Category: POLITICS

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The Nasty Politics of Tragedy

In Tucson, Arizona yesterday, a wanton violent outburst from a depraved individual shattered the calm of a beautiful desert morning. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was taking part in a “meet your congresswoman” event at a local supermarket when a gunman suddenly opened fire, wounding as many as twenty people, killing six including a federal judge, and critically wounding Ms. Giffords.The motive is unclear, as would be expected with entirely senseless violence.  Over time I am sure we will find the typically convoluted thinking process of a sociopath, who finding he does not fit in anywhere in society, strikes out randomly at those who do.  The deterioration from disturbed, harbored thoughts to violent actions is unfortunately all too common and  nothing new.  From Lee Harvey Oswald to Timothy McVey to this current assailant, Jared Loughner, the perceived wrongs endured, regardless of how ludicrous, explode into a horrific moment of rage, and the loss of life of innocents.  Try as all might to attach an underlying pattern of influences to the madness, there is never any legitimate philosophic structure that ties the slights to the event, as they are fundamentally random outbursts and the human target incidental.   

     Ohhh, but how they try.  Within days of the 1995 Oklahoma City tragedy, President Clinton tied the extremist perpetrator committing the murder of the 168 innocents in the Murrah Federal Building bombing directly to the influence of “right wing” radio :    

“We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate. They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”
     
      The political advantage was obvious. The random crime is heinous and irrational.  Your political enemies are heinous and irrational. Tie your political enemies to the random crime, and those looking for any connection will have their paranoias confirmed.  President Clinton’s action was premeditated, unfair, baseless, corrupt – and effective.   The success President Clinton achieved in recklessly melding the real victim status with those killed or injured in the bombing with his own “victimhood” was classic Clinton, and proved a powerful weapon against those who would disagree with him.  Disagree with President Clinton , and you were supporting the thinking process of those who would bomb buildings. Absurd on its face but by making the connection the President became just another victim of the bombing.
  
     The hyenas are out again with the tragedy in Tucson.  Knowing nothing of the circumstances of Loughner’s random active, political elements were quick to try to attach blame to the Tea Party, Sara Palin, or any other political opponent to whom the thinnest thread could be connected to Congresswoman Giffords and the massacre.  It is a foul reflex that has developed in political discourse, and thankfully some more credible reporters such as Howard Kurtz see through it for its callousness.  
 
      I am reminded that President Bush despite multiple vicious attacks by political opponents never permitted the connection to be made of the attackers’ verbiage and an accusation of lack of patriotism.  Despite the direct connection of the 9/11 participants to Islamic extremism, he never permitted the connection of extremists to the practice of the religion itself.  I used to think he was allowing himself to be a punching bag.  Sometimes it is just difficult at first to see how individuals with class react to classless attacks.  I am beginning to miss President Bush more and more every day.
 
      Ms. Giffords and all the victims are in our prayers.  Maybe the chattering self absorbed idiots looking for some advantage from the madness can take a moment to think about a family’s pain, and not their worthless agendas.

   

  

  

   
 
 

 

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2011 – The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

     The entry into the new year of 2011 brings the same set of challenges that every year brings.  The primary emotion is always the sense of renewal, that the worst of the old year’s mistakes can be averted, and new ideas can flourish that will bring a general betterment for all.  That’s the way it’s supposed to go anyway.    2011 opens the new decade, the “tens”, and hopefully this will be a decade of more realistic assumptions, more crisp and insightful analysis, and more determination to preserve the gains mankind has made in making the world a generally more comfortable and individually conscious world than it was for our ancestors. We can only hope.  The first decade of the new millennia was framed by two dark, backward looking medieval philosophies.  The first islamofascism, predicated on forcing the world to accept the edictual interpretations of a 13oo year old concept that women shield themselves from societal interaction, religious diversity be banned, individual expression and freedom be reduced to dust, and death be the revered expression of individual sacrifice. The second, global warming fascism, borne on the individual as the perceived medieval sinner, wantonly improving his own personal comfort at the expense of “others”, based on misrepresentations and pseudo-science, and proselytizing against the future “hell” unless the environmental sins are addressed with severe reductions of personal freedom to achieve, travel, and create.  Both philosophies are shown to be empty and wanting when exposed to any critical scrutiny, and hopefully will be dispatched to the dustbin of history by a more self aware and watching world in this coming decade.  With 2011 comes almost immediate framing of what we as defenders of civilization must keep in focus, and we must be attentive on the ramparts.

     THE GOOD 

      On the first day of the 112th Congress of the United States of America, the defining principles of what it means to have a participatory democracy will finally again be p;laced in the position of prominence it desires.  Word to word, line by line, the Constitution of the United States will be read into the congressional record.  For too long the elements of what makes this democracy unique, the precise rights of the individual and  the precise role and responsibility of the state,  have been subverted by those that feel that principles and rationalizations are interchangeable.  It doesn’t mean that this congress will be different than any other in following through, but there is an inkling of hope that the strong reaction of the citizenry with the most recent national election to restore principled leadership will not be wasted.

     THE BAD

      The overwhelming burden of what is to come may not yet have sunk in yet to the general population.  Multiple states are teetering on the brink of default. State and federal government budgets predicated on the the progressive enriching of the government employee have maxed out, and it is unclear the reaction that is bound to occur with unions when the harsh realities that the “permanent” gravy train may have reached its zenith and is rolling backward.  In Europe this was the stimulus for riots and strikes.  The United States is certainly not immune and there is bound to be friction.  The malfeasance of government to ignore its fiscal responsibilities to support a special interest that guarantees its return to power in return for votes is a dangerous, anti-democratic trend that needs to be stopped now, however painful, to make the future viable for all.    (Graph courtesy of C. Houghton)

     THE UGLY

     The world elite continue to have a love affair with the most reactionary, freedom destructive leaders and this western personality flaw shows no signs of abating.  The lack of outrage and continued pandering to pathetic authoritarians like Fidel Castro in Cuba, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe,  and Kim Jong Il in North Korea despite their catastrophic policies that have left their countries collapsed and starving remains a ugly sore on civilized clarity in action.  A frank romance with Marxist ends of less individual freedom, expression, and capacities remain a bizarre cultish yearning by those western elites who can’t stand the fact that prosperity has been shared with an ever larger slice of humanity without the reins of control they have always dreamed about.  Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.  If this decade gets anything cleaned up, it would be nice to see the end of rewarding the worst of us with our continued blind eye to their self aggrandizing and delusion.

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Bright Idea

     In 1879, Thomas Edison managed to do something that man had yearned for since the dawn of age. Submitting a patent for a light device known as the incandescent bulb, he managed provide for the first time reliable and safe illumination of the dark. There is probably no single idea that has done as more for man’s progress than the light bulb, providing an expansion in commerce, safety, transportation, education, and productive activity to dark rooms and night hours. The idea of carbonizing a bamboo strand, later replaced with tungsten, passing an electric current across it in a vacuum environment created luminescent magnificence that initially lasted for scores of hours, and later, thousands of hours. The invention has provided cheap, reliable, indispensable illumination to the farthest reaches of earth and has changed everybody’s lives for the better.
    

     So in true modern societal fashion, do we venerate such a magnificent outpouring of the best civilization has to offer universally to mankind? Of course not. We get rid of it for a pathetic shadow of an alternative, the CFL, or Compact Florescence Lamp. In 2007, in his one of many moments of catering to irrationality, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, effectively outlawing the incandescent light bulb in 2012. This act of Congress, like most oxymoronic acts coming out of Congress these days, determined that the energy expenditures of the incandescent bulb were excessive when compared to the swirly CFL bulb. The fact that the CFL took longer to reach illumination, painted everything an eye straining dull white yellow, and contained a disposal problem of toxic mercury when broken or thrown away entered into none of our elite leader’s consciousness. The point, excepting the fine one on the top of their heads, was single minded. The incandescent bulb illumination was provided by a greater per bulb draw of energy by that satanic force of nature known as the the evil carbon molecule, and therefore could no longer be tolerated.

      Here’s a bright idea. How about simply encouraging the use of more efficient incandescent bulbs and TURN THEM OFF when you’re not needing them? The world reels at the clarity of the logic.

     We have one year to horde our light bulbs or face a more dangerous, more poorly illuminated future. The other alternative is to get hold of your congressman or congresswoman and shake them until they wake up, and repeal this heinous act. Come on people; lets not let stupid rule and make the prohibition of Edison’s genius go the way of other brilliant prohibitions enacted by other Congresses stimulated by their desire to enforce the unenforceable.

     Defenders of the Ramparts, all hail the Bulb!

 

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Will Healthcare “Reform” Make U.S. Sick?

     The debate last spring regarding American healthcare was truncated and revolved around lack of access not provision of answers to our pressing healthcare needs. In typical modern legislative fashion, years of carefully wrought considerations regarding the strengths and weakness of the healthcare process were swept “under the rug” in the political rush to claim the moral high ground and achieve “reform”.  As Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel put so succinctly, ” You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”  As is true with so many government decreed “reforms” , the plan passed preserved the worst mechanisms of the previous system, exposing them to an ever larger population, and from a financial standpoint assured a progressive collapse of the segments of the system that are currently working to pay for  those that are progressively not.

     The modern American healthcare system has evolved into 17% of the GDP of the United States and has for sometime threatened to absorb the available discretionary income of the United States economy, suppressing growth and prosperity.  With the recent election, a real debate is finally feasible as the mechanisms of financing “reform” may be carefully reviewed at length.  The challenge of Obamacare was not to solve coverage for all Americans, which it failed to do despite the greatly increased expense, but rather, to assure viability of access to all who wanted it at a price we can all afford.  The passage of the bill only started the debate and its about to get interesting.  Over the next months, the various aspects of financing such an undisciplined reform will come to light in hearings of the House of Representatives, and the discussion to “Repeal” or “Repair” will be the focus of our newly found interest, as expressed in the recent election, in the democratic process.

     Nobel Prize winning University of Chicago economist Gary Becker begins to frame the argument:

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Oh, The Burden

     Every four years another group of egocentric, driven individuals get it in their mind that they have the special ingredients that are required for the demanding job of President of the United States. They come in several distinct sub-species. There are the career politicians who “understand” the inner workings of modern government “better” than the rest of us, and can make it work where others have failed. There are the giant intellectuals who are convinced the guy who had the job before was obviously the village idiot or doofus. There are the up and comers who feel that the establishment team in place is worn out and devoid of new ideas, and the country only needs the spark of a fresh face with newer ideas to stimulate progress. One lucky winner finally gets to take his place in the sun and see if he (or eventually she) is up to the job.

     And every four years the enormous responsibility, pressures, and burdens of marshaling the largest economy on earth and being leader of the free world come barrelling down on the new Achilles.  Like Achilles with his unique and fatal flaw, the cracks in the armour become progressively exposed in the new leader and in the case of those unprepared emotionally for the job, can find their armour broken wide open.

     On Friday the Leader of the Free World, President Obama, a politician his adult life, a giant intellectual replacing a “doofus”, and an up and comer who was going to “heal the earth and stop the rising of the oceans” met full face his own Achilles heel. He has found himself bored with the job and its increasingly heavy stresses. Most profoundly, he recently has had to experience the sour taste of compromise negotiations that come with a democracy that in November declared his radical agenda unacceptably radical. On Wednesday he was forced to explain at a press conference a tax agreement he had negotiated, at which he immediately stated he would do what he could to over turn in two years, while simultaneously explaining why it was good for the economy and country. In this particular case, he was against it before he was for it, and he is against it again. The Friday press conference was the coup de grace however to his crumbling veneer of special capacity for the job. In a hastily arranged press conference his own press secretary Robert Gibbs had no indication he was planning, he went out with former President Clinton to “explain” the virtues of the compromise. From the start he gave the podium to Clinton, who reveled being back in the klieglights; within minutes Obama started staring at his watch, and when a period for questions began, suddenly announced he had to leave to attend a party to keep his wife from becoming angry with him. He turned and left, leaving the former President to do the explaining to the American people of what in the world the current President had in mind for them. Former President Clinton LOVED it; almost no one else did.

     Every four years, a group of individuals think they are up to the spectacular personal demands of a Presidency.  Some are.  This President isn’t – and we somehow have to get through two more years without damage.

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Tsunami

     Maybe the most frightening moment of an incoming tsunami is when the sea, wrenched by enormous under water forces, pulls back from the land mass, and a momentary still pervades the beach.  The sense of being safe, on dry land,  is overwhelmed by the dread of the unforeseen but inexorable wave surge to come.  Waiting for inevitable destruction can be psychologically unbearable.  

     So must it have been for the democrat party nation in the state of Wisconsin on the eve of November 2nd.  In a wave of voter impact unique in its focused destruction, the democrat party lost the Governorship, the available U.S. Senate seat, the Assembly, the Senate, and control of the U.S. House delegation.  Swept away in the tide was the heart of the democrat leadership, the 18 year so called maverick U.S. Senator, the Leader of the state House, and the Leader of the State Senate.  The aftermath of the wave is a blue state now emblazoned bright red, and the shore line in just one day is unrecognizable.

      The election Tsunami of 2010 proved to be every bit as ferocious as advertised and the consequences of such a complex wave will be felt for years to come. Beyond the state of Wisconsin, some very interesting aspects of the surge deserve Ramparts acknowledgement and circumspection:

           Rise of the Black Conservative 

The election of Representatives Tim Scott from the 1st district of South Carolina and Colonel Allen West from Florida’s 22nd district with solid victories in  white majority districts are indications of a new type of African American politician – strongly conservative, fierce defenders of individual responsibility and endeavor , small government, and most at home in the Republican Party.   Since the 1960’s and the association however unfair of the democrat party with civil rights legislation and societal safety nets has lead to election after election of greater than 90% support for the democrat ticket in the black community and the subsequent effect on districting and policy of democrats.  A rising middle and upper middle class black voter is beginning to result in cracks in the homogeneous voting pattern, as more and more focus is paid to the four decade effect of the juxtaposition of singular loyalty to the democrat party by blacks and the state of the  black family, economic and educational opportunity, and relative progress compared to other ethnic groups.  Representatives Scott and West may prove to be leaders in a more circumspect evaluation of liberal policies on the African American community and a more competitive argument for their future voting power.

          Woe Be Gone California    

The tsunami stopped at the border of California. Liberal democrats Governor Brown and Senator Boxer cruised to easy victories  as the California voter proved oblivious to the state of California’s precarious position as a debtor government in severe economic peril, with crushing mandates and uncontrolled immigration imperiling its very existence.  The voter seemed to hope that the state is simply to big to fail, and if it does fail, will be too destructive to the rest of the nation’s economy for the rest of the country to let it happen.  Here’s the bad news California.   After the outrage over the TARP and Fannie and Freddie May mortgage bailouts, you’re likely to be on your own in this mess. Good luck , Governor Brown.   

          The Rust Belt Goes From Blue to Red

The Midwest has sustained a devastating direct hit from the recent recession and has been woefully ill equipped to respond to the economic triple indemnity of high taxes, union driven state budgets and fleeing of traditional manufacturing jobs to more receptive states with better business environments.  The rust belt voter said Enough! yesterday with the election of republican governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa and the almost complete takeover of state legislatures by the Republican party.  This will have profound effects on state economic structures, political re-districting,  and business climate likely to be felt for years to come.  Any effect on national strategic directions?  Remember, of the 44 American presidents, 15 have come from the Midwest.

          Government driven Healthcare Mandates doomed Its Supporters to Political Oblivion

The American public was uniform in its distaste for so-called Obamacare.  The attraction of an idea of an over arching healthnet provided for citizens by their government paled in comparison to the perception of people with good coverage as to what the effect would be on them personally.  The progressive elevation of premiums in direct response to Obamacare mandates after assurance that the effect of nationalization of health coverage would have the opposite effect, was devastating to Obamacare supporters in legislative elections, and time and time again proved to be their elective downfall.

           The Rising Stars

There have been few elections in recent history where so many potential stars have been put forward by electoral success.  Much has been through the power of the Internet, allowing the viral video to expose to the general public obscure elections and the talent pool that the Republicans had to draw from this time.  The list is truly amazing in the depth of the talent bench.  Look in the future for the significant impact of such rising stars as Marco Rubio and Allen West of Florida; Tim Scott and Nikki Haley of South Carolina; Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson, and  Sean Duffy of Wisconsin; Rob Portman of Ohio; Kristi Noem and John Thune of South Dakota – a deep bench with other players soon to be prominent to defend the cause of constitutionalist government and individual freedom.

              United States Constitution Has Legs

The single driving force of all this change has been the undeniable love of a people for their country’s document of foundation, the Constitution of the United States.  The progressive inattention to the principles expressed in the Constitution by politicians who either had no understanding of the tenets of the Constitution or who felt those tenets to be passe or no longer relevant, met with a tremendous backlash from the voting public.  It is clear to all that the overriding lesson of this election is that the American voting population is not ready to eject Constitutional principles of government and the relation of the government with its people expressed in the Constitution for  some on the fly interpretation.  In the end, the American nation felt it had come too far and accomplished to much, to throw out the philosophical driving force of the American Experience.

To which, I say to the American people…..thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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Rob Ford to the Rescue?

     On November 2nd the essence of forty years of philosophical determinism will be on trial in elections held in the United States.  Born out of the intense events and cultural tides of the sixties, a progressively overwhelming liberalist agenda has consumed the consensus of every day life in the Americas.  This philosophy of  reduction of individual responsibility, overarching governmental regulations on  life activity , policing the “correctness” of personal opinion and thought, and collectivist “balancing” of the individual’s desire for personal advancement has expressed itself in the governments we currently have and will be judging with our vote.   It has expressed itself on issues as “profound” as the temperature of the earth and man’s ability to effect and ultimately control it.  It has expressed itself on issues as “small” as the lack of each individual human’s ability to take personal account of his or her own actions without constant maintenance from an outside governmental guidance.  It is defined by the phrase “It takes a village” .   It has led to the sense by many Americans that their life is no longer their own to determine, and that government, rather than the individual, has become the expression of life experience from cradle to grave.

     Whatever.   Enter Rob Ford. 

     Who is Rob Ford you ask?  Rob Ford is the newly elected mayor of the city of Toronto, Canada, elected overwhelmingly on October 25, 2010 by the citizens of Toronto completely tired of the above paragraph’s consensus.  He is the antithesis of the liberal agenda that has placed Toronto in the status of “legendary” city for all like minded to gaze upon in awe and wonder, a city full of bike paths on streets, mandated political correctness, coffee shops, drug parks, film festivals, extended city worker benefits,  immigrant cultural dominance, and a dense fee and tax structure to pay for it all.  Rob Ford is the proverbial “bull in the china shop” , a 41 year old overweight, inarticulate, in your face Toronto councilman who for years railed against the direction of the city government’s desire to become a “world” city, the perks of governmental officials, the wasteful “services” provided to all comers, the “improvement projects” without end to the taxpayer.  He based his election drive on defeating a governmental philosophy that worried more about solar panels on cars than garbage and snow removal for citizens.  His slogan “Get Off the Gravy Train” featured a well dressed pig driving a train, and is the best selling t-shirt in town.  He could care less about being in government as a vocation, like being a doctor or a teacher, or a plumber.  He sees his job as putting the citizen taxpayer first, restoring governmental fundamentals, reducing waste, and eliminating unnecessary taxes – and that’s it.  He is, in short, the nightmare of nightmares to Toronto’s liberal elite, and his tenure as mayor is going to be nothing short of fingernails on a chalkboard for them.

     The larger question to ask revolves around as to whether 2010 is a brief blip of voter angst or the initiation of the fracture of the bond between the voter and the government that led to the process of progressive establishment of liberalist philosophy over the last 40 years.  In the United States this has expressed itself in the “tea party”,  first derided as racists and country bumpkins, and now feared as a real threat to the presumed “intellectual” dominance of the current elite progressive agenda.   The reality is that Canada has no “tea party” conceptualization.  It has a liberal stream of consciousness, a strong abiding sense of the importance of “village”, and has been much more comfortable with socialist governmental structures than the United States traditionally has been.  Mr Rob Ford shows, however, that there is a limit in democracies to the tolerance of the voter for substituting idealism for competence,  correctness for common sense,  and redistribution for individual endeavor.  November 2nd looks to be only our own expression of what is coming to be a world wide phenomena.

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Woe Be Gone California

     It is one week to go before the state and national elections of November 2nd, 2010.  Essentially all prognostications suggest a surge of voter anger to rival the great wave elections of the past, with voter disgust focused on the party in power and great numbers of incumbents imperilled.  The driving issue above all seems to be the surge in government deficit spending that concerns all, and the power brokers unwillingness to take any actions to arrest the country’s economic downward spiral.  This voter message is about to be painfully seared on incumbents careers across the nation everywhere – everywhere, that is, except in the state of California.

     Aaahh, California, state of sunshine,  Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.  A state beacon for national progress if there ever was one.  One would assume that California, so long a bellwether of the tides of the nation, would be in the forefront of the desire for change and reform.  Certainly the issues of governmental malfeasance are no more clearly defined then in the state of California.  California has long been the home of a democrat legislature  unwilling to deal with a burgeoning budgetary crisis that has put California in such financial arrears that it now has the lowest bond rating of any state in the nation, A-, and has been estimated to be in the top ten most likely governmental bodies for default in the world, ranking just ahead of war torn Lebanon and just behind Greece.  It is sitting on a budget deficit of over 19 billion dollars for fiscal 2010 and has accumulated  over 342 billion dollars in debt.  It currently spends 50% of its yearly budget on “public education”, though its high school graduation rates rank it as 48 out of 50 states, and 25% on health and human services, though it ranks 42 out of 50 states in health insurance coverage for its citizens.   It is home to two of the most liberal  democrat Senators in the nation in Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, and proud provider of the most liberal Speaker of the House in history, Nancy Pelosi, dually responsible for promoting the public spending that has surged the national government debt over 3.2 trillion dollars in just 2 years.  Surely California, the state with the largest economy and  the highest population of all 50 states is the most acutely aware of the impending financial crisis, and will take a leadership role in avoiding the final drive off the cliff that it has been so recklessly veering toward.

    With a week to go before a bellweather election to determine the state of California’s future destiny as a beacon state or a failed state,  the polls show the progressively stable leads in the election for Senate and Governorrespectively for – Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown.  Yes, that Barbara Boxer, and oh my god yes, THAT Jerry Brown.  Please California explain yourself – Jerry Brown was first elected your governor in 1975, 35 Years Ago, and his Utopian ideas have changed nada.  Perhaps we could also bring back  Nelson Rockefeller, Gaylord Nelson, John Lindsey, Hubert Humphrey, and Ted Kennedy himself to help  craft Mr. Brown’s vision for the state as they were all liberal lions who thought in 1975 as Mr. Brown does regarding the role of the state in people’s lives – no wait, they are all dead.   Yes, California, you are about to restore to governance a man who was governor during Gerald Ford’s Presidency as the man to lead you out of your current financial and economic wilderness.  And please don’t start me on Senator Boxer.  Is it destiny that California is too drenched in its own illusions, that it won’t do anything to try to save itself?

   Woe Be Gone, California. You were beautiful once.  We hardly knew ye….

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Smart Presidents versus Dumb Presidents

     It is one of the more ingrained myths of the modern American political experience that the more liberal you are, the more likely you are going to be seen as intellectually gifted or even brilliant,  the more conservative, more likely the dummy with persistence.   Quick – name our “intellectually gifted” presidents of the last fifty years: Kennedy, Carter, Clinton ,and Obama -the “intellectually challenged”: Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush.  Our current President Obama was noted to be “brilliant” by commentators as diverse as Peggy Noonan and Joe Klein, without a single released college transcript revealing assessed capacity, or a single legislative accomplishment as a state or federal senator.  David Remnick, Obama’s biographer, states, “Its certainly a relief to a lot of people that Obama shows no signs of the incuriosity displayed by his predecessor (Bush).  Obama has proven his intellectual and literary firepower.“  The power of liberal insight is it transforms people from being intellectually capable to being intellectually “gifted” on the solitary basis of the righteousness of the idealistic liberal cause.   President Obama in his righteousness has struggled with the inability of the segments of the American public to see the obvious benefits of his well thought out positions. Instead they “cling to their guns and their religion”,  and inconceivably deny the merits of the stimulus and health care packages he has produced,  so clear to any thinking person.  In juxtaposition are the two identified presidential “dullards”, Reagan and George W. Bush.  Mr. Reagan the obvious C student at Eureka College and B-movie  actor, was assumed to be incapable of the decision making capacity and policy conceptualization that led to a spectacular economic boom and the fall of the Iron Curtain.  Yet his diaries and writings show a depth, assuredness, and farsightedness based on bedrock principles that defy the attempted dismissiveness of his critics.  George W. Bush holds an especially pilloried position in intellectuals’ hearts when it comes to dullardness. He is the king of the incapable conceptualization, the crown prince of incuriosity. Yet of the three combatants for the Presidency, in order of intellectualism- Gore, Kerry, Bush- which had the SAT score in the top 20% of takers, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and the intellectual competence to fly jet fighters?  Ummm, that would be the dullard Bush.  No matter – the guitar playing Kerry was a clear intellectual heavyweight compared to the thick thinking Bush according to the media  definitions of 2004,  and Bush’s structural clarity in his decision making style and firm support of his management team were seen as profound mental rigidity bordering on -that’s right, dullardness.

     Intellectuals remain flummoxed by the unwillingness of people or events to conform to their version of the facts.  The sceptics of global warming were denounced as “flat earthers” for being unwilling to accept the “overwhelming evidence” of global warming, even as the 2009 East Anglia debacle showed data manipulation and out right fabrication at the base of the arguments.  President Clinton insisted that engagement with the North Koreans worked “under my watch” even though the North Koreans themselves admitted they brazenly lied regarding all elements of the Clinton era benchmarks, and successfully achieved a nuclear device.  Now President Obama is flummoxed by Iranian leaders engaging in evangelical self interest in nuclear development, when it was clear to him the failing of the Bush team was their anti-intellectual obstinance about accepting the Iranian theocracy as the legitimate expression of the Iranian people, even as Obama observed as  hundreds of thousands of Iranians bravely protested and hundreds died defining for all time the regime’s illegitimacy.

     The “unfortunate” conclusion of all this smart vs dumb presidential nonsense is that the components of leadership – organizational skills, temperment, intuitiveness, insight, principled logic and ability to instill passionate trusting involvement of a people- are hardly gaged by an individual’s grade in first year law school or his or her media savvy.  It is hard earned, ‘ boots on the ground’ performance that shows a politician’s true smarts, and our ability to find leaders who can solve some of the bigger issues of our time will determine our own success as a people, and our survival as a civilization.  We may want to consider a more diverse assessment of leaders as they come before us, such as the contrasting leadership styles under pressure of people such as Sara Palin or Hillary Clinton, before we dismiss one, and anoint the other.  The great educational institutions of America have produced some great leaders, but no more than the training ground of the school of hard knocks and personal challenge.

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Is Your State Well Run?

      As the election of November 2nd closes in, the national perspective often clouds the fact that this election is very much a plebiscite on the quality of state and local governmental management.  Governors seats and the senate and assembly positions are up for grabs across the nation, and as Tip O’Neill, the old Boston pol once so famously claimed, ‘all politics is local’.   In many ways the consensus on state and local governments often precedes the eventual national direction and concerns, and 2010 is shaping up to be an election about competence.  Chris Christie, in winning the governorship of the very blue state of New Jersey last year on the issue of competence and adult management,  changed the sense of the possible in all state elections and has states with incompetent governmental styles reeling in fear of the potential electoral wave before them.  State governments are frequently under the onus of the requirement for a “balanced” state budget, where the national government has no similar requirement.   State governments who have done a poor job of supporting their local economic advantages, and have instead fed the ballooning demands of state and local employee entitlements, allowing them to devour the discretionary portion of their budgets, are in particular trouble.  When the economy was sufficiently successful to support the spendthrift habits, the balance sheets seemed to work out, but with the recession lingering, states have had to progressively pilfer from other state fund vehicles to make up the difference.  My home state of Wisconsin under democrat governor Jim Doyle has been one of the great thieves, and has seen progressive loss of support in the bond market for its follies.  Wisconsin, an upper Midwestern state long known for effective government, outstanding education, and a diverse economy of both agriculture and manufacturing, has become a progressive loser compared to its better run neighbors in Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota.  The election in Wisconsin for Governor this year, pitting republican Scott Walker against democrat Tom Barrett, is a particularly  sharp contrast in philosophies of restoration of investment in economic sanity and local industriousness versus the stand-pat support of the safety net against all other needs.  The pattern of local and state competence and economic success is reflected in Standard and Poor’s state bond ratings, which reflect the lender’s confidence in whether their bond support will be realized by return on the borrowed money.  The map not surprisingly gives a pretty clear indication of the state’s most “in trouble” for a coming electoral sea change.

     How does your state compare to your neighbors when put under the microscope of appropriate management of all your states assets and resources?   The web site 24/7 Wall Street has a terrific breakdown of where the fifty states rate in regard to the concept of “well run”, including not only the traditional standard of fiscal information, but also, GDP per capita, debt per capita, credit rating, household income, percent of residents below the poverty line, support of education, support of infrastructure, and health care coverage – all impacting the state’s capacity to meet current needs and successfully invest in its future.   Take a look at the survey and see where your state rates. Wisconsin has always seen itself as an example for the nation, but its rating and its credit status are average at best, thanks to a decade of lack of discipline and focused attention to developing weaknesses. And if you live in California, not so the long ago, the pinnacle of state innovation, economic growth, and educational growth – read’em and weep. On November 2nd, if you don’t finally step up to the plate and vote to start to right your ship, God help you.