The United States is about to go into that season of political discourse and verbal combat known as the presidential election process. It seems the previous election is barely over and the next crop of presidential wannabes start lining up and creating distinction between themselves and the person in power. The process has produced coronations, like the second term elections of President Nixon and Reagan, surprise political savants appearing out of nowhere like Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama, politicians thrust into the role like Truman and Johnson, and can’t miss politicians that missed, like Senators Muskie, Glenn, and Teddy Kennedy. The journey to the election, no matter how unsatisfying the result, is a grinding battle that takes place in the harsh spotlight of an intense press, the need for voluminous sums of investors, and the capacity to weather rhetorical storms.
In an important article in the National Review, Paul Gregory gives definitive insight to a much different presidential process, the byzantine, behind the scene struggles of the men who would lead Russia. The election of 2012 is rapidly approaching, and unlike the American version, the battle to determine the winner will take long before the official vote. The epic battle brewing between the former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin, and the man he chose to replace him, Dmitry Medvedev, is every bit as compelling as the American version, though much of the contest will be shielded from the public eye.
Democracy in the Russian Federation is an evolving concept with no deep historical roots. 400 years of totalitarian Tsarist rule of the Russian empire was disturbed only by the brief blip of the Russian Provisional Government that wobbled out of the upheaval known as the 1917 Russian Revolution, comulnating in the overthrow of czar Nicholas II. The country barely looked up to see the czar gone, only to be thrust back into civil conflict and the rise of the communists, with 70 years of totalitarian oppression by communist overloads and demigods like Lenin and Stalin, and a whole host of other unsavory politicos. The final nail in the totalitarian coffin was driven by the shaky leadership of Mikael Gorbachev, whose glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) concepts to evolve a more humane communism only hastened its collapse by exposure of its fundamental failings, hypocrisies, and conceits. The whole Potemkin village edifice of a functioning superpower economy came crashing down in 1989 with loss of the vassal states of eastern Europe, and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
The first direct election for a President in history in 1991, brought a reform minded ex-communist to power, Boriis Yeltsin, who presided the next 8 years over a wild west atmosphere in Russia complete with “shock therapy” capitalism, oligarchy formation of major Russian industries, rampant economic strain, and nasty, bitter regional conflicts such as Chechnya, in provinces that did not achieve separation when the Soviet Union dissolved. Fragile political parties developed in this period stood no chance surviving the upheaval and the population craved the steadier times provided by autocratic rule. Yeltsin was replaced by Vladimir Putin, and the conversion of the early seedlings of healthy democracy, a vigorous press, multiple parties, and an independent judiciary, were rapidly silenced. Stabilization of the Russian economy through weak currency and strong oil exports have rebuilt the Russian veneer of a strong stable central government, but the price has been steep with Putin permitting increasing corruption among supporters, devastating attacks on opponents, and heavy handed governmental tactics that remind many of the closed economy and political apparatchiks of earlier times. With Putin’s two terms completed in 2008 and his desire to maintain the appearance of respecting the Russian constitution while maintaining power, he appointed himself prime minister and positioned Dmitry Medvedev, a technocrat, to succeed him as President. I suspect the plan was Medvedev to play caretaker until Putin was free to resume the presidency after the necessary interval of four years.
The best laid plans often fail to predict all contigencies, and Putin clearly failed to see how Dmitry Medvedev would grow into the role of president. He has proven himself competent on the international stage, more engaging then the brutish Putin with other leaders, and inherently more trustworthy. Surprisingly, his calm, rational demeanor has proven a modern alternative to Putin’s egocentric superman persona, and the russians are beginning to view him as a compelling alternative to the godfather approach of Putin. As Paul Gregory points out in his terrific article, the secret in Russia is to pick the winner correctly if one wants to prosper, and a surprising number of Russian politicos are hedging their bets. What will occur over the next year is anybody’s guess, but it is not difficult to see the continuing split personality of the Russia that wants to be modern, and the Russia that wants to be dominant. Time will tell if the country with its endless resources, will finally grasp its potential and take advantage of its diverse capacities. Putin vs Medvedev, is a heavyweight fight for the future of Russia. The best Presidential debate with the most impact on the battle of free will versus security, may yet be fought in 2012 on a foreign shore.
Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel visited the White House as a guest of President Obama. The President, as is his way, once again managed to frame a major address on a controversial subject in direct rebuke to the guest for whom the subject matter has most cause. President Obama, on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit pointedly undermined 40 years of carefully crafted American diplomacy by declaring the Arab demand for Israel retreat to its pre- 1967 borders as the appropriate basis for Israel’s participation in a peace settlement. Having recently set up Representative Paul Ryan for an uncalled for slap down on a national stage regarding health care, the President attempted this subtly arrogant technique on Netanyahu, but this formidable opponent was not about to allow historical distortion to stand. Mr. Obama, whatever else his intellectual gifts, tends to show an understanding of history that projects as if he learned it on the back of a cereal box. Prime Minister Netanyahu determined to take the opportunity of a post meeting press engagement, to take the President to school and teach a course on Middle East History 101. The accompanying video has rapidly spread across the internet, and perhaps shows once again, why amateurs who dabble in stratospherically difficult historical questions, can look fairly silly:
The questions of the arab israeli conflict have proved resistant to the most dogged and talented of diplomats. The apocalyptic nature of the jewish holocaust of World War II led to the world finally coming to grips with its role in preventing a deserving place for the jewish people in the human story, and the partition of the land of Palestine into Israeli and Arab states was accepted by United Nations Resolution in 1947. Israeli acceptance of the resolution followed, but the Arab powers rejected it. The result was Israel declaring nationhood on May 14, 1948, and the Arab governments of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq attacking the land of Israel the day after in an effort to eradicate it. Israel fought them off, and has been fighting on and off for its existence ever since, under a whithering blizzard of anti-israeli retoric, pre-mediated terrorism, and at times outright war for the next 60 years. The Six Day War of 1967, established Israel as the region’s significant military power in a stunning victory against a three front enemy that led to expansion into Syria, Gaza, Sinai, and the West Bank. Since that time, the faux arab argument has been to state there can be no peace and no acceptance of Israel without the retraction of Israel to its pre-1967 borders. In the interim and several more wars, Israel has withdrawn from Sinai, portions of the West Bank and Gaza. It has declared the need for defensible borders in any collective settlement, but has known in its heart, that the only acceptable border to the region’s arabs is an Israeli border that would exist only in history. The eradication of Israel as an ultimate goal of arab nationalism has always been the cause celebre, and has certainly pre-existed the establishment of the 1967 borders. A telling video from 1958 with Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, the profoundly erudite Abba Eban, shows clearly that the issues have not changed much in 50 years, and it would behoove the President to take a little more objective look at history, before he shows himself to be an historical fool in his efforts to surmount history.
http://youtu.be/9x8l9d3g_8Q
There is a large consortium of republican standard bearers developing a year and a half before the 2012 presidential election as evidence continues to mount that the current president is progressively running out of time to adjust the economic landscape that will be present come next November. As an upstart candidate who managed to come from nowhere to defeat an incumbent president now several decades ago so aptly put it, “it’s the economy, stupid!” The massive stimulus spending has proved to be an economic bust, inflation driven by basics for the economy like food and oil is gaining momentum, the debt process is progressively de-valuing the currency, and the mythical ability of a government to “create” jobs has once again been disproved. Who wouldn’t want a shot at the title belt running against that record? Charles Krauthammerwith his usual verve sizes up the potential combatants and assesses their individual chances of being in the title match. Its almost a Shakespearean group of protagonists. There’s the Mormon businessman running on conservative competence who when given a state to run put in place his own version of Obamacare, to the death of that state’s finances. How about the former House Speaker, who puts out more ideas about everything like a lawn sprinkler, but has not proven to those who have worked with him that he can show the personal discipline necessary to cleave out the bad ideas. Okay, maybe the populist from the great expanse of Alaska, who shoots bears and takes on the establishment with equal verve, or maybe her twin sister from Minnesota with equal populist sentiments and tough mother appeal? Best yet, how about the gas bag from New York City, who would like to run on an agenda of birtherism, lessons gleaned from the Apprentice TV show, beating up on the Chinese, and techniques learned from going bankrupt multiple times without ever being called on it – oh yeah, that one would be a good one. And those others – the good guy former governor from Minnesota who no one is paying attention to, the Mississippi governor who struggles to escape his cultural past, the former governor of Arkansas, who liked tax increases, cap and trade, and …oh forget it.
All right, I admit it. I am not that impressed with the options. Is there no one of the necessary substance and intellectual heft to take on the coming demagoguery that is sure to flow from our current prince? Is there no one trudging through the still snowy fields of the Midwest working on the craft of communicating to the people, devising and adjust the message of necessary sacrifice, reform, and adult responsibility? Is there no one who can synthesize the byzantine inner workings of government, discern its draining effect on the economic impulses of a nation, and articulate a clear concise strategy to achieve a soft landing and energetic and sustained economic future for America? Nobody? Really?
Wait a minute, that person sounds just like…Paul Ryan. Christian Schneider of National Review Onlinedetails what Mr. Ryan is up to in small town hall meetings in Wisconsin this spring and the public reaction to his message. It is no wonder that the floundering Washington prince has determined that, in a series of speeches across the country to detail the lack of detail in his deficit reduction plan, pointedly isolates Mr. Ryan as enemy numero uno to the status quo of negligence and demagoguery he wishes to protect for one more term. Mr. Ryan may not fully admit to himself what he is up to, but everybody else including the President himself is viewing it as Mr. Ryan’s spring training, in which he is warming up his vaunted talent and trying out his many pitches. It seems he can no longer go to a meeting without someone asking Ryan “The Question”, and his pat answer that he is happy doing what he is doing now, may not fly when, after the game really begins and the outcome is at stake, the crowd looks out at who is pitching the message and asks for the Closer.
Mr. Ryan has the necessary skill set to close out the contest, its just a matter of time before circumstances dictate that he ask for the ball.
This has been an eventful week in the annals of hypocrisy, a storied section of the human library if there ever was one. We had the passing of the U.S. budgetary resolution to prevent a governmental shutdown with a alleged “crushing” 38 billion in savings painfully carved out of the federal budget of 4 trillion. That draconian 0.95% cut from overall spending achieved with much gnashing of teeth and wailing by politicians regarding pain on closer inspection by the Congressional Budget Office accounting, turns out not to be a cut at all, but a 300 million dollar gain- hey, who knew? Then there is the “this is not a war” war in Libya, in which “our involvement will be days, not weeks”, now heading for its third month, with the Libyan dictator still in place, and no identifiable resolution on the horizon. But wait, there’s more – on center court, the king of the tactic, the big Kahuna, the Masters Class in Hypocrisy- was provided this week by no less than the President himself in what was billed as a national retort and “serious response” to Representative Paul Ryan’s budget plan to gain control over spiralling debt and achieve stability in our nation’s impending entitlement crisis. This effort at hypocrisy was so transparent, so state of the art, that its deserves a full Ramparts recognition, so we may be in awe of a master at his craft.
On April 13th, 2011, President Obama delivered his vision for America’s priorities and the need for budgetary discipline, in response to Representative Paul Ryan’s comprehensive budget plan recently passed by the House reforming entitlement programs and putting America on a path to fiscal solvency. For several years now, the President has engaging in budgetary discipline rhetoric, demanding that “grown-ups” step forward to suggest serious plans for deficit reduction, while himself engaging in ballooning deficit spending at historic levels. Two groups of “grown ups” stepped forward. His own deficit commission he appointed provided a template for maintenance of governmental spending at a GDP of 21%, and Rep. Ryan’s plan securing a cap at 20% while addressing the vexing entitlement problem which threatens to consume the budget. He has ignored them both, and in a particularly pointed Presidential smack-down, lured Ryan and his deficit commisioners to sit a few seats away from Obama as he delivered his apparently more “grown-up” response. The drizzle of hypocrisy was sustained and arrogant.
First, the President framed the nation’s budgetary history as in line with the current crisis, suggesting that prior administrations had recognized and tackled a similar fiscal problems presented by entitlement spending through budgetary discipline and tax hikes.
Now, at certain times -– particularly during war or recession -– our nation has had to borrow money to pay for some of our priorities. And as most families understand, a little credit card debt isn’t going to hurt if it’s temporary.
But as far back as the 1980s, America started amassing debt at more alarming levels, and our leaders began to realize that a larger challenge was on the horizon. They knew that eventually, the Baby Boom generation would retire, which meant a much bigger portion of our citizens would be relying on programs like Medicare, Social Security, and possibly Medicaid. Like parents with young children who know they have to start saving for the college years, America had to start borrowing less and saving more to prepare for the retirement of an entire generation.
To meet this challenge, our leaders came together three times during the 1990s to reduce our nation’s deficit — three times. They forged historic agreements that required tough decisions made by the first President Bush, then made by President Clinton, by Democratic Congresses and by a Republican Congress. All three agreements asked for shared responsibility and shared sacrifice. But they largely protected the middle class; they largely protected our commitment to seniors; they protected our key investments in our future.
As a result of these bipartisan efforts, America’s finances were in great shape by the year 2000. We went from deficit to surplus. America was actually on track to becoming completely debt free, and we were prepared for the retirement of the Baby Boomers.
It would be difficult to find a President who has been looser with the facts of history. The coming baby boomer entitlement wave has been recognized for decades but nothing has been done about it. Taxes passed by congresses and presidents adjusted current budgetary debts, not future deficit drivers. Representative Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, head of the Ways and Means Comittee suggested in 1988 a form of catastrophic health insurance and prescription coverage to achieve control of Medicare’s burgeoning expenses and was nearly lynched for it, and the bill was repealed. Social Security, a progressively unfunded mandate, was recommended to be put in a “lock box” by Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election and was summarily laughed out of discussion. The momentary debt reduction achieved by the Clinton Administration came to a crashing halt with the .Com bubble burst and the catastrophe of 9/11, and no mechanism was in place to maintain the spending discipline required in the face of such threats to the economy. In contradistinction, commission after commission acknowledged the devastating effect of 70 million baby boomers entering into an average of 20 years of entitlement exposure in both securities and health care. and no mechanism under present structures to remotely pay for them. Its a farce to imply America’s finances “were in great shape.”
But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program -– but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts -– tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.
Oh, of course; now its clear. Once again, its all George W. Bush’s fault. You have to understand; according to this president’s logic, the money available is all the government’s to spend. If it wasn’t for those treacherous citizens receiving some of their own money back, the government would have more available to spend in its progressively uncontrolled fashion. Unfortunately the facts again don’t fight. Under the Bush tax cuts, governmental receipts went up every year until the fiscal collapse of 2008 and subsequent recession, and the budgetary explosion in spending versus tax receipts occurred with President Obama’s first budget. In fact, he signed into law an extension of those cuts for an additional two years when every economist warned him to do other wise could sink the recession into a depression. Once again, the Obama reality:
So, thankfully, having discovered that the entire debt crisis arose only out of the 8 Bush budgets, the President, the only “grown up” in the present argument, is going to right the ship with mature budgetary cuts that take into account the obvious arthrimetic of the entitlement wave, right? Not quite. After over 4 trillion dollars of deficit spending in two and one half years of Obama economics, what is needed first is…more deficit spending:
The America I know is generous and compassionate. It’s a land of opportunity and optimism. Yes, we take responsibility for ourselves, but we also take responsibility for each other; for the country we want and the future that we share. We’re a nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI Bill and we saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives. That’s who we are. This is the America that I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit our investment in our people and our country.
To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.
So today, I’m proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years. It’s an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission that I appointed last year, and it builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table — but one that protects the middle class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.
The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week. That step alone will save us about $750 billion over 12 years. We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs that I care deeply about, but I will not sacrifice the core investments that we need to grow and create jobs. We will invest in medical research. We will invest in clean energy technology. We will invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We will invest in education. We will invest in job training. We will do what we need to do to compete, and we will win the future.
The money for this new investment will come from the usual sources. First, we will “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse” from government. Okay, that’s never been tried before, and based on the waste, fraud, and abuse inherent in the Obama stimulus package, should be a pretty good pot of money. Then there is that defense department, which will need to reduce its last two years of budgetary reductions again, while find funds for the expansion of nation building in Afghanistan, and the third conflict Obama recently started in Libya, which thankfully we will soon be out of. Then, the President will tackle health care expenditures, not in the cruel way of the Republicans like Ryan with their ridiculous notions of reforming the entitlements- no the President will reap the savings by – appointing another commission:
We will change the way we pay for health care -– not by the procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries and improve results. And we will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services that seniors need.
Now, we believe the reforms we’ve proposed to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid will enable us to keep these commitments to our citizens while saving us $500 billion by 2023, and an additional $1 trillion in the decade after that. But if we’re wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, then this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further improving Medicare.
After that independent commission has achieved the trillions of dollars of efficiency savings that the previous hundreds of independent commissions have been unable to achieve, the real muscle in in deficit reduction will be obtained from the culprit in this whole deficit mess- the American taxpayer who refuses to pay enough for all this governmental largess:
The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code, so-called tax expenditures. In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.
Did you catch that? The President will reduce spending in the tax code, so called tax expenditures. He now sees spending as not when the government spends, but when the government receives insufficient funds to cover its expenditures from those paying in! And more good news- if the government would fail to reduce expenditures (which of course never happens- see above) a debt failsafe law would be enacted that would lock in automatic tax increases (I’m sorry, tax expenditures) to cover the shortfall. The government would now be immune to ever looking again at the “spend” side of the equation, and having to stand up for a vote on increasing taxes. Wow. That says it all – a new democratic king of anti-democratic hypocrisy has been crowned.
The president ended his remarks with a call for bi-partisanship, after spending the previous thirty minutes savaging every bi-partisan instinct in deficit reduction. Representative Ryan, forced to sit through the whole speech and listen as the personal invite of the President to a step by step insult of all his hard work and rationalizations, showed in a strong response to the farcical performance why Ryan should be our next President:
To our current President, who has convinced himself that his distortions, deceits, historical fudges, and lack of responsible leadership on the critical economic issue of our time and the emerging threat to our society of freedom should hold court, I think a classic John McEnroe puts our opinion of our president’s comic book math and lazy solutions in perspective – Mr. President, YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS!
Every generation hopes for a leader that transcends the self absorption and indecisiveness that consumes the political discourse at various critical times in history to become a beacon of clarity and direction to the benefit of all. The founding of the nation, so fragile in birth, received a framework for all future leaders through the calm and steady George Washington. The country was consumed with insurmountable philosophic division in 1860, leading to Civil War, discovering a leader in Abraham Lincoln, who achieved the impossible task of translating the country’s original founding principles into a more modern version that restored unity when all thought it lost. The nation found in Theodore Roosevelt a unique vehicle for the country achieving a position as a world power while restoring the promise to the individual citizen of a fair shake in their own world. In its greatest test ever, buffeted by the twin catastrophes of great depression and apocalyptic war, the nation was steadily and safely led to the position of superpower by Franklin Roosevelt. Finally, out of a crisis of confidence in which many thought the nation’s best years behind it, Ronald Reagan restored a nation’s vitality and in each individual promise for a better tomorrow.
Every generation hopes for such a leader, and this generation is no different. The current crisis is self created, with a burgeoning national debt progressively suffocating all flexibility for addressing the nation’s needs, and inevitably draining the nation’s life force. Like all previous crisis situations, the political landscape is filled with pretenders and charlatans, deniers and demagogues, mediocrity and downright mendacity. The simplistic contribution of a self absorbed population to its own ills in welcoming an entitlement Trojan horse into its own future, feeds the comfort of all the sunshine patriots who claim the crisis is overblown or simply addressed at a later time.
The numbers are staggering – a 14.2 trillion dollar national debt, equal to the gross domestic product and expected to double within ten years, 4.6 trillion in US debt held by foreign countries, an indescribable 113.2 trillion dollars owed future generations in unfunded liabilities, and an estimated incurred debt per citizen of 51,000 dollars. Yet, the recent response of both congress and President was to pile on further debt and unfunded liabilities a a record level in complete disdain for the gathering storm. No leaders here, and certainly false and fatuous hope and change.
Like earlier times a leader has arisen from unassuming quarters, a back waters district in southeastern Wisconsin, and with no other calling than his profound desire to assure a nation worth inhabiting for his own small children. This leader, Paul Ryan, (Ramparts People We Should Know #4), has decided to put into action against all odds a means for this nation’s salvation. He has determined like all great leaders before him, that the position to lead is in front with clarity and courage. Like all great leaders he will face a storm of resistance and undercutting, and will be abandoned at times by his erstwhile friends, afraid of the heat. He will be impugned by the chief pretender, who adrift in a sea of his own inconsistencies and lacking in any semblance of original thinking, will see him as a threat and look to destroy him. Like all great leaders before him, I think Paul Ryan has realized that it is his time and his calling to bring America back from the brink. He has stated that his quest is not a personal one, but I foresee the willful force of history calling him to assume the mantle that he has to this point denied. Unfortunately for Paul Ryan and his desire to be an initiator but not the vehicle of change , he will soon find out, that he is the right one, at the right time. Paul Ryan is about to realize his own truth….A Nation’s Duty Calls.
The recent upheavals in Madison, Wisconsin have focused attention on the progressive inattention of citizens to the carefully thought out structure that drives this nation’s democratic republic. Although dramatically exemplified by the attempt of a county district judge to suspend the lawful process of a bicameral legislature, it is more profoundly about the national neglect that has permeated the democratic process and the depth of understanding of its value for some time. The identifiable underpinnings of this decline have presented themselves in a progressive reduction of participants in the democratic process, the reduction of standards of virtue in preservation of the sanctity of the voting process through lax standards, loss of confidentiality, and intimidation, and the lack of civics instruction. This has most profoundly affected the most democratically sensitive of the three branches of government, the legislature, and its progressive impotence in the difficult problems of our times threatens this nation’s democratic existence.
The founders put the most profound domestic powers in the hands of the legislature, the powers to enact laws and the powers to fund them, and accordingly put the most democratic constraints upon the legislature, with frequent elections to modulate their actions. The legislative branch, connected so profoundly to the will of the people, was assumed to be most responsive to that will. Owning the power of the purse through taxation, it was assumed that governmental representatives would be responsive to the electoral process that positioned them to be the spenders of the nation’s treasure. This bond between the people and those elected to serve the people was expected to be paramount. The founders were not foolish idealists, and certainly understood the potentially corrupting influences of human nature, thereby identifying the need for checks and balances. James Madison in Federalist Paper 51 put it succinctly:
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. “
The pattern of checks and balances assured the separation of powers as well. The legislative branch had primary force to enact laws, the executive branch to execute them, and the judicial branch to review their faithfulness to the constitution. Madison, again in Federalist #51, however recognized there was no device by which to make the branches co-equal, and still effective:
” It is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”
Madison recognized the legislative process as coming closest to mirroring the will of the people. As designed, representatives would review and vet the merits of the law in committee, debate and adjust it, assess its effects on the general good and its expenses to the general treasure, then representatively vote, so that a record would be available to the voting population to assure compliance with the will of the people in the next election, or adjust the legilature accordingly. The entire process commands that the people have a will, and that the will of the people is respected. Legislative branch has suffered most under the modern corruptions of lack of civics understanding, money of special interests, and general disinterest in the common good and importance of governmental restraint. In the past few decades, laws have achieved epic status, thousands of pages in depth, so that no serious vetting of theire effect is feasible. Committees have given themselves up to poor attendance and lobbyist influence with legislators forming their opinion before reviewing a law’s consequences. The massive influx of money has made legislators progressively immune to the ballot box, and more willing to do the bidding of the interest that is supplying them with their re-election funding than for the voter citizen. The citizen has become ignorant of the importance of informed voting, and has accepted lax standards as to the sanctity of the vote, the propagation of numerous “democratic” votes to preserve non-democratic and self serving governmental mechanisms, and dis-interest in the outcome regardless of its effect on the society that has protected his rights for over 234 years.
The weakness in the legislative branch has led to a dangerous instability in the carefully crafted balance between branches of government. Executives at both state and federal level now usurp the vested powers of the legislature . State governors, have line item veto power that allows them to completely change the essence of an enacted law. Federal executives name unelected “czars” that deflect laws and rework apportioned money to achieve their political agendas, as well as initiate wars that defy the legislative power to declare them. Activist judges go profoundly beyond the constraints of the Constitution to declare laws unacceptable on the basis of effect, not lawful standing, dangerously injecting themselves into the legislative process. The legislative branch’s unwillingness to assert its constitutional responsibilities progressively leads to the paralysis we see today to deal with profound questions of individual rights, freedoms, and economic sanity.
It is no small irony that the coalescence of all these dangerous trends are coming together in the capitol of a state named for one of the framers of one of the most carefully thought out means of a people to rule themselves. We have seen the unholy storm of vulnerabilities injected into the Wisconsin process that is a microcosm of our national vulnerability – a duly elected legislature attempts to enact law in the face of threats of violence and intimidation, lawmakers who flee their representative responsibilities under the demand of the interests that economically supply their elective position, the infection of federal executive influence on an issue of state’s rights, the national corruption of special interest money, the interference of the judiciary in a matter of legislative process, and the self absorption of a citizenry that can not see the trampling of the protections that maintain their influence over those that govern them through the process of free and fair election intervals, not reactionary recall processes.
Our founders were not, despite appearances, ancient powdered wig reactionaries, but rather visionaries with incredible foresight into what has made one of the most successful self governed visions of a people in recorded history. Try as we might to destroy their vision, the wisdom shines through over the centuries. Maybe its time again for less yelling, and more reflection on why our processes were put in place, so that we can have at least a tinker’s chance of fixing the mess we have allowed to develop.
We live in an age of hypocrisy so it is not shocking to have found ourselves in one of the most hypocritical of contests of will. The United States and assorted allies have spent the past week participating in what has been termed by a winking dupe of the executive branch a “kinetic military action” against Libya. Assorted videos of the conflict exhibiting active rocket launchers, flaming planes, concussive bombs, exploding buildings, and dead combatants and innocents alike would certainly tend to skew one’s opinion regarding what they see – it surely looks like a war. Then again, modern governments take great pleasure in going up to the line of war and just hedging their effort, in order to maintain plausible deniability. That way, none of the expected thinking processes that used to define the difficult process of going to war get in the way. Philosophers as far back as Cicero and St. Augustine contemplated the conditions for “Just War” – the concept that war could be justified in the face of just cause – the damage caused by the aggressor to the nation must be lasting, grave and certain; the complete exhaustion of other means of solving the conflict; the prospect of victory should be identifiable; and the use of arms should not create evils more profound then the ones they were attempting to vanquish. In modern terms, the indication that a nation’s treasure in riches or people should not be wasted in an action where the perceived national security interests are not directly attacked or threatened. The restrained quiet by the public and media flies in the face of the most recent reactions to a similar war or “kinetic military action” propagated recently in Iraq. The story went, a President with little indication of a perceived national threat, hastily drove towards war against a country that had not attacked his country, led by a dictator of an oil rich nation who had once been his ally, and did so with minimal national or international consensus, and no identifiable end game or exit strategy. Hmmm…..substitute “Libya” for “Iraq” and you have an almost identical presumptive argument, but none of the vitriol that surrounded President Bush regarding the Iraq conflict. One mustn’t forget that , of course, that was the dumb president, and this one is the smart one.
The tragedy of most modern conflicts is that the consequences of actions are so poorly conceived and vetted before plunging in. A million questions abound. Who are the people trying to throw Qaddhafi out? Are their goals for the Libyan people better than his? What are we willing to do to impose our will? What if it doesn’t work? What if it does work? Who will support the massive humanitarian crisis that could develop if stalemate enters? What wars have been won by committee decision? Who will declare victory and who will declare defeat? What would victory look like? These and other questions would seem to be ones you would want to have thought through before you would typically put a nation’s young men and women in harms way.
The availability of high tech weaponry has made these well thought out justifications too easily brushed aside. Cruise missiles flung from afar can seem to lessen the sense of risk to the launching country because after all, no country men risk harm firing from hundreds of miles away. Sterile wars seem to have amazingly unpredictable outcomes and more often then not painful realities and goal stalemates. The multi-decade presence of troops in Korea, Kosovo, and Afghanistan are just a few reminders of what prolonged stalemate looks like. As the war Napoleon once said of war strategy, ” If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna!” The lack of direct goals, aims, eye on victory makes this the most hypocritical of conflicts, where men and women will die, because no one could think of anything else to do.
As the world seems to be battered by one “surprise” after another and current leaders seem clueless to fashion a logical and committed strategy to begin to tackle any of these problems, the question arises, where have the experts gone? The can do spirit of the twentieth century to conquer some of the most overwhelming challenges ever devised to man’s humanity and security has disappeared in a blizzard of shoddy historical interpretation, pseudo-science, and junk economics. The harsh juxtaposition of examples abound. The rigorous objective mental genius without the availability of computer exhibited by the brilliance of scientists such as Ernest Rutherford, Neils Bohr, Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg who in the space of fifty years went from discovery of the atom to unlocking its power reigns supreme over the religious machinations of the current dominance of climate scientists who in order to prove their philosophy of man as the source of the planet’s ills, hide and bend data to fit their vision. The western tradition of economic thought elegantly put forth by Adam Smith over 250 years ago that built the greatest expansion of individual economic freedom and security in the history of the world is under assault by so called progressives who ignore measured outcomes in performance, rigorous rules of economic standards in banking, budgeting and commerce to blithely spend away a nation’s future. And acutely, the fundamental ignorance of history in interpretation of current events that make the present day leaders seem disorganized, contradictory, and reactionary with every event that transpires that does not fit their poorly conceived vision of how the world should be. Where are the experts a nation used to tap that provided a bottomless well of thought that guided the ship of state through perilous waters?
My own theory is that death of objective thought is self inflicted by our society’s pathetic neglect of our educational process. We have allowed a primary and secondary school system to completely run off the rails on its primary objective of providing an education to the nation’s youth, and the tools needed to comprehend, assess, and conquer the obstacles to individual achievement. The modern conversation centers on whether the dominant and monopolistic teacher’s union and its strangulating bureaucracy is appropriately re-imbursed and protected, rather than focusing upon the absolute collapse of student reading, mathematical, and interpretative skills that have soared in the last thirty years. Our advanced education process has become an over bearing financial behemoth rapidly tumbling out of financial reach of most families and individuals, that through political correctness has filled its campuses with rigid thought, the demise of platonic reasoning and socratic debate, and clogged the educational pallet with self absorbed study of victimhood and forehead thumping at the expense of a two thousand five hundred year tradition of analytic thought, objective debate, and scientific hypothesis and proof process. Out of such a primordial ooze, few are the experts that can be expected to evolve.
What does objective thought process sound like? Lets appreciate a brief video of one of our “old dinosaur” experts, 88 year old Henry Kissinger, who in five minutes extemporaneously manages to touch base on all necessary considerations that should attend the use of force in Libya:
Agree or disagree with Kissinger’s argument, no one would disagree that a rational argument has taken place, with historical underpinnings and rational review of outcomes. I defy anyone to point out a rational discussion with logical underpinnings put forth today on any of the major challenges of the day regarding energy policy, economic concepts, or political science, by those currently in power. Is there no one left who is willing to read a book with positions opposed to their own and rationally debate an argument to rebut and persuade?
I am afraid that would require someone who actually is willing to open a book, and if you ask most of today’s youth, books are yesterday’s news. Its enough to make western civilization’s grand old philosopher to role over in his grave.
At the close of his Presidency in 1861, with multiple states having declared secession and the federal military post Fort Sumter faced with violent attack from its own countrymen, President James Buchanan presided over a State of the Union address that summarized his four year policy of “indecisive indecision” on the subject of secession. After hearing Buchanan’s address, Senator William Seward of New York, soon to be Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln, ascerbicly translated for the nation President Buchanan’s convoluted and ineffectual logic with the following statement:
“No state has the right to secede unless it wishes to, and it is the president’s duty to enforce the laws, unless somebody opposes him”
We have a current President in President Obama who is proving to be the re-incarnated President Buchanan, serving up a soup of the indefensible hedge when it comes to the nation’s most pressing problems. Elected under the banner of “Hope and Change”, the process of governing has been more that of “Dodge and Hedge”. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has remained immersed in two wars and struggled to identify with any freedom movement since his election. He has managed to alienate almost every individual who viewed him as the propped up savior of the world self perpetuated by a fawning media. The Green Revolution in Iran waited for any word of support from him to help free themselves from an oppressive and murderous regime. Thousands of deaths later, they are still waiting. He announced last year that he would “surge” troops in Afghanistan, and announced on the same day that date at which he would begin to withdraw them. He struggled to sustain a coherent message with the recent Egyptian turmoil, having no stance for almost two weeks, only to announce support for the autocrat Mubarak, as he was about to fall. The turmoil spread to Libya, where he almost immediately declared the thuggish regime of Qhadaffi must go as it was illegitimate, then dithered when the tyrant started bombing his own people from the air and winning back territory from the regime opponents. The indecision was enough to send his own Secretary of State into a classic Clintonian leak, having an “unnamed source and close confidant” declare Ms. Clinton’s exhaustion with her boss’s lack of decision making capacity.
The domestic front is no better, with the President demanding fiscal discipline, naming a commission last year to create a bi-partisan consensus for the burgeoning budgetary crisis being created by entitlements. When the commission came out with a surprisingly tough set of agreements to reign in out of control spending, the President ran away from the commission like it wasn’t there. His most recent budget has been in described in direct terms as a fiscal fraud by his own nominee of the Office of Management and
Budget, Heather Higginbottom. He descended into fruitless war of words with the Governor of Wisconsin when he attacked the state executive’s efforts to balance his own budget by reducing collective bargaining rights, fully ignoring his own federal government’s complete lack of provision of the same collective bargaining rights for its own employees. The only issue he was willing to make declarative statements upon was the outcome of the US NCAA Basketball Tournament – “Pittsburgh will make the Elite Eight.”
The litany goes on and on, but unfortunately so does this President’s tactic of using a conclusion in any crisis to define his position, long after there is any capacity for him to truly affect the outcome. I must admit I had early hope of this man’s potential pragmatism. The world is finding out what we hoped was not the case of putting forward such an inexperienced person into the pressure cooker job of “world leader”. The truth of the matter is, Change comes, and from this man, No Hope.
A brief Sunday evening update for the “Inside Baseball” addition of the recent political drama that unfolded over the last month in the state of Wisconsin.
In a terrific piece of reporting, the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, a Wisconsin native, and John McCormack describe the tense struggle between the republican and democrat leaders over the proposed budget repair bill that was positioned to revolutionize the available leverage elected officials would have to address their budgets through the removal of collective bargaining for pensions and benefits. The recently concluded drama is the harbinger of a raucous oncoming year of political cage matches as the public unions fight with their very sinew to maintain their power to control governments.
The election of 2012 is rapidly approaching, and unlike the American version, the battle to determine the winner will take long before the official vote. The epic battle brewing between the former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin, and the man he chose to replace him, Dmitry Medvedev,
is every bit as compelling as the American version, though much of the contest will be shielded from the public eye.
