Michael Barone

Being There 

Obama is not so much Jimmy Carter 2.0 as the second coming of Chauncey Gardiner.

Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln’s hometown two days before Abe’s birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore.

Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. The more cruel among them, like The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost, say the comparison is not to Obama’s advantage.

But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to “lead from behind.” The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie Being There.

As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well, and all will be well in the garden.”

“First comes the spring and summer,” he explains, “but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.” The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, “There will be growth in the spring.”

Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama’s approach to the federal budget, doesn’t it?

In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission, headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97–0.

Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics.

Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. “We don’t estimate speeches,” Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. “We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.”

Evidently “first we have the spring and summer” was not enough.

Then Obama deputed Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders to handle negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. Biden apparently did a good job of letting everyone set out their positions and interact.

But last Thursday two influential Republicans, Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Jon Kyl, left the bargaining table and said that they wouldn’t return until Democrats dropped demands for tax increases. After all, if the Democrats hadn’t been able to raise taxes on high earners when they had large majorities in December’s lame-duck session, what makes anyone think this more Republican Congress will raise them now?

Cantor said it was impossible to make progress unless Obama got personally involved. Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid said the same thing. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, fresh from making a bipartisan compromise on public-employee benefits, offered succinct advice: “First, the president can show up.”

Well, Obama has agreed to do that Monday. But while Chauncey Gardiner, in his befuddlement, tried to answer questions squarely, Obama has seemed less interested in the substance of public policy than in framing issues for the next presidential campaign.

That was plainly the case in the decisions on Afghanistan he announced Wednesday night. Regardless of conditions on the ground, the president promised that the last of the surge troops will be removed by September 2012, the month Democrats hold their national convention.

As for Libya, Obama pretends we’re not involved in “hostilities” and has been content to “lead from behind.” Another sop to the antiwar Left.

Sometimes it seems he’s president of the AFL-CIO, not the U.S.A. The man who said he wanted to double exports in five years has nothing to say about his National Labor Relations Board appointee’s attempt to shut down a $1 billion plant being built by the nation’s No. 1 exporter.

And don’t forget the enviro types. Obama is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but his appointees are barring drilling in the Gulf and Alaska and refusing approval for a natural-gas pipeline from Canada.

On all these issues, Obama seems oddly disengaged, aloof from the hard work of government, hesitant about making choices.

That doesn’t sound like Lincoln. Or Roosevelt. Or even Jimmy Carter. More like “then we have fall and winter.”

— Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner. © 2011 The Washington Examiner.

We need a leader with a vision, not a reaction to polls or election cycles...

I have been a member of two unions over the course of my working life.... that's 17+23 years, and never have felt that I could trust "the brotherhood"... example, I have worked at two schools in the district that I work in. Both were hotbeds of union activity. Active members (presidents, etc) were both long-time friends and relatives of mine. There is one basic question that I have  continually brought up, "Can you give the membership an accurate accounting of our $900 per year individual union dues?" They never have! Several years ago they faked it by sending out an expenditures list that was horribly vague, rather than be viewed as an answer to a "brother's" question, it was more a slap in the face.... as in, "Shut up, you don't know what's good for you like we (the central committee) do!"

And what's with the Teamster Union setting up shop in police departments (thirty years now)... and the correct images of Chicago politics and the fox being let loose in the henhouse...

I have remained a member out of misguided obligation. This year with the help of a friend wrote a letter to the union redirecting my dues to the Unity Home (a surprising California law allows this).... but, its time for me to take a stand and simply quit the union! I'm almost ready to retire... Somehow I have to make up for all of my years of turning a blind eye to "the brotherhood"...  so, beware my brothers and sisters, I'll work to reduce your influence.... next!

Twilight of the Unions

Scott Johnson, Powerline

In "The union-owned Democrats" (the Washington Post's headline) and "Union owned and operated" (NRO's headline), Charles Krauthammer devotes his weekly column to compiling the notable services that Barack Obama has performed on behalf of his paymasters in organized labor. "Instructive cases all," Krauthammer comments, "demonstrating how those who lose popular support -- Democrats at the polls, unions in their declining membership -- can subvert and circumvent the popular will by judicial usurpation (Wisconsin) or administrative fiat (Boeing)." It's a story that reeks.

Mark Hemingway provided a comprehensive look at the phenomena in a recent Weekly Standard cover story. Hemingway deduced that the violent spasms of the union struggles we have witnessed in recent months represent death throes. He characterized the situation as "Unionsdämmerung," the twilight of the unions. I think that Hemingway makes a powerful case, but that there should probably be a question mark next to the title.

Hemingway covers a lot of territory in his article and reminds readers of stories that may not have registered in the rush of news this spring. Here Hemingway supports the thesis of his article with a union leader's own assessment of the prospects:

Unions themselves are deeply pessimistic about the future. Until last fall, when he left the SEIU, Stephen Lerner was director of the union's high-profile campaign for reform of the banking and finance industries. He's not just any other union official​--​according to Washington Post wunderkind Ezra Klein, Lerner is "considered one of the smartest organizers, if not the smartest organizer, working in the labor movement right now. .  .  . At a time when a lot of people in labor have become, if not resigned to their fate as a marginal force in American life, increasingly confused as to how to reverse it, Lerner has a lot of fight left in him."

So how does the labor movement's smartest organizer propose to save unions from irrelevancy?

According to audio of Lerner speaking at a recent closed session at Pace University that was leaked on the Internet, Lerner thinks the labor movement has to "destabilize" the country. There needs to be a mass strike on paying mortgages, student loans, and, bizarrely, local government debt. (How local governments are expected to continue paying the salaries and pensions of unionized employees after defaulting on their bonds is unclear.)

Lerner expressed the hope that this would force banks into insolvency. They would then have to renegotiate all their mortgages and loans. It would also "bring down the stock market," depriving the rich of their wealth. Lerner approvingly cited the fatal and destructive riots over austerity measures in Greece and solemnly invoked the famous Cloward-Piven strategy​--​a theory cooked up decades ago by two leftist sociologists that urges forcing the government into a crisis so as to address economic injustice.

Finally, Lerner announced the first target of this campaign​--​JPMorgan Chase. Why? "So a bunch of us around the country think, 'Who would be a really good company to hate?' We decided that would be JPMorgan Chase."

Hemingway quotes Lerner: "Unions are almost dead. We cannot survive doing what we do." Krauthammer himself intimates the ultimate failure of the favoritism and corruption that are propping up the unions. Along with the other evidence adduced in his article, Hemingway deepens this qualification of the events depicted in Krauthammer's column.

Oops, I've always wondered about all of this as well... how many times can that same phrase be used until everyone knows that something is not right with those who should know better and use it at every turn? BH

Unexpectedly!

Scott Johnson, Powerline 

Michael Barone elaborates on Glenn Reynolds' theme: why is it that after two years, bad economic news is still "unexpected?"

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word "unexpectedly" or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.

"New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed," reported CNBC.com May 25.

"Personal consumption fell," Business Insider reported the same day, "when it was expected to rise."

"Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month," Reuters reported May 25, "worse than economists' expectations."

"Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall," headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

"U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April," wrote the Wall Street Journal May 18.

Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.

Barone lays part of the blame, at least, on the fact that legacy media are cheerleading for the Obama administration:

It's obviously going to be hard to achieve the unacknowledged goal of many mainstream journalists -- the president's re-election -- if the economic slump continues. So they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.

I think that is correct. Nowadays, agenda-driven journalism is about the only kind we have.

Obama and his policymakers told the country that we would recover from the deep recession by vastly increasing government spending and borrowing. We did that with the stimulus package, with the budget passed in 2009 back when congressional Democrats actually voted on budgets, and with the vast increases scheduled to come (despite the administration's gaming of the Congressional Budget Office scoring process) from Obamacare.

All of this has inspired something like a hiring strike among entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Employers aren't creating any more jobs than they were during the darkest days of the recession; unemployment has dropped slowly because they just aren't laying off as many employees as they did then.

Do you remember when Democrats accused Presidential candidate George W. Bush of "talking down the economy?" It was a silly charge then, and journalists' efforts to "talk up the economy" today are likely to be equally ineffective. Irrational exuberance is not as easy to generate as some journalists may have believed.

Another must read contributed by Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired)

Comments on a dubious e-mail

All,

You are familiar with all manner of bunk communicated via e-mail.  Received the same probably spurious e-mail from two friends today but felt it was worth sending on a few words in reply.  It dealt with Israel, the New York Times, and Islam.  In a nutshell, it posited that the problem facing Israel is Islam. 

Is Islam the primary ‘problem’ facing Israel?  I argue no.  Anti-Semitism is more accurate but still wanting and neither term explains the essential support of the political left in the West.  We need to look carefully at some of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict to get a better understanding.

During the first decades following the birth of the State of Israel the bordering regimes and organizations fighting to destroy Israel were overwhelmingly both secular socialists and Arab nationalists.  This, over time, made them attractive to the western left especially after the Cold War put Israel squarely in the western camp. 

That is the critical fact in understanding why so many in the left in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere are so vehemently anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian today. 

Starting in the 1970’s, the violent radical left (Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, Japanese Red Army, etc) were all brothers and sisters in arms against Israel.  The RAF trained in the Middle East (to include Saddam's Iraq) under the sponsorship of Palestinian terrorist groups and they coordinated their attacks (recall the hijackings carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization designed to free RAF prisoners in German jails).  The Japanese Red Army was actually formed in Lebanon not Japan and its leader was also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Their shared opinion on religion was that it was an archaic opiate of the masses à la Marx.  Islam played no role for the radical left, Arab or otherwise, yet the goal, the destruction of the State of Israel, remained unchanged from that of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

These radicals have long been romanticized as heroes by too many on the left both here and abroad.  That means that a pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli policy is de rigueur in those circles today.  If you are an authentic leftist then you must oppose the State of Israel and you must take up the Palestinian cause. There are, however, contradictory forces working away at the ranks in the left that make this issue more controversial and offers a hint to a different outcome in the future.

The main contradictory force came to life with the rise of the Islamic theocracy movement that began in Iran in 1979 under the Shi'a ayatollahs that sent shock waves throughout the Islamic world.  This gave rise to bin Laden as a leader in a Sunni counterrevolutionary movement and re-legitimized the Sunni theocracy philosophy preached by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It created an endless friction point for the far left that abhors the concept of God, religion, and the male-dominated culture associated with radical Islam.  This works to weaken the decades-old and unquestioning support of the Palestinian cause and rejection of the State of Israel by the left.

The second is the inescapable fact that there are millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians at the same place.  Neither is going to go away and somehow both need a state.  That is the legitimate argument that strengthens the left in its anti-Israeli crusade yet causes a dilemma regarding the fate of the citizens of Israel except for the most extreme and genocidal of their brethren.

The final force at work is the old adage 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.'  Both the hard left in the West and the Islamist radicals hate the capitalist democratic system.  As it stands today, both are more than ready to hold their respective noses and grasp the hand of the other in common cause against the free-market West.  But that begs the question, what will happen if the common enemy is removed?  As Hobbes put it, life during that ensuing civil war will be nasty, brutish, and short.

It is true that Islam plays a greater role today than at any other time in the ranks of those bent on destroying Israel but as the historical record shows it has never been a necessary and sufficient condition to seek that destruction.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired) 

The death of UBL has led to a spate of misinformation regarding the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda.  Basing decisions on misinformation at this point would be a tragic and far-reaching mistake.

First, let us go over the history between these two organizations.  Al Qaeda was led, until this week, by UBL.  The Taliban is led by Mullah Omar.  The current alliance between the two began in earnest when Mullah Omar invited UBL and al Qaeda into Afghanistan from the Sudan within months of the Taliban taking control of Kabul in 1996. 

The leaders of the two movements were indivisibly joined in the tradition of that region, i.e. the feudal intermarriage between the two families to cement the alliance.  Most reliable open source reports cite the fact that a daughter from each family married into the other’s family.  They are joined together in blood on many levels.

In May 1998 al Qaeda declared war on the United States during a conference hosted by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  In 1999 al Qaeda began detailed planning and training for the 9/11 attacks from camps provided to them by the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

By 9/11 2001 al Qaeda was an official unit in the Taliban Army in Afghanistan and was designated as 055 Brigade.  In other words, the fighters in al Qaeda and the fighters in the Taliban were seamlessly integrated in common cause against us on the battlefield from day one. 

The Taliban alliance with al Qaeda is a strong today as it was on 9/11.

Second, we need to understand how important personal leadership is to movements like this.  When Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was killed in 2006 the organization carried on normally for a few months.  But after the previously planned operations were completed AQI began to falter.  New and well-coordinated operations did not easily follow and the organization soon faded as a viable threat to Iraqi sovereignty.  

A fair portion of this collapse was due directly to the loss of the ‘great leader.’  It was not simply a case of a key billet that urgently needed to be filled as is the experience in the Western or Eastern military tradition where the army is bigger than any one person.  It was a hole that could never be filled.  In organizations like al Qaeda the leader often is the organization.  This is especially true when the heart and soul of the organization is so deeply based on faith in God as are the al Qaeda and Taliban movements. 

The inescapable question now facing every true believer in al Qaeda is why did God kill UBL?  That leads almost immediately to asking why has God forsaken us, why are we being punished, what did we do that was so wrong?   The death of UBL is not simply the loss of a key or even the key leader; it represents a shattering of the previously unchallenged belief that UBL was the righteous arm of God.  Clearly he was not. Great personal piety is no excuse for merciless and compassionless murder of innocents.

The death of UBL has caused a crisis of faith in the ranks that al Qaeda will probably never recover from.  A similar fate probably awaits the Taliban should Mullah Omar meet his just deserts.

Finally, let us go over what we do not know.  We do not know that UBL was only a figurehead or symbolic leader.  We do not know that he was an active leader running operations directly from his compound in Pakistan.  We will, however, know which assumption is true shortly. 

Open source reports claim that significant amounts information in the form of documents and electronic storage media were captured.  Reportedly, he had several "thumb drives" whose information was so sensitive that he carried them on his body at all times. 

If that reporting is largely true then that information will be exploited by the intelligence community and we be able to assess just how involved UBL was in al Qaeda operations.  Perhaps more importantly, we will find out how deeply UBL was or was not involved in operations conducted by the Taliban, Haqqani Network, and Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami Faction in Afghanistan. 

If he was an active member of the enemy’s Afghan operational leadership then that could have a profound effect on both the Taliban and Haqqani Network (or less likely, on Hekmatyar's) spring offensives now underway in Afghanistan as those plans may now be compromised.

My bet is that UBL was actively involved.  Too many intelligence and operational leaders underestimated UBL too many times in the past.  The assumption that he was a mere figurehead may become one more miscalculation on our part in understanding the threat we face on the battlefield.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Mike Walker and Mike Ramirez combine to warn us... are we listening? Mike Walker is a retired USMC Colonel and Superintendent of Business Services for a California school district.

What happened to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report?

Why are we playing partisan games over the Obama and Ryan plans when a very good plan was already submitted?  It was not a creature of political bloodletting.  Is that why it was ignored in hyper-partisan Washington?

Gee, it was comprehensive, balanced, and bipartisan.  It was the product of a very talented group of Americans even for those jaded by Washington shenanigans.  More importantly, why are we waiting?  We need to act and we need to act now.  Here are two stories from the “trenches” of the governmental budget crisis in California. 

A Local Lesson

Our school district, like almost every district in California, has been hit with the largest budget cuts since the Great Depression and will likely surpass those cuts in the coming months.  Some of us learned that acting early to cut expenditures is everything in an on-going fiscal crisis like the one in California and one America is facing in Washington DC.  Yet amid this unprecedented crisis we are not laying off employees this year.  Many are asking why.  It is because we were amongst the school districts that acted early to reduce expenditures. 

When we eliminated around 25 positions for the 2009-10 school year it reduced expenditures by about $1.5M per year.  For the upcoming 2011-12 school year that yields a total expenditure reduction of $4.5 million. 

Comparable school districts that did not act in 2009 but put off the reductions until 2011 are still facing the same $4.5 million problem.  Ours is already fixed.  Their problem is not.  They now have to eliminate about 75 comparable positions to get the $4.5 million reduction for 2011-12. 

That is now gutting their educational program.  We will have the equivalent of fifty more professional educators serving the same number of students next year and we met the same $4.5 million goal.  The delay taken by our peers was a terrible miscalculation.  The lesson is that putting off painful cuts does not lessen the problem it exacerbates it.

A State Lesson. 

A few weeks ago the California State Legislature passed a little over $10 billion in cuts to expenditures in order to help address a $26 billion deficit for the 2011-12 fiscal year.  If they had made the exact same cuts starting with the 2009-10 budget, something many in and out of Sacramento had proposed, then the immediate crisis would be over and California would be looking at a $4 billion surplus on 30 June 2012.  Instead, Sacramento, like a lot of California school districts, resisted making timely cuts.  Instead of taking painful yet prudent cuts when first confronted with the crisis they dithered and delayed thereby creating a nightmare scenario in the here and now.

Learn from our mistakes.  If we want America to wait until the budget cutting is truly savage in its consequences then do what most did in California, keep playing politics and kicking the can down the road with accounting gimmicks. 

If we are serious about fiscal responsibility then we should start by pulling together simply as Americans and implement the Commission’s plan now.  There will be plenty of time to have a debate, politically driven or not, over the Obama and Ryan plans later.

Regards,

Mike

Paul Ryan's Growth Plan

Larry Kudlow ,   The Caller

Larry Kudlow is the host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”

Of all the discussion about Paul Ryan’s big-bang budget plan, the element I like best was caught in this Wall Street Journal op-ed title: “The GOP Path to Prosperity.” In other words, it’s a growth budget. It has plenty of spending cuts, but it also has significant pro-growth tax reform.

Obsessing over the debt is not by itself a policy. Advancing the economy and setting the stage for more job creation is a policy. Mr. Ryan kept an important dose of Ronald Reagan in both the spirit and reality of his plan. Limited government, lower tax rates, and deregulation (of energy) will all promote the path to prosperity.

The other big-picture thought is that the fiscal-policy ball is moving in the right direction. Most of what is being proposed faces a rocky political future. But the direction is unmistakable: less government, lower taxes.

This really started back in December with the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the withdrawal of the trillion-dollar omnibus continuing-resolution spending bill. It continues into the new year with new CRs. Whether Speaker Boehner gets $30 billion or $40 billion in cuts, the direction is clear: lower spending.

Just before the election, John Boehner told us he would stop the bad stuff. Looks like he has. And now Mr. Ryan keeps the drumbeat going with a 2012 budget that would cut $179 billion from the president’s budget baseline. In 2013, Ryan would take down over $220 billion. Over ten years, Ryan would lop off $6 trillion. The key point is not the actual numbers, but the direction of the numbers. Spending is coming down.

Ryan included the thinking of Dave Camp (the Ways and Means chair) on tax reform, which is a 25 percent top rate for individuals and businesses with a full-scale reduction in all the tax-credit, K Street, flotsam-and-jetsam loopholes. That’s very pro-growth.

Ryan also includes deregulation of energy for drill, drill, drill — another big growth and jobs measure.

The health care entitlement picture is going to be very muddled, and the outcome is impossible to figure. So I’ll leave that aside for a moment. The only thing Ryan neglected to do was highlight the need for stable money to stop the damaging Fed rollercoaster. But with so much on his plate, I can understand that omission for now.

Ryan basically stole the budget bacon from President Obama, who should have put this kind of plan in his State of the Union. He didn’t. And now he’s got to play catch-up. The Senate Democrats are utterly hopeless. But the public mood is still where it was last fall: less government spending and borrowing. Ryan delivers on that and then some with his tax-cut growth booster.

The cause of the debt bomb is too much spending and too little growth. Ryan attacks this with new spending rules and tough policy decisions. He also provides the new flat-tax reform incentives to grow the economy.

So if we look at the debt bomb as a share of GDP, what will happen — if Ryan prevails even modestly — is the numerator of debt will steady while the denominator of growth is unleashed.

We will be fine. I can almost hear Paul Ryan saying, “I will not allow America to become Greece.” Amen.

Larry Kudlow is the host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”