Columnist.
Scurrilous would be a step up for Harry Reid. If he were a Republican ... you know the drill. The word "McCarthyite" would be on everyone's lips and the thoroughly contemptible accusation -- based (ha!) on an anonymous "investor" who supposedly phoned Reid -- would be the story of the day. Reid's fetid slander, and not Romney's response, would preoccupy everyone interested in politics. For Romney to release his tax returns now would seem to reward this sort of disgraceful tactic. And yet, it may be worth doing anyway.
A young Chinese man is under arrest for a rampage killing in Liaoning province. The knife-wielding 17-year-old reportedly killed eight people, including two relatives of his estranged girlfriend, and wounded five others. Terrible story. But Agence France-Presse, in an account widely circulated by Yahoo and other news outlets, knew just whom to blame: capitalism. AFP explained, "Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded at an alarming rate.
When Muhammad al-Rahim mentioned in an interview with a Muslim newspaper that he supported the traditional Muslim conception of marriage -- no more than four wives per man, "That's the Quranic way"-- he never expected the storm of criticism that erupted. Within days, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that, "Rahim's values are not Chicago values" and supported a move by Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno to block the planned opening of one of Rahim's chain of convenience stores. Emmanuel explained that, "What the CEO has said as it relates to gay marriage and gay couples is not what I believe, but more importantly, it's not what the people of Chicago believe. We just passed legislation as it relates to civil union and my goal and my hope ... is that we now move on recognizing gay marriage. I do not believe that the CEO's comments ... reflects who we are as a city."
If just one man had given his life by throwing himself atop his girlfriend to shield her from bullets in that Aurora, Colo., theater, it would have been cause for amazement. That three apparently did so is deeply affecting. People earn the Medal of Honor for such courage and self-sacrifice in the military. There is no equivalent in ordinary life -- or what should be ordinary life.
Public discussion and debate about the Aurora, Colo., horror has missed the point. With numbing predictability, liberal opinion leaders in the press have focused on gun laws as the potential solution for such atrocities, while conservatives have responded that maniacs will find ways to kill people and therefore, nothing can be done about rampage shootings. Others have speculated that our excessively violent entertainments are tipping borderline types into spasms of real violence. I'm no fan of degraded entertainment, yet I suspect that saturation media coverage of these events is probably more culpable. But surely a more fruitful avenue of inquiry concerns our utterly dysfunctional mental health system. We don't know much about the killer in Colorado yet, but in many cases of rampage shootings, family members, colleagues or teachers saw signs of trouble before the eruption of violence. Family reports of disturbing behavior are often not enough because too many state laws require that a person be "imminently dangerous" before he can be involuntarily committed -- even for a short time. Thus, we have failed utterly to protect those in dire need of treatment and also placed society at increased risk from the minority of mentally ill people who are dangerous.
President Obama's "you didn't build it" gaffe just defined the 2012 campaign. It succinctly encapsulates the president's prejudices about the public versus the private sector. Though the president has frequently mouthed platitudes in praise of enterprise, his suspicion and contempt for business has always percolated just beneath the surface. Of course, the president is partially correct, in a banal sort of way. Yes, roads, bridges, firefighters and teachers are essential prerequisites to establishing an environment in which business can operate. So are peace and freedom -- for which we must thank the military. But the president doesn't understand that a critical aspect of good government -- and an essential ingredient for stimulating economic growth -- is not just roads but *rules of the road*. As economist John Taylor reminds us, steady, predictable and permanent rules permit business owners -- and individuals -- to plan for the future.
Until this week, the Obama campaign's strategy of interest group payoffs and demonization of Romney seemed, if tawdry, at least a possible route to re-election. The president's promises to deliver more and more "free" stuff for carefully selected grantees -- adorned in the language of sticking up for the "middle class" -- appeared to have a chance of success. But the decision to embrace one of the least popular Democratic positions of the past 100 years -- opposition to the work requirement for welfare recipients -- is inexplicable politically. It's also illegal and imperious. Let's stick with politics, because it's old news that Obama has contempt for the rule of law. He's declined to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" on many subjects: immigration, the Defense of Marriage Act, labor laws and environmental rules, among others. Those were lawless but politically logical acts. Not this.
Mitt Romney delivered one of the best speeches of the year at the NAACP meeting in Houston. It made me proud to watch him. Romney was wise to accept the invitation -- though, God knows, the temptation to decline must have been tremendous. The NAACP hasn't exactly covered itself in glory over the past few years. In 2000, the organization ran dishonest and disgraceful television and radio ads suggesting that George W. Bush had been somehow indifferent to the horrible lynching of James Byrd in Texas. More recently, the group -- theoretically dedicated to the best interests of black Americans -- has joined teachers unions in attempting to block charter schools and has condemned the tea party movement as racist.
June brought the perfect encapsulation of the Obama economy: More Americans signed up for disability benefits than got jobs. According to government statistics, 80,000 Americans found work last month, while 85,000 dropped out of the labor force altogether to collect Social Security Disability payments. It is possible that an unusual number of Americans have become disabled during President Obama's tenure -- but if so, what does that say about the virtues of Obamacare? In any case, though, Obama promised that unemployment would not top 8 percent if we passed the stimulus law -- and though he predicted that the unemployment rate would be at 5.6 percent today, the private economy itself is quite disabled under this leadership.
Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom's blunder -- telling an interviewer that Romney believes the individual mandate is not a tax -- was politically dumb, if revealing. It suggests that the Romney camp continues to struggle with the ghost of Romneycare. Romney's subsequent attempt at clarification, saying that it's a tax because the Supreme Court said it is, though, "I agreed with the dissent," succeeded only in further confusing matters. The campaign desperately needs clarity on this issue. It needs also to shake that worrying tentativeness on Romneycare -- a timidity that suggests to voters that Romney has something to hide.
This column is being written in the midst of a power outage that has reduced many parts of the mid-Atlantic to primitive conditions. I have no right to complain. We installed a small generator after the last big power failure ("Snowmageddon") and at least have been able to sleep in air-conditioned comfort. We sincerely pity the million-plus people in our area and surrounding states who are coping with 95-plus temperatures and no power at all. So while we are definitely among the lucky ones, the "derecho" outage has managed to short-circuit our 21st century lives anyway. Only the bedrooms are cool. The phones, Internet and televisions are dark. Even cellphones didn't function for 24 hours. Gas stations are closed. Supermarkets are dark and selling only nonperishable items. If you want meat, vegetables, eggs or milk, you'll need to drive another half hour. The Wall Street Journal wasn't delivered, and reading the Washington Post by itself is like choking down medicine, especially in an election year. The dog is very sick, and we cannot contact the vet because the phones are dead. (Update: Dog is in veterinary emergency hospital, which thankfully does have power.)
It has traditionally been liberals, not conservatives, who have looked to the courts to implement their policy preferences. Whether it was racial and sex preferences, abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment or the "rights" of illegal aliens, liberals have attempted to move the country left by judicial fiat. Judges, after all, are highly educated elites. The political views of people with advanced degrees tend to be liberal. It's far easier to seduce a few robed lawyers to issue congenial rulings than it is to undertake the hard and lengthy work of persuading millions of voters to elect people who agree with you. Conservatives have been so battered by adverse court decisions over the years that we'd become anti-courtists -- toying with ideas to reduce the judiciary's scope (as Newt Gingrich mentioned during the primaries), emphasizing the antidemocratic nature of judicial usurpation of legislative functions and stressing the importance of judicial restraint.
Anne-Marie Slaughter's eye-catching Atlantic article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," is being greeted with a certain reverse snobbery. We've been reminded that the choices and challenges of women with advanced degrees are hardly typical and not the sort of thing that should divert us from the problems of the middle class. Perhaps. But there are millions of women in the upper middle class and the culture they create and reflect affects everyone. Besides, Slaughter deserves some credit for honesty. As she recounts in the piece, when she mentioned to a friend that she was considering writing that women can't have it all, the friend was adamant: "You can't write that. You, of all people." Slaughter explains: "... such a statement, coming from a high-profile career woman -- a role model -- would be a terrible signal to younger generations ..." Slaughter, the "first woman director of policy planning at the State Department," had been one of those reliable soldiers in the "mommy wars" who had assured young women that, of course, they could have a satisfying career, a high income, a loving husband and 2.5 ego-gratifying, low-maintenance children whose problems wouldn't intrude when they "sipped champagne" at a "glamorous reception" hosted by President and Mrs. Obama. But she has discovered that the "have-it-all" catechism was a lie. Even with a supportive husband who was willing to "take on the lion's share of parenting ... (while) I was in Washington," she found that she didn't want to be away from her two teenaged sons, particularly when one was having trouble in school.
They always get the benefit of the doubt, these America haters -- from our enemies, of course. But also from our celebrities, our "mainstream" press and other organs of liberal opinion. The case of Julian Assange, would-be scourge of America, is depressingly typical -- if slightly surprising because the administration he sought to embarrass and discredit was Obama's. There's discomfiting news about Assange this week, which we'll get to, but first, a review. Remember the respectful treatment the Wikileaks founder received? After publishing 250,000 confidential documents obtained by an Army private -- some of which provided names and addresses of Afghan civilians who had cooperated with NATO against the Taliban, others that simply provided embarrassing diplomatic scuttlebutt -- Assange got a sympathetic "60 Minutes" interview. It was conducted at the country estate where he was under house arrest (or "mansion arrest" as the Daily Mail put it). A little matter of rape and sexual assault charges leveled in Sweden.
In 1999, Christopher Hitchens penned an acid reflection on the presidency of Bill Clinton, titled "No One Left To Lie To." The verdict on the presidency of Barack Obama, at least during this campaign season, might be No One Left to Pander To. In three and a half years, we've gone from the "audacity of hope" to the "shameless palm grease." Shaken by the polls and unable to tout his accomplishments in office, the president has instead targeted giveaways to particular constituencies of the Democratic Party. We've gone from soaring to squalid. Women got free contraceptives and the invitation to believe that the Republicans had launched another war of choice -- against women. College students got more subsidies for their loans. Gays got support for same-sex marriage. And Hispanics got the dubiously legal decision to forego deportations for certain illegal immigrants. Blacks and Jews haven't been bribed yet, but perhaps that's what comes of voting too reliably Democratic. (Supporters of Israel have long since been disappointed in this White House.)
As the nation debates whether to institutionalize same-sex marriage, social scientists have been weighing in -- often with a heavy hand. As Mark Regnerus, author of a new study examining outcomes for children in a variety of home environments, notes social science regarding gay and lesbian parenting has swung from "presents challenges," to "no difference" to "superior" in the space of one decade. The American Psychological Association declared flatly in 2005 that, "Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents." That prompted skepticism from Regnerus and agreement to undertake a large study, funded by conservative-leaning foundations, to examine the evidence. Regnerus's results, published in the journal Social Science Research, cast doubt on the "no difference" claim and have subjected Regnerus, a professor at the University of Texas, to personal vilification. His results have been denounced as "junk science" and "pseudo-scientific misinformation" by the leading gay advocacy groups, prompting even Will Saletan, a liberal writer for Slate, which published an explanatory piece by Regnerus about his results, to caution " ... before we all go get our stones, pitchforks, and kerosene ... trust science ... Yes, Regnerus is socially conservative. But he's reflective, open-minded, and reality-based."
President Obama ran a successful campaign in 2008 against George W. Bush. Yes, yes, John McCain's name was on the ballot, but that was a detail. Obama campaigned against Bush. McCain even laughed about it at the Alfred E. Smith dinner, joking that Obama's "pet name for me" is "George Bush." The president is hoping to reprise the same race in 2012. Speaking in Iowa last month, he said of Republicans: "They either want to do nothing at all or they want to double down on the same failed policies that got us into this mess." So it's the anti-Bush campaign, version 2.0. Will it succeed? How can you run for re-election on the hope that voters won't notice you've been in the White House for four years? Some Democrats fondly recall Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 re-election. Roosevelt brought back the ghost of Herbert Hoover -- who would remain a prop of Democratic campaigns for two decades -- and campaigned vigorously against the rich, proposing an "undistributed profits tax" and a "wealth tax." He won by a landslide.
Though it hasn't been celebrated as such, Scott Walker's victory in Wisconsin represents the full flowering of the tea party movement. It is also a sign -- among others -- that the Republican Party has recaptured its ideological core. The tea partyers are often mischaracterized as extreme right-wingers. Thus, proponents of same-sex marriage or unrestricted abortion will invoke "tea party" elements as those most opposed to their efforts. That's off target. Though many in the movement may have conservative social views, those weren't the issues that spurred them to organize, demonstrate and vote. No, the tea partyers -- judging by their signs, speeches and writings -- were alarmed about irresponsible government spending, bailouts of the undeserving and spiraling debt. The tea partyers are actually the 21st century "goo-goos" -- good government types -- the label that was attached to progressives in the early 20th century. They aren't anarchists, racists (as in the more febrile accusations of their opponents) or culture warriors. They simply want to see government scale back and perform its essential functions fairly, efficiently and honestly.
One elementary law of politics that the Obama campaign does not seem to have internalized is this: Don't play against type. Last week White House spokesman Jay Carney brazenly asserted that President Obama's spending binge never happened. "The rate of spending -- federal spending -- increase is lower under President Obama than all of his predecessors since Dwight Eisenhower, including all of his Republican predecessors." This was too much even for the usually worshipful press. The Associated Press issued a full-dress debunking, as did the Washington Post. Though Politifact, betraying its own unreliability, rated the administration's claim "mostly true." As the AP explained, the facially hilarious claim that Obama was the reincarnation of Calvin Coolidge arose from one columnist's creativity with numbers. Rex Nutting, of Marketwatch, employed the usual Washington legerdemain of counting reductions in the rate of increase as cuts. He then assigned all of the spending in fiscal year 2009 to former President Bush's account, the better to claim that Obama's increase in the rate of spending after 2009 wasn't all that huge.
"When sorrows come, they come not in single spies but in battalions." -- William Shakespeare The Obama campaign may not be in panic mode yet -- there's still plenty of time for that -- but they must be stooping a bit under the weight of bad news that has come their way in the past several weeks. Every month's jobs report represents a fresh wound for the Obama campaign. That's the chief sorrow for Chicago, but there are a thousand other cuts. The acutely embarrassing tale of Massachusetts senate candidate (and former Obama appointee) Elizabeth Warren's risible claim to Cherokee ancestry is a perfect encapsulation of liberal absurdity. Even if her story of 1/32nd Cherokee blood were true, how ludicrous is it to say with a straight face that it was an important part of her identity? How much more ridiculous, and frankly, corrupt, to be counted a "minority" in the great affirmative action hustle on such grounds?
