Obama’s First Month: Domestic & Foreign Fronts & Style vs. Substance
Beginnings are important – they set the tone and pattern for what follows. Of course it is possible to make course corrections, but that requires an understanding of errors. This is an attempt to help with that, assisted by some who are more expert. Let’s examine President Obama’s first month in office, on both domestic and foreign fronts. And then his style.
Domestic Economic Policy
In his first press conference, Obama deflected accusations of earmarks in the stimulus bill by saying that previous administration policies doubled our national debt, and their methods (e.g., excessive spending, tax cuts) were shown to fail. Even if one accepts his premise, how does that justify further excessive spending, as if two wrongs make a right? Nor can the current “crisis” be attributed narrowly to the factors he mentions – he clearly lacks understanding of controlled experiments. Who was in charge of the legislative branch for the past 2 years, and precipitated the sub-prime loan crisis (with broader investment ripple effects) by their social engineering constraints on the lenders? Yes, the Democrats – Barney Frank key among them. And then they use it as an excuse to go on the greatest spending binge in history. Perhaps we need to take away their credit cards, as in the narrowly averted LA tax revolt (LA County threatened to not make tax payments to the state in order to pay for local projects the state is supposed to fund, but is not).
During the election campaign, Obama & the liberals pooh-poohed conservatives who touted the need for strength in the war on terror, calling it fear-mongering for political gain. Similar charges were made about the “rush to war” in Iraq. Obama campaigned rather on “hope.” Well, now the table seems to have turned, and 25 times in one speech to drum public support for the stimulus bill, Obama referred to the economic situation as a “crisis” requiring immediate action to avoid disaster. Can conservatives be blamed for doubting his motives or urgency? Especially when, going against his promises of transparency and bipartisanship, he and the Democrat majority shut out the Republicans from the bill drafting process, and give them mere hours to review it (in a form not allowing electronic searches) before the vote? Obama also promised the stimulus package would be "timely, targeted and temporary" -- he gets credit for one out of three.
Perhaps it is a good time to recall Reagan’s statement that “In the current crisis, the government is not the solution to the problem, the government is the problem.” Government meddling in the sub-prime loan business resulted in disaster there and beyond, and now we’re considering nationalizing the banks? And now $275 billion more for housing (a few hundred billion here, a few hundred there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money!)? Let’s consider how Obama’s economics compare with the failed New Deal, and successful Reagan recovery.
In “Reaganomics vs. Obamanomics” (Peter Ferrara in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123431484726570949.html), it’s pointed out that Obama’s inaugural address claimed being “...guided by what works, not by any ideology or special interests.” Ferrara shows that is false in comparing Obama’s liberal Keynesian strategy with Reagan’s successful approach to dealing with an even more severe situation in 1980. Reagan’s recovery program had 4 components: across-the-board tax rate cuts, deregulation (today that would be especially relevant to energy production), control of government spending, and tight, anti-inflation monetary policy. This is the diametric opposite of Obama’s plan & stimulus bill.
“We know Reaganomics worked “... because they turned around in just two years an economy far worse than today’s. ... multi-year, double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, declining incomes, and rising poverty. In fact, what we suffer with today is not the worst economy since the Great Depression [as Obama claims], but the worst economy since Jimmy Carter -- the last time liberals were dominant politically and intellectually.
“We are stuck going in exactly the wrong direction on economic policy because of currently dominant ideological fashions.
“A natural economic recovery will begin sometime this year, not because of the president's policies, but because soon this will be the longest recession since World War II. However, thanks to the administration's retrograde policies -- cut from the cloth of the 1970s and even the 1930s -- the recovery will not be what it should be. Rather, unemployment will remain too high, and inflation will resurge, recreating the disastrous economic results we suffered the last time Keynesian policies were dominant.”
I note that it took some 25 years to come out of the Great Depression (aided by WWII), when stocks had fully recovered, etc., and following similar policies could extend and deepen the current recession to similar lengths and depths.
In “Do We Need a New New Deal?” (http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp) Burton Folsom cites 3 reasons we do not need a New New Deal like Obama’s. “First, ...FDR's New Deal did not lower unemployment. ... every dollar that went to creating a federal job had to come from taxpayers, who ... lost the chance to buy hamburgers, movie tickets, or clothes and create new jobs for restaurants, theaters, and tailors.”
“What's worse, some New Deal programs had terrible unintended consequences. ... the U.S. developed shortages of the very crops taxpayers were paying farmers not to produce. ...
“Second, the taxes to pay for the New Deal became astronomical. In 1935, Roosevelt decided to raise the marginal tax rate on top incomes to 79 percent. Later he raised it to 90 percent. These confiscatory rates discouraged entrepreneurs from investing, which prolonged the Great Depression.
“... FDR's loyal Secretary of the Treasury ... noted. "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!"
“Third, the New Deal divided and politicized the country in tragic ways. Those who lobbied most effectively won subsidies and bailouts even if their cause was weak.. . . Personal lobbying paid, regardless of the justice or injustice of their demand." ...
“In another example, under Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, Illinois lobbied effectively and won $55,443,721 under the first federal welfare grant while Massachusetts received zero federal dollars. ... Massachusetts valiantly raised its own funds ... City officials and teachers raised money and took pay cuts. Mass. Governor Joseph Ely believed that no state should receive federal aid and that private charity was the best charity; that federal relief ruined both taxpayers and those in need. "Whatever the justification for relief," Ely said, "the fact remains that the way in which it has been used makes it the greatest political asset on the practical side of party politics ever held by an administration." Ely added that "millions of men and women . . . have come to believe almost that there is no hope for them except upon a government payroll." [I note the current situation with many states now relying heavily on doles from the current stimulus package – but some out of principle are choosing to follow the example of Gov. Ely of old]
“Federal dollars always become political dollars, and the Democrats moved to use federal money to gain votes at election time. ... James Doherty, a New Hampshire Democrat, said, "It is my personal belief that to the victor belong the spoils and that Democrats should be holding most of these [WPA] positions so that we might strengthen our fences for the 1940 election."
“If history is a guide, we have every reason to believe that if President Obama institutes a New New Deal, then universal health care, federal bailouts, and jobs stimulus programs will be costly, will be politicized, and will fail.”
Fellow comrades (wake up when Hugo Chavez calls us that!), see also “We are All Socialists Now” (http://www.newsweek.com/id/1836630), that describes how we are moving inexorably toward European-style socialism. And, I note, oddly at the time Europe is beginning to wake up and move away from it after its failure there. How can we be so blind and short-sighted?
Foreign Policy
In the foreign policy area, Obama is off to no better start. In "The Biden Prophecy” (http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/02/20/the_biden_prophecy?page=full&comments=true), Charles Krauthammer reminds us of Biden’s prediction that "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama." He says that a series of threats and probes have already come in the first month in small bites, and that Obama’s responses (“Obama wobble”) do not bode well. I note that they may even invite or encourage more.
One of the 4 Russian provocations he cites is "Pressuring Kyrgyzstan to shut down the U.S. air base in Manas, an absolutely crucial NATO conduit into Afghanistan." Sounds like Putin's sour grapes over their Afghan debacle. I note the base is crucial because it is the only usable supply airbase in the region, and the only alternative resupply route is a land route over the Khyber Pass, where the bridge was blown up in the last week or two. He also cites 3 Iranian and 2 Pakistani (a supposed “ally”) provocations.
Krauthammer concludes,“These Pakistani capitulations may account for Obama's hastily announced 17,000 troop increase in Afghanistan even before his various heralded reviews of the mission have been completed. Hasty, unexplained, but at least something. Other than that, a month of pummeling has been met with utter passivity.
“I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e. domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented. But when the State Department says that Hugo Chavez's president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was 'for the most part ... a process that was fully consistent with democratic process' ... you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.”
Style vs. Substance
Obama loves to lay claim to the greatness and imagery of Lincoln. He wasn’t even inaugurated when it began, and he had no experience to justify the self-promotion. Yes, there is the coincidence of inauguration near Lincoln’s 200th birthday. And both from Illinois, and lanky, and well-spoken.
But speaking style isn’t an end-all; what one says – and does -- also matters tremendously. If President Bush was criticized for lack of style (but not substance), certainly Obama can be criticized for lack of substance. It is a rare combination of style & substance that we see in great presidents such as Reagan and Lincoln. The KGB dossier on Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, said there was no difference between his words and his deeds. And their former KGB chief admitted this ultimately provided the final leverage at Reykjavik that precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But consistency is clearly not Obama’s forte. He said that the decision as to when life begins was “above my pay grade” to an evangelical audience during the campaign, but acts as if he is quite sure his first week in office. Or perhaps that was a sleight of deceptive legalism – so much for his policy of “openness.” In any case, he very quickly showed his valuing of terrorist quality of life over the innocents' right to life.
Obama's and Lincoln's backgrounds are very different. Lincoln grew up dirt poor, basically self-educated. Obama grew up in privilege & an Ivy League education. Lincoln fought severe depression his entire life. Obama grew up largely in a “post-racial” (more accurately, PC, affirmative action) society, where as Geraldine Ferraro pointed out, he likely wouldn’t be where he was if he wasn’t black – it was actually an advantage. The media treated him with kid gloves during the campaign. Lincoln fought corruption at every turn. Obama came through the Chicago political machine, leaving it and many corrupt cronies intact.
Lincoln readily assembled a team of rivals. Obama stumbled at assembling a team of scofflaws, and the rare cabinet nominee from the opposing party reconsidered upon learning of the nefarious powers of Obama’s “Prince of Darkness” (Rahm Emanuel). Lincoln fought to re-unite and heal the union. Obama seems bent on class warfare, gives only lip service to bipartisanship, and the rhetoric from his choices of ministers (for 20 years, and for his inaugural benediction), and attorney general, seems to fan the dying embers of racism.
This nation knows Lincoln, Lincoln was a friend of ours, and Mr. Obama, you are no Lincoln. You’re not even of the right ideology or party of Lincoln. Your party has the most abominable record on race right up until Kennedy, keeping blacks down after Lincoln freed them. And since Kennedy, the Democrat welfare programs have continued to keep many blacks down. For a tribute to the real Lincoln, see the photo posted just prior to this post.
Obama’s megalomania and naïveté is a dangerous combination – he thinks he can charm extremists, just as Kennedy did in meeting with Khrushchev, leading to the Cuban missile crisis. There are missiles galore for us to worry about today – in Iran, N. Korea, Gaza, Syria, etc. Of course it is early in Obama’s presidency, and some other “crisis” (other than the current economic one) may yet prove his mettle, as did the Civil War for Lincoln. I don’t hold out much hope. Lincoln was the first to permit an enhanced interrogation technique when the nation was mortally threatened – an early form of water boarding. Obama eliminated that with one of his first week’s executive orders.
Domestic Economic Policy
In his first press conference, Obama deflected accusations of earmarks in the stimulus bill by saying that previous administration policies doubled our national debt, and their methods (e.g., excessive spending, tax cuts) were shown to fail. Even if one accepts his premise, how does that justify further excessive spending, as if two wrongs make a right? Nor can the current “crisis” be attributed narrowly to the factors he mentions – he clearly lacks understanding of controlled experiments. Who was in charge of the legislative branch for the past 2 years, and precipitated the sub-prime loan crisis (with broader investment ripple effects) by their social engineering constraints on the lenders? Yes, the Democrats – Barney Frank key among them. And then they use it as an excuse to go on the greatest spending binge in history. Perhaps we need to take away their credit cards, as in the narrowly averted LA tax revolt (LA County threatened to not make tax payments to the state in order to pay for local projects the state is supposed to fund, but is not).
During the election campaign, Obama & the liberals pooh-poohed conservatives who touted the need for strength in the war on terror, calling it fear-mongering for political gain. Similar charges were made about the “rush to war” in Iraq. Obama campaigned rather on “hope.” Well, now the table seems to have turned, and 25 times in one speech to drum public support for the stimulus bill, Obama referred to the economic situation as a “crisis” requiring immediate action to avoid disaster. Can conservatives be blamed for doubting his motives or urgency? Especially when, going against his promises of transparency and bipartisanship, he and the Democrat majority shut out the Republicans from the bill drafting process, and give them mere hours to review it (in a form not allowing electronic searches) before the vote? Obama also promised the stimulus package would be "timely, targeted and temporary" -- he gets credit for one out of three.
Perhaps it is a good time to recall Reagan’s statement that “In the current crisis, the government is not the solution to the problem, the government is the problem.” Government meddling in the sub-prime loan business resulted in disaster there and beyond, and now we’re considering nationalizing the banks? And now $275 billion more for housing (a few hundred billion here, a few hundred there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money!)? Let’s consider how Obama’s economics compare with the failed New Deal, and successful Reagan recovery.
In “Reaganomics vs. Obamanomics” (Peter Ferrara in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123431484726570949.html), it’s pointed out that Obama’s inaugural address claimed being “...guided by what works, not by any ideology or special interests.” Ferrara shows that is false in comparing Obama’s liberal Keynesian strategy with Reagan’s successful approach to dealing with an even more severe situation in 1980. Reagan’s recovery program had 4 components: across-the-board tax rate cuts, deregulation (today that would be especially relevant to energy production), control of government spending, and tight, anti-inflation monetary policy. This is the diametric opposite of Obama’s plan & stimulus bill.
“We know Reaganomics worked “... because they turned around in just two years an economy far worse than today’s. ... multi-year, double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, declining incomes, and rising poverty. In fact, what we suffer with today is not the worst economy since the Great Depression [as Obama claims], but the worst economy since Jimmy Carter -- the last time liberals were dominant politically and intellectually.
“We are stuck going in exactly the wrong direction on economic policy because of currently dominant ideological fashions.
“A natural economic recovery will begin sometime this year, not because of the president's policies, but because soon this will be the longest recession since World War II. However, thanks to the administration's retrograde policies -- cut from the cloth of the 1970s and even the 1930s -- the recovery will not be what it should be. Rather, unemployment will remain too high, and inflation will resurge, recreating the disastrous economic results we suffered the last time Keynesian policies were dominant.”
I note that it took some 25 years to come out of the Great Depression (aided by WWII), when stocks had fully recovered, etc., and following similar policies could extend and deepen the current recession to similar lengths and depths.
In “Do We Need a New New Deal?” (http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp) Burton Folsom cites 3 reasons we do not need a New New Deal like Obama’s. “First, ...FDR's New Deal did not lower unemployment. ... every dollar that went to creating a federal job had to come from taxpayers, who ... lost the chance to buy hamburgers, movie tickets, or clothes and create new jobs for restaurants, theaters, and tailors.”
“What's worse, some New Deal programs had terrible unintended consequences. ... the U.S. developed shortages of the very crops taxpayers were paying farmers not to produce. ...
“Second, the taxes to pay for the New Deal became astronomical. In 1935, Roosevelt decided to raise the marginal tax rate on top incomes to 79 percent. Later he raised it to 90 percent. These confiscatory rates discouraged entrepreneurs from investing, which prolonged the Great Depression.
“... FDR's loyal Secretary of the Treasury ... noted. "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!"
“Third, the New Deal divided and politicized the country in tragic ways. Those who lobbied most effectively won subsidies and bailouts even if their cause was weak.. . . Personal lobbying paid, regardless of the justice or injustice of their demand." ...
“In another example, under Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, Illinois lobbied effectively and won $55,443,721 under the first federal welfare grant while Massachusetts received zero federal dollars. ... Massachusetts valiantly raised its own funds ... City officials and teachers raised money and took pay cuts. Mass. Governor Joseph Ely believed that no state should receive federal aid and that private charity was the best charity; that federal relief ruined both taxpayers and those in need. "Whatever the justification for relief," Ely said, "the fact remains that the way in which it has been used makes it the greatest political asset on the practical side of party politics ever held by an administration." Ely added that "millions of men and women . . . have come to believe almost that there is no hope for them except upon a government payroll." [I note the current situation with many states now relying heavily on doles from the current stimulus package – but some out of principle are choosing to follow the example of Gov. Ely of old]
“Federal dollars always become political dollars, and the Democrats moved to use federal money to gain votes at election time. ... James Doherty, a New Hampshire Democrat, said, "It is my personal belief that to the victor belong the spoils and that Democrats should be holding most of these [WPA] positions so that we might strengthen our fences for the 1940 election."
“If history is a guide, we have every reason to believe that if President Obama institutes a New New Deal, then universal health care, federal bailouts, and jobs stimulus programs will be costly, will be politicized, and will fail.”
Fellow comrades (wake up when Hugo Chavez calls us that!), see also “We are All Socialists Now” (http://www.newsweek.com/id/1836630), that describes how we are moving inexorably toward European-style socialism. And, I note, oddly at the time Europe is beginning to wake up and move away from it after its failure there. How can we be so blind and short-sighted?
Foreign Policy
In the foreign policy area, Obama is off to no better start. In "The Biden Prophecy” (http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/02/20/the_biden_prophecy?page=full&comments=true), Charles Krauthammer reminds us of Biden’s prediction that "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama." He says that a series of threats and probes have already come in the first month in small bites, and that Obama’s responses (“Obama wobble”) do not bode well. I note that they may even invite or encourage more.
One of the 4 Russian provocations he cites is "Pressuring Kyrgyzstan to shut down the U.S. air base in Manas, an absolutely crucial NATO conduit into Afghanistan." Sounds like Putin's sour grapes over their Afghan debacle. I note the base is crucial because it is the only usable supply airbase in the region, and the only alternative resupply route is a land route over the Khyber Pass, where the bridge was blown up in the last week or two. He also cites 3 Iranian and 2 Pakistani (a supposed “ally”) provocations.
Krauthammer concludes,“These Pakistani capitulations may account for Obama's hastily announced 17,000 troop increase in Afghanistan even before his various heralded reviews of the mission have been completed. Hasty, unexplained, but at least something. Other than that, a month of pummeling has been met with utter passivity.
“I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e. domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented. But when the State Department says that Hugo Chavez's president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was 'for the most part ... a process that was fully consistent with democratic process' ... you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.”
Style vs. Substance
Obama loves to lay claim to the greatness and imagery of Lincoln. He wasn’t even inaugurated when it began, and he had no experience to justify the self-promotion. Yes, there is the coincidence of inauguration near Lincoln’s 200th birthday. And both from Illinois, and lanky, and well-spoken.
But speaking style isn’t an end-all; what one says – and does -- also matters tremendously. If President Bush was criticized for lack of style (but not substance), certainly Obama can be criticized for lack of substance. It is a rare combination of style & substance that we see in great presidents such as Reagan and Lincoln. The KGB dossier on Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, said there was no difference between his words and his deeds. And their former KGB chief admitted this ultimately provided the final leverage at Reykjavik that precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But consistency is clearly not Obama’s forte. He said that the decision as to when life begins was “above my pay grade” to an evangelical audience during the campaign, but acts as if he is quite sure his first week in office. Or perhaps that was a sleight of deceptive legalism – so much for his policy of “openness.” In any case, he very quickly showed his valuing of terrorist quality of life over the innocents' right to life.
Obama's and Lincoln's backgrounds are very different. Lincoln grew up dirt poor, basically self-educated. Obama grew up in privilege & an Ivy League education. Lincoln fought severe depression his entire life. Obama grew up largely in a “post-racial” (more accurately, PC, affirmative action) society, where as Geraldine Ferraro pointed out, he likely wouldn’t be where he was if he wasn’t black – it was actually an advantage. The media treated him with kid gloves during the campaign. Lincoln fought corruption at every turn. Obama came through the Chicago political machine, leaving it and many corrupt cronies intact.
Lincoln readily assembled a team of rivals. Obama stumbled at assembling a team of scofflaws, and the rare cabinet nominee from the opposing party reconsidered upon learning of the nefarious powers of Obama’s “Prince of Darkness” (Rahm Emanuel). Lincoln fought to re-unite and heal the union. Obama seems bent on class warfare, gives only lip service to bipartisanship, and the rhetoric from his choices of ministers (for 20 years, and for his inaugural benediction), and attorney general, seems to fan the dying embers of racism.
This nation knows Lincoln, Lincoln was a friend of ours, and Mr. Obama, you are no Lincoln. You’re not even of the right ideology or party of Lincoln. Your party has the most abominable record on race right up until Kennedy, keeping blacks down after Lincoln freed them. And since Kennedy, the Democrat welfare programs have continued to keep many blacks down. For a tribute to the real Lincoln, see the photo posted just prior to this post.
Obama’s megalomania and naïveté is a dangerous combination – he thinks he can charm extremists, just as Kennedy did in meeting with Khrushchev, leading to the Cuban missile crisis. There are missiles galore for us to worry about today – in Iran, N. Korea, Gaza, Syria, etc. Of course it is early in Obama’s presidency, and some other “crisis” (other than the current economic one) may yet prove his mettle, as did the Civil War for Lincoln. I don’t hold out much hope. Lincoln was the first to permit an enhanced interrogation technique when the nation was mortally threatened – an early form of water boarding. Obama eliminated that with one of his first week’s executive orders.
Comments
Post a Comment