Barack Obama Countdown widget brought
to you by www.obamacountdownwidget.com
to you by www.obamacountdownwidget.com
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Be careful what you wish for!
The Risk of Catastrophic Victory (from Wall Street Journal)
Obama is in the midst of one. Can the GOP avert one of their own?
By PEGGY NOONAN
Passage of the health-care bill will be, for the administration, a catastrophic victory. If it is voted through in time for the State of the Union Address, as President Obama hopes, half the chamber will rise to their feet and cheer. They will be cheering their own demise.
If health care does not pass, it will also be a disaster, but only for the administration, not the country. Critics will say, "You didn't even waste our time successfully."
What a blunder this thing has been, win or lose, what a miscalculation on the part of the president. The administration misjudged the mood and the moment. Mr. Obama ran, won, was sworn in and began his work under the spirit of 2008—expansive, part dreamy and part hubristic. But as soon as he was inaugurated ,the president ran into the spirit of 2009—more dug in, more anxious, more bottom-line—and didn't notice. At the exact moment the public was announcing it worried about jobs first and debt and deficits second, the administration decided to devote its first year to health care, which no one was talking about. The great recession changed everything, but not right away.
In a way Mr. Obama made the same mistake President Bush did on immigration, producing a big, mammoth, comprehensive bill when the public mood was for small, discrete steps in what might reasonably seem the right direction.
The public in 2009 would have been happy to see a simple bill that mandated insurance companies offer coverage without respect to previous medical conditions. The administration could have had that—and the victory of it—last winter.
Instead, they were greedy for glory.
It was not worth it—not worth the town-hall uprisings and the bleeding of centrist support, not worth the rebranding of the president from center-left leader to leftist leader, not worth the proof it provided that the public's concerns and the administration's are not the same, not worth a wasted first year that should have been given to two things and two things only: economic matters and national security.
Those were not only the two topics on the public's mind the past 10 months, they were precisely the issues that presented themselves in screaming headlines at the end of the year: unemployment and the national-security breakdowns that led to the Christmas bomb plot and, earlier, the Fort Hood massacre. "That's two strikes," said the president's national security adviser, James Jones, to USA Today's Susan Page. Left unsaid: Three and you're out.
Just as bad, or worse, the president's focus on health care allowed the public to infer that his mind was not focused on our security. He'd frittered his attention on issues that were secondary and tertiary—climate change, health care—while al Qaeda moved, and the system stuttered. A lack of focus breeds bureaucratic complacency, complacency gives rise to slovenliness, slovenliness results in what was said in the report issued Thursday: that, faced with clear evidence of coming danger, the government failed, as they're saying on TV, to "connect the dots." Dots? They were boulders.
I am wondering if the Obama administration thinks it vaguely dishonorable to be popular. If you mention to Obama staffers that they really have to be concerned about the polls, they look at you with a certain . . . not disdain but patience, as if you don't understand the purpose of politics. That purpose, they believe, is to move the governed toward greater justice. Just so, but in democracy you do this by garnering and galvanizing public support. But they think it's weaselly to be well thought of.
In politics you must tend to the garden. The garden is the constituency, in Mr. Obama's case the country. No great endeavor is possible without its backing. In a modern presidency especially you have to know this, because there will be times when history throws you a crisis, and to address it you may have to do an unpopular thing. A president in those circumstances must use all the goodwill he's built up over the months and years to get through that moment and survive doing what he thinks is right. Mr. Obama acts as if he doesn't know this. He hasn't built up popularity to use on a rainy day. If he had, he'd be getting through the Christmas plot drama better than he is
The Obama people have taken to pointing out how their guy doesn't govern by the polls. This is all too believable. The Bush people, too, used to bang away about how he didn't govern by the polls. They both added unneeded stress to the past 10 years, and it is understandable if many of us now think, "Oh for a president who'd govern by the polls."
If Mr. Obama is extremely lucky—and we're not sure he's a lucky man anymore—he will get a Republican Congress in 2010, and they will do for him what Newt Gingrich did for Bill Clinton: right his ship, give him a foil, guide him while allowing him to look as if he's resisting, bend him while allowing him to look strong.
***
Which gets us to the Republicans. The question isn't whether they'll win seats in the House and Senate this year, and the question isn't even how many. The question is whether the party will be worthy of victory, whether it learned from its losses in 2006 and '08, whether it deserves leadership. Whether Republicans are a worthy alternative. Whether, in short, they are serious.
I spoke a few weeks ago with a respected Republican congressman who told me with some excitement of a bill he's put forward to address the growth of entitlements and long-term government spending. We only have three or four years to get it right, he said. He made a strong case. I asked if his party was doing anything to get behind the bill, and he got the blanched look people get when they're trying to keep their faces from betraying anything. Not really, he said. Then he shrugged. "They're waiting for the Democrats to destroy themselves."
This isn't news, really, but it was startling to hear a successful Republican political practitioner say it.
Republican political professionals in Washington assume a coming victory. They do not see that 2010 could be a catastrophic victory for them. If they seize back power without clear purpose, if they are not serious, if they do the lazy and cynical thing by just sitting back and letting the Democrats lose, three bad things will happen. They will contribute to the air of cynicism in which our citizens marinate. Their lack of seriousness will be discerned by the Republican base, whose enthusiasm and generosity will be blunted. And the Republicans themselves will be left unable to lead when their time comes, because operating cynically will allow the public to view them cynically, which will lessen the chance they will be able to do anything constructive.
In this sense, the cynical view—we can sit back and wait—is naive. The idealistic view—we must stand for things and move on them now—is shrewder.
Political professionals are pugilistic, and often see politics in terms of fight movies: "Rocky," "Raging Bull." They should be thinking now of a different one, of Tom Hanks at the end of "Saving Private Ryan." "Earn this," he said to the man whose life he'd helped save.
Earn this. Be worthy of it. Be serious.
====================================================================
"We" need a game plan. What do Americans want us to do? How do we go about doing those things (maybe we won't do all)? Can we have a candid conversation with the electorate about what needs to be done? We hear they are worried about out of control spending. Will they share the burden of cutbacks? They want entitlement reform. Are they willing to allow the "deal" to be modified? In 1994 we had the "Contract with America." We misread the election then (it wasn't about the contract, it was dissatisfaction with Clinton). Clearly Obama misread his election as a mandate for his policies. He will pay for that assumption this year and beyond (hopefully). We need to learn from this history. Don't misinterpret the upcoming elections. It's more about dissatisfaction with an overreaching party who is focused on the wrong things. If we are to fully capitalize on this opportunity to stop Obamanomics in their tracks, we need to be THE ANSWER in short order. Once the campaigns are over, we are on the hook for turning the battleship around!
Let's hope the GOP "get's it." Noonan would say NO. Let's hope the GOP is listening!
Obama is in the midst of one. Can the GOP avert one of their own?
By PEGGY NOONAN
Passage of the health-care bill will be, for the administration, a catastrophic victory. If it is voted through in time for the State of the Union Address, as President Obama hopes, half the chamber will rise to their feet and cheer. They will be cheering their own demise.
If health care does not pass, it will also be a disaster, but only for the administration, not the country. Critics will say, "You didn't even waste our time successfully."
What a blunder this thing has been, win or lose, what a miscalculation on the part of the president. The administration misjudged the mood and the moment. Mr. Obama ran, won, was sworn in and began his work under the spirit of 2008—expansive, part dreamy and part hubristic. But as soon as he was inaugurated ,the president ran into the spirit of 2009—more dug in, more anxious, more bottom-line—and didn't notice. At the exact moment the public was announcing it worried about jobs first and debt and deficits second, the administration decided to devote its first year to health care, which no one was talking about. The great recession changed everything, but not right away.
In a way Mr. Obama made the same mistake President Bush did on immigration, producing a big, mammoth, comprehensive bill when the public mood was for small, discrete steps in what might reasonably seem the right direction.
The public in 2009 would have been happy to see a simple bill that mandated insurance companies offer coverage without respect to previous medical conditions. The administration could have had that—and the victory of it—last winter.
Instead, they were greedy for glory.
It was not worth it—not worth the town-hall uprisings and the bleeding of centrist support, not worth the rebranding of the president from center-left leader to leftist leader, not worth the proof it provided that the public's concerns and the administration's are not the same, not worth a wasted first year that should have been given to two things and two things only: economic matters and national security.
Those were not only the two topics on the public's mind the past 10 months, they were precisely the issues that presented themselves in screaming headlines at the end of the year: unemployment and the national-security breakdowns that led to the Christmas bomb plot and, earlier, the Fort Hood massacre. "That's two strikes," said the president's national security adviser, James Jones, to USA Today's Susan Page. Left unsaid: Three and you're out.
Just as bad, or worse, the president's focus on health care allowed the public to infer that his mind was not focused on our security. He'd frittered his attention on issues that were secondary and tertiary—climate change, health care—while al Qaeda moved, and the system stuttered. A lack of focus breeds bureaucratic complacency, complacency gives rise to slovenliness, slovenliness results in what was said in the report issued Thursday: that, faced with clear evidence of coming danger, the government failed, as they're saying on TV, to "connect the dots." Dots? They were boulders.
I am wondering if the Obama administration thinks it vaguely dishonorable to be popular. If you mention to Obama staffers that they really have to be concerned about the polls, they look at you with a certain . . . not disdain but patience, as if you don't understand the purpose of politics. That purpose, they believe, is to move the governed toward greater justice. Just so, but in democracy you do this by garnering and galvanizing public support. But they think it's weaselly to be well thought of.
In politics you must tend to the garden. The garden is the constituency, in Mr. Obama's case the country. No great endeavor is possible without its backing. In a modern presidency especially you have to know this, because there will be times when history throws you a crisis, and to address it you may have to do an unpopular thing. A president in those circumstances must use all the goodwill he's built up over the months and years to get through that moment and survive doing what he thinks is right. Mr. Obama acts as if he doesn't know this. He hasn't built up popularity to use on a rainy day. If he had, he'd be getting through the Christmas plot drama better than he is
The Obama people have taken to pointing out how their guy doesn't govern by the polls. This is all too believable. The Bush people, too, used to bang away about how he didn't govern by the polls. They both added unneeded stress to the past 10 years, and it is understandable if many of us now think, "Oh for a president who'd govern by the polls."
If Mr. Obama is extremely lucky—and we're not sure he's a lucky man anymore—he will get a Republican Congress in 2010, and they will do for him what Newt Gingrich did for Bill Clinton: right his ship, give him a foil, guide him while allowing him to look as if he's resisting, bend him while allowing him to look strong.
***
Which gets us to the Republicans. The question isn't whether they'll win seats in the House and Senate this year, and the question isn't even how many. The question is whether the party will be worthy of victory, whether it learned from its losses in 2006 and '08, whether it deserves leadership. Whether Republicans are a worthy alternative. Whether, in short, they are serious.
I spoke a few weeks ago with a respected Republican congressman who told me with some excitement of a bill he's put forward to address the growth of entitlements and long-term government spending. We only have three or four years to get it right, he said. He made a strong case. I asked if his party was doing anything to get behind the bill, and he got the blanched look people get when they're trying to keep their faces from betraying anything. Not really, he said. Then he shrugged. "They're waiting for the Democrats to destroy themselves."
This isn't news, really, but it was startling to hear a successful Republican political practitioner say it.
Republican political professionals in Washington assume a coming victory. They do not see that 2010 could be a catastrophic victory for them. If they seize back power without clear purpose, if they are not serious, if they do the lazy and cynical thing by just sitting back and letting the Democrats lose, three bad things will happen. They will contribute to the air of cynicism in which our citizens marinate. Their lack of seriousness will be discerned by the Republican base, whose enthusiasm and generosity will be blunted. And the Republicans themselves will be left unable to lead when their time comes, because operating cynically will allow the public to view them cynically, which will lessen the chance they will be able to do anything constructive.
In this sense, the cynical view—we can sit back and wait—is naive. The idealistic view—we must stand for things and move on them now—is shrewder.
Political professionals are pugilistic, and often see politics in terms of fight movies: "Rocky," "Raging Bull." They should be thinking now of a different one, of Tom Hanks at the end of "Saving Private Ryan." "Earn this," he said to the man whose life he'd helped save.
Earn this. Be worthy of it. Be serious.
====================================================================
"We" need a game plan. What do Americans want us to do? How do we go about doing those things (maybe we won't do all)? Can we have a candid conversation with the electorate about what needs to be done? We hear they are worried about out of control spending. Will they share the burden of cutbacks? They want entitlement reform. Are they willing to allow the "deal" to be modified? In 1994 we had the "Contract with America." We misread the election then (it wasn't about the contract, it was dissatisfaction with Clinton). Clearly Obama misread his election as a mandate for his policies. He will pay for that assumption this year and beyond (hopefully). We need to learn from this history. Don't misinterpret the upcoming elections. It's more about dissatisfaction with an overreaching party who is focused on the wrong things. If we are to fully capitalize on this opportunity to stop Obamanomics in their tracks, we need to be THE ANSWER in short order. Once the campaigns are over, we are on the hook for turning the battleship around!
Let's hope the GOP "get's it." Noonan would say NO. Let's hope the GOP is listening!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Someone tell the pay czar to check out State & Local Governments!
States are exhibiting the type of fiscal responsibility that we need at the Federal level. That being said, it seems that there is room for more cuts. According the the CATO Institutes Tax and Budget Bulletin, State & Local employees total compensation and availability of benefits is significantly better than the private sector. This is true across the board, from high union share to low union share. Who would have thought the government would be a plush gig? According to CATO, in 2008, wages and benefits of $1.1 trillion accounted for half of total state and local government spending. This is close to the compensation share at Wall Street firms! This is important for other reasons - it's not uncommon for State and Local Pension/Benefit plans to be significantly underfunded (i.e. guess who picks up the tab?). Below are the key tables from the CATO report (link to full report below).
Monday, January 11, 2010
Taking Chance - Movie Review
I stopped by the local Blockbuster recently looking for movies to watch over the weekend. Given the cold and snow, I thought I should get several movies. One movie I chose without any idea what the movie was about was "Taking Chance" with Kevin Bacon. I was so surprised by this movie, and I would highly recommend this movie. It reminds one how wonderful this country is and how patriotic the majority of Americans are. The movie is about two people, Private First Class Chance R Phelps (19) and Lieutenant Colonel Michael "Mike" Strobl. We never really meet Chance, as he was killed in action on Good Friday in 2004. Strobl expressed an interest in performing "escort duty." We find out late in the movie that Strobl if feeling gulity that some of the men he served with in Desert Storm were serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. At the time this takes place, Strobl has an administrative job with the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico Virginia. Strobl is assigned to escort the remains of Chance Phelps to his final resting point in Wyoming. The story follows Strobl and Chance as they make their way from Dover Air Force Base to DuBois, WY. All along the way from the mortuary team at Dover who prepared Chance's body for the coffin (cleaning him, cleaning his personal effects, dressing him in full dress) to all the people Strobl encounters as he flies from Dover to Philadelphia, to Minneapolis and finally Billings, MT. The respect that Chance is shown along this journey is very moving. The gratitude shown by the Phelps family and the friends and aquaitances of Chance is very much a surprise to Strobl. He seems like he got more out of the experience than anyone. Strobl ends his story with the following "I left DuBois in the morning before sunrise for my long drive back to Billings. It had been my honor to take Chance to his final post. Now his is on the high ground overlooking his town. I miss him."
It is hard to think about the fact that there are soldiers out there every day carrying out this difficult duty to honor our fallen with honor, dignity and respect. The military doesn't get much respect these days, and that starts with "Our" President. I hope the escorts, the families and those still serving know that the average American holds them in the highest regard. This movie is worth watching.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
