An on-point evaluation of President Obama

There used to be a newspaper published in Washington, D. C., The Washington Examiner, which I enjoyed reading. Some time ago, the paper ceased publication, except for an online presence that still continues. Recently I saw a column by Noemie Emery on the Examiner's site, which I found quite interesting. Her columns in the Examiner when it was in print often reflected my own thought, and I think this column also shows a great insight, so I would like to reprint it.

President Obama, wrote the Washington Post's Greg Jaffe in a recent story about the president's view of his country, articulates “his vision of a nation that can acknowledge and, learn from, its mistakes.” Would that this vision applied to himself.

Now comes the main point, one that I think characterizes this President above all things that have been written about him:

Not only does Obama never learn from mistakes, he doesn't think that he makes them, and he denies that they even exist. Any regrets for the way he passed healthcare? Not that you'd notice. Any regrets about leaving Iraq? Nope — he still thinks he “ended two wars,” which the other side keeps on fighting.

The conventional view of what has gone wrong — that Obama lacked experience, and that first-term senators should be viewed with suspicion — is undercut by the fact that he has had six years of experience, and failed to learn from it. At home and abroad, Obama makes mistakes over and over, with the same result, and takes nothing from them. He disses his friends, placates aggressors and seems surprised that aggressors advance and whole regions catch fire.

He refuses to bargain with Congress, insults opponents, imposes unpopular policies by fiat and seems surprised when his measures result in court challenges, when polarization increases, opposition solidifies, divisions harden and gridlock prevails. Deal-making is the essence of politics, but Obama finds it demeaning, so he resorts to brute force when he has the means to (as in the still-festering matter of healthcare). Alternatively, as with immigration, Obama resorts to executive actions that stir angry resistance and are frequently halted by courts.

This has gone on since 2009, but Dana Milbank noticed only when Obama began slighting Democrats, whereupon he began taking offense. “Rather than accept that they have a legitimate beef, he shows public contempt for them,” the Washington Post columnist complains, writing that Obama dissed fellow Democrats to friendly reporters as being short-sighted and dense. (Of course, he's done that for years to Republicans, but they seem not to matter.) If Franklin Roosevelt was described as having a commonplace intellect but a brilliantly tempered political character, Obama seems to be his ultimate opposite: A man with an intellect that delights the elite but a temperament that is counterproductive in matters of government. This combination seems to work much less well.

A comparison with his predecessors is instructive.

Presidents can sometimes repair their mistakes, but only after they realize they've made them, which is something Obama can't do. George W. Bush stayed with his failed Iraq strategy until a bloody year followed by a political bloodbath in the 2006 midterms forced him to change course dramatically. John Kennedy failed in the Bay of Pigs and then in his first face-to-face meeting with Nikita S. Khrushchev, when he compounded his first bad impression by seeming irresolute.

Sensing at once that he had made a grave error — “He savaged me,” Kennedy said later of the Russian leader — he doubled the draft, increased defense spending and took Dwight Eisenhower's advice to have his councilors argue their cases before him and each other (instead of one at a time and in isolation), which led to the peaceful solution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

But admitting mistakes — and taking advice — are not the skill set of the current incumbent, who finds them demeaning. The learning curve of the 35^th president between l961-63 had been exponential, while, as Josef Joffe recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “the 44^th president's learning curve has been flat for six years.”

It's not lack of experience that hampers Obama; it's his refusal to learn a thing from it. That's the trait we can't have in the 45^th president — and the one we must strive to avoid.

A valuable observation, and one with which I heartily concur.

Telling Boehner to pass laws

Yet another person has written a post saying: “Dear Speaker Boehner: Do your job instead.” That was the actual title of a post by Sally Kohn of CNN. Of course, she is described as a “progressive activist, columnist and television commentator.” And so as far as she is concerned, President Obama is just doing his job. She does not see him as violating law after law passed by Congress and the Constitution he was sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend.” She has no problem with his executive orders, which she points out were fewer in number than those of “Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and President George W. Bush.” What she does not point out was that their executive orders were in conformity with law and the Constitution. They never issued orders directing that laws duly passed by Congress — such as our immigration laws and even the “Obamacare” law that he considers his pride and joy — not be fully enforced.

And what is most amazing is her directive to John Boehner to “pass laws to help rather than jeering from the sidelines and rooting for America to fail so you can blame it on President Obama.” John Boehner would like to “pass laws to help,” but he knows that anything his House passes will be shot down by the Senate.

Let us give an example. Kohn refers to a jobs bill that did pass the House. She of course derides it by saying,

You assert that you have passed jobs bills that President Obama and the Democratic Senate are ignoring, but frankly the word “jobs” as you use it there is questionable. Your “jobs” bills include legislation to repeal Obamacare, through which 20 million Americans now have health insurance, cut food stamps for poor Americans and reduce government regulations on fracking.

Meanwhile, President Obama proposed an actual jobs bill that would have created construction jobs to modernize our deteriorating roads and airports, provided tax credits for employers that hired returning veterans, extended unemployment benefits, which also spurs spending, and cut payroll taxes for 98% of American businesses. But that jobs bill was killed by Republican opposition in Congress.

Which approach would have actually created jobs? Clearly, Kohn thinks the second. But repealing Obamacare, in fact, would create millions of jobs, simply because employers are not now hiring people due to the onerous burden that Obamacare places on them. Reducing government regulations of fracking would create jobs in the petroleum industry. And on the other hand, extending unemployment benefits encourages people who might look for work not to. Boehner's bill would have created jobs; Obama's would not. All I can say is, Sally Kohn, you don't know what you're talking about.

Kohn wants Boehner to pass bills, but not bills that would actually help the country; she wants Boehner to pass bills like Obamacare — which she has the gall to describe as a good thing! — to hasten the president's destruction of our economy. But then, what can you expect of a “progressive activist, columnist and television commentator”?

And others agree!

Back on December 12, 2010, I posted a message entitled “My own rating of Presidents.” I thought at that time that the worst one we'd had within my lifetime was Bill Clinton. I subsequently revised my opinion, and on May 17, 2012 I posted a message here entitled “Obama: the worst of all Presidents? Perhaps not, but it's close!” At that time I thought perhaps that Jimmy Carter beat out Pres. Obama for the title of “worst in my lifetime,” both being much worse than Clinton. My opinion continued that way, and even as late as October 30, 2012, in a post entitled “Probably the best reason to support Romney,” I made the comment that “[o]nly Jimmy Carter, of those presidents whose terms of office have been within my lifetime, has been worse, I believe.” I subsequently changed my point of view. In the past year or so, Obama has beaten out Carter for “worst,” based on the fact that Carter at least tried to follow the Constitution, while Obama seems to feel that the Constitution doesn't apply to him.

The latest news is that a lot of Americans agree with me. A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University has found that 33% of the respondents ranked Obama as the worst since World War II — which is really the same time frame as my “worst in my lifetime,” since I was not quite three years old when WWII ended. This was a larger number than chose any other President. Now It is also true that George W. Bush and Richard Nixon, neither of whom I would call particularly bad, also ranked up there in this poll, but Obama was #1. And 40% now say that Bush was a better president than Obama has been so far — though an almost equal number say the reverse. An even bigger number, 45%, say we would be better off if Mitt Romney were president, and that exceeds the number who disagree by seven percentage points.

Polarization and divisive Presidents

Before George W. Bush was elected President, he remarked “I'm a uniter, not a divider.” Yet the country was more divided and polarized during his Presidency than it had been for a long time. And his successor, Barack Obama, had also expressed similar rhetoric:

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

But under this same Barack Obama, the polarization increased even more, to the point that it is hard to believe that it can ever be repaired. The United States Senate, for example, recently adopted a change of rules to throttle the minority's ability to filibuster executive nominees for some positions.

George W. Bush believed he could unite Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D. C., because he had done so as Governor of Texas. But Texas Democrats are a different breed from the Democrats he faced in the Nation's Capital: conservative enough that Bush could work with them without compromising his principles. In fact, George W. Bush's lieutenant governor during much of his service was a Democrat, Bob Bullock, and yet they were able to work closely together. But Bullock was not the vicious partisan that Bush faced in Nancy Pelosi in Washington, D. C. So he could not unite the parties in D. C.

And similarly, Barack Obama didn't understand the task when he became George W. Bush's successor as President. He had never been a chief executive. And his experience in south-side Chicago politics had never exposed him to the principles that Republicans hold dear. He assumed they shared his values, and tried to sell them his plans based on those values — which of course failed utterly.

So what would it take to be a unifying President? For one, someone who has been a chief executive in a state where the other party has a lot of power — a Democrat in a red state, or a Republican in a blue; and it would also take someone who has actually worked with the leaders of the opposite party to accomplish what he set forth as his program. Mitt Romney would have been someone who had a chance to fill that role; unfortunately, he faced an African-American opponent who brought out his co-race voters in 93% proportions, and with historically high turnouts. In the absence of this factor, he would be President now, and we would not be going through the throes of agony over “Obamacare's” launch. But we can't turn the clock back to 2012 and rerun it, and it is obvious to me that this nation's most likely path toward unification is to have Chris Christie as the next president. It is devoutly to be hoped that the hard-line conservatives in the GOP do not thwart the nomination of the one Republican who seems likely to win in 2016. And if the 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election is any clue, if the Republicans do nominate Christie, he will win, getting a lot of votes from people who normally support Democratic candidates.

And that is the path to a united Unoted States.

Apparently, presidential power (vs. Congress) depends on who exercises it

Back in 2007, a Presidential candidate named Barack Obama filled out a candidate questionnaire for the Boston Globe and, as reported by John Fund in a column in the National Review Online entitled “Obama Embraces the Imperial Presidency,” he wrote:

The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

He added that the president can only act unilaterally in “instances of self-defense.” Also in 2007, Senator (now Vice-President) Joseph Biden was quoted as saying:

The president has no constitutional authority to take this nation to war… unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked.

Fast forward to 2013. Vice-President Biden is calling for an immediate strike against Syria. President Obama, it would seem, feels no need to defer to Congress' warmaking powers; he is able, in his estimation, to order us into war, in the words of his spokesman Mary Ann Marsh, acting unilaterally:

The president of the United States cannot be handcuffed by the same Republicans that are holding the rest of the country hostage on every other issue. That is wrong.

Apprently, the Constitution confers powers upon a president named Barack Obama which it does not on a president named George W. Bush. Or so believe Obama and Biden.

I don't think so.

Media bias, the NSA, and the last two administrations

There's an interesting post by Richard Benedetto on the Real Clear Politics site, dated June 18, 2013 and entitled “Media Cut Obama Slack They Denied Bush on NSA.” While the emphasis is mine, I quote it in its entirety. It shows just how biased the media are:

In recent days, there has been discussion about how Democrats and liberals, once severe critics of anti-terror surveillance programs when Republican President George W. Bush was conducting them, have been more careful, and less critical, when responding to the massive data collection sweeps that have come to light under President Obama.

“It is jarring to see the left so compliant now that the surveillance has been sanctioned by a Democratic president,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote Sunday.

Milbank raised a valid point. But perhaps even more “jarring” are the carefully chosen, softer words used by the news media when reporting on the Obama program, compared to the inflammatory and alarmist language used when his predecessor was in charge.

When news broke in December 2005 that the Bush administration was engaged in phone wiretaps (without court orders) against suspected terrorists, the major news outlets almost immediately labeled the program “domestic spying.”

“In address, Bush says he ordered domestic spying,” said a Page One headline in The New York Times on Dec. 18, 2005.

The Washington Post, reporting on the same radio address, used similar wording in its headline: “President says he ordered NSA domestic spying.”

The Times and Post news articles each went on to use the word “spying” — which has dark, sinister connotations — four more times, although Bush, in his speech, never used it once. The Post followed up with an editorial: “Spying on Americans.”

So use of the word “spying” was the media’s choice, not the president’s. But the stage was set. From then on, The Times, The Post and other major news outlets continuously used the phrase “domestic spying” when reporting on the Bush wiretap program months after the initial outburst.

Bush, apparently frustrated by what he saw as media failure to fully explain what was really going on, tried to clarify in a Jan. 23, 2006 speech at Kansas State University. He hoped to get rid of the “spying” label and convince Americans that he was not listening in on phone calls to their mothers.

“I'll repeat to you, even though you hear words, ‘domestic spying,’ these are not phone calls within the United States. This is a phone call of an al-Qaeda, known al-Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States.”

The presidential explanation didn’t work. Here is the USA Today headline on the speech: “White House steps up defense of domestic spying.”

Fast-forward to June 2013. Obama, thanks to an explosive leak by a National Security Agency contractor, finds himself embroiled in a similar flap over the gathering of domestic intelligence. This time, he is in charge of what appears to be the most sweeping “domestic spying” mission ever undertaken. “Unprecedented” is a word Obama likes to use. That’s what it is. And while the news media have not shied away from covering the controversial program and its citizen-privacy ramifications, the style, tone and use of language are far different from the Bush days.

Mostly gone from the reporting is the loaded phrase “domestic spying.” Instead, we find a flurry of euphemisms such as “call monitoring,” “data collection,” “data mining,” “data gathering” and “electronic surveillance.” Most news outlets that continue to use the word “spying” when referring to the current U.S. intelligence gathering programs are foreign newspapers and broadcasters.

“Top official tries to quell US spying scandal,” said a headline in the June 10 New Zealand Herald. Moreover, many of the reports repeatedly remind us that the programs in question began under the Bush administration. So, by implication, it’s not really Obama’s fault.

Last Sunday’s Washington Post front page had a nearly 2,000-word story on the surveillance controversy headlined “NSA Surveillance: The Architecture.” It strongly reiterated the point that this is what Bush wrought.

There were no photos on the front page, but when you jumped inside there was a four-column picture of Bush, Vice President Cheney and two other top aides in a 2008 visit to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. There also were smaller headshot photos of two Bush legal and security aides and one more picture of protesters at a 2007 Senate hearing wearing oversized sunglasses with the message “Stop Spying.” The witness at that hearing was then-Bush intelligence director Mike McConnell.

Oddly, many news stories on the current surveillance controversy do not feature photos of Obama unless he is directly addressing the issue. It conveys that while this is a serious problem, it is not necessarily Obama’s problem. He’s busy showing the world that he’s doing other things. That’s the way he likes it. And so, apparently, do the news media.

A good observation. And one that needs to be given more publicity.

The perils of purism

Yeaterday I ran a post about a column by Cal Thomas in that day's Washington Examiner which surprised me in that I often disagree with Thomas' columns, but found that particular column to be totally in accordance with my thinking. Today I'm also posting about a column in the Examiner, but while I am just as much in agreement with today's column as I was with yesterday's, this time it causes no great surprise, because the column is by Noemie Emery, whose posts I usually find make a lot of sense to me. As it happens, it says much the same thing as a remark in Thomas' column in yesterday's paper:

If the Republican “tent” isn't large enough for Chris Christie, then it will resemble a pup tent for some time to come.

Emery's column is entitled, “Conservative crisis management.” At the beginning of the column, she says:

When in a hole, keep right on digging. That's the attitude of a number of movement conservatives, who, in reaction to last year's shellacking, seem to want to make certain they never climb out.

And, addressing those conservatives, she makes the point (emphasis mine):

…don't complain about Republicans running the Bushes, John McCain, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, when you run Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan and Rick Santorum against them. If you want to win nominations, you might try running candidates. (And a better message might help matters, too.)

That's a powerful dig, but they deserve it. The fact is that most Americans are not far-right conservatives. If a conservative is to win their votes, he needs to be moderate enough to get the votes of people closer to the middle of the political spectrum, who would never support a Santorum. Which leads ino her next point:

check the urge to purge heretics, which died out long ago in most of the world. Movement conservatives now scourge their party's most popular governors. Yes, blue- and swing-state Republicans always enrage some conservatives; the problem is that conservatives need them if they want to become a national party. If they like to throw tantrums, they should keep on what they're doing. If not, they should throw them some slack.

Why? Andrew Cline explained this two years ago, just after Scott Brown, having thrilled conservatives by winning the seat of Ted Kennedy, enraged them with one of his first Senate votes. “Scott Brown does not represent the Republican National Committee in the United States Senate. He represents Massachusetts,” Cline said then, correctly. “If Scott Brown voted as though he were from Alabama, the voters of Massachusetts would send him there.”

The really important thing to note is what Emery says a little bit further along:

…Chris Christie, with his Ralph Kramden vibe, is the closest thing they are likely to get in New Jersey — and, though conservatives would prefer a Reagan conservative, in those states this is not in the cards. Christie and Bob McDonnell represent their blue and swing states, not Utah or Texas, and the alternatives to them are not stronger conservatives.

The alternative to Olympia Snowe isn't Ted Cruz, it's Angus King, who votes with the Democrats. The alternative to Scott Brown isn't Rand Paul, it's Elizabeth Warren. We have Obamacare now because of the Club for Growth and Pat Toomey, whose primary threat scared Arlen Specter back to the Democrats, where he became the 60th vote for Obamacare's passage.

In other words, the far right's insistence on purity has driven the center of American politics leftward, hardly a desirable goal from their point of view.

I wish Noemie Emery's words could be read by the people who keep insisting on ideological purity.

Probably the best reason to support Romney

Much of the reason I've been supporting Mitt Romney for the Presidency is a negative one — that the alternative is Barack Obama, who is one of the worst presidents this country has seen. Only Jimmy Carter, of those presidents whose terms of office have been within my lifetime, has been worse, I believe. But the best reason to support Romney is a positive one. He can unite people of both parties to forge a consensus.

George W. Bush said he was “a uniter, not a divider,” but as Governor of Texas, the Democrats he had worked with were conservative enough that he was unprepared to find, when he came to Washington, that the Democrats there were of such a different stripe that he was not able to find common ground with them. President Obama used different words, but in his 2004 keynote at the Democratic convention, when he said “I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America,” he seemed to offer to many the promise of uniting us. However, as President he has not governed in a way consistent with this rhetoric. He has pushed through a healthcare bill with no support from a single Republican Senator, and only one Republican vote in the House of Representatives. He has made “recess appointments” when the Senate has just broken for a weekend, so he would not get them rejected in the Senate. He has done exactly the opposite of what a unifying, consensus-building President would be expected to do.

By contrast, we have the record of Mitt Romney as Governor of Massachusetts — a state which, unlike George W. Bush's Texas, has Democrats who are as liberal as any in the country, and yet where, facing an 87% Democratic legislature, he managed to get substantial parts of his program enacted. The Des Moines Register, which has endorsed Democrats in most recent elections (in fact, has endorsed only one Republican from 1964 to 2008) and endorsed Obama in 2008, endorsed Mitt Romney, saying: “Romney succeeded as governor in Massachusetts where he faced Democratic majorities in the legislature. If elected, he would have an opportunity to renew the effort.” As Emily Miller of The Washington Times points out,

President Obama has burned bridges by ramming through legislation like the stimulus and Obamacare without bothering to consult Republicans. That’s not how Mr. Romney would operate. “I know there are good Democrats who love America just like we do,” he told supporters in Celina, Ohio, Sunday. “I want to reach across the aisle to them, work together, put the interests of the people ahead of the politicians.”

He noted that as a GOP governor of a deep blue state, he worked with a legislature that was 87 percent Democrat. He still managed to decrease spending and cut taxes 19 times. “We were able to balance our budget. The $3 billion budget gap in our first year became a $2 billion rainy day fund,” Mr. Romney explained to cheering crowds. “We did that together, Republicans and Democrats. And we’ve got to do that in Washington.”

The Obama campaign is trying its best to deny this bipartisan record. “The American people can’t trust a word Mitt Romney says, especially when he claims he’d work across the aisle as president,” said campaign spokesman Danny Kanner. “As governor, he refused to work with Democrats in the legislature.”

Not so, according to the Bay State’s former Democratic House majority leader. “The governor did work with the legislature,” James Vallee told The Washington Times in an interview Monday. “There were issues of difference, but I had a very productive relationship with the Romney administration. They reached out to legislatures and did an effective job working with us.”

Mr. Vallee, who left the legislature in June and is now a lawyer at Nixon, Peabody, believes Mr. Romney would be most effective with a bipartisan cabinet and team. “If he says he’s going to reach across the aisle, I think he will,” he said.

That's the best reason to support Mitt Romney for the Presidency this year.

What the Democrats are saying

I get a lot of e-mail, ostensibly from such people as Mitt Romney and John McCain, asking me to donate money to the Romney-Ryan campaign. I don't have a lot of money, so I don't donate; I figure my blog posts contribute more than I could afford, so I think I'm doing my part. My wife is an enrolled Democrat, and she gets entirely different appeals, mainly by postal mail, since her e-mail presence on the Net is not as great. And recently, one of those letters — four printed pages long — arrived in her mail. Now, they did a good job of personalizing it — her first name appears in the text of the letter several times — and it ostensibly comes from President Barack Obama himself. (In fact the return address on the back of the envelope says “Obama Victory Fund 2012,” with a Chicago address. But the upper lefthand corner of the front of the envelope, where you might, at first glance, think is the return address, says “President Barack Obama.”)

Now my wife, though (as I said) an enrolled Democrat, is not a big fan of President Barack Obama, so it is a bit of a laugh that she gets a request for campaign donations. She is not certain of what her vote will be this November, but has said that it will “probably” be for Mitt Romney, but if not, then for a third-party candidate; certainly not for Obama.

Well, I don't often see what kind of nonsense the Democrats send out in their campaign funds appeals, so it was interesting to read this letter. Since it was addressed to Democrats, it is not terribly surprising that it began:

Four years ago, you and I began a journey together.

Of course, the addressee, my wife, did not begin that journey with Pres. Obama — she voted for John McCain — but the Obama campaign headquarters had no way of knowing that. However, one thing that my wife agreed with — and, in fact, so do I — began a few short paragraphs down:

Over the next several months, this path to the 2012 elections will take many twists and many turns. Polls will go up and down. And in the coming weeks, Governor Romney and I…

(remember, this purports to be from Pres. Obama)

…will spend time debating our records and experience, Republicans and Democrats will have a frank exchange on the issues — as we should.

Though we will have many differences over the course of this election, there's one place where we stand in complete agreement with our opponents. This election is about our economic future.

Again, I will skip a few short paragraphs to another point that I cannot find objectionable:

… what is holding us back is not a lack of big ideas. It isn't a matter of finding the right technical solution. Both parties have laid out their policies on the table for all to see. What's holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views of which direction America should take.

And this election is our chance to break that stalemate.

The next sentence is the request for that monetary donation, addressed to my wife by her first name. Of course, to my mind, the best “chance to break that stalemate” is to send Pres. Obama packing, back to Chicago, and put Governor Romney in his place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

In the next few paragraphs the letter refers to Romney's promise to reduce stifling regulations and lower taxes — of course, in terms that imply that this is a bad thing — the description refers to “regulations designed to protect consumers and workers” without mentioning that these regulations have cost millions of jobs by making money that would better be spent on wages go into lawyers' pockets defending companies from frivolous suits, for example. And the letter speaks of cuts to programs such as “medical research grants for things like Alzheimer's and cancer and AIDS,” but these are mere speculations; the Romney budget has not been presented in full, so Obama is picking and choosing where the cuts will fall, not producing anything that is justified by an actual Romney proposal!

Of course, the letter presents the repeal of “the Affordable Care Act” as “eliminat[ing] health insurance for 33 million Americans.” Romney would repeal this bizarre monster of a legislative act, to be sure, but he will certainly propose new legislation which will provide for those Americans who want it to have affordable insurance — without forcing it on people who do not need or want it, and without making people violate their religious tenets. Of that I am certain.

One point that I think is interesting to read, though I suppose not unexpected, was:

The economic vision of Mr. Romney and his allies in Congress was tested just a few years ago. We tried this. Their policies did not grow the economy.

Well, the big laugh that these words brought was because the recession that we are in now began only a few months before the election that brought Pres. Obama and the Democrats in Congress to power! Pres. Obama is claiming that the 3½ years he's been in power has not been enough to grow the economy — that he needs four more. But Pres. Bush had about four months to fix the economy — not years, but, I repeat, months. So can he really say that “[w]e tried this ([t]he economic vision of Mr. Romney and his allies in Congress)” and “[t]heir policies did not grow the economy”? No, the whole point is that the country, in a scare caused by the economic drop, tried then-Senator Obama's ideas, and it was his policies which did not grow the economy. The Republican policies were not given a chance.

I'm not going to cite more of the letter; I think I have shown the kind of appeal the President is making. Yes, I agree that this election is a choice between two fundamentally different views of the way this country should go: the view of Abraham Lincoln — that I quote in the header to this blog:

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves — in their separate, individual capacities.

or the view of Karl Marx:

From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.

I know which way I want this nation to go. With Lincoln — and Mitt Romney; not Marx — and Barack Obama.

A guest post by my wife

I am “Opinionator's” wife, Deb, and while I am far less conservative than he, in this election I may well vote for Mitt and company. Am I enthusiastic about this choice? No, I am a nominal Democrat but really an Independent. However, I have been looking for a permanent fulltime job in a field I have done well (retail) for over a year and have only found temp parttime work. Is this the “Change you can believe in” promised about 3½ years ago by Barack? Doesn't seem so to me, and at this point I don't think you can blame everything in this area that didn't work out on G.W. Bush!

When I heard about that speech that Obama gave saying that “You didn't build” your business, I carefully got ahold of — well, really “Opinionator” got ahold of :) — and read the complete speech. I still was left with the impression that Obama didn't seem to know much about business at all (I never ran one, but I worked for someone who did — you have to work very hard and be very smart in a stategic thinking way — and you still might not succeed). Despite my reservations about Mitt, I think that at this point he may be the best alternative available. I guess I'll be voting this time for the one who gives me less pause. Maybe we need, indeed, to give this guy a chance and see what he can do.

Is this 2004, or 1980, or something yet different?

I was looking at a post by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine called “2012 Election Is Bush-Kerry in Reverse,” likening this election to the one eight years ago, in which, to quote Chait,

The parallels between this year’s presidential election and the one we had eight years ago are striking. Incumbent president with middling approval ratings faces rich guy from Massachusetts with a reputation for flip-flopping.

We all know how that campaign ended up, of course: the incumbent defeated the “rich guy from Massachusetts.” Presumably, Chait favors Obama and wants the same to happen this year.

Many of the people commenting on this post say, in effect, “no, it's more like the 1980 Reagan-Carter election,” and again, we all know how that one ended up too. I don't imagine any of the people making that comparison are Obama-supporting liberals! But in fact, every election has its own factors. Romney, unlike Kerry, didn't claim to be a war hero in a war he then strongly opposed, and he inherited his wealth (and then increased it by good businessmanship, the point he is raising to emphasize his qualifications to handle this economy) while Kerry married his, so the 2004 comparisons are pretty lame. While, compared with 1980, there are also major differences: Reagan had a history of connecting with the people, from his acting background, while Romney is not exactly the warm communicator that Reagan was.

So, yes, there are elements in common with 1980, and also with 2004, but this one looks to play out in a totally different way. And I hesitate to predict what will happen in November based on any of the presidential elections we've had in the past.

The best case against Obama in 2012

Yesterday, in a posting on “The Daily Beast,” Michael Medved suggested that one of the reasons that Barack Obama may be vulnerable in this year's election is that he was elected on a “pledge to unify the nation and put aside petty, partisan differences.” Medved begins his post:

In the last 100 years, every U.S. president who lost his bid for a second term did so because he abandoned his principal promise to the American people. If Republicans can persuade the public that Barack Obama similarly shattered the pledge at the very core of his presidency, they will succeed in denying him the new lease on the White House he insists he deserves.

Four elected chief executives in the past century failed in their reelection campaigns—and each of them flopped by landslide margins. For William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992, broken promises doomed their chances for another four-year term.

He goes into some detail, which you can read on his post but which I am deleting for brevity, but the most important point he makes is:

If Republicans want to see history repeat itself in 2012, with a once-popular incumbent turned out of office by a deeply disillusioned electorate, they must persuade the public that Barack Obama has continued the big-loser pattern of broken promises. That means reminding voters of the most important theme associated with his rise to power: the pledge to unify the nation and put aside petty, partisan differences. Whatever happens with the unemployment rate or gas prices, the president’s failure to live up to these assurances remains both painful and apparent.

In the speech that made him a national figure overnight, Illinois Senator Barack Obama gave the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. “Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people,” he intoned. “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

In his Inaugural Address four-and-a-half years later, the newly elected president sounded strikingly similar themes. “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

Can even the most devoted Obama admirer plausibly claim that this new day of harmony and cooperation actually dawned in Washington?

Low approval ratings for all federal officials suggest that Americans recognize that the “conflict and discord” have become more bitter than ever before and that the president, despite his soaring rhetoric, plays a prominent part in the squabbling. He may attempt to blame conservatives exclusively for the small-minded gamesmanship, but he’s compiled his own long record of below-the-belt, straw-man attacks, sliming his opponents as greedy and corrupt, claiming that they place plutocrats and corporate power above the public welfare.

Instead of the fresh era of “unity of purpose,” President Obama must acknowledge that his signature legislative achievement, health-care reform, passed both houses of Congress without a single Republican vote, and led elected officials in the majority of states to challenge its constitutionality before the Supreme Court.

And furthermore, Medved reminds us:

When challenging Barack Obama’s claim on a second term, the Republicans should remind the American people why we entrusted him with the presidency in the first place. Beyond any specific expectations about jobs, taxes, and health care, the public welcomed the prospect of an end to the bickering with a new politics of common-sense reform.

The GOP candidate can expose the president’s spoiled promise by renewing the same pledge more credibly, and demonstrating in the campaign itself the coalition-building, pragmatism, and bipartisanship the people expected from the incumbent. Reinvigorated hope for unity and cooperation provides the best chance to highlight this president’s most fatal failure and to add his name to the melancholy list of discredited one-termers who broke faith with the American people.

No better reason to turn Barack Obama out on his ear in 2012. And there is an obvious choice as to who should replace him. Mitt Romney was a productive Governor in a State where the legislature was overwhelmingly under the control of the opposite party. And they were not conservative Texas Democrats, such as served in the legislature that George W. Bush had to work with. (He thought he could be “a uniter, not a divider,” but he'd never had to deal with Democrats luike Nancy Pelosi as Texas Governor.) These were liberal Massachusetts Democrats. And yet he found a way to work with them. Mitt Romney can be the force for harmony that Barack Obama said he could be.

2012: a repeat of 2008 with new characters?

On the Republican side (but not the Democratic side, where the presence of a sitting president makes things totally different), this year's nomination campaign seems like a repeat of what occurred four years ago, but with different characters playing the same roles.

This year's Mike Huckabee is Rick Santorum, the darling of the Religious Right (though Catholic, not Evangelical Protestant). Huckabee won Iowa, but faded when things went to states which were less dominated by the Religious Right; Santorum didn't quite win Iowa, but came pretty close, and will probably not so as well as Huckabee all around, but he's clearly fitting into the same role.

This year's Rudy Giuliani is Chris Christie, a candidate who would suit a lot of us (including me) very well, but who simply does not accord with enough of the Republican electorate to win the nomination. Giuliani actually tried to run, but after a few primaries bowed out and threw his support to John McCain, Christie saw the situation from the beginning and strongly backed Mitt Romney.

And as the previous paragraph hints, Mitt Romney is this year's John McCain. So much of the "conservative" part of the party does not consider him conservative enough, though he's about as conservative as the nation will vote for, in fact. McCain could have beaten Obama except that the economy took a dive just a few weeks before Election Day; he was leading in the polls, actually. But this year, the weaknesses in the economy will help the GOP, not the Democrats, because the sitting President is not George W. Bush, but Barack Obama.

McCain and Romney do not really like each other, but when Romney saw he could not get the nomination four years ago, he conceded to McCain; McCain has just rewarded Romney, in turn, by endorsing him for this year's nomination.

The only candidate from four years ago who has no corresponding one this year, interestingly, is Mitt Romney. Since he's playing John McCain's role this year, he obviously can't play himself!

But if this is really 2008 with new characters, clearly the nominee will be Mitt Romney — and perhaps this time our November will see the Republicans (with “change” on their side this time!) recapturing the White House. I certainly hope so.

Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and qualifications for the Presidency

The Washington Examiner carries a regular column by Byron York, who, like many of the Examiner's columnists, tends to be a little more right-wing than me, so sometimes I agree and sometimes I disagree. In yesterday's paper I read York's column, which read:

What's wrong with Rick Perry? How did the successful, well-liked, long-term governor of one of America's largest states enter the Republican presidential primary race with great fanfare, zoom to the top of the polls, and then slide almost as quickly back into the pack?

Blaming the Texas governor's problems on a lackluster debating style — as Perry himself has done after a number of poor performances — answers only part of the question. Yes, debates are particularly important this campaign season. But debates are more than just style and popularity contests. They reveal deeper things about candidates; voters watching debates can learn not only how a candidate handles tough questions but whether he is really, truly prepared to run for the White House.

Early in Perry's candidacy, there was a spate of stories suggesting he's not smart enough to be president. They weren't subtle; one was headlined “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” But even Perry's critics could look at those stories and say: Here is a man who has successfully governed a large and complex state, presided over prosperity and growth, dealt with the political challenges that go with it all, and won re-election repeatedly. Successful governorships don't just happen by accident; Perry's results in Texas show he is a smart, competent executive.

But the debates have revealed a different problem. The Rick Perry who has taken the stage in four Republican debates so far is a man who, for all his governing success in Texas, appears not to have thought enough about why he wants to be president of the United States and what he would do if he achieved his goal. When critics gently say that Perry's presentations have been “light on details,” they're really saying Perry doesn't seem to have thought things through.

More than anything else, a lot of thinking should precede a run for president. There's no time to think about much of anything once the campaign begins, and there's no way a candidate can collect and organize a lifetime of experiences into a coherent approach to national issues once he's flying from stop to stop. A candidate has to have done his thinking long before he hits the road or steps on a debate stage.

Think back to a different example from a different time. In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Miers was a perfectly fine White House counsel, but she clearly had not spent a lifetime doing the kind of legal thinking that prepares one for the highest court. The White House assured doubters that Miers planned to study really, really hard in preparation for her confirmation hearings.

But it doesn't work that way. Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito didn't have to cram at the last minute for their hearings. Each had a lifetime of experience and thinking at the highest levels of the law, and their task was to organize the knowledge they already had to prepare for confirmation questioning. But the important thing was, the knowledge was there. The thinking had already been done. Miers, on the other hand, wasn't prepared and finally dropped out.

There's no doubt former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has thought a long, long time about being president. Romney can tell you, at any level of generality or detail you want, why he is running and what he would do if he won. He adjusts to new issues and questions by building on all the preparation he's already done.

For Romney, debate preparation involves taking all the things he has already thought through and finding the most effective way to present them in one-minute answers. For Perry, debate preparation is trying to learn new stuff about national issues that he should have been thinking about a long time ago.

It's often pointed out that since Perry entered the Republican race late, on Aug. 13, he had little time to build a campaign organization and hone a campaign pitch. That's true, but the fact is, if Perry wanted to be president, he should have been thinking seriously about the substance of national issues — not just money-raising and state chairmen — years before he declared his candidacy.

Now Perry is paying the price for that lack of preparation. And if that, in fact, is the real problem behind his poor debate performances, then he's not going to improve as a candidate in the next few weeks. It's far too late for that.

I don't think York goes quite far enough. When he says that “[t]here's no doubt former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has thought a long, long time about being president. Romney can tell you, at any level of generality or detail you want, why he is running and what he would do if he won. He adjusts to new issues and questions by building on all the preparation he's already done,” he's conceding, as well, that Romney, if he is elected in November 2012, will be able, right on Jan. 20, 2013, to move into the Presidency, knowing what he wants to do and how and why he wants to do it. Contrast the current occupant of the White House, who let Congress write his health care bill because he wasn't quite sure what he wanted, and who has in general been pretty slow on the uptake in just about any way you can imagine. This is a good reason to elect Romney, not just a reason he will win debates — whether with Perry now or with Obama in 2012.

Rick Perry? Oh, no!

Some polls I've seen lately show a surge in the numbers for Rick Perry, putting him in #1 position among Republican candidates for the nomination. I hope that it's just a case of people supporting him because he's a fresh face, the newest entry into the race.

It's clear that Perry is the kind of Republican that Democrats like to paint all Republicans as — pretty stupid. His remarks on creationism, for one, bear this out. And he's taken to comparing himself to George W. Bush by saying "Bush went to Yale, I went to Texas A&M." Nominating Perry almost concedes the race to Obama, unless people are so fed up with Obama's handling of the economy that they'll vote for anyone running against him, and I don't see this yet.

There are certainly problems with Mitt Romney, but so far he seems the best choice. I've seen some mention of former New York State Governor George Pataki as a candidate, and I would — as far as I can tell — be able to support him, but I haven't seen that he was interested in the nomination. I might have really liked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and had a favorable view of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, but both of them have made it clear that they aren't interested. My favorite blog owner, Dennis Sanders, keeps advocating Jon Huntsman, who is probably closer to me politically than Romney, but can he get the nomination in a party where he's polling about 2%? And if he manages to get that nomination, will he be able to make himself known to enough people to get their vote in Nomember 2012 against an incumbent President Obama? So with all these factors, I have to go for Romney.

Organized labor - part of why I'm a Republican!

There is a union — the Bakery and Confectionery Workers' union — which has a large headquarters building in Kensington, Maryland. Back in 2000, I remember passing that building, on the bus, almost every day; on Election Day, I actually had to walk by that building en route to my polling place. And there was, on the side of the building, a gigantic Gore sign. I used to say that that sign was an almost-daily reminder of why I had to support Bush. This year, the shennanigans of the Wisconsin Democrats in their State Senate, similarly, remind me of why my loyalty has to be to the Republican Party.

I don't mean to say that organized labor cannot be right about anything. And I don't mean to say that they are worse than, say, Muammar Qaddafi or his ilk. But I think that a large amount of the damage that has been done, over the past few decades, to the United States has been due to organized labor. And the Democrats' fealty to organized labor makes them my political enemies.

I remember when New York City had eight newspapers. When one of them folded, there were seven remaining, but three of those seven, because of economic hardship, wanted to merge. The unions opposed this merger because some jobs would be lost, and went on strike for a whole year; in the end, the merged company published for a few months after the strike ended, but went under quickly, and more jobs were lost as a result than would have been if the original merger plans had been allowed. And we have seen recently how both Chrysler and the once-mighty General Motors had to go through a bankruptcy; obviously, they could not compete with foreign companies. Some people have pointed to foreign automakers' use of labor at wages no American could live on, but it is funny: Toyota makes cars in the USA with American workers, but makes a profit while the workers receive wages they seem to be able to live on.

Unions like to prevent workers from being judged on the quality of their work: workers' pay is to be based on seniority, not merit, which means there is incentive for workers not to do their best. They also require firing to be on a seniority basis, so when a company has to downsize, it can't keep the best workers, but must keep the longest-serving. In general, unions treat the workers they represent as interchangeable parts, and this makes it impossible for a company to try to use them where they can best fit in.

People say that the Republicans are in just as much fealty to "big business" as the Democrats are to organized labor. Funny: both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are Democrats. It seems that both parties have policies that attract some "big business" types. But big labor is solidly behind the Democrats. They know who will do their bidding. And that's a big part of the reason I'm a Republican.

The Medal of Freedom, given to George H. W. Bush

Apparently, it has been known since November that President Obama would award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former President George H. W. Bush. But I must admit that I only found out about it when the actual award was made yesterday.

It's an interesting choice. President Obama has been doing everything in his power to prevent Republicans, in the Congress and elsewhere, from having any input into his programs, such as the health care "reform." Does he think that by giving this symbolic recognition to a Republican President (the father of his predecessor, the man he has been regularly denouncing over the recent years!) he will suddenly be seen as something other than the leftist he is?

It would be more useful if Pres. Obama would actually listen to Republicans, rather than giving them symbolic awards.

Consequences of divided government

Some people have cheered the result of the election last month in producing a Republican House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate, which means that, together with the continuing Democratic hold on the Presidency, we will have divided government. They believe that this will require both parties to work together, which will lead to a moderate policy, in line with the wishes of most Americans, rather that the extremist policies that result when one party dominates both houses of Congress and the Presidency.

To some extent, this will probably happen. President Obama has already begun moving in a more moderate direction (though he does not have to face a Republican House until next month) in his willingness to compromise on the bill that extended the Bush administration tax cuts, as the Republicans wanted, while also extending the unemployment benefits, as the Democrats wanted. However, divided government is particularly bad in one area: the deficit.

Republicans tend to help solve deficits by lowering both taxes and spending, in accordance with a desire to make government smaller. By lowering taxes, they give the people control of more of their money, while also discouraging the start of new government programs since there is less money to pay for them. By contrast, Democrats tend to help solve deficits by raising both taxes and spending, since they want to start a lot of new government programs of various kinds, so they need the new taxes to pay for them.

When government is divided, we see what happened during the latter part of Ronald Reagan's Presidency: the Republicans succeeded in lowering taxes (which people like), while the Democrats succeeded in starting their new government programs (which also appeals to a lot of people; at least to those who are the beneficiaries of those programs). The deficit ballooned. The same, of course, happened in the latter years of the George W. Bush Presidency, only more so because of the effects of recession. So I'm afraid that controlling the deficit will be a hopeless task.

When Richard Nixon was President, he found a solution: the Democratic Congress appropriated a lot of funds which President Nixon simply "embargoed": he didn't spend the money on the basis that he was simply authorized to spend it, not required to. This got such a bad reputation among Democrats that later Presidents did not do things like that. And anyway, it would not be very likely that this solution would work in the current situation, where the Democrats control the Presidency: it is the President who wants both higher taxes and spending, and he obviously cannot spend money that the Congress does not give him. So what will happen is anybody's guess.

My own rating of Presidents

Although the recent poll which I cited in yesterday's post covered the ten most recent Presidents, my own preference is to rate the last twelve. My reason is that these are the ones whose terms have been within my lifetime. (Oh, FDR lived for a couple of years after I was born, but I can't say I remember his Presidency, as he died before my third birthday. So Truman is the first President whose service was really within my lifetime, I would say.)

Harry Truman is one President I think better of than I did when he was in office. His management of the quarrel with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, when I was yet a child, is one factor: as a child I thought Truman was wrong, but as I said in another post, by now I've come to a different conclusion: insubordination is not to be tolerated. Truman did some bad things, like trying to nationalize the steel industry, but considering his handling the issue of the atomic bomb (it's hard to believe that, in those days, vice-presidents were so out-of-the-loop that when he succeeded to the Presidency he knew nothing about it!) and the aforementioned MacArthur incident, Truman showed more competence than I gave him credit for at the time. I'd not call him a great President, but actually he was better than average.

Dwight Eisenhower became president when I was ten. By the time his term ended, I was eighteen. So he was really the President I came to political maturity under. (In those days, you had to be twenty-one to vote. But I think I really reached political maturity at about age fourteen. I have changed a little since then, but not much.) I think he was by far a better President than many historian-types make him out to be, because rather than a flashy Kennedy-type he preferred to work in more subtle ways. It is partly because of Eisenhower's Presidency that I am a Republican; the Governorship of New York State by Nelson A. Rockefeller was the only other important influence that made me what I am politically. So need I say that my opinion of Eisenhower as President is extremely high?

On the other hand, everyone else seems to give a high rating to John Kennedy. Yet I can't see why. As I said in yesterday's post, he botched the Bay of Pigs invasion, and he couldn't get a thing through Congress that he wanted to, though his Democratic Party controlled that Congress. The fact that, like the current President, he had a glamorous wife and was himself photogenic seems to have meant a lot, and his assassination made him a martyr, I suppose. But objectively, what did he accomplish as President?

Lyndon B. Johnson was a powerful President. Because of him, many of Kennedy's ideas did get passed, including his civil rights proposals. So LBJ gets high marks in the department of getting things done. He was, however, one President with no integrity. As a Senator from Texas, he was a typical Southern segregationist; as a President, he did more for civil rights than just about any other President. Obviously, civil rights was an issue he'd take either side on, based on how it would affect his election prospects. In my first Presidential election vote, in 1964, I abstained: Goldwater was someone too extreme, I thought (though later I found that his ideas weren't nearly as bizarre as the newspaper I read made them out to be!) and Johnson was too unscrupulous. If I could do it over again, my vote would have been given to Goldwater (though, of course, it wouldn't have done much good!)

Then came Richard M. Nixon. Just about the most hated President, yet I believe in fact the best in my lifetime. (No, I'm not putting him in the category of a Lincoln. Note the "in my lifetime" qualification.) I could spend so much time on Nixon, but I will keep this paragraph short. I may post some more on him. But as far as I can see, he had only one flaw, as I said in yesterday's post: he was too loyal to underlings who violated the law to help re-elect him. But is loyalty to one's political supporters really that bad? One thing I dislike about Barack Obama is his stabbing Alice Palmer in the back. I think perhaps Nixon's loyalty was not entirely a bad thing.

When Nixon was forced to resign, the Presidency fell upon Gerald Ford, a genuinely nice person who never wanted more than the Speakership of the House. I cannot say much about him; he didn't serve long enough to accomplish much, but he didn't discredit the office.

Ford was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, the most incompetent President of my lifetime. He actually appointed a man in charge of his drug program that had been censured for improperly prescribing drugs, and his attempts to get our hostages out of the Middle East were laughable. He also turned Nixon's accomplishments in getting honorably out of Vietnam and establishing contact with China into defeats. (We no longer have an embassy in Taipei, because of Carter!)

After Carter, anyone would have been an improvement, and obviously Ronald Reagan was. I might have preferred someone a bit more moderate, but, again as I said in yeaterday's post, he recognized the need for moderates in the GOP to have some of their goals as well. I don't rank Reagan as high as Nixon or Eisenhower, but not far below them.

Reagan had offered his Vice-Presidency to one of his moderate opponents, George H. W. Bush. And on reaching the end of the two terms that the Twenty-Second Amendment permitted Reagan, Bush moved into the Presidency. Though Bush and Reagan had come from different factions of the GOP, there was a lot of continuity, but unfortunately, a Democratic Congress got in his way. He had promised "no new taxes," but he couldn't get the budget he wanted through Congress, and taxes did go up. I don't blame him for going back on his promise. It was politically necessary. But it cost him re-election, and set the stage for Bill Clinton.

Carter may have been the most incompetent President of my lifetime, but Clinton was, except for the current occupant of the office, the most unscrupulous. It seems he wanted to emulate JFK, and at least emulated one of JFK's worse traits, a skirt-chasing proclivity that Kennedy could keep more secret than Clinton could. But between Whitewater and his trying to cover up the sexual harassment of his subordinates, I consider him the worst, bar none, of the Presidents. He should have been removed from office by impeachment, but politics in the Congress saved his neck.

George W. Bush, the next President, got the country behind him in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. But he let anti-war sentiment undermine his Iraq policy. I preferred his father's moderation to his more right-wing orientation, but I consider that again he is one who I rate higher than many other people. I'd have voted for him again if there hadn't been a Twenty-Second Amendment.

This takes us to the current President, Barack Obama. Our worst? No, that title I reserve for Bill Clinton. But only because his Presidency hasn't been corrupt. He's gone against the wishes of the people on health care, and tried to do so on other things, and generally violated the idea that this is a government by the consent of the governed.

That's all for now. But I may expand on some of these at a later date.

On Mark McKinnon's program (Part 3 of 3)

The last four of Mark McKinnon's proposals:

9. Go nuclear. The ultimate green strategy, good for the environment, good for the economy and therefore doable, is a natural-gas-to-nuclear-power plan proposed by contrarian Robert Bryce. Wind and solar power are land-intensive, a green sin, but not energy-dense, and affordable only when heavily subsidized. And wind power must be supplemented with hydrocarbons for reliability. Texas leads the nation and is sixth globally in wind production, yet only 8.7 percent of installed capacity is dependable during peak demand. And it provides only 1.2 percent of the state's total energy need. In Denmark, the poster child for wind power, neither carbon dioxide emissions nor hydrocarbon consumption have been reduced. Natural gas resources in the U.S. are equivalent to three times the known oil reserves of Iraq. Natural gas is the near-term solution for cleaner fuel and the bridge to the fuel of the future—nuclear, the most carbon-neutral, power-dense, relatively affordable and available energy source. As Bryce says, "If you are anti-carbon dioxide and anti-nuclear, you are pro-blackout."

I have long agreed with this proposal. People are afraid of Three Mile Island-type scenarios, but nobody was harmed by Three Mile Island. People were seriously affected by Chernobyl, but that was a type of reactor we don't think of building in the U. S., precisely because of the hazards associated with it.

10. Get right. Repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the U.S. military and legalizing same-sex marriage are issues of equality for all. Sixty percent of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Gay people serve their countries openly in the British, Canadian, and Israeli military. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is discriminatory, and it limits our ability to recruit and retain the greatest numbers of the best and brightest, especially critical while we are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both back this needed reform. And for the first time since Pew started tracking opinions on same-sex marriage 15 years ago, fewer than half of those polled now say they oppose legalizing the institution. Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. In my opinion, we have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights. It's way past time for the GOP to come out in support of equality for all.

Frankly, I've said enough on this topic that anyone reading this blog knows McKinnon's proposal has my full approval, so I need to say nothing more.

11. Open the borders. Any act that proposes 16,000 additional IRS agents can't be good. But President Obama is right: "Consumers do better when there is choice and competition." Unfortunately, the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does neither. Seventy-nine percent of Republican voters, 56 percent of voters not affiliated with either party, and a majority of voters in the battleground congressional districts still favor repeal. As an alternate strategy to lower costs, it's time to open the borders to allow the purchase of private health insurance across state lines, and to allow consumers and businesses to associate for better pool rates. Just six months after the bill was signed into law, consumers face increasing premiums, fewer choices when it comes to health-care insurers and providers. Squeezed by Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement payments below cost and mounting liability insurance costs, doctors may soon be an endangered species. There's a reason doctors have flocked to Texas since 2002: tort reform. Tort reforms are needed to protect patients' access to health care providers.

When I first looked at his title, I thought this proposal was going to deal with illegal immigration, but actually, as will be seen below, that is his next proposal. In fact this #11 is a really common-sense proposal. Some pieces of it have already been endorsed on this blog; I really agree with just about all of it.

12. Recognize reality. It's time to fix illegal immigration. Voters in Arizona and Texas are rightfully frustrated by the federal government's disinterest in protecting our sovereignty. Though unemployment numbers are high, low-skilled immigrants actually expand the size of the overall economy. Punishing those who work hard, who do not hurt others, and who seek a path out of poverty for their families is not the answer. The fixes need to begin now, and begin in parallel. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has the right plan. Secure the border; ceding a no-go zone to foreign drug lords on American territory is not acceptable. Deport illegal immigrants with felony convictions. For the 11 million already in this country, provide a tough but fair path forward which would include paying fines and back taxes, passing background checks, proving English proficiency and going to the back of the line to work toward lawful permanent residence. We need to expand and simplify the farm-worker program to address seasonal work needs. Issue all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, a biometric ID card. And strengthen the penalties and enforcements for employers. At the same time, we need to expand the number of visas issued for high-skilled workers in science and technology, the next Einstein may be waiting.

This is probably a pretty reasonable way to handle it. It is close to the plan which was proposed by both George W. Bush and John McCain, but extremists on both sides led to its being scuttled.

McKinnon closes by saying:

It's not a brand that brings the middle together. It's a shared belief: The promise of America still exists. Though the system is corrupted, and government now rules as the master, not the servant, the ideal of liberty balanced by responsibility lives on—right in the middle.

That is a pretty good summary.