Published in Presidency

President Obama met with Senate GOP in a closed-door meeting yesterday which, by all accounts, turned somewhat testy.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) accused Obama of acting "duplicitous" in calls for bipartisanship. "I told him I thought there was a degree of audacity in him even showing up today after what had happened with financial regulation." Corker met daily with Democrats on financial reform, relying on promises of bi-partisan compromise, only to be excluded from the final negotiations.

As seems customary to his character, Obama bristled at GOP policy objections. According to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.):

The more he talked, the more he got upset. He needs to take a valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans and just calm down, and don't take anything so seriously. If you disagree with someone, it doesn't mean you're attacking their motives -- and he takes it that way and tends then to lecture and then gets upset.

Obama seems to be the thinnest-skinned president in recent history. Ironically, for a lawyer and politician, he is deeply uncomfortable (even angered) by the slightest disagreement or prospect of debate. 

Among the many reverberations of President Obama's election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

So says the NY Times.  But who made Obama possible? What about Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condi Rice? A succession of prominent Republican black appointments gave Americans the confidence that blacks are up to the task (younger readers will not remember the rarity of black quarterbacks). I submit that Obama could not have been the Democrat nominee without such precedents--from the opposing party.  Hence Obama's 2008 campaign put-down of Justice Thomas--why acknowledge one's dependence on the kindness of the other party?

Moreover, I would argue that baseball star and integration trailblazer Jackie Robinson (a Republican) made Martin Luther King's success possible.

To add to Andy Busch's anti-Obamacare focus (highlighted by Julie below) read Matt Spalding on the connection between the Declaration's denunciation of the old despotism of Britain and the bureaucracy's new despotism: 

The greatest political revolution since the American Founding has been the shift of power away from the institutions of constitutional government to an oligarchy of unelected experts. They rule over virtually every aspect of our daily lives, ostensibly in the name of the American people but in actuality by the claimed authority of science, policy expertise, and administrative efficiency....  

Either the party of the modern state will unify its control and solidify its centralized model of government, or a new coalition of its opponents -- unified by a healthy contempt for bureaucratic rule and a determination to reassert popular consent -- will gain control of the political institutions of government and begin the difficult task of restoring real limits on government.

See my previous posts on Presidential Proclamations dating of the designated event in explicitly Christian terms and from the Declaration of Independence.  Despite professed good intentions, the alteration in fact makes the honored Jewish Heritage Month less included for political purposes.  And such a feeling (and reality) of inclusion is what a presidential proclamation is intended to bring about.  Of course, the next move will be to drop the Proclamation dating system--and separate Proclamations from the Constitution's original dating language and the Constitution.

Can you imagine George Washington's Touro Synagogue letter rewritten by the Obama White House?  Do the descendants of those Americans feel less secure than their spiritual ancestors?  "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants--while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

"I don't accept second place for America. I want us to be first...." Thus began President Obama, in a sincere and robust tone which actually stirred a bit of patriotic confraternity within my heart. I was surprised to hear Obama speaking so openly in favor of American exceptionalism. My ears perked and I smiled ... until I heard the rest of the sentence.

"... in wind power, first in solar power and I want us to be first when it comes to bio-diesel...."

If only Obama could find the same pro-American enthusiasm he has for global warming and environmentalism in the context of U.S. military conduct, foreign relations, historical legacy, moral tradition, economic power and cultural excellence.

Well, I suppose then he wouldn't be a Democrat.

I think the pick will be former Arizona Governor Napolitano, and the Arizona illegal immigrant law is the tie-breaker, if any were needed.  Just the political angle:  The nomination will show the right at its worst--its sometimes irrational screeds on the serious problem of illegal immigration--and Napolitano will be able to present a credible case that she has had a centrist record on immigration reform.  She will also persuade some conservative Republicans that she is up on the terror issue (based on classified info), and that they should have confidence in her to make prudent decisions on national security law.  Her comments on the Christmas bomber can be explained as attempts to minimize panic.  This cancer survivor is of Italian ancestry but is a Methodist.  The fact that she was on the Anita Hill legal team doesn't hurt either--this is a crew that loves to hate Justice Thomas.

In the ongoing dust up over bank regulation, President Obama complains that GOP leaders are deploying a "cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts -- when he knows that it would do just the opposite."

As I read him, President Obama thinks that is it out of bounds to talk about bills in light of what unintended consequences they might have.  Assuming the President is acting in good faith, the goal of the bill is certainly to end such bailouts.  But if we have learned one thing about legislation over the years, it is that if often, perhaps always, has unintended consequences, often perverse ones.  And there are intelligent people of good will who think that the banking bill will, in fact, lead to more bailouts.  Perhaps they are wrong, but they, and those who think they may be right, are not merely being cynical.  By suggesting they are, the President is being needlessly divisive and petty.

Hence the only way to resolve this argument is to consider what the bill will, in fact do, and not what it is, in fact, designed to do.  In other words, we're dealing with plausible guesses.  But such humility about our ability to solve problems with legislation is bad for the political class, and for the people who get paid to support and write about them.

President Obama topped an international popularity contest among world leaders, with Hillary Clinton coming in third (bisected by the Dalai Lama at #2).

Whereas those over whom he actually governs have taken a far less favorable view as of late, Obama's charm endures amongst the Europeans.

Leader of the Free World, indeed.

Obama gets another selection for the Supreme Court this year, and voters trust him (46%) more than they do Senate Republicans (43%) to make the right choice. More (47%) believe that only qualifications should be considered by senators when voting on a nominee, while 43% believe political views should be a factor. Fifty-two percent approve of his first selection, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Rob Schwarzwalder of the Family Research Council reminds us that the census was politically necessary to count slaves, so the South could build up an electoral advantage in the House.  (See our Richard's earlier post.)  In taking a shot at Karl Rove, Rob points out the difference between today's census and the original ones.  And John Judis notes how wrong Barack Obama was to record himself as black on the census form:  "he ... confirmed an enduring legacy of American racism."

Today is the 145 anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated on Good Friday, April 14, 1865.  (Interesting that he spent Good Friday attending a comedy.)

In their zeal to find a cause of unjust big government, some conservatives turn against Abraham Lincoln.   Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo shows why this makes no sense.  Guelzo notes how government and its expense shrank after the extraordinary circumstances of the Civil War.  Of course if one thinks rebellion and secession (let alone slavery) can possibly be principles of constitutional government, then all bets are off.

Such seekers of the cause of our current discontents would be better off blaming either George Washington (which would show the absurdity of their historical understanding) or, actually on-target, the bipartisan duo of Progressives Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.  Read political scientists Sidney Milkis and RJ Pestritto, who know well the Progressive roots of current government.  (RJ, I'm told, has been featured on Glen Beck's program, which I've never seen.)

This piece is getting renewed attention in the past week. Even though it stands two years old. Its resonance appears due to several elements of the reign of Obama. John Podhoretz was not amused, but, he he seems more to disagree with certain observations rather than the overall spirit of the essay. Then see Spengler's response.

What are the unamendable portions of the Constitution? Why did the Framers make them unamendable?  Answer to the first--see Article V, last two clauses. 

Hint:  In other words, why is federalism a central American political principle (and what is its relationship to majoritarianism) and was the founding racist?  I doubt that any senator of either party has any interest in posing the questions, but I have to have hope.

For the other questions I would have had them ask of nominee Sotomayor, see here.

President Obama is now saying that we should tone down our rhetoric.  A fair point.  But is he the proper person to deliver that message?  This from a man campaign organization riles up doners with rhetoric like:

"Don't think for a minute that power concedes without a fight," Obama reminds his fundraising targets. "Please donate to Organizing for America's campaign to win this fight and ensure that real health care reform reaches my desk by the end of this year."

And we ought not to forget, as John Hinderaker notes, comments like: "if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," and who exhorted his supporters to "get in their face."  Unfortunately, a "community organizer" may not be a good candidate for calming the waters.

"A Washington Post poll taken last week showed that more people view the [Tea Party] movement favorably than unfavorably -- and that 62 percent believe it has either the right amount or not enough influence on the Republican Party."

The more opportunistic leftists libel Obamacare opponents as racists for wanting to limit federal government powers--and presumably justify states'-rights segregationists.  (Tell that to the sanctuary cities movement.)  We need to remind ourselves why the Founders made the bedrock principle of federalism, the equal representation of each State in the Senate, an unamendable part of the Constitution (Article V).  Consequently, thinly populated "red states" (with their guns and bibles) will always be with us.  (There are of course blue states with small populations, too.)  The federalist principle here is manifested most vividly in the electoral college--another institution the left would do away with.  The Sage of Mt.Airy has further thoughts on Federalist #51 and federalism's role in limited government.

The often astute Jeff Rosen eggs on Obama's confrontation with the Supreme Court, outlining a Court-bashing strategy Obama can use to his advantage.  (Given Axelrod's interest in Lincoln's political savvy, I'm sure something similar has occurred to him and has put it in play.)  The trouble is, Obama's manner of unleashing his attack, at the SOTU, made him look like a schoolyard bully, not a TR with the bully pulpit. 

If the Dems use the Slaughter House Rules to get Obamacare through, this Court-confronting strategy might help delegitimize an opinion declaring the desperate tactic unconstitutional.  Hence the short as well as long-term importance of the current wave of Mrs. Clarence (Virginia) Thomas-bashing.  But the left needs to silence more than her for the proposed Rosen strategy to work.

UPDATE:  See Matt Franck's demolition of Rosen.

With Obama's latest feint toward moderation, his reform of No Child Left Behind, consider Kevin Kosar's brief critique.  Here's his assessment of political science's contribution to political understanding.

See the sidebar links for book reviews, commentary, and lengthier studies on education, including his book.  Besides being an authority on federal higher education policy, Kevin also manages a website devoted to the model of all social science scholars Edward Banfield and another called AlcoholReviews.  He is the late professor's grandson-in-law--a fact evidenced by the closing line in the NCLB article "So call me grumpy, but I think much work remains to be done, and I won't be surprised if we end up sorely disappointed again."

David Brooks insists that Barack Obama, despite his misreading of public opinion, "is still the most realistic and reasonable major player in Washington."  (Look at the abuse leftist commenters heap on him, as your conservatism dismisses this as liberal madness.)  "In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism."  Bring me smarter citizens--the cry of savants throughout the ages!  In truth, Brooks has a point about Obama's Middle East policy and maybe on another issue or two.  But what is at the man's core, what he does he ultimately want to achieve?  Brooks is at odds with, among others', Charles Kesler's reading of Obama, which finds far more ambition (and political extremism) in him than in Clinton or other liberals.

Michael Gerson is even more problematic in his reasoning, making extraordinary parallels based on the relative successes of the gay rights and the pro-life movements:

But so far the gay rights movement has succeeded for many of the same reasons that the pro-life movement (to a lesser extent) has succeeded. Both have taken sometimes abstract, theoretical arguments and humanized them. Both have moved away from extreme-sounding moralism (or anti-moralism) and placed their cause in the context of civil rights progress. Whatever your view on the application of these arguments, this is the way social movements advance in America.

Yes, the way social movements advance is often through spurious comparisons, repeated by authorities.  Moreover, the civil rights movement morphed into racial/ethnic preference pleading that is a key part of expanding the administrative state.  It is the civil rights movement based on the Declaration that must move Gerson, but he has a strange view of it, if he wants to apply it to both pro-life and gay rights. 

Both Brooks and Gerson seem to lack any objective standards by which to assess whether a policy is moral or immoral, just or unjust.  Brooks endorsed a form of gay marriage; is Gerson far behind?    

But as much as some conservatives fail us we should ourselves of how bad liberal establishment journalism was and remains.  See the anti-Fox rant of Howell Raines, former NY Times editor, in tomorrow's WaPo.

Wouldn't it be a fine thing to have another president whose first serious taste of failure didn't come in the Oval Office?  We don't need presidents with exclusive academic credentials. We need presidents who know what it's like to work for a living. We need presidents who understand average Americans. We need presidents for whom the White House isn't just the ultimate résumé entry.

He's turning into President Telemarketer:  incessantly bugging you, trying to get you to buy a product that you don't want, can't afford, and have heard terrible things about.  But he's convinced that this call at dinnertime will be the one that changes your mind.

Henry Adams wrote that "The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin."  In an update, George Will sees the replacement of politics by the administrative state, as called for by Wilson and Obama, in the healthcare legislation.  RTWT, but here are the last two paragraphs:

So note also Obama's yearning for something [in healthcare legislation] "academically approved" rather than something resulting from "a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people," aka politics. Here, too, Obama is in the spirit of the U.S. president who first was president of the American Political Science Association.

Wilson was the first president to criticize the Founding Fathers. He faulted them for designing a government too susceptible to factions that impede disinterested experts from getting on with government undistracted. Like Princeton's former president, Obama's grievance is with the greatest Princetonian, the "father of the Constitution," James Madison, class of 1771.

Update:  Jonah Goldberg elaborates on Will's column, with thanks to Claremonsters.

Barack Obama loses the ACLU - in a full-page ad in the NYTimes. Neverminding the silliness of the ACLU's persistent objections that military tribunals are unconstitutional, the ACLU's real value is as an indicator of hyper-liberal mood and temperament. The natives are getting restless, Mr. President.

AG Holder has been given his just deserts, but State Department legal adviser Harold Koh may deserve even sterner rebuke.  In a lengthy (and fascinating) article in the Weekly Standard (see part 2), NYU law professor Kenneth Anderson notes Koh's unwillingness to offer defense of the legallity of the highly effective Predator drone strikes on terrorist leaders. 

Even as the Obama administration increasingly relies on Predator strikes for its counterterrorism strategy, the international legal basis of drone warfare (more precisely, its perceived international legal legitimacy) is eroding from under the administration's feet--largely through the U.S. government's inattention and unwillingness to defend its legal grounds, and require its own senior lawyers to step up and defend it as a matter of law, legal policy, and legal diplomacy.

And the Democratic Party, too, from the health care disaster:  The Parliamentarian of the Senate, who could rule that the Senate may not use reconciliation to pass the health-care bill.   That would give everyone an out. 

The "win-win" way out would be for Republicans Paul Ryan of the House and Tom Coburn of the Senate to develop a health care bill and bring it to a passing vote, with Obama coaxing it along and then signing it.  Democrats might choke or commit hara-kiri, but enough would vote for it; the rest could campaign on passing a real bill.  Republicans would finally have a positive domestic agenda, though they would likely lose their chance for a legislative majority in 2010.  Obama would avoid a disaster.  The fact that Obama is not interested in such a scheme or too weak to muscle it through indicates his lack of statesmanship, low or high.

With this head in the print edition of the WaPo, Michael Gerson's column scorns Glenn Beck's attack on Theodore Roosevelt for his Progressive policies.  The former Bush 43 speechwriter should have followed the lead of our Roger Beckett. 

In his "New Nationalism" speech at John Brown's home in Bloody Kansas, Roosevelt sees progress in history as arising from "this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess."  

Gerson objects that conservatives should no more go after TR than they should denounce Lincoln.  TR claims the legacy of Lincoln.  But Lincoln viewed human history as strangers becoming friends, not one of class conflict.  Moreover, TR pushed centralizartion of power far further than circumstances justified:  "The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good."  Even Gerson has to allow that TR's "progressivism could sound a bit like socialism." 

In claiming TR as a forefather of "reform conservatism" Gerson simply shows his allegiance to big-government conservatism and his lack of understanding of founding principles.  His speeches for "W" cited the Declaration of Independence often but without understanding the limited government principles within his founding document.

Glenn Beck's mentor on Progressivism, RJ Pestritto, has written these books so you can decide.

As the arguments about whether the legislature may pass major health care reform via the reconciliation process, rather than the regular legislative process, I keep hearing comparisions to this debate with that of 2005, when republicans conisdered ignoring Democratic filibuster threats aimed at blocking nominees to various courts.  Two points, for starters seem to be worth making.

It is lamentable, though not surprising how common this comparison is. As a short glance at the U.S. Constitution reminds us, we are talking about two different powers.  Health care is legislation, as such it has to do with the Senate's powers under Article I of the Constitution. By contrast, the power to advise and consent is under Article II, and is one of the cases where the Senate partakes of the execuive power that is, for the most part, loged in the President of the United States. Whether filibuster is proper for and Article II process is very much open to question. Invoking the filibuster over nominees was unprecedented in 2005.

The second point is that the current debates vindicate the "gang of 14" who "saved the filibuster" by negotiating a deal whereby the Bush administration withdrew some nominees, and the Democrats in the Senate agreed not to filibuster the rest.  Even though there is a very big difference between using the filibuster for Article I powers than for Article II powers, it would have made no difference. Unfortunately, our political debate is too ill-informed nowadays for such things to come into play.

Richard Samuelson, an American historian at Princeton's Madison Program this year, relates today's tea parties to the protests of the 1770s and also today's Progressive administrative state to the Imperial government suffered by the colonists.  Samuelson's conclusion:

Now we can see how today's tea parties resemble those of yesteryear. As more and more government operations are taken off the books, popular frustration rises. Similarly, and ironically, bureaucracies often serve the industries they regulate rather than the public good. When the government is unresponsive to the views of the people, and, beyond that, when our administrative and judicial branches restrict the scope of the people's legislative rights, protest rises. President Obama, an heir to the Progressive tradition, wants to strengthen this unaccountable, administrative state. The response has been altogether fitting.

A further comparison of some major Obama policies (such as its handling of terrorists) with the first grievances in the Declaration is also appropriate.

Drawing on his military experience, the Sage of Mt. Airy points out the dangers of the political correct (on environment, religion, sexuality) military to mission effectiveness.  Peer pressure

works by forcing those soldiers whose principal concern is military effectiveness (and thank God there's still plenty of them) to simply accept the PC codes as part of the "given" in any problem they face. Political correctness is, with a "can do" shake of the head and shrug of the shoulders, simply accepted as one more obstacle to be overcome. The effective officer figures out a way to work around it.

But the way around it is always inefficient, sometimes dangerous and far too often dispiriting. My son is a U.S. Army First Lieutenant currently serving in Iraq. When I asked him about his training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi immediately prior to his deployment he answered with this: "Dad, I'm not sure how we'll perform in combat, if and when we engage the enemy, but one thing I do know, we'll sure as hell not sexually harass them."

Now I suspect some of you may think I'm overstating the case. If so, ask yourself this question, or better yet, ask it of anyone you know (male or female, straight or gay, white or not) who holds a position of command in the military, at any level of responsibility: Is their duty of disciplining a poor performing soldier complicated or simplified if the individual in question is a straight white male? We all know the answer to this.

Unless you want a day to honor William Henry Harrison.  It remains Washington's Birthday, George Washington scholar Matthew Spalding insists.  (See his book, co-authored with Patrick Garrity, which remains the best book on Washington's ideas.)

The Monday Holiday Law in 1968--applied to executive branch departments and agencies by Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11582 in 1971--moved the holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, currently designates that legal federal holiday as "Washington's Birthday." Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any President has changed "Washington's Birthday" to "President's Day."

Not every complaint about fairness is really a protest against injustice; and not every complaint about injustice can be satisfied without running some risk that its real motive is the will to power. "Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its own sake," Lincoln admitted. But that was no sanction for "the pernicious principle . . . that no one shall have any, for fear all shall not have some." Two hundred and one years after Lincoln's birth, it might be well to remind ourselves that the real enemy of both fairness and justice is not weakness of will or an unwillingness to bear "shared sacrifice," but the seeping gas of power.

Pat Felder, who co-owns Felder's Collision Parts Inc. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, went to the White House in October, along with members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Obama came in, talked at us, shook a few hands and left," Felder says. "I was foolish enough to think small- business owners would have some sort of dialogue." [ed.--emphasis mine]

Along I-35, near Wyoming, Minn., one finds a billboard of George W. Bush - and the question: "Miss me yet?"

Liberals are apparently steaming mad and on a witch-hunt to find the anonymous sponsor. Such a humorless lot, those liberals.

Yet it may be a relevant question, given that Obama has just hit the lowest approval rating of his presidency. (44% approval, 47% disapproval, with crucial independents breaking heavily against him by 29%-57%).

The answer, by the way, is 44% of Americans say "yes."

He lets us know that he admires Abraham Lincoln, yet his speeches could not be more different from Lincoln's in respect to argument. Lincoln used argument to transcend momentary feelings. Obama avoids it by recourse to vacuous words like "change" and"hope," never saying toward what or for what.