Thursday, 16 October 2008
Narrative v. Reality
Topic: Assessing the Issues
Have you noticed how completely the once-notorious Iraq War has faded from the headlines?
It remains true, of course, that by making the war look like an unwinnable debacle, the Bush Administration's faulty strategy and poor leadership set the Republican Party on the path toward a major electoral defeat. But now that the unwinnable war is being won, few people seem interested in talking about it. This is what happened when narrative replaces facts.
Barack Obama has long since settled on his Iraq War narrative: a mistake for the beginning and unwinnable now. And when you think about it, it's remarkable how he has clung to that narrative despite this year's dramatic turnaround in Iraq. Obama's impudent disregard for the facts ought in itself to disqualify him for the presidency. But maybe not. For isn't he simply reflecting a widespread tendency and constantly growing tendency to elevate narrative over the facts. If you accept the narrative of global warming, the facts don't matter. If you accept the narrative of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, the facts don't matter.
Intellectual honesty, always a rare resource, seems in especially short supply today. Indeed, among our intellectual class, it's practically nonexistent. Or as George Orwell once put it: "The greater the understanding, the greater the delusion—the more intelligent, the less sane."
Maybe Barack Obama is the president we really deserve.
Posted by tmg110
at 8:20 AM CDT
Third and Final
Topic: Commentary
My take on last night's debate: John McCain wasn't bad, and Barack Obama was less than impressive. But nothing happened that's likely to affect the outcome of this election. McCain is going down—hard.
For a man who's supposed to have a terrible temper, McCain has been painfully tentative and uncertain in his criticism of Obama. Maybe he's afraid of being branded as a racist; maybe he means it when he talks about mutual respect and so forth. But the fact of the matter is that the country is sharply divided right now, the anger level is high, and people have more of an appetite for straight talk than they do for good manners.
Straight talk was supposed to be McCain's trademark. A little straight talk about Barack Obama's stealth leftism, dubious associations, wrong-headed policies and campaign thuggery might have helped Mr. Maverick to turn things around. But maybe not. The McCain campaign has frittered away its most precious asset—time. And there are no Hail Mary passes in presidential politics. I've said before that John McCain is a lucky politician. But last night, his luck ran out.
Debate transcript here.
Posted by tmg110
at 7:03 AM CDT
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Ask Dr. Obama
Topic: Assessing the Issues
That’s what John McCain should do this evening when the third and final presidential debate of 2008 turns to the subject of healthcare. For on the merits, the Republican candidate’s market-based healthcare reform plan is far superior to the Democrat’s elephantine proposal—which carries a $400 billion prince tag and would force millions of Americans into a government-run health insurance program. (Writing for the Weekly Standard, Yuval Levin provides details here.)
In recent weeks, the Obama campaign has been on the attack against McCain’s proposal, falsely claiming that it would cause millions of Americans to lose their current employer-provided healthcare. The truth is very different: Obama’s plan is the one that would destroy employer-provided healthcare. How so? Simply by enacting a “play or pay” rule. Employers would have the choice of maintaining their current plans, or of dumping them and paying a tax to support the new government insurance system. It’s not hard to envision what most employers would do: wash their hands of the whole healthcare problem by paying the tax.
People need to understand all this before they cast their ballots—but John McCain, whose proposal is so clearly superior, has been mostly silent in the face of this opponent’s dishonest attacks. In this final stage of the campaign, Mr. Maverick is demonstrating exactly why so many conservatives viewed his candidacy with suspicion. Even when he’s clearly in the right, McCain can’t bring himself to punch back at his opponent. Maybe that’ll change in tonight’s debate, but personally I wouldn’t bet on it.
Posted by tmg110
at 8:13 AM CDT
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Park or Eat: You Choose
Topic: Commentary
Here’s a preview of the probable future from the city where Barack Obama cut his political teeth:
Loop Parking May Be Getting More Expensive
City Proposal Would Hike Tax To 33 Percent
This to help close Chicago’s ever-present budget deficit. Just to put this in perspective, downtown parkers are already paying up to $780 per year in taxes alone. But Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has proposed this tax, apparently believes that people who can afford to pay that much can afford to pay still more. It’s an attitude that the community organizer-in-chief no doubt shares.
Posted by tmg110
at 7:34 AM CDT
No-Win Situation?
Topic: Commentary
Yesterday's spectacular 11.08% surge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average demonstrates that last week's even more spectacular sell-off was the result of irrational panic. The economy may be struggling at the moment, but things aren't that bad.
Still, last week's Wall Street rout had a profound effect on the election, and it now seems to me unlikely in the extreme that John McCain can win. Even before the financial crisis took off, he was the underdog. Now, barring some unforeseen development, he's toast. Nor can the Republican Party look to the future with optimism. The GOP, whose prospects seemed a bit brighter three weeks ago, now faces catastrophe. It's not at all impossible that the party will lose 25 House seats and nine or ten Senate seats. If that happens, the Republicans won't even be able to mount filibusters in the Senate. They will be politically impotent.
So much for the problems of defeat—bit victory has its problems as well. And the bigger the victory, the bigger the problems. If the GOP is indeed reduced to political impotence, the Democrats will inherit sole ownership of every challenge facing the nation, from terrorism to tax policy. And as this campaign has made plain, neither Barack Obama nor the Democratic congressional leadership has the slightest idea of what to do about them. Progressivism may soon have one of its periodic collisions with reality. It won't be a pretty sight.
Posted by tmg110
at 7:03 AM CDT
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Fiscal Reality Check.
Topic: Assessing the Issues
This editorial in the Detroit News says it well: Barack Obama and John McCain have misjudged the temper of the electorate. Both assume that the the public has developed an appetite for vastly expanded government intervention in the economy. And both are dead wrong.
The editorial cites McCain proposal to buy up bad mortgages and Obama's health care proposals as examples of the candidates' misjudgment. The best that can be said of McCain's idea is that its $300 million price tag is chump change. Not only would Obama's health care plan be enormously more expensive than that, it's pregnant with unintended consequences that would depress the quality of health care and burden the economy with a host of expensive mandates.
Whoever becomes president is unlikely to bring his plans to fruition—the coming recession will see to that. It's hard to believe, for example, that even so clueless a progressive as obama would be reckless enough to raise taxes and create costly new entitlements at a time when the economy is moribund. But you never know, and the likelihood of an Obama victory next month means that we may soon learn just how clueless the community organizer-in-chief truly is.
Posted by tmg110
at 8:11 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, 9 October 2008 8:23 AM CDT
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
The Shape of Things to Come
Topic: Commentary
What might an Obama presidency look like? California may be providing a preview:
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger may order lawmakers into emergency session to address a mounting deficit, two weeks after a record-long impasse ended with the Legislature over the budget.
>snip<
"Revenue for the state is coming in lower than expected, so that is something that we may need to do," Schwarzenegger's press secretary Aaron Mclear said of the possibility of a special session.
Schwarzenegger signed a $143 billion budget Sept. 23, ending an 85-day stalemate with lawmakers over how to close a $15 billion deficit in the fiscal year that began July. 1. Tax revenue tied to income and capital gains is declining in the state as the U.S. economy falters and stock markets slide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a five-year low today.
And so on. Thus the incoming Obama Administration will find itself confronted with an economic recession, shrinking federal revenues, and a ballooning budget deficit. Universal health care, anyone? I think not.
Posted by tmg110
at 7:42 AM CDT
History Lesson
Topic: Commentary
Speaking of President Obama, this headline caught my eye this morning:
U.S. Stocks Drop; S&P 500, Dow Post Worst Retreats Since 1937
Pop quiz: Who was president in 1937? That's right—FDR. But how did that happen? I mean, wasn't FDR the savior (one might even call him the messiah) who led America out of the dark depths of the Great Depression into the broad, smiling uplands of prosperity and plenty? Yes, it's puzzling when you consider that the Great Depression began in 1929-30, and that FDR assumed office in 1933. But perhaps the New Deal wasn't such a great deal after all.
Posted by tmg110
at 7:31 AM CDT
Hello, President Obama!
Topic: Commentary
Some hopeful souls in the ranks of the GOP may still believe that lightning can strike, but after watching last night's debate, I've reached the conclusion that John McCain will go down to defeat on election day.
It's not that McCain did anything wrong last night; it's simply that he failed to make the case that (a) he has both the experience and character to be president in turbulent times while (b) Obama doesn't. Without linking these two propositions, McCain can't win. Many of the people who will vote against him on election day would probably concede (a), but they won't have accepted (b). Given this year's hunger for "change," it's not hard to see why they'd pick Obama, who has successfully marketed himself as the agent of change. (Debate transcript here.)
It didn't help that the debate itself was a gigantically boring snoozefest. Will we ever see a real presidential debate? Frankly, I doubt it. The stakes are seen as too high for candidates to take such a risk. The only thing that one can say of this year's debates is that they have shown, once again, that the nation's mainstream media are intellectually bankrupt. As long as MSM solons like Tom Brokaw control the debates, they won't be debates at all.
Posted by tmg110
at 7:13 AM CDT
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Let's Panic!
Topic: Assessing the Issues
To judge from yesterday's Wall Street sell-off, to say nothing of the bloodletting on foreign stock exchanges, the US government's bailout package has done nothing to calm investors—rather the reverse.
Of course the markets are correct in anticipating a recession, quite possibly a severe one. The global economy isn't simply going to bounce back to health in a month, or six months, or a year. Look at the price of oil. Not so very long ago it was selling for $140 per barrel. Yesterday it closed at a mere $89. When commodity prices collapse like that, they signal the arrival of an economic downturn.
What all this means for the US presidential election is pretty obvious: bad news for John McCain. Always the underdog, he now finds himself trailing Barack Obama by five or six points. Though it's not impossible to turn such a deficit around, the erratic recent behavior of the candidate and his campaign make me wonder if he's capable of doing so. Tonight's debate will tell the tale. Unless McCain turns in a stellar performance, it's probably all over for him.
If McCain does lose, Barack Obama will be our next president, and he will take office just as the coming recession begins to bite in good earnest. So he will have the options of (1) buckling down to the hard work of economic recovery, or (2) making a bad situation much worse by pressing on with his grandiose agenda. Given Obama's instincts and antecedents, he's not likely to content himself with (1). And that would be bad news for the country.
Posted by tmg110
at 6:54 AM CDT
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