Obama

Words worthless to halt aggression

(London, Oct. 6) The mistaken belief that clever diplomacy was a substitute for force of arms led to Athens’ defeat by Sparta, according to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Two thousand years later the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu- himself a master diplomatist- observed that diplomacy was useful only when it was the “velvet glove adorning the mailed fist.” Finally we recall the 19th century German Chancellor Bismark who famously stated that “ the great questions of the day are decided not by speeches in the Diet but on the battlefield by Blood and Iron.”

These ideas may sound harsh to some contemporary ears but they remain highly applicable in our very imperfect modern world, as the Russian invasion of Georgia reminds us yet again.

Russia’s aggression has rudely shattered illusions and highlighted unpleasant truths worldwide.

Prominently revealed in the wreckage is the terminal disunity of the European Union. While French President Nicholas Sarkozy flew to Moscow to appease Vladimir Putin- reminding many of Neville Chamberlain’s infamous flight to Munich to appease Adolf Hitler- the Presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine flew to Tbilsi to support the embattled President of Georgia.

Besides revealing the stark divide between “Old” and “New” Europe this sad scenario puts a final end to EU dreams of being a coherent diplomatic and military power on a par with Russia, China, and the United States.

Thoughtful commentary across Europe is now realizing the EU is trapped between its ongoing hostility to its nominal American ally and its newly revived fear of Russia’s imperial ambitions. Equally clear is the fact that answers to these challenges are different in virtually every member state and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The major lesson here is that diplomacy and the attendant speeches in the U.N., European Parliament and U.S. Congress are utterly useless absent a credible determination to impose serious consequences on aggressors.

Just as Hitler correctly perceived the flabbiness of the Western democracies at the time of Munich, so too did Putin calculate that he would face no serious consequences for his invasion of Georgia. Also like Hitler, no one should believe that he sees Georgia as Russia’s final territorial acquisition.

The hard lessons that Europe is relearning have considerable implications elsewhere in the world and are highly relevant to the choice Americans will make in the upcoming Presidential election.

Within the coming year the United States will face important decisions regarding the next chapter in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similarly the nuclear confrontation with Iran may reach critical mass.

As their first debate illustrated, Senators McCain and Obama have starkly differing worldviews and approaches to the projection of American power around the globe.

While Obama ritually insists that “all options are on the table” and casually repeats a willingness to send U.S. troops across the Pakistan border, absolutely everything we know about him and the Democratic Party he now leads strongly suggests that the preferred options favor talk over action. These include deference to the U.N., the World Court, the E.U., and “world opinion” generally. He worries that the U.S, is not “liked” and believes this should be corrected by a multilateral approach to just about everything.

When asked how he would handle Russia, Iran or other tyrannies Obama’s usual response is “tough, direct diplomacy." As Hillary Clinton pointed out he has a “naïve belief in the efficacy of sitting down face to face with dictators."

What exactly would he say to them? Does he really believe that his breathtaking eloquence would persuade Putin to leave Georgia, Ahmadinejad not to exterminate Israel, or Kim Il-Jong to cease his nuclear program? Would he be willing to actually threaten them with consequences, even if he lacked the full backing of the U.N., E.U. etc.?

McCain is much more like Truman or Reagan: Utilize diplomacy when helpful, but always be willing to take forceful action when needed. Seek allies whenever possible, but be prepared to go it alone when vital American interests are at stake. McCain’s motto as he noted in the debate is that of his hero Theodore Roosevelt who said “Speak softly and carry a big stick."

The worldview, policy inclinations, and attitude toward their country of these two men is as divergent as their life experiences. Not within living memory has a Presidential election presented Americans with a clearer choice. ---------------- William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.

Set Sarah free!

I mostly listened to the Vice Presidential debate on radio, though I did get to see some of it on TV. Palin held her own and well exceeded the low expectations that the media had set for her. She was confident, poised and articulate -- even as she faced off against the verbosity machine that is Joe Biden. Biden was...Biden. He spoke quickly with an authority that is designed to make his statements seem like fact -- even when they aren't. Palin took him on effectively, and wasn't afraid to confront Biden's frequent exaggerations. I thought that had John McCain done that well last week against Obama the Republicans would be in better shape today.

Palin missed some chances tonight, specifically to refute the Obama-Biden claim that McCain was responsible for deregulation which got us into this mess. That's clearly only part of the story; Congress has been a big part of the problem by forcing too much regulation on Fannie and Freddie. If Fannie and Freddie had been forced to react to market risks on loans, they would never have made the vast number of sub-prime loans that they did.

Palin also missed a big chance to wack Biden on the War in Iraq -- specifically on his claim that Obama supports the same withdrawal plan that Maliki and Bush are negotiating about. Hello? The only reason anyone is talking about a withdrawal now is because of the surge that John McCain supported and Biden and Obama opposed. I wish that Palin had hit him over the head with that.

One thing that I didn't like about Palin's performance tonight: her consistent use of "corruption" and "greed" to describe Wall Street.  Certainly, some corruption always exists at the nexus of money and public policy -- but to make blanket statements that tar and feather an entire sector of our economy is populism worthy of John Edwards, not the Republican Veep candidate.  The mess we are in is more about the corruption of Capitol Hill and the lax interest rate policies of the Fed than it is any systemic disease on Wall Street.  Banks took advantage of the rules and pushed the limits to make money.  With risk comes reward -- and often failure. 

Also, I would have liked to hear Palin say also that the behavior of  borrowers played a role in this mess, too -- and that it wasn't just the responsibility of "predatory lenders".  People have to take personal responsibility for their decisions, and if this is not a theme promoted by McCain-Palin then they become nothing more than the victim-baiters that Obama-Biden are. 

In any event, my suggestion to John McCain is this: Set Sarah Free!

Let her go. Let her be spontaneous. Let her be the maverick, fun woman that she is. She's the only candidate who can relate to the American people as a real person. It is something that helps to differentiate the McCain-Palin ticket from Obama (effete, Chicago intellectual) and Biden (career Senator). It's what turned on the Republican base and got independents excited about McCain after the Convention. He needs to let her work her magic.

McCain's campaign -- and thus his chances to be president -- are in bad shape at this point. All polls in the battleground states are now leaning for Obama. He needs to do something dramatic to turn this around.

The Howard Beal election

It's hard to turn on the TV these days. The news and images from Washington are like a train wreck. The height of hypocrisy: the crooks who made this mess posturing for a bailout on the backs of the taxpayer... looking stern and serious while they sit in gilded offices paid for by the investment banks and mortgage firms -- those that provided them with cheap loans to their poor constituents, while profiting handsomely from complex, opaque financial instruments that no one understands. While Washington slept the market ran wild, fueled by impossibly cheap money and overabundant credit. The Wall Street Journal ran a picture of J.P. Morgan the other day. He looks like a banker: stern, serious, practical. I wonder if he'd have given people $400,000 stated income loans; not a piece of paper to prove their earning or their ability to pay it back. That's what we did in the hyper-fueled lending world of Freddie and Fannie. You need to buy a house. Can't afford it? No problem, we'll cover you. Can you imagine J.P. Morgan doing anything so stupid?

And now comes the final indignity: the "bail out". The House yesterday decided not to pass a $700 billion bailout bill. They did so to prove that we are still a free market. They did so to save their reelection chances. They did so to protest the Bush Administration and their total mishandling of this crisis from start to finish. Whatever the reason: it failed. And rightly so.Does anyone really think that the Bush, Paulson or Bernanke have any idea what is really going on here? Fortune Magazine reported last week that the $700 billion number that Paulson chose has no analysis behind it:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Wow. How comforting is that? We know that markets operate on psychology, and that the large number is designed to provide confidence in the market that the government has a big enough solution to take care of the problem. I understand that.

But I also understand something that George W. Bush and his team have never understood: this is also a political issue during a presidential election. The Bush Administration remains totally tone deaf to the concerns of the American people. While the $700 billion number may calm financial markets, it has shocked, dismayed and infuriated the American taxpayer.

Hello? Is anyone out there? Does George Bush really want Barack Obama to become president? It sure looks that way.

In fact, Bush's handling of this issue looks a lot like the war in Iraq before General Petraeus went to Baghdad. It looks incompetent, poorly planned and poorly executed. It looks just like the mess that Gens. Casey and Abizaid got us into, with American soldiers dying daily amid violence and chaos on the television. Total mis-management. The American people lost confidence in Donald Rumsfeld in 2004. And what did the President do? He held his course, kept Rummy on and took a beating in the 2006 midterm elections. Bush was shocked to take such a shellacking. He didn't understand the level of discontent among the voters then -- and he doesn't understand it now. Americans in vast numbers are angry at Washington. Mad as hell, as Howard Beale famously yelled out the window in the movie Network. And they aren't going to take it anymore.

[photopress:180px_Network12_1.jpg,full,pp_image]

Who will pay the ultimate price for this debacle? John McCain. He's been swallowed whole by this mess and his campaign will never recover. Yes, he miscalculated -- the whole "suspending his campaign" gambit backfired. Frankly, his instincts on the bailout were wrong; his behavior showed him as a legislator. A compromiser. Not as an executive who had to make a tough call in a crisis. He temporized and vacillated.

In fact, McCain missed a golden opportunity: He could have taken the momentum and initiative away from Obama and come out forcefully against the bailout from the beginning. He could have stood up in the debate and said:

I'm against this because I don't believe in taxpayers footing the bill for what is essentially a $700 billion entitlement program. Yes, I know the situation is serious and that we need to provide relief to the credit markets. But there is a better, less-intrusive way to do this: change the "market-based" accounting rules so that firms can revalue their portfolios to something that reflects their true intrinsic value. Provide loans and guarantees that the firms will pay interest on, etc. etc. etc.

But McCain didn't do that. He didn't see the opportunity for bold action and decisive decision-making. He could have put Obama in a corner. And with public opinion running 2:1 against the bailout, the polls would have been on his side.

In the end, this is the kind of crisis that either makes or breaks a candidate. The odds were against McCain from the beginning, but his handling of this issue has fallen short. He was dealt a bad hand by Bush and his bumbling lieutenants; in this case, running against Bush would have been smart for McCain. But it was the kind of "game changing" opportunity that comes about only once in a campaign. If you seize it, you win. If you don't, you lose.

So far, McCain hasn't seized it, and unless Palin pulls out a miracle against Biden and McCain can rally in the last two debates, the Republicans will lose on November 4.

'Who are those guys?'

The late Paul Newman's famous refrain with Robert Redford, playing Butch and Sundance just a step ahead of their relentless pursuers, is what the GOP should have been making front-runner Barack Obama mutter for the past month. Opportunity missed, and election hopes greatly dimmed. McCain didn't go for the jugular on economics or national security in his first debate with Obama, despite many chances to do so.

Palin has gone bland and cautious since the convention, instead of blistering the opposition ticket and lynch-mob media with her testerone as we know she can.

House and Senate Republicans haven't trained their fire on Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter as the guilty authors of the mortgage mess.

It pains me to bracket a class act like Newman with a phony like Obama, however similar their political views may have been. (Redford is another story; he and BHO can have each other.) But the analogy of that wonderful Western and campaign 2008 holds true.

It was going to take hell-bent determination and, yes, a killer instinct for the center-right posse to chase down the charming leftist who already cleaned out Hillary's bank and is now closing in on the White House vault. Barack heard footsteps for a while there in August and early September. He was looking over his shoulder, maybe ready for that desperate cliff dive into the river.

But the cold sweat of "Who are those guys?" wasn't sustained, Obama has regained some breathing room, and in another 35 days of hard riding the biggest prize of all may be his.

"What we have here," to switch Newman movies for a moment, "is a failure to communicate." That monument of understatement from the death scene in "Cool Hand Luke" applies in spades to the McCain-Palin campaign and may become their epitaph.

We can hope not as we remember the great films and say: RIP, Paul.

Look for substance in debates

The first of three presidential debates has been completed, with the sole vice-presidential debate scheduled for Thursday evening. Evaluation of these quadrennial events tends to be based on the most superficial matters, such as whether a knockout blow or a major gaffe was made, the presidential "look" was evident, expectations were met, positive or negative impressions were given, and so on. Instead, what we should be looking for in a president is evidence of solid character and sound public policy. Some voters are still undecided, in part because neither of those decisive criteria matter to them as much as superficial appearances. However that may be, the country depends on wisdom and virtue, not charisma or demagoguery.

Of course, character and policy, wisdom and virtue, are only distinguishable in theory; in real persons one finds some combination of these. Still, a man of character is more likely to favor sound policy than a man of bad character. A virtuous man is more likely to be wise than a vicious man.

When it comes to character, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, has a distinct advantage. For not only did he demonstrate his courage as a prisoner of war at the hands of the North Vietnamese communists, but he has never feared to buck political pressure from inside as well as outside of his political party. I will not maintain that he has always been right–only that he would rather be right than win an election.

A year ago McCain’s campaign for the Republican nomination seemed doomed. In fact, his own fate was inextricably tied to our country’s. During nearly four years of America’s attempts to crush extremists of various stripes following the stunning victory over the forces of the late Saddam Hussein, McCain was almost alone among members of Congress in calling for an increase in troops and a change in strategy. His judgment and his candidacy were vindicated when Gen Petraeus’ "surge" virtually chased the enemy from Iraq and gave peace and stability a chance.

That same courage was on display at last Friday’s presidential debate with Democratic candidate Barack Obama. He justifiably reminded everyone of his lonely crusade to save America’s policy in Iraq and criticized his opponent for his failure to admit that he was wrong in dismissing the surge, not to mention opposing the removal of Saddam Hussein’s despotic regime, with its history of deploying weapons of mass destruction.

McCain is not the skillful rhetorician that Obama is, for that latter’s nimble verbal footwork gave the impression that his quarrel with America’s decision to topple Hussein was merely because we had "taken our eye off the ball" in Afghanistan. But it is a known fact that Obama could not win the Democratic nomination without appeasing the far left that is animated by a combination of Bush hatred and hostility to American interests.

When Obama declares that the next president, preferably himself, will need to repair the damage done to America’s reputation abroad caused by the allegedly disastrous policies of George Bush, he is merely repeating a less obvious version of the "global test" that sank failed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry‘s chances four years ago. It was no accident that Sen. Obama went abroad a few months ago to "wow" Europeans and try to pressure the Iraqi government to delay any permanent agreements with the United States until Jan. 20, 2009.

Democrats are reputed to have an "edge" when the country is in economic crisis, as it is now. Obama only made an appearance with McCain at a meeting of the President and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson with congressional leaders to hammer out some sort of relief package for the nation’s credit. But McCain wisely rescued the House Republicans’ alternative private insurance plan from being ignored by Democrats, who preferred to stick taxpayers with the full cost of the proposed bailout and cover up their up-to-the-eyeballs involvement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

We are in a credit crisis not because of inadequate federal regulation of private investment companies but because federal law encouraged easy credit and two quasi-governmental behemoths made a mockery out of the lending business by enticing people who could not afford even to make a down payment on a home, to sign papers for purchase anyway.

In future debates one hopes that voters will look past the atmospherics and listen carefully for evidence of what we need in a president, not for what merely pleases us.