Don't be fooled by Obama's 'moderation'

The mass media have been filled with news of the pending policies and appointments of President-elect Barack Obama, particularly the signs that his administration will be more ‘moderate’ than many on both the left and the right expected. The leftists are restraining their rage and the conservatives are breathing a sigh of relief. Don’t believe it. While it is true that the responsibilities of governing can be sobering for even the most ideological of presidents, they can be overcome in time. And while it is also true that “personnel is policy” to a considerable degree, even the old Clinton stalwarts that Obama has selected for the cabinet-level positions serve only at the president’s pleasure.

“Rule will show a man,” the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote 2300 years ago, and it always does. Obama’s strength has always been rhetoric, and his two-year quest for the presidency revealed that he is not too shabby at campaign management and organization. But making life and death decisions for the sake of the American polity is a whole different matter.

Those of us who recall the presidencies of the two previous Democrats find more similarities than differences. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton won over the national media to their cause, taking office on a wave of enthusiasm. They, too, had the advantage of their fellow Democrats controlling Congress. And they also made impressive cabinet-level appointments.

But both Carter and Clinton had failed administrations. I don’t mean failure in the narrow sense of failing to achieve their goals, which in fact they did in some cases. I mean in the more profound sense that their ideas for improving the country were demonstrably mistaken.

Carter was elected in 1976 on a vague promise of restoring the trust of the American people after the defeat in Vietnam and the trauma of the Watergate scandal. That got him into the Oval Office but didn’t restrain him from bestowing unconditional amnesty on Vietnam-era draft dodgers (like Bill Clinton), calling for austerity rather than production to deal with the 1970s energy crisis, failing to restrain spending and raising the payroll tax on social security, cutting the defense budget, abandoning America’s allies in Central America and the Middle East, and failing to rescue 58 Americans held hostage by Iran.

As for Clinton, he didn’t merely admit, like Carter had, that he had lusted for other women but actually had affairs with several women while “stand by your man” Hillary vouched for him before the adoring cameras of CBS. The most notable slogan of his 1992 campaign was “It’s the economy, stupid,” as if the challenges facing our nation abroad could be wished away after Ronald Reagan had won the Cold War.

Clinton had higher priorities, like lifting the ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces, abandoning his promise of a middle-class tax cut (this will soon be repeated), nationalizing health care and, of course, cutting the defense budget.

Congress, after members were given a videotape of gay pride parades, defaulted to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but continued with a policy of unrestrained domestic spending. Not surprisingly, Clinton asked for an income tax rate increase, which passed Congress by a narrow margin. Then there was the “Hillary care” takeover of the health sector that went down in flames even without a vote. Islamist terrorism was merely a legal question.

Obama has proposed new federal spending of nearly one trillion dollars, huge cuts (again) in the defense budget and abandoning our allies in Central America and the Middle East (again), while signaling a desire to “transform” this country into a kind of model project of “progressive” reform. However he couches his proposals in reassuring terms such as “stimulating the economy” or “restoring America’s prestige abroad,” you can be sure that taxes will go up and America’s defenses will go down.

Obama’s studied pose as a moderate actually is the personification of the academic habits he acquired in elite colleges and universities where professors typically affect a detached approach which only obscures a radical impatience with the supposed inequities of flawed human institutions.

The professorial class sees America as a racist, imperialist, oligarchic, sexist and homophobic regime that is indifferent, if not hostile, to the needs of other nations and peoples and needs the stern corrective of impoverishment and impotence. The Constitution places obstacles like separation of powers, bicameralism, judicial independence, freedom of speech and press, and private ownership in the way of progressive enthusiasms. Sooner or later, however, Obama’s contempt for the Constitution will become clear.

ABOUT THE WRITER Richard Reeb taught political science, philosophy and journalism at Barstow College from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of “ Taking Journalism Seriously: ‘Objectivity’ as a Partisan Cause”  (University Press of America, 1999). He can be contacted at rhreeb@verizon.net.

Celebritizing of politics isn't good

Before leaving for a brief sojourn through South America, I noticed something troubling on the news. On one channel, hordes of photographers followed Britney Spears around snapping shots of her every move while she was out and about somewhere in LA or New York. Bored with the usual pop drivel, I flipped to Fox News and there was a very similar scene of flashing bulbs and a legion of paparazzi.

But Fox News was not covering Britney Spears, they were covering Alaska's Governor, Sarah Palin. The scenes were almost identical, both women were being swarmed by countless reporters--every move being photographed.

This type of celebritization of political identities is not just a problem for Palin though. Our soon-to-be President Barack Obama is widely treated like a celebrity and was even criticized about it by the McCain camp in a very successful campaign advertisement. At moments, Obama's campaign (and McCain's for that matter) seemed to craft Hollywood-esque scenarios to capture the attention of the audience...the voters.

When elections become nothing more than popularity contests and public persona is more important than policies and principles, democracy suffers.

Kenyan expectations also overblown

Roger and Kate, friends of mine from Denver who are Christian missionaries in Mozambique, happened to be in Nairobi, Kenya, for a conference the first week in November, during America's election. Their report in an email to me not only illustrates the contrast of cultures and customs from there to the US. It also points up how not-Kenyan our next President is in some of his ways. Roger wrote as follows:

Everyone in Kenya wanted to know for whom we would vote. Where we were staying lacked television and internet, so our son had to text message us from elsewhere with news about the election. Among those at the conference who favored McCain, it created a pall over the morning, but the Kenyans were elated.

The following day was declared a national holiday - Obama Day. Obama poster-size calendars were passed out in the newspapers as the "Year of Obama." They all think that it will be easier for Kenyans to get visas to the U.S. and/or the U.S. will now solve all of the problems with the Kenyan government.

After all, in Africa, this is what family does. If one comes into wealth, he is expected to share that wealth and opportunity with the rest of the family. They don't see nepotism in quite the same light as we do. Now one who is considered one of their own has just "inherited" the wealth of the richest nation on earth and they are expecting great things.

It makes me both proud and sad - proud that they think so highly of the U.S. that we can solve all of their problems - sad to think that there is going to be great disappointment one of these days. Fortunately, by the time that I was leaving, cooler heads in the newspapers were trying to explain to the people that countries like the U.S. are subject to rules about what they can and cannot do.

So "in Africa, this is what family does... share that wealth and opportunity with the rest of the family." On the one hand, this would help explain the redistributionist views Obama has expressed, as well as the starry-eyed expectations of some supporters in this country -- notably Florida's famous Peggy the Moocher, who told a TV camera all the expenses she counts on him to cover for her.

But on the other hand, elated Kenyans need to remember the President-elect's cool disinterest in being a sugar daddy even to his own blood relatives, including the half-brother living in a hut near Nairobi on $1 a month, and the destitute aunt in public housing in Boston (who is apparently not even a legal US immigrant). He hasn't lifted a finger to help either of them. Good luck to everyone else in the old country.

It sounds as though Nairobi media were already starting to cool the locals' overheated hopes by the time Roger and Kate left in mid-November. But just to be safe, maybe Kenya should be added to the itinerary of those Obama press spokesmen who have been working to dampen stateside expectations about his administration.

Will BHO tack to center like Sarko?

Rush Limbaugh’s giddiness since the Republican election loss has proved infectious among French advocates of American conservatism, admittedly a rare breed but a committed one nonetheless. Why the Gallic mirth? Well, consider this. During the French presidential campaign back in early 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged that, if elected, he would bring profound change to economically sclerotic France. “La rupture” he dared call it to liberal and even some center-right catcalls and hisses.

About 18 months on, those previously doing the catcalling and the hissing are now cheering and blowing kisses to their Nemesis-turned-fellow-traveler. How come? Well, in France’s predominantly leftist political culture, President Sarkozy has realized that his approval ratings as well as his chances of reelection in 2012 depend to a large extent on his ability to tack to the left.

Judging by his social and economic record so far, his reelection campaign started about a year ago. He calls it “pragmatisme”. Let’s take it for what it really is and call it Socialism, the “spread-the-wealth” kind of Socialism America voted for more than a week ago. Even on foreign policy, Sarkozy is turning out to be a typically French fair-weather friend, gesticulating against America’s Missile Defense just to placate his KGB pals over in the Kremlin.

Given la rupture’s slim hopes of survival in post-election worlds, President-elect Obama’s “Change we can believe in” may well follow Sarkozyesque revert-to-cultural-type political meanderings after all.

In other words, in a (still?) predominantly center-right country like the United States, Obama may well realize that sticking to some lite version of pro-family-strong-defense-tax-cutting conservatism is his best political option.

Even Rush himself not so facetiously let the cat out of the electoral bag a few days before the vote. In a brief exchange with Rudy Giuliani over Joe Biden’s Obama’s-gonna-be-tested-gaffe, Rush hinted that Biden’s pleas to liberal faithful for support of Obama’s response might actually imply that the next president would be as tough as George W. Bush.

Nothing for conservatives to worry about then? Maybe so, unless a majority of the American people, including 20% of conservatives, are so enamored of Sarkozy and Socialistic France that they are prepared to take their cue from Tocqueville’s ill-advised descendants and ditch freedom for the smothering embrace of Welfarist paternalism.

In that case, freedom will have been no more than one election cycle away from extinction. Conservatives, French and American alike, would then all be laughing on the other side of their faces.

Note: “Paoli” is the pen name, er, nom de plume, of our French correspondent. Monsieur is a close student of European and US politics, a onetime exchange student in Colorado and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

Everybody wants some

Nearly five decades after John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to ask what they could do for their country, the new national sentiment seems to be, “Ask what your country can do for you.” In fact, it could have been an ’08 election slogan. How many times did we hear jubilant Obama supporters exclaim how the government was going to pay their mortgage and buy them gas? Unfortunately, they aren’t the only ones hoping to get a pocket full of newly minted change.

Unexpected voices have joined the entitlement choir. It isn’t just the grievance industry who wants politicians to redistribute the wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not. Middle class families and businesses of all stripes have come to feel entitled to other people’s money. They may criticize big government in the abstract but fiercely defend their government loan, farm subsidy, business incentive or government program. To borrow a line from Van Halen, “everybody wants some/ I want some too/ Everybody wants some!/ Baby, how 'bout you?”

The real legacy of the bipartisan accord between liberals and big government Republicans is not the $10 trillion national debt levied on the next generation, but the spread of government dependency to the formerly self-reliant.

Even the once tough pioneer-spirited state of Colorado has been seduced by Washington largesse. Only days after the election, several Colorado business leaders told the Rocky Mountain News how they would like the new president to spread the wealth around. Their Christmas list includes funding for individual homebuyers, money for the state, health care for their employees and, of course, subsidies for their industries. It reads like a conversation between Orren Boyle and Wesley Mouch of Atlas Shrugged.

They are not the only ones. After a $1 trillion bank and Wall Street bailout, Congress is talking about bailing out automakers and sending cash to the states. In the new state stimulus package, Congressman Ed Perlmutter is hoping for energy sector giveaways. Congresswoman Diana DeGette and Congressman-Elect Mike Coffman want cash for infrastructure. Of those interviewed by the Rocky Mountain News, only Rep. Doug Lamborn seems to understand that “giving aid to states and their taxpayers at the expense of placing an equal burden upon federal taxpayers” is a bad choice.

“There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do,” observed Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman. The government cannot produce jobs or wealth out of a hat. To give to some through handouts, bailouts, subsidies, and grants, it must take from others. The government burdens entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers, the true engines of a vibrant, free economy, through taxation and regulation and further weakens the dollar through debt spending.

Anyone who lived through the 1970's saw firsthand what government intervention can do. Nevertheless, a new poll shows 72 percent of Americans are looking to the new president to revive the economy. Some 44 percent of Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in this false hope. I’d be willing to bet that a significant percentage of these Americans expect to get a check, a program, a subsidy, or an incentive for themselves, their business or organization.

Proponents of limited government should be worried. We’re counting on the predictable failure of liberal government policies to pave the way for a conservative comeback like they did in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. There is a worrisome difference between then and now, however. Americans nodded when Reagan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Since then too many people have come to see government as their source of hope and have no qualms with being its object of charity. Is America already so far down the road to serfdom that we're forgetting what it was like to be free?

Krista Kafer is a Denver-based education consultant, frequent cohost on Backbone Radio, and regular columnist for Face the State.com, from which this is reprinted by permission.