Is Obama a captive of radical members of his party who are more interested in getting their revolutionary concepts turned into law knowing that they are going down come November as the narrow window closes or is Obama really in their camp?
Obama's decision on Arizona and support of Eric Holder would suggest the latter unless Obama is totally blind and deaf? You decide. (See 1 below.)
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Is Attorney General Holder going to run the Justice Department for the benefit of corrupting the voting process in order to save candidates like Reid etc.? Again you decide. (See 2 below.)
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Is Obama sincere about Netanyahu's concern over Iran or is he just trying to stop erosion among Jewish voters? Certainly Obama is suing Arizona to pacify Spanish voters.
Flip flopping is nothing new for Obama. Typical for a person with few principles.(See 3 and 3a below.)
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Ray Hanania urges Abbas to begin a media offensive to capture American sympathy because he has the best friend in the White House the Palestinians are likely to get and Obama might not be there many more years. (See 4 below.)
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Is Britain going to point the way towards fiscal sanity leaving Obama in the deflationary dust. (See 5 below.)
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Has Obama turned NASA into an affirmative action agency in order to elevate Muslim self-esteem. and is that something American taxpayers feel good about funding? (See 6below.)
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Mort Zuckerman believes Obama is barely treading water.(See 7 below.)
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An historian would like to see the return of American exceptionalism.
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No doubt decades of fiscal irresponsibility has eaten at our nation's fiber but what is exceptional is speed with which our Muslim sympathizing president has brought our nation to its knees. (See 8 below.)
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Many of the articles above touch on the rapidity with which Obama has both self-destructed and taken our nation along for the ride.
Obama began by telling Muslims we are their friends and we are exceedingly sorry for our behaviour towards them. Then to prove he was empathetic, Obama began a series of actions to buttress the message he delivered in his Cairo speech, starting with returning Churchill's bust and ending with rupturing our relationship with Israel.
Along the way Obama wasted billions claiming it would employ Americans. It has not worked.
Obama has basically given Iran a pass towards becoming a nuclear state yet, Afghanistan is where he has chosen to take a Custer like stand.
Now Obama is suing Arizona because our borders are leaking with illegal Mexicans and apparently Obama is willing to ignore Black Panther thugs armed with clubs to patrol voting places.
Also, along the way to oblivion, Obama decided our health care system needed expanding and reforming and several of his own party's stalwarts have decided to bring comparable reform to our financial system.
I maintained from the git go Obama's presidential qualifications were suspect but, until recently, I have been unwilling to acknowledge his Muslim background as a controlling feature guiding his governance. Though I saw him as a far Left individual I was unwilling to think or label him a revolutionist.
As Zuckerman points out, along with others, the past few weeks have caused me to review and rethink my position. I have decided to throw in the towel in terms of giving Obama the benefit of the doubt. I now see his actions as purposeful and orchestrated.
Regretfully I have concluded Obama is a very conflicted person, who means our nation harm. He is a real and no longer veiled threat.
The best we can hope for is a tide of voter discontent in November that will result in a significant replacement of the current House membership, a substantial reduction in the Democrat majority in The Senate so that a fiscal tourniquet will choke off further damage.
Dick
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1)A Hapless Administration
By Jeffrey Folks
Last week was extraordinary. The president's economic advisor, Christina Romer, declared that Americans should be feeling pretty good about the June jobs report. After all, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7% to 9.5% because 650,000 people were so discouraged that they gave up looking for work. "We've known for some time," she said, that things would get bad before they got better. Romer's advice to those losing their homes, their cars, their medical insurance, and all else was "Be patient."
Nancy Pelosi, known for her innovative solutions, such as passing major pieces of legislation without voting on them, announced that the best way to create jobs was to extend unemployment insurance beyond 99 weeks. The president himself simply reminded the American people that it's all George Bush's fault, and it will take "some time" before things get better. That should boost the public's confidence in the economy.
The fact is that government is failing to produce jobs for the simple reason that government cannot create jobs. Jobs are created by the private sector as it produces goods and services that the public wants and needs. Other than necessary spending for national defense, government should have no role in the economy.
Although it cannot create jobs, government can retard job creation. An EPA ban on mountaintop mining will wipe out thousands of jobs in Appalachia, according to the National Mining Association. The ban on deep-water drilling -- which promises to extend beyond six months since the advisory committee to evaluation drilling safety has not even met -- will cost 20,000 jobs. Financial regulation promises to drive tens of thousands of Wall Street jobs overseas to free-market havens like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland. Pending cap-and-trade legislation will further sap growth and reduce competitiveness, leading to further job losses.
Government, in reality, produces nothing of value beyond its role in national security. It only destroys.
The destructiveness of government is all too apparent in Obama's response to the Gulf oil spill. Dozens of countries volunteered to come to our aid, but government bureaucracy (and Obama's fear of being shown up as the incompetent he is) kept them out of our waters. Bureaucratic guidelines prevented hundreds of skimmers from being transferred from other parts of the country to the Gulf, and it took the administration ten weeks to decide to partially suspend the regulation. A giant skimmer-vessel (the A-Whale) has arrived in the Gulf, but the EPA so far has refused to exempt it from regulations that prohibit discharge of small quantities of oil as a byproduct of its filtering operations.
The A-Whale can remove 500,000 barrels of oil-soaked water from the Gulf daily, more than all the cleanup vessels now operating combined, but in doing so, it will discharge a few parts per million of oil back into the sea. So let's prohibit it from operating. You see, the regulation says ships cannot discharge more than 15 parts per million. The EPA doesn't want a ship to remove half a million barrels of oily seawater from the Gulf if the filtered seawater contains a few specks of oil.
The EPA may issue a permit or may be overruled by other authorities, but its behavior is a good example of the way government works -- or doesn't work.
By contrast, the way the free market works is incredible and inspiring. Watching the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in distant Taiwan, Mr. Nobu Su, CEO of a Taiwanese shipping company, devised a plan to solve the spill problem. Within hours he had decided to convert a large cargo vessel into a giant skimmer -- the A-Whale. Within one day, the conversion plan was already well underway. Mr. Su risked his company's capital in the expectation of renting his skimmer vessel to BP and making a profit for his company.
So far, our government has done nothing to promote the efforts of men like Mr. Su. The A-Whale is currently in the Gulf undergoing tests. How long will it take EPA and other bureaucracies to license the A-Whale for actual use?
The sad thing is that government doesn't see this kind of delay as a problem. It sees it as an opportunity -- for expansion of bureaucratic power and for political shakedowns. Carol Browner, Obama's energy czar, has stated publicly that new drilling regulations will probably drive all but the largest companies out of the Gulf. That seems to be just fine with Ms. Browner, but has she considered how many companies will fail and how many jobs will be lost? Browner's reaction is typical of how out of touch, and how callous, the Obama administration has become. Just like Ms. Romer, Browner's attitude toward the economic devastation she is causing seems to be "Be patient."
In another ten or fifteen years, once coal mining and oil and gas production have been decimated, the country will have no choice but to install windmills and solar panels. Imagine how many temporary jobs that will produce, and how many nasty little industries will be driven overseas! There will hardly be an American factory left to trouble the conscience of the tree-hugging community.
When Obama's stimulus bill was passed in February 2009, the president promised that it would create four million jobs. Not only has the stimulus bill not produced jobs, it and other Obama policies have cost us five million jobs. Government has squandered trillions of dollars that might have been put to work in the private sector, creating jobs. Given free rein, the free market would already have moved the country toward full employment -- and it would have cleaned up the Gulf oil spill as well. Government is destroying our economy and despoiling the environment to boot. As Ronald Reagan understood so well, government is not the solution -- it is the problem.
Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published many books and articles on American culture and politics.
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3)Obama accepts Israel's nuclear stance as reflecting its unique security needs
Reciprocal compliments galore - this time
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ended a meeting which both called "excellent" at the White House Tuesday July 6. In a carefully-worded comment, the US president indicated he would continue to respect Israel's nuclear stance and ambiguity about its reported arsenal. He also avoided pressing Israel on extending its 10-month freeze on settlement and Jerusalem construction which expires Sept. 26, but rather voiced the hope that face-to-face Israel-Palestinian talks could go forward by September.
3a)US president realizes his tough approach to Israel was counterproductive
By Eytan Gilboa
Even if the Obama and Netanyahu photos and statements following their meeting do not fully reflect what was said in the Oval Office, they convey important messages for our region and for US citizens, who in four months will cast their ballots in the Congress elections.
Obama and Netanyahu had to walk a very fine line. Both of them are pressed between foreign affairs and defense strategies on the one hand, and domestic political elements on the other. Obama is pressed between his approach to Israel and resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and his deteriorating status among voters in general, and among Israel’s friends in particular. Netanyahu is pressed between Obama’s demands and the more rightist components of his coalition.
Unbreakable Bond
Following meeting with Netanyahu, president says he believes Israel serious about desire for direct talks with Palestinians; Bond with Jewish State unbreakable, Obama says, vows to keep up pressure on Iran. Bibi calls for tougher sanctions
Full story
The meeting was meant to hold off the pressure and improve both Obama’s and Netanyahu’s status at home and abroad; it appears these objectives were met.
In all the previous meetings between the two, the US president criticized the prime minister, reprimanded him, pressed him, and in some cases even humiliated him. The US Administration also made an effort to highlight the disagreements between the sides and the president’s dissatisfaction with the prime minister and his policy.
Yet in the latest meeting, the tables were turned. Obama lauded Netanyahu and his policy, treated him with respect, and stressed the areas of agreement with him. Both leaders characterized their meeting as excellent and lavished gratitude and praise at each other.
The change in Obama’s attitude stems from a combination of diplomatic and political elements. The strategy of exerting brutal pressure on the prime minister and creating a crisis in US-Israel relations did not produce the hoped-for results, did not improve America’s status in the Arab and Muslim world, did not promote talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and did not prompt strategic shifts in Netanyahu’s policy.
The opposite was true: America’s status deteriorated, among other things because its Arab allies wondered whether this is the kind of attitude accorded to (as Obama himself characterized it) America’s most important Mideastern ally. Meanwhile, the Palestinians reached the conclusion that they need not do a thing – the US will do the job for them and elicit all the concessions they demanded from Israel.
On the unilateral front, Obama reached the conclusion that it’s better to influence Netanyahu via embraces and encouragement rather than through slaps to the face and pressure. On the regional front, the message that emerged from the meeting is meant to change the interpretation given to the tensions in US-Israel relations, which undermined important regional and global US interests.
The message stopped the deterioration in US-Israeli ties and stressed the close military and diplomatic ties between the sides. Obama is attempting to restore the special relationship between the two states and even gave expression to this by referring to Israel’s nuclear program. He said that because of Israel’s size, past, and the existential threats it faces, the Jewish State is a unique case.
Message to Palestinians, Americans
The message to the Palestinians is that they must stop looking for excuses and enter direct negotiations with Israel. Obama hinted that they should not count on an American peace plan that will be forced upon Israel in case the two sides to the conflict fail to secure an agreement themselves. The message to the region is that the US supports Israel, and anyone who thought he can provoke and harm Israel without paying any price or facing any response better think again.
In four months, elections will be held for all Congress seats and one third of Senate seats. Obama’s status among voters has deteriorated and he needs every vote. His attitude to the prime minister and to Israel provoked criticism among Israel’s friend in the US, including Democratic Party members.
An immense majority of Senators and Congress members of both parties sent the president critical letters on several occasions and demand that he change his attitude to Israel. The frequency of these inquiries was unprecedented. Hence, the meeting with Netanyahu was also meant to reassure Israel’s friends among the voters and stress the change in the Administration’s attitude to Israel.
The dispute with the US also undermined Netanyahu’s status. The strategic ties with the Americans are vital to Israel, and a prime minister who fails to safeguard them appears to undermine our national security, especially at a time when Israel’s global status deteriorates and it faces grave threats on the part of states like Iran and its allies.
The outcome of the meeting with Obama enables Netanyahu to claim that he is restoring the ties with the US without paying a high price. By doing so he boosts his status within the public and among his coalition partners.
The summit meeting did not eliminate the deep gaps that still exist between Obama and Netanyahu in respect to their worldview, ideology, and policy. The manner in which the summit was presented serves first and foremost their shared short-term interests.
Obama wishes to avert a collapse of talks between Israel and the Palestinians even to advance them to a direct negotiations format. He wishes to boost his status ahead of the November elections among Israel supporters, and hopes and that direct talks will prompt the continuation, in practice, of the construction freeze in the territories.
Netanyahu is interested in direct talks, in restoring the ties with America, and in boosting his coalition. Only towards the end of the year we’ll be able to determine whether the meeting indeed reflected a new chapter of cooperation in US-Israel relations, or merely a lull between periods of disagreement, tensions, and crises.
Professor Eytan Gilboa is an expert on US affairs and a Political Science and Communication lecturer at Bar-Ilan University
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4)Yalla Peace: What Abbas must do for peace
By RAY HANANIA
The PA president should recognize that the battle is in the mind-set of the American public, where the future of Palestine will be decided.
As long as Israel has the US on its side, its government knows it can do no wrong. It plays games with Middle East peace by provoking extremism in the Arab world with excessive policies that fuel anti- Israel sentiment more than they protect Israeli citizens.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu may not be the poster-child of moderation, but he is smart enough to recognize that if Israel loses the ball in the US court of public opinion, he will lose the game completely. So he swallowed his pride and again reached out to President Barack Obama, after the Obama administration slammed him harder than any Israeli government.
But Israel made it easy for Obama. Netanyahu’s irrational refusal to stop the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem as a means of returning to peace talks with the Palestinians has put Israel in a strange place in American public opinion, which increasingly recognizes the settlements as obstacles to peace.
Then, there was Israel’s playing right into the hands of the extremists by taking the bait and taking over the flotilla of boats seeking to break its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Although Israel has refused to release a complete list of what the blockade prevented from entering the Gaza Strip – insisting the banned items are intended to prevent terrorism – it’s since been impossible to keep the truth from coming out.
The fact is the Israelis not only have prevented weapons from entering the Gaza Strip, they also have prevented many food items, toys for children, most medicine – allowing some to trickle in at an unreasonable pace – and a long list of items that include other things that have less to do with preventing terrorism and more to do with efforts to “punish” the Palestinians.
I opposed the flotilla strategy to break the blockade because I believe it empowers Hamas and its supporters.
Palestinian national policy should not be defined by activists, including some who openly oppose peace based on two-states; it should be left to the legitimate Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah.
But the legitimate PA government has been ineffective and indecisive, driven more by what the emotion-driven Palestinian public feels rather than by policies and strategies reflecting leadership.
IF YOU do not lead the public, you leave the public to be led by fanatics and extremists who tug at emotions.
Irrational conduct always looks good through the blinded rage of an emotional person. Courageous leadership means doing the right thing and knowing that such leadership will bring the majority of the Palestinian public back from the irrational precipice to one of reason.
They just need a courageous leader. And so far, one has not stepped up to the plate.
That dynamic makes it easy for Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinian activists to avoid peace, although Israel has the advantage as it is the only one that recognizes that the ball game is not in the UN but in the US.
It doesn’t matter what Belgium or Turkey believe. It only matters what the Americans think. They not only hold the key to the future in the Middle East, but they also control the money and their military is actively engaged in several Arab world countries.
What Americans believe will decide whether Israel can continue to sidestep peace and expand settlements in the West Bank while rejecting demands for peace based on the return to the 1949 armistice line, called the Green Line. So what’s a moderate to do? First, the Abbas government should get its act together.
It needs to recognize that it is trailing the Israelis when it comes to defining effective public policy.
Abbas needs to engage the American public directly. He needs to define his core message, which is simple: the Palestinian Authority supports the creation of two states, a land-for-land swap, the sharing of east Jerusalem and wants Israel to step up to the plate and recognize its role in the Palestinian refugee tragedy.
Abbas should hire a high powered public relations firm and stop pandering to the fanatics in the Arab world through the Arabic language media – a pandering that often undermines Palestinian rights because of contradictory pronouncements that confuse rather than enlighten public opinion, including in Israel.
And, more importantly, Abbas should recognize that the battle is not in the Gaza Strip but in the mind-set of the American public, where the future of Palestine, twostates and Middle East peace will be decided.
The problem with Abbas is most of what he does is conveyed to the world through the Arabic-language media, which has little or no impact on the American public. They’re not reading the Arabic media for positive news and only scour through the Arab world media to find evidence of terrorism and anti-American hatred.
And there is a lot of that to be found.
While Netanyahu is bringing his message directly to Obama, Abbas needs to bring his message directly to the American people. He should do a 10-city tour of the US and argue directly what many do not want the American public to hear.
As far as most Americans are concerned, Hamas and its extremist activists represent the face of the Palestinian people and Abbas is negligible.
That can easily change. For the first time in Palestinian history, the Palestinians have a friend in the White House. He may only be there a few years. Now is the time for Abbas to change his strategy and stop playing second fiddle to Hamas and to Israel.
Abbas needs to make the American public his priority.
If he can win over their hearts and minds, Palestine can become a sovereign state.
The writer is an award- winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host.
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5) Tea Party time across the pond
By Marc A. Thiessen
This past weekend Americans celebrated a revolution that began with a tea party in Boston Harbor -- and today's Tea Party movement takes its inspiration from those early protests against the economic despotism of George III. So it is ironic that the first Tea Party government seems to have been formed in, of all places, London -- and it is a Tory-led government no less.
Last week, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne unveiled an emergency budget that would be the envy of Tea Partyers here in the former colonies. Osborne announced dramatic spending cuts of 25 percent for all departments of government -- the steepest reductions in eight decades. The austerity measures include a two-year wage freeze for nearly 6 million government employees, and nearly $17 billion in welfare cuts. Only two areas were declared off limits: foreign aid and health care (note to GOP: repeal Obamacare fast -- once created, national health care is a one-way ratchet). Some areas, such as defense and education, will face smaller reductions -- meaning some departments could face cuts upward of 30 percent.
The spending cuts were necessitated by years of Labor profligacy, which produced the second-largest budget deficit in Europe, and a debt that grew on Labor's watch to roughly 799 billion pounds. Now the Conservative-led coalition must undo the damage.
While the budget includes some important pro-growth tax cuts (such as reducing the corporate tax rate to 24 percent, the lowest of any Western economy), it also includes some unfortunate tax increases -- a concession to the Liberal Democrats in exchange for their support for deep spending cuts. For example, the capital gains tax rate will rise from 18 to 28 percent for upper income taxpayers. The Liberal Democrats wanted to raise the rate to 40 percent, but Osborne told parliament a "dynamic analysis showed that this would have resulted in smaller total revenues." The government will also increase the VAT by 2.5 percentage points. Still, the balance of spending cuts to tax increases is 77 to 23 percent. As Osborne put it, "The country has overspent; it has not been under-taxed."
The Osborne budget shares the same objective as the Tea Party movement here in America: to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government. London's Spectator gushes, "The assault proposed on public sector is, quite rightly, massive -- much bigger than anything ever done by Margaret Thatcher." The government's Office of Budget Responsibility estimates the budget changes will eliminate 610,000 public-sector jobs over the next five years (mostly, Osborne insists, from not filling vacant posts), while creating 1.3 million new private-sector jobs -- a massive transfer of workers from government to private employment.
Critics predicted a fierce popular backlash, but a recent poll showed that British voters support the budget by a margin of 57 to 23 percent (the only provision of the budget opposed by a majority of Britons was an increase in the value-added tax). Since the budget was released, Conservatives have risen from 36 percent support on Election Day to 42 percent support today. According to Liam Fox, the first official of the new government to visit Washington, if the election were held today the Tories would be able to form a government on their own.
It seems that fiscal responsibility sells on both sides of the pond. Americans are yearning for leaders like Osborne who are willing to make these kinds of hard choices and end the fiscal recklessness in Washington. Polls show that Americans want candidates for Congress who support spending cuts and consider the national debt the greatest threat to our country, on par with the threat of terrorism. This is why President Obama is trying to recast himself as a champion of fiscal responsibility. Last week in Wisconsin, he declared "We've got to get this debt and our deficit under control." This from the man who rammed an $877 billion stimulus bill and a $1 trillion government health-care bill through Congress. In just 17 months, Obama and the Democrats have increased the national debt by 23 percent, and have put the country on track for another decade of red ink. According to the Congressional Budget Office, before the year is out, the debt will account for 62 percent of the economy -- the highest percentage since the end of World War II -- and by 2020 it will reach 90 percent.
In other words, Obama and the Democrats are now creating the same mess for American taxpayers that Gordon Brown and Labor Party created for British taxpayers. The Tea Party movement has risen up to stop him. Two hundred and thirty-four years after we fought a bloody war for independence, Tories and Tea Partyers are finally united in common purpose. Who says bipartisanship is out of style?
Marc A. Thiessen is a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Courting Disaster."
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6)Is It NASA’s Job to Make Muslim Nations ‘Feel Good’?
By Elliott Abrams
In the spring of 1961, President Kennedy spoke to Congress about his desire to “win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny.” He told Congress and the nation that “now it is time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise — time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.”
His inspiring conclusion: “I believe we should go to the moon” — though he noted that this would require additional expenditures of money and intellectual resources, and presidents were more serious about budgets in those days. Kennedy said, “It is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel, and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel. New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further — unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.”
A half century later, in the age of Obama, that kind of inspirational yet candid communication from Washington is gone. This past week, the current NASA administrator revealed what our current president thinks about space. “When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things,” NASA head Charles Bolden told al-Jazeera. “One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
This quote is entirely believable. Mr. Bolden was not told that he must advance American interests in space, but instead to become part of the big Obama program of engagement with the “international community.” His achievements will be measured by whether he can “reach out” to make people “feel good,” and those people aren’t even Americans; no, his “perhaps foremost” job is to make Muslims around the world “feel good” about their past.
A more serious task might be to make them feel terrible about the present level of education in Muslim lands, not least for women and girls, in the hope that we could spur them to reform and improvement. The dismal state of science, math, and engineering in Muslim nations is quite clear, but Mr. Bolden isn’t assigned to improve their performance (which would presumably be the job of USAID, but whatever). No, he’s to be another Dr. Feelgood, a sad assignment for this former astronaut. Mr. Bolden should not be criticized for telling the truth about his job, for the problem is at the top, not at NASA. The space program is being transformed into a tool of Obama foreign policy, which views American national greatness as an anachronism.
Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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7)Obama Is Barely Treading Water: The president's problem is simple: the economy and jobs
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
The hope that fired up the election of Barack Obama has flickered out, leaving a national mood of despair and disappointment. Americans are dispirited over how wrong things are and uncertain they can be made right again. Hope may have been a quick breakfast, but it has proved a poor supper. A year and a half ago Obama was walking on water. Today he is barely treading water. Then, his soaring rhetoric enraptured the nation. Today, his speeches cannot lift him past a 45 percent approval rating.
There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn't work, that it is incapable of solving America's problems. Americans are fed up with Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by the Republicans.
The American people wanted change, and who could blame them? But now there is no change they can believe in. Sixty-two percent believe we are headed in the wrong direction?—a record during this administration. All the polls indicate that anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is greater than it has been in many years. For the first time, Obama's disapproval rating has topped his approval rating. In a recent CBS News poll, there is a meager 15 percent approval rating for Congress. In all polls, voters who call themselves independents have swung against the administration and against incumbents.
Even some in Obama's base have turned, with 17 percent of Democrats disapproving of his job performance. Even more telling is the excitement gap. Only 44 percent of those who voted for him express high interest in this year's elections. That's a 38-point drop from 2008. By contrast, 71 percent of those who voted Republican last time express high interest in the midterm elections, above the level at this stage in 2008. And these are the people who vote.
Republicans are benefiting not because they have a credible or popular program—they don't—but because they are not Democrats. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, nearly two thirds of those who favor Republican control of Congress say they are motivated primarily by opposition to Obama and Democratic policy. Disapproval of Congress is so widespread, a recent Gallup poll suggests, that by a margin of almost two to one, Americans would rather vote for a candidate with no experience than for an incumbent. Throw the bums out is the mood. How could this have happened so quickly?
The fundamental problem is starkly simple: jobs and the deepening fear among the public that the American dream is vanishing before their eyes. The economy's erratic improvement has helped Wall Street but has brought little support to Main Street. Some 6.8 million people have been unemployed in the last year for six months or longer. Their valuable skills are at risk, affecting their economic productivity for years to come. Add to this despairing army the large number of those only partially employed and those who have given up their search for work, and we have cumulative totals in the tens of millions.
Many people who joined the middle class, especially those who joined in the last few years, have now fallen back. It's not over yet. Millions cannot make minimum payments on their credit cards, or are in default or foreclosure on their mortgages, or are on food stamps. Well over 100,000 people file for bankruptcy every month. Some 3 million homeowners are estimated to face foreclosure this year, on top of 2.8 million last year. Millions of homes are located next to or near a foreclosed home, and it is the latter that may determine the price of all the homes on the street. There have been dramatically sharp declines in home equity, representing cumulative losses in the trillions of dollars in what has long been the largest asset on the average American family's balance sheet. Most of those who lost their homes are hard-working, middle-class Americans who had lost their jobs. Now many have to use credit cards to pay for essentials and make ends meet, and they are running out of credit. Another $5 trillion has been lost from pensions and savings.
But it is jobs that have long represented the stairway to upward mobility in America. For a long time, it was feared they were vulnerable to offshore competition (and indeed still are), but now the erosion is from economic decline at home. What happens as those domestic opportunities recede? Middle-class families fear they have become downwardly mobile and have not hit the bottom yet. The financial security that was once based on home equity and a pension has been swept away.
In a survey just released, the Pew Research Center explored the recession's impact on households and how they are changing their spending and saving behavior. Nearly half the adults polled intend to boost their savings, cut their discretionary budgets, and cut their debt loads. The report concludes that the present enforced frugality will outlast the recession and its overhang. Fully 60 percent of those ages 50 to 61 say they may delay retirement. What does that mean for the young would-be employees entering the labor force over the next few years?
The administration's stimulus program, because of the way Congress put it together, has created far fewer jobs than anyone expected given the huge price tag of almost $800 billion. It was supposed to constrain unemployment at 8 percent, but the recession took the rate way above that and in the process humbled the Obama presidency. Some 25 million jobless or underemployed people now wish to work full time, but few companies are ready to hire. No speech is going to change that.
Little wonder there has been a gradual public disillusionment. Little wonder people have come alive to the issue of excess spending with entitlements out of control as far as the eye can see. The hope was that Obama would focus on the economy and jobs. That was the number one issue for the public—not healthcare. Yet the president spent almost a year on a healthcare bill. Eighty-five percent in one poll thought the great healthcare crisis was about cost. It was and is, but the president's bill was about extending coverage. It did nothing about the first concern and focused mostly on the second. Even worse, to win its approval he accepted the kind of scratch-my-back deal-making that suggests corruption in the political process. And as a result, Obama's promise to change "politics as usual" disappeared.
The president failed to communicate the value of what he wants to communicate. To a significant number of Americans, what came across was a new president trying to do too much in a hurry and, at the same time, radically change the equation of American life in favor of too much government. This feeling is intensified by Obama's emotional distance from the public. He conveys a coolness and detachment that limits the number of people who feel connected to him.
Americans today strongly support a pro-growth economic agenda that includes fiscal discipline, limited government, and deficit reduction. They fear the country is coming apart, while the novelty of Obama has worn off, along with the power of his position as the non-Bush. His decline in popularity has emboldened the opposition to try to block him at every turn.
Historically, presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent—Obama is at 45—lose an average of 41 House seats in midterm elections. This year, that would return the House of Representatives to Republican control. The Democrats will suffer disproportionately from a climate in which so many Americans are either dissatisfied or angry with the government, for Democrats are in the large majority in both houses and have to defend many more districts than Republicans. In any election year, voters' feelings typically settle in by June. But now they are being further hardened by the loose regulation that preceded the poisonous oil spill—and the tardy government response.
The promise of economic health that might salvage industries and jobs, and provide a safety net, has proved illusory. The support for cutting spending and cutting the deficit reflects in part the fact that the American public feels the Obama-Congress spending program has not worked. As for the healthcare reform bill, the most recent Rasmussen survey indicates that 52 percent of the electorate supports repeal of the measure—42 percent of them strongly.
It is clear that the magical moment of Obama's campaign conveyed a spell that is now broken in the context of the growing public disillusionment. Obama's rise has been spectacular, but so too has been his fall.
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8)Bring back the old glory: It's time to rescue the idea that America is exceptional, says historian
By John Steele Gordon
The notion of American exceptionalism — that America is a unique nation on Earth, if not in all history — is in decline, at least among much of the country's self-appointed chattering classes. And it is they who write the lion's share of books, magazines, newspaper editorials and blogs. That idea leads directly to the idea that America itself is in decline.
It's a dangerous notion, not just on the country's 234th birthday, but for the long-term health and strength of the Republic itself. We must rescue American exceptionalism if we are to preserve the bright future that our nation has earned and, indeed, deserves.
The idea that the United States has a special place on the planet, and in history, dates back after all to Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous book "Democracy in America." "The position of the Americans is ... quite exceptional," he wrote in 1831, "and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one."
People on the right in American politics are quite comfortable with this concept. Indeed, they tend to accept it almost without question.
Those on the left, however, typically deny American exceptionalism vehemently or cast it in as bad a light as possible. The noted author Joyce Carol Oates wrote that "American exceptionalism makes our imperialism altruistic, our plundering of the world's resources a healthy exercise of capitalism and ‘free trade.'"
Oates, as is true of the far left generally, dislikes much of what America has traditionally stood for — individual political and economic freedom to make one's own choices. The left prefers collective decision-making through government. Indeed, it is the singular importance of the individual in this country that is at the very heart of American exceptionalism, so it is not surprising that the left doesn't like the idea.
President Obama doesn't go as far as the anti-American left. Asked about American exceptionalism, he responded with a clever dodge —saying that "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, to Obama, American exceptionalism is nothing more than casual chauvinism.
But while the fans of the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees may be equally chauvinistic, the White Sox have been in 5 World Series and won 3 of them. The Yankees have been in 40 and won 27. So are the Yankees no more exceptional than the White Sox? The idea is ludicrous.
The Yankees, to be sure, have been lucky. They are lucky that they are located in the country's largest media market and that the owner of the Boston Red Sox needed to raise money and so he sold them Babe Ruth. But the Yankees have made the most of their luck, a sure-fire formula for success.
The United States has been exceptionally lucky too and, like the Yankees, has made the most of it. Our first piece of luck was the land we occupy and its geopolitical position on the globe. Abundantly endowed with natural resources and with a vast territory, we are a continental power, like Russia or China. But we border on only two other countries, both friendly, so strategically we are also an island power, like Britain or Japan.
Our second piece of luck, even more important, was our mother country. It was in medieval England that the concept of personal liberty — the great gift of the English-speaking peoples to the world — was born. And local control of local matters was the norm in England. So both liberty and self-government came to America with the very first colonists. The United States, more than any other country, was created by individual people, not rulers, so power has always tended to flow from the bottom up, not the top down.
In the early days, that made America exceptional indeed. If today it is less so, it is only because the idea that the locus of political power resides with the governed, not the governors, has spread around the world.
It wasn't the British government that founded the American colonies; it was profit-seeking corporations, such as the Massachusetts Bay and Virginia companies, or individual proprietors, such as William Penn. So unlike almost all countries whose origins lie in the great expansion of European civilization after 1500, the American colonies were created not to extend European political power, but to create individual wealth. This too has made America exceptional.
And because the British government, unlike its French and Spanish rivals, did not care who emigrated to the colonies, the population quickly became an usually feisty and diverse group of people.
Seventeenth-century England was often wracked by political conflict and economic depression. In effect, many people sat around saying, "Oh, dear, oh dear, things are terrible. Somebody has got to do something."
But others didn't do that. Instead, they decided that they would do something. So they said goodbye to everything they had ever known, often sold themselves into temporary slavery as inde ntured servants to raise the passage money, and they came to the New World in hopes of making a better life for themselves and their descendants. They have been coming ever since.
So if Americans are famed for their exceptional get-up-and-go, it is precisely because we all have ancestors who got up and came. Even the slaves, who of course had no choice about it, survived an ordeal beyond modern imagination and passed that incredible strength down to their descendants.
When the American colonies fell out with the mother country in 1776, they did so over differing ideas as to the nature and extent of the liberty that they all held dear. This was a dispute not over political power, but over political philosophy. And the dispute produced an event that was more than exceptional, it was unprecedented in world history: a country that emerged solely out of an abstract but extraordinarily powerful idea that has motivated it ever since. As Abraham Lincoln noted 87 years later, the United States was "born in liberty" and motivated by the idea that government should be "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Americans wrote the modern world's first written constitutions to limit the power of government and protect the rights of individuals. This exceptional idea, too, has now spread around the world.
These ideas are what bind Americans into a nation still. There is no such thing as an American ethnicity. Indeed the American population is made up of every ethnicity on earth. What binds us together is that we all subscribe to the ideas so eloquently expressed in our founding document, that "We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If you come to this country, subscribe to these ideas, then congratulations, you're an American, and every bit as much of one as someone whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.
It is perhaps the enshrining at the heart of our political system of the right to pursue happiness that is what is most exceptional about America. For happiness inheres in the individual not the collective. And it was that pursuit that brought us to these shores, that led us to establish limited government that protects individual rights, that produced the incredible abundance that we enjoy and which we have shared with the world.
If the sun shines exceptionally brightly on this favored land, it is not because we are a chosen people. It is because the American people chose to create these United States.
Gordon is the author of many books of history, including "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt.
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