Columnist.
The advice columns are beginning to reflect the season. A dismayed mother wrote to the Washington Post, "I love the holidays, but they bring out the greed in my children. From Halloween to Christmas Eve, all I hear is 'gimme, gimme and gimme.' How can I make them think of others instead of themselves?" The always wise Marguerite Kelly offered some sound suggestions -- like having the kids make fudge to give out to friends and neighbors "so your children will find out how good it feels to be a giver as well as a getter."
By any standard, the fury directed at President Obama by his own party this week has been jaw-dropping. Forget that the object of their rage was "The One" who just two years ago sent thrills down the legs of everyone to the left of Michael Bloomberg. Forget that he was the leader who was going to usher in a new golden age of liberal gigantism. Consider only that Barack Obama is the sitting president and leader of the Democratic Party.
INDIANAPOLIS -- "If I could wave a magic wand and change just one thing, it would be to guarantee that every American child could grow up in a two-parent home until the age of 18. That would solve maybe three-quarters of our problems."
It was pleasant -- and frankly a little shocking -- to see The Washington Post editorialize over the weekend about the new film "Fair Game," which purports to be the true story of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. Noting that Plame has labeled the movie "accurate" and that Wilson had expressed the hope that the film would help people "who don't read" or have "short memories" to understand the period, the Post blasted them both. "'Fair Game' ... is full of distortions -- not to mention outright inventions ... Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; 'Fair Game' is just one more example."
Three years ago, before any of my kids had reached the age to take the SATs, I noticed an interesting piece by Charles Murray on the tests. Murray is always interesting, of course, but I was curious about his take on the SAT because his views on IQ are well known. Murray argued that the SAT should be scrapped. His case was not (no surprise) the usual indictment of the tests as culturally biased. Instead, he argued that the SAT is unnecessary and, in some ways, counterproductive.
A couple of weeks ago, on the occasion of the annual hajj, in which 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims fulfill their obligation to travel to Mecca, prominent Muslim clerics from Asia, Africa, and Europe, along with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq denounced violence in the name of Islam and issued a manifesto, signed by all, declaring that "murder of innocents is never justified and violates the teachings of Islam."
Back in January, the Obama administration announced a new policy for airline safety -- country-based profiling. Travelers from 14 countries known to harbor terrorists would automatically receive extra scrutiny including additional pat-downs or full body scanners. The named states were: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
By telling Barbara Walters that she thinks she can defeat President Obama, Sarah Palin has dimmed hopes cherished by sensible Republicans that she might decide against a run for the White House in 2012. Here are just some of the reasons she should not run. The Republican nominee should be someone with vast and impressive experience in government and the private sector -- and a proven record. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity, not sizzle and flash.
What are we to make of Nancy Pelosi's home town's measure to ban Happy Meals? Shall we say that the San Francisco board of supervisors got a little carried away in their zeal to prevent childhood obesity? Or is it about time someone staged an intervention to shake Americans out of their sickening (literally) eating habits? Well, maybe, but not this way. When liberals unleash their coercive urges as the supervisors in San Francisco have done, even some Democrats -- notably the mayor -- are forced to protest. Would we like it if McDonalds changed its menus in response to social pressure and consumer demand? Yes. And by the way, that is happening. Customers at McDonalds can now choose salads, fruits, and quite tasty coffee in addition to the usual fatty fare. But that clearly didn't satisfy the food cops.
Everyone agrees that the burden of dealing with escalating health care costs should not fall on the most vulnerable, right? Democrats in particular are always at pains to convince us that they are sensitive to the needs of the less fortunate. Yet among the many new taxes Obamacare will impose is one that hits wounded veterans and sick children especially hard -- the 2.3 percent annual tax on medical device manufacturers set to begin in 2013.
It's almost enough to evoke sympathy: the entire journalistic world poring over President Obama's post-election comments and applying a humility meter to his words, his facial expressions, and his mood. Does he get it? Is he sufficiently abashed by the voters' rebuke?
It's an occupational hazard of pundits to see what they want to see in election returns. After the Democrats' 2008 sweep, any number of liberal commentators (and even some conservatives) consigned the Republican Party to Whig status (the Whigs ended with a whimper in 1856). Some were unwise enough to enshrine their predictions in book titles. In 2009, James Carville published "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation," and Sam Tanenhaus authored "The Death of Conservatism." Some conservatives despaired that Republicans had lost women, young people, the cities, New England!
First, there was Bell, Calif., the little L.A. suburb that achieved distinction for its florid corruption. Robert Rizzo, former city manager, stands accused of 53 counts of misappropriating public funds and conflicts of interest. In a town described as the poorest in L.A. county (average income $30,000, unemployment rate 16 percent), Rizzo earned a salary of nearly $800,000 in 2009 and was expecting to rake in $1.5 million this year.
I am as delighted as any conservative could be about predictions for Tuesday's election. But the exultation among some on the right is making me nervous. It's not just superstition. The votes haven't even been counted, and yet some are already over-interpreting Republican victories as a thorough repudiation of everything Democratic, socialist, and liberal. The era of big government is over ... again.
I appeared on a public radio program, "On Point," this week with National Public Radio ombudsman Alicia Shepard and listened to her defend NPR's firing of Juan Williams. NPR, the listener is invited to conclude, has no bias, but Williams, a liberal with occasionally heterodox views, is too conservative for NPR.
Only in France could a labor action sound like a tasty appetizer. They call it "escargot," but they're not referring to snails in a buttery/garlic sauce. No, this escargot refers to the practice of truckers who work in teams to snarl traffic by driving at a snail's pace. Infuriated drivers cannot get around them.
Here's a technique they don't teach in campaign school: Patronize the voters. President Obama, speaking at a fundraiser in Boston, said, "People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be." He might as well have reminded his listeners that you can expect little else of people who "cling" to their Bibles and guns and hostility to those who are different.
Two great questions ricochet around the capital in the countdown to the midterms. The first: Does Barack Obama plan to seek re-election? A remarkable number of top advisers have left the administration. Rank-and-file Democrats are listless. And the economic news is, well, everyone knows about that. President Obama is rumored to be dissatisfied, grumpy, and isolated. He doesn't even enjoy Camp David.
Ten months ago, when Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years for "inciting subversion of state power," the world response was muted. There were condemnations of this unashamed assault on free expression and individual freedom, but they were mild and oddly off-key.
Three and a half weeks from now, Americans will decide whether to pull the emergency brake on a train that is headed to bankruptcy. Across the pond in Great Britain, which got aboard that train following World War II, the sparks are flying as the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government attempts a very tardy, and accordingly much more painful, reversal.
