…of iPads for apes.
Obama, Romney, the gay electorate, and the press
Obama’s declaration about gay marriage is getting an unbelievable amount of press.
It’s as though it actually means something, other than that for some reason Obama has decided to abandon his pretense of being against gay marriage. It’s being framed as everything from a political profile in courage—following his conscience even though it will hurt him with voters—to a ploy to placate gay backers and rake in more money. I think it’s the latter, plus a need to shore up his base—a political calculation, just as his previous antagonism to gay marriage was a political calculation. And in that, he’s not much different from many politicians, although a bit smoother and cynical than some.
And I don’t think Joe Biden’s preparatory remarks were a slip-up or an accident.
That said, I don’t think it will affect much in this election, despite the enormous brouhaha. How many voters will change their minds because of this? I can’t imagine it would be many.
As expected, for the most part the press has dutifully jumped on board. Not only are there the usual fawning tributes to Obama, but there’s been a full court press to paint Romney as not only against gay marriage but guilty of bigotry against gays. It’s been quite carefully orchestrated, I think, beginning with blaming Romney for the resignation of his gay foreign policy advisor Richard Grennell, and now the ludicrous dredging-up of somebody’s memories of something Romney supposedly said to some gay kid in the classroom back in the mid-60s.
This is what the WaPo calls big news these days. And if it were about Obama instead, you better believe it would be under lock and key, like his grades, or something like this, an incident that happened not in high school but in 2003, and is not a rumor but a videotape.
The best comment about the Romney revelations was this one in a thread at Althouse, by “Pastafarian”:
I’ve also heard, from unnamed sources, that in second grade, [Mitt] pulled the pigtails of the girl seated in front of him — her eyes welling with tears. The War on Women was being waged even then.
President Obama…
…does the expected flip-flop on gay marriage.
Hillary Clinton says she no longer cares about hair and makeup…
…while looking nicely coiffed and wearing tasteful makeup.
And yet I’m not going to hit her for hypocrisy. Hillary Clinton is now sixty-four years old, and although she’s no glamour puss, she looks perfectly fine for her age. Every now and then there’s an unflattering photo of her; so what? My ratio of unflattering to flattering photos is about 100 to 1 these days, and I’m not being constantly followed by photographers salivating to catch me in at my worst, like Hillary is.
What’s more, Hillary never really cared about style. She just pretended to in order to further Bill’s career, and then her own. And whatever happened to cool their marriage over the years (and it was plenty), I’m of the mind that at least in the beginning there was some basic heterosexual sexual chemistry.
Many many people have disagreed with me about that, but I offer exhibits A and B:
New Russian jet missing over Indonesia
This is absolutely terrible on both the human and the economic level, and for the Russian aviation industry specifically:
…[A] a Sukhoi SuperJet-100, the first completely new post-Soviet jetliner, went missing during a promotional tour in Indonesia.
The plane is presumed crashed, although Russia’s official RIA-Novosti agency said that darkness and fog have prevented search teams from reaching the site where the plane is believed to have gone down during a demonstration flight near Mt. Salak, about 50 miles from Jakarta.
Russian aviation has been especially troubled for decades, and this new design was supposed to reverse that trend. It had been developed in cooperation with Western giants such as Boeing. But something seems to have gone terribly wrong. Design flaw? Pilot error? Maintenance problems? Perhaps even sabotage?
At this point no one knows, but this is ominous:
But Russia’s airline industry has been hit with a series of scandals, including revelations that many engineers working in aircraft factories have inadequate or fake diplomas.
As for the passengers, they were a bunch of VIPs:
Among the 50 people on board the plane were potential buyers from several major local airlines. Reporters also filled seats as did several people from the Russian Embassy…
The plane, which had its maiden flight in 2008, had seemed so promising until now that 170 orders had already been placed around the world. Indonesia was one of the largest potential customers.
Lugar and the press
Richard Mourdock primaried and yesterday ousted six-term Republican senator Dick Lugar in Indiana, and the MSM is very upset. As Michael Brendan Dougherty of Business Insider succinctly points out:
The only time the press weeps at the loss of a Republican Senator is when he is replaced with a more conservative one.
Bingo. Lugar was the MSM’s kind of Republican, and I say this even though I’m hardly against RINOs in principle—in liberal states, that is, as I’ve written many times on this blog. But reading Lugar’s paeans to a bipartisanship that at this point exists only in his own mind, and is unilateral at that, is sad. The man isn’t just a RINO, he’s a dino—unfortunately, because I happen to agree with sentiments such as the following, at least in principle (in practice they have gone the way of the dodo):
Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.
Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times.
It seems these days that the Democrats’ specialty is to be highly partisan and uncompromising, and to pretend it’s only Republicans who are that way. The press, of course, co-operates in trying to foster that notion. Witness “Lugar’s Demise and the Constitutional Crisis” by Jonathan Chait, which castigates those partisan, monolithic Republicans and pretends the Democrats are a moderate, compromising group:
Incumbent senators used to have almost no fear that they might be deposed by members of their own party for ideological or partisan deviations, and now that threat has become the most powerful disciplinary tool available to activists. And it’s a tool, moreover, that is being deployed asymmetrically ”“ the homogeneously conservative Republican Party has winnowed out virtually all its moderates, while the Democratic Party remains a looser coalition of moderates and liberals.
Like, for example, Joe Lieberman.
And then there’s the little matter of judicial appointments. Lugar voted to confirm both Kagan and Sotomayor, one of the reasons conservatives turned against him. Chait rails on and on about how the nasty partisan Republicans have blocked Obama’s perfectly reasonable judicial appointments, but I wonder what Chait had to say about this when it was happening:
Soon after the inauguration of Bush as president in January 2001, many liberal academics became worried that he would begin packing the federal judiciary with conservative jurists. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote an article in the February 2001 edition of the liberal magazine The American Prospect that encouraged the use of the filibuster to stop Bush from placing any nominee on the Supreme Court during his first term. In addition, law professors Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago) and Laurence Tribe (Harvard), along with Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center, counseled Senate Democrats in April 2001 “to scrutinize judicial nominees more closely than ever.” Specifically, they said, “there was no obligation to confirm someone just because they are scholarly or erudite.”
On May 9, 2001, President Bush announced his first eleven court of appeals nominees in a special White House ceremony. This initial group of nominees included Roger Gregory, a Clinton recess-appointed judge to the fourth circuit, as a peace offering to Senate Democrats. There was, however, immediate concern expressed by Senate Democrats and liberal groups like the Alliance for Justice. Democratic Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said that the White House was “trying to create the most ideological bench in the history of the nation.”
As a result, from June 2001 to January 2003, when the Senate in the 107th Congress was controlled by the Democrats, many conservative appellate nominees were stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee and never given hearings or committee votes.
The pretense that Republicans have a monopoly on partisanship is, quite simply, propagandist poppycock.
Lugar is also 80 years old, which might have had something to do with his defeat, because challenger Mourdock (a name that unfortunately reminds me of both “warlock” and H.G. Wells’ Morlocks), although no spring chicken at sixty, is considerably younger than Lugar.
Will Mourdock win Indiana’s senate seat against Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly? The consensus of opinion is “probably,” although I think it’s way too soon to tell. If so, though, Indiana Republicans saw an opportunity to get a younger, more conservative senator in office, and they understandably seized it.
This woman…
Go figure.
Richard Cohen tells Obama to be like LBJ
Richard Cohen advises Obama to read Robert Caro’s latest biography of LBJ and learn how to make friends and influence people like Johnson did.
Dream on. In an alternate universe, maybe. In this one, a person can learn a few things and change somewhat as he/she goes through life, but change that basic virtually never happens.
Obama will never become a people person, like LBJ. Johnson relished pressing the flesh, and wheeling and dealing in the Senate for the many years he was a titanic figure there, persuading and arm-twisting and threatening and cajoling. Obama’s power is through the power of his silver tongue (I always saw it as tin, but I know a lot of people differ), his extension of executive power through czars and agencies, his reliance on a couple of leaders in Congress such as Nancy Pelosi (as long as Democrats were in charge, that is), and the assistance of his fawning allies in the press.
It’s hard to come to any conclusion except that Obama is a cold fish, as Cohen seems to recognize. Our current president is uncomfortable among people and crowds, preferring to stay with a small group of very trusted advisors, and only appearing for a short time at events and doing the bare minimum of schmoozing.
He’s never really had to do more than that. He looks down on people from his Olympian heights, removed and distant, above it all, seemingly calm and thoughtful. That’s what’s always worked for him in the past, and it’s suited his temperament, as well.
It’s ludicrous for Cohen to expect a man with that personality, and who spent only a couple of years of a single term in Congress before running for president, to have somehow amassed the skills and the knowledge base of LBJ, a master of power, people, and Congress. Very few people could emulate him, and Obama is probably the least likely person to do so.
How many pairs…
…of gloves can Obama take off and still have more to go?
I am so, so tired of reading that Obama is finally taking the gloves off.
And amazingly enough, Obama seems to be asking people to keep hoping. It’s a bit like Lucy and the football—this time it will happen:
“If people ask you what this campaign is about, you tell them ‘it’s still about hope.’ You tell them ‘it’s still about change,'” he told a cheering mass of supporters at Ohio State University in Columbus, six months and one day before the election. “I still believe in you. And I’m asking you to keep believing in me.”…
The embattled Democratic incumbent also laid out his answer to the question Ronald Reagan posed to devastating effect in the 1980 election: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
“The real question, the question that will actually make a difference in your life, in the lives of your children, is not just about how we’re doing today. It’s about how we’ll be doing tomorrow,” Obama said. “Will we be better off if more Americans get a better education? That’s the question. Will be be better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity? That’s the question. Will we be better off if we start doing some nation building right here at home? That’s the question. Will we be better off if we bring down our deficit without gutting the very things we need to grow?”
Obama must sell belief, because he can’t point to action—that is, he can’t point to action that people want. Obamacare, the pinnacle of accomplishment of his first term, has been rejected by the majority. He can only talk about killing Bin Laden so often; even Obama knows that people want to feel hopeful because there’s a reason to hope. Promises are all he’s got now, and the force of his personality. It worked well enough last time, so maybe he can keep stringing the public along till November.
It’s more like a religion or a personal cult than politics or leadership.
I think…
…that this story can only redound to Romney’s credit.
But maybe that’s just cause I’m such a rebel. Question authority! Power (boats) to the people!!
Looking at the French elections
I don’t pretend to be an expert on internal French politics, but here’s a little summary of what winner Hollande stands for:
He’s a Keynesian (although the article doesn’t mention that word) who favors stimulus as the answer to France’s problems.
He wants to tax the top tier at 75%.
He proposes that some illegal immigrants would be given residency, on a “case-by-case basis.”
It should be fascinating to watch.
Even conservatives in France are a little bit socialist compared to conservatives here. That’s what happens with a welfare state; it’s very hard to turn it back when people get accustomed to the perks. As Michael Barone writes:
It is obvious that voting for one’s living is a great deal easier than working for it. It is easier to blame someone else who is wealthier for a reduction in the standard of living than to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about the nature and effect an expansionist government has on the quality of life in a society in general.
The driver of this process is at its most basic level envy…Countries that choose this path see that, rather than all the boats rising on the incoming tide of massive government expansion in the name of goodness and light, the boats actually start to wallow and the wealth of the society as a whole begins to erode significantly.
Rather than being lifted up through greater productivity and economic growth, the society becomes mired in finger pointing where the many, through their politicians, blame the few.
But although I agree with this analysis, there’s a lot more than that going on in the French election. A fair amount of the vote was backlash against Sarkozy, who has become disliked personally (and has always been seen as an outsider, an important factor in insular France), as well as the desire to try something different when the present administration isn’t seen as having been successful in fixing France’s problems. Even then, the vote for Hollande over Sarkozy was hardly overwhelming—the final tally was actually fairly close.
So whatever the trend is in France, it isn’t a strong one. Of course, that doesn’t matter except in terms of weighing the attitude of the French public, because the winners now get to set the policy.
Hollande sees his victory as a vote against austerity, which I think is correct. Austerity; who wants it? It’s like some bitter medicine a patient is prescribed: it better work, and fast, or a lot of patients will stop taking it. And it better not be too bitter, either, or the patient will spit it out the first time it’s tasted.
What’s more, austerity is not enough. A growing economy isn’t just a matter of tweaking one variable; cuts have to be balanced with something that stimulates growth, even if it isn’t an actual stimulus package. Sometimes it’s just a perception that things are going to get better, which changes attitudes and behavior and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And sometimes the problems are more systemic than that.
The left will now get its chance to try to fix the crumbling economic situation in Europe, and in a few years the electorate might turn on them—again. But there’s little doubt that the politics of envy are in control right now in France:
At home, Hollande has pledged to tax the very rich at 75 percent of their income, an idea that proved wildly popular among the majority of people who don’t make nearly that much. But the measure would only bring in a relatively small amount to the budget, and tax lawyers say France’s taxes have always been high and unpredictable and this may not be as much of a shock as it sounds…
[Ghylaine Lambrecht, 60, said] “I’m so happy…In the last few years the rich have been getting richer. Now long live France, an open democratic France.”
“It’s magic!” said Violaine Chenais, 19. “I think Francois Hollande is not perfect, but it’s clear France thinks its time to give the left a chance. This means real hope for France. We’re going to celebrate with drink and hopefully some dancing.”
Magic—hope, and change.
[ADDENDUM: Arthur Herman says, “Europe, R.I.P..”]
France chooses…
…another round of socialism, first in 17 years. Dominique Strauss-Kahn must be kicking himself: shoulda, coulda, woulda.
And Greece is confused, but it sounds like the voters might like more socialism, too, only with a different party in charge than the last one. The results are murky enough that there might be another election called if no coalition can be formed that controls Parliament.
I think the real message of both elections is, “throw the bums out. Let’s have some new bums!”