Right Opinion

Groundhog Day in America

Barack Obama won a moderately close victory over Mitt Romney on Tuesday. But oddly, nothing much has changed. The country is still split nearly 50/50. There is still a Democratic president, and an almost identically Democratic Senate at war with an identically Republican House, in a Groundhog Day America. Obama's win did not really reflect affirmation of his first term, given that the president made only halfhearted efforts to defend Obamacare, the stimulus, huge Keynesian deficits and his attempts to implement cap-and-trade. So if there is a second-term agenda, even Obama supporters don't quite know what it will be

Status Quo Preserved

WASHINGTON -- America's 57th presidential election revealed that a second important national institution is on an unsustainable trajectory. The first, the entitlement state, is endangered by improvident promises to an aging population. It is now joined by the political party whose crucial current function is to stress the need to reform this state. And now the Republican Party, like today's transfer-payment state, is endangered by tardiness in recognizing that demography is destiny. Perhaps Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election on Sept. 22, 2011, when, alarmed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry's entry into the Republican nomination race, he rushed to Perry's right regarding immigration, attacking the DREAM Act. He would go on to talk about forcing illegal immigrants into "self-deportation." It is surprising that only about 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Romney.

Obama Re-elected -- 9-Year-Old Black Kid Can Breathe Easy

Brandon, a 9-year-old black kid, attended a campaign rally hosted by Michelle Obama. A cameraman interviewed Brandon, who was there with his dad. "Why does (Obama) need to win?" he was asked. "Because if Mitt Romney wins," he replied, "we'll be going back to the crop fields. We'll be picking crops." Off-screen, his father could be heard laughing. From whom does a 9-year-old hear that Obama's opponent is a racist who, to quote the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, wants "to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws"?

Four More Years of Decline

Great nations and proud empires have always collapsed from within before they were conquered from without. President Obama's re-election mirrors the self-indulgent, greedy and envious nation we are rapidly becoming. Pollsters Michael Barone and Dick Morris got it horribly wrong. Both predicted a 300 electoral-vote win for Romney. It was President Obama who reached that mark. The central message coming out of the election seems to be that we are no longer the America of our Founders, or even the America that existed during World War II, which produced our "greatest generation."

Hollywood Mysteries

I used to review movies, first for the Daily Bruin when I was attending UCLA, and then for Los Angeles magazine. Even I'm amazed that I could stand to do it for 12 years when, at the end of each year, I was hard-pressed to come up with a list of the 10 Best. To be perfectly frank, my list usually had three or four pretty good ones, another few that were okay, and two or three that were, at most, preferable to undergoing a prostate exam. Still and all, I will state that I had a far easier task than those who have to sit through movies these days and file reports on the experience. For one thing, people like Billy Wilder, William Wyler, John Huston and Alfred Hitchcock, were still making movies back then. Today, you've got James Cameron, Wes Anderson, Steven Spielberg and Kathryn Bigelow, and Hollywood is actually handing out Oscars to the likes of "The Hurt Locker," "Forrest Gump," "Crash," "The English Patient," "No Country for Old Men" and "Titanic."

What Happened?

Obama won. Not by a lot, but by more than enough. In the end it came down to the battleground states, and President Obama won most of them by slim, but decisive, margins.

A Golden Retriever's Trick or Treat

Almost every night I take a 2-year-old golden retriever on a long walk through a safe and sylvan suburban neighborhood. This is Champ's dominion, and he prances through it with the happy confidence of a not-so-long-ago puppy who now assumes he is undisputed sovereign of all he surveys. Champ is particularly tolerant of the lesser creatures in his realm. Chipmunks skittering by in the dust, geese honking through the skies overhead, squirrels scrambling for the nearest tree -- these things rarely disturb his princely mien. Even the arrogant red fox -- who has made a habit of casually strolling across the road 50 feet in front of Champ's otherwise attentive nose -- elicits no response at all from this most benevolent of neighborhood monarchs.

A Dreadful Media Campaign

Throughout the very long presidential election cycle, two trends remained consistent. The media lauded Obama no matter how horrendous his record, and they savaged Obama's Republican contenders as ridiculous pretenders. From the start of the Republican race in 2011, every candidate who took the lead took an unfair beating. They even slimed Sarah Palin in case she decided to run. Martin Bashir announced she was "vacuous, crass, and, according to almost every biographer, vindictive, too." Newsweek mocked Michele Bachmann on its cover, making her look pale, confused and nutty, with the headline "The Queen of Rage." Politico and other media outlets tried to pin sexual harassment claims on Herman Cain without naming, or even knowing the accusers. The Washington Post killed trees to report in earth-shaking depth how the Rick Perry family had leased a hunting property where once the N-word was painted on a rock. Never mind that it was the Rick Perry family that covered it with white paint. Chris Matthews smeared Newt Gingrich by saying "He looks like a car bomber ... He looks like he loves torturing." Matthews thought Newt was also polluting the civil discourse. "Ever since he appeared on the national scene, politics has been nastier, more feral, too often uglier."

Our Disenfranchised Troops Deserve Better

The next president of the United States must do right by our men and women in uniform. Our troops put their lives on the line to protect our right to vote, but untold thousands of them were unable to cast their own ballots on Tuesday. For shame. Veterans groups and soldiers advocates have warned about military disenfranchisement for years. M. Eric Eversole, director of the Military Voter Protection (MVP) Project and a former litigation attorney in the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, reported that "more than 17,000 military and overseas voters were disenfranchised in 2008 because their ballots arrived after the deadline and had to be rejected." That doesn't include the thousands more whose ballots never arrived or arrived at their bases too close to the election to be returned. The total number of troops affected this year could be more than double or triple that because of the relocation of nearly 70,000 military personnel out of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past year.

More Government

I expect that by the time you read this, President Obama will have been re-elected. Get ready for four more years of Big Bloated Government. Hurricane Sandy didn't help. The New York Times declared "a big storm requires big government," and my liberal neighbors agreed. My science-challenged mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said the storm makes it imperative that America do something about climate change. He said this even though hurricanes have not increased and little evidence exists that man has much effect on climate. With Obama's re-election, we now will spend billions more on "green" strategies. But the Earth won't notice.

Nate Silver's Numbers Racket

In the last week or so, an intense kerfuffle broke out over the poll-prognosticator Nate Silver and his blog at the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight. Silver, a statistician, has been predicting a decisive Obama victory for a very long time, based on his very complicated statistical model, which very, very few of his fans or detractors understand. On any given day, Silver might have announced that -- given the new polling data -- "the model" was now finding that the president had an 86.3 percent chance of winning. Not 86.4 percent, you fools. Not 86.1 percent, you Philistines. But 86.3 percent, you lovers of reason. Not surprisingly, for nervous Mitt Romney supporters, Silver's model has been a source of vexation. For nervous Obama supporters, he's been a constant reassurance. On her Twitter feed, Katha Pollitt, a columnist for the left-wing magazine The Nation, prodded Silver: "Why are you on a plane when you should be at yr desk updating 538 EVERY FIVE MINUTES?"

Our Deviant Society

Here's one usage of the term gentleman: The gentleman helped the fallen lady to her feet. Here's another, one we might hear from a newscaster or a police spokesman: Tonight we report on the arrest of two gentlemen who raped, sodomized and murdered an 80-year-old woman. During earlier times, to be called a gentleman meant one was honest, brave, courteous and loyal. Today "gentleman" is used interchangeably in reference to decent people and the scum of the earth.

Waiving Freedom

A Cop's Best Friend

Our dog, a Maltese/Yorkshire terrier mix named Lana, knows one trick: She sits on command. Sometimes this will get her a peanut, but it does not really do anything for me. When Aldo and Franky sit, by contrast, they accomplish something important for their police handlers, signaling the presence of illegal drugs and justifying searches that would otherwise be prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Two cases the Supreme Court heard last week offer an opportunity to impose long overdue restraints on this amazing ability to transform a cop's hunch into probable cause, which is based on serious misconceptions about the meaning of a police dog's "alert." Aldo, a German shepherd, was riding with Officer Todd Wheetley of the Liberty County, Fla., sheriff 's office on June 24, 2006, when Wheetley pulled over a pickup truck driven by Clayton Harris because of an expired tag. Harris seemed nervous to Wheetley, who later said he was shaking, restless and breathing rapidly.

America Is Two Countries, Not on Speaking Terms

You know who won the election (or whether we face another Florida 2000), and as I write I don't. But whether Barack Obama is re-elected to a second term or Mitt Romney is elected the 45th president, the contours of their support during this fiercely fought campaign show that we live in Two Americas. The culturally cohesive America of the 1950s that some of us remember, usually glossing over racial segregation and the civil rights movement, is no longer with us and hasn't been for some time. That was an America of universal media, in which everyone watched one of three similar TV channels and newscasts every night. Radio, 1930s and 1940s movies, and 1950s and early 1960s television painted a reasonably true picture of what was typically American.

A Last Look at the Battleground States

Judgment day.

Persecuting Jesus

The nineteenth century French painting, Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, today hangs in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. It has not lost its capacity to shock. In the Roman Circus, the small flock of Christians is huddled in the sand, kneeling around their aged pastor. We see weeping little children, whole families gathered. In the stands are tens of thousands of people, none of whose faces are visible, but they are colorfully dressed, awaiting a special entertainment. The scene is eerily lighted by flaming crosses. Looking more closely, however, we see those crosses bear Christians, covered in pitch and set aflame. Their suffering, at least, will be brief. Out of the depths beneath the Circus stride lions a single tiger. The lead lion advances menacingly toward the Believers.

Some Military Voters Disenfranchized

Veterans enable Americans to cast the ballot

Gross Misconceptions

This country is at a historic crossroads, and the path we choose can determine our future far beyond the next four years. Our children and grandchildren may someday bless us or curse us for what we do this Tuesday. Against that background, it is painful to see the petty talking points and gross misconceptions that seem to dominate this year's election campaign. Take the question of jobs. How many times have we heard about how many jobs have been added during the Obama administration? Yet few people bother to find out whether these are net additions to jobs -- which is what is crucial. The government can always increase some jobs, either directly by hiring more people or indirectly by policies that increase employment in particular industries or regions. But the real question is whether the government's actions create more jobs than they destroy -- that is, whether there is any net addition to jobs.

Do You Want Revenge Against America or Loving Restoration?

Mitt Romney was very wise to pivot on Barack Obama's impromptu statement that "voting is the best revenge" and frame the campaign in the final days as a choice between that negative message and Romney's "love of country." I wouldn't say that if I thought Obama's statement was merely a slip of the tongue. Rather, I believe that in another unscripted moment, he once again revealed who he really is and the essence of his mindset. When his soul mate and spouse said that her husband's ascendancy was the first time she'd been proud of America in her adult life, she wasn't just throwing out words. She was telling us who she is and what kind of hang-ups she has about pre-Obama America.