Pete Stark has always been a sour loose cannon partisan but now his own party seems to be embracing his brand of nastiness. If you want a laugh and feel despair then I suggest you buy this BS (Bumper Sticker) Removal kit and watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=201pgTaEseQ&feature=player_embedded (See 1 below.)
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More commentary on our liberal friends in the media and press and their conspiratorial cabal. Hillary was 'right.' She just was wrong about the side - the conspiracy is coming from the 'left.' (See 2 below.)
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Are sanctions beginning to have an impact on Iran and/or is Iran just getting ready to blow more smoke? (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Obama returned Churchill's small bust and then Obama proceeded to create a bigger bust. (See 4 below.)
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Obama campaigned on change and now that he has changed things for the worse he is telling the voters to stay the course or is it curse? You decide. (See 5 below.)
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I invited some hedge fund friends,who I have known for years, to come and make a presentation to about 40 or so people. They did a fine job and their presentation was a walk through of their chart handouts which confirmed my own view that the fiscal math we face as a nation is overwhelming.
I maintain we are in for a protracted period of economic under performance and maybe a growing dose of deflation as well.
There were many questions but the one that evoked the response I believe most telling was whether we had the political and moral will to face up to our problems and what could be the consequences? The response was: 'observe Japan and recognize they have been in a deflationary period for well over several decades and one of the political consequences was a constant turnover of governments.'
Frankly, I do not believe Republicans can solve our problems because I am not sure they would be ready to visit the pain doing so entails. Therefore, I am perfectly happy for Democrats to remain in the driver's seat as long as enough legitimate conservatives remain as passengers to thwart further Liberal stupidity.
Shakespeare said it a long time ago - "Time that knits the raveled sleeve of care."
It took 60 years to create our fiscal mess and it will take a long time to correct it so I would suggest watching Christie on the East Coast and California on the West. This should give you a pretty good way to track a true reformer - Christie - and whether he can bring about needed reforms and overcome union and the Liberal Legislator's resistance and when will it dawn on the zanies in California they too will have to taste the hemlock of retrenched government and increased fiscal sanity. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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Dick
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1)The Party of Despair
By Carol Peracchio
California Congressman Fortney "Pete" Stark was caught on tape in June insulting a constituent at a town hall meeting. When the voter identified himself as a member of the Minutemen, Representative Stark asked him, "Who are you gonna kill today?" The taped exchange has gone viral.
I watched Mr. Stark with fascination and a bit of nausea, incredulous that he's been representing his district since 1979. Reading his words is disturbing, but watching the video is astonishing. A few minutes into it, I discovered that I know Pete Stark. In fact, every single one of us knows Pete Stark.
Congressman Stark is a living, breathing, textbook example of a crotchety, sour old coot. He's the codger in bed 301B who snarls at the nurse for not answering his call bell in thirty seconds. He's the crabby customer who yells at the cashier, certain he didn't get the senior discount on one item. He's the quintessential cranky old guy down the street, yelling at the neighborhood kids: "Get off my lawn!"
What is most surprising about Pete Stark is not that he's 79, or that he's been a congressman for decades, or even that he's aged so disgracefully. The surprising thing is that in today's Democratic Party, he is so typical. After reading the bios of today's liberal Democrats, it's hard to distinguish Washington, D.C. from Jurassic Park. For example, here are a few facts about some of our leading Democrat dinosaurs:
Nancy Pelosi: 70 years old, in Congress for 23 years.
Harry Reid: 71 years old, in Congress for 27 years.
Charles Rangel: 80 years old, in Congress for 39 years.
Barney Frank: 70 years old, in Congress for 28 years.
Barbara Boxer: 70 years old, in Congress for 28 years.
Steny Hoyer: 71 years old, in Congress for 29 years.
So what? you may ask. Many people in their 70s and 80s lead productive lives. My question is not why so many in the Democratic Party in Washington are elderly. Experience counts. What puzzles me is the almost universal cantankerousness among them. For example, a few weeks ago, Democrat Congressman Bob Etheridge, 69, who has represented his North Carolina district for 14 years, was caught on camera actually assaulting a student who merely asked him if he supported President Obama's agenda.
Representative Barney Frank, 70, has been fêted for decades in the mainstream media for his acerbic wit. When confronted by constituents at a health care town hall meeting last summer, however, he snapped, attacked, and snarkily told one lady, "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table." Quite the sparkling wit, isn't he?
And let's not forget Senator Barbara Boxer, 70, berating a brigadier general for calling her "Ma'am" instead of "Senator." It wouldn't have been out of place if she had added, "You young whippersnapper!"
As I pondered the personalities of these elder statesmen in the Democratic Party, I tried to figure out what lies at the root of such behavior. It couldn't be merely a matter of old age. Consider Ronald Reagan. I couldn't think of an incident where President Reagan at the same age was rude and insulting to an average voter.
I decided to dust off my psychiatric nursing training and review Erik Erikson's Stages of Development. Erikson was a psychoanalyst whose theory was that every person must pass through a series of eight interrelated stages over the entire life cycle. These stages are characterized by a conflict or crisis between two opposing emotional forces. For example, Erikson's first stage (Birth to 12 to 18 Months) is known as "Trust vs. Mistrust."
All of the Democrats I've referenced fall into Erick Erikson's final stage: Late Adult, Age 55 or 65 to Death. The crisis is Integrity vs. Despair. In this stage, we look back over our lives and review our achievements and contributions to future generations. This is also the time when we inevitably face our own mortality. To explain further:
Integrity means feeling at peace with oneself and the world. No regrets or recriminations. The linking between the stages is perhaps clearer here than anywhere: people are more likely to look back on their lives positively and happily if they have left the world a better place than they found it - in whatever way, to whatever extent. There lies Integrity and acceptance.
Despair and/or 'Disgust' (i.e., rejective denial, or 'sour grapes' feeling towards what life might have been) represent the opposite disposition: feelings of wasted opportunities, regrets, wishing to be able to turn back the clock and have a second chance.
What is it about being a liberal that seems to lead inexorably to despair in old age in the 21st century? I have been wracking my brain trying to come up with a liberal in academia or media or politics who can be described as a "Happy Warrior." Compare George H.W. Bush to Jimmy Carter. Two former presidents who perfectly illustrate Integrity vs. Despair.
The old cliché goes: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Liberals have achieved their greatest ambition: power. They have passed comprehensive health care reform and massive stimulus bills. The media obediently cheer their every move. And yet it is obvious that they are leaving the world in a much, much worse condition than what they were given. Their grandchildren will never pay off the debt. We are farther from racial unity, not closer. All their education dreams have been implemented, and our children are dumber. And on and on.
Erikson's stages are unrelenting. Every one of us must pass through them. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense why our elderly Democrat politicians are so nasty. They have had the opportunity to implement everything they've devoted their entire lives to, and it's been a spectacular failure.
Erikson's final stage also explains another mystery: Why do so many politicians refuse to retire? If one reviews one's life and sees only wasted opportunities and failed programs, how could retirement be an option? So we are faced with the tragic picture of politicians like Arlen Specter refusing to leave the stage. Just one more term, just one more.
And as liberal politicians face the mess that is their agenda, they have an even greater problem. If they wish to stay in public life, to have that coveted second chance, they need the support of their constituents. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense why Pete Stark lashes out at the previously docile average voters who are now rejecting him. Without them, he's out, finished, alone with his regrets. No wonder he and his fellow senior citizen liberal comrades are so cranky.
I'm submitting a new motto for 2010:
Today's Democrats: The Party of Despair. From "Happy Days are Here Again" to "Get off my lawn!"
Carol Peracchio is a registered nurse.
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2)Journolist and Malice
By Mark J. Fitzgibbons
Uncertainty and fear among members of the now-defunct Journolist cabal seem rampant. Some of the emails demonstrate certain liberal journalists willing and eager to employ malice as part and parcel of their professional duties.
The fact that such open malice of at least a few of the four hundred "professionals" on Journolist did not result in their expulsion from this professional Listserv, and indeed seemed tolerated at the time by its members and now by its defenders, would seem to indicate a more widespread problem. The dog doesn't bark when it's comfortable with the visitor.
Jonathan Strong of The Daily Caller broke the news about left-wing journalists conspiring on Journolist to kill the stories during the 2008 election about Barack Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Strong writes,
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama's relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama's conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."
Ackerman skipped the intermediary suggestion of even asking loaded questions of Obama's conservative critics and proceeded directly to proposing false accusations against figures -- "who cares" -- on the right.
Strong reports that others on Journolist objected to the strategy proposed by Ackerman -- not because what Ackerman suggested involved malice, but because strategically it did not aid their cause:
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman's strategy. "I think it's worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he's trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he's not going change the way politics works?"
Fred Barnes wrote a measured, thoughtful response to the report. Barnes' style isn't provocative or satirical, as Rush Limbaugh's or Ann Coulter's can be. All three, however, face the malice of the left because they advocate for less government.
The malice exhibited in the e-mails is about more than journalistic ethics, and it may have legal consequences, with the immediate potential to cause jitters in the bars of Georgetown and Manhattan.
Malice becomes very, very significant in the case of public figures like Limbaugh, Barnes, and Rove ever since The New York Times v. Sullivan decision. Such public figures have a very difficult time winning damages for libel because of the "malice" evidentiary hurdle announced in Sullivan. As Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner explains,
Rove is certainly a public figure and a strong case could be made that Barnes is as well. Thus, any temptation to sue they might experience would be tempered by the Sullivan standard - unless conscious, actual malice by the defendant can be proven, forget it.
On the other hand, it's not difficult to envision an enterprising attorney finding an arguable case that specific examples culled from among the voluminous comments exchanged among JournoList participants clearly indicate high levels of what sure looks an awful lot like actual malice towards all sorts of prominent people on the Right.
This might help explain a curious passage in JournoList honcho Ezra Klein's explanation ... of his response to Tucker Carlson's request to be allowed to join the list serv:
"Adding someone to the list meant giving them access to the entirety of the archives. That didn't bother me very much. Sure, you could comb through tens of thousands of e-mails and pull intemperate moments and inartful wording out of context to embarrass people, but so long as you weren't there with an eye towards malice, you'd recognize it for what it was: A wonkish, fun, political yelling match." (Emphasis added.)
As The Daily Caller continues to expose vile exchanges on Journolist, we read about the hateful fantasy of one NPR producer involving Rush Limbaugh having a heart attack, and "serious" discussions that the government should shut down Fox News.
Why are any of these people still employed by news agencies instead of flipping tofu burgers?
Malice is not designed to get to the truth. Quite the opposite: Malice is designed to harm without regard to the truth. Malicious libel against public figures is not a protected press freedom. On the other hand, satirical or provocative speech, writings, or graphics, which can be biting, are designed to elucidate certain truths or positions in an attention-grabbing way.
Writing at The Daily Caller, Ben Smith observes:
The election of Barack Obama, America's first black president, was supposed to be a sign of our national maturity ... a chance to transform the charged, stilted "national conversation" about race into a smarter and more authentic dialogue, led by a president who was also one of the nation's subtlest thinkers and writers on the topic.
Instead, the conversation just got dumber.
Smith errs. It's not dumb conversation that's the problem. Malicious accusations of racism against conservatives are an old left-wing tactic. They are an intentional distraction from genuine conversations about small-government principles. Charges of racism being leveled at "who cares" damages and discredits the real issues of racism that should be addressed. Both debates are harmed by malice from the left.
The NAACP recently passed its controversial yet unreleased resolution that the Tea Party should condemn what it describes as racist elements within the Tea Party. Some news agencies agree. The Kansas City Star even proclaimed, "NAACP's criticism is valid: Tea party needs to condemn its racist fringe elements."
While the NAACP, The Kansas City Star, and others on this bandwagon may not have demonstrated malice, it is clearer now that they are pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with racism. Journolist, the "unofficial Obama campaign," proves that irresponsible, false charges of racism are accepted on the left as a political tactic.
Tea Partiers, being mostly new to political activism, may not be accustomed to dealing with leftist institutions. However, in my opinion, the Tea Party should avoid being distracted from its purposes by these attempts from the left. The left would like nothing more than to draw attention away from constitutional, small-government, fiscally responsible policies that the Tea Party advocates.
Maybe the left-wing journalists at Journolist could learn from the Coffee Party to encourage deliberation guided by reason. Oops, too late. It seems reasoned deliberation isn't as popular on the left as the strategy of smears.
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3)Iran says ready to talk as EU approves new nuclear sanctions
Tehran says ready to restart negotiations without preconditions after EU move targets the Iran's foreign trade, banking and energy sectors.
By The Associated Press
Iran is ready to return to negotiations on a nuclear fuel swap without conditions, its envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Talking of a letter that Iran handed to the IAEA about the proposed nuclear fuel swap, Iran's envoy to U.N. agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh said:
"The clear message of this letter was Iran's complete readiness to hold negotiations over the fuel for the Tehran reactor without any conditions."
International concerns about Iran's uranium enrichment program have led to a tightening of economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The European Union on Monday formally adopted a package of new sanctions against Iran, targeting the country's foreign trade, banking and energy sectors.
The move, which EU leaders had been agreed to in principle in June, is the latest in a series of measures taken by the international community in an effort to halt Iran's nuclear program.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast denounced the EU decision.
"Moving toward confrontational measures and supporting unilateral actions and damaging the atmosphere are not considered by us to be a good use of the opportunity," Mehmanparast said, according to the state television network's website.
In Brussels, EU foreign ministers adopted a decision on a package of restrictive measures in the areas of trade, financial services, energy and transport, said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity under standing rules.
Israel, meanwhile, lauded the move: "We welcome any diplomatic process that can cause Iran to reconsider its intention to acquire a nuclear capability," said Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai.
The new measures will come into force in the next few weeks, after they are published in the bloc's official gazette, officials said.
"We have a comprehensive set of sanctions. This is something where we have all 27 countries working together," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said ahead of the meeting.
According to the decision reached in June, the sanctions will target dual-use items that could be used as part of a nuclear program, and Iran's oil and gas industry - including the prohibition of new investment, technical assistance and transfers of technologies.
Iran's shipping and air cargo companies will be blacklisted and banned from operating in EU territory, and new visa bans and asset freezes will be imposed on Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The sanctions also encompass trade insurance and financial transactions.
EU exports to Iran - mainly machinery, transport equipment and chemicals - amounted to euro 14.1 billion in 2008.
Imports from Iran, the EU's sixth largest energy provider, amounted to euro 11.3 billion, with energy being 90 percent of the total.
The new European restrictions will come on top of a fourth round of sanctions imposed last month by the UN Security Council to curtail Iran's nuclear program over fears it is developing weapons. The council endorsed those sanctions after Iran rebuffed a plan to suspend uranium enrichment and swap its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium for fuel rods.
The new restrictions are similar to measures adopted by the Obama administration, which has imposed penalties against additional individuals and institutions it says are helping Iran develop its nuclear and missile programs, and evade international sanctions.
Iran denies that it is working on a nuclear weapon, saying its program is intended solely for peaceful purposes such as energy-generation, and that it has the right to enrich uranium under the international nonproliferation treaty.
EU foreign ministers also are expected reaffirm the bloc's invitation to Tehran to hold talks on the issue.
"Our aim is to bring Iran back to the negotiating table," said German State Secretary Werner Hoyer. "We're offering our hand, and all they have to do is to take it."
Iran has sought to deflect pressure and further sanctions by displaying a willingness to talk about nuclear issues - a line reinforced Monday by Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Tehran's senior envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"Iran is ready to go back to the negotiating table quickly to discuss exchanging some of its enriched uranium for fuel rods for Tehran's nuclear reactor," Soltanieh told reporters in Vienna.
He spoke after presenting revised proposals on a possible swap to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, who was expected to relay them to the U.S., France and Russia - the three nations engaged with Iran in such an exchange.
No details of the latest offer were available. But under a similar deal in May with Brazil and Turkey, Iran agreed to ship 1,200 kilograms (2,640 pounds) of low-enriched uranium to Turkey, where it would be stored. In exchange, Iran would get fuel rods made from 20 percent enriched uranium. That level of enrichment is high enough for use in research reactors but too low for nuclear weapons.
3a)Russia turns on 'irresponsible Iran'
By JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP
Iran dismisses diplomatic assault as EU, Canada impose sanctions.
Russia turned on Iran, accusing it of "fruitless and irresponsible rhetoric" and adding its voice to a diplomatic assault Monday which included unilateral sanctions from both the EU and Canada, as well as warnings from Iran's opposition party that Ahmadinejad's regime could suffer the same fate as the deposed Shah.
The Russian remark came after criticism from Tehran over Moscow's support for UN sanctions last month. In the past, Iran had depended on allies Russia and China — and their veto power at the Security Council — to block tough penalties, but Russia sided with the US and its allies and endorsed the sanctions, levied in a bid to force Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry suggested "Iran's leaders take concrete and constructive steps to work the situation out."
The European Union and Canada formally adopted unilateral sanctions against Iran earlier Monday which target the country's energy, banking, and foreign trade sectors.
The move came on the heels of the unilateral US sanctions passed last month by the Senate. June's sanctions showed signs of affecting Iran's airline industry. The EU sanctions were agreed to in principle by European leaders in June, and are the latest in a series of measures taken by the international community in an effort to halt Iran's nuclear program.
"We have a comprehensive set of sanctions. This is something where we have all 27 countries working together," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said ahead of the meeting.
In Canada, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the country's new measures will include a ban on any new Canadian investment in Iran's oil and gas sector, and restrictions on exporting goods that could be used in nuclear programs.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper explained Canada's sanctions, saying"These sanctions are in no way intended to punish the Iranian people," said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "These targeted measures are designed to hamper attempts by Iran to develop nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs" and to persuade the country to engage in negotiations.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed the sanctions, saying they "will not affect Iran," and only "complicate the situation and push the sides further away from reaching agreement."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded to UN sanctions in June by saying they were "worthless" and should only go into "the trash bin," in a report cited by Bloomberg News.
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4) Israel, West desperate for leaders like Churchill, Roosevelt, and Ben-Gurion
By Eitan Haber
The real crisis we face isn’t economic (unlike the case in many world countries,) isn’t diplomatic (unlike the case in many world countries,) and certainly isn’t about security (unlike some world countries.) As of July 2010, the real crisis faced by the State of Israel, and apparently by the world around us too, is a leadership crisis.
There is no leadership that can extricate us from the difficult situation; neitherhere nor out there, in the great wide world.
What’s worse, given that leaders grow and develop over a period of years, at this time we do not hear or see anyone who can be characterized as a great promise. The leadership reservoir is empty.
Unfortunately, these are fateful years for the Western world, including the State of Israel. Unexpectedly and as opposed to earlier predictions, a fundamentalist, radical Islamic wave has emerged and is sweeping the world. At first, mostly in Europe, it was treated lightly. The lazy Europeans (we are too, by the way) needed people to wash dishes in restaurants and allowed the masses to pour into their countries. Now, many Europeans are forced to wake up at 4 am every morning to the sound of the muezzin.
The tough Islamic wave is led by Iran, which registers more success stories each week. The world monitors its acts with concern, while some of it watches on with existential anxiety (Gulf states, for example.) Another part of the world is happy to hate the wealthy, oppressive West rather than to embrace the Ayatollahs and their political platform.
In the eyes of that part of the world, the “wealthy, oppressive West” constitutes first and foremost the United States, and right behind it there’s its satellite state, Israel. Barack Obama, who noticed this trend a while ago and certainly during the initial briefings from intelligence agencies after assuming the presidency, is already winking to the rising Muslim power and the part of the world that always accused the US of favoring Israel.
Obama making us pay
Obama is trying to shirk the “Zionist” image of his country, and he is doing it at our expense. The dangerous process of de-legitimizing Israel, which currently crosses states and continents, would not have been possible had the radical world believed that the US still stands by Israel at any price.
As the whole world undergoes this process these days, the main casualties (Europe, the US, and Israel) are desperate for exceptional leadership that would extricate us from these potentially destructive troubles, with the worst yet to come. The world needs leaders like Churchill, Roosevelt, De Gaulle, Ben-Gurion, and others – instead, we got Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and…what the hell is that guy’s name in London?
Obama is indeed being perceived as a leader with a vision and a way, and one who may save the world from the Islamic threat, yet he is sunk neck-deep in the inheritance he received in Afghanistan and Iraq, and until he cures us of these maladies his time shall pass too, apparently.
So we have to make do with what we have. What do we have? Let’s assume for a moment, just for a moment, that Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak are our best leaders at this time. Let’s just assume. Does anyone see on the horizon Ben-Gurion-like leaders that would replace this duo? Here’s the shelf of future leaders, just reach out your hand - who would you bring down from there to serve as our savior? Who?
We may face a diplomatic, social, and possibly a security crisis. However, the leadership crisis is the gravest one of all.
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5)Obama's message to voters: Things could be worse
Erica Werner
President Barack Obama, who rocketed to the White House promising "change you can believe in," is now telling voters they shouldn't change a thing.
His message for the fall elections, which are looking ominous for his Democrats, is that Republicans caused the nation's economic troubles, but he and the Democrats are starting to fix them. So stick with the Democrats and don't go back to the GOP.
"This is a choice between the policies that led us into the mess or the policies that are leading out of the mess," Obama said recently in Las Vegas.
Trouble is, it's a tough sell to voters who've seen little progress.
Unemployment is stuck near double digits and polls show many voters have decided Obama's policies are to blame, not his predecessor's.
Obama often frames the argument by saying that Republicans had their chance to drive, then drove the car into a ditch and shouldn't get the keys back. But voters may be concluding that Democrats, who control the White House and both chambers of Congress, have had their chance at the wheel, too, and haven't gotten very far.
"From the American public's point of view, the people in charge at this point are the people who own the problem," said Andrew Kohut, head of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
Obama's challenge for the next four months is to turn that perception around.
So he's traveled, from Buffalo, N.Y., to San Francisco, reminding voters of the mess he faced when he took office: a shrinking economy, lost jobs, weak markets, an economic crisis becoming international in scope.
Now, even though unemployment hasn't dropped to the 8 percent level the administration once projected, the economy is gradually picking up and adding jobs, the president says. Putting Republicans in power, he contends, would reverse the momentum.
But the White House knows it can't just be about blaming George W. Bush, though the former president's enduring unpopularity helps Obama's case. Obama must try to take it a step further and get voters to view Republicans now running for office as little more than extensions of Bush who would advance the ex-president's same policies.
"This isn't about relitigating history," said Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. "This is about history repeating itself."
Will the strategy work in an election year roiling with anti-incumbent sentiment? That's not yet clear, though it hasn't appeared to boost Democrats' standing much so far. Midterm elections typically deal a drubbing to the president's party anyway, and for Democrats it could mean losing control of the House.
Republicans say they intend to keep the focus on Obama's policies, which they cast as deficit-busting, big-government boondoggles. "Democrats can attempt to spin it any way they want, but unfortunately for them this election is going to be a referendum on the president and his party's failed economic policies," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
But Obama's pickings were slim when it came to campaign themes.
The narrative that worked so well when Obama was a presidential candidate offering himself as a transformational figure who could change Washington is no longer at his disposal. He can hardly claim to have delivered on that promise because he hasn't changed Washington, at least not much, as he's acknowledged.
Obama's stacked up a remarkable, if controversial, string of legislative successes, from last year's economic stimulus bill to the health care law and now the financial overhaul bill. But his vaunted eloquence on the campaign trail has often seemed to desert him as he's tried to sell those policies to the public. To the 14.6 million people out of work nothing else much matters anyway.
At the same time, the desire for change that Obama helped ignite is still burning. But this time it may work against him. As Bush recognized shortly before leaving office, calling for change is a luxury denied to incumbents.
"I was the guy in 2000 who campaigned for change. I campaigned for change when I ran for governor of Texas. The only time I really didn't campaign for change is when I was running for re-election," Bush told ABC News in December 2008.
In the end, trying to convince voters that things are moving in the right direction, although not as fast as he or they would like, might be the only message Obama can reach for.
"Is it the best that they can do, I think, is really the question. And I'd have to say yes, it is," said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.
So Obama tells voters every chance he gets that things would be a lot worse if not for the stimulus bill and other steps he took. At least the recession never became a depression, the president says.
Proving a negative is a hard argument to make, but Obama keeps at it. He has little choice.
Sometimes, the president sounds confident the message will get through.
"Americans don't have selective memory," Obama told NBC News recently. They'll remember "the policies that got us into this mess as well."
Other times, he doesn't sound so sure.
"I know that sometimes people don't remember how bad it was, and how bad it could have been," Obama said in Racine, Wis.
So this election year, instead of beckoning voters to change the future, Obama is just hoping they'll remember the past.
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6)The Unpresidential President
Barack Obama has managed a rare feat: The longer he holds office, the more he diminishes in stature.
BY James W. Ceaser
From charisma to populism—this is the slippery slope down which Barack Obama has been sliding over the past two years. In June 2008, Obama the candidate described his nomination as “the moment when . . . our planet began to heal.” In June 2010, Obama the president promised his partisans he would find an “ass to kick.”
With the peculiar magic of his presidential campaign now a faded memory, Obama is shoring up support by the cruder method of divisive appeals. Long before the current (already hugely extended) campaign season began, Obama made it a practice to target opposition symbols (“the insurance industry,” “speculators,” “a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” the oil companies), call out and assail individual opponents (Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner), and refer disparagingly to the Tea Party movement and Republicans in general (“this crowd”). More than a half-year before the midterm elections, he tried to revive his electoral base of “young people, African Americans, Latinos, and women” by taking a page from Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and embracing the shop-worn slogan, “I won’t stop fighting for you.”
An ass-thumping president frantically fighting for the little guy—it’s hard to imagine George Washington or Abraham Lincoln choosing to project an image of this kind. Barack Obama has managed a rare feat in American history: The longer he is president, the less presidential he has become. Obama has reversed the usual process of growth and maturation, appearing today far more like a candidate for the presidency—and a very ordinary one at that—than he did during the latter stages of his campaign.
He has also become practitioner-in-chief of what Alexander Hamilton referred to in Federalist 68 as the “little arts of popularity.” These arts, Hamilton well knew, would become an inevitable feature of democratic politics. But their spread from the province of political campaigns into the “normal” conduct of the presidency represents a dramatic reversal of the Founders’ design. The Constitution was crafted to prevent a campaign-style presidency; Obama is in the midst of creating one.
Although many will quibble about the right words for describing Obama’s leadership style, the general direction in which he has been heading is beyond dispute. In January 2010, the Obama-friendly Huffington Post ran a headline: “President Takes Populist Message on the Road.” Even some of his staunchest and most serious supporters, among them Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, have commended Obama for “turning toward populism.” By “populism” these observers were referring to divisive “us against them” appeals meant to rile up and energize a base.
What the president’s supporters add by way of explanation, if excuses for employing the “little arts of popularity” are still necessary, is that Obama is only responding to an unprecedented series of attacks from his detractors. But this explanation misses the main point, which is not the alleged behavior of gatherings of citizens, but the norms and standards of the presidency. Many past presidents endured harsh criticisms from the press and from popular movements of their day, but considered it unpresidential to respond in kind. Not Barack Obama, who has found his comfort zone in magnifying and then assaulting any kind of opposition. This excuse for Obama’s style also overlooks that he does not want for other means to get his message across. Obama has at his beck and call a staff of professional spokespersons, not to mention the editorial page of the New York Times.
It may be, however, that Obama has created a box for himself from which he cannot escape. He has so monopolized and personalized the public relations aspect of his office that now only his own voice can speak for the presidency. Profligacy in the use of public access—almost a speech a day—has made indirectness impossible. A president who has become his own chief point man puts at risk an asset that is helpful to his standing and vital for the nation’s political system: the dignity of the presidential office
Obama’s embrace of a populist campaign style generated enough consternation that he backtracked temporarily. In a commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 1, Obama adopted a more statesmanlike posture, deploring the lack of “civility” that is “starting to creep into the center of our discourse.” “We can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it.” To emphasize his impartiality, he sought to put himself above the fray, decrying the excesses “practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right.” Yet far from calming the country, this lofty tone served only to grate on those who found in this speech a repetition of a by now all-too-familiar Obama tactic of earnestly preaching what he does not practice—a technique he has used especially in those matters in which “fairness” and “good government” are most at issue, such as the public finance of campaigns (which Obama supported before exempting himself) or the promise of post-partisanship (which he abandoned from almost his first day in office). For a statesmanlike speech such as the one Obama gave in Michigan to work, the speaker must have cultivated the “ethos” of presidentialism. Obama had long since given up on this effort.
Charisma
The “popular arts,” as that phrase was used by Hamilton, referred to the various methods of boosting public support: by dazzling (if one can); practicing an easy familiarity; promising and offering generous benefits; raising energy and anger by targeting and dividing; and blaming convenient scapegoats. Gaining approval by these methods was contrasted with winning support by achieving stature, which comes from public recognition for good service, displaying admirable qualities, or demonstrating sound judgment. Stature is manifest when a leader establishes himself “in the esteem and confidence” of a considerable portion of the people, so that public standing includes a dimension of “looking up.”
Stature is one of the most elusive and precious qualities in political life, and it is almost always in short supply. Executives (governors) and public servants (including military leaders, such as Colin Powell or David Petraeus), who build records of service, are in a better position to acquire it than legislators, whose main activity is expressing a point of view. Being elected to the presidency usually confers an initial measure of stature, not just because running a successful campaign represents an accomplishment, but also because the office has been developed over the years to confer on its occupant dignity and distinction. But how a president acts in office affects whether he adds to or diminishes this initial stature. Slipping approval ratings may tempt presidential advisers to counsel a president to try to revive his fortunes by indulging in the popular arts, but what few of them bother to tell the boss is that approval ratings are not always measures of stature. Efforts to “bump up the positives” can often come at the cost of the president’s stature. “Fighting for you” may get a crowd worked up, but it doesn’t add to a president’s dignity.
The practice of the popular arts is as old as democratic politics. Only the names that designate its various techniques have changed. America’s Founders were partial to expressions like “playing the favorite,” “popular leaders,” “sycophants,” and (most often) “demagogues,” a term that connected their thought back to the classical treatments of popular government in Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch. The category “demagogue” includes not only lowly rabble rousers who appeal to anger and fear (Cleon or George Wallace), or those who incite envy and gin up class divisions (Gaius Gracchus or John Edwards), but also, in John Jay’s wonderful description, “those brilliant appearances of genius [who], like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle.”
Charisma, one of the modern terms for the popular arts, was coined by the German sociologist Max Weber around the turn of the 20th century. The word means the “gift of grace” in its New Testament usage, but Weber defined it as “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which one is ‘set apart’ from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” While Weber meant charisma to be a scientific concept, it has turned out to be anything but, and is frequently invoked today to describe celebrities in the fields of sports or entertainment. For all of its imprecision, however, charisma points to that ineffable something that allows people to know it when they see it. Barack Obama circa 2008-09 had it; Mitch McConnell never did.
Weber stressed the relational aspect of charisma. It depends not just on the qualities of the figure from above, but also on the needs of the followers from below. In the many narratives written so far of Obama’s meteoric rise in 2008, insufficient attention has been given to the demand side. Obama came to the fore in a period that was charismatically challenged—indeed, strikingly lacking in political leaders of stature or even, more modestly, of political heft. Take the Senate. Who in 2008 stood out as a substantial figure, other than John McCain or Ted Kennedy? Was it Chris Dodd? Harry Reid? The same held true for the House of Representatives—where a deficit of stature is more to be expected as most “stars” generally leave to move up the political ladder. Still, in the past there were longtime representatives seen as substantial figures like Sam Rayburn or Tip O’Neill or, more recently perhaps, Dick Gephardt. Today, no one in the House even approaches this kind of standing. Perhaps the best-known congressman, Barney Frank is clever and intelligent, but often presents himself as a kind of prankster or clown. As for the governors, there were no doubt competent individuals in 2008—Mitt Romney among them—but there were few who were known nationally. The exception was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is to this day still most widely remembered as a barbarian or a terminator.
What was (and is) true of politics on the American scene was truer of the world as a whole. Who among the active leaders qualified as a significant statesman or even a person of enormous standing, someone whom the public could name, like a Tony Blair, a Nelson Mandela, or a Mikhail Gorbachev? Instead, the video photo-ops of the world figures—displayed always against a light blue backdrop—at those innumerable summits showed in 2008 a barely recognizable Gordon Brown, conspicuous by his dourness; Nicolas Sarkozy, bounding about like a nervous ferret; and Angela Merkel (perhaps the most gifted of the group). Otherwise, it was a total blank, with no one able to name the prime minister of Japan or say who’s Hu in China. The only personages on the world stage known generally to Americans in 2008 were two obvious demagogues, Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Next to all of these ordinary (or contemptible) personages appeared a new and attractive figure, unsullied by previous involvement in political activity, offering to fill this dreary void.
A touch of charisma is a nice thing for a president to have. Harry Truman and Gerald Ford—men who made no pretense, because they could not, to possessing the “gift”—may have been disadvantaged by their lack of it, although the same could surely have been said of two great men, and credible presidents, John Adams and James Madison. In the final analysis, however, charisma sits uneasily with a republican form of government. Its very terms of belief in exceptional powers stand in tension with the idea of authority limited by law. The potential conflict is greater when flatterers convince themselves that the leader’s charisma is an asset that the nation cannot afford to lose. Obama supporters today regularly insist that his personal standing in the world is a vital element of America’s soft power and the key to altering world perceptions about America. Obama himself reportedly expressed this very position to Democratic members of Congress in the summer of 2008: “I have become a symbol [abroad] of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” Following on this belief, the nation’s foreign policy has become hostage to the president’s charisma. Anything that sustains Obama’s image, even if it involves the president apologizing abroad for America’s sins or errors, is justified by the canons of a new understanding of realpolitik that promises to bring substantial returns.
Obama still retains an aura of charisma abroad, though to date it has yet to bring any of the benefits that were promised. But this kind of soft-power realism hardly bespeaks a foreign policy conducted on the basis of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” where principles are set down as markers designed to help open eyes to the rights of man. It represents instead a foreign policy based on promoting an indecent pandering to an evanescent infatuation with a single personality.
Tonal Populism
Populism, another modern word used to designate the popular arts, is so ambiguous a term that, other than expressing the notion of a vague popular sentiment, it has no fixed content. It can only be understood if it is broken down into two distinct types: “tonal” (or “soft”) populism and “political” (or “hard”) populism.
Tonal populism refers to a style of politics that disdains pretension and insists on the virtue of the plain and the down-to-earth—though not necessarily the average. A person who claims tonal populism is a guy like all -others, someone you could have a beer with, or a gal like all -others, someone you could be frank with, if not go moose hunting with. Populism in this sense may once have been thought vulgar, at least from an aristocratic point of view, but America’s democratic mores virtually ensured that it would eventually win its place as an acceptable and even respectable part of our politics. Tonal populism is anti-elitist, but without any special policy message. It can mildly amuse, as when Lamar Alexander, a former college president, campaigned for governor of Tennessee and then president of the United States wearing a red and black plaid shirt. More recently, there was Scott Brown’s self-presentation in his stump speech for the Senate campaign in Massachusetts: “Friends and fellow citizens, I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I’m asking for your vote.” Forget Wrentham and fellow citizens; it is the truck that says it all.
It is commonly said that tonal populism originated with Andrew Jackson, who made no bones about his common origins or tastes. But this style only achieved full mainstream status when it became bipartisan during the 1840 presidential campaign, which John Quincy Adams described as marking “a revolution in the habits and manners of the people.” The Whig party, which hitherto had disdained “truckling” after votes, made the fateful decision to out-Jackson Jacksonianism. The Whigs invented the notion of the campaign as a mass spectacle by mobilizing the party faithful to hold rallies, sing songs, and enact dramatic skits in celebration of the down-home virtues of “Old Tip” (William Henry Harrison), whose simple ways were captured in the campaign’s symbols of the log cabin and hard cider. The slightest whiff of deference in American politics became a thing of the past.
Not everyone, of course, can successfully claim tonal populism, nor should they try. There are only so many country lawyers. For a politician to try to force himself into the mold of an ordinary guy when it does not fit can make him look not only phony, but ridiculous. Just ask John Kerry, who campaigned for the presidency in 2004 in a leather jacket, returning on weekends to one of his several mansions to drink green tea or go windsurfing. It never sold. Fortunately for American politics, there are other ways besides emphasizing tonal populism to rise to prominence, including demonstrating competence, achieving stature, and possessing charisma.
If claiming tonal populism is not essential for an American political leader, it is nevertheless important not to run afoul of it and be viewed as an “elitist.” Some who employ tonal populism adopt the demagogic ploy of trying to chase from politics those who have an old family name, are wealthy (especially when the wealth is inherited), or have attained a high educational status at a prized institution. While these objective indicators of elitism can present challenges to certain aspiring political leaders, they are rarely disqualifying factors. Americans can be remarkably tolerant, even of the wealthy and the privileged. But what people cannot easily forgive is an open attitude of elitism that expresses disdain for the average person. John Edwards, who ran for the presidency in 2008 as the self-proclaimed people’s candidate, was able to survive his multimillion-dollar fortune, his huge mansion, and even his $400 haircuts; what he could never have survived was his comment, only disclosed later, that he could not stand attending state fairs where “fat rednecks try to shove food down my face. I know I’m the people’s senator, but do I have to hang out with them?”
Political analysts agree that Democrats more commonly run afoul of tonal populism than Republicans, despite the fact that Republicans suffer more often from the objective disadvantages of family name and wealth, though probably no longer of educational status. The reason is that intellectual spokesmen on the Democratic side, while proclaiming their love of the people, prove themselves congenitally unable to hide their disdain for the people’s tastes and opinions. But generalizations about the parties do not govern every individual case. Bill Clinton remains the prime example of the Democrat who, even with a Yale law degree and a Rhodes Scholarship, had no trouble claiming the mantle of tonal populism. It was not just the fact that he came from a dirt-poor background in Arkansas and a troubled family or that he spoke with a Southern accent. He was saved by his vices. Any man who was known for gobbling down two Big Macs in one sitting, who could count among his girlfriends Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, and who had the nickname “Bubba,” was beyond all suspicion of elitism.
On the Republican side, the most interesting cases are the two Bushes, George H.W. and George W. Both of them carried the triple burden of family name, inherited wealth, and high educational status. These damaged George H.W. somewhat, especially when added to his “elite” government service as ambassador to the U.N. and to China and as director of the CIA. Ann Richards famously mocked him at the 1988 Democratic convention, in as elongated a Texas drawl as anyone had ever heard: “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Bush overcame the charge to be elected, though the old ghost came back to haunt him in 1992, when, during a visit to a supermarket, he apparently expressed astonishment at seeing a price scanner. This immediately confirmed for many that he was a man “out of touch” with the average American, a charge that struck hard during tough economic times.
The case of George W. is more intriguing. On the scale of objective factors, W. was in a worse position than his father, as he was a son of a president and held degrees from both Yale and Harvard. But by the middle of his first term, he had been rescued from almost any taint of elitism. The smugness of his detractors, who so relentlessly attacked his supposedly lowbrow tastes and intelligence and ridiculed his evangelical faith, made it impossible for them to put any daylight between W. and middle America. They made George W. into an average American and had to live with their choice.
Barack Obama’s relation to tonal populism has been the most complicated of all the modern presidents. He made virtually no effort in the 2008 campaign to claim or establish himself as a “familiar” figure. He was able to eschew this kind of appeal because he had more compelling qualities. Not only was there his initial charisma, but also, as the campaign progressed, there was his reputation for intellectual bearing, as displayed in his Philadelphia oration on race, and his remarkable “coolness” and sobriety, as shown in his calm approach to the financial crisis that struck in September. Obama had no need to be of the people, because he was so evidently above them. Obama was, and in most ways remains today, a conspicuously nonpopulist figure in the tonal sense.
At the same time, it should have been easy for Barack Obama to escape offending the populist spirit and become a winner on all counts. Coming from a broken family without wealth or status and being from a race that has always been on the outside in American life, he should have been immune to any charge of elitism. All he had to do was live down his Harvard law degree and his position as a professor at the University of Chicago, hardly an insurmountable task for a talented politician. Yet in what must count as a clear blot on the ledger of his political skills, Obama has repeatedly blundered. His series of self-inflicted errors began with the decision during the campaign to stop wearing a flag pin on his lapel (which he later put back on) and continued with his nearly fatal comment in San Francisco about the “bitter” Midwestern workers, who “cling to guns or religion . . . as a way to explain their frustrations.” Hillary Clinton almost ended his campaign with the charge of elitism. Obama was reduced to pleading his case on the objective criteria: “I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you’re raised by a single mom, when you were on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you went to school on scholarship.”
Since becoming president he has repeated his mistake, beginning with a gratuitous accusation against Officer James Crowley of acting “stupidly” in arresting Obama’s friend, Harvard English professor Henry Louis Gates. Following a half apology, he made matters worse by calling Crowley and Gates together to the White House for the so-called “beer summit.” In principle, there is nothing more populist in America than guys “having a beer.” And yet when the photographs of the summit were released, the only guy who looked at ease with his beer was Crowley. It remains a conspicuous fact about this administration that no one working for the president could plausibly utter an “Aw shucks” in public and get away with it. No wonder none of Obama’s aides restrained him from trying to score points by ridiculing Scott Brown’s truck.
Tonal populism has become part of the fabric and even the fun of American politics. Still, it has a growing number of critics today, especially on the left, as Republicans have proven more adept at tapping into its spirit. These critics no longer, of course, dismiss the idea of democracy and scoff, like Coriolanus, at “the beast with many heads.” To the contrary, they profess to be the people’s truest friends, objecting only to the fact that the people do not know how to serve the people’s real interests. There is doubtless a certain merit in questioning a populism that goes too far in celebrating mere common sense. But this criticism would be entitled to far more respect if it were not being used to promote the claim to rule by a class of experts that serves a partisan end.
Political Populism
Obama’s distance from tonal populism led many to think that he was ill-suited for engaging in populist appeals of any kind. But whether awkward in the task or not, Obama has taken to “political” populism in a most assertive way. Political populism involves pitting one part of the community against another in order to generate energy and boost popularity. Like tonal populism, it identifies a popular “us” (“the people”) and an oligarchic “them” (the “elite” or “special interests”), but, not content merely to establish sympathies and associations, it goes on to promise important policy changes, such as punishing the biggest interests and spreading the wealth around.
There is both a leftist and a rightist version of political populism. The left speaks of an economic power elite that is manipulating the system to its advantage, oppressing the people. The right speaks of a class of experts bent on using public authority to transform morals and run people’s lives. The left will resolve the problem by taking on Big Capital; the right by confronting Big Government. These two versions reflect parts of the genuine public philosophies of liberalism and conservatism, with the result that elements of the two populisms are apt to appear in public discourse as genuine arguments. But political populism in its full sense occurs when the populist themes become the core of the presentation, deployed to win support and boost or solidify opinion. Politicians clearly know when they are “going populist.” When the president launches an attack on a Supreme Court decision for aiding “Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans,” there is no mystery in what he is up to. Subtlety is rarely a feature of a populist appeal.
Populism as a technique is often contrasted with a statesman-like tone, which normally aims to appeal to reason and tamp down conflict and division. Statesmanship in the highest sense is the management of affairs for the public good, which in rare cases may require an approach that divides. But the statesman only adopts this path when necessary and never for mere political gain. The usual posture of the statesman is calming and deliberate, which is what is meant by the term “presidential.” To engage in populism and parallel demagogic tricks—to blame others, to mock, to display no magnanimity toward opponents—all of these actions necessarily appear unpresidential. They are fitting for campaigns, but they make a president look smaller.
There was no shortage of political populist rhetoric in Obama’s campaign speeches in 2008, but this element clearly took a backseat to the attraction of his person and to his grander themes. Now that his themes have dissipated into thin air and the charisma has worn off, political populism has emerged as a dominant characteristic of Obama’s leadership. But coming from a president, rather than a candidate, it appears at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
The Presidential Office
Modern presidents have the twin responsibilities of being a policy advocate (or party leader) and a constitutional officer. These two roles inevitably are in tension, and one of the great challenges of a president is to find the proper balance. Obama seems uninterested in locating this balance. One of the norms of being a constitutional officer is to appear as “president of all the people,” even when others may not act as if they accept him as such. Advocacy, no matter how vigorous, must respect a set of limits and be characterized by forbearance. The nation needs this understanding of the presidency to serve as a symbol of national unity—and Obama may soon need it to call on the deeper reservoirs of support in the event that conditions become far more trying than anyone today suspects.
With his stately voice, his elegant presence, and his command of the language, Barack Obama possesses more personal tools to be presidential than any of his predecessors since Dwight D. Eisenhower, but—Bill Clinton, of course, excepted—he has shown less inclination to be so. By urging him down the path of populism, Obama’s political counselors do not seem to have the slightest clue of the damage they have done to him, because they have no conception of what the office of the presidency is all about. They coach their prince to be presidential one day and populist the next, oblivious to the fact that if presidentialism appears as a mere pose it loses all credibility. To be presidential, a president must practice presidentialism constantly, to the point that others have no choice but to view him as sincere. Obama has professed to regard George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as his models, but there is no indication that he has studied how either man conducted himself as president. They jealously guarded the dignity of the office; Obama is heedlessly frittering it away.
James W. Ceaser is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of politics at the University of Virginia
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6)The Democratic Fisc
The White House budget office offers a scorecard on Obamanomics
Democrats have been running Congress for nearly four years, and President Obama has been at the White House for 18 months, so it's not too soon to ask: How's that working out? One devastating scorecard came out Friday from the White House, in the form of its own semi-annual budget review.
The message: Tax revenues are smaller, spending is greater, and the deficits are thus larger than the White House has been saying. No wonder it dumped the news on the eve of a sweltering mid-July weekend.
Mr. Obama inherited a recession, so let's give him a pass on the budget numbers for 2009. Clearly the deficit would have been large no matter who was President, even if the David Obey-Nancy Pelosi $862 billion stimulus made it larger than it otherwise would have been. What's striking about the latest budget estimates, however, is that the White House is predicting the numbers won't improve much through 2011, the third year of the President's term.
As a share of the economy, the White House now says the deficit in fiscal 2010, which ends on September 30, will be even larger than in 2009: 10%. That's after a full year of economic growth, given that the recovery began last summer. More remarkable still, the deficit will barely fall in fiscal 2011, declining only to 9.2% of GDP in the second year of a recovery that ought to be gaining steam.
To put this in historical context, consider the nearby table that compares deficits as a share of GDP under Presidents Reagan and Obama. The 1981-82 recession was comparable in severity to the one Mr. Obama inherited and reached similar heights of unemployment. The deficits that resulted from that recession were the source of huge political consternation, with Democrats, the press corps and even some senior Reagan aides insisting that only a huge tax increase could save the country from ruin.
Yet as the table shows, the Reagan deficits never reached more than 6% of GDP, and that happened only in 1983, the first year of economic recovery. As the 1980s expansion continued, the deficits fell, especially as the pace of spending slowed in the latter part of Reagan's second term. Few remember now, but when Ross Perot won 19% of the Presidential vote in 1992 running more or less on the single issue of the deficit, the budget hole was only 4.7% of GDP.
The Obama deficits are double that, and more than one-third higher than even the Gipper's worst year. What explains this? Part of it is that Democrats are simply spending much more, sending outlays as a share of GDP above 25% for the first time since World War II. The White House now says outlays will be higher in 2011, at 25.1% of GDP, than at the height of the stimulus in 2009 and 2010.
This is an ironic tribute to the degree to which Democrats on Capitol Hill have been increasing spending willy-nilly below the media radar. The 111th Congress is the most spendthrift in a century outside of World Wars I and II.
The other explanation for the record Obama deficits is that revenues have been so anemic, thanks to the lackluster economic recovery. In the Reagan years, revenues as a share of GDP never fell lower than 17.3%, despite (or we would say because of) his pro-growth tax cuts. In 2010, by contrast, the White House now says tax revenues will hit an astonishing low of 14.5% of GDP, rising only to 15.8% in 2011, even with the huge tax increase that hits on January 1, 2011.
The White House predicts revenues will rise sharply after that, as it also assumes the economy will grow by more than 4% in each of 2012, 2013 and 2014. The last time the economy grew that rapidly for that long, however, was from 1997-2000 and from 1983-1985. In both of those cases, taxes were falling. The Obama White House plans a huge tax increase next year, followed by the ObamaCare tax hikes that hit in 2013, and that's before whatever else the President's deficit commission recommends.
Democrats and their defenders will argue that the nature of the 2008-2009 recession, with its roots in financial panic, is the reason for the slow recovery. But it's also true that deep recessions have historically been followed by more robust recoveries.
The point we would stress is that there has also been a notable policy difference between the 1980s and today. The Reagan Administration also pursued fiscal stimulus, but its policy choice was permanent across-the-board cuts in marginal tax rates. Revenue didn't fall nearly as much as Keynesian economists predicted it would, and the economy roared back. Growth and spending restraint then reduced the deficit over time.
Democrats by contrast have pursued stimulus by spending and temporary tax rebates for selective constituencies. They did so first in concert with President George W. Bush, who was intellectually and politically tapped out, in February 2008. Then they did so again, on hyperdrive, with the February 2009 stimulus. They are now doing it again on a smaller scale with another burst of jobless benefits, adding some $30 billion to the deficit.
To put it another way, Democrats have been undertaking a vast fiscal policy experiment, blowing out the federal balance sheet in an effort to show that a country can spend and tax its way to prosperity. Look no further than the numbers in the White House's own budget review for the unhappy lab results.
6a)No jobs but more benefits
By Ralph R. Reiland
About the writer
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached via via e-mail.
Pushing for more billions in deficit spending to extend jobless benefits to a record 99 weeks, or nearly two years, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently declared that more red ink and more dependency on government checks for longer stretches were the best ways to stimulate the U.S. economy and create jobs.
"This is one of the best stimuluses to our economy," she asserted regarding unemployment legislation, which the House and Senate passed and the president signed last week. "It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative."
The legislation extends benefits averaging $309 per week until December. That's an average, however, with benefit levels differing widely among the states.
In Massachusetts, the top benefit is $943 a week, or $49,036 a year. For a lucky jobless couple living off the bay in Nantucket and eligible for the maximum checks, that's $98,072 a year and plenty of free time to catch some striped bass for dinner.
A recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal, "Stimulating Unemployment: If you can't create any jobs, pay people not to work," contended that the extended benefits to subsidize joblessness will have the direct effect of expanding and prolonging unemployment: "Democrats are going so far as to subsidize more unemployment. If you subsidize something, you get more of it. So if you pay people not to work, they often decide not to work. Or at least to delay looking or decline a less than perfect job offer, holding out for something else that may or may not materialize."
Further, President Obama's call for 99 weeks of jobless benefits, argued The Journal, underscores the failure of his economic program, the failure of his $862 billion stimulus, and the job-killing impact of Obama's continuous calls for more regulations, more mandates and higher taxes on the nation's job creators in the private sector.
"The one possibility the president and congressional Democrats won't entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation," maintained The Journal. "Since February 2009, the jobless rate has climbed to 9.5 percent from 8.1 percent, and private industry has shed 2 million jobs."
The problem, according to Ivan Seidenberg, head of the once Obama-friendly Business Roundtable, is that Obama has created "an increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation here in this country."
What doesn't work in creating jobs in a free-enterprise system is an ideology that's anti-boss and pro-worker. Richard Lowry, editor of National Review, recently pointed out the irrationality and inconsistency of that position, succinctly, stating, "The Democrat's sympathy for the unemployed doesn't extend to the people who might hire them."
Investing and hiring new employees is too risky, in short, when businesses see a plethora of higher taxes and more regulatory costs on the horizon, beginning with one of the largest tax increases in U.S. history on Jan. 1 that is precisely aimed at the incomes of the nation's entrepreneurs, investors and small business owners.
"Among businesses of all sizes, there is now a pervasive sense that the administration does not understand economics," states Joel Kotkin, an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London and a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University.
"Obama's real problem is that he's a product, basically, of the fantastical faculty lounge."
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