Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, War Commentary

On The New Republican “Isolationism”

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Thoughts from Stanley Kurtz:

For President Obama to choose this moment of overstretch and crisis to commit us to a supposedly humanitarian intervention in a land with no vital American interests at stake is little short of madness. Obama’s obliviousness to our pressing military and financial burdens as he pursues utopian dreams of international governance is the perfect counterpart to his domestic policy of pulling us toward European socialism just as the welfare state itself is collapsing across the West. We can only conclude that Obama is far less interested in either American strategic advantage or economic prosperity, traditionally defined, than in his dreams of an equality-of-result society and a multilaterally governed world.

With the Middle East slowly turning into a series of tin-cup-rattling failed states, and with Obama blithely embarking on a postmodern adventure in supposed humanitarianism when real military dangers threaten at every turn, why shouldn’t conservatives question where all this is leading? Hawkish democratizing optimists have chosen to overlook both Obama’s internationalist justifications for war in Libya and his refusal to quickly go for the kill. In doing so, they are hoping to forge a hawkish, bipartisan consensus in the country as a whole. This is a mistake, and is leading instead to the very opposite result. What Americans urgently need right now is a foreign policy that makes distinctions between our greater and lesser interests, and above all, a policy based on a realistic assessment of what is happening in the Middle East.

Foreign policy is often viewed through a partisan lens, which is why many Democrats are quite sanguine about the same policies unde Barack Obama that outraged them when perpetrated by George Bush. But I think that we will see a pretty major change in foreign policy from the next president, regardless of who it is.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Fanny And Freddy

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I’m not a big David Brooks fan, but he takes the political class to task much more than he’s usually willing to in today’s column.

Morgenson and Rosner write with barely suppressed rage, as if great crimes are being committed. But there are no crimes. This is how Washington works. Only two of the characters in this tale come off as egregiously immoral. Johnson made $100 million while supposedly helping the poor. Representative Barney Frank, whose partner at the time worked for Fannie, was arrogantly dismissive when anybody raised doubts about the stability of the whole arrangement.

Most of the people were simply doing what reputable figures do in service to a supposedly good cause. Johnson roped in some of the most respected establishment names: Bill Daley, Tom Donilan, Joseph Stiglitz, Dianne Feinstein, Kit Bond, Franklin Raines, Larry Summers, Robert Zoellick, Ken Starr and so on.

Of course, it all came undone. Underneath, Fannie was a cancer that helped spread risky behavior and low standards across the housing industry. We all know what happened next.

The scandal has sent the message that the leadership class is fundamentally self-dealing. Leaders on the center-right and center-left are always trying to create public-private partnerships to spark socially productive activity. But the biggest public-private partnership to date led to shameless self-enrichment and disastrous results.

It has sent the message that we have hit the moment of demosclerosis. Washington is home to a vertiginous tangle of industry associations, activist groups, think tanks and communications shops. These forces have overwhelmed the government that was originally conceived by the founders.

The reckoning started last November, but the real one is yet to come.

Political Commentary

The Next Senator From Texas

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…looks like a huge improvement over the one he’ll be replacing:

Before earning a Harvard law degree magna cum laude (and helping found the Harvard Latino Law Review) and clerking for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz’s senior thesis at Princeton — his thesis adviser was professor Robert George, one of contemporary conservatism’s intellectual pinups — was on the Constitution’s Ninth and 10th Amendments.

Then as now, Cruz argued that these amendments, properly construed, would buttress the principle that powers not enumerated are not possessed by the federal government.

I doubt if Kay Bailey even understands what those amendments mean, or why they’re in the Constitution at all. Good riddance.

Political Commentary

Must Be That New Civility I’ve Been Hearing About

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A union leader Godwinizes a rally in New Jersey, right out of the gate.

[Friday morning update]

It’s hard to get good goons these days:

When people who are used to dealing with cave-ins, or ladles of molten metal, hit the streets, they’re putting those traits to work in an environment that’s probably less dangerous than the one they work in every day. That makes them pretty formidable.

In fact, it made them so formidable that they were able to put together unions solid enough to send the industries they depended on overseas, where labor was more tractable, because the bosses weren’t willing to face the headache of trying to get rid of the unions, and couldn’t afford to pay the wages the unions, with their toughness, had managed to extract.

But miners and steelworkers are one thing. When the public employees of, say, Wisconsin hit the streets, it looked more like a bunch of disgruntled DMV clerks and graduate teaching assistants, because, well, that’s what it was.

Though they displayed more creativity in signage than you might expect from steelworkers, overall, they brought pretty much the same work habits to their protests that they bring to their jobs. (Sleeping in the capitol? Pretty much what they do at the office.)

America’s DMV clerks aren’t known for toughness and dedication on the job, and it would be asking a lot to expect them to display such characteristics for the first time when they’re off the job.

As the author of the editorial would say in other contexts, heh.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Obama Supporters Try To Defend His Middle-East Policy

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An epic fail:

Let’s consider this:

A. Britain, France, Italy, and Germany all announced they would vote against unilateral independence before Obama did anything. He didn’t twist their arms; they took the lead.

B. There is no evidence that Obama has tried to twist anyone’s arm in Europe on this issue. Quite the opposite, he’s tried to get them to endorse his program of: We’ll get Palestine independence real fast so they don’t need to go to the UN. In other words, it is an appeasement strategy.

C. No, he has not given “ultimatums”; he’s just said he’s against it and will vote against it. In saying that, he’s assuming that it will go to the UN. An ultimatum is when you threaten someone with serious consequences unless they give in. He has not done so.

D. “He knows Israel is [our] only ally in the Mideast.” This is the most interesting sentence of all. No public action Obama has taken demonstrates that in any way. We only have the ritual pro-Israel statements. And such things as continued good military relations are not expressions of Obama’s personal views, but of Defense Department policies and sheer inertia.

Unfortunately, failure doesn’t distinguish this policy from any of his others.