Putting the brakes on Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

President Obama may have wanted the Republicans to sit in the back of the car, but the voters have now plunked the Republicans right next to Obama, up in the front seat.

And the car they are driving is like the one my driver ed teacher used to have. You know, the one with the dual brake system—a set of brakes for the driver and another set for the guy to the right, as an extra check on the student driver’s judgment.

And I’m tempted to say, “fasten your seat belts, we’re in for a bumpy ride.”

There’s plenty of speculation on just what the Republicans have in store for Obama, and how they might accomplish blocking his agenda. And George Will points out that the Republican victory in Congress may put a curb not only on Obama’s legislative agenda, but to his attempt at an end run around Congress through the mechanism of czars and regulatory agencies.

And now, possessing House committee gavels and subpoena power, Republican chairmen will be able to limit Obama’s ability to use the “permanent government” – the bureaucracy – to accomplish through regulation what he cannot achieve through legislation.

Democrats retain their majority in the Senate. But it is hardly monolithic. Not only do the Democrats have the specter of many of their colleagues’ defeat last week to remind the twenty-three of them (if you include Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman) coming up for re-election in 2012 of their own vulnerability, but among the new Senate Democrats there are two—Joe Manchin and Chris Coons—who spoke out strongly against some aspects of Obama’s agenda in their successful election campaigns. Voters might just be paying attention if they betray their promises when Harry Reid twists their arms.

Rubio rising

The New Neo Posted on by

Stephen F. Hayes calls Marco Rubio “the most important freshman senator” in this Weekly Standard article.

Rubio not only won handily in Florida, he also gave a great and widely-admired acceptance speech. He’s one of the rising stars of the Republican Party, who along with Chris Christie of New Jersey has captured the attention of the public and whose bedrock fiscal conservatism is highly thought of by the Tea Party movement. And in this day and age, it doesn’t hurt that he’s young, smart, handsome, inspirational without being saccharine, and Hispanic.

But Rubio’s obvious talents went largely unappreciated by the conventional Republican leadership at the start of the race. Almost to a person, they endorsed his opponent Charlie Crist until their hands were forced when the latter ditched the party and become an Independent. There were a few surprising exceptions, however, and one of them was Jim DeMint, who showed remarkable prescience and was nearly alone in seeing Rubio as a very impressive candidate on first meeting him:

Rubio told DeMint and his staff that he was in the race for the duration, and he did so in a manner that left a strong impression. Rubio told DeMint that his parents had come from Cuba seeking a better life. His parents had worked in the hospitality industry. It wasn’t glamorous, but they understood that the harder they worked the more opportunities they could provide for their four children. It hadn’t been this way in Cuba, even before the revolution, and Rubio explained, with great passion, that he felt a moral obligation to do whatever he could to make sure his children had the same opportunities. “I remember my eyes welling up,” says DeMint. Others in the room remember the same thing. “You get pretty hardened in Washington. But I thought, this guy is for real. We don’t meet many people like him in Washington.”…

DeMint was angry that the NRSC had supported Crist. “If you listen to what the moderates have said””we need youth, we need minorities, we need women. And here we have this young Cuban American who had proved himself as speaker of the House in Florida. And the committee was dissing him and ignoring him.

And now that Rubio has proven the NRSC wrong and DeMint right, the senator from South Carolina has another prediction, a surprisingly selfless one:

“Marco Rubio is a natural leader and is likely to be a leader of our party,” says DeMint. “In five years, no one will remember Jim DeMint, and Marco will be president.”

More about those state legislature flips

The New Neo Posted on by

Since last week’s election, we’ve been reading the good news that a great many state legislatures flipped to the Republican side. I even wrote a post about it last Saturday.

But still, I had no idea how dramatic the changes were until I looked at two maps (hat tip: Althouse) that show the actual numbers of Democrats and Republicans in each state legislature, before and after. It’s extraordinary.

Here’s the “before” map, and here’s “after.” Mouse over any state to see the actual figures, and compare.

States that almost always lean heavily to one party or another didn’t show the changes, for the most part. Massachusetts remains bluer than blue; Republican pickups were slight. The same was true in reverse in ruby-red Utah.

But oh, the magnitude of some of those switches! In New England, for example, we’ve got Maine, which started out on Tuesday morning with a hefty Democrat margin of 95 Democrats to 55 Republicans in its House and 20 to 15 in the Senate, and ended up on Wednesday morning with Republicans in charge 73/77 and 14/20 (in this and the following pairs of figures, I state Democrats first and Republicans second). Then there’s Wisconsin, which went from 52/46 in the House and 18/15 in the Senate to 38/60 and 14/19. Minnesota flipped from 87/47 and 46/21 margins to 62/72 and 30/37, while Michigan had similar gains.

But perhaps the most dramatic flip of all occurred in New Hampshire, a tiny state boasting a huge legislature. The previous figures were 216 Democrats to 173 Republicans in the House and 14/10 in the much-smaller Senate. Now New Hampshire has a legislature that rivals Utah in its one-sidedness: a whopping 102/298 and 5/19.

A number of pundits have mentioned that straight-ticket voting was one reason for these whiplash-inducing changes. And no doubt that’s at least partly true. But strangely enough, it doesn’t seem to have been the case for New Hampshire, one of the biggest flippers of all. After a resounding victory for Democrats in 2006, the state’s Democratic Party scrapped straight-ticket voting, fulfilling a long-term promise. This might have been thought to have restrained the Republican vote at the state level in New Hampshire this year, but with results like these, it’s hard to believe it had any effect at all.

[ADDENDUM: More.]

Nicholas Brothers addendum: art and PC purity

The New Neo Posted on by

For those of you who read and enjoyed last Saturday’s post on tap dancing, and especially the clips of the Nicholas Brothers, here are some additional nuggets of interest:

(1) The brothers were the children of vaudevillians, and never had any formal dance training.

(2) Later in life they taught dance, and one of their students is reported to have been Michael Jackson.

(3) Fred Astaire called that Nicholas Brothers number from “Stormy Weather” (the one that appeared in my post in its YouTube version) “the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen.”

(4) Both brothers married three times. The first wife of the younger, Harold, was the beautiful actress Dorothy Dandridge—who, like the brothers, had spent her childhood as a performer on the black vaudeville circuit in a sibling act.

Now I’ll weigh in on the topic introduced by commenter John Schroeder in the comments section of that thread:

You have stepped into one of the great debates in the arts – What is tap all about – rhythm or style.- and it is buried in race.

The contention is that tap was “invented” by blacks and is a rhythmic exercise. It was only when it was “stolen” by the white man and combined with more acceptable forms of dance that it took on the appearance you seem to prefer. Some have even accused the Nicholas Brothers of “selling out” – and Bill Robinson was “forced” to dance that way to make a living.

I personally think there is room for both styles – they ask very different things of the audience. One is essentially visual and one aural.

Savion is not pretty, but close your eyes and listen – there are professional drummers that cannot do that with four extremities and a kit.

Very interesting indeed. But my response is that dance is a predominantly visual art, not an aural one. If Glover, and the tap dancers who resemble him—be they black, white, green, or polka-dotted—wish to call themselves “tap musicians,” or to refer to what they do as “playing the feet,” that’s perfectly all right with me. Just don’t call a predominantly auditory art “dance,” because it’s not.

As for the black art purists who say the Nicholas Brothers are a sell-out and Glover the real deal, I would maintain that, if they wish art to remain in the domain of anthropology, keeping it static and never allowing a culture to develop its own blended art forms, then the world of art will be sadly diminished.

One of the greatest strengths of this country is that we have managed to create new types of art: rock n’ roll, jazz, ragtime, Broadway musicals, modern dance, ballet with an American twist (one of the developments for which Russian emigre choreographer George Balanchine was known, as was American-born Jew Jerome Robbins)—and, yes, tap dancing. All of these wonderful contributions to the world exist only because they took art forms that began in other parts of the world and added to them, changing and blending them into something almost unrecognizable in the process.

This is the incredible strength of the American popular performing arts. To destroy it for some misguided PC idea of artistic ethnic purity is not only counterproductive, it’s offensive.

Even the Times wants Pelosi to quit—but why?

The New Neo Posted on by

Pelosi is toxic for the Democrats. I don’t care how much money she raises; her retention as the Democrats’ House leader would send a strong message—and function as a constant reminder—that the Democrats don’t hear what the people are saying, and that they’ve learned nothing from this year’s election.

Hey, that’s okay with me. Because they haven’t heard what the people are saying, and appear to have learned nothing from this year’s election.

This puzzles me. I’ve spent a lot of time observing Democrats and thinking about them (not to mention decades passed as a Democrat myself), and I thought they were smarter and less stubborn than that. And of course some of them are; there are plenty of calls for Pelosi to step down.

Pelosi’s own motivation for wanting to stay isn’t so difficult to guess at. It’s hard to give up the reins of power, even reduced power. It’s understandable that, like a gambler losing a fortune at the roulette table, she thinks that if she just keeps playing she can get it all back.

But what’s the other Dems’ excuse? And why do they keep saying the sort of thing we see in this NY Times editorial?

It calls for Pelosi to step down, to be sure. But the reasons are the same tired old story—she just didn’t sell the program well enough:

What [Democrats] need is what Ms. Pelosi has been unable to provide: a clear and convincing voice to help Americans understand that Democratic policies are not bankrupting the country, advancing socialism or destroying freedom.

If Ms. Pelosi had been a more persuasive communicator, she could have batted away the ludicrous caricature of her painted by Republicans across the country as some kind of fur-hatted commissar jamming her diktats down the public’s throat.

I used to think this was just face-saving spin, and that liberals knew full well how much the American people hate the program itself as well as the corrupt process by which it was passed. But after last Tuesday, I’m starting to revise my assessment. It seems that many liberal Democrats are truly unable to understand that there’s anything wrong with their philosophy or their policies or their methods, or that people can have valid disagreements with the substance of what they’ve done.

It is so manifestly correct, so obviously right, that the only explanation left for its failure so far must lie squarely in the realm of advertising. It wasn’t branded properly. The spokespeople weren’t forceful enough. Maybe some perkier music would help. Anything but an admission that it’s the product, stupid, and that the dogs just don’t like the food.

Obama’s Gandhi

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “expat” points us to this article about Obama’s constant references to and reverence for Gandhi, expressed during his Indian visit, and the fact that this isn’t exactly reassuring to the present-day Indian government and business leaders.

Obama is many things, but one of them is what I would call “amateur historian.” His knowledge of so much of history (including Gandhi) is superficial liberal boilerpate. The reality is more complex (might I say “more nuanced”?):

Gandhi’s vision of a village-dominated economy was shunted aside during his lifetime as rural romanticism, and his call for a national ethos of personal austerity and nonviolence has proved antithetical to the goals of an aspiring economic and military power.

If anything, India’s rise as a global power seems likely to distance it even further from Gandhi.

Of course, it’s mainly this global business context in which Obama’s visit occurs. Obama’s near-constant references to Gandhi are beginning to wear on even the Indians—or maybe especially the Indians, who after all are probably most familiar with Gandhi’s flaws:

“The impression on the Indian side is every time you meet him, he talks about Gandhi,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express, a leading English-language newspaper, adding that the repeated references struck some officials as platitudinous.

Did I say “Gandhi’s flaws?” Yes, I did.

Talking this way about Gandhi is tricky, because he is so universally admired. But history is history, and Gandhi’s is hardly all sweetness and light. Obama does not appear to be familiar with the Gandhi facts outlined here and here.

They make for sobering reading, indeed. There are so many nuggets of information there that I hardly know which ones to excerpt, but this will have to do:

All great visionaries are extremists, and Gandhi was no exception. By the sheer force of his personality he managed to hold together a movement against the British that ended up with a measure of success in terms of winning Indian independence. But that initial success was followed by the unleashing of internal forces of violence of such an extreme nature that they dwarfed any outrages the British had committed in India. When partition (which Gandhi had opposed) occurred, the country was already on the brink of a turmoil that erupted into a series of massacres which killed at least a million or more, although the true figures will never be known. Gandhi’s methods were utterly powerless against the violence between Moslem and Hindu, as opposed to his relative success against the British colonial authorities.

Gandhi was not only extremist, he was utterly consistent as well. I was shocked to learn that what he had earlier recommended for the Jews in the face of Hitler, he also applied to his own people on partition: that they surrender themselves to death. In this article by Dr. Koenraad Elst, a Belgian scholar on India, the author discusses a number of mistakes he feels Gandhi made. Elst writes:

Gandhi refused to see the realities of human nature; of Islamic doctrine with its ambition of domination; of the modern mentality with its resentment of autocratic impositions; of people’s daily needs making them willing to collaborate with the rulers in exchange for career and business opportunities; of the nationalism of the Hindus who would oppose the partition of their Motherland tooth and nail; of the nature of the Pakistani state as intrinsically anti-India and anti-Hindu.

In most of these cases, Gandhi’s mistake was not his pacifism per se”¦The Khilafat pogroms revealed one of the real problems with his pacifism: all while riding a high horse and imposing strict conformity with the pacifist principle, he indirectly provoked far more violence than was in his power to control. Other leaders of the freedom movement, such as Annie Besant and Lala Lajpat Rai, had warned him that he was playing with fire, but he preferred to obey his suprarational “inner voice”.

The fundamental problem with Gandhi’s pacifism, not in the initial stages but when he had become the world-famous leader of India’s freedom movement (1920-47), was his increasing extremism. All sense of proportion had vanished when he advocated non-violence not as a technique of moral pressure by a weaker on a stronger party, but as a form of masochistic surrender”¦

During his prayer meeting on 1 May 1947, he prepared the Hindus and Sikhs for the anticipated massacres of their kind in the upcoming state of Pakistan with these words: “I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.LXXXVII, p.394-5) It is left unexplained what purpose would be served by this senseless and avoidable surrender to murder.

Even when the killing had started, Gandhi refused to take pity on the Hindu victims, much less to point fingers at the Pakistani aggressors. More importantly for the principle of non-violence, he failed to offer them a non-violent technique of countering and dissuading the murderers. Instead, he told the Hindu refugees from Pakistan to go back and die. On 6 August 1947, Gandhiji commented to Congress workers on the incipient communal conflagration in Lahore thus: “I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore”¦”

I cannot read that excerpt without feeling a literal shiver of dread and horror. I cannot see that “Die with the dying Lahore” is a sentiment to emulate.

Obama and the mid-course “correction”

The New Neo Posted on by

By his own admission, Obama is poised for a mid-course correction.

I don’t recall whether Clinton announced a mid-course correction, but I know he performed one. What’s more, he actually had a previous track record of working with Republicans rather than being at war with them while pretending to court them, and of being a moderate prior to his presidency rather than just rhetoric to that effect.

But this is Barack Obama speaking, not Bill Clinton. Obama’s moderation and bipartisanship on the domestic front have been all rhetoric, no action—and what’s more, his action has been the opposite of his rhetoric. So everything he says should be taken as potentially meaning its opposite.

What he may be saying is merely this: I know I must pretend to be changing my ways because the people hate what I’ve been doing, and I’m up for re-election in 2012. So I’ll use my silver tongue to say I’ll change, and hope I won’t have to actually do anything (there’s that “hope and change” thing; it worked before). The people are stupid and gullible, and all I’ve done wrong so far anyway is to fail to sell myself better.”

That’s one possibility. Another is that Obama actually will move towards the middle, in deed as in word. But it will be a temporary feint, a move made to convince doubters that he’s gotten the message and changed his ways.

It need only be until the next election. If Obama can moderate himself enough to be able to point to a few small but real compromises with the Republicans, he won’t be losing much and he’ll be gaining a lot. The American people are a generally genial and forgiving (not to say trusting) lot, predisposed to like him, and by then he may indeed have rehabilitated himself in the eyes of enough voters that he will win his bid for re-election and even increase the Democrats’ Congressional representation.

And then, and then—voila! Four more years! Four years in which he won’t have to answer to the electorate at all. He will be unleashed to do whatever it is he really wants. And does anyone think that would look moderate at all?

Tap dancing, then and now

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s take our minds off politics for a while, shall we?

Here’s a video of the fleet-footed, technically adept, incredibly klutzy and profoundly uninteresting (to me) Savion Glover, giant of tap dancing for the last couple of decades:

And here are the Nicholas Brothers, from the 40s. They’re impressively elegant and terrifying at the same time. And if you don’t think those two things can co-exist, just take a look (be patient; it builds and builds and builds):

Reviewer Alastair Macauley of the NY Times agrees with me about Savion Glover’s curiously off-putting and even unpleasant style:

The tap choreographer-dancer Savion Glover is a puzzle. He is the most famous tap dancer to have emerged in decades. He has been hailed as the greatest tap dancer who has ever lived by people well qualified to pass such judgment. He is the man who has done most to make tap a youthful genre again. But it is hard to think of a celebrated dancer performing today who is more tedious, more devoid of stage sense, more undancerly and more lacking in musicianship.

The review goes on, and contains nothing but complaints about Glover, such as this:

I’ve never seen a tap dancer whose execution looked so disembodied. It isn’t just that from the ankle up he does so little. It’s that from the ankle up he’s an ungainly bore, without physical grace or line or intensity.

I second the motion. But I don’t think it’s really about Glover. He’s a sign of our times, part of a general dance trend in favor of meaningless and extreme technique at the expense of everything else, including what makes dance joyful and meaningful.

The Nicholas Brothers were the opposite. As was the incomparable Fred Astaire (the dancing starts at about minute 1:35, after the singing):

And of course, this segue is irresistible:

Republican victory at the state level

The New Neo Posted on by

This is very impressive:

Republicans took control of at least 19 additional state legislative bodies Tuesday for a total of 26 in which the party controls both chambers, compared with 21 for Democrats and with three still up for grabs. Among these are legislatures in Alabama and North Carolina that had not seen elected Republican majorities since the Reconstruction elections of 1876 and 1870, respectively. Those that argued just two years ago the GOP was in danger of becoming a Southern regional party were proved resoundingly wrong as state legislative chambers in New Hampshire, Maine, Wisconsin and Minnesota flipped to GOP control. Republicans even made major inroads and could end up on top of legislative bodies in Oregon and Washington. Republicans won 16 of 30 races for state attorney general, taking five such offices away from Democrats, pulling within four of their opponents’ total. The GOP also won 17 of 26 secretary of state races, a gain of six, giving the party a 25-22 edge (three states don’t have such offices).

We often pay so much attention to the national picture that we forget the nitty-gritty of local governing. But these and other grass roots changes are exceedingly important.

The above results directly affect Congressional redistricting as well. Yesterday I wrote a post that featured a map of Barney Frank’s gerrymandered district in Massachusetts; that won’t change, since the Democrats continue to control that state. But others will, and don’t underestimate the importance of that fact. Redistricting can only take place every 10 years. Now, thanks to this election, Republicans can influence many more of the districts that go up to make the House of Representatives.

How many? This many according to the Washington Examiner: 197 districts for Republicans vs. 49 for Democrats, with the remaining 189 either with split influence or decided by other means, such as a special commission.

Not a bad result for a day’s work, don’t you think?

[HAT TIP: Instapundit.]

More Obama ego

The New Neo Posted on by

A helpful reader sent me a link to this 2008 Obama quote. Another one that ought to send tingles up your spine—and I don’t mean the kind that Chris Matthews got down his leg:

A 2008 New Yorker article quoted Patrick Gaspard, now the White House political director, describing what Obama told him during the job interview: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Come to think of it, maybe it’s true. He’s had lousy speechwriters and advisers lately.