Columnist.
Help us, we're falling and we can't get up again. Once upon a time -- in 1988 and 1998 to be exact -- the United States was the best country for a baby to be born and raised in, at least according to The Economist magazine. But the 2013 edition of the magazine's "where-to-be-born" index has us down at No. 16 -- tied with Germany and one spot ahead of the United Arab Emirates. Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark -- nice countries but not exactly world famous as destinations for millions of people seeking opportunity -- are ranked 1 through 5.
Republicans had better learn from history -- and from Ronald Reagan's mistake. President Obama and his fellow big-spenders in Congress are promising if they get higher tax rates today they'll make even higher spending cuts tomorrow. It's an old sucker's game. Republicans -- and the rest of the country -- should know it by now, because for three decades we've all been suckers. If history is our guide, and Republicans in Congress don't grow a spine, by this time next year we'll have higher taxes, higher spending, more debt and a bigger government.
Forget Republican comebacks in 2014 or 2016. Unless it gets its head and its heart straight, the party might never win the popular vote or the White House again. The GOP today is not my father's party. And until the hierarchy of the GOP stops talking about how great Ronald Reagan was and starts embracing what he really stood for, the party of conservatism is destined for the ash heap of history. Ronald Reagan was somebody who believed in inclusion, not exclusion. He found a way to reach out to all voting groups, which is why he was the last Republican presidential candidate to win the Hispanic vote.
Democrats have been blaming George W. Bush for the last four years. Now I think it's time for Republicans to start blaming George W. for the next four years. For a week we've been pinning last week's debacle on everything from Mitt Romney's moderation to low Republican turnout. But the most important Republican who didn't turn out to support Romney this fall was George W. Bush. You can make an honest argument that G.W. was as much to blame as anyone else for our being unable to defeat an incompetent incumbent of historic proportions.
Wait until next year -- 2016, that is. That's what disappointed Republican spinners kept saying Tuesday night as they watched Mitt Romney's hopes crash and burn in swing state after swing state. How many times did I hear a Republican talk about how their party's deep bench of future all-stars will return it to power in Washington in four years? But all the Ryans, Rubios, Bushes, Haleys and Christies in America can't put the GOP -- or the country -- back together again.
This is the story of two very different American presidents and how they each answered their emergency Libyan phone calls. First, the story of Ronald Reagan. When he got a call about trouble with Libya it was in August of 1981 and I happened to be having dinner with him and Nancy in Los Angeles. We had just finished eating and were having coffee when Ed Meese phoned. Meese was my father's top policy adviser, and there was a serious military crisis brewing in the Mediterranean. At the time, the United States Navy was conducting war exercises in international waters in the Gulf of Sidra off the Libyan coast.
During Monday night's debate nearly 60 million of us got a good look at why Barack Obama has not been able to accomplish anything in four years. It's his patronizing, me-me personality. Did you see how condescending he was toward Mitt Romney, not to mention downright rude at times? Obama's more-presidential-than-thou attitude, which he did little to hide or dial back at the debate, should have reminded us of what happened in the first two weeks of his administration.
Everybody talks about the middle class being hurt in the Obama economy, but it's really the working poor who are getting crushed. The president boasts that he and four more years of his trickle-down government policies are going to save the middle class' bacon, eggs and jobs. And at the Tuesday night cockfight on Long Island, our presumptive ex-commander in chief accused Mitt Romney of being hypocrite and a liar who wants to help the rich at the expense of the middle class.
Those were my cheers you heard coming from the Left Coast last Wednesday night. I watched the Romney-Obama debate at my home in L.A., where I could hear the gasps and sobs of the creative community get louder and louder as Mitt came out swinging and never let up. That wasn't a debate. It was "The Great Debacle" -- and everyone who watched it for three minutes knew Kid Romney was winning every round on substance and style. I kept waiting for David Axelrod to throw a towel in the ring or referee Jim Lehrer to step in, wave his arms over his head and stop the fight on a technical knockout.
As I write this column, I'm waiting impatiently for the first debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama. More than 50 million Americans were expected to watch the debate in Denver on Wednesday night, and you have probably seen it by the time you read this. I don't know how it turned out, though The New York Times headline on Thursday probably read something like "St. Barack Slays Rich, Out-of-Touch Mormon Profiteer."
Why aren't you mad as hell yet, America? What will it take? At home, unemployment is stuck above 8 percent. Twenty-three million are out of work. Millions of others have given up looking for jobs. One American in six is on food stamps. Small businesses are terrified of Obamacare. The economy ran out of gas four years ago and the president still thinks the only way to get it going again is to fill up the tank with trillions of dollars of debt and make successful people pay for the tow truck.
Barack Obama has become America's blamer in chief. He and his administration spent last weekend blaming the explosion of violence against America in the Middle East on a moronic anti-Muhammad video that's been on YouTube for months. His United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice made the rounds of the Sunday morning news shows, where she made an absolute idiot of herself. Apparently auditioning for the secretary of state job in -- God forbid -- a second Obama administration, Rice insisted that the "spontaneous" Islamic rage that killed our ambassador in Libya and three other Americans was caused not by the failures of her boss but by an amateur movie made by some nut in California.
"I absolutely love my Chevy Volt." That's what the smug guy in the TV commercial says when he's praising the virtues of his plug-in hybrid and boasting that he hasn't seen a gas pump in months. You might love your Chevy Volt, too -- if you could afford to buy one. The GM Volt, aka the Green Edsel, is not just an overly engineered, overly expensive, overweight and impractical car than runs on electricity and gasoline.
It's not Obama vs. Romney in 2012. It's really Obama vs. Obama. The president has to run against himself. His own record on the economy has been so pitiful he can't defend it or run on it. He has to run away from it. Instead of comparing his performance as president to what Romney-Ryan might do, Obama has to pretend like it's been someone else who's been mismanaging the economic recovery for the last 3 1/2 years.
We can win in November with ease. All Mitt Romney and Republicans need to do is follow the GOP's script from the historic midterm elections of 2010. In case you've forgotten, 2010 wasn't just a Republican wave. It was a tsunami. The GOP gained 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate, plus they picked up five governorships and a record 680 seats in state legislatures. Republicans won in every corner of America for one important reason -- the election was about the economy, not social issues. Independents and Democrats swung to the GOP because they had lost their jobs, lost their houses and had already lost hope in President Obama's ability to fix anything bigger than a parking ticket in Chicago.
Choosing Paul Ryan is a game-changer. Ask the Chicago Gang and its publicists in the mainstream media. They're terrified. They know that when Mitt Romney chose Ryan for his vice president, it re-defined the Romney campaign overnight. It proved Mitt was not as boring, cautious and moderate as conservative Republicans feared and the Obama Left hoped. In one bold, smart move, Romney's VP choice makes it clear that this election is about one thing -- the economy.
It's taken more than 200 years, two world wars, an industrial revolution, and the dawn of the Internet, but the United States once again finds itself at the mercy of an intolerant king. Instead of a tax on tea, King Barack Obama and his Democrat Knights of the Fast Food Table seem intent on imposing a penalty on chicken -- but not all chicken. They are only targeting poultry prepared by Chick-fil-A.
President Obama was supposed to be all about hope and change. But after almost four years he's squeezed the hope out of most of us. A new Rasmussen poll is the latest proof that the only hope of getting out of our economic ditch is to fire the hopeless guy in the White House who keeps digging it deeper. Since early 2009 Rasmussen has been asking two questions that serve as a good barometer of what people think about both our present and our future.
Dirty political campaigns are as old as the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams are said to have thrown the first mud at each other in the presidential election of 1800. Jefferson accused his old pal -- who was then president -- of being a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal and a tyrant. Adams returned fire, calling his vice president and challenger Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." I don't know what the average citizen of 1800 thought about those lies and name-calling, which have been an ugly fixture of our politics ever since.
There you go again, Mr. Obama -- again and again and again, engaging in class warfare. Trying to make voters think Mitt Romney cares more about the offshore bank accounts of the wealthy than the pocketbooks of the middle class. Proving for the umpteenth time that you know nothing about economics, how wealth and jobs are created or why businesses and rich people are moving themselves or their money overseas to escape the taxes you think aren't high enough. "There you go again, Mr. Obama." That's what my father would have said to the president's latest dumb idea to punish rich and successful Americans by raising their taxes.
