?"
So let me tell you about that Playboy, and how I came to purchase it.
In the spring of 2007 I wrote a series of columns from Indonesia about the battle lines then emerging between religious radicals and moderates in the world's largest Muslim-majority country. I profiled Abdurrahman Wahid, then the former (now late) president of Indonesia and a champion of his country's tolerant religious traditions. I visited a remote Sumatran village that had expelled an itinerant Islamic preacher for his militant Wahhabi teachings. I interviewed Habib Rizieq, head of the Front for the Defense of Islam, a vigilante group known for violently suppressing "un-Islamic" behavior.
I also spent a delightful evening in the company of Inul Daratista, the Indonesian equivalent of Shakira, who had been accused by a council of Muslim clerics of committing pornoaksi—or "porno action"—for gyrating a little excessively in one of her music videos. A million Indonesians had taken to the streets to denounce the video, and legislation was introduced in Indonesia's parliament to ban pornoaksi, which could be defined as any female behavior that could arouse a sexual response in a man, such as the sight of a couple kissing in public or a woman wearing a backless dress.
One person I didn't manage to interview was Erwin Arnada, the editor of the Indonesian edition of Playboy. I did, however, get hold of a copy of the magazine (the one now in my office): It contains not a single picture of a naked woman. The Playmate in the centerfold is clad in the kind of lingerie that would seem a bit old-fashioned in a Victoria's Secret catalogue; a second photo essay in my magazine looks as if it belongs in a J. Crew ad.
Nevertheless, upon beginning publication in 2006 Mr. Arnada was almost immediately charged with violating Indonesia's indecency laws. (He was ultimately acquitted.) His Jakarta offices were violently attacked by Mr. Rizieq's goons, forcing the magazine to move to the predominantly Hindu island of Bali. "For Arnada," wrote New York Times reporter Jane Perlez, "all the fuss represents fears about the intrusion of Western culture. 'Why else do they keep shouting about Playboy?' he asked."
Mr. Arnada's comment gets at the crux of the argument I made in my column, which is that it is liberalism itself—liberalism as democracy, as human rights, as freedom of conscience and expression, as artistic license, as social tolerance, as a philosophy with universal application—to which the radical Muslim mind chiefly objects, and to which it so often violently reacts. Are Israeli settlements also a provocation? Of course they are, as is Israel itself. Should Israel dismantle most or even all of its settlements? Sure, if in exchange it gets a genuine peace.
But the West will win no reprieve from the furies of the Muslim world by seeking to appease it in the coin of this or that Israeli withdrawal or concession. To do so would be as fruitless and wrong-headed as cancelling a performance of Mozart's Idomeneo because it might offend radical Islamic sensibilities—though that's precisely what a Berlin opera house did in September 2006 for fear of sparking a violent outburst of Muslim rage.
Fortunately, the West has better options for dealing with that rage than pressuring Israel. Though he doesn't seem to realize it, Mr. Exum makes my point very nicely by noting the inroads that artists like Ms. Wehbe have made in much of her region. Liberalism, not least of the sexual kind, sells in the Muslim world: The first issue of Playboy Indonesia, tame as it was, sold out its entire print run of 100,000 copies. In Bahrain, efforts by Islamists in parliament to ban a performance by Wehbe failed on account of popular demand: As one Bahraini fan told the Lebanese Web site YaLibnan, "If certain people find it offensive, they shouldn't go to the concert." It's hard to imagine a more liberal outlook than that.
There was a time when liberals believed that rock'n'roll would change the world. They were right, though not in the way most of them imagined. Instead, in places like communist Czechoslovakia—where Vaclav Havel took inspiration from the likes of Lou Reed—and today in the repressive lands of Islam, the sensual currents of Western life exert a constant and ineradicable attraction, even as they also provoke censorious and violent reactions.
If America wants to tilt the balance of Muslim sentiment in its favor, it needs to stand up for its principles, its liberties and its friends—Israel, Playboy and Lady Gaga included.
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6)Obama and America’s 20-year bust
By James Pethokoukis
It is an alarming, jaw-dropping conclusion. The U.S. standard of living, says superstar Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon in a new paper, is about to experience its slowest growth “over any two-decade interval recorded since the inauguration of George Washington.” That’s right, get ready for twenty years of major-league economic suckage. It is an event that would change America’s material expectations, self-identity and political landscape. Change in the worst way.
Now it’s not so much that the Great Recession will morph into the Long Recession. More like ease into the Great Stagnation. As Gordon calculates it, the economy will average only 2.4 percent annual real GDP growth over that span vs. 3 percent or so during the previous 20 years. On a per capita basis, the economy will grow at just a 1.5 percent average annual rate vs. 2.17 percent between 1929 and 2007.
That might not seem like much of a difference, but it really is. Over time, the power of compounding would create a huge growth gap measured in the trillions of dollars. To look at it another way, assume you had an annual salary of $100,000. If you received a 1.5 percent raise each year, you would be making $134,000 after 20 years, $153,000 after 40 years. But a 2.17 annual raise would boost your income to $153,000 after 20 years and $236,000 after 40 years.
For Gordon, the culprit is weaker productivity. Productivity, economists like to say, isn’t everything — but in the long run it is almost everything. A nation’s GDP growth is little more than a derivative of how many workers the nation has and how much they produce. And if Gordon is correct, U.S. productivity is about to weaken. He forecasts that over the next two decades, the metric will grow at just a 1.7 percent annual rate. From 1996-2007, economy-wide productivity averaged just over 2 percent with GDP growing at 3.1 percent.
Gordon’s argument is simple: The productivity surge starting in the 1990s was driven primarily by the Internet, though drastic corporate cost-cutting in the early 2000s helped, too. Going forward, though, Gordon thinks the IT revolution will be marked by diminishing returns. He concludes, for instance, that most of the product innovations since 2000, like flat screen TVs and iPods, have been directed at consumer enjoyment rather than business productivity. (Also not helping are a more protectionist trade policy and a tax code where the penalties on savings and investment are about to skyrocket with rates soaring 60 percent on capital gains and 200 percent on dividends.)
All this dovetails nicely with research showing financial crises are followed by negative, long-term side-effects such as slow economic growth and higher interest rates. Lots of debt, too. Indeed, researchers Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff find advanced economies with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent grow more slowly than less-indebted ones. (Japan is the classic example.) America is on track to hit that level in 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But maybe Gordon is wrong. Productivity has been surprisingly robust during the downturn, helping the overall economy (though not the labor market) weather the storm better than most expected. Maybe nanotechnology or genetic engineering will be the next Internet and ignite further creative destruction. Yet even if Gordon is correct, Americans still control their own economic destiny.
Since the 2008 election, American economic policy has been about wealth preservation (keeping the economy from sliding into a depression) and wealth redistribution (healthcare reform.) Wealth creation? Not so much. That needs to change. Washington needs to focus on growing the economy and competing with the rest of the G20 nations, including the other member of the G2, China. Every policy — from education to trade to the tax code — needs to be seen through that lens.
America faced a similar turning point a generation ago. During the Jimmy Carter years, the Malthusian, Limits to Growth crowd argued that natural-resource constraints meant Americans would have to lower their economic expectations and accept economic stagnation — or worse. Carter more or less accepted an end to American Exceptionalism, but the 1980 presidential election showed few of his countrymen did. They chose growth economics and the economy grew.
Now they face another choice. Preserve wealth, redistribute wealth or create wealth. Hopefully, President Barack Obama will choose door #3. Investing more in basic research (not just healthcare) would be a start, as would slashing the corporate tax rate. A new consumption tax would be better for growth, but only if it replaced the current wage and investment income taxes. Real entitlement reform would help avoid the Reinhart-Rogoff scenario. The choices made during the next few years could the difference between America in Decline or the American (21st) Century.
6a) America's economy: Hope at last
The world’s biggest economy has begun a much-needed transition. Barack Obama could do more to help
he Economist print edition
GREAT storms and floods have a way of altering landscapes. Once the waters recede, some of the changes are obvious: uprooted trees, damaged property, wrecked roads. Later come further changes, as people seek to avoid a repeat, erecting new flood walls or rebuilding elsewhere.
As in the physical world, so in the economic one. The financial deluge that broke over America has passed and the recession it caused, the worst since the 1930s, is ebbing. This year the American economy is expected to grow by around 3%, after shrinking by 2.4% in 2009. Rainbow-spotters hope that employment is at last beginning to grow again. And the economy emerging from recession is not the same as the one that went in. There is obvious damage: high unemployment, millions of foreclosed homes and a huge hole in the public finances. Less obviously, a “rebalancing” is under way: from consumption, housing and debt to exports, investment and saving. As our special report this week argues, this is enormously promising for America and the world; but it is far from assured. A lot depends on politicians—and not just the ones in Washington.
America has relied for decades on its consumers’ willingness to spend, borne up by borrowing and the false comfort of bubbles in asset prices. Now Americans are saving more and borrowing less because the collapse in home prices has eviscerated their wealth. Bankers and regulators who once celebrated the democratisation of credit now ration it. Businesses from General Electric to Citigroup that prospered from the consumption culture are rethinking—and often shrinking—their loan books. Property developers are building smaller, simpler houses. The country’s geography is changing. Recession has slowed the rush to sun and sprawl. People are moving out of Florida and into North Dakota. Foreclosures and costlier commutes have laid low the distant suburbs, or exurbs.
Dearer, scarcer credit is not the only reason. Energy, though not as frighteningly expensive as in 2008, is also no longer cheap. Americans are choosing cars over light trucks, utilities are being told to use more renewable fuel, and domestic deposits of oil and gas locked deep beneath the sea or in dense rock are suddenly profitable to extract. If these trends continue (admittedly, a big if), America could import barely half as much oil in 2025 as seemed likely just five years ago.
United States of exports
With consumers forced to live within their means, American firms will have to sell more to the rest of the world. That may seem a tall order, but with a competitive dollar and favourable growth in other countries, exports in which America already excels, such as high-value manufacturing and services, should do well. The result will be a more balanced American economy and, by extension, a healthier global economy.
Or so it should be. But the smoothness of this transition cannot be taken for granted. Policy decisions both inside and outside America will determine whether this rebalancing is painful or easy. Put crudely, if Americans save more and spend less while other big countries do the opposite, the world economy will prosper. If Americans become thriftier while foreigners fail to spend more, it will stagnate.
The world’s surplus economies have been propelled by American consumers’ appetite for everything from cars and electronics to furniture and clothing. If the United States is going to save and export more, countries in emerging Asia will have to rely more on their own shoppers and on each other. That means changing a mindset that equates economic health with bulging trade surpluses, and also ushering in a plethora of microeconomic reforms to boost Asian workers’ incomes and encourage consumption. It is now in everybody’s interest to push China to overhaul its health care, pensions and corporate governance.
And, yes, a stronger yuan would also speed up global rebalancing. Yet it is also dangerous for America to make a fetish of China’s currency (see article). Slapping bilateral tariffs on China, which some Democrats want to do to punish it for the low yuan, would hardly help rebalance anything: America would merely import stuff from elsewhere. And the cost in terms of beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism and diplomatic poison would be dire. Far better for Mr Obama to seek a multilateral solution while focusing on rebalancing at home.
How to become thriftier without anybody minding
From that perspective the macroeconomic imperative in Washington is clear: a credible medium-term plan to reduce the deficit. That would avoid premature and dangerous tightening while calming bond markets enough to hold down long-term interest rates. The combination of tight fiscal policy and low interest rates is usually a recipe for a weaker currency.
Plenty of microeconomic reforms could also help with rebalancing. America taxes income and investment too much and consumption too little. So far Mr Obama’s policies have mostly worsened the tilt. Health-care reform applies for the first time a payroll tax (for Medicare) to investment income. His administration has rejected a tax linked to the carbon content of fuel. It has also increased the subsidies, guarantees and preferences for mortgages that helped inflate the housing bubble. The federal government now stands behind 60% of residential mortgages and seems open to the idea of creating a permanently expanded backstop.
Rather than reinforce these biases, Mr Obama should remove them. Getting rid of the tax concessions for housing would help both control the deficit and speed up rebalancing. Housing assistance should be aimed at homeowners who cannot easily move to jobs in brighter parts of the country because their homes are worth less than their mortgages. By helping people reduce their mortgage debts, Mr Obama has taken a step in the right direction.
The world’s biggest economy has begun a long overdue rebalancing. American consumption and borrowing can no longer be the engine of either America’s economy or the world’s. That is the hope. The fear is that politicians everywhere are incapable of dealing with the consequences
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