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WEDNESDAY,  NOVEMBER 12,  2008

UPDATE AT 8:53 P.M. ET:  From AP:  WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats are pushing legislation to send $25 billion in emergency loans to the beleaguered auto industry in exchange for a government ownership stake in the Big Three car companies.

Welcome to Europe.  And...

DETROIT (AP) -- Advocates for the nation's automakers are warning that the collapse of the Big Three -- or even just General Motors -- could set off a catastrophic chain reaction in the economy, eliminating up to 3 million jobs and depriving governments of more than $150 billion in tax revenue.

COMMENT:  This will be one of the biggest stories of the last quarter century.  Will it mark America's decline, or will we simply see a helping hand toward an economic rebirth?  Keep both eyes open.

UPDATE AT 8:44 P.M. ET:  From CNN:  In an interview that will be airing this afternoon on CNN's "Situation Room," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leaves open the possibility that she could run for the United States Senate if a special election was held to replace scandal-plagued Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska):

I believe that I have — I feel I have a contract with Alaskans to serve. I’ve got two more years in my term. I’m going to serve Alaskans to the best of my ability. At this point it is as governor.

Now if something shifted dramatically and if it were, if it were acknowledged up there that I could be put to better use for my state in the U.S. Senate, I would certainly consider that, but that would take a special election and everything else. I am not one to appoint myself or a member of my family to take the place of any vacancy.

COMMENT:  It may turn out to be moot.  Stevens's challenger, Mark Begich, has pulled ahead in the count by three votes.

NOTE AT 8:38 P.M. ET:  We give the Pompous Fool Award in our new Subscriber Services department today.  The great Thomas Sowell has a quote about the class of pompous fools.  I thought you'd might like it:

How have intellectuals managed to be so wrong, so often? By thinking that because they are knowledgeable-- or even expert-- within some narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns, that makes them wise guides to the masses and to the rulers of the nation.

But the ignorance of Ph.D.s is still ignorance and high-IQ groupthink is still groupthink, which is the antithesis of real thinking.

COMMENT:  I've known some great academics, superb people.  And the first thing about a great academic that you notice is humility.  A true intellectual, or scholar, is always aware of what he or she doesn't know.  We have too few real intellectuals.

BAMWATCH - DAY 2

Posted at 8:19 p.m. ET

When Samantha Power came down from the fifth floor of a Harvard academic building carrying the Tablets of the Left, Commandment VI was, as it is written, "Thou shalt not build missile defense nor do stuff that will offend our misunderstood Russia friends."  The King Barack version differs slightly, stating "build" as "rush," scholars believing that McGovern, blessed be he, meant to give his flock some flexibility, and appear to have an interest in national security.'

Now we are met at a crossroads, testing whether that Commandment, or any so stated, can long endure. 

The president-elect had a phone chat with the president of Poland last week, and chat turned to flap.  The gentleman from Poland said after the talk that Mr. Obama had endorsed missile defense for Poland, as agreed to by President Bush.  But Mr. Obama's team issued a statement denying the president-elect had made such a commitment.  Thus the way in which strong alliances are maintained.  Right.

Now our missile-defense czar weighs in, publicly urging Mr. Obama not to abandon the field.  He'll be leaving his post imminently.  If his departure hadn't already been planned, this public statement would have guaranteed it: 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon's missile defense projects said Wednesday that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a group of reporters that he is awaiting word from Obama's transition team on their interest in receiving briefings.

They haven't asked?  Shame, shame.

"What we have discovered is that a lot of the folks that have not been in this administration seem to be dated, in terms of the program," he said. "They are kind of calibrated back in the 2000 time frame and we have come a hell of a long way since 2000. Our primary objective is going to be just, frankly, educating them on what we have accomplished, what we have been able to do and why we have confidence in what we are doing."

Asked whether he meant that Obama or his advisers had an outdated view of missile defense, Obering said he was speaking more generally about people who have not closely followed developments in this highly technical field.

General, forget that dream of a fourth star.

Obering said he is confident in the technology needed to make the European leg of the missile defense system work.

"In terms of any recommendations for the future, I would say that if we were to walk away from these proposed deployments to Europe, that it would severely hurt, number one, our ability to protect our deployed forces in that region and our allies and friends from what we see as an emerging threat. Number two, I think it would severely undermine U.S. leadership in NATO."

Good statement.  Technology moves ahead.  Our capabilities expand with each day.  (So do the capabilities of countries like Iran.) 

We'll be intrigued to see what Mr. Obama does - whether he maintains American leadership on this, or succumbs to the demands and threats of leftists, including Congressional leftists.  It may be one of his first tests.  If he doesn't pass it, we'll be loud and clear.

November 12, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 4:34 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed down 411.  A headline in Bloomberg says, "Obama Will Act Quickly on Global Warming Upon Taking Office, Adviser Says." 

COMMENT:  As Johnny Carson used to say, "Aren't we lucky."  Mr. Obama better get his priorities straight. 

UPDATE AT 3:30 P.M. ET:  The Dow has dropped 350.  The only reply the Democrats, now the power party, has to offer is more government money.  We wait for voter remorse to set in.  Sooner, rather than later.

NOTE AT 2:55 P.M. ET:  The Dow is down 308.  Do you have a sense, a week after the Obama euphoria, that a certain reality is setting in?  We are in serious soup, and the adolescent Obama-worship of some left-wing European intellectuals won't help us a bit.

UPDATE AT 2:35 P.M. ET:  Via Bloomberg, comment by Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee:

``The financial situation facing the Big Three is not a national problem, but their problem,'' Shelby said in a statement. ``I do not support the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to reward the mismanagement of Detroit-based auto manufacturers in such a way that allows them to continue and compound their ongoing mistakes.''

We sense a growing resistance to the fast hustle going on in Washington, much of it engineered by industry and labor lobbyists.  We're moving toward socialism, and a whole generation of Americans, miseducated in our schools, doesn't seem to understand the implications.  American Express today put in its bid to be saved by the government.  "Where does this stop?" Congressman Spencer Bachus of Alabama asked.  A lot of Americans are asking the same thing.  This can get very bloody.  Both parties are to blame.

UPDATE AT 1:33 P.M. ET:  The Dow is down 274.  The election of Obama has not brought any optimisim.  Indeed, there does not seem to be any real confidence in the incoming administration's economic plans, to the extent that we know them.

UPDATE AT 8:10 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:   Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice.  Nominating Gates to stay, “would be a violation of the mandate for change that Obama says he represents,” said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war group CodePink.A better bipartisan fit for Obama, they say, is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who brings out what they like about Gates – his ability to deal with Russia, Iran and Syria – without the direct link to Bush’s policies.

COMMENT:  I hope this story kills Hagel's chances.  He's an embarrassment.  Let us pray that Meda Benjamin endorses him publicly.

REALITY CHECK

Posted at 7:58 a.m. ET

Amazing what a week as president-elect can do to soaring rhetoric, Heavenly promises and a general aura of saintliness.  Apparently, Barack Obama and company, lately seen walking on water, have now started to come down to the world where the rest of us reside.

The Los Angeles Times reports on the march to reality:

The president-elect who promised to overthrow Washington's partisanship and cronyism is turning to seasoned veterans -- even lobbyists -- in an apparent effort to avoid rookie mistakes.

Reporting from Washington -- Now that the confetti has fallen, the nascent administration of Barack Obama has come face to face with one of its biggest challenges: living up to the exceptionally high expectations his thrilling campaign produced among supporters and long-suffering Democrats.

Long-suffering and angry. 

So it goes as Obama makes the rocky transition from campaigning to governing.

While campaigning, he frequently decried the polarizing politics of years past.

"I am in this race because I don't want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s," he said in a typical speech in South Carolina a year ago. "I don't want this election to be about the past, because if it's about the future, we all win."

Future?  Did he say future?

But his government-in-waiting is rife with officials from the Clinton administration. Podesta was a senior Clinton White House aide, as was Obama's choice for chief of staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.).

Warren Christopher, who served as President Clinton's first secretary of State and is a partner at the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, is heading up the transition for the State Department, and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) is preparing things at the Pentagon.

It's starting to look as though Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's family empire is living on, even though she lost the Democratic primary.

Ouch.  She's lovin' it, lovin' it.

On the campaign trail, Obama cast himself as a fresh-faced alternative. One stock line was: "It's time to turn the page."

In a speech last year in New Hampshire, the Illinois senator said: "There are those who tout their experience working the system in Washington. But the problem is that the system in Washington isn't working for us and hasn't for a long time."

That was then.  Now the Obama people are people who need people, and look at the people they need:

But with the campaign won, Obama seems eager not to repeat the mistakes of Democratic predecessors who left the party mandarins feeling marginalized.

Imagine!  The One is going to the mandarins.  The sound you hear is his picture being taken down at MoveOn offices all over the country.

To burnish Obama's reformist credentials, Podesta on Tuesday rolled out what he billed as a tough set of ethics rules targeting professional lobbyists. But there was a loophole: Lobbyists could work on the transition as long as they stayed away from the policy areas that their lobbying involved.

As a candidate, Obama's language when it came to lobbyists was far more emphatic. "I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race -- and I've won," he said in the South Carolina speech. "I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."

I'm reminded of the classic Hollywood story of the screenwriter who meets a producer on the back lot.  "Your script is perfect," the producer says.  I'm looking forward to the changes."

Obama's campaign was perfect.  Now we're getting the changes.

November 12, 2008.      Permalink          

ONE-TERM WONDER?

Posted at 7:08 a.m. ET

We're usually shy about speculation here.  It's so easy, and it's usually wrong.  But James Pethokoukis of U.S. News has written a fascinating piece, thoughtfully reported, on why Obama might be a one-term president.  He makes good points:  Herewith:

It's the battered economy, after all, that will be President Obama's greatest domestic policy challenge. As such, it will also be his greatest political challenge, too -- but one where failure may already be baked into the cake.

That's right, the "O" in "Obama" may stand for "One Term." For starters, there's a strong chance that when voters head to the polls on Nov. 2, 2010, they likely will still think the economy is awful. Not much debate about that. (Good chance the Democrats' two-election winning streak comes to an end.)

Okay, so he may suffer setbacks in the mid-terms.  But what about 2012?

And while voters may be somewhat patient for two years, patient for four years? Really unlikely. If history is any guide at all, voters may still be terribly cranky about the economy when they cast their ballots on Nov. 6, 2012 and thus likely choose the 45th president of the United States -- be it Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal or some other Republican without "Bush" for a last name. Once again a "change" election for an impatient America. The same bad economy that doomed John McCain in 2008 will have sunk Obama, as well.

Keep this column away from Michelle.  She won't be proud of her country anymore.

See, it takes a while for people to really perceive that an economy has turned around, especially if unemployment is high. Bill Clinton won the 1992 election on the economy ("it's the economy, stupid") even though GDP had been growing for six full quarters. According to Gallup, 88 percent of Americans thought the economy was "fair" or "poor" in October 1992 with some 60 percent saying the economy was "getting worse." Two years later, it was the Democrats turn to feel the brunt of widespread economic anxiety as the Republicans captured both the House and the Senate. Even though the economy had then been growing for 14 straight quarters and the unemployment rate was down to 5.8 percent, 72 percent of Americans still thought the economy was "fair" or "poor" and 66 percent though the nation was headed in the wrong direction.

This man has done his research, a rarity in journalism.

And then there's this: The 2008-09 recession may actually be far nastier than its 1990-91 twin. Every day, Wall Street forecasts worsen. Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, expects a jobless rate of 8 1/2 percent by the end of 2009 and drifting a bit higher in 2010 for the biggest cumulative rise in unemployment since the Great Depression. And over at JP Morgan Chase, economists are predicting the economy will shrink 4.0 percent this quarter and 2.0 percent during the first three months of 2009. And on top of all that, you have the $7 trillion of lost national net worth. (Think higher investment and business taxes will help?)

Plus the fact that the bailouts, which will be administered on Obama's watch, are hugely unpopular and resented.

Obama's election is often compared to that of Ronald Reagan's in 1980. Both gentlemen were voted in to fix an ailing economy. But the 1982 recession took a huge chunk out of the Gipper's popularity. He had just a 35 percent job approval rating at the start of 1983, just two months after Republicans lost 27 seats in the House in the midterm elections. But Reagan's presidency was saved by an amazing economic rebound. The economy surged at a 4.5 percent pace in 1983 and at a mind-blowing 7.2 percent clip in 1984 as unemployment dropped from a high of 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.2 percent in November 1984. The Long Boom was underway.

Finally...

Reagan worked his magic with tax cuts. Obama is trying to do the same with government spending. But stimulus packages are only supposed to keep the recession from getting worse or morphing into a mini-depression. I don't think anyone expects that $500 billion in hot money to return America to prosperity. Only time (and the private sector) can do that, especially with a downturn caused by a credit crisis and deflating asset bubble.

Someone said, before the voting, that this might be the only presidential election in American history where the winner asks for a recount.  Obama has a staggering job ahead of him, with very little experience behind him.  He also has an angry Democratic Party and interest groups who will demand their chunk of the organically produced pie.

And there is something else.  Economic stress almost always leads to ugly recrimination, often directed against minorities or "businessmen."  Will a President Obama, under intense political pressure, be able to avoid joining in the finger pointing?  If he slips into it, he might be seen as divisive as is (unfairly) George W. Bush.

There is nothing more unpredictable than a presidency.  When the minds of many mainstream journalists reach voting age, they may begin to see the complexities and dangers ahead, and bring an end to the sixties-style mindlessness that has surrounded the election result.

November 12, 2008.      Permalink          

TUESDAY,  NOVEMBER 11,  2008

TIME MARCHES ON

Posted at 8:26 p.m. ET

There are whack jobs, and then there are the kings and queens of the whackdom, one more whacked than the other.

With a hat tip to NewsBusters, a case in point:  One Nancy Gibbs of TIME.  She reports on Obama's election this way.  I'm not kidding:

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama never talks about how people see him: I'm not the one making history, he said every chance he got. You are. Yet as he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people's faces. We are the ones we've been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began.

You have something to look forward to.  It gets worse:

Barack Hussein Obama did not win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that was a victory all its own.

This is high-school journalism.  But, look, we've come to accept it.

And who said this country needed to be saved?  Isn't that the language of fundamentalism, which reporters like Gibbs probably despises? 

He let loose a deep blue wave that washed well past the coasts and the college towns, into the South through Virginia and Florida, the Mountain West with Colorado and New Mexico, into the Ohio Valley and the Midwestern battlegrounds: you could almost walk from Maine to Minnesota without getting your feet wet in a red state. After months of mapmaking all the roads to 270, Obama tore right past with ease.

Ms. Gibbs, of course, would not bother our little heads with complications like the economic meltdown, in which Mr. Obama's party played a huge role through its Fannies and Freddies, nor would she admit that reporters like her played an equally huge role in boosting Obama every chance they could.

A nation doesn't much need a big President in small times; it needs one when the future is spitting out monsters. We've heard so much about Obama's brand-new voters that we easily forget the others he found, the ones who hadn't voted since Vietnam or who had never dreamed they'd vote for a black man or a liberal or a Democrat, much less all three. But many Americans are living through the worst decade of their lives, and they have anger-management issues.

The worst decade?  How about a decade, say, from 1935 to 1945, when many Americans went without shoes, then saw thousands of their brothers killed in a few days of Pacific or European battles?

This is just too embarrassing.  Journalism needs a maturity bailout.

UPDATE AT 8:28 P.M. ET:  From Adweek:  NEW YORK With a handful of higher-ups already out the door, Time Inc. is moving to the rank-and-file as it, like other publishers, seeks to reduce its workforce in the face of dropping ad revenue.  Some of Time Inc.’s biggest magazines have put out the call for at least 83 volunteers to take buyouts, according to memos and staffers at the company.

COMMENT:  I have a nomination.  See the previous paragraphs.

November 11, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 7:20 P.M. ET:  From The Politico:   President-elect Barack Obama wants a high-profile point person to oversee reforms in the ailing auto industry, according to members of Obama’s transition team.  Specifics about the proposal remain unclear. But the transition team says Obama suggested to President Bush on Monday that aid to the auto industry could be coupled with the appointment of “someone in charge of the auto issue who would have the authority” to push for reforms. The details came from a more extended readout of the White House meeting provided Tuesday.

COMMENT:  Does the auto industry need reform?  To quote a recent candidate, you betcha.  Should the government be overseeing these reforms?  There's the rub.  Basically that's a huge step toward socialism.  It is a terrible precedent.  And yet, if the industry gets the federal bailout it wants, the American people will insist that the money is wisely spent.  What we have here is the collision of two bad things - the Democratic Party's urge to control the universe from Washington, and the auto industry's history of sloth, cynicism and lack of imagination.  But what change can we really believe in?

FURTHER UPDATE AT 7:25:  WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will push legislation next week to help the ailing auto industry.  "I am confident Congress can consider emergency assistance legislation next week during a lame-duck session, and I hope the Bush Administration would support it," the California Democrat said in a statement.

COMMENT:  We are heading into the unknown here.  Careful, Nancy. 

UPDATE AT 4:49 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed down about 176.  Remember that we are now entering the Thanksgiving/Christmas season.  If retail sales are in the tank, that could accelerate a market drop.  Also, if the auto industry continues on a crash course, that will dramatically affect the market.  Mr. Obama better have some plans ready, even if they give his left wing a group coronary.

UPDATE AT 12:47 P.M. ET:  Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell below $59 a barrel in New York for the first time since March 2007, and gasoline tumbled, on speculation the International Energy Agency will cut its 2009 oil-demand forecast because of slowing economic growth.

COMMENT:  Always look for the silver lining, even if it's soaked with oil.

UPDATE AT 12:07 A.M. ET:  The headline at Drudge says it all: 

BUSH ANGER:  OBAMA AIDES LEAK CHAT DETAILS.

It is a longstanding tradition that talks between the president and the incoming president be strictly private.  Please note that, last week, Obama had a phone talk with the president of Poland, after which Obama's talkative "aides" contradicted a public statement about the talk by the Polish president.  This was a diplomatic flap, although the in-the-tank media barely noticed, still drunk on its racial obsessions. 

Now we have this.  It bespeaks a certain arrogance by the incoming administration.  These are not people who respect tradition or propriety.  The signs are not good.  We still hope Mr. Obama can rein in the bulls around him, and that his cabinet appointments will reflect thoughtfulness, not vindictiveness.  He knows he has the press on his side, and that may lead to miscalculation and adventurism. 

Mr. Obama should call Mr. Bush to apologize, just as he had to apologize to Nancy Reagan for an off-the-cuff remark last week.  Of course, after a time the apologies can wear thin. 

Not good, not good.

UPDATE AT 11:47 A.M. ET:  The Dow is off 252.  There is now serious talk of a possible bankruptcy for General Motors.

PATRIOTISM

Posted at 7:45 a.m. ET

It is Veterans Day.  Sad to say, for too many of our countrymen Veterans Day is a time for good store sales.  It is especially upsetting when young people, some of whose peers are on fighting fronts today, have little notion of the meaning of the day.

I looked for something appropriate to quote, and, ironically, found it in a British newspaper, the Daily Express.  Consider, and contemplate:

The question was put to me with stark simplicity. “What was it all for?” asked the elderly lady, a wistful look in her eyes.

“The country that they died for has gone,” she continued, glancing down at the red poppy on her lapel.

Do we not sometimes have that same feeling here?

She explained that she had lost close relatives in both World Wars and as a teenager had endured the horrors of the Blitz. Mixed with her admiration for family heroes who had lost their lives in conflict, she also felt utter despair at the state of Britain and a profound sense of betrayal.

That is what happens when things we used to call "constant values" stop being constant.

Her insistent question – “What was it all for?” – has also been echoing through my mind as I research a book about Bomber Command during the Second World War. It mounted perhaps the most bloody and dangerous British offensive of the conflict, as crews of the heavy bombers flew night after night over Germany through vicious flak from the ground and from Luftwaffe fighters.

Long-term chances of survival were minimal. More than half of all men who served in air crews were killed in action.

But...

They died for their nation but that nation barely exists any more. It has been destroyed by the politicians, its sovereignty handed over to an unelected continental bureaucracy, its economy sold off to foreign interests, its heritage traduced or ignored...

This is a warning to us, isn't it?

...what is largely missing today is a respect for that instinctive devotion to Britain which inspired so many millions to take up arms in defence of our country. Patriotism is now a dirty word in too many of our civic institutions, where the Union flag is seen as an offensive symbol of xenophobia and the national anthem is hopelessly uncool.

And...

It is precisely because the political elite has lost all grasp of British patriotism that our nation is now so fragmented and purposeless, a place without a soul, our once green and pleasant land swallowed up by mass development, our justice system left in tatters by the imported human-rights culture.

And the "human-rights culture" often has little to do with real human rights.

During my research, the most moving passages I uncovered were the memories of bomber pilots who flew back British POWs from Germany just after VE day.

All of them said that, as the planes approached the white cliffs of Dover, the ex-prisoners would alternately cheer or weep.

Today, in a nation that has lost its history, the white cliffs have no such resonance. 

The American nation, last week, turned its back on a former POW who has served his country with distinction.  We understand the reasons, and we accept the outcome.  But I find it disturbing that so few commentators were gracious enough, at the moment of his defeat, to pay some small tribute to what John McCain and his family have given to this country.  We make that mistake at our peril, and the peril for this nation and its heritage is growing day by day.

November 11, 2008.      Permalink          

BAMWATCH - DAY 1

Posted at 7:04 a.m. ET

We are informed by a variety of sources that the president-elect hopes to reverse most of the Bush administration by a series of executive orders.

That is his prerogative, I suppose, but it can turn out to be a terrible mistake.  A new president has two constituencies - his party, and the nation.  (This president-elect seems to have added a third - something called "the world."  We pray he soon outgrows that.)

By every survey taken, we've learned that the American people, last week, did not vote to repeal the Reagan era.  They may favor certain actions the new president takes through executive order, but they may easily see others as payoffs to the interest groups that make up the Democratic Party's base.  They may also see some orders as imperious and arrogant, a reinforcement of Obama's overinflated belief in his own goodness.

There is something solid and ratifying about the legislative process, even in the hands of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the king and queen of creativity.  The American people like the idea of open debate, and a vote by their representatives.  There is a legitimacy that an executive order, especially one dealing with a controversial subject, normally lacks.

One item apparently on Mr. Obama's agenda would restrict offshore drilling still again.  Brilliant, isn't it?  Just as the price of gasoline is going down, to the relief of the nation, the president would send a signal that we're not serious about developing our own resources.  This would bring warmth to the hearts of assorted mullahs, princes and other managerial types, and the price of gas at the pump would shoot up again.  Before signing such an executive order, to appease radical environmental groups, Mr. Obama might consider the meaning of such terms as "political suicide," "approval rating," and "one-term president."

November 11, 2008.      Permalink