Columnist.
As anticipated, the U. S. Supreme Court will join 300 million fellow Americans in rendering judgment on Obamacare. But with this difference: The high court's judgment, expected next June, will be the judgment that sticks.
The sagacious editorial page of the Wall Street Journal raised this question the other day of a too-little-noticed point concerning the long-running Herman Cain affair. The Journal addressed the much-discussed question of "why we don't have 'better candidates.'" Take a guess. "Because no normal person would risk it." On the nose! No "normal" person, for the privilege of leading the United States of America, would subject himself, I hereby suggest, to:
Republicans by the boxcar load adore him. You know what that means if you're a certain kind of Democrat, and the "him" in question is Herman Cain. It means Cain lovers -- even or perhaps especially, folks in Dixie, who might have lynched him 80 or 90 years ago for his uppity ways -- are playing a dark, devious game. They're using a black man to: 1) show how non-racist they are, 2) stick a thumb in Barack Obama's eye, or 3) control the candidate, like in the old, old days.
The war that presidential candidate Barack Obama called "stupid" ends in a few weeks by order of President Barack Obama, who thinks we've done about all we can in Iraq. In which case, he may be right. Though, he neglects to shine much light on the road that now lies before his country -- in regards to the United States' role in the world. Possibly, no other president, at this moment in history, would do differently. For with all the risks tied to withdrawing every one of the troops, leaving Iraq becomes something like a pacification of the country. With respect to its overall position in the world, the United States hasn't really known what it was trying to do since the collapse of the Soviet empire. Are we the policeman of the world, the bringers of democracy, or what? In regards to Iraq, it might be best for us to step back and ask a vital question: What's in it - however "it" may be defined -- for us?
"The protest against corporate greed born last month on New York's Wall Street spread across the world Saturday," according to The Los Angeles Times. But hold on! The Times is engaged in a question-begging exercise -- one with tendencies that deserve to be, but certainly won't be, shut down promptly. Such is the nuttiness of our era. "Greed" has brought us to this crummy pass. That's what we are to infer from these protesters, but they don't have proof. Greed is the motive principle of capitalism: More moola for me, the capitalist, less for you, the "99 percenters." The protesters want greed to stop now. But how? That's the sticking point: Nobody knows the means of legislating an end to the currently most conspicuous of the seven deadly sins.
Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, different leaders of varied labor unions -- pour it on, folks! Show your political solidarity with all the "occupations" going on around the country! Speak to us in anguished tones about the awfulness of free market mechanisms like banks and the horror of earning more money than someone else. While you're at it, tell us what you're going to do about the horrors of free enterprise and the profit motive. The explicit Marxist-Leninist remedy seems out of favor these days. That leaves, what? Congeries of yelps ("Stop Corporate Greed," "People, not Profits") from the ragtag occupation armies enjoying the autumn sunshine in venues from Wall Street to the West Coast.
"I, Rick Perry, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I further will avoid physical proximity to racially charged names susceptible of scandalizing the media on pain of public disembowelment." Would that speech do the job, should Gov. Perry against lengthening odds, become President Perry? Not a chance. The trivialization of American politics proceeds apace, with the enthusiastic collaboration of the media -- my own profession, one way or another, for nearly half a century.
Possibly the biggest argument against big government is that if it weren't so big we'd wait until election years to hold election-year arguments over what to do about big government. President Barack Obama understands the calculus concerning the endless election campaign. While angling for the Republican support he requires to get anything useful or useless -- either one -- passed by Congress, Obama bashes the Republicans, whose policies, he informs us, would "fundamentally cripple America." Sheer showmanship.
The fashion, one of them anyway, since Gov. Rick Perry entered the presidential lists is to bash him as a drooling neo-Confederate, pining for the good ol' days of states' rights. Yessuh, them Yankees tellin' us what to do all the time, why it's just unconstitutional, and we needs to see-seed! That's a pretty fair representation of the media trash-talk directed not just at Perry, but at the idea that the United States is constructed as something more than a drill team, kicking and stamping in unison, wheeling this way or that as the leader's baton moves about.
So much for the spirit of we're-all-in-it-together, which prevailed, more or less, at the 9/11 commemorations. The next day, President Barack Obama showed up in the White House Rose Garden to propose financing his presidential comeback by picking the pockets of his opponents. The president said some $400 billion to finance the tax cuts he wants should come from limiting itemized deductions enjoyed by the filthy rich, as he seems to define them: families earning more than $250,000 a year, not to mention those perennial favorites in the Obama lexicon, oil companies, hedge funds and owners of corporate jets.
An old joke would have it that there are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who preface broad statements with "There are two kinds of people in the world" -- and the kind who don't. The fact, nonetheless, is that for economic purposes there really are two kinds of people: the kind who think government has most, if not the all, the answers and, on the other hand, the kind who know better. You sense this, hardly for the first time, in the national palaver about jobs and economic recovery.
What fun -- a new way to do presidential politics. Namely, ask the candidates about their religious views, and find out, saith New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, "if a candidate places fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon (the text, not the Broadway musical) or some other authority higher than the laws and Constitution of this country." It's kind of fascinating, in a carnivalesque sort of way: the notion of religion as a force alien and dangerous to the American polity, hence to be regarded with fear.
"The Tea Party can go straight to hell," said Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California the other day. Having taken aboard that helpful piece of counsel, we can now press ahead with the task of putting America back to work -- the task Ms. Waters's party leader, our president, says he will address after Labor Day. Possibly, he will do so with a little more healing unction, but maybe not a lot more creativity, considering the administration's inability thus far to get its arms around a fundamental economic truth. The truth in question: free people work harder than, shall we say, less free people.
The way liberals reacted to Gov. Rick Perry's announcement of his presidential candidacy suggests many think Santa Anna didn't do half enough damage as he should of at the Alamo. Why he didn't burn down the whole &$!&$!& country, is the question seemingly on many minds. For instance, check out The New York Times website for reader comments on Perry: "Texas yahoo," "alpha male Texas quarterback type," "more whackos from Texas," "the Texas twang and the Texas swagger," "tiresome and stupid in a big Texas way."
Evidently, as my sainted mother used to observe, it's just one "D" thing after another. A handy letter, D, standing for debt along with other insalubrious things. Our economic traumas begin with debt (and don't we know it?) What we don't know, is what comes next. Let me make a slight suggestion here: The 2012 election comes next. Before it, nothing definitive is likely to happen; after it, the ship could start to slowly come around. I don't like to engage in naked politics (preferring as I do the chastely clothed kind). Though, at this point, there's nothing for it.
A little perspective on the debt-ceiling fracas might not be amiss. And so... Whoever said it first spoke a mouthful: Rome wasn't built in a day. To which I would add: congressmen didn't build it either. Members of Congress bicker, bellow and throw nails under each other's pickup tires seemingly trying to block meaningful action like the enactment of legislation authorizing payment of national obligations.
It's not that this wonderful land of ours has never known political fracases. A war that took place midway through the 19th century comes to mind. There was also, years later, if memory serves, an upheaval known as the New Deal, during whose course all manner of head-butting took place. The redeeming feature of knockdown-drag-outs, by whomsoever initiated and howsoever decided, is that they focus attention on matters too urgent to be laid aside for future contemplation. In which category is the debt-ceiling brawl. It's like a family intervention over Dad's unseemly craving for Old Grand-Dad. The music has got to be faced.
To quote The New York Times: There is across the land "both pessimism and cynicism about the state of [federal debt ceiling] negotiations in Washington, resignation about the partisan jousting, and more confusion than conniption about what exactly will happen" if there's no deal by Aug. 2. Take, for instance, Stephanie Perone of San Francisco, "who was drinking wine with a friend during Friday's happy hour. 'I have no interest in it ... it's just the same thing over and over.'"
"This is part of the problem with a political process where folks are rewarded for saying irresponsible things to win elections." No! Couldn't be! Saying things like "hope and change"? And now -- so as to strike the pose of adult calm amid riotous kids -- "Pull off the Band-Aid. Eat our peas. Now is the time to do it."
A problem as big and many-faceted as the problem of the public schools couldn't possibly be the fault just of teachers -- or even of teacher unions. The National Education, even so, makes clear why teachers have lost so much of the devotion and respect they used to command from Americans. Namely, because unions such as the NEA put their politics over the principles one might hope they hold. Out of Chicago, where the NEA just rose from its annual convention, comes notification -- I didn't say news -- that the country's biggest teacher union is endorsing for president -- come on, guess! -- Barack Obama. As was its right: free speech and all that. Figuring all Republican presidential candidates incapable of saying anything remotely interesting to a teachers union, the NEA, 3.2 million members strong, went ahead and endorsed.
