September 3, 2009



September 3, 2009

Thomas Sowell comments on the Justice Department investigating the CIA. No hope here. Just audacity.

...Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about "upholding the law" but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law.

There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and shot — and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed and the film has been shown on the History Channel.

So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.

That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.

But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.

 

Jennifer Rubin reaches a compelling conclusion about Obama's spineless responses to outrageous actions.

...The Obama administration’s blasé attitude has raised speculation that we were in on the “deal” or that we share suspicions long held by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and others that maybe the wrong terrorist was convicted. But I think the explanation is simpler. Obama never gets very outraged about outrageous things, because that would require he do something.  And, yes, there is a double standard about who gets the tongue-lashings. (Peretz again: “It is not as if Obama is usually shy with emotional oratory, although he is rather shy in admonishing Muslims, a difficulty he seems not to have with the Israelis.”)

If we were full-throated in our condemnation of Iranian show trials, or the continued Syrian facilitation of terrorists who kill our troops in Iraq, or human rights in China (or anywhere), Obama might be expected to address the source of the outrage and confront the miscreants. This he does not do. So he looks down, shuffles his feet, offers only the most tepid words, and moves on. But others, primarily our adversaries, are watching. They see an irresolute and unconcerned American president. And they will act accordingly.

 

Since the new administration tries to blame everything on W, Karl Rove has fun pointing out the real cause of their troubles.

... The administration's problems have been compounded by tactical mistakes. Allowing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to push for a Democrat-only bill shatters any claim Mr. Obama can make to bipartisanship, a core theme of his candidacy. Leaving the legislation's drafting to Congress has tied the president's fortunes to Mrs. Pelosi, who has a 25% approval rating nationwide, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose approval rating is 37% in Nevada.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) was inartful but basically correct when he said if Mr. Obama loses on health care, "it will be his Waterloo." It would destroy confidence in the ability of Democrats to govern. Mr. Obama knows this, which is why he will stop at nothing to get a bill, any bill, on which the label "health-care reform" can be stuck.

Given the Democratic congressional margins, Mr. Obama has the votes to do it, but at huge costs to him and his party. Legislation that looks anything like the bill moving through the House will contain deeply unpopular provisions—including massive deficit spending, tax hikes and Medicare cuts—and create enormous ill will on Capitol Hill. This will be especially true if Democrats rely on parliamentary tricks to pass a bill in the Senate with 51 votes. The public's reaction in August showed that the president is creating the conditions for a revolt against his party in the 2010 elections.

On the other hand, if Mr. Obama jettisons the public option, he may spark a revolt within his party. The Democratic base is already grumbling and could block a bill if it doesn't include a public option.

Presidents always encounter rough patches. What is unusual is how soon Mr. Obama has hit his. He has used up almost all his goodwill in less than nine months, with the hardest work still ahead. At the year's start, Democrats were cocky. At summer's end, concern is giving way to despair. A perfect political storm is amassing, and heading straight for Democrats.

 

 

Ed Morrissey posts on Jake Tapper's reporting of Obama's "precipitous slide."

How bad has Barack Obama’s slide in the polls become? So bad, Jake Tapper reports for ABC News, that the White House has abandoned the talk of mandates and now cast Obama as a courageous statesman willing to do the unpopular. Why, the world would look much different if Obama was concerned about mandates: ...

 

 

Howard Kurtz recounts how a lot of the left-media are falling out of ObamaLove.

It is as inevitable in Washington as sweltering summers and steamy sex scandals.

A president is going to be smacked around from the moment he takes office and the uplifting rhetoric of campaign rallies meets the gritty reality of governing.

But the criticism of Barack Obama has turned strikingly personal as some of his liberal media allies have gone wobbly on him. After playing a cheerleading role during the campaign, some are bluntly questioning whether he's up to the job.

If Obama is losing Paul Krugman, can the rest of the left be far behind?

"I'm concerned as to whether, in trying to reach out to the middle, he is selling out his base," says Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. "I find myself saying, 'Where's that well-oiled Obama machine we saw last year?' . . . Maybe he's being a little too cool at this point."  ...

 

 

From abroad, Roger Simon looks at the current political landscape here and has some sage advice for the GOP.

... If I were the Republicans, I’d be worrying about peaking too early.

 

 

In Slate, Anne Applebaum explains some of the reasons for the continuing World War II commemorations.

...The answer cannot lie in the personal experiences of any of the statesmen involved, since none was alive at the time. It lies, rather, in the way that memories of the war have come to be central to the national memory, and therefore to the contemporary politics, of so many of the countries that fought in it.

Everything about modern Germany, for instance, is the way it is because of the war, from its pacifism and its devotion to the European Union to the architecture of its capital city. War guilt is built into the political system and becomes controversial only when it seems some Germans want to abandon it: The new wave of interest in the fate of Germans who fled or were expelled from Central Europe after the war, or the popularity of books about Allied bombings of German cities, worries many in the region. Hence Angela Merkel's presence at Westerplatte. (She was the first to confirm she would attend.) No German chancellor wants any of Germany's neighbors to doubt that Germany is still very sorry about 1939 (even if some are rather indifferent). And none wants Germany's neighbors to fear German aggression today.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend for slightly different reasons, or so it would seem. Last weekend, Russian state television ran a long documentary essentially arguing that Stalin was justified in ordering the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Baltic states—and in doing a secret deal with Hitler—on the grounds that Poland itself was in a secret alliance with the Nazis. Putin himself probably will not defend this startling and ahistorical thesis, although—judging from an article he has written for the Polish media—he may well try to "contextualize" the Hitler-Stalin pact by comparing it with other diplomatic decisions. Lately, other Russians have lately expressed similarly positive views of 1939 in a well-coordinated attempt to justify the Hitler-Stalin pact. (If they have any views: The majority of Russians, a recent poll shows, do not know that the USSR invaded Poland in 1939.)

But from the point of view of the Russian ruling elite, such interpretations make sense: By praising Stalin's aggression toward the USSR's neighbors 70 years ago, the current leaders help justify Russia's aggression toward its neighbors today, at least in the eyes of the Russian public. ...

 

 

David Harsanyi, one of our favorites, agrees with George Will.  

... Judging from their harsh reaction to Will, it's not clear when, if ever, some conservatives believe the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan. Even less clear is how the victory narrative is supposed to play out. Does this triumphant day arrive when every Islamic radical in the region has met his virgins? If so, after eight years of American lives lost, the goal seems further away than ever.

Or is victory achieved when we finally usher this primitive tribal culture, with its violent warlords and religious extremism, through the 8th century all the way to modernity? If so, we're on course for a centuries-long enterprise of nation-building and babysitting, not a war. The war was won in 2002.

If the goal is to establish a stable government to fill the vacuum created by our ousting of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, we've done quite a job. Most Americans can accept a Marine risking life and limb to safeguard our freedoms. But when that Marine is protector of a corrupt and depraved foreign parliament — one that recently legalized marital rape and demands women ask permission from male relatives to leave their home — it is not a victory worth celebrating. ...

 

 

Scott Johnson of Powerline recounts a shocking story from Peter Robinson.

...Former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson recalls that Senator Kennedy was something more than a useful idiot. In the heyday of the Soviet Union's peace offensive, Senator Kennedy appears to have offered his collaboration with Soviet leadership in opposing Reagan's efforts. Robinson writes:

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

See Robinson's column for the rest of the story. I add only that the soul of liberalism appears to be immortal. At any rate, it survives Senator Kennedy's death.

 

 

The IBD Editorial board also comments on Kennedy's KGB overtures and the egregious lack of coverage by the MSM.

...When we first heard of this, we thought it must be a mistake. Or a hoax. But it appears to be neither. Indeed, to our knowledge, the memo written by then-KGB chief Victor Chebrikov to Andropov has never been challenged as a fake....

 

...As we said, we're not the first to report this. First came the London Times' Sebastian, way back in 1992. And just three years ago, historian Paul Kengor repeated the story in his book "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism." ...

...The whole shameful episode reflects poorly on the honesty and integrity of America's major news outlets. It seems Kennedy read the media right — he was quite confident the Fourth Estate's reflexive defenders of Camelot could be counted on to help. ...

...Again, in the end, there's no evidence Kennedy or Tunney ever actually helped the KGB. Just that they offered to. Yet this raises many troubling questions that, sadly, may never be answered.

Did Kennedy not understand that the Soviet Union was, indeed, a murderous evil empire? Did he really think that, between Reagan and Andropov, the Russian was the lesser of two evils?

Still more troubling, perhaps, is the question asked recently by James Kirchick at Commentary Magazine: Did a sitting senator violate the Logan Act, the 1799 law that prohibits "any citizen" of the U.S. from meddling in American foreign policy on behalf of a foreign power?

The mainstream media could have at least asked these questions. That they didn't only adds to a long, shameful history of partisanship that has skewed the news for more than a generation — and left the nation worse off for it.

 

 

David Warren has been reluctant to write about Kennedy.

...Those who could not guess what I thought of Ted Kennedy, could not have been reading my columns. But to review, quickly, I classed him among the horrible freaks of electoral politics, an embodiment of almost everything I detest in public life, from open advocacy of "the culture of death," and socialist tyranny, to great personal hypocrisy; sometimes nearly a traitor to his country; and certainly a traitor to his religion. ...

..."But what do you really think?" I can hear my reader asking. That is what I really think, but it is not incompatible with something else I really think: that Kennedy was a great and interesting man, and not without some noble qualities; moreover, a man in some (small) degree excused by the overweening ambitions of the Kennedy family, inculcated by a rather monstrous father. His brother Robert would, had he survived, have set Ted a better example, for Robert retained a fairly stalwart Christian moral sense, and was thus less easily corrupted.

Ambition on behalf of the good should be encouraged; ambition as an end in itself should never be. But the worst kind of ambition was the sort Ted Kennedy had, in which self and cause become inextricably confused. ...

 

 

John Stossel looks at the unintended, and negative, economic consequences of Cash for Clunkers.

...Let's start at the beginning. The government paid car owners to trade in their old cars, which will be destroyed. But the government is running a deficit. So it doesn't have $3 billion to hand out. It must borrow the money, which reduces the amount of money for other investments. Moreover, the government must raise taxes in the future to pay back the principal and interest -- or the Federal Reserve will monetize the debt through inflation. Either way, we pay.

That isn't all. Those car buyers were either going to trade in their used cars soon or they weren't. If they were, Cash for Clunkers simply moved up the schedule. The stimulation of the auto industry occurred earlier. Big deal. But if buyers planned to keep their cars longer, the program imposed costs that are less visible. Without the government incentive to buy cars, consumers would have bought other things -- computers, washing machines, televisions. The manufacturers and sellers of those products didn't get to make those sales. Why should the auto industry get privileges at the expense of others?

Then there are the mechanics who would have serviced those used cars. They've lost business. Some will be laid off. Nor should we forget low-income people who depend on the used-car market for their transportation. The cheap cars they would have bought were destroyed. ...

...Finally, there is something revolting about the government subsidizing the destruction of useful things. It reminds me of the New Deal policy of killing piglets and pouring milk down sewers to keep food prices from falling. ...

 

 

Given the complaints of some of the left Luddites about bio-engineered crops, the fact there is plenty of diversity in available seeds is counter-intuitive. Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy has the story.

It is generally assumed that crop diversity declined dramatically during the 20th century. This trend is blamed upon market pressures and the rise of corporate agriculture, among other things. But is the underlying assumption accurate? Paul Heald and Susannah Chapman of the University of Georgia (law and anthropology, respectively) suggest we may need to rethink what we think we know about vegetable crop diversity. In a new paper, "Crop Diversity Report Card for the Twentieth Century: Diversity Bust or Diversity Boom?", they present evidence that crop diversity has not declined meaningfully at all. ...

 

 

The Wall Street Journal editorial board reports on the government-created drought in California.

...The state's water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a "biological opinion" imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched. ...

...The result has already been devastating for the state's farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years. In August, 50 mayors from the San Joaquin Valley signed a letter asking President Obama to observe the impact of the draconian water rules firsthand. ...

...The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor's request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a "severe drought" in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth. ... 

...The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit on behalf of three farmers in the valley, calling the federal regulations "immoral and unconstitutional." Because the delta smelt is only found in California, the Foundation says, it does not fall under the regulatory powers provided by the Constitution's Commerce Clause. On a statutory basis, the Fish and Wildlife Service also neglected to appropriately consider the economic devastation the pumping restrictions would bring. ...

 

We close with a look at a time when we had a government that got a few things right. John Fund reviews Hayward's The Age of Reagan. 

You call this a crisis? Think back nearly 30 years ago. When Ronald Reagan took office the country's economy was in a shambles—inflation was running into the double digits, growth had stagnated and the top marginal tax rate was 70%. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, bristling with imperial designs and nuclear weapons, had recently invaded Afghanistan, installing a puppet regime, and Iran had ousted a pro-Western leader in favor of a fervently anti-American cleric. The White House tenure of Jimmy Carter, known for hand-wringing over "malaise" and a botched hostage-rescue mission, had led scholars to conclude that the American presidency, as an institution, was too weak to govern in the modern world.

And then came Reagan. He faced down the Soviets, cut taxes and revived the economy. Not least, he restored confidence in the presidency itself, providing a model for his successors. One of his legacies, visible in the outlook of every successful presidential candidate since, is an optimism about the nation, echoing his statement that "people who talk about an age of limits are really talking about their own limitations, not America's."

In "The Age of Reagan," Steven F. Hayward offers a splendid narrative history of Reagan's two terms in the White House—a period (1981-89) that amounted to what he calls a "counterrevolution," reversing so much of what had spiraled downward in the late 1970s. Along the way, he supplies a keen analysis of just how much Reagan succeeded in changing America's self-image, often by reasserting core principles. ...

 

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Jewish World Review

Suicide of the West?

by Thomas Sowell

 

Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi — the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people — is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time.

In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.

The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the problem when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."

He wrote this long before Barack Obama became President of the United States. But this administration epitomizes the "concessions and smiles" approach to countries that are our implacable enemies.

Western Europe has gone down that path before us but we now seem to be trying to catch up.

Still, the release of a mass-murdering terrorist, who went home to a hero's welcome in Libya, shows that President Obama is not the only one who wants to move away from the idea of a "war on terror" — as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us.

The ostensible reason for releasing al-Megrahi was compassion for a man terminally ill. It is ironic that this was said in Scotland, for exactly 250 years ago another Scotsman — Adam Smith — said, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."

That lesson seems to have been forgotten in America as well, where so many people seem to have been far more concerned about whether we have been nice enough to the mass-murdering terrorists in our custody than those critics have ever been about the innocent people beheaded or blown up by the terrorists themselves.

Tragically, those with this strange inversion of values include the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. Although President Obama has said that he does not want to revisit the past, this is only the latest example of how his administration's actions are the direct opposite of his lofty words.

It is not just a question of looking backward. The decision to second-guess CIA agents who extracted information to save American lives is even worse when you look forward.

Years from now, long after Barack Obama is gone, CIA agents dealing with hardened terrorists will have to worry about whether what they do to get information out of them to save American lives will make these agents themselves liable to prosecution that can destroy their careers and ruin their lives.

This is not simply an injustice to those who have tried to keep this country safe, it is a danger recklessly imposed on future Americans whose safety cannot always be guaranteed by sweet and gentle measures against hardened murderers.

Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about "upholding the law" but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law.

There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and shot — and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed and the film has been shown on the History Channel.

So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.

That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.

But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.

 

 

Contentions

Lockerbie—Another Profile in Conflict Avoidance

by Jennifer Rubin

The outrage continues over the return of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on “humanitarian grounds.” (Marty Peretz cracks: ” This, I suppose, is a new human right, perhaps soon to be certified by Mary Robinson, who now wears the honor of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”)

The Wall Street Journal notes the growing storm in Britain:

The more we learn about the British government’s negotiations over the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Megrahi, the more it appears we aren’t getting the whole story from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his cabinet. This weekend came revelations that as far back as 2007 British Justice Secretary Jack Straw was in detailed communication with his Scottish counterpart Kenny MacAskill about Libya’s demands that Megrahi be released.

And then there is the matter of the U.S. government’s reaction. While his advisers followed with stronger denunciations, Obama’s own reaction was the all-too-familiar understated and unimpressive expression of disappointment: “We thought it was a mistake.” Well, that’s telling ‘em. (The White House hastened to add that it “deeply regrets” the decision.)

The Obama administration’s blasé attitude has raised speculation that we were in on the “deal” or that we share suspicions long held by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and others that maybe the wrong terrorist was convicted. But I think the explanation is simplier. Obama never gets very outraged about outrageous things, because that would require he do something.  And, yes, there is a double standard about who gets the tongue-lashings. (Peretz again: “It is not as if Obama is usually shy with emotional oratory, although he is rather shy in admonishing Muslims, a difficulty he seems not to have with the Israelis.”)

If we were full-throated in our condemnation of Iranian show trials, or the continued Syrian facilitation of terrorists who kill our troops in Iraq, or human rights in China (or anywhere), Obama might be expected to address the source of the outrage and confront the miscreants. This he does not do. So he looks down, shuffles his feet, offers only the most tepid words, and moves on. But others, primarily our adversaries, are watching. They see an irresolute and unconcerned American president. And they will act accordingly.

 

 

WSJ

Obama and the Perfect Political Storm

It's hard to sell change voters don't think they need.

by Karl Rove

August was the worst month of Barack Obama's presidency. And he seems to know it—he is now planning to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress 232 days into his administration in a desperate attempt to save his biggest domestic priority, overhauling health care.

He has already had the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus package, a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, an earmark-laden appropriations bill that boosted domestic spending nearly 8%, and a cap-and-trade energy tax that limped through the House with dozens of Democratic defections (and which has stalled in the Senate). These achievements are unpopular, so they are boomeranging on him.

Mr. Obama's problems are legion. To start with, the president is focusing on health care when the economy and jobs are nearly everyone's top issue. Voters increasingly believe Mr. Obama took his eye off the ball.

In addition, Mr. Obama is trying to overhaul health care without being able to tap into widespread public unhappiness. Nearly nine out of 10 Americans say they have coverage—and large majorities of them are happy with it. Of the 46 million uninsured, 9.7 million are not U.S. citizens; 17.6 million have annual incomes of more than $50,000; and 14 million already qualify for Medicaid or other programs. That leaves less than five million people truly uncovered out of a population of 307 million. Americans don't believe this problem—serious but correctable—justifies the radical shift Mr. Obama offers.

Moreover, he's tried to sell it with promises Americans aren't buying. He says ObamaCare will save money, but American believe it comes with a huge price tag because the Congressional Budget Office has said it will.

Workers are also rightly concerned they won't be able to keep their current coverage. Many businesses will drop their health plans and instead pay a fine equal to 8% of their payroll costs, which is less than what they pay for employee coverage.

Families believe they will be pushed into a government plan as the "public option" drives private insurers out of the market.

Health-care providers fear they'll be forced to follow one-size-fits-all guidelines drafted by bureaucrats, instead of making judgments for specific patients.

And seniors are afraid of Mr. Obama's plan to cut $500 billion from Medicare over the next decade, including $177 billion for Medicare Advantage. It's simply not possible to cut that much from Medicare without also cutting services seniors need.

Each of these concerns is energizing opposition among many previously uninvolved voters and political independents. Members of Congress, especially those in closely contested districts, saw this firsthand when they returned home in August.

The administration's problems have been compounded by tactical mistakes. Allowing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to push for a Democrat-only bill shatters any claim Mr. Obama can make to bipartisanship, a core theme of his candidacy. Leaving the legislation's drafting to Congress has tied the president's fortunes to Mrs. Pelosi, who has a 25% approval rating nationwide, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose approval rating is 37% in Nevada.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) was inartful but basically correct when he said if Mr. Obama loses on health care, "it will be his Waterloo." It would destroy confidence in the ability of Democrats to govern. Mr. Obama knows this, which is why he will stop at nothing to get a bill, any bill, on which the label "health-care reform" can be stuck.

Given the Democratic congressional margins, Mr. Obama has the votes to do it, but at huge costs to him and his party. Legislation that looks anything like the bill moving through the House will contain deeply unpopular provisions—including massive deficit spending, tax hikes and Medicare cuts—and create enormous ill will on Capitol Hill. This will be especially true if Democrats rely on parliamentary tricks to pass a bill in the Senate with 51 votes. The public's reaction in August showed that the president is creating the conditions for a revolt against his party in the 2010 elections.

On the other hand, if Mr. Obama jettisons the public option, he may spark a revolt within his party. The Democratic base is already grumbling and could block a bill if it doesn't include a public option.

Presidents always encounter rough patches. What is unusual is how soon Mr. Obama has hit his. He has used up almost all his goodwill in less than nine months, with the hardest work still ahead. At the year's start, Democrats were cocky. At summer's end, concern is giving way to despair. A perfect political storm is amassing, and heading straight for Democrats.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

 

 

 

Hot Air

Tapper on Obama’s “precipitous slide”

by Ed Morrissey

How bad has Barack Obama’s slide in the polls become? So bad, Jake Tapper reports for ABC News, that the White House has abandoned the talk of mandates and now cast Obama as a courageous statesman willing to do the unpopular. Why, the world would look much different if Obama was concerned about mandates: [pic]

“If we only did what was popular in polls, the banks would have failed, there’s be no domestic automakers, and we’d pull all of our troops out of Afghanistan tomorrow …”

Well, except for that one domestic automaker that didn’t take the government cheese. How is Ford doing, by the way? It leads Government Motors in market share for the first time in 80 years. And can we remember to put the statement on Afghanistan in the memory banks for later retrieval when the Obama administration gets squishy on the Af-Pak theater?

The White House has begun to take the decline seriously — and they should, as Tapper reports:

Low job approval ratings could impact the president’s ability to get anything done this fall. Even Democrats are practically begging the president to improve his game on health care reform.

“I think the president’s got to decide in a sense, and he has, and to step up and really frame this again for us,” said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Dodd is the acting chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, which drafted a Senate health care reform bill.

It remains to be seen what the long-term implications are of President Obama’s precipitous slide. Seven months into his term, President George H.W. Bush was at a high of 73 percent, but he was not reelected. His son, President George W. Bush was at 61 percent at this point in his presidency, but is now known for the most unpopular second term on record.

Congress will concern themselves more with short-term implications. They got an earful of hot dissent when they returned to their districts, and they have to worry about 2010 with a politically-wounded Democrat in the White House. They need to decide whether to tie themselves to a President who seems unwilling or unable to actually lead, or to cut the radical Obama-Pelosi agenda loose and take their chances by distancing themselves.

 

 

Washington Post

Et Tu, Lefty? Allies Critical Of President

Waffling on Health Care Riles His Loyal Pundits

by Howard Kurtz

It is as inevitable in Washington as sweltering summers and steamy sex scandals.

A president is going to be smacked around from the moment he takes office and the uplifting rhetoric of campaign rallies meets the gritty reality of governing.

But the criticism of Barack Obama has turned strikingly personal as some of his liberal media allies have gone wobbly on him. After playing a cheerleading role during the campaign, some are bluntly questioning whether he's up to the job.

If Obama is losing Paul Krugman, can the rest of the left be far behind?

"I'm concerned as to whether, in trying to reach out to the middle, he is selling out his base," says Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. "I find myself saying, 'Where's that well-oiled Obama machine we saw last year?' . . . Maybe he's being a little too cool at this point."

David Corn, a blogger for Politics Daily, says that despite a reservoir of support for the president, some of his policies "have caused concern, if not outright anger, among certain liberal commentators and bloggers. It's been a more conventional White House than many people expected or desired. . . . He's made compromises that have some people concerned about his adherence to principle."

Perhaps that's why a recent Frank Rich column in the New York Times was headlined, "Is Obama Punking Us?"

Rich says by phone that there is "a kind of impatience" with Obama as his initiatives stall, but that the 24-hour news cycle is producing a rush to judgment just seven months into the administration.

"The big mistake made in looking at him during the campaign was that he was a wuss or an academic or professorial and couldn't rise to the occasion, and he did," Rich says. "It's too early to talk about whether he's strong enough. He's got to be pretty damn strong to have won the campaign. . . . Of course he's not the messiah. He never was going to be the messiah."

But the sense of letdown is palpable. Krugman wrote recently that "Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted. But there's a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line."

Arianna Huffington has lamented Obama's "lack of leadership," asking: "How could someone with a renowned ability to inspire, communicate complex ideas, and connect with voters find himself in this position?" Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has noted "his distinct coolness, an above-the-fray mien that does not communicate empathy." The Post's Eugene Robinson, writing about the White House seeming to retreat from a public health insurance option, wrote: "We didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one."

Robinson says now: "I'd be lying if I didn't say there was a feeling, an excitement that attended the advent of the Obama presidency, and I'm the first to say it infected me." But, he says, "I wanted to remind readers -- and if he reads the column, to remind him -- of what he said and what people voted for. . . . Any president, coming in at any time, in any context, is going to make decisions I might not like."

The White House is well aware of the diminishing enthusiasm. "I don't think anyone anticipated that we would have broad consensus on everything we did, even from our friends," deputy press secretary Bill Burton says. "People have meaningful differences with our policies. The president doesn't view his approval ratings as something to be put up on a shelf and admired."

Burton suggests a certain journalistic impatience, saying: "Do I think it's too early to say that our friends will abandon us? I certainly do."

It was liberal commentators, of course, who formed the leading edge of the most favorable coverage that any White House contender has drawn in a generation. Having swooned as they did, some were probably more susceptible to having their hearts broken. ...

 

 

Roger L. Simon

Coming home: The rhetoric of Obamaland

I have one more full day in Europe and, if I am to believe Politico, I am returning to a chastened – one could almost say desperate – Obama administration. You can sense that desperation in the language of their defenders in the Politico piece. Regarding healthcare: “We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”

No, they haven’t and everybody knows that. The President has been advocating the public option for the better part of a decade. Who is this “aide” speaking under the cloak of anonymity? Don’t know, but it could be David Axelrod himself who seems to be the key interview for the Politico piece. The article concludes with this inadvertent bit of comedy from the President’s key advisor: “Part of it is born of long experience,” he said. “In Washington, every day is Election Day. I’d be lying to you if I told you I don’t look at polls — I do. But I’ve also learned that you have to keep your eye on the horizon here and not get bogged down. I am not Polyannish, but I am also not given to the hysteria that’s endemic to this town.”

He be “lying” to us if he told us he didn’t look at the polls?! Sacré bleu, as they say here in Paris. Or “gag me with a spoon,” as they say back in the Valley.

Healthcare watered down, cap-and-trade on the shelf… Obama’s now out to nail Big Bad Wall Street. Pretty thin gruel. If I were the Republicans, I’d be worrying about peaking too early.

 

 

Slate

The Days Are Getting Shorter. Time for Another World War II Memorial?

Why European leaders can't resist celebrating the Sept. 1 anniversary—again.

by Anne Applebaum

Seventy years ago next week—at 4:45 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1939, to be precise—the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began to shell the Polish military base at Westerplatte. For the Germans, for the Poles, and for the British and French, who immediately declared war on Germany, this was the beginning of World War II. The Soviet Union, having signed a secret agreement with Nazi Germany, did not declare war but was itself preparing to invade Poland and the Baltic States. Which it did, two and a half weeks later, on Sept. 17.

None of these basic facts is in dispute. Nor can they be rightly described as "current events": Two generations have passed, yet those signature events nevertheless continue to be remembered, contested, and commemorated in every anniversary year ending with five or zero. I remember joking with a friend on May 8, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Nazi capitulation, that now, finally, we had reached the end of the anniversaries. But we had not. Next week, on Sept. 1, 2009, the prime ministers of Russia, Poland, and France; the foreign minister of Britain; the chancellor of Germany; and more than a dozen other European leaders will meet at Westerplatte to launch the cycle of 70th anniversaries—barely on the heels of the 65th. Why?

The answer cannot lie in the personal experiences of any of the statesmen involved, since none was alive at the time. It lies, rather, in the way that memories of the war have come to be central to the national memory, and therefore to the contemporary politics, of so many of the countries that fought in it.

Everything about modern Germany, for instance, is the way it is because of the war, from its pacifism and its devotion to the European Union to the architecture of its capital city. War guilt is built into the political system and becomes controversial only when it seems some Germans want to abandon it: The new wave of interest in the fate of Germans who fled or were expelled from Central Europe after the war, or the popularity of books about Allied bombings of German cities, worries many in the region. Hence Angela Merkel's presence at Westerplatte. (She was the first to confirm she would attend.) No German chancellor wants any of Germany's neighbors to doubt that Germany is still very sorry about 1939 (even if some are rather indifferent). And none wants Germany's neighbors to fear German aggression today.

For the Poles, this 70th anniversary has a different significance: It's the first time this particular event has been commemorated by a Polish government that is firmly a member of both the European Union and NATO. The British and the French will be there for the same reason—Central Europe in general and Poland in particular now have a large number of votes in European institutions and generally have to be taken more seriously than they used to be. Top-level U.S. politicians will presumably be absent because they, by contrast, have no special reason to take Central Europeans seriously. Generally speaking, the former Allies prefer to remember the bits of the war—D-Day, for example—that contribute to their memory of the 1945 Triumph of Democracy, preferring to forget that the war's initial raison d'être, the independence of Poland and the freedom of Central Europe, was not really achieved until 1989.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend for slightly different reasons, or so it would seem. Last weekend, Russian state television ran a long documentary essentially arguing that Stalin was justified in ordering the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Baltic states—and in doing a secret deal with Hitler—on the grounds that Poland itself was in a secret alliance with the Nazis. Putin himself probably will not defend this startling and ahistorical thesis, although—judging from an article he has written for the Polish media—he may well try to "contextualize" the Hitler-Stalin pact by comparing it with other diplomatic decisions. Lately, other Russians have lately expressed similarly positive views of 1939 in a well-coordinated attempt to justify the Hitler-Stalin pact. (If they have any views: The majority of Russians, a recent poll shows, do not know that the USSR invaded Poland in 1939.)

But from the point of view of the Russian ruling elite, such interpretations make sense: By praising Stalin's aggression toward the USSR's neighbors 70 years ago, the current leaders help justify Russia's aggression toward its neighbors today, at least in the eyes of the Russian public. Certainly, they serve to make Russia's Central European neighbors anxious—precisely the opposite effect of that which Merkel hopes to achieve. Thus can the same event have multiple meanings, thus do the Germans and the Russians express their radically different feelings about their places in Europe—and thus do the anniversary celebrations carry on, every five years, without fail.

Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.

 

 

 

Denver Post

George Will is right on Afghanistan

by David Harsanyi

[pic][pic]This week, prominent conservative pundit George Will wrote a column advocating for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. His piece, not surprisingly, was met with instantaneous anger, disdain and derision from most of the right.

"But let's be honest," wrote noted neoconservative William Kristol in The Washington Post. "Will is not calling on the United States to accept a moderate degree of success in Afghanistan, and simply to stop short of some overly ambitious goal. Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat."

Tossing around words like "retreat" and "defeat" — or, as one critic more creatively asserted, Will's column "could have been written in Japanese aboard the USS Missouri" — is the rhetorical equivalent of the vacuous "chickenhawk" charge leveled at any civilian who supports military action. It's emotive and hyperbolic, and I've probably used it myself, but it's not an effective argument.

Judging from their harsh reaction to Will, it's not clear when, if ever, some conservatives believe the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan. Even less clear is how the victory narrative is supposed to play out. Does this triumphant day arrive when every Islamic radical in the region has met his virgins? If so, after eight years of American lives lost, the goal seems further away than ever.

Or is victory achieved when we finally usher this primitive tribal culture, with its violent warlords and religious extremism, through the 8th century all the way to modernity? If so, we're on course for a centuries-long enterprise of nation-building and babysitting, not a war. The war was won in 2002.

If the goal is to establish a stable government to fill the vacuum created by our ousting of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, we've done quite a job. Most Americans can accept a Marine risking life and limb to safeguard our freedoms. But when that Marine is protector of a corrupt and depraved foreign parliament — one that recently legalized marital rape and demands women ask permission from male relatives to leave their home — it is not a victory worth celebrating.

You know, idealism regarding Afghanistan's future begins to dissipate the first time we read the words: "Why don't we negotiate with the moderate Taliban?"

But while strict Sharia law is acceptable, illicit drugs are not. If most of us agree that America has no business foisting its notions of wrong and right on other cultures, why then did we spend hundreds of millions of dollars eradicating poppy crops (one of the only productive crops of the Afghan farmers)? Was it because our own war on drugs has gone so splendidly?

It is perplexing that advocates of a long-term engagement in Afghanistan — folks who often reject social engineering as a tool of public policy — accept the idea that a nation with scores of ethnic groups, widespread corruption, no industry, and no bonding of language or nationality can be coaxed into constructing a stable and lasting democratic society.

What seemed to irk Will detractors most, however, was his inconsistency. You can go from patriot to cheese-eating surrender monkeys in a mere 750 words. And if you once supported Operation Enduring Freedom, you've apparently cast your lot with Kabul forever. Which makes sense, because it's going to take that long for American troops to find a puppet Islamic state that pretends to value any enduring freedoms.

Naturally, the invasion made sense after the 9/11 attacks. Fighting terrorism with force makes sense. The subsequent military victory was worth celebrating. But if every military engagement includes an open-ended plan for nation building that pins our fortunes on the predilections of a backward nation, we are, indeed, setting ourselves up for failure.

 

 

Power Line

Ted Kennedy: More than a useful idiot?

Posted by Scott

When Ronald Reagan set out to bring down the Soviet Union, he built up America's nuclear arsenal while deploying short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and undertaking a widely derided missile defense program. Reagan's build-up took place over the massive worldwide opposition of the left, much of it orchestrated by the Soviet Union under the auspices of one or another of its "peace offensives."

Reagan's efforts induced a kind of mass hysteria. ABC brought us The Day After, the documentary-style film portraying a fictional nuclear war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact that rapidly escalated into a full-scale exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The film graphically displayed the effects of the war on Lawrence, Kansas. Nuclear war was a bitch, of course, and the film served as a timely warning against the nightmare toward which Reagan's policies would deliver us.

in Useful Idiots Mona Charen also recalls that public television brought us Testament (1983), "a moving film about a family in Washington State slowly dying of radiation poisoning after a nuclear war." Not to be outdone, Charen adds, NBC "broadcast its own scaremongering documentary called Facing Up To the Bomb (1982)."

In 1983 protesters formed a 14-mile anti-nuclear "human chain" in Berkshire, England. When Reagan visited London for an economic summit the following year, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament turned out somewhere between 80,000 (police count) and 200,000 (CND count) protesters marching from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square to greet him. Reagan modestly allowed that he didn't "take credit for all of the demonstrators being there for me..."

Nowhere was the hysteria greater than on college campuses. It manifested itself in intense hostility to the military, to national defense and security, and to every aspect of the Reagan defense build-up. The college crowd hated Reagan's opposition to Communism, wherever applied.

On July 5 the New York Times reported that in 1983, as a Columbia undergraduate, Barack Obama was among the useful idiots expressing high-minded disparagement of Reagan's defense policies. That's not exactly how the Times puts it, because reporters William Broad and David Sanger fail to supply the missing historical context that Charen's book provides, and perhaps because the Times itself figures prominently among the useful idiots chronicled by Charen.

The Times article reports on Obama's 1983 article "Breaking the war mentality." The Times notes that in the article Obama railed against discussions of "first-versus second-strike capabilities" that "suit the military-industrial interests" with their "billion-dollar erector sets," and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.

The Times chooses to portray Obama's 1983 article as the early expression of his continuing pursuit of "a nuclear free world." While others may hope that Obama has outgrown his youthful radicalism, the Times suggests that he is fulfilling it. Unfortunately, that's true too.

The death of Senator Kennedy last week elicited many eloquent tributes to Kennedy as the lion of liberalism and the soul of the Democratic Party. Where did Kennedy stand on Reagan's efforts?

Former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson recalls that Senator Kennedy was something more than a useful idiot. In the heyday of the Soviet Union's peace offensive, Senator Kennedy appears to have offered his collaboration with Soviet leadership in opposing Reagan's efforts. Robinson writes:

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

See Robinson's column for the rest of the story. I add only that the soul of liberalism appears to be immortal. At any rate, it survives Senator Kennedy's death.

 

 

IBD  -  Editorial

Kennedy, The KGB And The Media

Media Malpractice: Among the many encomiums that the mainstream media showered on the late senator from Massachusetts, something was curiously missing: the link between Sen. Ted Kennedy and the KGB.

Shortly after the Soviet archives were opened up following the collapse of communism in 1991, Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across a strange memo.

It purported to detail how in the 1984 political season Kennedy tried to enlist the aid of the Soviet regime, then headed by former KGB chief Yuri Andropov, to get President Reagan defeated.

When we first heard of this, we thought it must be a mistake. Or a hoax. But it appears to be neither. Indeed, to our knowledge, the memo written by then-KGB chief Victor Chebrikov to Andropov has never been challenged as a fake.

And what it says is simply shocking.

The memo describes a visit by former Sen. John Tunney of California to Moscow in 1983. Tunney was sent at Kennedy's behest to sound out the Soviet leadership about helping out the Democrats with the upcoming '84 general election.

As Chebrikov's memo notes, Kennedy thought Reagan had trumped the Democrats on national security — especially their push for a nuclear freeze, which faltered after Reagan successfully got European leaders to deploy Pershing II missiles in Europe.

To counter this, the memo says, Kennedy even offered to come to Russia to tutor them. "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA."

And why do all this? Politics. Kennedy thought the Democrats might actually turn to him in '84, if they got desperate enough. If not, Tunney told Chebrikov, Kennedy might run in '88.

As we said, we're not the first to report this. First came the London Times' Sebastian, way back in 1992. And just three years ago, historian Paul Kengor repeated the story in his book "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism."

Yet this blockbuster revelation was all but ignored by the big media. Actually, "ignored" is too kind a word. The story was, for all intents and purposes, smothered by the media.

The whole shameful episode reflects poorly on the honesty and integrity of America's major news outlets. It seems Kennedy read the media right — he was quite confident the Fourth Estate's reflexive defenders of Camelot could be counted on to help.

As Chebrikov's memo notes: "Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. . . . The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."

In short, Kennedy was offering to provide PR cover for the KGB.

Chebrikov's memo mentioned specifically Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters as media "friends" of Kennedy who might be enlisted to help out.

Let's be clear about this: As far as we know, neither Cronkite nor Walters ever did anything on behalf of the KGB. But why would this be relayed to a senior Soviet official if Kennedy and Tunney didn't think the U.S. media giants would go along?

Again, in the end, there's no evidence Kennedy or Tunney ever actually helped the KGB. Just that they offered to. Yet this raises many troubling questions that, sadly, may never be answered.

Did Kennedy not understand that the Soviet Union was, indeed, a murderous evil empire? Did he really think that, between Reagan and Andropov, the Russian was the lesser of two evils?

Still more troubling, perhaps, is the question asked recently by James Kirchick at Commentary Magazine: Did a sitting senator violate the Logan Act, the 1799 law that prohibits "any citizen" of the U.S. from meddling in American foreign policy on behalf of a foreign power?

The mainstream media could have at least asked these questions. That they didn't only adds to a long, shameful history of partisanship that has skewed the news for more than a generation — and left the nation worse off for it.

 

 

Ottawa Citizen

An interesting, if detestable, man

by David Warren

[pic]Several readers actually complained when I did not write about the late Edward Kennedy on the weekend. "In a week when one of the most important politicians of our time dies, who happens to be a fellow Catholic as well," says one, "you chose to write about tree huggers. It seems to me that your writing tendencies have become quite narcissistic and that, my friend, is a grave sin."

Perhaps there is something in the complaint. One drinks narcissism in the water, these days, mixed with the chlorine. A more charitable interpretation might have been, however, that with the passage of time, I grow more convinced by the old adage, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Of the dead, speak nothing but good -- at least, until after the funeral. (Chilon, incidentally, the wise Spartan magistrate, is said to have said this; not Solon, the Athenian lawgiver; nor Horace, the Roman poet. Please, nobody get that wrong again.)

Those who could not guess what I thought of Ted Kennedy, could not have been reading my columns. But to review, quickly, I classed him among the horrible freaks of electoral politics, an embodiment of almost everything I detest in public life, from open advocacy of "the culture of death," and socialist tyranny, to great personal hypocrisy; sometimes nearly a traitor to his country; and certainly a traitor to his religion.

I'd have been scandalized, and ashamed, had my Roman Church given him a Christian burial. In the event, the responsible bishops gave him all the pageantry they could supply, thereby further alienating themselves from the faithful laity.

"But what do you really think?" I can hear my reader asking. That is what I really think, but it is not incompatible with something else I really think: that Kennedy was a great and interesting man, and not without some noble qualities; moreover, a man in some (small) degree excused by the overweening ambitions of the Kennedy family, inculcated by a rather monstrous father. His brother Robert would, had he survived, have set Ted a better example, for Robert retained a fairly stalwart Christian moral sense, and was thus less easily corrupted.

Ambition on behalf of the good should be encouraged; ambition as an end in itself should never be. But the worst kind of ambition was the sort Ted Kennedy had, in which self and cause become inextricably confused. He could have made a mighty champion for the motherhood and apple pie that are the best political causes, for he really did have extraordinary skills as a legislator, to forge political deals. He had a formidable will, and the personal charm to assert it. But these are gifts, not moral accomplishments.

I was struck by the contrast between Ted Kennedy's huge public send-off, crassly politicized by his party, and the recent private funeral of his elder sister. The late Eunice Kennedy Shriver was admirable in so many ways: founder of the Special Olympics, and of numerous child health facilities across the U.S.; tireless crusader for the disabled, the innocent and helpless; a courageous and vocal defender of the sanctity of human life, who publicly condemned "pro-choice" positions by her Democrat party. She was the Kennedy most worth honouring; the one who made proper use of inherited wealth and connections. (In many respects, she, too, was on the left, but I cannot chafe: for acts speak louder than words.)

The hardest thing is to accept that persons we may utterly abhor have some good qualities. But it is necessary to allow them, if we are to detest people worthily, and companionably, and with love.

Ted Kennedy was, from my understanding, capable of bold generosity.

It was a wonder to see his political machine (that whole "Catholic mafia" from Boston) swing into action in the proper way, to get a bit of justice for somebody, even for someone they themselves despised, once Teddy gave the word. As the champion of his constituents, the man was a knight in shining armour.

His self-defence after Chappaquiddick was something beyond shamelessly self-serving. Yet it is worth noting that even on that occasion, he was doing for himself exactly what on other occasions he did for friends. "Mary Jo Kopechne is dead; let us now help the living."

This is not the finest moral sentiment, but the loyalty built into it, somewhere, was not a purely selfish loyalty.

At the funeral, Kennedy was quoted by some eulogist: "For all my years in public life, I have believed that America must sail toward the shores of liberty and justice for all. There is no end to that journey."

Canned and false: that is the side of Ted Kennedy I detested. There is in fact an end to that journey, and it occurs when the ship hits the shoals, drowning all passengers. Captains should steer for safe harbours, not vague glistening horizons.

 

 

Townhall

Clunker Legislation

by John Stossel

The economic illiterates in Washington are so impressed with the "success" of Cash for Clunkers that they're readying Cash for Clunker Appliances. The ludicrous "stimulus" bill gave $300 million to the Department of Energy to provide rebates for 10 types of appliances that have been rated energy efficient.

Before government extends Cash for Clunkers to more products, it might be a good idea to examine the original. The fact that Washington and the buyers who took advantage of Cash for Clunkers are gaga is hardly evidence that it was in the public interest.

It wasn't. As usual, the program has been judged only by its first and most visible consequences, violating Henry Hazlitt's teaching in his classic, "Economics in One Lesson":

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

If you only look at the immediate effects, Cash for Clunkers appears pretty good. People traded in gas-guzzlers for more fuel-efficient new cars. The program cut carbon emissions slightly and gave the auto industry a boost.

"Manufacturing plants have added shifts and recalled workers. Moribund showrooms were brought back to life, and consumers bought fuel-efficient cars that will save them money and improve the environment," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood bragged. "American consumers and workers were the clear winners thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program."

But wait. Shouldn't that be some consumers and some workers? And only in the short run?

Let's start at the beginning. The government paid car owners to trade in their old cars, which will be destroyed. But the government is running a deficit. So it doesn't have $3 billion to hand out. It must borrow the money, which reduces the amount of money for other investments. Moreover, the government must raise taxes in the future to pay back the principal and interest -- or the Federal Reserve will monetize the debt through inflation. Either way, we pay.

That isn't all. Those car buyers were either going to trade in their used cars soon or they weren't. If they were, Cash for Clunkers simply moved up the schedule. The stimulation of the auto industry occurred earlier. Big deal. But if buyers planned to keep their cars longer, the program imposed costs that are less visible. Without the government incentive to buy cars, consumers would have bought other things -- computers, washing machines, televisions. The manufacturers and sellers of those products didn't get to make those sales. Why should the auto industry get privileges at the expense of others?

Then there are the mechanics who would have serviced those used cars. They've lost business. Some will be laid off. Nor should we forget low-income people who depend on the used-car market for their transportation. The cheap cars they would have bought were destroyed.

What about the alleged environmental benefits? Assuming that cutting carbon emissions is worthwhile, was Cash for Clunkers helpful? It's hard to see why. People who traded in inefficient cars for efficient ones will likely drive more and therefore use more gasoline.

Even if carbon emissions are cut by a lot, economist Christopher Knittel says the program will cost more than $365 per ton of carbon saved.

Economist Bruce Yandle points out what a lousy deal that is: "The much celebrated Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade carbon-emission control legislation estimates the cost of reducing a ton of carbon to be $28 when done across U.S. industries. Yes, we are getting carbon-emission reductions by way of clunker reduction, but we are paying a pretty penny for it" ().

Finally, there is something revolting about the government subsidizing the destruction of useful things. It reminds me of the New Deal policy of killing piglets and pouring milk down sewers to keep food prices from falling.

Leave it to politicians to think we can prosper by obliterating wealth.

 

Volokh Conspiracy

How Much Did Crop Diversity Decline in the 20th Century?

by Jonathan Adler

It is generally assumed that crop diversity declined dramatically during the 20th century. This trend is blamed upon market pressures and the rise of corporate agriculture, among other things. But is the underlying assumption accurate? Paul Heald and Susannah Chapman of the University of Georgia (law and anthropology, respectively) suggest we may need to rethink what we think we know about vegetable crop diversity. In a new paper, "Crop Diversity Report Card for the Twentieth Century: Diversity Bust or Diversity Boom?", they present evidence that crop diversity has not declined meaningfully at all.

According to the conventional wisdom, the twentieth century was a disaster of monumental proportions for vegetable crop diversity. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Our study of 2004 commercial seed catalogs shows twice as many 1903 crop varieties surviving as previously reported in the iconic 1983 study on vegetable crop diversity. More important, we find that growers in 2004 had as many varieties to choose from (approximately 7100 varieties among 48 crops) as did their predecessors in 1903 (approximately 7262 varieties among the same 48 crops). In addition, we cast doubt on the number of distinct varieties actually available in 1903 by examining historical sources that expose the systematic practice of multiple naming. Finally, by looking more closely at the six biggest diversity winners of the twentieth century (tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, garden beans, squash, and garlic), we suggest that patent law is virtually irrelevant.

These results will be a surprise to many, but I think they are largely consistent with what economic theory would predict. While there are pressures toward greater commodification and standardization of agricultural goods, there are also pressures to satisfy the demands of niche producers and consumers. As our ability to modify crop varieties improved, and the costs of customization declined, desired crop varieties should proliferate.

These trends might not occur in tandem. That is, the pressure toward commodification to increase productivity and reduce costs may precede the pressure toward the development of specialty crops. If so, then one would expect to see an initial decline in crop diversity before an eventual increase. (Think of something like the agricultural equivalent of the "Environmental Kuznets Curve.") Some crop varieties are lost along the way, to be sure, but new varieties emerge as well, and I see no reason to presume that the older varieties are necessarily superior than the new ones. In many cases they will each have been the product of human design.

Consider this example. During the initial "Green Revolution" there was a decline in crop diversity as it was too costly to breed desired traits into all existing varieties of individual crops. Increased agricultural productivity came at the expense of local crop diversity. Over time, however, more advanced techniques make it much less expensive and time consuming to insert a desired characteristic into a given plant. This has enabled the insertion of desired traits into traditional local varieties, so that crop quality can be improved without sacrificing crop diversity. Somewhat ironically, some of the same groups that complain the most about the loss in crop diversity also oppose the technologies that can enable agriculture to meet more human needs without sacrificing it.

 

WSJ  -  Editorial

California's Man-Made Drought

The green war against San Joaquin Valley farmers.

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America's premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

The state's water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a "biological opinion" imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year's government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley's water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.

The result has already been devastating for the state's farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years. In August, 50 mayors from the San Joaquin Valley signed a letter asking President Obama to observe the impact of the draconian water rules firsthand.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he "doesn't have the authority to turn on the pumps" that would supply the delta with water, or "otherwise, they would be on." He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a "God Squad" is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor's request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a "severe drought" in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth.

As the crisis has deepened, the political stakes have risen as well. In late August, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack came to the devastated valley to meet with farmers and community leaders. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein has pledged to press the issue with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "There are 30 lawsuits on the biological opinions and two separate opinions, one for the smelt and one for the salmon," Ms. Feinstein said, "The rules need to be reconsidered."

The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit on behalf of three farmers in the valley, calling the federal regulations "immoral and unconstitutional." Because the delta smelt is only found in California, the Foundation says, it does not fall under the regulatory powers provided by the Constitution's Commerce Clause. On a statutory basis, the Fish and Wildlife Service also neglected to appropriately consider the economic devastation the pumping restrictions would bring.

Things in California may have to get so bad that they endanger Democratic Congressional incumbents before Washington wakes up, but it doesn't have to be that way. Mr. Salazar has said that convening the God Squad would be "admitting failure" in the effort to save the smelt under the Endangered Species Act. Maybe so, but the livelihoods of tens of thousands of humans are also at stake. If the Obama Administration wants to help, it can take up Governor Schwarzenegger's request that it revisit the two biological opinions that are hanging farmers and farm workers out to dry. 

WSJ

The Triumph Of Optimism

Two foes: the Soviet Union and Big Government. The first proved weaker.

by John Fund

You call this a crisis? Think back nearly 30 years ago. When Ronald Reagan took office the country's economy was in a shambles—inflation was running into the double digits, growth had stagnated and the top marginal tax rate was 70%. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, bristling with imperial designs and nuclear weapons, had recently invaded Afghanistan, installing a puppet regime, and Iran had ousted a pro-Western leader in favor of a fervently anti-American cleric. The White House tenure of Jimmy Carter, known for hand-wringing over "malaise" and a botched hostage-rescue mission, had led scholars to conclude that the American presidency, as an institution, was too weak to govern in the modern world.

And then came Reagan. He faced down the Soviets, cut taxes and revived the economy. Not least, he restored confidence in the presidency itself, providing a model for his successors. One of his legacies, visible in the outlook of every successful presidential candidate since, is an optimism about the nation, echoing his statement that "people who talk about an age of limits are really talking about their own limitations, not America's."

In "The Age of Reagan," Steven F. Hayward offers a splendid narrative history of Reagan's two terms in the White House—a period (1981-89) that amounted to what he calls a "counterrevolution," reversing so much of what had spiraled downward in the late 1970s. Along the way, he supplies a keen analysis of just how much Reagan succeeded in changing America's self-image, often by reasserting core principles.

One of Mr. Hayward's many insights is that Reagan's foreign and domestic outlook were unified more than we realize. Reagan believed that both the Soviet Union and Big Government at home represented threats to America's future. In 1979, he confided to aide Richard Allen his view of the Cold War: "We win. They lose." Two years later he used his inaugural address to call for scaling back the power of Washington: "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." In the end, the Soviet Union turned out to be the weaker foe.

Reagan grasped "the simple fact," Mr. Hayward writes, "that most of the Communist rulers lost the will to shoot their own people in large numbers." By declaring the Soviet Union "an evil empire," Reagan helped to undermine its legitimacy even as he unnerved it with a military buildup and the prospect of a missile-defense system that it could not replicate.

On the domestic front, it was a different story. Although the economy roared back in the 1980s, Mr. Hayward concedes that Reagan failed at "rolling back the domestic government empire." The programs of the New Deal and Great Society—and the spending habits of Congress—were well-entrenched. Public opinion on the role of government in American life was ambivalent and not susceptible to some magic moment when Reagan could stand in front of the Federal Trade Commission and declare: "Tear down this regulation!"

Mr. Hayward shows how much opposition Reagan faced from within his own party when it came to domestic spending and other items on his agenda. After Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (then a Republican, now a Democrat) opposed a Reagan appointee, Reagan wrote that the action was "unjust and deeply wrong" and vowed not to campaign for the senator. About congressional Republicans in general he wrote: "We had rabbits when we needed tigers."

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The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution

By Steven F. Hayward

Crown Forum, 753 pages, $35

Reagan was not an ideological purist; he moved to the center often enough, including negotiating arms-control agreements with the Soviets. Yet he remained popular with his base. Why? One reason was economic growth. While it is true that federal spending grew only slightly more slowly than it did under Mr. Carter, Reagan tax cuts and deregulation helped increase the size of the economic pie (GNP) by 27% between 1982 and 1988. Another reason was the extremism of Reagan's critics. Mr. Hayward explodes the myth that Washington was a kinder, gentler place in the 1980s. From Clark Clifford's description of Reagan as "an amiable dunce" to the Los Angeles Times's graphic depiction of Reagan as a Hitler-like figure plotting a fascist putsch in a beer hall, the attacks were savage, creating a backlash of sympathy even among those who disagreed with particular Reagan positions or policies.

The last years of the second term, Mr. Hayward reminds us, were ineffective. Revelations about Reagan's lax management during the Iran-Contra scandal rattled him to the point that, as Mr. Hayward notes, he yielded "much of the principled ground upon which he could defend his [foreign] policy." Journalist Fred Barnes (quoted by Mr. Hayward) says that "the Reagan crowd didn't want him to use his power much. That might cause his popularity to plummet, which would mean he'd lose power—circular logic if ever I heard it."

Reagan came to realize how much work he had left undone and began promoting an Economic Bill of Rights, a package of constitutional reforms that included a federal spending limit and a requirement for a two-thirds majority in Congress for tax hikes. It was too little too late. Such initiatives were doomed to be ignored by Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush.

Still, the accomplishments remain. Free-market ideas are a robust part of the mainstream policy debate—even if they have lost some traction recently. Traditional social norms, articulated so well by Reagan, have held their own in the continuing "culture wars." Reagan's abolition of the Fairness Doctrine paved the way for the diverse media universe we now take for granted. In his 1989 farewell address, Reagan described his record by saying: "Not bad. Not bad at all." The foreign-policy achievement is easily measured but should not obscure everything else. Mr. Hayward closes by quoting Gary McDowell, a former Reagan official: "Domestically Ronald Reagan did far less than he had hoped . . . less than people wanted—and a hell of a lot more than people thought he would."

 

 

 

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