What tent cities, Rep. Paul?

"Tent cities on the edge of empty neighborhoods" are cited by Congressman Ron Paul as evidence that "now the crisis has come" for America's economy, as he has long warned. He makes the claim in his own words on TV and radio spots for his presidential campaign, airing in Colorado ahead of the Feb. 5 caucuses. It's a dramatic and powerful image, evoking the darkest days of the Great Depression. But how valid is it? If there were any sort of national outbreak of Bushervilles resulting from the subprime mortgage mess, you can be sure major media organizations would be all over it. But a web search turns up no evidence of same -- even if an outbreak is defined to mean two or more.

Google "tent cities" and you come up with exactly one (1) relevant result, a YouTube video depicting some tents pitched in Southern California "after the housing bubble burst." The only other search results from current news, a cluster of church-sponsored homeless encampments in Seattle and 84 shantytowns erected across the country by deaf activists upset about Gallaudet College, don't seem relevant to the candidate's generalization.

Like Ron Paul, I sympathize with the hardship of those who have lost their homes through unwise borrowing. But also like him (presuming the sincerity of his free-market professions) I can't blame that unwisdom on anyone but the borrowers themselves. For Rep. Paul to blame policymakers and regulators, as these ads imply, would be unworthy of him as a small-government constitutionalist and apostle of personal responsibility.

What am I missing here? Maybe you Pauliacs can tell me. Absent some documentation of numerous tent cities and some theory of liberals' responsibility for them, your man's broad hint to voters that as President he, of all people, would have an interventionist plan to remedy or prevent mortgage foreclosures leaves me with the uneasy feeling of intellectual dishonesty bordering on demagoguery.

Such over-claiming hurts the credibility of an honorable man who is right about a lot of things, economically and politically. It makes him sound like just another of those doomsayers and hard-money pessimists who have correctly predicted 13 out of the last three recessions.

Disclosure: I will be advocating for Mitt Romney when I chair my precinct caucus in Centennial on Tuesday night.

Obama is no JFK

It is a testament to how shallow our politics have become that an op-ed by Caroline Kennedy appears in the New York Times comparing Barack Obama to her father, John Kennedy. "A President Like My Father" cites Obama's ability to bring hope to the American people and inspire them to get involved in our collective future. Of Obama, she writes "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans". It may be understandable that Caroline Kennedy sees her father as an inspiring, towering figure in American history -- a man of great ideals who could move the nation. She was a young girl not quite six years old when her father was struck down by an assassin's bullet -- and her understanding of her father's life and legacy is unavoidably tied to the memories of "Camelot" as told to her through the eyes of ordinary Americans who were forever changed by his death. John Kennedy is now inexorably intertwined with his image as a new generation of leader, young, articulate, fresh -- with a classy wife in Jackie and two young children in the White House. It was then, and remains now, a tremendously attractive image.

On this cursory level, perhaps, you can make a comparison of Kennedy and Obama as young, urbane, well-educated and handsome leaders. They both exude a sense of hope and promise for a new generation of leadership to take over the entrenched interests in Washington. And both use soaring rhetoric that can be truly inspiring. That was evident again last night in Obama's victory speech in South Carolina. Like Kennedy, he can certainly turn a phrase.

But that's as far as the comparison goes. On substance, Kennedy and Obama are worlds apart. Kennedy was a liberal of the old school -- a realist who understood that certain threats to America needed to be met with blunt force, and who believed that the use of American power for good in the world was at its core a noble, generous act. It was Kennedy who said this in his first inaugural address:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Such a sweeping affirmation of the importance of America's role in securing liberty was at the core of Kennedy's foreign policy. This was borne out, overtly and covertly, in a series of military moves during his presidency: in the Bay of Pigs designed to secure Castro's overthrow, the Berlin Airlift that brought needed food and medicine after the Soviet blockade of the city, the blockade of Soviet ships in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the gradual but inexorable escalation of our military commitment to South Vietnam. In each of these cases, the goal was to maintain US security and to establish democracy in the place of a socialist brand of totalianarism, even at the cost of American lives. Kennedy was an interventionist; by today's liberal standards, he'd be a conservative hawk -- just to the left of Dick Cheney.

Obama, on the other hand, embodies none of Kennedy's commitment to liberty. He's hung much of his campaign on his opposition to the Iraq War -- a war that liberated 25 million Iraqis from tyranny and that is attempting to establish a democracy in the heart of the Middle East. While Obama is on the record as saying that he doesn't "oppose all wars" and has called for an increase of US troops in Afghanistan, he views the current struggle against terrorism as a series of skirmishes in the shadows, rather than a war against a world-wide movement of Islamic extremism. He seeks to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately, even though we now have a real chance at showing Al Qaeda that Iraq can be a success despite its best efforts at destroying it. He is on record as wanting to negotiate directly with Iran and Syria to help bring "stability to Iraq", though the evidence is clear that both Syria and Iran are responsible for the killing of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians with impunity. In sum, Obama is typical of the Left who see negotiation as a panacea, and who believe the fight against terrorism is really a law enforcement issue -- a sporadic crime wave rather than a strategic struggle for the future.

Caroline Kennedy is at least half right -- Obama is a liberal in the mold of a Kennedy -- except that it is Teddy, not Jack. He's missing JFK's conviction that our current fight against Islamic radicalism is akin to the struggle against communism that Kennedy waged during the Cold War -- and which would require a similar, methodical, steadfast commitment to "bear any burden" in ensuring the triumph of democracy and freedom.

At first glance he may look the part. But, if you dig beyond the shallow similarities, Barack Obama is no Jack Kennedy.

It killed them to stand

Washington emergency rooms were swarmed last night with Democratic congressmen and senators experiencing acute joint pain from unwillingly giving repeated standing ovations during President Bush's State of the Union address. With a national television audience looking on, majority Democrats were forced to their feet again and again to avoid looking stupid when Bush spoke of winning in Afghanistan, persisting in Iraq, having Al Qaida on the run, facing down Iran, and bringing home 20,000 troops.

Cardiac specialists from Rose Hospital told Politics West that Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, and members of their caucuses were fortunate that partisanship and ideology prevented them from standing or applauding at number of other points in Bush's speech, however.

The stress of having to acknowledge his superior logic on such issues as making the tax cuts permanent, expanding consumer choice in health care, pursuing stem cell research without destroying embryos, and authorizing surveillance of terrorists could have felled many Democrats with heart failure, the specialists said.

The President and Vice President, meanwhile, were given Botox shots by White House doctors to relieve extreme facial fatigue -- after struggling for most of the hour to suppress broad grins at the Dems' persistent discomfort, whether sitting or standing.

Baiting Romanoff & Booting Temple

State Rep. Douglas Bruce jerking around Speaker Andrew Romanoff before joining the House was one thing: a calculated bid for attention, rude but arguably shrewd. His putting the boot, literally, to a Rocky Mountain News photographer is something else again, however: plug-stupid with no conceivable justification. Someone needs to tell him the ink-by-the-barrel rule of political life and public relations. Bruce's foolhardy footwork, bringing down the wrath of Rocky publisher John Temple along with a near-unanimous rebuke from his own Republican caucus, is an utter loser for the man's legislative aspirations and, worse, for the GOP conservative cause he claims to support.

Deliver us, please, from such friends. My endorsement of Bruce's candidacy for this House seat, and my congratulations to him upon winning in it, are on extreme probation and rapidly approaching termination.

After being wrong fourfold about the New Hampshire primary last week, I now have the embarrassment of being -- it seems -- wrong again about what constructive benefit might come from having the self-proclaimed "terrorist" of taxpayer protection join the Colorado House of Representatives.

Mea culpa. One humbling experience after another; how much character-building can I stand? "When I make a mistake," as Fiorello La Guardia famously said, "it's a beaut."

Supply-side Rudy, fumbling Fred

(Lyon, France, Jan.14) However off-target many polls might be, as the New Hampshire primary demonstrated, Rudy Giuliani’s freefall in the latest surveys is being established as a fact. This might be well due to his strategic plans to focus exclusively on Florida and the February 5 states, and thus deliberately leave the early January limelight and momentum to the other contenders in the Republican field. More likely, his glissade may be the result of some conservative voters’ initial, albeit reluctant, support for his tough stance on terrorism finally draining away from him as supposedly more conservative candidates wisecrack voters into paying attention or work harder to get some traction.

Whatever the case might be, Rudy Giuliani is in trouble. He should not be. Asked a similar question about what to do to ward off a looming recession, Rudy Giuliani, the allegedly least conservative candidate in the Republican race because of his views on social issues, and Fred Thompson, proudly endorsed by Human Events on January 11 as a “solid conservative”, gave such very different answers as to turn the conservative world upside down.

Here is what Fred Thompson said on “Late Edition” on January 13: “(…) Increase the child credit, that would get money into the hands of lower income folks (…) At some level, I think a stimulus package and tax rebates would be beneficial.”

Stimulus packages delivered by government, including putting more money into people’s pockets for them to spend, has a name. It is called Keynesianism. It is what liberals do.

Now compare Thompson’s reply with what a dubious conservative like Giuliani had to say on Fox News Sunday the same day:

“ The kind of short-term stimulus you need is to present a realistic picture of an economy that’s going to grow and then the private sector and the investment sector, the multiples of money that that would involve, dwarfs anything you’re talking about [Hillary Clinton’s stimulus package]. (…) If the government in Washington presents the picture of immediately moving toward pro-growth policies, you have growth right away. A lot of the movement of money, not just in markets, but in general, is a prediction of not just where the economy is today, but where it is going to be next year, the year after, and the year after that.”

Stimulating the economy through private sector investment has a name too. It is called supply-side. It is what genuine conservatives do.

Now comprehensive conservatism should be about free-market economics, traditional values, and strong national defense. Rudy Giuliani might reasonably give pause to some social conservatives because of his views on abortion and gay rights -- but even social conservatives have to work and support their families and Giuliani’s supply-side answer would tangibly help them. Might his prescription also lift the remaining scales off their eyes and show them who the real conservative is when it comes to the crunch?

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.