What difference does it matter!
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Hanukkah and Thanksgiving arrive at the same time this year. Happy Holidays!
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Ne'eman on Obama's Iranian Policy and other comments (see 1, 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d below.)
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Yesterday Obama hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Ole Bill Clinton's neck. No doubt he would have liked to have shoved it down his throat.
I doubt a piece of metal will silence Ole Bill, because he wants his wife in The White House so he can become 2d in command! (See 2 below.)
On the other hand, and for opposite reasons, Obama did the same for Oprah but in her case it was to congratulate her for keeping her mouth open and her mind closed.
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The fix that won't keep giving. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Obama's Iranian Policy
By Yisrael Ne'eman
Despite being buried under domestic economic and health care issues the Obama Administration is re-embarking on its 2009 diplomatic initiative aimed at bridging gaps with the Muslim World, this time through negotiations with the Iranians over their nuclear program. Surprisingly it is said that France led by the socialist Pres. Francois Hollande is taking the hardest line. Obama visited Turkey and Egypt at the outset of his first term, emphasizing the break with the 60 year old NATO centered American foreign policy. The Atlantic Alliance no longer determined future US initiatives or interests. Despite setbacks throughout the Muslim World and in particular the Middle East (most notably Egypt) there is a redoubling of efforts to continue the overtures. Obama's world view stands at the center of policy.
Obama focuses much more on reconciliation between Islam and the Christian world than any previous president. He is fully convinced that the democratic process in electing Islamic leaders is the best way to go. US foreign policy views Turkey's Islamist PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development party most positively. In 2009 Obama spoke of US-Turkish relations as the corner stone for bridging gaps between the two great religions. Increasing authoritarianism and oppression as evidenced through the curtailing of media rights and the heavy handedness used in putting down demonstrations have not elicited much of an American response. Nor was America particularly ruffled during the Gaza flotilla episode in 2010 when Erdogan stood firmly behind the Muslim Brotherhood (IHH) organizers attempt to break Israel's Gaza "blockade" designed to halt the import of contraband.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi was freely elected in 2012 but within a few months was consolidating power and overstepping his legal mandate. Once overthrown by the military (with much popular support) the US has continued to advocate the re-installment of the Islamist president. The traditionally secular and quite pro-American Egyptian military is currently looking for new allies in the face of the American cut in aid. The Russians are coming to the rescue. When discussing political Islam, the will of the people through elections carries much greater weight than the behavior of those same regimes once they take power. Both Erdogan and Morsi are known for their extreme anti-Israel remarks, whether made publicly or privately (and then denied) and the two have made clear the need for a re-engagement with Tehran. The Obama administration very much takes into account this "moderate" Islamist perspective.
Europe is perceived as a collection of nation states having devolved from Christendom and although most are secular today the individual nation state basis of loyalty in Britain, France, Germany, etc. is completely different from the multi-ethnic/religious civil society identity at the root of the American experience. With the continually expanding Muslim populations not finding their place in a fossilized and aging Europe, American multi-culturalism is borrowing a page from the Canada of Elliot Trudeau (1960s - 70s) and making it the wave of the future. For Obama American "exceptionalism" is its "all-inclusivism" – leaving out none and thereby bringing in the Iranians from the cold when deemed possible. The Europeans are hypocritical in attempting to remain nation states. They import Muslim laborers from the Middle East and North Africa but refuse to become multi-cultural societies and demand the immigrants adopt the national identity. After all how could a Muslim identify as German, British or French?
From another angle democratization of the Middle East is not happening any time soon, Egypt serving as the best example. The Muslim Brotherhood was freely elected and rightly or wrongly overthrown by the military. Although elected, Pres. Morsi is said to have overstepped his legal bounds, bringing a popular backlash and military intervention. Whether true of not, is of little significance. In the eyes of the administration democracy was undermined. In June Iran elected Hassan Rouhani, a "reformist" to the presidency. Although largely a ceremonial office the US administration was encouraged by the hope for democracy in Iran. The US role is "curtailing" Iran's nuclear program is an opportunity to develop a relationship with Shiite Islam.
When engaging Islam, Obama is committed to bridging gaps and erasing fault lines. Policies have not gone well in the Arab World and in echoing Thomas Friedman's recent article in the New York Times it may be time for some sort of Iranian option to offset Persian Gulf Arab pressures, most notably Saudi demands to destroy Tehran's nuclear potential. Some 80 years ago US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised to keep the Saudi family in power provided Arabian oil flowed uninterrupted to American shores. Bringing the Iranian Shiite regime into the equation as another option for future oil imports is seen in Riyadh as a threat to future stability in the kingdom, especially as the Gulf oil producing region counts a majority of Arab Shiites as opposed to the majority Sunnis. They are certainly susceptible to Iranian influence as noted in Iraq and Bahrain.
All the Western powers claim they will not be duped by Iran but surprisingly the French appear most worried. One suspects they represent overall European thinking that multi-cultural understandings between Europe and Islam are in short supply. Germany's Angela Merkel does not hesitate to emphasize the point. Israel has a European style state nationalism of the Jewish type but, when engaging the Muslim world the issues are the same. For Obama, American liberalism and inclusiveness are the answers. Military action against Iran is essentially out of the question, even if necessary. It is much better to redefine world leadership through compromise. One must step beyond the NATO alliance and special relationship with Israel.
The US can live with a nuclear Iran, but can Israel, the Arab Gulf States and the Europeans? Here we find the confluence of many interests. Israel fears extermination, the Iranians never having denied this objective. The Sunni Arab Gulf countries fear Iranian military pressure and a shifting of loyalties to Tehran by their own Arab Shiite populations. Shiite Iraq is in the Iranian sphere of influence while Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia may be next. Eastern Europe and the Balkans are already within missile range from Tehran. Any deal not understood to be a Western victory will play into the hands of European Muslim radicals, a group completely forgotten when considering concessions to the Iranians. Hollande may be the spokesman but all the EU fears for stability in their countries.
North Korea is a nuclear power despite US negotiations to halt the drive. South Korea and Japan live with the threat. The US is not overly worried about a nuclear Iran, after all we all lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and except for a few threats and a missile crisis nothing happened. Israel, the Sunni Arab World and Europe can be expected to face the same threat unless they join forces to destroy Iran's nuclear arsenal should the need arise. It is not automatic that the US will join such an alliance in the future.
No one believes Rouhani and the ayatollahs are insane – they are simply pursuing their interests. Fair enough, but just one problem remains – how do we define sanity and what are their ultimate objectives? Throw in some theology are we all realize that sacrificing oneself in the name of Allah will help one achieve salvation. Destroying the infidel and in particular the Jewish State are part of the equation. It is all clearly spelled out but how much does the Iranian leadership believe in their own theology and who is willing to take the chance? We simply do not know. The Soviets were completely secular – only this world counted hence nuclear parity ensued. Is a contained, peaceful nuclear Iran feasible? Maybe – if Khomenist Shiism becomes something of the past. Not likely however.
The US hopes to cut deal with as little loss damage as possible for Sunni Arabs and the American Jewish community. Israel counts for little, is more of a sideline and will prove itself or not when negotiating with the Palestinians. The Jewish State has no real options for a patron besides the US and can entertain itself playing "make believe" when hosting the French PM this past week. The Hollande visit to Israel was like a dream quickly fading into oblivion while reality sets in. There will be an agreement (and France will sign) leaving Israel to live with the consequences.
Once there is a Western agreement with Iran Israel is prevented from taking military action unless the Sunni Arab states and a European power of two will work together forming a coalition. Such action will only be taken should there be undeniable proof that Tehran is on the threshold of a nuclear weapon. By then it may be too late.
1a)How Bush Let Iran Go Nuclear
AMERICAN and Iranian negotiators yesterday began a second round of talks in Geneva, seeking a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
By Ari Shavit
If such an agreement were signed, it would represent an Iranian victory — and an American defeat. The Iranians would be able to maintain their nuclear program and continue to enrich uranium, while the Americans and their allies would loosen the economic siege on Iran and allow Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the economic oxygen needed to sustain his autocratic regime.
Yes, Iran’s race to the bomb would be slowed down — but an accord would guarantee that it would eventually cross the finish line. The Geneva mind-set resembles a Munich mind-set: It would create the illusion of peace-in-our-time while paving the way to a nuclear-Iran-in-our-time.
But don’t blame President Obama. Indeed, this American defeat was set in motion long before he took office.
What three American presidents, four Israeli prime ministers and a dozen European leaders vowed would never happen is actually happening. What was not to be is almost a reality. The Iranian bomb is nearly here.
Why wasn’t the West able to mobilize its political, economic and military resources in time to force Tehran to give up its nuclear ambition?
The answer may be described as a spelling error.
After 9/11, the United States was determined to strike back, destroy terrorist sanctuaries and display its imperial might. President George W. Bush chose to do all of this in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan may have been a mistake, but it was an understandable one: Al Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban’s support and had found refuge in Taliban-controlled territory. But invading Iraq was an incomprehensible mistake, as there were no links between Saddam Hussein and the 19 terrorists who attacked New York and Washington in September 2001.
If Mr. Bush had decided to display American leadership and exercise American power by launching a diplomatic campaign against Iran rather than a military one against Iraq 10 years ago, the United States’ international standing would be far greater today.
The Bush administration’s decision to go after Iraq rather than Iran was a fatal one, and the long-term consequences are only now becoming clear, namely a devastating American failure in the battle to prevent a nuclear Iran, reflected in Washington’s willingness to sign a deeply flawed agreement.
Mr. Bush’s responsibility for the disaster now unfolding is twofold: He failed to target Iran a decade ago, and created a climate that made it very difficult to target Iran today. The Bush administration didn’t initiate a political-economic siege on Iran when it was weak, and Mr. Bush weakened America by exhausting its economic power and military might in a futile war. By the time American resolve was needed to fend off a genuine global threat, the necessary determination was no longer there. It had been wasted on the wrong cause.
The correct way to confront the Iranian threat would have been to establish a broad coalition including Russia, the European Union, Sunni Arab countries, Israel and the United States. This would have placed Iran’s leaders in a real stranglehold and forced them to abandon their nuclear project — just as Libya did in 2003.
The Republican Party could have done that in 2003 or 2005 or 2007. But Republican leaders squandered the opportunity. Worse still, the United States got bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and that sucked all the oxygen out of America’s lungs. Mr. Bush passed on to Mr. Obama a nation that had lost much of the resolve it had possessed. When faced with a real threat to world peace, America’s will was spent. It had evaporated in the violent streets of Basra and Baghdad.
Sure, Mr. Obama has made mistakes, too. After coming to office, he wasted time on a futile policy of engagement and then on ineffective sanctions. He ignored the British, French, Israelis, Egyptians and Saudis who warned him that he was being naïve and turned his back on the freedom-seeking Iranian masses in June 2009. When Mr. Obama finally endorsed assertive diplomacy and punitive sanctions in 2011 and 2012, it was too little, too late.
But Mr. Obama was operating within the smoky ruins of the strategic disaster he had inherited.
After Iraq, America is a traumatized nation, with a limited attention span for problems in the Middle East. The empire is weary. It has lost the ardor and wisdom needed to deal with the cruelest of the world’s regions and with the most dangerous of the world’s evil powers.
The Geneva agreement being negotiated is an illusion. The so-called moderate president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is an illusion, too. So is the hope that Iran’s supreme leader can be appeased. Because America missed the opportunity for assertive diplomacy, all the options now left on the table are dire ones.
Rather than pursuing a dangerous interim agreement, the West must insist that all the centrifuges in Iran stop spinning while a final agreement is negotiated. President Obama was right to demand a settlement freeze in the West Bank in 2009. Now he must demand a total centrifuge freeze in Iran.
By Rick Richman
On the New York Times op-ed page, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit writes that if an American-Iranian nuclear agreement is signed “it would represent an Iranian victory – and an American defeat.” It would “guarantee that [Iran] would eventually cross the [nuclear] finish line.” It is the product of “a Munich mind-set” creating “the illusion of peace-in-our-time while paving the way to a nuclear-Iran-in-our-time.” It is “a deeply flawed agreement” that “is an illusion”–and the “so-called moderate president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is an illusion, too.” Obama ignored allies “who warned him that he was being naïve,” and America “missed the opportunity for assertive diplomacy.” Now Obama is pursuing “a dangerous interim agreement.”
So naturally, Shavit blames Bush.
Five years into Obama’s presidency, it is a bit late to blame the predictable results of Obama’s feckless diplomacy on Bush. In 2009, Bush handed Obama a P5+1 structure already in place, having declared the U.S. was addressing Iran through a multilateral framework since a “group of countries can send a clear message to the Iranians” that “we’ll find new sanctions if need be,” beyond the multiple UN Security Council sanction resolutions already then in effect. The Bush administration also announced it was “confident that if given the opportunity to choose their leaders freely and fairly, the Iranian people would elect a government that … would choose dialogue and responsible international behavior,” rather than terrorism and nuclear weapons.
It was not Bush who thereafter: (a) stood mute as the Iranian regime stole an election and brutally repressed a popular revolt; (b) met each failure by Iran to respond to his outstretched hand with an announcement there was still “time and space” for them to respond; (c) consistently opposed stronger sanctions by Congress only to claim credit for them once they were enacted; (d) is currently pushing a bad deal, claiming sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table but that stronger sanctions would cause them to leave it; and (e) is palpably salivating for a deal to “put more time on the clock” now that time is running out and Iran is approaching the goal line.
Last Thursday, in the course of his ObamaCare press conference, Obama was asked about critics who contend only tougher sanctions will make Iran capitulate. He responded that the purpose of sanctions “was to bring the Iranians to the table” and an agreement would “provide time and space” to test whether Iran is “prepared to actually resolve this issue.” “We can buy some additional months,” he said.
But the purpose of sanctions was not to bring Iran to the table, but make Iran comply with binding UN resolutions; and additional months are precisely what Iran needs to complete its nuclear program. Obama is about to pay them $10 billion, and reduce sanctions, giving them more time and space to cross the line. It is a fiasco that can’t be blamed on Bush.
1c)Why Netanyahu won't yield
The prime minister's hard line on Iran reflects his deep sense of duty to defend the Jewish state against an existential threat.
By Amb. Michael Oren
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been labeled a warmonger, a wolf-crier and an opponent of peace at any price because of his policies on Iran.
Here's what Netanyahu's critics say: His warnings of a bad deal are designed to undermine measures to slow Iran'snuclear program and test its openness to long-term solutions. His insistence on strengthening, rather than easing, sanctions will weaken Iranian moderates and drive them from the negotiating table — precisely what Netanyahu allegedly wants. Similarly, his demands for dismantling Iran's uranium enrichment facilities and removing its nuclear stockpile are intended to replace diplomatic options with military ones.
The critics claim that he is again playing the doomsayer, the spoiler of efforts to avoid conflict and restore Iran to the community of nations.
Why would any leader subject himself to such obloquy? Why would he risk international isolation and friction with crucial allies? And why, as some commentators assert, would Netanyahu jeopardize a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear threat and drag his country — and perhaps not only his — into war?
The answers to these questions are simple.
Netanyahu is acting out of a deep sense of duty to defend Israel against an existential threat. Such dangers are rare in most countries' experience but are traumatically common in Israel's, and they render the price of ridicule irrelevant.
Moreover, when formulating policies vital to Israel's survival, the prime minister consults with Israel's renowned intelligence community, a robust national security council and highly specialized units of the Israel Defense Forces. Netanyahu may at times appear to stand alone on Iran, but he is backed by a world-class body of experts.
In 2011, these same analysts predicted that the Arab Spring, which was widely hailed as the dawn of Middle Eastern democracy, would be hijacked by Islamic radicals. They foresaw years of brutal civil strife. Netanyahu publicly expressed these conclusions and was denounced as a naysayer by many of the same columnists who are now lambasting him on Iran.
Yet it is precisely on Iran that Israeli specialists have proved most prescient. They were the first, more than 20 years ago, to reveal Iran's clandestine nuclear activities. They continued to scrutinize the program, emphasizing its military goals, even after 2003, when weaponization was purportedly halted.
Throughout several attempts at diplomacy, these experts have disclosed the ways that Iran systematically obstructedUnited Nations observers, lied to world leaders and hid nuclear facilities, such as the one at Fordow, which can have no peaceful purpose. Israeli intelligence has accurately tracked Iran's support for terrorist organizations, its role in the massacre of thousands of Syrians and its responsibility for attacks against civilians in dozens of cities around the world.
This does not mean that Israeli estimates are infallible. Since the failure to foresee the 1973 Yom Kippur War, intelligence officials are wary of long-standing conceptions and rigorously question them. Nevertheless, Israeli experts agree that for hegemonic purposes and internal security, the Iranian regime wants and needs the bomb.
Consequently, it will employ any ruse to preserve the ability to produce a weapon in a matter of weeks while obtaining some relief from sanctions.
Iranian leaders know — and Israel's analysts agree — that lessening the economic pressure on Iran will send an incontrovertible message to foreign companies, many of which are already seeking contracts with Tehran, that the sanctions that took years to build are ending. Iran could drag out any confidence-building period indefinitely while producing fissile materiel for multiple bombs.
Top-flight intelligence helped Israel grapple with the challenges posed by the Arab Spring, but the stakes regarding Iran — the lives of 8 million Israelis — are vastly greater. Pundits may posit that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is a moderate, but Israelis cannot indulge in speculation. Our margin for error is nil.
Knowing that, Netanyahu is duty-bound to warn of Iranian subterfuge, to insist that Iran cede its centrifuges, cease enrichment, close its heavy-water plant and transfer its nuclear stockpiles abroad.
He has a responsibility to explain that although Israel has the most to gain from diplomacy, it also has the most to lose from its failure. He is obliged to stress that the choice is not between sanctions and war but between a bad deal and stronger sanctions. And as the prime minister of the Jewish state, Netanyahu must assert Israel's right to defend itself against any existential threat.
Critics can call him militant or intransigent, but Netanyahu is merely doing his job. Any Israeli leader who did less would be strategically and morally negligent.
1d)The Gipper's Guide to Negotiating
The guy who is anxious for a deal will get his head handed to him.
By
ByBy
With U.S.-led talks to curb Iran's nuclear program underway in Geneva this week, American diplomats would do well to take a few pointers from the Gipper—my former boss, Ronald Reagan, that is—on how to negotiate effectively:
1. Be realistic; no rose-colored glasses. Recognize opportunities when they are there, but stay close to reality.
2. Be strong and don't be afraid to up the ante.
3. Develop your agenda. Know what you want so you don't wind up negotiating from the other side's agenda.
4. On this basis, engage. And remember: The guy who is anxious for a deal will get his head handed to him.
Take, for example, the negotiations with the Soviets that began in 1980 in Geneva over Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF). Reagan's agenda after taking office in 1981: zero intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles on either side at a time when the Soviets had around 1,500 such weapons deployed and the U.S. had none. Impossible! How ridiculous can you get?
President Reagan, right, shakes hands with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the two leaders signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.Associated Press
When negotiations with the Soviets didn't move forward, the U.S. deployed INF in Europe, including nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in West Germany. We, with our NATO allies, had upped the ante.
The Soviets walked out of negotiations. War talk filled the air. Reagan and America's allies stood firm.
About six months later, the Soviets blinked and negotiations restarted. We worked successfully on a broad agenda designed to bring real change in the Soviet outlook and behavior. On Dec. 8, 1987, seven years after negotiations began, President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty whereby these weapons would be eliminated. So much for the impossible.
Apply these ideas to the Iranian problem—the regime's increasing nuclear capacity and its unacceptable behavior. The reality is that Iran is the world's most active sponsor of terror, directly and through proxies such as Hezbollah, and it has developed large-scale enrichment capacity that far exceeds anything needed for power-plant operations.
Worse, Iran openly expresses its intent to destroy Israel. The election of President Hasan Rouhani, a "moderate" in the eyes of some, may provide a slight opening. But don't bet on it. At this point, strength in the form of sanctions is taking its toll. As with the INF negotiations, the U.S. shouldn't be afraid to up the ante.
Tehran maintains that it wants nothing more than to produce nuclear power for its people, medical research and the like. As former Sen. Sam Nunn, currently CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said on Nov. 11 in an address to the American Nuclear Society: "An agreement with Iran that allows us to test and verify Iran's claim that it has no intention of producing nuclear weapons is absolutely essential."
Moreover, if Iran has no intention of producing nuclear weapons, then Tehran should cease all uranium enrichment and immediately allow international inspections for verification. Nuclear materials for power and research facilities are readily available and have been offered to Iran for such purposes for years.
Do we have a fallback position? Yes. Allow Iran and the IAEA to identify an existing Iranian-enrichment facility that can supply what is needed for purely civilian use. Then make sure that all the other enrichment facilities and the heavy-water reactor in Iran are destroyed under international inspection. Once the job is done, sanctions will be lifted.
It has become a cliché, but it still holds true: Trust but verify. An impossible dream? Remember Reagan, who dreamed an impossible INF dream. What did the Gipper teach us? Dreams can come true when accompanied by a little reality, strength and a willingness to engage.
Mr. Shultz, a former secretary of labor, Treasury and state, and director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
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2)Barack Obama’s plummeting polls won’t help Hillary Clinton
Today’s Washington Post/ABC News poll is devastating reading for the White House. As The Post’s Dan Balz and Peyton M Craighill note, “the flawed rollout of the Affordable Care Act has pushed President Obama to the lowest point of his presidency, with dwindling faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes that have buoyed him in the past.” Barack Obama’s approval rating now stands at just 42 percent (a 6 percent drop in a month), with 52 percent of Americans now holding an unfavourable view of the president. Back in January, at the time of his inauguration, Obama had a net approval of 23 points.
Much of the disillusionment with the Obama presidency has been driven by mounting opposition to Obamacare, with 57 percent of Americans now against the government’s health care reforms, and 62 percent disapproving of the president’s handling of its rollout in recent weeks. As The Post notes, half of Americans now see Barack Obama as dishonest and untrustworthy:
On three measures of leadership and empathy that have been tested repeatedly in Post-ABC polls, Obama now is underwater on all three for the first time. Half or more now say he is not a strong leader, does not understand the problems of “people like you,” and is not honest and trustworthy. Perceptions of the president as a strong leader have dropped 15 points since January, and over the past year the percentage of registered voters who say he is not honest and trustworthy has increased 12 points.
Perhaps most damning of all, when asked “if the 2012 presidential election were being held today instead of just over a year ago, and the candidates were (Barack Obama the Democrat), and (Mitt Romney, the Republican) for whom would you vote?” 47 percent opted for Obama and 47 percent for Romney among all Americans, but among registered voters, as Politico’s Tal Kopan reported, Romney beat Obama by 49 percent to 45 percent.
It is hard to see how Barack Obama is going to recover from the pummeling he has received at the polls. Obamacare is just one big rolling disaster for the White House, and a huge political albatross that will weigh down the rest of the president’s second term. US voters also have little faith in Obama’s big government economic policies. Only 41 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, while a huge 70 percent believe the country is going down the wrong track. The US electorate also increasingly views the Obama agenda as too left-wing. Strikingly, 45 percent of Americans see Obama’s political views as “too liberal” (43 percent think his views are “just about right,”) and 46 percent think the Democratic Party’s views are “too liberal” (as opposed to 41 percent who think their views are “about right.”)
All of this is bad news for Hillary Clinton, who at present is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Many of the problems facing Obama, including a deeply unpopular health care reform, disillusionment with his economic policies, and a growing rejection of his liberal ideology, will be inherited by the former Secretary of State, who has significant problems of her own, not least the fallout from the Benghazi debacle. According toThe Washington
Post/ABC poll, 49 percent of Americans see the Obamacare law as “unworkable”, yet Clinton has championed the president’s health care reforms. Like Obama, Clinton is a firm believer in big government, and ideologically it’s hard to draw a line between the two. Barack Obama’s decline is not just the story of a president who fell to earth, but also a tale of Americans rejecting a liberal ideology that is more at home in continental Europe than it is in the United States. So far, Mrs Clinton has done nothing to suggest that her vision is any different than that of the current president.
2a)Worse Than ObamaCare
Obama's biggest failure is that he hobbled the U.S. economy.
By Dan Henninger
The ObamaCare train wreck is plowing through the White House in super slow-mo on screens everywhere, splintering reputations and presidential approval ratings. Audiences watch popeyed as Democrats in distress like Senators Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor decide whether to cling to the driverless train or jump toward the tall weeds. The heartless compilers of the Washington Post/ABC poll asked people to pick a head-to-head matchup now between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Mitt won. This is the most amazing spectacle of mayhem and meltdown anyone has seen in politics since Watergate.
No question, it's tough on Barack Obama. But what about the rest of us? For many Americans, the Obama leadership meltdown began five years ago.
In fall 2008, the U.S. suffered its worst financial crisis since the Depression. That wasn't Barack Obama's fault. But five years on, in the fall of 2013, the country's economy is still sick.
Unemployed middle-aged men look in the mirror and see someone who may never work again. Young married couples who should be on the way up are living in their parents' basement. Many young black men (official unemployment rate 28%; unofficial rate off the charts) have no prospect of work.
Washington these days kvetches a lot about what Healthcare.gov is doing to the Obama "legacy." Far worse than ObamaCare, though, is that the 44th president in his second term presides over a great nation that is punching so far below its weight that large swaths of its people have lost heart.
Getty Images
For five years, news stories have chronicled the social and economic deterioration in America of people with no jobs or weak jobs.
Here's a headline over a Gallup report: "In U.S. Fewer Believe 'Plenty of Opportunity' to Get Ahead."
Two from The Wall Street Journal recently: "Parents Serving as Emergency Support for Adult Kids," and "Workers Stay Put, Curbing Jobs Engine."
On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put out a report saying the U.S. has become a threat to global recovery. The OECD ratcheted down growth estimates almost everywhere for the rest of this year. For the euro-zone nations: -0.4%; for "emerging" India it's down to 3%; South Korea: 2.7%.
As to the U.S., the OECD says growth for the rest of the year will fall back to 1.7%. That is about the average rate of U.S. economic growth for the entire Obama presidency.
Barack Obama is not the original cause of so much economic misfortune. He didn't create an advanced U.S. economy in which the highest income returns flow to math geeks who snag jobs at Facebook FB +1.23% and Google, GOOG +0.82% while average people wonder what hit them. The shift away from traditional manufacturing began before he was organizing anyone back in Chicago. And yes, Mr. Obama has talked of the plight of "middle-class folks" from the first days of his presidency. But what has his presidency done for them? What is there to show for all the talk?
In February 2009, he got $831 billion of stimulus spending. Not even seismographs can detect the results. Every speech he outputs about "middle-class folks" offers them the same solutions: more public spending on education, on public infrastructure projects and, even now, on alternative energy. As he tirelessly repeats what remain promises, the Labor Department's monthly unemployment-rate announcement on Friday mornings has become a day of dread.
A normal post-recession growth rate of at least 4% would have made it possible for Mr. Obama and his progressive allies to chase virtually any pie-in-the-sky policy they wanted. Instead, the U.S. has fallen far off its normal 3.3% growth rate.
A U.S. president, faced with such devastating labor-market problems and persistently weak growth, should do anything—anything—that will give the American workplace more lift. Instead, he's willing to entertain just one idea: more federal spending.
You know the theory here: Spend a public dollar and you get $1.50 of economic output. It hasn't happened, but Barack Obama is gonna crank his old Keynesian Multiplier, created during the 1930s in the era of the Hupmobile, until it sputters to life.
Ponder, though, a partial list of the public-policy decisions that have flowed steadily out of the Obama administration and directly into a job-starved U.S. economy:
The no-decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and its union jobs; the 2,000-page regulatory law draped in 2010 across the entire financial sector; the shutdown in 2010 and then the slow-walking of offshore oil drilling; siccing the EPA on the utilities industry and the National Labor Relations Board on all industry; a 2010 FCC decision to regulate Internet growth; a significant tax increase this year; support this month for jacking up the federal minimum wage to over $10, certain to smother new jobs; the Justice Department's $13 billion looting of J.P. Morgan JPM +1.81% bank; and of course Hurricane ObamaCare.
Barack Obama has the U.S. economy on lockdown. It's the worst thing this president has done. American resilience, and elections, mean it won't stay this way forever. But for a lot of poor and middle-class folks, living with mom in the basement is getting old.
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3)The Fix That Won't Fix Anything
President Obama has concluded that those “bad apple insurers” aren’t so bad after all. Their health plans might not meet his high standards, but they are better than nothing.
That is one way to interpret the president’s announcement that millions of people whose health plans have been cancelled could buy them for another year—but only if insurers offer them. This is a far cry from “if you like your health plan, you can keep it.” It may have partly addressed the public’s growing distrust of the president’s promises and kept congressional Democrats in line for the moment. But it does not resolve the problem.
The White House will not go to Congress seeking a change in law. Instead, Health and Human Services will simply not enforce requirements that all insurance cover a wide range of costly benefits. If an insurer wants to extend coverage and the state insurance regulator agrees, customers who received a cancellation notice will have the option to continue with their old plan. Otherwise, they must purchase a new health plan that can be more expensive and may not offer the same access to providers as the old plan.
The health insurance industry is having difficulty with this last-minute change in direction. At least three insurance commissioners have already said they will not go along with this scheme. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners pointed to the risk of changing the rules for some plans and not others. If healthier individuals remain with their current plans, the exchange plans will face escalating costs that will drive up premiums.
There is no practical way to implement the president’s new policy soon enough to avoid causing a loss of coverage for people who have insurance today. Even when the state agrees, insurers have to assess the feasibility of extending coverage under plans that had been cancelled. Some health plans that have been cancelled will not be revived.
It will take time to make current plans available for purchase. Insurance actuaries must determine premiums for 2014 based on the general rise in health costs, changes in networks of physicians and hospitals, and whether customers will remain with their current plan. The plans must be approved by the state regulator. People who had previously been told that their coverage would be cancelled must be given time to weigh their options. This is a months-long process but there are only six weeks left between now and January 1, when many of the current policies lapse.
This forces many families to make a difficult decision. Do they purchase a plan over the next few weeks to maintain coverage, even though that plan is more expensive or reduces access to their caregivers? Do they wait to buy insurance and risk a gap in coverage, expecting that their current plan will become available on acceptable terms? If they buy coverage now, will they be able to transfer to a better plan later?
The administration argues that the decision is easy: exchange coverage will be cheaper for most people. Even if that were true, the collapse of the federal healthcare.gov website has thus far prevented all but the most determined from purchasing coverage. That situation is unlikely to be resolved by the promised November 30 deadline.
But for many, exchange plans will not be less expensive. A Kaiser Family Foundation study finds that about half of people now buying their own insurance will be eligible for a tax credit. Perhaps another 20 percent will be eligible for Medicaid coverage. That leaves a third—about 5 million people—paying the full premium.
The Affordable Care Act changes the rules of the individual insurance market. Insurers can no longer reject applicants, and they can no longer charge higher premiums for those likely to incur above-average expenses. Moreover, all policies must now cover a wider array of services than typically available in the individual market.
That raises the cost of health insurance, and the money has to come from somewhere. The federal exchange subsidy only fills part of the hole, and only for some people. The rest is supposed to come from younger, healthier people whose premiums will be higher than their expected cost—and in many cases, substantially higher than they pay today.
This is what policymakers overlooked in enacting the ACA. Washington’s obsession with Congressional Budget Office scoring from the 50,000 foot level obscured the fact that many people would be harmed at the same time many people would be helped.
The president’s fix is too little too late. Complaints are coming from families living on tight budgets who have just discovered that they will pay more so that others can receive a subsidy. That is a hard truth that will not change by delaying the higher cost a year.
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