Making Sense of Marijuana Laws

The Obama administration announced this week that the Justice Department will no longer aggressively prosecute medical marijuana users or dispensaries like those in California, where voters legalized use of the drug with a doctor’s prescription in 1996.

Under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Justice Department had continued to enforce the federal ban on marijuana despite referenda (reeferenda?) in 14 states legalizing its medicinal use.

The question is, do states have the right to override federal drug laws? Or does the federal government’s authority trump states’ rights? The courts have been adjudicating the issue since 1973, when the first case involving the “compassionate use” of the drug was filed.

Newsprism thinks this is an easy one: the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution clearly states, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Another question that should be easy for most to answer is, should people whose suffering could be eased by marijuana be allowed to use it? This is an especially easy question to answer when other medications aren’t as effective as marijuana; for instance, marijuana most definitely increases the appetite of patients struggling to maintain their weight due to chemotherapy or AIDS.

A separate issue of interest to college students is, should students who’ve been convicted of drug possession, including marijuana, be allowed to receive federally-guaranteed student loans? At present, even simple possession of marijuana disqualifies a student from these loans for at least one year, and potentially for a lifetime.

As a new generation takes power in Washington, and as budget crises filter through the economies of more and more states, some liberalization of marijuana laws is likely. California, with its history of liberal social policies and its crippling debt, could become the first state to legalize the drug in the near future.

Tinkering with US drug laws carries with it any number of risks, including an increase in the use of any drug that is decriminalized or legalized, an increase in violence associated with the production of such drugs (as has happened in northern California already,) and a diminishing of the social stigma rightly attached to drug abuse.

How our legislators and executive branch officials choose to treat marijuana at both the state and federal levels should at the very least reflect a more enlightened, more compassionate approach than has been seen over the last few decades. Medical marijuana has far too many benefits and far too few risks to be withheld from suffering patients.

Using marijuana possession convictions to refuse student loans seems equally draconian.

Whether the drug should be made legal for all to use is a different issue, but one that can now at least receive a fair and objective hearing in state houses, governor’s mansions, Congress, and the White House.

Newsprism

Bush Shines as Cheney Whines

A longstanding, informal rule asks that outgoing presidential administrations refrain from criticizing incoming ones. Most former presidents and vice presidents obey this rule for the good of the country, though there are surely strong disagreements that would tempt one to rip a new administration a new you-know-what.

Over this past week, former Vice President Cheney chose to ignore this informal rule, while former President Bush chose to obey it.

Whatever you may think of the policies of the Bush-Cheney years, both men put the safety of the nation foremost, even if that meant violating our Constitution (warrantless wiretapping) or international law (torture, rendition).

With the new administration struggling to deal with a severe economic crisis and the consequences of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, President Bush took the high road in his speech yesterday in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and again when asked about Obama’s changes to Bush policies.

Said Bush:

I’m not going to spend my time criticizing (Obama). There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence…

I love my country a lot more than I love politics. I think it is essential that (Obama) be helped in office.

Bush went on to say that he would be happy to help Obama in any way if asked; this gracious offer comes after Bush showed great class and patriotism during the transition between administrations.

Vice President Cheney, on the other hand, has repeatedly criticized Obama for his handling of the economic crisis, his domestic policy agenda, and most recently, for his changes to American foreign policy. On CNN’s State of the Union last Sunday, Cheney said that Obama had made the country less safe, and that the president is using the economic crisis to inappropriately expand federal power. Two Cheney quotes from the CNN interview:

(Obama) is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.

(Obama’s policies are) one of the greatest expansions of federal control over the private economy, probably in the history of the republic.

Of course, Dick Cheney has every right to speak his mind in whatever forum he chooses. To undermine the president so publicly, however, weakens the nation and opens the door for future ex-administration officials to do the same.

Worst of all, it appears that Cheney is motivated in part by a desire to influence judgments of the economic and foreign policy choices of the Bush years—a process better left up to more objective voices speaking in the fullness of time—and in part by a desire to innoculate himself and his former boss from accusations of responsibility for future terrorist attacks.

Cheney also refused to criticize Rush Limbaugh, who famously hopes for the Obama administration to fail.

One wonders if Cheney shares that profoundly immature and unAmerican wish.

Newsprism

Stormy Seas, Uncharted Waters…and We’re Adding Ballast?

Let me torture a metaphor for a moment.

The Ship of State is currently sailing through stormy seas in uncharted waters.

We’ve sailed into stormier seas before—in 1873 and 1929, for instance, the US entered more severe depressions (interesting article here about which depression more closely parallels the current situation.) We’ve spent many a decade in uncharted waters as well, for example, when we transformed the country from an agrarian to an industrial economy, and from an industrial to an information economy. The first transformation helped spark the Civil War, and the second led to the bursting of the dotcom bubble and, to some degree, the credit crisis.

Now, we seem to be struggling through some stormy economic times while transforming from a nationally-based economy to a globally-based one, and from a production-based economy to a borrowing-based one.

So how should we steer the Ship of State through this storm?

On real ships, “ballast” is weight added to stabilize the craft, improve steering, and control buoyancy. Ships of state take on added debt for a similar purpose.

The problem is that both kinds of ballast take up room that could be used more productively. On the real ship, ballast replaces cargo with dead weight; on the ship of state, debt, while enhancing economic stability and allowing for more precise “steering,” the ballast of debt takes capital out of the system. Debt is like dead weight on the economy.

The budget submitted by President Obama will spend over $3.5 trillion in the upcoming fiscal year. The Omnibus Spending Bill up for a vote in Congress will spend over $400 billion in the remainder of this fiscal year. Hundreds of billions more are promised to failing banks and mortgage holders. Another $500 billion is proposed to shore up the FDIC—and if you want to see these stormy seas turn into a tsunami, just let the whisper of mass bank failures start to spread.

This is not the time to be adding tons and tons of ballast, of debt, to the Ship of State. It’s well past time to instead jettison as much debt as we can.

That means raising the retirement age and reducing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. It means cutting government programs that aren’t vital (and that would be the majority of government programs…) It means freezing government spending, not increasing it. It means making difficult and unpopular decisions that shrink the size and scope of government and put more responsibility on the individual for his or her own well being.

It means asking us—all of us, rich and poor—to make sacrifices for the greater good.

Instead, President Obama is expanding the size and scope of government, increasing benefits, and running up an already obscene national debt to levels that make the waste and idealism of George Bush look modest.

What good is stabilizing a ship with ballast, if that ballast could cause the ship to sink?

Newsprism

Promises, Promises

Barack Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congres tonight (video) was expansive in scope and evocative of hope (transcript).

To call it ambitious would be an understatement. Three major policy thrusts were put forward, each of which is designed to enhance the long-term prospects for our economy. In health care, the president proposed reforms intended to take the burden off both families and businesses by reigning in costs and eliminating waste. In energy, he promised a long overdue reversal of our dependence on oil and a concomitant effort to enable the growth and development of alternative energy sources. In education, he pledged that every American will be able to afford a college education and that by 2020, America will once again lead the world in the proportion of citizens with a college education.

On the financialal front, Mr. Obama said his administration was working to shore up the banking system and get credit flowing once again. On the fiscal front, he said that old ways of hiding government spending would come to an end, that earmarks and wasteful or ineffective programs will be terminated, and that future generations won’t be burdened with an overwhelming debt. Att the same time, he promised that no one making under $250,000 a year will have their taxes raised and that taxes will be cut for 95% of the American people. He also noted that beginning not this year, but next year, the federal budget would be gone over line by line to eliminate waste and earmarks.

The biggest challenge Obama faced was to renew confidence in the economy. Rhetorically, he did exactly that; the speech was stirring and highly encouraging. In reality, however, one wonders whether a single speech, no matter how brilliant, can have any lasting effect on a disheartened public. Both the speech and the speaker were Reaganesque; no one can say whether it’s morning in America again, but for an hour at least, if felt that way.

In foreign affairs, the president promised a new era of engagement, with aggressive diplomacy replacing unilateralism. At the same time, he threw down the gauntlet to our enemies, insisting that those who wish to harm us won’t be allowed to plot against us from safe havens anywhere, particularly from Pakistan. He declared that Guantanamo Bay will be closed and that most of our troops will be withdrawn from Iraq while maintaining order in that country.

There were three overt rebukes of the Bush administration. On torture, the president made an unequivocal declaration that the United States does not torture (implying, of course, “any longer.”) The Joint Chiefs of Staff and John McCain were among the first to stand and applaud, and rightly so. The president made a pointed reference to the squandering of the balanced budget Bush inherited from Bill Clinton, and another to the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the $700 billion dollar bank bailout.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the speech was its invocation of hope. Whether that hope is more realistic or fantastic remains to be seen. What President Obama didn’t make clear was how, short of divine intervention, we can do everything he promised while at the same time reducing the budget deficit and chipping away at the national debt.

Mr. Obama appealed to the promise of America, which he called the most powerful force for progress on earth.

The promise of America isn’t built on promises, however.

Talk is cheap. What the president promised tonight won’t be.

Newsprism

Freedom, Order, and the Limits of Individualism—A Crisis for American Conservatism

The 2006 and 2008 elections were, at least in part, rejections of the extreme individualism of American conservatism in favor of a more collectivist approach to governance.

As a libertarian conservative, I value individual liberty above all else. But I also recognize that social order is a fundamental necessity if liberty is to thrive.

Absolute freedom is anarchy, and anarchy inevitably subverts individual freedom to the tyranny of the strong and the ruthless. What good is your absolute liberty if you’re oppressed by others who will inevitably abuse theirs?

Absolute freedom is not perfect freedom; far from it.

In its original conception by Edmund Burke, modern conservatism had at its center the wisdom inherent in tradition. Social traditions evolve out of social order; that which works to create and maintain order wins out over that which destroys or erodes it. Over time, traditions may change, but their essence always tends towards the maintainance of order.

To the Burkean conservative, society is conceived of not as a collection of individuals, but as a single organism, as in Herbert Spencer’s sociology.

In the West, a tradition of individual liberty and individual responsibility has nonetheless produced a dynamic and relatively stable civilization. Liberty unleashes the most innovative and creative human faculties. The French and American Revolutions (which Burke strongly criticized at the time) produced a paradox: a high degree of individualism can lead to a thriving and prosperous, well-ordered social organism.

Individualism and social order aren’t opposed to each other, but rather depend on each other. Still, there are limits, and over the last sixteen years, the limits of individualism have been stretched to the breaking point. The reckless and selfish indulgences of Bill Clinton, while damaging to the presidency, were, compared to the policies of the Bush years, superficial distractions from an otherwise relatively centrist administration.

The character and politics of both Baby Boomer presidents were formed in the social turmoil of the sixties, but with very different results. The Great Irony of post-Reagan conservatism is that the sixties generation so famous for its leftist radicalism has produced a kind of conservatism so undisciplined, and so self absorbed, that the label is nearly meaningless. If sixties leftism made a fetish out of progress, contemporary rightism has made a fetish out of self interest.

While he has plenty of company, most notably Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush is the poster child of this undisciplined, shallow, idealistic conservatism, which has no intellectual roots, little knowledge of its history, and a poor understanding of the singularity of circumstance. Neoconservatism as practiced by Bush isn’t conservatism at all. It’s far too radical and far too rigid, rejecting the vital center—social, cultural, and political—so brilliantly elaborated in the sociology of Edward Shils.

Neoconservatives, and to a lesser degree Republicans in general, act as if self interest is all that is needed to maintain social order. What Burkean conservatives understand is that enlightened self interest undergirds social order, while merely crass, atomistic self interest erodes it. In addition, Burkeans understand that social order evolves slowly, step-by-step and institution-by-institution, with every society unique, every circumstance singular. To attempt any radical change in a society is to invite unintended consequences, and to ignore the latent virtues that exist in traditional, socially centrist institutions like marriage.

This is why on the economic front, Bush and Limbaugh’s ideology has brought such disastrous consequences. The current crisis is largely the result of unregulated and unenlightened self interest, of naked greed masquerading as virtue, of an “I’ve got mine” attitude that isolates the individual from the traditional social context so necessary to true human liberty. Gated communities and McMansions, much like the sky-scraping commercial fortresses of our cities, where the affluent are insulated from the realities of the larger society, are sad, lonesome icons of the times.

On the foreign policy front, the Bush agenda has been an equally tragic disaster. The naive and idealistic notion that American-style democracy can be transplanted into the Middle East makes as much sense as the hope that one can chop down a fig tree and expect a cherry tree to spring up in its place. Does anyone really believe that if China were the world’s hegemon, she could impose communism on America by force? Iraq and Afghanistan can’t be transformed by brute force or good intentions. To attempt to do so was the height of arrogance, and of ignorance.

The more intellectual conservatives—George Will, Pat Buchanan, David Brooks, the late William Buckley—realized early on that Bush is no conservative, at least not in any sense that retains the essence of conservatism. Similarly, intellectual conservatives, like those at The American Conservative magazine and (sadly, less and less so) National Review hold their noses while their powerful ally, Rush Limbaugh, sacrifices far-sighted traditionalism on the altar of short-term individual self interest.

Imagine Limbaugh, who quite literally advocates gluttony and ridicules frugality in our use of oil, trying to explain to Burke (or to future generations) how maximizing consumption of natural resources, rather than conserving them, is conservative!

Buckley put it this way:

Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress. And in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge.

The reaction to President Obama’s stimulus plan illustrates the crisis American conservatism faces as it attempts to balance individual liberty with social order. The same congressional Republicans who slathered bill after bill with pork during the Bush administration are suddenly aghast that Obama is spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in order to stabilize the economy they helped to devastate.

Hypocrisy reveals self indulgence and a lack of intellectual discipline, as when the same Rush Limbaugh who celebrates imprisoning marijuana users was found out to be a narcotics addict. Now, Limbaugh would rather see Obama’s social policies fail, with all the damage that would do to the greater society and the world, than see them succeed and discredit even slightly the extreme individualism of the contemporary far right. Conservatism is by its very nature center-ist, if I can coin a word, not radical or extremist.

Earlier this week, Rick Santelli of CNBC went on an on-air rant about how unfair it is that some citizens who made poor financial decisions may be bailed out by those of us who made wise ones. But wouldn’t a true conservative understand that sometimes circumstances demand some sacrifice by the few to maintain the social order necessary for all? To whine about necessary, albeit perhaps overreaching, solutions to a social crisis because you might lose a few dollars yourself is short-sighted and selfish, not conservative.

The conservative American Issues Project  condemns the $787 billion stimulus package in a TV ad that shows the three wise man as the narrator says, “Suppose you spent $1 million every single day starting from the day Jesus was born — and kept spending through today. A million dollars a day for more than 2,000 years. You would still have spent less money than Congress just did.” The upshot of the ad is that Jesus would oppose the stimulus… But what true conservative actually believes that Jesus, the champion of the poor, would oppose taxing the prosperous to protect those who are at risk in a communal crisis?

David Brooks, as usual, gets right to the heart of the matter. While he bemoans the irresponsibility of those whose greed and dishonesty led to the economic crisis, Brooks accepts, in “Money for Idiots”, that the stimulus package is, from the perspective of social order, a necessary evil. He begins,

Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible. Over the last few months, we’ve made a hash of all that. The Bush and Obama administrations have compensated foolishness and irresponsibility.

But unlike all but three Congressional Republicans, and Limbaugh, Santelli, and the American Issues Project, Brooks is able to put rigid ideology and his own self interest aside and think about what’s best for the social order. He concludes:

The responsible have been punished along with the profligate….(But) it makes sense for government to try to restore some communal order. And the sad reality is that in these circumstances government has to spend money on…people who have been idiots.

The nation’s economy is not just the sum of its individuals. It is an interwoven context that we all share. To stabilize that communal landscape, sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent. The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we’re all in this together. If their lives don’t stabilize, then our lives don’t stabilize.

I don’t relish the advance of socialism under the Democrats. But after eight years under Bush, maybe we need to turn left to get right.

And as conservatism demands, ideology must not trump the contingencies of the moment. The natural enemy of conservatism is radicalism, not liberalism. Part of the genius of the American system is that the people, that reservoir of traditional wisdom, can choose leaders suited to the circumstances of the day.

Excessive individualism subverts social order, which in turn threatens individualism itself. Freedom requires order. Until American conservatism learns that lesson, it risks being increasingly marginalized.

American conservatism must return to First Principles. We must reject the pop culture conservatism of Rush Limbaugh and the neoconservatism of George Bush in favor of the philosophical roots of conservatism: Edmund Burke’s traditionalism, Herbert Spencer’s organicism, and Edward Shils’ center-ism.

Newsprism

Pat Buchanan Infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome

In a now-famous column from December 2003, Charles Krauthammer coined the phrase “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to classify those liberals whose fear and hatred of President Bush could only be ascribed to a mental condition. The sarcastic column by Krauthammer echoes the assertion by some on the far right that liberalism isn’t merely wrong, it’s irrational (see Michael Savage’s book, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder.)

Just over six years later, BDS appears to have infected not just liberals, but some of the most respected and knowledgeable conservatives as well.

In his two most recent columns, Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative pundit most grounded in a deep understanding of the past, makes the case for George Bush’s place in American history.

Either Buchanan is deranged, or maybe, just maybe, some sufferers of BDS weren’t so much mental as prescient.

In fact, a survey of presidential historians conducted by the non-partisan C-SPAN found that Bush ranks 36th out of the 42 American presidents who served before the end of 2008. In earlier surveys of historians by the partisan History News Network, Bush was judged by the vast majority of historians as either among the worst, or actually the very worst, of American presidents.

Buchanan’s evaluation makes the historians’ look charitable. In “Metrics of National Decline,” Buchanan focuses on economic issues:

Beginning and ending in recession, the Bush presidency added a net of 407,000 private sector jobs over eight years, less than 51,000 a year, the worst eight-year record since 1927-35, which includes the first six years of the Great Depression.

By January 2009, the average workweek had fallen to 33.3 hours, the lowest since record keeping began in 1964.

From Jan. 31, 2001, through Jan. 31, 2009, 4.4 million manufacturing jobs, 26 percent of all of the manufacturing jobs in the United States, disappeared….

Between this unprecedented loss in manufacturing capacity and jobs, and the $3.5 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods alone, run up by George W. Bush, the correlation is absolute….

Since 1982, the United States has run $5.7 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, and $2.1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and automobiles. In the Bush years alone, the United States ran more than $1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and cars.

These statistics, these realities — factories closing in the United States, manufacturing jobs being outsourced in the millions to China and Asia, enormous, endless trade deficits in goods — testify to a painful truth: America is a receding and declining world power.

In “The Long Retreat,” Buchanan focuses on America’s stature and influence in the world:

America had best brace herself for difficult days ahead.

For stepping back from the dreary prognosis for Afghanistan, a new reality becomes clear. The long retreat has begun.

Whether it is in the 23 months Gen. Petraeus favors, or the 16 months Obama promised, the United States is coming home from Iraq.

The retreat from Central Asia is already underway. Expelled from the K-2 air base in Uzbekistan in 2005, the United States has now been ordered out of the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, ripped away from Georgia by Russia last August, are never going to be returned. And we all know it.

Georgia and Ukraine, most realists now realize, are not going to be admitted to NATO. We’re not going to fight Russia over the Crimea. And the U.S. anti-missile missiles and radars George Bush intended to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic will not now be deployed.

For Washington has fish to fry with Russia, and the price of her cooperation is withdrawal of U.S. military forces from her backyard and front porch. And the warm words flowing between Moscow and Washington suggest the deal is done.

With tensions rising in Korea, too, it is hard to believe President Obama will bolster ground forces on the peninsula, when even Donald Rumsfeld was presiding over a drawdown and a shifting of U.S. troops away from the DMZ.

In Latin America, the United States seems reconciled to the rise of an anti-American radical-socialist coalition, led by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and embracing Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Partisans of President Bush may blame Obama for presiding over a strategic retreat, but it is the Bush administration that assured and accelerated such a retreat.

Buchanan ends his two-column critique with a challenge to the new administration:

Obama’s assignment: Rebuild U.S. productive power, and execute a strategic withdrawal from non-vital commitments.

Economic decline at home, political retreat abroad. This is the verdict of an arch conservative who, unlike many right wing pundits, says exactly what he believes, even if that means alienating the superficial patriots who worship Rush Limbaugh. Buchanan is to Limbaugh what Ruth’s Chris Steak House is to McDonald’s .

The Republican Party risks becoming a regional, as in Southern, party if it continues down the road paved by Tom Delay, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and George Bush.

Our economic and geopolitical fall should be no more worrisome to conservatives than our moral fall. Torture, detainee abuse, extraordinaty rendition, secret prisons, suspension of habeus corpus at Guantanamo Bay, violations of the Geneva Conventions, suppressing global warming science, exploiting Terry Schiavo’s death, squandering the Clinton budget surplus, outing a CIA agent for political revenge, warrantless wiretapping, signing statements, contempt for the separation of powers, Katrina—the Bush legacy is tainted bydepravity, failure, and arrogance.

Krauthammer’s diagnosis of Bush Derangement Syndrome wasn’t entirely off base. Extemists on the web (www.dailykos.com, www.democraticunderground.com) and ideologues on the airwaves (Keith Olbermann, Randi Rhodes) demonized Bush unfairly and prematurely.

Now, while the liberal media have certainly given President Obama less scrutiny and skepticism than he deserves, many conservatives seem to be suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome. Blaming Obama for our economic and geopolitical woes is, at best, premature.

At least those of us who now condemn the Bush legacy have eight years’ worth of evidence to back our diagnosis.

Newsprism

Mirror Missing in Congressional Hearings

Yesterday’s hearing before the House Financial Services Committee combined the worst kind of political theatre with the most shameless kind of scapegoating.

Representatives Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, for example, share at least as much responsibility for the financial crisis as the bankers they were scolding. That didn’t stop Frank and Waters from heaping scorn and blame on the CEOs of eight major banks that have accepted government bailout money.

But the winner of the sanctimony contest had to be Democrat Michael Capuano, who told the bankers,

You created the mess we’re in. And now you’re saying ‘Sorry. Trust us.’ . . . America doesn’t trust you anymore.

Newsflash: Americans don’t trust Congress, or government in general, any more than they trust the captains of finance.

In the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll, the American people gave Congress a 29% approval rating, with 71% disapproving. That’s down in George Bush territory. And to be brutally honest, many among the three in ten who claim to approve of the jobs done by Congress and Bush probably don’t mean it; they’re simply loyal to a fault.

There was a prop missing in yesterday’s episode of our national situation comedy: a huge mirror facing the shameless Representatives as they spoke.

Newsprism

Republicans Get Back on Track with Steele

After six rounds of voting, the Republican National Committee yesterday elected a moderate, attorney and former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, as Chairman. The choice signals a much-needed turn towards the center for the GOP.

Eight years ago, the party controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives; today, the Democrats control all three.

Why? In part because voters have come to see the Republicans as increasingly exclusive and extremist. Moderate voices in the party have been largely overshadowed by far right pundits who, while they certainly attract lucrative audiences in the mass media, tend to alienate both liberals and moderates.

In addition, the policies and failures of the Bush administration have damaged the image of the party significantly. Those abandoning the GOP can hardly be blamed for doing so; the torture, the detainee abuse, the gulag of secret prisons, the warrantless wiretapping, the unprecedented use of signing statements that erode the separation of powers, the contempt for the Constitution—what better word to describe such policies than unAmerican?

Add to this the incompetence shown in the execution of the war in Iraq and the response to Katrina, and it’s no wonder the party has lost favor with the moderate voters whose support is so critical to both parties, but moreso to the Republicans.

The election of Steele was also to some degree a repudiation of the kind of not-so-subtle bigotry illustrated by another candidate for the Chairmanship, Chip Saltsman. Saltsman earned some notoriety last year when he mailed a CD to RNC members that included a satirical song made famous by Rush Limbaugh: ”Barack the Magic Negro”.

The face the GOP has been showing to the country and the world of late is a profoundly ugly one characterized by militarism, corporatism, nationalism, and racism.

With Chairman Steele, the GOP has a new face—by which I mean, a moderate face—and not a moment too soon.

Newsprism

Is Obama Following Bush in Overreaching?

George Bush failed to take the advice of Colin Powell in rushing to invade Iraq. The Powell Doctrine included three straightforward principles: don’t commit American military forces without 1.) a clear objective, 2.) an exit strategy, and 3.) overwhelming force.

Now, Barack Obama is at risk of mirroring Bush’s recklessness by overreaching on the economic stimulus package.

As David Brooks details in “Cleaner and Faster”, Harvard economist and Obama advisor Larry Summers recently insisted that any stimulus package should be 1.) timely, 2.) targeted, and 3.) temporary. Instead, the current plan is seriously diluted with long-term spending on pet domestic agenda items, many of which will be permanent.

We’re living with the burden of the war in Iraq; at a moment when we’re this vulnerable and overextended, do we really want to add an economic debacle to a military one?

Newsprism

Yes We Can (Say NO to Big Government Spending)

One of the first challenges President Obama faces may be the most consequential: can he say “No” to excessive spending by a Democratic Congress?

More specifically, the $825 billion stimulus package under consideration is heavy on government spending and relatively light on tax cuts. Government spending doesn’t stimulate the economy as efficiently as tax cuts and takes far longer to wend its way through the economy.

David Brooks, in “The First Test,” calls the Dem’s spending bill “a muddled mixture of short-term stimulus haste and long-term spending commitments” and notes that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that just half of the bill’s spending would even occur within the next 21 months. Brooks’ question for Obama is whether the president can say “No” to the extravagance of his own party:

President Obama is clearly going to have to show the hard way that he meant what he said about bringing change. He didn’t run for president just to sign whatever bills the Old Bulls put on his desk.

He’s going to have to prove the hard way that he meant what he said about being pragmatic and evidence-based. That means he won’t sweep a C.B.O. study under the rug simply because the findings are inconvenient.

He’s going to have to show that his plans have credibility, that a stimulus bill is really a stimulus bill, and not a Christmas tree for every special interest desire.

Ironically, and incomprehensibly, President Bush, who expanded presidential power at every turn, utterly failed to control extravagant big spending by a primarily Republican-controlled Congress. His veto pen was out of ink from the get-go.

George Will, in “Grand, Yes. Bargain, No“, gives us reason to worry. Despite Obama’s promise to trim entitlements, the House this week passed an expansion of an entitlement program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), that will now offer health care subsidies to families making as much as $100,000 per year. As Will notes,

Barack Obama vowed to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit”… (to) help chart a path toward what has been called a “grand bargain.” This Big Bang will aim to create a new universe of domestic policy by, among other things, making the entitlement menu — particularly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are more than 40 percent of federal spending — manageable.

Will suggests that the real goal of the expansion of SCHIP is “to get as many people on public coverage as possible and to have children grow up thinking that it is normal for them to get their health insurance from the government.”

House Democrats seem intent on using the fiscal crisis as an excuse to further expand an already bloated federal government.

President Obama, if he truly intends to govern based on pragmatism rather than ideology, if he truly intends to be a centrist and a uniter, should pull out his veto pen right from the start and send an unambiguous message to congressional Democrats:

No. No. No.

Newsprism

Cartoon Conservatism—Why a Libertarian Conservative Voted for Barack Obama

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I voted for a Democrat for president. As a libertarian conservative, I’ve been troubled by the turn the Republican Party has taken during the Bush years.

Under Bush, we’ve seen the largest budget deficits in the nation’s history, a near doubling of the national debt to a staggering $10 trillion, the erosion of civil liberties, an assault on Constitutional principles, the abandonment of the working and middle classes, a reckless and arrogant foreign policy, torture and sexual abuse of detainees, and the concentration of wealth in corporations and the upper class.

We’ve also seen the Republican Party devolve into a caricature of its former self, into what I call “Cartoon Conservatism.” Led not by conservative intellectuals grounded in philosphy, but by political hacks and cynical infotainers blinded by a shallow and self-serving partisanship, the GOP has betrayed what is best about America, what is most worthy of conserving.

A mean-spirited and ham-handed Tom Delay drained the House of Representatives of any sense of decorum or compromise. Karl Rove imbued the Bush presidency with an unscrupulous, winner-take-all obsession with political calculation at the expense of rational, far-sighted governance. Congressional Republicans and the White House colluded in an unprecedented spending spree that has imperiled our economic future, with almost nothing of lasting value to show for it. Billions of dollars have been siphoned upwards, filling the coffers of corporations to record levels and padding the fortunes of the wealthy. Scandal after scandal has revealed naked self-interest posing as devotion to country; Jack Abramoff and Ted Stevens bookend an era of disgrace. A level of hypocrisy that defies belief seeped into the right, from homophobic homosexuals like Larry Craig to anti-drug drug addicts like Rush Limbaugh. The rabid voices of the far right have demonized and divided, their only concern seeming to be to destroy the opposition and get rich and/or powerful doing it.

What the hell does this kind of behavior have to do with conservatism? Superficiality and selfishness have overtaken social order and enlightened self-interest as the foundation of the conservative movement. Rush Limbaugh is not so much the leader of this kind of philosophically rootless individualism, as its emblem. His glib dismissal of the scientific evidence of global climate change shows how profoundly self-centered and short-sighted Cartoon Conservatism has become.

Is that what our founding fathers risked their lives and fortunes for? Is that what our brave fighting men and women died for?

What a cartoonish vision of conservatism. a philosophy designed to promote and preserve social order, not each man’s individual wealth.

Ironically, I don’t think John McCain in any way represents what conservatism has become. He’s a national treasure, a man of integrity willing to sacrifice everything for America, a free-thinker whose refusal to submit to the Cartoon Conservatives nearly destroyed his candidacy. His greatest misstep may have been to compromise with the base (in both senses of the word—the conservative base, and the baseness of its corrupted leadership). His embrace of George Bush and his choice of Sarah Palin demonstrate that the maverick, that which is best in John McCain, was broken just when a little wildness was most needed.

David Brooks, who I think is next in line to take the mantle of intellectual conservatism from George Will, believes the right has ceded the center to the left. In a brilliant analysis of the impending defeat of a moderately conservative presidential candidate by a staunchly liberal one in a clearly center-right nation, Brooks puts the ideological landscape in stark relief:

There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom….

But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility…. Members of this tradition have one foot in the conservatism of Edmund Burke. They understand how little we know or can know and how much we should rely on tradition, prudence and habit. They have an awareness of sin, of the importance of traditional virtues and stable institutions. They understand that we are not free-floating individuals but are embedded in thick social organisms.

But members of this tradition also have a foot in the landscape of America, and share its optimism and its Lincolnian faith in personal transformation. Hamilton didn’t seek wealth for its own sake, but as a way to enhance the country’s greatness and serve the unique cause America represents in the world.

Members of this tradition are Americanized Burkeans, or to put it another way, progressive conservatives.

The first President Bush, a liberal Republican, is of this ilk, as are conservative Democrats like Sam Nunn. Both of these statesmen follow in the even footsteps of some of the greatest Americans—from Alexander Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt.

Brooks hits the nail on the head when he writes that, unlike McCain, Sarah Palin, whom 60% of the electorate judges unready for the vice-presidency, ”represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.”

Moreover, writes Brooks, praising the man’s progressive conservatism, ”McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straitjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times.”

What has happened during the last eight years richly deserves repudiation. As an Obama victory becomes more and more likely, more and more conservatives are making their true feelings known. Some, like Lawrence Eagleburger, are admitting that Sarah Palin simply isn’t qualified to be president. Others, like Peggy Noonan, are giving Bush the condemnation he deserves. Still others, like Colin Powell, have made the leap and are endorsing Barack Obama.

My mind wasn’t made up until five or six weeks after McCain chose Sarah Palin as his runningmate. While I respect her and see a bright future for her, after giving her a fair hearing, I can’t in good conscience cast a vote that could put her in line for the presidency.

I agree with little of Barack Obama’s philosophy. But I see in him a keen and subtle intellect and a steely temperament. His performance since announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, in February of 2006, demonstrates the quality of that intellect and character. He promises change at a time when nine out of ten Americans believe we’re on the wrong track, and healing at a time when we are divided within and at odds with our allies.

My vote is, in part, a protest vote; Republicans need to be sent a message that incompetence, unilateralism, and sanctimony won’t be rewarded. But I’m also very impressed with Obama, a man who has the potential to be one of our great presidents just when one of our worse has left us in the lurch. After eight years of Bush, maybe we need to turn left to get right.

Obama, like Bush, promises to unite the country. I hope he doesn’t betray us the way his predecessor has.

Half a century ago, Barry Goldwater, in The Conscience of a Conservative, sketched out the intellectual and moral underpinnings of conservatism. When John Dean wrote Conservatives Without Conscience in the middle of the Bush debacle, he wanted to begin a conversation about the ongoing erosion of those underpinnings.

That conversation’s time has come.

Newsprism

Will the Center Hold? Only If Both Sides Give

As the presidential election nears its climax, many are already looking beyond November 4 and beyond next January when the new president takes office.

Assuming the obvious—that Barack Obama will be the victor—the question becomes: in an Obama administration, can the center hold?

Critical challenges will face both Obama and the Republican opposition if that is to happen.

For Obama, the challenge will be to reign in the more extreme elements of the Democratic Party and govern towards the center. If he chooses to continue following his legislative bent, which is decidedly leftist, he’ll invite the worst obstructionist tendencies of an already enflamed right. His campaign has been run on a theme of unity, of bringing together disparate elements of the American nation. His predecessor promised to be a “uniter, not a divider,” then proceeded to divide the nation as few have in our history; Obama will have to demonstrate that he’s a man of his word.

For the Republicans, the challenge will be to act as a principled counter to the left-leaning agenda of the president and the Congress, which will move further into the Democratic fold on November 4. John McCain could play a key role in meeting that challenge; his refusal to go along with the increasingly shrill and unprincipled tactics of the more fringe elements of the right, for example, by taking Jeremiah Wright out of the picture, bodes well. So does the movement of so many thoughtful conservatives towards Obama, (Future Secretary of State) Colin Powell chief among them. (Who better to right the ship of state than General Powell, whose Powell Doctrine would have kept us out of Iraq and fully engaged us in Afghanistan?)

In a broader context, a post-election reconciliation could be hampered, or worse, if liberals fail to win with grace. Everything in his temperament and character suggests that Obama will epitomize both qualities in victory; much in the temperament and character of the Democratic leadership in Congress, and of many in the left wing media, suggests just the opposite.

That same reconciliation could be hampered, or worse, if conservatives fail to lose with class. John McCain’s temperament and character leave little doubt that he’d be in the forefront as a unifying force, and with a few exceptions, most Republicans in Congress will follow suit; but much in the temperament and character of the right wing press leaves plenty of room for pessimism.

Newsprism

Presidential Debate Ends in Tie, Obama Wins (and So Do We)

Tonight’s presidential debate was different from the previous two presidential and the lone vice presidential debate in this respect: it was a debate!

The previous events, particularly the “town hall” format last week, were highly controlled dual press conferences where the participants offered canned talking points with little opportunity to interact. Kudos to Bob Schieffer for handling the debate masterfully, and to the campaigns for allowing the candidates to truly debate.

The winners: first, the American people, who were shown some sharp contrasts between the candidates. Two very different approaches to health care, the economic crisis, and the choice of Supreme Court justices were on display, and both Obama and McCain were able to critique the other’s proposals in a measured back-and-forth.

The second winner: Barack Obama. With a substantial lead in the polls and a deepening economic crisis on the horizon, Obama merely had to avoid a glaring misstep or a game-changing performance by McCain.

On  substance, the two candidates fought to a dead heat. On style, however, Obama continued to polish his JFK-like persona while McCain looked more Nixonish than ever. The younger Democrat was, as usual, unflappable, even in the face of some aggressive tactics by McCain. The older Republican seemed uncharacteristically stiff and distracted, blinking uncontrollably, grinning nervously, and glancing around with shifty eyes.

To an observer watching the debate with the sound turned off, this was a sound defeat for McCain…and if we’ve learned anything about contemporary politics, it’s that image is paramount.

In addition, the negative tone adopted of late by the McCain campaign, which has apparently led to his decline in the polls, was evident in McCain’s tactics, which more than likely drove independents towards Obama while cementing the polarization of both parties’ bases. That’s a net loss for McCain that he can ill afford.

Every sign seems to be pointing towards an Obama victory in three weeks. In addition to the disastrous record of Bush and the ongoing economic meltdown, McCain has dealt his own candidacy a death blow by taking on the rhetorical excesses of talk radio. Every attack on Obama has backfired, discrediting McCain’s hatchet woman, Sarah Palin, among all but the most rabid of Republican partisans, while Obama’s refusal to take the bait has elevated not only his campaign, but also his character in the eyes of the public.

To his credit, McCain has refused to revisit the Reverend Wright story, but his insistence on hyping the Ayers association has backfired badly. What works for Limbaugh and Hannity in commercial broadcasting has utterly failed McCain in the political arena.

If Obama does win the presidency, it will be critical for McCain to repudiate talk radio tactics in order to bring the nation together in a time of crisis.

That would truly be putting his country first.

Newsprism

Palin Attacks Obama’s Patriotism with Bush-like Eloquence

Newsprism has strongly denounced the excesses of media liberals in attacking Sarah Palin (here and here, for example.)

Now that she’s finally been allowed to step into the media spotlight, however, her rhetoric is beginning to look like a cross between the shallow silliness of Rush Limbaugh and the amoral cynicism of Karl Rove.

On Friday, she took a shot at Obama’s patriotism by suggesting that a single quote about the war in Afghanistan, taken out of context from a 2007 campaign appearance, should disqualify the Democratic nominee from leading our armed forces.

Here’s the Obama quote, which was a response about how we could better use troops stationed in Iraq:

We’ve got to get the job done (in Afghanistan), and that requires us to have enough troops that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

And here’s Palin’s response:

Some of his comments that he has made about the war that I think may — in my world — disqualifies someone from consideration as the next commander in chief. Some of his comments about Afghanistan and what we are doing there, supposedly just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.

First of all, John McCain and the vast majority of the military and intelligence communities all agree that we need more troops in Afghanistan. Second, Obama is spot on in noting that we’re alienating key elements in Afghanistan—recent protests against collateral damage demonstrate that fact. Third, Palin incorrectly implies that Obama was accusing our forces of atrocious behavior, a backhanded jab at his patriotism that, probably by design, invokes similar accusations made by Vietnam war protestors. Fourth, Palin’s grammar and syntax sound more like a fumbling high school debater than a candidate for the vice presidency.

Obama’s choice of words was unfortunate and highly vulnerable to being twisted by Swiftboaters and those obsessed with superficial canards like lapel pins. But to suggest that a single line disqualifies him from being our Commander-in-Chief is laughable. In fact, even that bastion of liberal reporting, FoxNews, notes that

Republicans lashed out at (Obama) at the time, though the Associated Press published a fact-check shortly afterward that showed, by their count at the time, Western forces had killed 286 civilians in the country, compared with 231 killed by militants in 2007. 

Today, based on a front-page article in the New York Times, Palin made a similar attack that attempts to link Obama with sixties radical and Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers:

(Obama) is not a man who sees America as you see America, and as I see America. Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect — imperfect enough that he’s pallin’ around with terrorists who would target their own country. Americans need to know this. … I think, OK we gotta get the word out. This is in fairness to the electorate we gotta start telling people what the other side represents.

First, while Obama served on the board of a charity with Ayers, the Democratic nominee has strongly condemned Ayers, calling him “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.” The phrase “pallin’ around with” mischaracterizes the relationship between Obama and Ayers. Second, guilt by association is a classic form of character assassination that could be used against anyone who’s spent any time in public service. Third, using a violent radical to exemplify “what the other side represents” is downright dishonest and unethical. And fourth, there’s that Bush-like inability to put together a sentence that would pass muster in a high school English class.

Again, FoxNews, to its credit, plays it down the middle with a counterpoint:

The Times article she mentioned concluded that Obama and Ayers did not appear to be close.

The McCain campaign is taking the Straight Talk Express straight down the low road, and for the time being, Palin is doing the driving.

Newsprism

Conservative Commentators (Belatedly) Write Bush’s Political Obituary

The top tier of conservative pundits have begun writing George Bush’s political obituary. While Mark Twain’s famous obituary was greatly exaggerated, Bush’s is greatly belated.

Peggy Noonan, in addition to noting “the aggression, and phony populism, of the Bush White House,” has this to say:

We’ve never seen a presidential meltdown like this. George W. Bush’s weakness is not all lame-duckship… We witness here a great political lesson. When you are president, it matters—it really matters—that a majority of the people support and respect you. When you squander that affection, you lose more than mere popularity. You lose the ability to lead when your country is in crisis….

David Brooks writes of The Decider,

…if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice. And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence…. (And) Bush…seems to compensate for (his) lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

Prescient as usual, Pat Buchanan has been documenting the death throes of the Bush presidency for years now.

As early as November 2005, Buchanan labeled the invasion of Iraq “perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in US history” and concluded,

What killed the first Bush presidency and is ruining the second is the abandonment of Reaganism and his embrace of the twin heresies of neoconservatism and Big Government Conservatism…True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, “Goodbye to all that,” and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconservatism. If they do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wilderness into which they have led us all.

In February 2006, Buchanan wrote, “Americans…wonder if the man they entrusted with the nation’s security has not lost his marbles,” adding, “(Bush’s) foreign policy takes on an aspect of incoherence. Ideology is the antithesis of conservatism, Russell Kirk wrote. The tragedy of George W. Bush may be that he was converted by courtiers to the ideologies that are failing as visibly now as the discredited ideologies of yesterday: Wilsonianism and Marxism.” 

In April 2006, Buchanan called Bush an “imperial president” and noted that “There is a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct war from the power to declare it. The reason is just such a ruler as George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and sense of mission that are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country.”

In July 2006, Buchanan declared the “End of the Cowboy Era” with this judgment:

As one reviews the ledgers of his foreign policy, Bush seems to have alienated or antagonized just about everyone on earth, with precious little to compensate us for our war losses. And if we are about to jettison his cowboy diplomacy, perhaps it is time to look again at the successful policies Bush and the neocons dismissed and deplore. For, unlike theirs, these policies never failed America.

What are they? The anti-interventionism of the Founding Fathers from Washington to Wilson, and the conservative policy of containment and deterrence pursued by Eisenhower and Reagan.

Both deserve a hearing in the politics of 2008…

In October 2006, Buchanan asked rhetorically, “Is the Bush Doctrine Dead?”, called the Axis of Evil speech “a blunder of the first magnitude,” and counselled the president, “put the bellicose bluster on the shelf. It has done less than nothing to advance America’s security.”

In March of 2007, Buchanan elaborated:

In the catechism of the Bush Revolution, liberty is indivisible. If the whole world is not free, America’s freedom is not secure, and we must thus use American power in perpetuity to liberate mankind and, as Bush declared in his Second Inaugural, “end tyranny on earth.”

No more utopian ambition has ever been declared by an American president.

In 2006, however, reality intruded.

The elections Bush championed as way stations on the road to global democracy produced, from the Mideast to Latin America, defeat after defeat. In Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, the real winners were the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and Moqtada al-Sadr. In Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, free elections gave Hugo Chavez three new allies, and radicals almost captured Peru and Mexico. Populism, socialism and anti-Americanism are surging in Latin America.

In August of 2007, Buchanan opined that “(Bush) embraced the interventionism of Wilson, the free-trade globalism of FDR, the open-borders immigration ideas of LBJ and the budget priorities of the Great Society. It was a bridge too far for the party base. The Republican Party needs a new architect. The firm of Bush & Rove was not up to the job.”

In October 2007, Buchanan wrote that “one may conclude then that America is not only rejecting Bush the man and his record, but the philosophy behind both” and offered a litany of Bush’s failures:

Interventionism gave us Iraq, the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history. Big Government conservatism wiped out the surplus, fattened the federal bureaucracy and enlarged its share of GDP, and destroyed the Republican reputation as America’s bastion of fiscal prudence.

The Bush immigration philosophy was repudiated by Middle America, which rose in righteous wrath against his amnesty plan and demanded he enforce the law and secure the border. Americans are unreconciled to the idea that the America they grew up in will be morphed into some mammoth multicultural Mall of Mankind.

Now, the returns have come in from the Bush policy of free-trade globalism…. Since 2002, America has run five consecutive world record trade deficits. Three million manufacturing jobs have disappeared. The euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar. The Canadian dollar has reached parity. Plants have been shutting down across this country for years. The wages of Middle Americans have stagnated. The trade deficit with China last year reached $233 billion, a world record between any two nations.

In November 2008, Buchanan wrote “Ideology Was Bush’s Undoing”:

If there is a one root cause to the Bush failures, it has been his fatal embrace of ideology.

Ideology is substitute religion, a belief system based on ideas that are often contradicted by history and common sense. Yet men will adhere to ideologies with a zealotry that borders on fanaticism.

Marxism, fascism and socialism were are ideologies, gods that failed. So, too, is democratism, the Gospel of George W. Bush.

In March of this year, Buchanan offered this stinging rebuke: “On reading George Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” And he elaborated with this:

In smearing as nativists, protectionists and isolationists those who wish to stop the invasion (of illegal immigrants), halt the export of factories and jobs to Asia, and stop the unnecessary wars, Bush is attacking the last true conservatives in his party.

Which is understandable. For after the judges and tax cuts, what is there about Bush that is conservative? His foreign policy is Wilsonian. His trade policy is pure FDR. His spending is LBJ all the way. His amnesty for illegals is Teddy Kennedy’s policy.

Two-thirds of the nation says we are on the wrong course. Two-thirds rejects NAFTA and amnesty. Two-thirds wants out of Iraq. Two-thirds rejects Bush. Bush says that people are being misled by those wicked old isolationists, protectionists and nativists.

In May of this year, Buchanan gave us this litany:

Looking back on the years since 9-11, it is hard to give the Bush foreign policy passing grades. We pushed NATO eastward and alienated Russia. We have 140,000 Army and Marine Corps troops tied down in Iraq in a war now in its sixth year, from which our NATO allies have all extricated themselves. We have another war going in Afghanistan, where the situation is as grave as it has been since we went in.

The Bush democracy crusade was put on the shelf after producing election triumphs for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, after Iraq, appears to be headed there, as well.
 
America remains the first economic and military power on earth. But after seven years of Bush, we no longer inspire the awe or hopes we once did. We are no longer the world hegemonic power of the neocons’ depiction. And the reason is that Bush embraced their utopian ideology of democratic empire and listened to their siren’s call to be the Churchill of his age.
 
Of Bush, it may be said he was a far better politician and candidate than his father, but as a statesman and world leader, he could not carry the old man’s loafers.

For nearly three years, Pat Buchanan has been dead right about the Bush presidency. Like Cassandra’s, his foresight has been ignored even as its validity has unfolded so clearly.

To those who have demonized Buchanan over the years, and to those who have come somewhat late to the same conclusions as he has, three words:

Listen, and learn.

Newsprism

Presidential Race Breaking For Obama as McCain Stumbles

When McCain and Obama met with George Bush during this week’s frantic lurch towards the left in DC, the sputtering McCain campaign might have been dealt a death blow.

The financial crisis further discredits a Bush administration already infamous for its incompetence while at the same time shining a spotlight on the close ties between Bush and McCain. Add to that McCain’s questionable choice of runningmate, yesterday’s transparent ”suspension” of his campaign, and his dodgy stance on the scheduled debate, and things start looking good for Obama.

The scare the financial crisis has put into the voters naturally favors Democrats in a year in which Republican failures have reached Hooverian proportions.

A prediction: in November, our prediction of an Obama victory seven and a half months ago will prove correct, Democrats will consolidate their hold on both houses, and the sharpest turn to the left since Roosevelt will begin.

How ironic: the conservatives who most loathe socialism have made a hefty dose of it all but impossible to avoid.

Newsprism

Tina Fey Rips Sarah Palin on the Bush Doctrine—but the Joke is on Liberal Hypocrites

Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin on last night’s Saturday Night Live was spot on, and the humor in the show’s opening sketch focused as much on Hillary Clinton’s monomania as on Palin’s inexperience.

The idea that Sarah Palin “doesn’t know what (the Bush Doctrine) is,” however, reveals a glaring degree of hypocrisy among liberal commentators.

For years now we’ve heard liberals rightly condemn the Bush administration for its repeated waffling on the rationale behind our invasion of Iraq. Are we there to protect ourselves from WMD? To create a presence in and stabilize the Middle East? To free the people of Iraq? To counter Iranian hegemony in the region? To spread democracy across the globe?

The so-called Bush Doctrine has had at least four iterations since the invasion, as Charles Krauthammer made clear immediately after the interview with Charles Gibson in which Palin (gasp!) hesitated and asked for clarification when asked her position on that Doctrine. Liberal commentators jumped on Palin’s hesitation as if a split second of thought were clearcut evidence of absolute ignorance. Ditto her question to Gibson about the Bush Doctrine: “In what respect, Charlie?”

Palin’s question, far from demonstrating ignorance, showed that, unlike Gibson, she understood the ambiguity of the question. Which Bush Doctrine are we talking about?

The joke here isn’t on Sarah Palin; it’s on liberal hypocrites like the Queen of Catty Maureen Dowd who decry as “sexist” overly harsh criticism of female Democrats, yet jump on Mrs. Palin at every chance.

Newsprism

Never Mind the 50 Most Influential Pundits—Here Are 10 of the Best

After the success of its “Top 100 Liberals” and “Top 100 Conservatives,” the UK’s Telegraph has now unveiled its “Top 50 Political Pundits.” All three lists have had many in the media buzzing (like flies around a fresh, steaming cow patty.)

Before you check the lists out, a warning: they’re broken down into mini-lists of 10 or 20, so that to peruse them all, you’ll wind up clicking on 17 separate web pages—a cynical ploy aimed at maximizing the Telegraph’s web traffic to drive up advertising rates.

So never mind the Telegraph’s gimmicky lists, which confuse popularity with influence. Influence is a poor measure in the first place, especially when the news media have become more oriented towards entertainment than analysis. By what criteria are comics like Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh, or a superficial confrontationalist like Hack Hannity, or Glenn Beck, considered alongside the best journalists and political pundits of our time?

For what it’s worth, here are Newsprism’s Ten of the Best Political Pundits in America, all on the same page and commercialism free:

10. Michael Kinsley—while he occasionally veers off into liberal la-la land, Kinsley is thoughtful, lucid, and incisive. He’s the most reasonable voice from the far left, idealistic yet practical in a Pat Moynihan sort of way.

9. Charles Krauthammer—a solid bedrock conservative with unmatched acumen in foreign policy, Krauthammer’s analysis of the Middle East is spot-on. He’s as hard-nosed as Bush is hard-headed, staunchly nationalistic without succombing to the naive idealism of the neocons.

8.  Christopher Hitchens—an exceptional writer, Hitchens is also stubbornly independent. He defies categorization in an era marked by polarization; he’s loyal only to his own judgment, never taking sides or pulling his punches, lefts or rights.

7. Dick Morris—he’s as sleazy as the Clintons, and as brilliant, a Karl Rove without the charm (or loyalty.) His cynicism is matched by his insightfulness. A mean streak and his hatred for his former employers make him fun to follow.

6. David Brooks—while the market rewards extremism, especially on the right, Brooks is a moderate conservative devoted to what’s best for the country rather than winning an argument. Brooks is highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and his columns range across critical social and political issues.

5. Frank Rich—a writer on par with Hitchens, Rich anchors the New York Times opinion pages and has the ear of journalists left and right. His background as a critic of culture adds depth and dimension to his political analysis.

4. Karl Rove—the man got George Bush elected. Twice. George Bush. He’s been demonized by the left and stained by his association with the policies of his most famous client, but Rove understands American politics as well as anyone. He’s been outthinking the pack for nearly thirty years.

3. Peggy Noonan—both the woman and her writing are graceful and wise. Never pretentious, she has a way of making profound points effortlessly. Her wit is elegant, simple but never simplistic. Noonan may seem as soft as a feather, but that feather cuts like a scalpel. Her criticisms of George Bush, for example, go right to the heart of a presidency with no moral or philosophical foundation.

2. Pat Buchanan—with the best grasp of history in the business, Buchanan puts contemporary issues into a sweeping historical context. His perspective spans the breadth of Western civilization in an era whose memory barely reaches beyond the 24-hour news cycle. To “get” Buchanan, you should read his books and columns; his appearances on MSNBC don’t do him justice.

1. George Will—nobody connects the dots like Will. His commentary reflects attention to the highest principles while at the same time being grounded firmly in contemporary American culture and history. Will compares favorably with William F. Buckley and Walter Lippmann. His wit isn’t dry, it’s arid, a droll sarcasm befitting his bemusement at our increasingly uncivil society. A collection of his columns like The Leveling Wind transcends punditry; he’s a philosopher who happens to write columns.

Newsprism

Looking for the Most Embarrassing Moment in Presidential History? Mission Accomplished!

Like Babe Ruth’s home run record, Bill Clinton’s “shot heard ’round the world” looked certain to remain the Most Embarrassing Moment in Presidential History for a long, long time. Then came George W. Bush.

Five years ago today, Bush, codpiece and all, landed a fighter jet onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared victory in Iraq. Not only was his declaration premature, he made it beneath an enormous banner reading, “Mission Accomplished.”

Like Clinton’s moment of infamy, Bush’s was truly revealing. If Clinton is an egomanaical self-absorbed sex addict with the morals of a (one-eyed trouser) snake, Bush is a deeply insecure arrested adolescent who’s used the US military as a prop for his own self-aggrandizement. The very idea of using fighter jets, an aircraft carrier, and an entire crew of sailors as backdrops in a swaggering draft dodger’s PR stunt is as pathetic as it is ludicrous.

Just as Clinton denied his boner, saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” while he wagged his finger at the nation, Bush now denies the “Mission Accomplished” banner referred to the war in Iraq. The Bush administration claims the banner referred to the mission of the USS Lincoln itself; White House spokesperson Dana Perino continued that farce yesterday, saying

President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said ‘mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.

A banner with those words on it would have been as long as a Babe Ruth homerun.

Sometimes it’s the biggest egos, and sometimes the smallest, that require the most stroking.

Newsprism

FoxNews Fails History Lesson

Mistakes are inevitable in the 24-hour pressure cooker of cable news. Misspelled words, mispronounced names, technical glitches—these are to be expected.

But confusing Stephen Douglas and Frederick Douglass in a story about the Lincoln-Douglas debates?

That’s exactly what happened this morning when FoxNews mistakenly aired a graphic showing President Lincoln and former slave Frederick Douglass (video).

The fact that three news personalities didn’t catch the mistake is bad enough. News broadcasts involve more than on-air talent, however. Editors, directors, fact checkers, technicians, and graphic artists all have a hand in what goes out over the air.

No one at FoxNews managed to figure out that an African-American like Frederick Douglass was unlikely to have been running for office in 1858, when African-Americans couldn’t even vote.

As HL Mencken noted, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

Certainly not FoxNews’s owner, billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

Newsprism

FoxNews’s vapid cheerleading for the worst president in American history reminds Newsprism of another quote from Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

America’s Dangerous Mis-Spellings of “Ignorance”

How many Americans can correctly spell “ignorance”? How many teachers and bureaucrats?

Two excellent columns by Bob Herbert and George Will came out this week bemoaning the declining state of American education.

At least three root causes account for the sad decline in education in this country.

First, parents have abdicated responsibility for their children’s education to cold, monolithic government institutions that facilitate mediocrity and stifle innovation. Take President “childrens do learn” Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind program. Administered by the pathetically underqualified Secretary of Education, Bush croney Margaret Spellings, NCLB imposes an asinine amount of testing on schools without addressing the underlying problems—as if measuring academic failure enough will turn it into academic success. Heckuva job, Spellie.

Second, the erosion of the nuclear family has left more and more of our children adrift without adequate supervision or an understanding of the value of education. The best predictor of academic performance isn’t social class or school quality; it’s the presence of a solid family structure that inculcates the right values and enforces their pursuit. No amount of government intervention can fix the decline of the American family, though government intervention has surely been a major factor in causing it.

Third, we’re increasingly mesmerized by electronic media, which force us into the role of passive, isolated consumers of what nowadays passes for culture. Today’s American child is lost in an amoral popular culture that priviliges physical beauty over mental acuity and appetite over intellect. Reading is becoming a lost art, one that requires thoughtful deliberation as opposed to passive consumption. Market considerations have all but replaced moral ones, and all too often, mind-numbing gadgets take the place of parenting.

Education is ultimately and essentially the responsibility of each individual citizen, and that requires citizens raised in strong families that value knowledge and wisdom. No teacher, school or government program can provide that.

Henry David Thoreau, America’s philosopher laureate, wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Two organizations hacking at the root of our education woes are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the America’s Promise Alliance, run by Colin and Alma Powell (not coincidentally, two devoted couples presiding over strong nuclear families.)

The gravest threat to American democracy isn’t terrorism or global warming. It’s ignorance.

And ignorance can only be cured from within.

Newsprism

Oops, or Poops? HuffingtonPost Headline Embarrassing Mistake, or Outright Lie?

Hollywood leftist news and gossip site The Huffington Post included this headline today:

Legal Experts Predict War Crimes Prosecutions Over Torture Meetings

The problem? The article excerpted and linked to at HuffPo says exactly the opposite. Published in the Center for Independent Media’s Washington Independent, the story begins,

With nine months remaining in President George W. Bush’s term, virtually no legal analyst expects that anyone in his administration will face indictment and prosecution in connection with the torture of terrorism detainees.

The same story ends,

…the likelihood of retributive measures against the Bush administration for torture remains remote.

And in between? More of the same.

Is HuffPo really that incompetent? Or did the editors choose to utterly mischaracterize the article in their headline for partisan political purposes?

Newsprism’s guess: both.

Newsprism

The Perfect Vice President for Either Party: Sam Nunn of Georgia

Former Senator and conservative Democrat Sam Nunn today endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, eliciting speculation that he could be on Obama’s short list of potential runningmates.

Newsprism has long considered Nunn, a four-term Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an expert on weapons of mass destruction, among the most credible candidates for the presidency—an office he’s shown little if any interest in.

As Obama’s runningmate, Nunn would shore up the Democrats’ foreign policy credentials substantially and move the ticket towards the center, possibly even putting some states in the otherwise solidly red South in play.

Mr. Nunn would make an equally strong runningmate for John McCain. McCain’s main weakness is the perception that he would continue the utterly failed foreign policy of George Bush, a foreign policy Nunn has challenged with great depth and perspective. Nunn would also pull the Republican ticket towards the center, putting any number of blue states in play.

Nunn  hopes for a sea change in US foreign policy and for political reconciliation domestically. Accepting a spot on either ticket would go a long way towards accomplishing both objectives.

Update: Nunn just told MSNBC that he’s happy in the private sector and not considering a return to public office.

Update: Along with Nunn, former Senator David Boren and former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich have also endorsed Barack Obama today.

Newsprism

McCain Proposes Tax Cuts, Curbs on Spending

In a speech timed to coincide with the deadline for filing federal income tax returns and to reach the media covering the Democratic primary, John McCain outlined his economic policies in Pittsburgh today.

McCain’s plan rejects the upper-class orientation of George Bush, embracing instead the populism and pro-growth policies of Ronald Reagan.

The Arizona senator’s tax plan calls for doubling the exemption for dependents from $3500 to $7000, establishing a simplified two-tier tax schedule, eliminating the alternative minimum tax, and suspending gasoline taxes over the summer. In addition, McCain would extend Bush’s tax cuts, reduce corporate taxes significantly, and give tax benefits to businesses for research and purchases of equipment.

In addition to these tax policies, McCain wooed working- and middle-class voters with the promise of readily available student loan funds, government-guaranteed mortgages for homeowners at risk of foreclosure, and a continuation of unemployment insurance for displaced workers.

In terms of government spending, McCain would freeze nonmilitary discretionary spending at current levels for one year while reviewing government programs for waste and fraud, increase Medicare premiums for wealthy retirees, veto any bill that includes earmarks.

McCain’s plan combines tax cuts with curbs on federal spending, a breath of fresh air compared to the irrationally expensive proposals of the two Democratic presidential hopefuls and the equally irrational Bush policy of cutting taxes while dramatically raising spending.

Newsprism finds McCain’s proposals substantive, centrist, and sensible, and therefore likely to be quickly overshadowed by the next irrelevant gaffe or contrived Bittergate.

Newsprism

Bush Administration Going Down in History—and Down and Down and Down

If journalists write the first draft of history, historians write the final one. Judging by two polls of historians conducted by the History News Network, one four years ago and the other last month, Bush has gone from bad to worse—and maybe, to worst.

In 2004, 415 historians were surveyed on Bush’s legacy. 81% believed the Bush administration would be judged a failure compared to 19% who believed it would be judged a success. 12% went so far as to say Bush would go down as the worst president in American history.

In 2008, 109 historians were surveyed. 98% believed the Bush years would be judged a failure compared to less than 2% who believed they would be judged a success. A staggering 61% said Bush would go down as the worst president in history.

The History News Network may not be the most objective source, but dismal evaluations of Bush aren’t confined to HNN. Eminent Princeton historian Sean Wilentz wrote in Rolling Stone two years ago that

George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace…. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

Wilentz is joined by presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Tulane University, who in December, 2006, wrote in the Washington Post that

it’s safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder. The reason: Iraq … which is an unmitigated disaster.

Many will dismiss the nearly unanimously negative judgment of Bush as evidence of the liberal leanings of historians.

While the field does harbor a preponderance of liberals, historians as a group are notoriously cautious and circumspect, waiting for the historical record before pronouncing judgment. In addition, nowhere near 98% of histrians are liberal, meaning that the vast majority of moderate and conservative historians agree with their liberal colleagues.

Besides, as the most historically grounded conservative commentator, Pat Buchanan, notes, George Bush is anything but a conservative (see here, here, here, here, and here.)

Here’s a sample of the historians’ evaluations of Mr. Bush:

Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill.

With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct. When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency.

…the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover…. God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.

His domestic policies have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.

George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States…

His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States enjoyed enormous support around the world. President Bush squandered that goodwill by taking the country into an unnecessary war of choice and misleading the American people to gain support for that war. And he failed utterly to have a plan to deal with Iraq after the invasion…. Mr. Bush inherited a sizable budget surplus and a thriving economy…. Bush transformed the surplus into a massive deficit. The tax cuts and other policies accelerated the concentration of wealth and income among the very richest Americans. These policies combined with unwavering opposition to necessary government regulations have produced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Then there is the incredible shrinking dollar, the appointment of incompetent cronies, the failure to react properly to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the blatant disregard for the Constitution—and on and on.

James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, move over. Your failures appear to have been misoverestimated.

Newsprism