Columnist.
WASHINGTON -- It has happened again! Our gaffe-prone president has filed another blunder on his presidential record. At the dedication of George W. Bush's presidential library he invoked history with his usual mastery of detail. He placed President John F. Kennedy in Air Force One, "On the flight back from Russia, after negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War." Actually the flight was returning from Vienna, not "Russia," and not much "negotiating" had been done. Truth be known, it was one of the lowest points in JFK's presidency. As Kennedy himself recalled, "He [Khrushchev] treated me like a little boy." And more: "Worst thing in my life. He savaged me," said our 35th president. Well, at least President Obama did not claim anyone at the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit spoke "Austrian." That was the language our learned president attributed to the citizens of Vienna back on April 6, 2009. No philologist has ever heard of it.
WASHINGTON -- It has come to my attention that there is a new derogatory term in American politics. It is "Angry White Male." Moreover, I am apparently a member of this low-down grouping of Americanos. According to Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia," the term delineates a male who is "characterized by opposition to racial quotas, political correctness, affirmative action, anti-discrimination policies and other liberal policies." With the possible exception of "anti-discrimination policies," that pretty much describes my politics, though I would add a few other prejudices into the mix such as advocacy of free market economics, opposition to socialism or any form of statism, opposition to totalitarianism and preference for caf‚ noir. Actually, I would doubt that the preference for such policies is the exclusive enthusiasm of Angry White Males. Most of the women I know and admire also are with me on these political issues and most of my non-white friends -- women and men -- are as well. All of us feel that these values have done a lot of good for America. Yet, up there in the Kultursmog -- in that rarefied stratosphere where American culture is supposedly determined -- these values are presented as inimical to the good life.
WASHINGTON -- When asked on left-leaning MSNBC why President Barack Obama refrained from describing the Boston bombings as a "terrorist attack" David Axelrod, Obama's longtime political advisor, readily saw a political opportunity. The blood had not yet been washed away from the streets. We had yet to count up the casualties. Yet Axelrod saw a political opening, an opportunity to advance one or another of his pet political issues. So he said, "I'm sure what was going through the president's mind is -- we really don't know who did this -- it was tax day." Yes, tax day! This is not the response of a normal mind. A normal mind would not, given the promiscuity of public bombings in the Middle East and now another bombing here in America, think it was provoked by "tax day." Conceivably the bombs in Boston were the work of small-government libertarians or of Tea Partiers. They could even be the work of vegetarians, but that was not the question. Axelrod was asked why the president was not describing the bombings as a terrorist attack. It certainly looked more like the work of terrorists -- either left-wing lunatics or right-wing lunatics -- than tax protesters.
WASHINGTON -- On the occasion of Lady Thatcher's death, there is widespread admiration and even applause for her premiership, but surely there ought to be gratitude too. After all, without her -- and without President Ronald Reagan -- the poor would be much poorer and without hope of bettering themselves. That was socialism's notion of equal opportunity. Moreover, we might all be living in a world devastated by nuclear war. I do not know what the conditions of that world would be, but I am grateful not to live in it and my guess is that the vast majority of inhabitants of the former Soviet Union and its satellites are grateful too. Of course, there are some who wish that Lady Thatcher had never lived. They think that the poor are poor because of her (and of Reagan), and as for the post-Cold War world, I have not a clue as to what they think. Maybe they attribute today's peace among the world's nuclear powers to Mikhail Gorbachev or to the Tooth Fairy. They certainly do not thank Lady Thatcher or that stupid actor.
WASHINGTON -- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City ought to know by now that gun owners do not trust him. The more he agitates against guns, the more they dig in their heels. The more magnificoes he gets behind his Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the more gun owners and advocates of the Second Amendment see him as their enemy. He and his colleagues might only oppose the ownership of small cannons. They might only oppose extending gun ownership to convicted killers and to the criminally insane. Still gun owners and Second Amendment supporters will be suspicious of him. They quite rightly perceive Mayor Bloomberg as harboring ulterior motives in his sonorous pronouncements on guns. Small cannons today, but handguns and pea-shooters and slingshots tomorrow. Frankly, I side with those who suspect the mayor of treachery.
WASHINGTON -- The American left cares so much for humanity that it even expends copious draughts of compassion toward us, toward you and me, toward suave, *dégagé* conservatives. The left's members really fret over how elements of the "extreme right" are undermining the Republican Party, consigning it to oblivion. The latest moral colossus to perform this exemplary task is Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, but there are many more from all the precincts of the left. This past weekend, I even detected this concern for us from the pollster, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. Writing a piece on the future of the Republican Party, he expressed his concern that advocates of "staunch conservatism" have left the Republican Party "estranged from America." If moderate Republicans do not smarten up and presumably rid the party of these "staunch conservatives," the party will go so far to the right that it will be replicating the political suicide of Senator George McGovern and his McGovernite zealots back in 1972.
WASHINGTON -- Apparently New York City's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg whiles away his last hours in the mayor's palace daydreaming. He has been mayor for almost three terms and though his mayorship may not have been as heroic or even as effective as that of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it has at least kept the city up to Mayor Giuliani's standards of cleanliness, law and order, and an approximation of sense of financial rectitude. So if Bloomberg is no Rudy Giuliani, at least he has done OK up until now. Now his daydreams are taking on the air of delusion. He apparently longs for the perfect gesture with which to festoon his legacy. Health for all! An end to guns for everyone, except the cops! No more violence! Maybe he even plans a campaign against spitting in public. If that last daydream plays well with the public relations team he has hired to ensure his fame for the ages, he will probably call a press conference and admonish us all to avoid public spitting. Possibly the citizenry will be advised to carry little cups or doggy bags. The mayor and his team think of everything.
WASHINGTON -- When Senator Rand Paul took to the floor of the United States Senate the morning of March 6 he really -- as they say -- may have made a difference. It is a difference in our awareness of the issues facing the country. It is a difference in our perception of the man who is leading the country, President Barack Obama. It might even have been a difference in the direction the country will go. Will it continue on its melancholy path toward statism or will it follow the course of freedom as laid out by the Founding Fathers? Senator Paul rose ostensibly "to begin to filibuster John Brennan's nomination for the CIA." Yet he aimed higher. As he explained it in the Washington Post on March 10, "I wanted to sound an alarm bell from coast to coast. I wanted everybody to know that our Constitution is precious, and that no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime. As Americans, we have fought long and hard for the Bill of Rights. The idea that no person shall be held without due process, and that no person shall be held for a capital offense without being indicted, is a founding American principle and a basic right." Thus he filibustered for 13 hours, and his views redounded around the Internet, on Tweeter, on Facebook. Everywhere!
WASHINGTON -- I do not know about you, but to me this sequestration imbroglio is getting interesting. Last week, I wrote of my surprise that a basic untruth was being repeated over and over again by the White House, to wit, that the Republicans were responsible for the monstrosity of sequestration. I wrote that, as I recalled it, sequestration was an idea introduced by the White House to coax the Republicans and the Democrats into a deal in the summer of 2011 to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Remember that deal? And another thing, there would be no tax increase. President Barack Obama himself endorsed the 2011 idea of sequestration before claiming in his third debate with Mitt Romney that, "The sequester is not something that I proposed." And he went on, "It is something that the Congress proposed." Really?
WASHINGTON -- I have long contended that public policy issues are as complicated as they appear because the giants of Capitol Hill like it that way, particularly the giants of the left. Bills can be written more simply. Decisions can be phrased with a certain lucidity. Yet, if they were, the electorate would mull them over and, after a cup of coffee, make a decision on them. As things stand today, with talk of budget imbalance and of esoteric matters such as "sequestration," voters scratch their heads, blink their eyes and walk away. Who gives a hoot? It is time for my morning nap, perhaps, two naps. This is another anti-democratic way that Washington politicians have bootlegged our legislative process. Make policy so confusing to normal people that they will take little or no interest in it. It is all a game reserved exclusively for the political class. Al Gore in his new book, prosaically titled "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change," bangs on about the power of lobbyists and giant corporations in shaping legislation -- do you know anyone who sits on more corporate boards than Gore? Has he considered the unwieldy nature of the legislation in the first place? Debt piled atop debt that even Warren Buffett cannot conceptualize. Sequestration, indeed -- why not segregation or constipation? It is a geek to me.
WASHINGTON -- I am indebted to Amity Shlaes for gently correcting a joke of mine that dates back to July 8, 1972. On that date in the New York Times, I joshed that President Calvin Coolidge "probably spent more time napping than any president in the nation's history" and therefore was a successful president. My joke was a play on an earlier joke by H. L. Mencken, and now Shlaes has corrected both of us. She has written a very impressive biography titled simply "Coolidge," wherein she never mentions Cal's naps but rather what made him the most successful president of the 1920s. He reversed the economic insolvency of President Woodrow Wilson, and set the economy on the road to growth, a road made rocky by Cal's successor, President Herbert Hoover, and rockier still by Hoover's successor, Franklin Roosevelt.
WASHINGTON -- It has happened again. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review referred to by Paul Krugman the other day as "a long-time conservative," has essayed in the New Republic the modern conservative movement, and traced us all back to John C. Calhoun. I suppose our point of origin could have been more sinister. Sam could have traced us back to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the former Confederate General who went on to be an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, but John C. Calhoun is bad enough. Of course, Calhoun is no kind of modern conservative. He is not even a typical conservative of the 19th century, at least outside the South. He would have made heavy weather of it in the North in the company of such conservatives as the Adamses or even the Virginia founders such as George Washington.
WASHINGTON -- In the aftermath of the Super Bowl, it is perhaps salutary to take stock of professional football and to suggest a few reforms that might make the game more wholesome. First, let me say that, in my humble estimate, this past season was, if not the best in my lifetime, surely one of the best. To be a mediocre player in the NFL today is to be a marked man among giants. Then, too, there is another point to be made. Someone failed to pay the electric bill. It was sobering to be reminded that even the NFL is not so powerful as to intimidate a Louisiana utility company. Next year I suggest that the NFL's hierarchy see to it that all bills are paid before Super Bowl Sunday, even the halftime entertainments' advances. What if Beyonce had gone on strike or refused to sing one of her trademark songs with their dirty, albeit moronic, lyrics? Or what if she had dressed in a burka? Actually I would have found that last gesture amusing and sophisticated to the utmost, though the perpetual teenagers in the audience would probably not have shared my amusement.
SANTO TOMAS DE CASTILLA, Guatemala -- Where is that, you ask? Generally this column comes to you from Washington, D.C. or New York City. Occasionally it comes from London or Paris. Today it carries the dateline of a seaport in Guatemala, and if it were written a day ago or two days hence it would carry the dateline of Belize. It is freezing up north. The inclement weather has driven me to tropical parts. Global warming sounds more and more agreeable to me and, frankly, if you have your wits about you, to you, too. The frozen remains of palm trees have supposedly been found in the melting ice of the poles. Well, that is good news. Bring together a village of Eskimos and notify them of the so-called perils of global warming and, my guess is, they would all become vociferous advocates of anthropogenic climate change. Think of it? Wearing a bikini in the North Pole. That is progress!
WASHINGTON -- A couple of weeks ago, I elaborated on how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had at the time failed for three straight years to write up a budget in the Senate, thereby breaking the law three -- now four -- years running. I said that he should write up a budget in part to inform the citizenry how their tax dollars were being spent. How much was going to the Pentagon and our nation's security? How much was going into green fantasies like Solyndra and payoffs to the Democratic Party's friends. That would be friendly fascism, the left's post-liberalism evolutionary stage. Some call it Obamaism. Where is the accountability? Failing to write up a budget is a dereliction of duty. At the time, I speculated ever so gently about what sort of crime Harry was committing. Everyone agrees that not writing up a budget is crime. Is it a felony or a mere misdemeanor? I innocently joked that senators from Nevada are not known for committing mere misdemeanors. Now having spent two weeks studying Harry's case and counseling with members of Congress -- past and present -- I think I am closer to excogitating a penalty for the wretched Harry.
WASHINGTON -- Former senator Chuck Hagel is a suave, energetic, spirited fellow. He is intelligent, and from his early youth apparently patriotic and undoubtedly courageous. He showed that in Vietnam. Hagel has been a Republican senator and an accomplished businessman. Now he is President Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of defense. Because he is President Obama's nominee for secretary of defense he is attracting dutiful scrutiny, and that is all to the good. This is not your ordinary presidency. In domestic policy and foreign policy President Obama is showing every indication of attempting to be an epochal president (with four million fewer votes for his second term than for his first). That is to say, he poses a distinct break from Ronald Reagan's model of government and even from Franklin Roosevelt's. In the economy he seems to be resurrecting the welfare state on the model of France or perhaps Spain. In foreign policy he famously promises to "lead from behind," as illogical as that sounds. In both areas his exemplars are sure losers, but his party and his partisans seem not to have noticed.
WASHINGTON -- I have one question about the way Majority Leader Harry Reid has been conducting the Senate. Has he committed a felony or a mere misdemeanor? The wags will say that a politician from Nevada does not commit misdemeanors, but I am in earnest. The difference between whether Dingy Harry -- as he is known by the eminent political scientist Dr. Rush Limbaugh -- shuffles off to a federal prison or merely pays a hefty fine is significant. I suppose we can leave it to the federal prosecutors to decide, but if he gets off on a misdemeanor I urge it also entail mandatory budget counseling. No one would be surprised to hear of Harry being sentenced to a stint at anger management counseling. Why not mandatory budget counseling too?
WASHINGTON -- I wonder, as we begin 2013 and look forward to four more years of this insufferable poseur in the White House, where Sandra Fluke might be. Miss Fluke is the lady who made birth control a matter of national security, in particular her own personal supply of pills and God knows what else. Prior to her appearance on the national scene I always thought it was a male?s responsibility to supply condoms, as the occasion warranted. Yet Miss Fluke enlightened me. Actually she never told us what she used these items for. I suppose I am jumping to conclusions. She might be an artiste, and they may be part of her palette. There are all sorts of things birth control devices can be used for. At any rate, she brought birth control to the fore in American presidential elections at least four decades after they became a fixture in America. In that respect she made history.
Washington -- The year 2012 is about to expire. It was a blank in my judgment -- poof and it is gone. We have the same sorry vacuity in the White House, bereft of knowing how to run the government. Just now he is off to Hawaii to loll in the sun, having left behind questions as to how to avoid our "fiscal cliff." Yes, he wants to raise taxes on the top two percent, but how do we reduce the deficit and finish off the tax bill? He has headed for the beach -- and practically no one remarks on the amateurism of it. The president is a poseur. Not much more can be said for the rest of the leadership in Washington, in Congress, in the media, strutting down the halls of government. As year chases year, I have come to the conclusion that this whole town is abundant with poseurs or worse. The blandness of the Washington and New York City scenes is maddening to anyone familiar with American history, a history filled with great figures.
Washington -- Think back. Have we not experienced all this before, say in the 1990s? Since October, we have known the defense measures at our Benghazi diplomatic installation were inadequate. Then there was the controversy over whether the assault on our diplomatic compound was caused by a peaceful demonstration that went haywire. It turned out there was no peaceful demonstration, contrary to the State Department's early account. But that was lost in the next controversy over security at the installation. Officials from State appeared before Congress. Some testified there was sufficient security. Some said there was not sufficient security. Some State Department officials contradicted themselves. Ultimately the entire question was wrapped in chaos as still other questions became incomprehensible. Let us move on.
