We keep hearing about how the Republican Party is full of radical Tea Party crazies. But our latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that it’s Democrats who are out of touch with reality and well outside the mainstream.
The public overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, that current economic policies aren’t working, that President Obama is doing a bad job, that government should be smaller and that ObamaCare should be repealed. But not Democrats.
Onissue after issue, in fact, Democrats are the outliers by wide margins, according to an analysis of the December IBD/TIPP survey.
They are, by and large, Pollyanna-ish about the economy, they can see no evil when it comes to Obama or ObamaCare, and they are extremists when it comes to the size and role of the federal government.
To get a sense of just how out to lunch Democrats are these days, consider:
The economy is barely moving after four years of Obama’s “recovery,” there are millions who’ve given up looking for work, household incomes are down and poverty is up.
Not surprisingly, 64% of the public says the country is headed in the wrong direction — 71% of independents say this. But those who identify themselves as Democrats are positively upbeat. Two-thirds, in fact, are perfectly satisfied with the country’s direction. …
It’s worth noting, too, that onquestion after question, Republicans and independents are more closely aligned than independents and Democrats. You can see that clearly in the charts above.
It’s true that some of these responses simply show Democrats rallying around their guy in the White House. But the fact is that Republicans were more willing to admit to George W. Bush’s faults as a leader when they emerged, and own up to a bad economy during his tenure. …
The only reason Obama and his fellow Democrats aren’t constantly tagged as extreme is because the press is so far left that it treats them as reasonable centrists. Meanwhile, by skewing the polls, the increasingly radicalized Democratic Party manages to make the country appear more liberal than it really is.
What is sickening about these poll results is that back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Democratic Party was the natural home of people who questioned the status quo, from Vietnam to Jim Crow laws. (Even though the former was started by Democrats, and the latter was the idea of southern Democrats.) It seems today that the correct symbol for the Democratic Party is a sheep.
No, the 35th and 40th presidents are not going to run for reelection from beyond the grave. Mark Tapscott asks:
Could the GOP be on the cusp of a JFK moment on the national political scene? Before simply dismissing the idea out of hand, consider the following:
John F.Kennedy’s appeal in the 1960 presidential campaign was built around his basic summons to the country: “Let’s get America moving again.”
Fast forward to President Obama’s America, which suffers from an economy that sputters along in a slow-growth purgatory, with millions of people dropping out of the workforce, even as Obamacare pushes many of those still working to accept part-time schedules.
Now comes Washington Examiner columnist and Talk radio host (and best-selling author) Hugh Hewitt with a sensible and strategically important suggestion:
“‘What we could do, what we could be, if the federal government would go back to its limited role.’ That should be the mantra for GOP candidates for the House and the Senate, incumbents and challengers, in 2014.”
Be the party of “free markets, free enterprise, free choice and freedom, period,” and there will be “a sea-change in the makeup of Congress,”Hewitt encourages.
President Ronald Reagan likely would second Hewitt. Reagan built his political personae around his unshakeable faith in America as the “shining city on a hill.”
As he said in his first inaugural address, Americans “believe in our capacity to perform great deeds” because “after all, we are Americans.” It may be circular but it struck a chord that led to national renewal.
It’s not a chord that will be available to Democrats in 2014 or 2016, however, because they are linked to a host of negatives, thanks to Obamacare, the economic doldrums and the widespread public view that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Of course, two of those three were true in 2012, and we got another four years of Barack the Destroyer.
I agree with an unstated truth of this piece: The next GOP presidential nominee needs to be a governor. Members of Congress are not qualified to be president.
Last Resistance proves that any choice Barack Obama makes can indeed be the wrong choice:
With all of the problems associated with Obamacare and the failed rollout of the online signup program, President Obama has left small business owners in a paradox that could be very costly to them.
In a move that Obama says will help small business owners; he delayed the launch of an online healthcare exchange for them for a year. But like many private individuals, many small business owners are finding that their policies are being cancelled due to the requirements imposed by Obamacare. This is leaving small business owners with no insurance for them or their employees and no access to an exchange program for a year. …
At a time when the economy is still struggling and many small business owners are barely keeping their businesses running, this insurance nightmare may be more than some can bear. Obama has repeatedly promised to help small businesses, but his actions say otherwise.
Earlier this year, small business owners were facing a number of tax increases that Obama instituted. If a small business owner makes $250,000 or more a year, they faced combined tax increases of 6%-10%.
Obama has also been pushing to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $9 per hour. In August, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) wanted the minimum wage pushed up to $10 per hour. Fast food workers belonging to unions, most of which are Democrats and followers of Obama were pushing for minimum wages of $15 per hour.
Between increased taxes, possible increase in minimum wage and decreased retail sales, the healthcare insurance nightmare of having policies cancelled and no way to sign up for new coverage for a year can and probably will be the breaking point for some small business owners.
I heard recently from someone who invested her entire retirement savings into her business. Sometimes you have to do things like that. (During the 1990s one way to find startup capital was to fill out every credit card application you got in the mail, and max out the cards immediately to buy whatever your businesses needed to start.)
One comment on the story disagreed with the term “cancelled.” The commenter, who claimed to have worked in insurance, said that policies can generally canceled only for two reasons — nonpayment of premiums, and fraud on the application. However, health insurance companies can decline to renew policies — if, for instance, the policy no doesn’t meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, such as required maternity care for anyone of any age — and that is what’s happening. To the business owner who suddenly loses his or her employees’ insurance, the result is the same.
Possibly the dumbest argument against a governor for the GOP nominee in 2016 is that Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a governor. This brainstorm from a popular right-wing radio host is the sort of jaw-dropping inanity that reminds you what happens when you stay hermetically sealed in the right-wing echo chamber. To respond: There is no Lincoln around. Honest. Given the choice between available ideologues who have accomplished nothing and conservative, successful governors, it might be a good idea, generally speaking, to go with the latter.
The comment betrays a fundamental disconnect on the right. They suppose thinking “right” (no-holds barred conservatism with no desire to appeal to the center) is the key to winning and governing. (Well, it’s not, unless they like losing and complaining afterward, which is a distinct possibility). Ideology without capacity and extremism without common sense are essentially what we have now and what got the GOP into the shutdown mess. It’s how radio talk show hosts succeed; it’s never been a formula for governing well. (Ronald Reagan, the idol of the far right, made all sorts of compromises, including signing a major immigration reform bill.)
Both the liberal pundit class and the right wing of the GOP see the presidency much as President Obama does. It is about big thoughts and big speeches, they would tell you. In fact, the presidency is about much more. It is instructive to understand which personal qualities and skills make good chief executives.
The better presidents in the modern era are experts at dealing with those with whom they disagree, rolling up their sleeves to make hard choices in tough negotiations, adjusting their world view based on real-world experience, exercising prudence and delivering unpleasant truths to supporters, taking half or three-quarters of a loaf, finding smart advisers (not yes men) and showing courage and determination when faced with politically unpopular but necessary decisions. Harry Truman supporting a Jewish state. Richard Nixon going to China. Bill Clinton conducting an air war in Europe. George W. Bush ignoring his own military men to rescue the United States from defeat in Iraq. None of these were functions of ideology; they were, to a large extent, improvisation based on the demands of the moment and examples of political fortitude.
I don’t suggest ideology is unimportant or that a candidate’s agenda should be disregarded. Ronald Reagan knew the Soviet Union was evil and was determined to sink it. Obama is a committed left-wing statist. The results will be quite different if dramatic differences in belief are present. But experience, character, executive leadership and that first-class temperament (largeness of spirit, calm under fire) that Obama turned out not to possess are equally (if not more) important.
In fact, Obama demonstrates why the next president should not come from the House or the Senate (sorry, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, etc.) No one in Congress is required to get anything at all done; all they have to do is give speeches and vote yea, nay or “present,” and figure out how to get federal goodies doled out into their states. (See Obama, Barack, senator.) Governors are required to get, at an absolute minimum, yearly or biennial budgets passed. Every president on Rubin’s list after Lincoln was either vice president (Truman and Nixon) or a governor (Reagan, Clinton and Bush) before becoming president. None, including Reagan, were ideologically perfect. Any of the governors-turned-presidents were better presidents than the disaster currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
If Hillary Clinton wants to become president, she should have run for governor of New York. If Cruz wants to become president, he should run for governor of Texas; conveniently, Gov. Rick Perry announced he’s not running for reelection, presumably to run for president. Perry is therefore more qualified to be president than Obama was and Hillary Clinton is.
George Will introduces the rest of the U.S. to Scott Walker:
In 2011, thousands of government employees and others, enraged by Gov. Scott Walker’s determination to break the ruinously expensive and paralyzing grip that government workers’ unions had on Wisconsin, took over the capitol building in Madison. With chanting, screaming and singing supplemented by bullhorns, bagpipes and drum circles, their cacophony shook the building that the squalor of their occupation made malodorous. They spat on Republican legislators and urinated on Walker’s office door. They shouted, “This is what democracy looks like!”
When they and Democratic legislators failed to prevent passage of Act 10, they tried to defeat — with a scurrilous smear campaign that backfired — an elected state Supreme Court justice. They hoped that changing the court’s composition would get Walker’s reforms overturned. When this failed, they tried to capture the state Senate by recalling six Republican senators. When this failed, they tried to recall Walker. On the night that failed — he won with a larger margin than he had received when elected 19 months earlier — he resisted the temptation to proclaim, “This is what democracy looks like!”
Walker recounts these events in “Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge” (co-authored by Post columnist Marc Thiessen). Most books by incumbent politicians are not worth the paper they never should have been written on. If, however, enough voters read Walker’s nonfiction thriller, it will make him a — perhaps the — leading candidate for his party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
Act 10 required government workers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries to their pensions (hitherto, most paid nothing) and to pay 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums (up from 6 percent but still just half of what the average federal worker pays). Both percentages are well below the private-sector average. By limiting collective bargaining to base wages, Act 10 freed school districts to hire and fire teachers based on merit, and to save many millions of dollars by buying teachers’ health insurance in the competitive market rather than from an entity run by the teachers’ union. Restricting collective bargaining to wages ended the sort of absurd rules for overtime compensation that made a bus driver Madison’s highest paid public employee.
Act 10’s dynamite, however, was the provision ending the state’s compulsory collection of union dues — sometimes as high as $1,400 per year — that fund union contributions to Democrats. Barack Obama and his national labor allies made Wisconsin a battleground because they knew that when Indiana made paying union dues optional, 90 percent of state employees quit paying, and similar measures produced similar results in Washington, Colorado and Utah. …
To fight the recall — during which opponents disrupted Walker’s appearance at a Special Olympics event and squeezed Super Glue into the locks of a school he was to visit — Walker raised more than $30 million, assembling a nationwide network of conservative donors that could come in handy if he is reelected next year. Having become the first U.S. governor to survive a recall election, he is today serene as America’s first governor to be, in effect, elected twice to a first term. When he seeks a second term, his opponent will probably be a wealthy rival who says her only promise is to not make promises. This is her attempt to cope with an awkward fact: She will either infuriate her party’s liberal base or alarm a majority of voters by promising either to preserve or repeal Act 10. …
“Outside the Washington beltway,” he says pointedly, “big-government liberals are on the ropes.” No incumbent Republican governor has lost a general election since 2007. Since 2008, the number of Republican governors has increased from 21 to 30, just four short of the party’s all-time high reached in the 1920s. He thinks Republican governors are in tune with the nation. If reelected, he probably will test that theory.
I remain skeptical that Walker will run for president, let alone get elected. But I like the phrase “President Walker” merely because it makes liberals turn blue with rage.
Such as this exchange chronicled by The Blaze after the death of actor Paul Walker Saturday:
After news of actor Paul Walker’s death, an editor of a feminist website turned to Twitter to ask why Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker couldn’t have perished instead.
“Why couldn’t it be Scott Walker?” Jezebel news editor Erin Gloria Ryan tweeted Saturday night.
… But Ryan defended her comment about 15-minutes after she initially posted it to social media.
“Wow, conservatives are about as bad at jokes making fun of celebrity worship as they are at governing Wisconsin,” she said, according to The Desk.
About 90-minutes later, she removed the controversial tweet and issued an apology.
“Dumb joke deleted,” she wrote. “Apologies.”
“I don’t wish death on anyone,” she later added. “Joking about that was insensitive and inappropriate.”
Fifty years ago today was one day after John F. Kennedy’s funeral, and two days before Thanksgiving.
You may have been able to tell my ambivalence about Kennedy and his assassination and legacy from the previousweek of posts. On the one hand, since my days at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Madison, I’ve been interested in Kennedy, and since I became a media geek, I’ve been fascinated at how the Kennedy assassination was covered by this new thing called TV news.
Perhaps the reactions of some to his death are understandable given that no president had been assassinated in the memory of almost everyone alive in 1963. (William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.) Franklin Roosevelt died 18 years earlier, but the better comparison in terms of trauma wasn’t FDR’s death but the Pearl Harbor attack Dec. 7, 1941. (Too few people will remember that a week from Saturday.)
On the other hand, the term “revisionist history” must have been created for, if not by, Kennedy’s postmortem myth-makers, Jackie Kennedy, speechwriter Ted Sorenson, and historian Theodore S. White. The past week has demonstrated that many people who lived through Kennedy’s assassination haven’t let reality get in the way of their memories about how inspiring he was, because apparently a lot of Baby Boomers needed to be inspired by someone in authority.
Everything people who were alive when Kennedy died knows what they remember from the coverage of a sycophantic news media that covered up pertinent information like his health. (As for his extramarital flings, I pose a question I asked in print about Bill Clinton’s extramarital flings: If someone is willing to violate vows made before God and man, why should he be trusted in anything else?)
What we know about Kennedy is less than we think we know. From all accounts, he was an actual war hero to the survivors of his PT boat. He apparently volunteered for active Navy duty in spite of his father’s efforts (which were successful with his two younger brothers) to get him cushy desk duty for the duration of World War II. And we have barely 1,000 days of presidency, which followed a House and Senate career with his friend, Sen. Joe McCarthy. (Yes, that McCarthy.) He looked and sounded like the president people wanted, but image and reality are not the same thing.
I read a blog that claimed that after the Cuban Missile Crisis he was much more interested in peace with the Soviet Union and looking to get the U.S. disentangled from Vietnam. The evidence on each is unpersuasive. He started the Peace Corps, and Peace Corps volunteers would say that was worthwhile. Everything else — civil rights, tax cuts and the space program come to mine — were accomplishments of his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, or overstatements in terms of JFK’s actual interest in them. And in reality, whatever he did in terms of curbing the Soviets was insufficient to actually defeating the Soviets, and that took until the 1980s and presidents determined to end the Soviet Union.
So we’re left with image and memory of a time people who were alive then think was simpler. (The past is always simpler than the present, and the future seems simpler than the present.) Maybe he was a good father, but a good father doesn’t play around on his children’s mother. Kennedy simply wasn’t president long enough to have a significant record. When, early in NBC-TV’s coverage on Nov. 22, 1963, Chet Huntley said “this is no time for speculation; facts are all that are warranted,” he was right then and now. Kennedy’s myth machine created Camelot, based on a Broadway play that, like much of Kennedy’s presidency, was fiction.
One wonders when we’re going to grow up and stop looking to politicians for inspiration that should come from elsewhere, or nowhere. Politicians, whether Democratic (Barack Obama, Tammy Baldwin, whichever Democrat is going to lose to Scott Walker next year) or Republican (Walker, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul) or nonpartisan, are interested in preserving and increasing their own power first and foremost. (One word: Watergate.) Everything a politician has, in terms of power, is taken from you. Those are cynical statements. John F. Kennedy was a cynic.
On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963 around 12:30 p.m., John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy were riding in a motorcade in downtown Dallas.
At the same time, those watching a CBS-affiliate TV station in the Eastern Time Zone (and therefore not viewers of WISC-TV in Madison, which was carrying “The Farm Hour”) were watching this:
About seven minutes later, listeners to ABC radio stations heard this:
About three minutes after that, the aforementioned CBS viewers saw this:
Those listening to the biggest Top 40 station in Dallas had their listening to the Chiffons (given what we now know about Kennedy, an ironic choice of song) interrupted:
Those watching whatever their NBC-TV station was carrying around 12:45 heard this …
… while those watching WFAA-TV in Dallas at the same time saw this:
Those watching ABC-TV’s rerun of “Father Knows Best” (again, in the Eastern Time Zone) saw this:
From then on, for the first time in history, all three TV networks presented wall-to-wall (or as close as possible; most TV stations went off the air after midnight) coverage of breaking news:
I have great interest in JFK’s assassination and coverage thereof for a couple of reasons. I went to John F. Kennedy School in Madison, so that may be part of it, in addition to my being a media geek.
Coverage of Kennedy’s assassination came a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would have qualified for breaking news had the technology existed to bring live bulletins beyond someone sitting in front of a camera or microphone reading a script.
What is interesting from viewing the coverage is the quality of most of the TV coverage for an unprecedented (for TV) event. It was far from perfect (the ABC-TV coverage is particularly difficult to watch early on), but live remote reports were rare even when they could be set up in advance, let alone when they needed to be set up on the spur of the moment. NBC had its own problems getting a telephone report from Robert MacNeil (later of PBS’ MacNeil–Lehrer Report).
In comparison, the local radio coverage left something to be desired. Perhaps it’s because coverage standards have changed, but it blows my mind (pun not intended) that radio stations would report that the president had been shot in their own city, and then go back to their usual programming (music and, in one case, a Bible program). One reason is that radio news reporters were strewn all over the area to cover Kennedy’s several appearances in Fort Worth and Dallas. One station went between its own coverage and CBS radio coverage, while another went between its own coverage and NBC radio coverage, which also incorporated NBC TV coverage.
TV initially did the same thing. Imagine today watching, say, reports that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and then being asked to stay tuned for later bulletins. In the nearly five decades since today, viewers expect wall-to-wall coverage, whether or not actual news is broadcast or repeated endlessly intertwined with less-than-factually-based observation and speculation.
There were mistakes, because there are always mistakes in such coverage. Lyndon Johnson was reported to also have been shot and to have had a heart attack. (Imagine the panic that briefly created.) A Secret Service agent was reported to have died. (Oswald killed a Dallas police officer after shooting Kennedy.)
Since there was no such thing as a minicam and satellites weren’t in much use yet, there is no tape of the actual announcement from White House assistant press secretary Malcolm Kilduff:
Nearly everything (except for CBS-TV’s NFL games on Sunday, since, unlike the American Football League, the NFL did not cancel games Nov. 24, a decision NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle later regretted) was knocked off the air for the next four days. That included NBC’s “Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre” on Friday, CBS’ Jackie Gleason and “Gunsmoke” Saturday, and CBS’ Ed Sullivan and NBC’s “Bonanza” on Sunday.
One is struck on watching the coverage how Kennedy’s assassination emotionally affected those covering it in a way I doubt would be repeated in today’s cynical age:
From nearly 50 years later, some reporters and commentators sound as if they were in the tank for Kennedy — or, more accurate, Kennedy the image:
A rather clear-eyed, even cold commentary came from NBC’s Edwin Newman, a UW grad:
Had I been a columnist or commentator (who might have actually voted for Kennedy instead of Richard Nixon, particularly had I been able to discern what a disastrous president Nixon would become) in late November 1963, I might have peered through my glasses or newfangled contact lenses, puffed on my pipe, and typed out something like this:
On Monday, Americans will get to witness on television something most have never seen before, except possibly in a theater newsreel — a state funeral. This country’s last state funeral took place in 1945 upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
It was noted at the time of President Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 that this country had an unprecedented number of living former presidents — Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy’s predecessor; Harry Truman, Eisenhower’s predecessor; and Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt’s predecessor. It is one of many cruel ironies of this weekend that all three have outlived our youngest elected president.
Kennedy was not our youngest president; that was Theodore Roosevelt, who became president upon the assassination of William McKinley, the last president to have been assassinated before Friday. However, our youngest elected president is also the youngest to have died in office.
Those men who fought in and survived World War II will note the additional irony of one of their own, who had his PT boat cut in two and sunk by a Japanese destroyer 20 years ago, surviving that only to die of violence back in this country.
When you reach the age of President Kennedy, you start to notice when people of your own age show up in the obituary columns. Usually, their deaths are because of heart attacks or car accidents or cancer. President Kennedy projected youth, energy and vitality, thanks in large part to his family. Whether or not you voted for him, most men of President Kennedy’s age or with a young family identified with him much more than with any other president of our memory. And now, Mrs. Kennedy will have to raise their two young children by herself, a widow thanks to, according to the wire reports, a former Marine who left this country for the Soviet Union.
President Kennedy knew much tragedy in his short life. Two of his men on PT 109 were killed in the collision with the Japanese destroyer. His older brother, Joe, died during World War II. One sister, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. Another sister, Rosemary, is retarded and in a nursing home. Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy had a stillborn daughter and another son, Patrick, die shortly after birth earlier this year. The president’s father suffered a massive stroke earlier this year. This latest Kennedy family tragedy is now the nation’s tragedy as well.
Those readers who were around in the 1940s remember where they were when news was reported about the Pearl Harbor attack and the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Now, this generation has its own where-were-you-when moment. This moment, though, reflects poorly on the United States of America.
I tried to write that what-if column from the viewpoint of 1963. (Hence the term “retarded” to describe Rosemary Kennedy, who had a low IQ and was the victim of a lobotomy ordered by her father, a world-class scumbag.) Americans then and now like to think of ourselves as idealists. A lot of Americans got into government because of Kennedy and what he seemed to represent. Even though Kennedy defeated a presidential candidate just four years older, Kennedy represented to most Americans youth and vigor. (We know now from his medical record that that was an inaccurate representation, as was a great deal of his life story.) He also represented nearly unlimited possibility, such as his embracing a flight to the Moon.
Those of my generation have never experienced an assassination of a president, though an attempt was made on Ronald Reagan’s life. So it’s hard to say how we’d react today to a similar event. Much of the reaction would be based on our political worldview, which is the wrong motivation. We are much more cynical today for good reason, and we see politics as a zero-sum game — one side wins, which means the other loses.
Paul Ryan is ready to move beyond last year’s failed presidential campaign and the budget committee chairmanship that has defined him to embark on an ambitious new project: Steering Republicans away from the angry, nativist inclinations of the tea party movement and toward the more inclusive vision of his mentor, the late Jack Kemp.
Since February, Ryan (R-Wis.) has been quietly visiting inner-city neighborhoods with another old Kemp ally, Bob Woodson, the 76-year-old civil rights activist and anti-poverty crusader, to talk to ex-convicts and recovering addicts about the means of their salvation.
Ryan’s staff, meanwhile, has been trolling center-right think tanks and intellectuals for ideas to replace the “bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs” that Ryan blames for “wrecking families and communities” since Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964.
Next year, for the 50th anniversary of that crusade, Ryan hopes to roll out an anti-poverty plan to rival his budgetary Roadmap for America’s Future in scope and ambition. He is also writing a book about what’s next for the GOP, recalling the 1979 tome that detailed Kemp’s vision under the subtitle, “The Brilliant Young Congressman’s Plan for a Return to Prosperity.”
Ryan “has always been more than the budget guy. His vision is much broader than that,” said Bill Bennett, a conservative political theorist who worked with Kemp at Empower America, where Ryan got his start. “You can’t be the governing party unless you offer people a way out of poverty.” …
Advisers recall Ryan in workout clothes in a Des Moines Marriott, telling campaign officials in Boston that he had two requests: First, to meet the staff in person. And second, to travel to urban areas and speak about poverty.
No one said no. But with Romney focused relentlessly on Obama’s failure to improve the economy for middle-class Americans, the idea always seemed off-message. “We struggled to find the right timing to dovetail it into our messaging schedule,” Romney strategist Ed Gillespie said via e-mail.
Ryan adviser Dan Senor said Ryan argued that “47 million people on food stamps is an economic failure.” But Ryan did not get clearance to deliver a speech on poverty, his sole policy address, until two weeks before the election.
Ryan had “frustration during the campaign for obvious reasons. His message, which was more than jobs and business, was secondary, subsidiary. So you didn’t get the full Ryan,” said Bennett, who vacationed with Ryan and his family in Colorado this summer. When the campaign was over, Ryan found himself “wanting to say more about who he was and introducing that broader agenda.”
Right Wisconsin adds:
Conservatives ought to be encouraged and excited about the prospect of Ryan authoring and proposing an anti-poverty agenda that embraces volunteerism, service, opportunity, and prosperity rather than government dependence.
Despite the obvious failure of the liberal ‘War on Poverty,’ conservatives have largely avoided talking about poverty for the better part of 50 years. It is long overdue that conservatives engage this vital issue with ideas and compassion.
It’s been said for years that the War on Poverty and its now trillions of dollars in government spending has been as successful at alleviating poverty as spending no money at all would have been.
One of the more negative aspects of political life is the relentless drive towards dividing the world into what Carl Schmidt called “friends and enemies”. Such division, often appropriating for itself the characterization of political realism, suggests that attempts at finding a common good are flights of romantic idealism. The modern mass media metastasize this constant degenerative danger inherent in political life because conflict, not dialogue, sells. It is as if the Socratic dialogues—where participants engaged in robust dispute without resorting to persecution—were but a fable. Given at least one version of the Apology, perhaps the ultimate degeneration of political life into friends and enemies is inevitable. Still, let us attempt, precisely when partisan passion is at its crescendo, to rise above the degeneration and inquire dispassionately into the important matter of Edward Snowden.
Assuming Mr. Snowden is not simply a spy for a rival power, but an authentic citizen concerned with abuse of power and usurpation of rights, he has already learned the hard way about friends and enemies. The Chinese and Russian regimes are certainly comparatively freer and better places than a few decades ago. Yet they are no greater sanctuaries of human rights than the United States. If anything, the kind of government surveillance and secrecy that Edward Snowden protests against in America has been the norm in Russia and China for years. No PATRIOT Act was necessary to trigger it, as neither regime ever had much of a limited constitutional government to subvert in the first place. Cuba, which appears poised as another possible temporary sanctuary for Mr. Snowden, is also not the greatest champion of human rights—though it too, in fairness, has made strides in the direction of freedom recently. The point, however, is that in trying to disassociate himself from American government, Mr. Snowden cannot help but to associate with governments whose records on civil rights are possibly as bad if not worse than America’s.
By no means does this imply guilt by association. Rather, it suggests that Mr. Snowden may become a useful prop for nation-states seeking to undermine American policy. In politics, it is very difficult to announce an enemy without making unwanted friends. In the case of Mr. Snowden, these friends who routinely monitor the emails of their citizens (in the case of China and Russia) blunt any moral point he may have been hoping to make about privacy rights as a whistleblower. The more Mr. Snowden relies on these new friends for protection against American prosecutors, the more he will risk tarnishing his reputation. After all, if he is so morally opposed to American surveillance practices, will he also speak out against similar practices in Russia and China? Since he will not, then we may fairly ask why his indignation is not universal, but rather directed only at America? Why is it morally proper to accept even passive assistance from foreign countries who practice the very internet surveillance Mr. Snowden faults America for?
Some may say that this is an exceedingly high standard of morality. What else, Mr. Snowden’s apologists might contend, could he have done? Where else could he go? One possibility would have been to resign in protest, seek legal counsel and perhaps even seek political support within the United States. By fleeing, Mr. Snowden is effectively communicating not only that his country’s National Security system is criminal, but also that his nation’s legal system is unreliable. He is, effectively, making a very negative statement about the rule of law in America. As such, he necessarily risks antagonizing not only potential sympathizers in the national security establishment, but in the legal establishment as well. He is communicating to the world that China and Russia now have greater legal protections for free speech, internet privacy and the rule of law than America. Is this really true?
Perhaps; perhaps not. The days of the Cold War are over, and only a few insignificant regimes exist which still cling to truly totalitarian practices. The rest of the world—China, Russia and America with them—are all in a muddled area. Globalization has universalized certain practices, some good, some bad. Most are not extreme and are hard to categorize as giving any one particular country the moral high ground. As a matter of fact Edward Snowden’s revelations, much like Wikileaks, are actually not all that shocking. Was anyone in doubt that the American government was monitoring emails and telephone calls, or at least had the legal right to access such records from private entities after fulfilling certain procedural formalities? Wasn’t this made explicit at least ever since the PATRIOT act was passed and signed into law? Didn’t opponents to the law make this explicit?
One can of course make the case that this law must be repealed or scaled back, and certainly a change in American foreign policy from a desire to remake the world in the image of Kansas to one prioritizing the proverbial defense of Kansas, would facilitate such change. Imperial tools are easily removed when imperial foreign policy is removed in favor of republicanism. The notion that it is possible to maintain high levels of military and intelligence operations throughout the world and ensure transparency is dangerously absurd. It is dangerous because secrecy is an obvious prerequisite to military success; it is absurd because in our democratic dementia we sometimes misunderstand the nature of government and politics, applying rather silly and unprofessional standards to it, like demanding “transparency” from offices the explicit purpose of which is secrecy.
Both Presidents Washington and Eisenhower, arguing against an over-extended, imperialistic foreign policy in their farewell addresses, did so on the basis of a realistic view of government. Both understood that the particular character of republican institutions could not be sustained by what Washington called “foreign intrigue”, nor by excessive influence of that faction Eisenhower identified as the “military industrial complex.” Yet both men also understood that, as Washington put it, such policy ought “not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements.” Certainly President Eisenhower did not misunderstand it. Nor, it must be admitted, did President Obama when fulfilling existing engagements, negotiated by his predecessor, according to which American troops were to leave Iraq. …
Mr. Snowden, like many Americans, apparently felt great concern over the extent of government intrusion into private life facilitated by the PATRIOT act. Sadly, he decided to act outside of the law, in a manner reminiscent of Wikileaks, which insist that “existing engagements” as Washington called them, are immaterial. One important facet of the maintenance of credibility in such engagements is secrecy. Secrecy in government, like war itself, may attack our moral sentiments, but if we think for a moment, we will realize its broader ethical justification. Need we explain the moral validity of the maintenance of secrecy in voting, or in negotiating business? Do citizens who serve as public figures suddenly lose the right to secrecy when they enter public life? Did Mr. Nixon really have no right to keep his own counsel? Shall we transform the Presidency and the diplomatic corps into a reality TV program to satisfy public gossip?
The charge that government can abuse secrecy under the pretext of national security is legitimate, but the remedy is not to compel transparency at the cost of the real benefits to be had from secret council amongst officers of the government. Instead, we should change policy so as to disengage government from imperial practices that risk the exploitation of growing power and secret council. Some might recoil at the notion that secrecy has any place in government, but serious reflection should dispel any doubts. …
Finally, Edward Snowden, like Julian Assange before him, has taken the law into his own hands. Supposedly, he has done so for a higher cause. One wonders whether American political life has collapsed to such lows as to really make it necessary? If Mr. Snowden can be justified, why can others not? Will those who view Mr. Snowden as a hero support general mutiny amongst soldiers, police officers and the like? Should doctors, construction workers and the like go on strike, break all laws and public ordinances they find in violation of morality? Should we stop paying taxes? Would all conscientious lawbreakers be justified if Mr. Snowden is justified? What are the acceptable limits of civil disobedience in democratic society? Does it tell us something about patriotism that those who practiced civil disobedience alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. did not flee the country but accepted prison to satisfy the high calling of their consciences?
These are all very hard questions. Perhaps a good starting point towards an answer is the recognition that where we still have free elections, we still have an obligation to abide by their results and a right to vehemently disagree with them. The right comes in natural conjunction with the obligation. Just as the obligation to abide by laws we disagree with does not cancel out our right to disagree, so too our right to disagree cannot cancel out our obligation to abide by the law in a liberal democracy. If it does—if we say “my right to disagree leads to my right to ignore the law— all in the name of higher morality”—then we introduce a sort of inverse Kantian categorical imperative towards mob rule. Everyone will then, at their discretion, decide when and when not to follow the law. That kind of disintegration of fidelity towards law amongst the people will destroy the constitutional republic we have far quicker than bad government ever could. Lincoln taught us as much in his brilliant Lyceum address.
It is true that a greater tendency to violate laws grows when laws are long, complex, proliferate and invasive; but, restraint must somewhere be exercised, prudent judgements somewhere be made. Edward Snowden, as of this writing sitting in Moscow with a bag full of classified American intelligence, under the verbal protection of once KGB-man Vladimir Putin, may have acted rather imprudently. Is he hero or traitor? Either way, he is certainly tragic.
Continuing our theme of this week of being unimpressed by the fiction known as Camelot, Jonathan S. Tobin:
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This means that all things JFK are back in vogue from ghoulish rehashing of the details of his murder (what Mona Charen aptly termed “assassination porn”), to the generally moronic conspiracy theories about the events of 11/22/63 as well as fierce debates about the legacy of the 35th president.
To some extent this is understandable. Kennedy’s death was probably the single most traumatic event for most Americans in between the attack on Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Moreover, as we have already been told endlessly and at length in just about every publication online or in print, Kennedy’s death while still young and handsome and before his successor’s administration was mired in Vietnam and the turmoil of the late 1960s has transformed him into a symbol of an earlier, less cynical era. But while conservatives and liberals are fighting over Kennedy and baby boomers are wallowing in Camelot nostalgia, some perspective is in order. Though he ranks high among our presidents in terms of symbolism, even in a week such as this it is not out place to point out that the obsession about his 1,000 days in office is completely disproportionate to his historical significance. If this anniversary is probably the last time anyone will make much of a fuss about Kennedy it is because once the generation that remembers where they were when they found out he was shot is gone, few will care about him.
To note this fact is not to dismiss Kennedy or to insult his memory. It is due to the fact that his presidency must, at best, be given a grade of incomplete simply because it was cut short by Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets. But unless we, as Kennedy apologists are wont to do, play the “what if” game and assume that if he had lived he would have altered course and avoided escalation in Vietnam (as Lyndon Johnson operating under the influence of Kennedy Cabinet holdovers did not) and emphasized civil rights (as Johnson did), the argument for him as anything other than a transitional figure with slim accomplishments is not very convincing. If Kennedy’s presidency is remembered for anything other than the tragic manner in which it ended once the baby boom generation is no longer around, it will be because it was the first in which style was more important than substance as the magic of JFK’s charisma was conveyed to the nation via the magic of television. …
The JFK mythmakers’ success was rooted in the way Kennedy appealed to America’s desire for a hero. He looked and sounded the part and though he accomplished relatively little, the tag stuck.
Of course, Kennedy had many outstanding qualities and some attractive elements in his biography. He was a genuine war hero and a man with the sort of grace in public that is a rarity in politicians. His presidency was also not without momentous events. JFK’s legion of admirers in the media and in the ranks of popular historians have elevated the Cuban Missile Crisis into the Gettysburg of the Cold War, but though he deserves credit for avoiding armed conflict, it was not quite the triumph that the Kennedy myth machine made it out to be. It was precipitated by Kennedy’s terrible performance in his first summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that left the latter thinking he was an indecisive pushover. And it would be years before most Americans realized that the deal to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba that was presented as such a triumph for Kennedy was offset by the U.S. withdrawal of missiles from Turkey. Kennedy’s role in the Civil Rights struggle is also a keynote of attempts to lionize, him but the fact was that he did little more than his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower and not nearly as much as Lyndon Johnson.
If both conservatives and liberals wish to claim him, it is not because any of this matters as much as the work of other, more important presidents but because of the genius of the public-relations package his followers managed to sell the country both during and after his time in office. That’s why conservatives and liberals think it worth the bother to fight over him. Author Ira Stoll is right to claim in his interesting new book that Kennedy’s instincts were conservative and that if you transpose his positions on most issues in the late ’50s and early ’60s to today’s political landscape, his fiscal conservatism, belief in tax cuts, and assertion of a vigorous anti-Communism and strong defense fits more comfortably on the right than the left. Would he have shifted left with the rest of his party if he had lived? Who knows? But like lifting any other president out of his historical context, the exercise serves more to show how politics in this country has changed than to tell us what an older JFK would have done. Personally, I don’t think he was much of a conservative or a liberal. He was, instead, a talented political opportunist of the first order who might have been great (like other presidents who grew in the office) if he had been given more opportunity and greater challenges.
The generation that remembers him clings to his memory because inflating an articulate, charming, wealthy, and morally dissolute young man into a legend allows them to relive their youth and to hold onto the dubious notion that the pre-Vietnam America was somehow more pure than the one that followed it. But once they are gone, there will be little reason to worry about JFK’s true political leanings or to try and inflate the Missiles of October into more than one of a few relatively minor Cold War skirmishes that might have gotten out of hand. Nor will there be much more reason for conspiracy nuts to twist the evidence into knots in order to put forward the absurd notion that the act of a Communist malcontent was really the work of right-wing bigots, big business, or the mafia.
The author of a new book on glamour, Virginia Postrel, observes the Kennedys’ glamour:
The Arthurian legends, especially when taken as history, demonstrate the validity of ideals including Christian virtue, power in the service of justice, and unity rather than civil war.
Camelot isn’t a true utopia, however. It destroys itself from within, through adultery, betrayal and dissension, suggesting that such ideals can exist only for “one brief shining moment.” That King Arthur may someday return from his mysterious refuge in Avalon gives the tales a messianic element, preserving their displaced meaning. But the Arthurian legends are a tragic romance — a narrative full of struggle as well as glory.
Not so the Kennedy Camelot. The Kennedy administration ended with sudden violence from without, making Jackie’s analogy doubly potent. It suggested a parallel with a legendary Golden Age while simultaneously implying that, left to itself, this new Golden Age might have continued indefinitely. This Camelot was pure glamour: a frozen moment, its flaws and conflicts obscured.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 