The "70-30 issue" is a cliche in political circles: Basically, the idea is that there are all sorts of issues where 70 percent of Americans are for X and 30 percent are against X . . . . The trick for most/many politicians is to always be on the 70 side. . . . When you look at Obama’s troubles, it’s kind of shocking how he’s managed to maneuver the party to the 30 percent position (or allowed it to drift that way) on so many issues.. . . One question I have, and maybe brother Geraghty or someone else around here knows the answer, is whether Bush got himself in a similar mess.
I don't think 70-30 applies, really. The matter is more one of the reception of leadership.
George W. Bush's approval — and mandate — collapsed when both the left and right anathematized the president over Katrina, and the general public was shocked by the disaster enough to have listened. Before that, the contention of Iraq slowly abraded Bush's ratings as a majority of Americans held fast to the hope that they were right in originally supporting the operation.
If a parallel can be drawn, it's between Iraq and the economy (an unfair comparison considering the gravity of the war, but as we know from the Nineties, different times trade in different values). Most Americans continue to hope that their leader a) intends to improve their quality of life, but more importantly b) is actually capable of doing so. Economic illiteracy plays some role, here: media and education have left many confused about how markets actually work, so unless splashed with cold water by a truly ideological GOP, the electorate is unlikely to summarily reject both tax-and-spend and its advocate president.
The point commencing a terminal fall in public approval will almost certainly lie, very unfortunately, in President Obama's inability to respond to the kind of exigency that only happens once every ten years or so. Second/Third World invasion (Carter, failed; H.W. Bush, passed)? Massive terrorist attack (Clinton, W. Bush; both passed)? Dishonor (Nixon, failed; Ford, arguably failed)? Unsupportable war (Truman, Johnson; both failed)?
Absent such an event, missteps here and there are small stuff. Obama may preside over a solidly Republican congress, but preside he will.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Princeton University professor Alan Blinder gazes from the bird's eye view of an economy where the modest buy a lot and the rich buy a little, period. Who creates good and services whose demand necessitates proffering jobs that pay incomes? It is all our daily bread, mana from above, not from the hands of risk-taking men, as far as Blinder is concerned:
Let the upper-income tax cuts expire on schedule at year end. That would save the government an estimated $75 billion over the next two years. However, it would also diminish aggregate demand a bit. So, instead of using the $75 billion to reduce the deficit, spend it on unemployment benefits, food stamps and the like for two years. That would surely put more spending into the economy than the tax hike takes out, thus creating jobs.
Blinder's claims confirm that degreed thinking somehow displaces common sense.
Only the vernacular serves, here: unemployment benefits are socio-economic s___ sandwiches. Nothing can make them palatable, let alone any substitute for an American's average income. Living on what comes from the dole queue is just that. The money provides merely enough to get by; and paying bills and groceries doesn't precipitate growth. Yet Blinder would tax the very investors, entrepreneurs and customers of organizations that, with capital the government confiscated, would provide jobs to the unemployment?
If Republicans acknowledge that economic ends depend on political means, however, they hamstring themselves by opposing benefit extensions. Unemployment isn't welfare: most on its rolls wish to be removed as soon as possible. Furthermore, no volume of small, weekly payments will ever reach the size of federal embonpoint squeezed and groped by the politically favored. The right should seek, with a congressional majority, to divest Washington from "stimulus" and trade spending for tax cuts, the only real assurance Washington can give the private sector.
Do employers have good reason to justify their eponymity? I wager Yes. Stagnation won't last for half a decade if free rein is given to enterprise — unemployment would be halved in twelve months.
Anne Applebaum looks up, declares democracy in trouble and references a heavily revised historical account:
By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of "democracy" — along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled "civil society" organizations — to deflect pressure for change.But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish "war for democracy" that went predictably wrong. The subsequent failure of Iraq to metamorphose overnight into the Switzerland of the Middle East is cited as an example of why democracy should never be pushed or promoted. This silly argument has had a strong echo: Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts — he prefers "our common security and prosperity" — as if it might be some dangerous Bushism.
Recall that "the past decade" was nearly half-spent witnessing daring outbursts and full-fledged movements carried out by liberals in response to the deposition of the Taliban and Iraqi Ba'athists. As recently as 2005, men with no love for America — let alone George W. Bush — credited the Bush doctrine for their advances, such as Walid Jumblatt who admitted "[T]his process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq."
In fact, oppressed peoples of the world do look to the people and leaders of the United States for validation of ideals whose self-evidence, for them, is often in question. When did the tide begin to ebb? 2006. When Bush's political opposition, determined to discredit the occupation of Iraq and personally denigrate its commander-in-chief, seized a cardinal domestic victory in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — whether the president deserved it or not — the resulting traducement shattered the last of American unity on an intolerance for authoritarianism and the bizarre, totalitarian fanatics its stifling desperation breeds.
The men against whom the United States would "impose democracy by force," the cadres of secret police, roughnecks and wage-earning psychopaths, realized that the enemies of their enemy would, through the rule of law, occlude any measures to defeat them. They could return to the business of autocratic cruelty. Why worry when powerless assemblies — approved by an American president who shows more animadversion against markets and industry than juntas and regimes, himself invested in the "silly argument" against Iraq — will "condemn abusers" and do nothing else?
Jonah Goldberg, this morning:
Don't get me wrong, I'm usually singing from the same "It's Obama's Fault and We Know It" songbook. But I just can't bring myself to agree with the folks who think that the BP spill is a major indictment of Obama. He may have handled the politics of this thing badly, by which I mean the PR, but unless someone can explain how Obama could have "taken over" and fixed this faster, I think a lot of the criticism is overboard. Not all of it; it sounds like Bobby Jindal has some legitimate complaints. But the notion that BP isn't motivated to cap this thing as quickly as possible and so therefore Obama needs to lean on BP harder is nothing short of crazy talk. Obama could have been on vacation for the last month and I'd bet the tempo of the BP operation wouldn't have been one minute slower.
Jonah is right, of course. If the BP spill is at all like Hurricane Katrina, it shows a disappointing example of many Americans' meager tolerance for tragedies that unfold largely out of the control of man and science — as well as an incomprehension of what supports modern societies.
The public misunderstands scale in two ways. At the same time the gusher cannot be plugged with a cork, the spill itself will not affect ecology on a wide-ranging and long-lasting basis — sorry, but one need not be an expert to deduce that. And in spite of several thousand offshore platforms quietly collecting a vital natural resource at this moment, hysterics and opportunists are actually persuading some to consider an end or curtailment of drilling. It's on the order of a naive teenager swearing off meat after he learns how it's obtained.
Details of the rig explosion are pertinent legally and professionally, but for goodness' sake, not philosophically. Nor are they valuable politically. I dislike President Obama and his administration, but what partisans cast as insouciance may very well be a realistic sense of the country's daily affairs — or at least a tacit admission of the limits to federal majesty.
"Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November," writes David Frum. "Anger is a very bad political adviser. It can isolate us and push us to the extremes at exactly the moment when we ought to be rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting."
I agree that Barack Obama's imputed character won't make a difference — in early 1996, William F. Buckley himself noted that the same 57 percent responding in a survey with dubiety for the Clintons' associates was happy to elect the Democratic incumbent. Those who (at least believe that they) support Barack Obama's stated policies and prospective methods won't care who's nurtured his political career.
And Frum is wise to reprove conservatives to avoid the same animus against Obama as the left holds against Bush. But I wonder if he should also warn us of the verbal, political, legal and physical violence that many leftists will visit on many of us.
I want to think that, if Obama wins, the next four to eight years will be as typical as Bill Clinton's tenure: venality and indolence just can't block out memories of Rush Limbaugh, Newt, 1994, and a limerence with the end of history. Yet there's that weird apotheosis. Those kids singing about transnationalism, the real hatred of Kos-style leftists, and the obscurantist actions of Obama's own inner circle in Missouri and Chicago.
Most people behind an electoral majority, if they decided in two or four years the next president wasn't worth their vote, would pull the single lever of power they have, but would leave many more levers to others. The direct current animating ideologues looks uncontrollable and deadly to the touch. We should be wary that our camp for "rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting" could instead be spent in theirs for reeducation.
Count me among those unconvinced that Barack Obama, offering the truism of lipstick on a pig, disparaged Sarah Palin.
But also count me among those who believe the Democratic nominee is a man of words only so long as they're not coming out of his mouth while he thinks of what to say. If George W. Bush mangles delivery when under pressure, Barack Obama mangles concepts themselves.
Were the United States guaranteed a McCain presidency, I would look forward to debates in which the senator from Arizona flattens the one from Illinois. But since there is a chance that a callow, flighty man could be the leader of the free world, there's reason to worry.
All that aside, this could be political payday for the GOP.
Just how inevitable is an executive to be made of the Democratic Party's ought-to-be nominee? This man is elecutionarily gifted, handsome; one who is quite literally the new face of America. There's innervation in his speeches not seen since the end of the last decade, and it shows. The grassroots should, by fall, grant him apotheosis.
His challenger is a national fixture more in the strict sense of age than venerability; more recognizable as a greying statesman than the crippled, forebearing hero. He has two salient political attributes. One, rapprochement at best with his own party. Two, staunch affiliation with an unpopular president whom the public sees as persisting in a military campaign for a country whose name has descended, in the vernacular, to a four-letter word.
Twenty years ago, a stuffy, New England governor tried to deny the White House to a sedate vice president whose boss was ending a presidential term with record popularity. In July polls, the governor maintained leads of up to twenty points.
And by how many points does the first man average over the second man, this July? Five.
From approximately 12:50 PM Eastern, Wednesday:
RUSH: Michael in North Olmsted, Ohio. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I am a longtime registered Republican. Every time I've had the chance to pick up a Republican ballot, I have. So if anybody's looking at voter rolls, they're not going to have any question as to who I am.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But, as far as I'm concerned, the Obama campaign has been courting me and it culminated in an automated phone call two days before the election. The salient phrase was, "It doesn't matter if you're registered with another party or an independent. Pick up a Democratic ballot and vote for change."
RUSH: Absolutely!
CALLER: They were asking me to unfortunately...
RUSH: Amen, bro. I know exactly what you're saying. They can go out and court you, and they can try to convince you to cross over and vote for Obama, and that's not "corrupting the process," and that's not being "ungentlemanly."
CALLER: Well, exactly. Exactly. As far as the broader left is concerned, they have gotten what they wished for if in fact listeners of yours — or other Republicans, or rightists, people who would not have picked up a Democratic ballot — did and knocked it to Hillary.
RUSH: I would even say this. Thanks for the call out there, Michael. I appreciate it. I would even say this to you members of the Drive-By Media and you Democrats, who say that what I did was corrupting the Democrat process because I have no desire for Hillary to win. How do you know that? Maybe I want Hillary to win your nomination, just like you guys wanted McCain to win ours. Maybe I want that. You guys gotta be very, very careful how you approach this, because in the process of coming after me, you are lancing yourselves.
The message from the Obama campaign was left on my answering machine. I gave it an auditory double-take because I couldn't believe the invitation.
Your words moved, your movement affirmed.
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Though Figure Concord remains active, I am always working over at Game and Player. The editors and our contributors intend good things for the nascent year, and to start off we looked back at the last twelve months. In due attribution, Game and Player has published The Best of 2007 and The 2007 Booby Prizes.
