Are Republicans fooling themselves?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t get this Stanley Kurtz column at NRO.

It seems to me he’s making an awful lot of assumptions without illustrating them, and assuming we share them. He says that those who dismiss the Democratic convention as “relatively meaningless” are “fooling themselves,” but he never offers any evidence whatsoever that the convention itself is meaningful or has influenced anything.

He indicates that Republicans don’t seem to be aware of how leftward the nation has gone, but my impression is that they are very aware. And very concerned; I don’t know a single conservative who isn’t. Who’s Kurtz hanging out with? Not the folks at neo-neocon.

Kurtz blames Romney for keeping the gloves on:

Only the Romney campaign can cut through the cultural, educational, and media filters and force a debate over the Obama Democrats’ bogus redefinition of the American dream. The media can ignore what conservatives say, but they still have to cover the candidate. With the exception of his welfare ads, however, the Romney campaign has avoided an assault on Obama’s ideology. Romney’s entirely plausible strategy is to downplay the ideological battle (Ryan nomination notwithstanding).

Again, I must disagree. Why dismiss the Ryan nomination as being of no import? And the very hard-hitting Ryan speech at the convention? Has Kurtz missed where Romney pretty much called Obama a liar? And speeches such as this one?:

At the Republican convention, speaker after speaker talked about the growth of big government under the Democrats. Sure, they didn’t use the “leftist” word for Obama (at least, I don’t recall them doing so), which seems to be one of Kurtz’s beefs. It’s not one of mine; I don’t think that approach would resonate with most Americans who need to be persuaded. But the days of “Obama is a nice guy” are long gone, although on occasion Romney may continue to utter that phrase (which is basically condescending, if you think about it). But “Obama is a nice guy in over his head” is not the theme of the Romney campaign.

I think you’ll see plenty more hard-hitting ads and speeches from Romney/Ryan before Election Day that attack (sometimes more subtly than Kurtz would like) Obama’s ideology. Whether the American public is too far to the left to hear or care remains to be seen.

Altruism: what’s in it for me?

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back commenter “steve” wrote:

…seems to me the question is what is behind Romney’s unusual generosity. Is it altruism or is it enlightened self-interest or is it also a bit of a compulsion?…Motivation matters.

Right there is fodder for several books on ethics, plus maybe anthropology. I’ve already thought about these questions in general (not specifically about Romney) long and hard. My answer is that no, it doesn’t matter. Good is good, and we are human beings whose motives are never pure.

So I don’t much care about your secret motives for doing good. I don’t much care if you want accolades for your good deeds and even if you receive them. I don’t care if you perform good works because you think it will get you into heaven, or that it will make your girlfriend like you better, or if you feel compelled to do good because you feel guilty if you don’t.

Yes, I suppose it’s on a higher moral plane if you do good simply because you love the good, and are completely uninterested in anything connected with yourself that might be considered a reward, even the reward of personal satisfaction. I suppose, but I’m not entirely sure. It seems to me that if altruism and enlightened self-interest happen to coincide, and if people have “a bit of a compulsion” to do good, so much the better.

We are all part of the whole, and if we help another, we are really helping ourselves, and that’s just fine with me. I’m with John Donne:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Me and I are angry, me and I are sad

The New Neo Posted on by

The exponential growth of I/me confusion is driving me nuts.

You hear it everywhere: “She gave it to he and I.” “Thanks for helping my son and I.” In conversations casual and formal, in real life and on TV, the cringe-inducing (to me) error has become so ubiquitous that to point it out to anyone would be churlish.

And yet here I am, doing so. Because it’s such a simple error to overcome. It nearly always goes in the direction of over-using the “I” rather than over-using the “me,” perhaps in an effort to sound more erudite and avoid the old “Him and me went to the store” (which you also hear on occasion).

And yes, sadly, I must say that I even heard it in Mitt Romney’s convention speech, in an otherwise moving passage:

But if you ask Ann and I what we’d give to break up just one more fight between the boys, or wake up in the morning and
discover a pile of kids asleep in a room — well every mom and dad knows the answer to that.

The thing about it is that the rule is actually so very simple. Just remove the other pronoun or name and the word “and,” and say the sentence without those things. I can’t imagine Romney ever saying “But if you ask I…”:

I know that language changes all the time. You might even say it evolves. But this change just doesn’t seem right to me.

Or to I.

[NOTE: And if this entry follows the rules of the usual nitpicky grammar post, I will have made at least one inadvertent grammar or spelling error in it.]

[ADDENDUM: The very worst example of this error I’ve ever heard occurred on the TV show “The Bachelorette,” (and yes, I sometimes watch it), when a contestant said something like, “Her and I’s relationship has gone to another level.”

Now, that’s creative.]

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Conscience-stricken bot and friends:

I as well as my guys were found to be taking note of the best thoughts on your website and the sudden came up with a horrible feeling I never expressed respect to the website owner for those secrets. The young men had been absolutely excited to read them and have in effect definitely been using those things. Our honest apologies for not expressing gratitude to earlier.

Perhaps he/she/it/they went to Catholic school?

Bob Woodward joins the anti-Obama crowd

The New Neo Posted on by

The anti-Obama wave continues, this time with a new book (ABC’s description here) by Bob Woodward entitled The Price of Politics and due to come out on September 11.

It focuses on the Obama administration’s attempts to deal with the economic crisis, in particular the president’s relations with Congress—focusing on, but not limited to, the debt negotiations. The information contained in it about Obama is astoundingly negative, but that’s been the drift lately.

I’m not sure how much I trust Woodward. But his account resonates with everything I’ve ever observed about Obama, both as a political being and as a human being. Woodward describes an incredibly disorganized Obama White House with no coherent management; and a clueless executive without the faintest idea of how to work with people, be they his own staff, his political opponents, or members of his own party.

It seems Obama is an equal-opportunity president: he’s managed to offend almost everyone.

Please read the whole thing; it’s well worth it. I was especially struck by this [emphasis mine]:

Larry Summers, a top economic adviser to Obama who also served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, identified a key distinction that he said impacted budget and spending talks.

“Obama doesn’t really have the joy of the game. Clinton basically loved negotiating with a bunch of pols, about anything,” Summers said. “Whereas, Obama, he really didn’t like these guys.”

Summers said that Obama’s “excessive pragmatism” was a problem. “I don’t think anybody has a sense of his deep feelings about things.” Summers said. “I don’t think anybody has a sense of his deep feelings about people. I don’t think people have a sense of his deep feelings around the public philosophy.”

Then there’s what Obama did to Paul Ryan, somewhat similar to the president’s State of the Union dissing of the Citizens United case while the SCOTUS justices were obliged to sit in the audience, silent and impassive, as he criticized their judgment. Obama seems to like to dress people down publicly; humiliating someone and watching him/her squirm (or try to suppress the squirm) is another way to assert power over another person and to feel superior oneself.

Here’s the Obama-Ryan story:

An example of the White House’s blundering came when he gave a speech on the debt crisis and ripped into House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s plan as “changing the basic social compact in America,” ”” not knowing that Ryan had been specifically invited along by an aide.

Ryan stormed out telling Obama’s economic adviser Gene Sperling “I can’t believe you poisoned the well like that,” as he left.

Obama told Woodward, he accepts that Ryan would have thought he was trying to embarrass him. “We made a mistake,” the president said.

I don’t actually believe Obama didn’t know about Ryan’s attendance, although if he really didn’t it would be just another example of the poor organization and communication between the president and his staff. As we’ve asked so many times before on this blog: Obama, fool or knave, or both? And does it even matter any more which it is?

Another Woodward book tidbit is this one, about a wealthy businessman named Seidenberg (a “progressive independent,” by the way) who was invited to the White House for Obama’s Super Bowl party:

Obama did little more than say hello, spending about 15 seconds with him. “Seidenberg felt he had been used as window dressing,” Woodward writes. “He complained to Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama aide. .”‰.”‰. Her response: Hey, you’re in the room with him. You should be happy.”

Jarrett’s remark crystallizes the near-worship that Obama not only accepts, but requires and craves. Jarrett, his oldest and closest adviser except for his wife, exemplifies that worship. One of the many reasons that Obama is incapable of facing the reality of his own flaws and learning from them is that he does not seem to want to.

[NOTE: Notice also, in this New Yorker article, an unnamed Democratic insider is quoted as saying that “Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” I believe it.

And not many people who actually know him seem to like him.]

Hillary and Biden: what a difference four years make

The New Neo Posted on by

It seemed to me Obama’s basic message last night was, You really can’t expect me to have figured this out in a mere four years, can you? I mean well (as opposed to the Republicans, who are just mean). So give me another chance to get this down.

Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, among others, seem to think that’s just fine. But four years ago, Biden and Bill’s wife Hillary sang quite a different tune:

If you can stomach the speeches tonight…

The New Neo Posted on by

…feel free to discuss them here.

I’ve listened to a few minutes of Biden, and it’s a few minutes too many for me.

It’s really a cult of personality, isn’t it? What a hero, what a rescuer, that Barack Obama is! “This man has courage in his soul, compassion in his heart, and a spine of steel.”

Give me a friggin break.

[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that Biden’s speech must have needed to have Obama’s stamp of approval. Even to a narcissist like Obama, that line should have seemed ludicrously over-the-top. And if it didn’t, Obama is not only narcissistic but tone-deaf as well.

And if the speech wasn’t pre-approved, then he’s negligent.]

By special request: ballet + jello

The New Neo Posted on by

They said it couldn’t be done. But hey, I’m a can-do person.

So here, at commenter Gringo’s behest, is a post on ballet and jello.

Helped out by the remarkably resourceful and inventive act of Googling the words “ballet jello,” I came up with two examples of the juxtaposition of those fabulous neo-neocon special interests.

First up, we have a photo of a cute little girl in her cute little ballet outfit, holding a packet of as-yet-unmade jello. Her proud mom, the blogger, will probably be a bit surprised at the strange uptick in traffic today, if she even has a site meter. Be very kind if you go there.

Next, we have a video that I found. I think you will agree that it illustrates, not jello and ballet, but jello as ballet:

Competitor in Chief

The New Neo Posted on by

I was astounded to read this portrait of Obama that appeared in last Sunday’s NY Times magazine section. There’s plenty about how smart he is, and what a hard-driving perfectionist, but does the Times really think this sort of thing is complimentary?:

…[Obama] joked at a recent New York fund-raiser with several famous basketball players in attendance, “it is very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person.”…

But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies…

For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores…

Even some Democrats in Washington say they have been irritated by his tips on topics ranging from the best way to shake hands on the trail (really look voters in the eye, he has instructed) to writing well…

For another, he may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr. Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House ”” including a “solid B-plus” for his first year ”” many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.

It goes on, but I think that’s enough to give you the flavor and demonstrate that this is not a puff piece, and that the passages I just quoted have the ring of truth.

All in all, I think it’s one of the most unpleasant portraits of a president I’ve ever read. How strange is this, to be published in the Times? Do liberals see the same things in it that I do, or do they just see a brilliant, hard-driving, hard-working, guy?

Clinton at the convention

The New Neo Posted on by

Although I didn’t plan to watch the Democratic Convention, I ended up overhearing a large portion of Bill Clinton’s speech last night. I was at the home of some Democrats; the TV was on in the background, and of course I recognized that voice immediately.

It brought me back to the 90s, when I was a Democrat myself, and he was the president whom I’d voted for, twice. And let me just say that even back then I wasn’t onboard with Clinton admiration, although I understood that lots of people really, really liked him. His speeches seemed boring and contrived to me, and looooong (again, remember I don’t like political speeches in general).

Well, that’s all still true of good old Bill, the charmer. He seemed ecstatic to be the center of attention again, and he went on too long. However, it also occurred to me last night that he is still a better speechmaker and politician than virtually everyone else in the Democratic Party (including that great orator, Barack Obama).

As for the convention itself, here’s an interesting take on it from Datechguy, as well as this from PJ’s Roger Simon.

To allow comments or not to allow comments

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse notes that Walter Russell Mead has closed comments on his blog with the following explanation:

To make the comments section work in its present form we would have to edit and curate much more aggressively than we do now and in our current judgment the effort needed to do that is better spent improving other features of the blog.

Althouse writes:

The previous post [at Mead’s blog], the last post with comments, is saying that the blog hit a new traffic record. That got 11 comments. 11 comments! Is it really that hard to “edit and curate”?

Going to Mead’s blog, I notice he adds that in three years of blogging he’s gotten 40,000 comments. That’s a fair number, about 13,333 a year, which made me realize I have absolutely no idea have many comments I’ve gotten here. Since WordPress obligingly keep count, I took a look: 166,490 and counting.

Let’s see. I’ve been blogging for about 7 1/2 years, which makes approximately 22,200 comments a year. Is it particularly arduous to “edit and curate” those comments? No, it’s really not; I’m with Althouse on this.

I’m only one person here. On my old blog, using Blogger, policing comments was difficult, I admit. But with my move to WordPress I gained a ton of much more effective tools to fight the trolls and spammers. It doesn’t take all that much time or effort, either—and much more importantly, the gains from allowing a comments section are vast.

Mead is a well-known writer in print journalism rather than primarily a blogger, so my guess is that he became used to writing without comments long before he enabled them. It would make sense that he can take them or leave them. But I learned quite some time ago that, although I’ve written articles at sites that don’t have comments, I much much MUCH prefer the immediate feedback and the camaraderie of a comments section.

In fact, I very much doubt I would blog without them. It would be like dropping a stone down a well and watching it disappear.