Not until the last stage of the Democratic primaries did I consider Hillary Clinton to be a strong woman.  Previously, she always seemed someone who had ridden her husband’s coattails to success.  Could anyone else so charismatically challenged have leapfrogged over so many politicians who had already won elective office to her party’s nod for the Senate seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s retirement in 2000?

And yet, watching her fight for her party’s presidential nomination eight years later when the media, which had so promoted her in the past and which had regularly run interference for her, had written her off and encouraged her to quit, I saw a new woman emerge, feisty, determined, tenacious.

If she brings those qualities to the State Department, she could succeed where the incumbent Secretary has failed.  Much as I admire Condoleezza Rice, clearly one of the most intelligent women in America, she has yielded to her department’s permanent bureaucracy all too often these past four years.

I just don’t see Mrs. Clinton giving in to those arrogant apparatchiks.  Indeed, I see her standing up to them should they try to thwart her initiatives as she stood up to the media (and the man who tapped her for the State Depament) in the final months of the primary campaign.

Let’s just hope those initiatives reflect her rhetoric in that stage of the campaign.  Commentary‘s Abe Greenwald seems to think they will, complimenting perhaps the “bold Bush policy” with “better PR.”

While our nation had many good Secretaries of State (and at least three great ones, Acheson, Dulles and Shultz) during the Cold War, for the passed two decades, we’ve had only mediocrities and incompetents.  But, HIllary lacks one thing which made otherwise qualified individuals mediocre at State, she is her own person, or at least, has been, since the media abandoned her last spring (or maybe even earlier).

(more…)

Last night, while doing my cardio, I was “treated” to forty-five minutes (the length of my workout) of insight into the Bush-hating mindset. One of the television monitors featured MSNBC. Neither Chris Matthews nor Keith Olbermann could offer any insight into Bush’s Farewell Address. Instead, they offered insight into their own obsession with the man.

They were upset that he failed in his speech to grovel and apologize for his supposedly failed Administration. When aren’t they upset with something the president has said or done?

Given how perennially upset they are with George W. Bush, his team and his defenders, one wonders, along with Gateway Pundit, “What will MSNBC do without President Bush?” He has become a target on which they have long projected their own inner demons.

Olbermann brought along a professional stooge to help make his case. He invited former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan on the show to comment on the president’s farewell address.  Having nothing better to do, he accepted.  Well McClellan didn’t offer much analysis, just ofered some left-wing talking points about how Bush failed to be candid with the American people and didn’t admit his mistakes.

He didn’t address the substance of Bush’s message, merely commented on what wasn’t there. He knew how to please his left-wing host.  Basically, he just repeated Obemann’s points, but with different words.  Well, he did call W a decent guy, words which never pass that angry announcer’s lips.

Look, Scott may not have been a very competent spokesman for a president under constant attack from the news media, but he’s not stupid. He knows that conservatives weren’t pleased with his performance as White House Press Secretary. He was forever in a “defensive crouch,” failing to properly promote Administration policies and discredit dishonest attacks, and take issue with antagonistic arguments.

Eager for him to leave the Administration, conservatives would not be honoring him at their conclaves or featuring him on their television and radio programs.

But, the left-wing media forever maligning McClellan’s former boss would give a place of honor to an Administration turncoat. He knew what it would take to gain their favor: bash Bush and his team.

(more…)

Last week, when browsing at Borders with a friend who had voted for Obama pointed to a table laden with books by or about the president-elect. He asked a question that had also occurred to me: had I ever seen such attention given to an incoming Administration.

Even when I visited Washington, D.C. just before Bill Clinton’s first inaugural in 1993, I didn’t see as much memorabilia for the then-incoming president as I have seen this year in the Hollywood area. A nearby 7-11 advertises T-shirts with the mug of the president-elect and the date of his inaugural. Scan a newsstand and it seems more magazines today have cover stories about Obama than did about George W. Bush in 2001, Clinton in 1993, George H.W. in 1989 or even the Gipper in the last such transformational inaugural (at least we’re told this is such a swearing-in) in 1981.

I wonder if cities in “flyover” country are seeing such promotion of the Obama inaugural. Or maybe that establishments here are just playing to folks in the entertainment industry overly enthusiastic about this particular president-elect.

In a long, but quite powerful, piece on BigHollywood.com, GayPatriot reader Charles Winecoff talks about his coming out as a conservative in liberal Hollywood.  Echoing David Zucker who said last fall that being Republican here is the “new gay,” Charles, upon making gift donations to ActforAmerica.org, a grassroots group keeping  an eye on the spread of Islamic supremacy and jihad, learned that it has “basically become taboo” to talk about

the spread of Islamic supremacy and jihad here in the civilized world — kind of like the way homosexuality used to be before people fought back. Despite the fact that we are currently at war with Islamic extremists who are fervently devoted to annihilating the Great Satan (that’s you and me), I received two reactions for the donations I made.

When one friend reacted with anger, he decided to come out to his friends and family.  In that letter which BigHollywood posted in its entirety, Charles recounts how 9/11 changed him  It wasn’t just what he learned in reacting to the events of the day, it was also what he observed in the reaction of some on the left, particularly those involved with the radical group, moveon.org,

warning us how not to think and suppressing self-respect — because that is the underlying message for all the cool young folk out there: that if you hate yourself, hostile people will like you — then why can’t someone send out emails and action alerts to slow down the spread of an ideology that actively treats women like barnyard animals, condones slavery, and punishes gays like criminals

Like many gay people transformed by 9/11, Charles was troubled that so may in his circle blamed America–and by extension themselves–for that hateful ideology.

To try to be “nice” in the face of threats – or actual violence? Not to empower ourselves and be proud? Why are we urged to take on guilt for the whole world? It’s a very sick dichotomy.

Every day I see people being lazy and turning against themselves when we should all be uniting against something that literally wants to kill us, and that has a specific deadline (yes, it’s true — according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-Year Plan, the Islamic caliphate should be up and running the entire world again by about 2082 — so have fun! Equal rights for all won’t be on the agenda.)

Supporting Western values means letting people be who they are as individuals, being able to disagree or get along with each other in a civilized manner, being able to progress. Yet more and more Americans seem so quick to doubt themselves and the very meaning of democracy. Maybe that’s something people need to reconnect with. I was born here. It was not my choice, but it has generally been an easy and good life. Would I like to live in Europe, while it’s still there, if I had the chance? You bet. But I have to work for a living to take care of elderly family members and my own, nontraditional family. I’m free to do that.

Read the whole thing. Let’s hope that his friends in the entertainment industry continue to judge him by his qualities as a human being rather than his failure to conform to their ideas of how a gay man should think.

As my friends on the East Coast and in the Upper Midwest have been suffering under record cold temperatures, we here in Los Angeles have been experiencing a heatwave.

That made me wonder if the hot weather in cities where many in the media and would-be opinion-makers reside effects their narrative on global warming.  Whenever noting how general weather trends contradict the supposed “evidence” of global warming, GatewayPundit posts (e.g., here) a map showing that while temperatures are below normal in much of the country, they are increasing in some areas, notably the Washington-Boston corridor in the East and Los Angeles and much of central California in the West.

So does the global warming narrative of the MSM and leading liberals reflecting their insularity?  That evidence, like opinions, from “flyover” regions, is irrelevant.

I mean, if it’s warming where the “élites” live, then it must be warming all over.

Perhaps the recent cold spell on the eastern seaboard may cause them to change their mind.

Today marks the 101st anniversary of the birth of Ethel Merman, one of the great Broadway stars of the last century, perhaps the only woman who never had a flop.  Alas, that we missed her centennial last year.

As I read this great lady’s biography, I learned with delight that she had her debut (at age five) singing at the Astoria Republican Club.  I knew there was a reason I always liked the diva with the iron lungs.  It wasn’t just that she reminded me of my great aunts and adoptive grandmother.  Ethel appears to have been a Republican.

So this is one diva we gay Republicans love without being embarrassed by her politics.

Indeed, she sang for Ronald Reagan as, I believe, he was about to take office.  So, what better way for a gay Republican blog to honor this diva than to provide a clip of her singing for the Gipper.

She was right.  He was swell.  He was great.

And so was she.  Thanks to youtube, you can see this diva with all her class, sass and brass without leaving your home or waiting for the next TCM retrospective of her limited film work.

Sometimes when I watch a speech, see an item on the news or read something on the web, an idea hits me and I feel “compelled” to blog on it.  Other times, an idea steeps over time (as with my points on Bush’s mistakes).

And then there are times, when as a blogger, I write about something because my readers expect me to do just that.  I doubt I would have watched the presidential debates last fall had I not felt obligated to y’all to comment on these exchanges.

Tonight, however, I watched the president’s Farewell Address not because I felt obligated to, but because I wanted to.  I was curious to see how he would defend a tenure where he has had some remarkable successes and made some serious mistakes.

As our nation is about to inaugurate its first African-American president, it is interesting that two of the four men outgoing president singled out at the conclusion of his address are black.   Another is Hispanic.

And Bush began his final speech as president by offering kind words for his successor: “Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land.  This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole Nation.”  It is indeed a moment of pride for our nation which once allowed the enslavement — and later sanctioned the discrimination — of individuals of African heritage.  Black slaves once built the White House.  Now, a black man will live there.

The president focused on his record in keeping us safe.  He cited the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan.  While he acknowledges there can be “legitimate debate” about many of the decisions he made

. . . there can be little debate about the results.  America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil.  This is a tribute to those who toil night and day and night to keep us safe — law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, homeland security and diplomatic personnel, and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

Note his grace in praising those who carried out his policies. He devoted a considerable amount of time to talking about the promise and meaning of America, contrasting our “guiding principles” with the ideology of our opponents in the current global struggle, our system “based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.”

Liberty, freedom. George W. Bush understands our founding ideal.

I will miss the moral clarity of his speeches on the War on Terror. Would it that he had delivered such addreses more often.

(more…)

Given my tendency to write essays, I sometimes bury the meat of my posts after the jump.  So, I decided to separate post to list the conclusion of my prior post where I list the broad areas of President Bush’s failure.  I flesh them out a little in the post, so check it out to read my explanation.

But, if you’re pressed for time, here are the main reasons (in my view) for the slide in the president’s popularity in his the second half of his first term and his second term.

1. Taking his popularity in the wake of 9/11 for granted and not doing enough to defend his character and promote his programs. (And as per Jack Goldsmith, this applies to the way he dealt with Congress.)
2. Not realizing that the increased security expenditures in the wake of 9/11 should mean cuts from other areas of the budget.
3. Seeing his reelection a a personal vindication and appointing cronies instead of competent conservatives to posts of power and influence.

As President Bush prepares to deliver his farewell address, I thought I’d offer my broad overview of why, I believe, he lost the support of the American people and how he failed conservatives.

Later, either today, tomorrow or this weekend, I may use the text of that address to focus on his accomplishments. Despite his many blunders, he did accomplish a good deal, notably in keeping us safe since 9/11 and in appointing two responsible, intelligent and eminently qualified jurists to the Supreme Court.

While Bush has been anything but a conservative on fiscal issues, I don’t regret my vote for him in 2000 and 2004. Given the alternatives, I know we’d be in worse shape had Al Gore or John Kerry won. Gore’s behavior since his loss has shown he lacks the temperament to lead. And Kerry was too beholden to liberal opinion to develop a coherent strategy to face the threats abroad.

Since I’m going to focus on Bush’s failings, let me alert you to Fred Barnes’s piece listing ten things, he believes, the president got right. I agree with him on most of those.

While we can find many little mistakes over the course of the president’s eight-year tenure, I believe that many (if not most) of them stem from two things, taking his popularity for granted in the wake of 9/11 and misreading the 2004 election returns.

After 9/11, just by (by and large) doing the right thing, his popularity skyrocketed and remained high through the summer of 2003, the same time he tapped a overly deferential man lacking in public relations skills as his Press Secretary. Simply put, Scott McClellan was the wrong man to handle a press corps eager to under George W. Bush.

Even as the press became increasingly combative in 2002 and 2003, the public continued to rally around the president. He didn’t think he needed do anything to remain in the good graces of the American people. So, he didn’t work hard enough to burnish his image and defend his policies in the wake of unrelenting attacks on his character and motives.

At the same time as he requested larger federal outlays to meet the terrorist threat, he didn’t do anything to restrain domestic spending. It would seem that a responsible steward of the public treasury would say, if we need more to pay for this program, we’re going to have to take less to pay for that.

(more…)

. . it makes sense he’d pick a man to serve as Treasury Secretary who took tax reimbursements for taxes he didn’t pay.

When I heard that the president-elect had dined earlier this week with a number of leading conservatives, it seemed to confirm an impression I had formed of Barack Obama during the Democratic primaries:

He reminds me of those liberal activists I encountered in college, those who would come to hear visiting conservative speakers, ask questions in a civil tone and even amicably greet their Republican peers on campus.  In classroom discussions (in which [they] would often participate) [they] would usually chime in with the standard liberal idea du jour.

Those activists would often prepare for conservative lectures by boning up on the ideas of the speakers, tracking down their articles in various periodicals, borrowing their books from the library (this, in the days before the Internet).  Indeed, in interviews, Obama has frequently shown a familiarity with conservative ideas greater than that of most other prominent Democrats.

My guess is that the president-elect had an exchange with those pundits similar to those I frequently enjoyed with liberal students while at Williams (and later at the University of Virginia School of Law).  There was much disagreement, but respect for each other’s ideas.  He likely responded with argument, not innuendo or ad hominem.  Perhaps, in some cases, he didn’t offer an opinion one or the other while acknowledging the speaker had a point.

The guest list included some of the most thoughtful conservatives columnists, including four of my favorites, Michael Barone, Charles Krauthammer, Larry Kudlow and Peggy Noonan.  And since I’ve compared Peggy to the Greek goddess Athena, perhaps, I could call this a gathering of the Olympians of conservative opinion.

On his blog, Barone offered a short squib on the dinner, refraining from offering any details (except to acknowledge his presence) and suggesting that it was the pundits (host, George Will, perhaps?) who organized it:

I’m not going to write about any of the details here; it was off the record, as such gatherings must be, if people are to get above the level of frankness that obtains in public statements. But my observations will affect my writing in the weeks, months, and years ahead. A miffed talk-radio host notes that George W. Bush and previous Republican presidents did not dine with liberal journalists on coming to Washington. That’s not entirely true: The late Katharine Graham invited the Reagans and the George H. W. Bushes to dinner and cultivated a friendship with Nancy Reagan. But evidently no liberal journalist thought to send an invitation to the now outgoing president. Perhaps one should have.

I’d always thought one of Bush’s great mistakes was his failure to reach out to the liberal media (more on that later today). When I first heard of the dinner, I had assumed the president-elect intended to correct that flaw of his soon-to-be predecessor’s Administration.

If indeed the conservative journalists did instigate this dinner, this exonerates (at least in part) the president of that charge. And it puts them in a better light than their liberal media colleagues, ever eager to engage their ideological adversaries.  As it makes one wonder why, as Barone put it, “no liberal journalist thought to send an invitation to the now outgoing president.”

Finally, while I’m (obviously) eager to praise columnists I respect, fairness requires me to praise the presient-elect.  It speaks highly of the man that he would accept the invitation from columnists who have criticized him in print and pixel.  And it confirms my early assessment of the man.

Welcome Ace of Spades and Instapundit Readers!!

So eager were left-wing bloggers (and sometimes even their allies in the MSM) to find fault with George W. Bush that they became outraged over actions he took which they would ignore, excuse or even praise if a Democrat (save perhaps Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries) had taken.   (What is it with the left and this need to manufacture outrage against approved targets?)

Remember how outraged Bush critics were just four years ago at the expense of Bush’s inaugural?

The current economic crisis, which some have called the worst since the Great Depression, has not deterred the organizers of Obama’s inaugural festivities from outspending the Bush team four years ago. So much do this year’s festivities cost that the outgoing president has declared an emergency to pay for it so his successor won’t have to spare any expense as he celebrates his swearing-in.

Indeed, “Barack Obama’s inauguration is set to cost more than £100m [$146 million] making it the most expensive swearing-in ceremony in US history.”

The most expensive swearing-in ceremony in US History?  Where’s the outrage?  Oh, yeah, it’s a Democrat doing the spending so the standards are different.

UPDATE:  This year an AP reporter is defending the same extravagence one of her colleagues faulted four years ago.

On Sunday, while participating in a rally in support of Israel outside the federal building in Westwood, my former State Assemblyman Paul Koretz approached me, asking for my support in his current bid for LA City Council.  While I wondered at the appropriateness of his campaigning at the event, I took advantage of his approach to question his fiscal record.

First, I saw his current bid for elective office undermining the whole notion of citizen legislator. Some people just have to keep running for office.

When I moved to Southern California, Koretz was serving on the West Hollywood City Council.  In 2000, he ran for and won a seat in the California General Assembly.  Term-limited out in 2006, he announced shortly thereafter that he was running for LA City Council–which required him to move just so he could make another bid for elective office.

So, back to his fiscal record.  Given that California faces record budget deficits, I asked him if he had done anything to contain the size of state government.  He mumbled something about some expenditure he had looked into or some such.  I wondered whether he pressed the governor to dismiss the state employees hired during Gray Davis’s tenure in office, the point being that even as state revenues have declined, the size of the government has grown.

I reminded him of the difficult choices my brothers have had to make during the economic downturn, having to lay off employees so they can keep their business afloat.  Shouldn’t a state make a similar choice if it faces a revenue shortfall?

But, for the “past eight years,” to borrow an expression, in the Golden State, our elected officials have done little to cut state spending.  Instead of working to cut spending, Koretz introduced a resolution to impeach the president, something beyond the purview of a state legislature.

It’s not just in Washington where Democrats (and alas Republicans as well) don’t see deficits as an impediment to new government programs.

(more…)

In the wee hours of the morning, Glenn linked a post penned er, pixeled by Peter Kirsanow which gets at two of the primary problems preventing Republicans and conservatives from making their case to the American people.

Kirsanow, in turns, links Jay Nordlinger’s column on the success of the left-of-center media élites in defining prominent Republicans and conservatives as laughingstocks (Palin), monsters (Cheney) or fools (Bush).  The first problem Kirsanow identifies:  a media determined to discredit our leaders.  Note, for example how differently the MSM treat John McCain when he was a “maverick” Senator challenging his party’s leadership and when he was the party’s presidential nominee vying for the White House.

But, it’s Kirsanow’s second point which Glenn cites and which we can more easily address, that of confidence in our leaders and our ideas:

Think about the scores of times bright, honorable, self-sacrificing conservatives have been defamed by the Left with barely a peep of protest from Republicans in a position to command attention. It’s as if Republicans concede the premise that their friends and colleagues are demons and/or nitwits.

Many Republican politicians seem to begin the day apologizing for being Republicans. And they appear to have a perverse, desperate desire to befriend and seek favor from those who regularly malign conservatives.

You will not find finer men nor better public servants than Justice Thomas, Ken Starr, John Ashcroft — to name a few. Yet I’ve witnessed Republicans act as if they’re embarrassed to even know of them. Whether it’s a momentous slander or a series of invidious slights, too many weak-kneed, hand-wringing Republicans simply tolerate the abuse heaped on these good Americans. No surprise that the caricatures hold sway when those expected to protest remain silent.

Until Republicans start responding to each and every falsehood with vigor and conviction, the slanders will continue. That’s not good for Republicans, conservatives, or the country.

Exactly. We need respond to these falsehoods with vigor and conviction. And when we do, we’ll find, from time to time, that those on the left and in the MSM not consumed with partisan animosity may join us in defending our leaders and ideas. Just as Camille Paglia so regularly defends Sarah Palin.

At first blush, it seems that Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay taxes should disqualify him from serving as Treasury Secretary, yet as one who, for the past decade, has paid someone to do his taxes, I am willing to cut him some slack given that for “four of the years in question” he prepared his own returns.

That said, the president-elect has tapped Geithner to run the department responsible for collecting taxes. He should be more familiar with the tax code than the average citizen.  As Tom Maguire puts it:

. . . it was tricky and he got bad tax advice – not a real resume boost for a former Under-Secretary of Treasury aspiring to the top job, but there it is.  However, as of 2006 he knew he had a liability for 2001 and 2002 – where was his check?  Was his conscience unruffled by his non-compliance?  Or does Geithner have a “”Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on back taxes?

It’s too soon to tell whether Geithner’s failure to pay taxes will sink his nomination, but Glenn alerts us that his confirmation hearings are being postponed.

It’s not too soon, however, to see two big things this issue tells us about Obama’s transition and the media. First, as Jennifer Rubin asks, “what the heck is wrong with the Obama vetting process?” To be sure, when the Obama team learned of the problem, they alerted Geithner and he promptly paid his back taxes.  Yet, they still allowed the nomination to proceed.

If Obama’s team was aware of the problem and Obama still appointed him, didn’t they think he owed the American people an explanation?  That is, shouldn’t they have been more fortcoming about the nomination before he sent it to the Senate?

Perhaps, they were counting on the media according his nominee different treatment that they would a Republican in similar circumstances. Such a Republican, Rubin contends, would “surely” be “toast.”

I mean, as Jim Treacher points out, it’s “headline news” when a “plumber owed $1,000 in taxes that he didn’t even know about.” Of course the plumber in question dared challenge Obama rather than agree to serve in his Administration:

(more…)

“Spider-man creator Stan Lee is to unveil the world’s first gay superhero.” Well, technically not the first, as there have been a number, notably Northstar, appearing in various comic books, er, graphic novels over the years.  But, none of them have had their own TV show as will Lee’s new character, Thom Creed.

(H/t Jonah @ the Corner.)

There are few Obama-supporting blogresses I enjoy reading more than Camille Paglia. Unlike some on the left of the political spectrum, she does not harbor a visceral animosity toward her ideological adversaries. Indeed, it would be hard to define an ideological adversary to Paglia as her politics, like her ideas, are quite eclectic.

She supports Obama because she appreciates his qualities. Yet, her appreciation of those qualities does not blind her to his faults nor to those of his political opponents, notably the accomplished Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.  And Paglia has been unsparing in her criticism of liberal talking heads in the media for attempting to take Mrs. Palin.

One reason the Democrats succeeded in undermining popular support for that good woman in the fall campaign was the generous assist they received from such talking heads and the mainstream media. Perhaps because John McCain was used to having the MSM help him get his message out, he assumed they would give his running mate a fair shake. So, his campaign arranged for the news anchors from the three broadcast networks to interview the Alaska Governor.

But, those anchors weren’t interested in giving Governor Palin a fair shake. They didn’t appreciate that a woman with values different that their own had achieved a position of political prominence while earning the accolades of social conservatives. Her success undermined their narrative, both about successful women and about Republicans.

Yet, Paglia saw through their attempts to discredit that good Governor, refusing to judge her by standards set in coastal urban enclaves. She didn’t let a lens of received “élite” opinion distort her perception of Palin. She sees her as she was, as she is, and not as others would have her be. Not just that, she calls out Couric for who she is, a preening phony:

I have never had the slightest problem in understanding Sarah Palin’s meaning at any time. On the contrary, I have positively enjoyed her fresh, natural, rapid delivery with its syncopated stops and slides — a fabulous example of which was the way (in her recent interview with John Ziegler) that she used a soft, swooping satiric undertone to zing Katie Couric’s dippy narcissism and to assert her own outrage as a “mama grizzly” at libels against her family.

Ideology-driven attacks on Palin became clotted liberal clichés within 24 hours of her introduction as John McCain’s running mate. What a bunch of tittering lemmings the urban elite have become in this country. From Couric’s vicious manipulations of video clips to Cavett’s bourgeois platitudes, the preemptive strike on Palin as a potential presidential candidate has grossly misfired. Whatever legitimate objections may be raised to Palin on political grounds (explored, for example, by David Talbot in Salon) have been lost in the amoral overkill that has defamed a self-made woman of concrete achievement in the public realm.

And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC’s “Today” show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric’s small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric’s TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There’s many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.

Seeing this cartoon in a friend’s e-mail reminded me of the Gerson column I mentioned in my previous post. I seemed a sign I should finally, put pen to paper fingers to keyboard and write a piece that had been kicking around in my head since I had first read that column last month.

Just as that Kool-Aid changes flavors to reflect the latest polling data, so does Obama change to reflect his surroundings.  As Gerson noted, his cabinet picks showed the “audacity of moderation.”  Maybe he realized that he won his election because of certain circumstances during the campaign (i.e., the financial meltdown) rather than the ideology of his party.  Or maybe he realizes that his more moderate general election campaign rhetoric resonated with the American people.

If he shifted his ideology to reflect those around him, it would be entirely consistent with his past record.

He associated with radicals like William Ayers because that’s what intellectuals did who lived near the the University of Chicago.  He joined Jeremiah Wright’s church because that’s what up-and-coming African-American politicians did on the South Side of Chicago. He voted the party line in the Senate because that’s what ambitious Democrats do in their first years in Washington.

He may have associated with Ayers and praised Wright, but unless you adopt Andrew Sullivan’s logic, you won’t find any evidence that supported their most extreme ideas.

Like a chameleon, he just seemed to blend in.  While he did often articulate support for their general worldview, he lacked the political courage to challenge those hateful ideas.  He liked didn’t support Ayers’s agenda of terror or Wright’s animosity toward United States in general and white Americans in particular, but he didn’t want to risk exposing himself as any different from the most outspoken (and bigottted) people around him.

Now that Obama is about to become my president, the leader of the nation I love, I want to believe he will set a course different from one suggested by his liberal voting record and left-wing associations.  Since I reject the notion that he harbored the hateful views of Wright and Ayers, I’m left seeing him as a political chameleon.

(more…)

Every now and again you read an article or column which well summarizes an issue of the day, a campaign theme or helps us to define a public figure. Rarely do you find such pieces which help us define two elected officials, indeed, two very different politicians.

Such a piece was Michael Gerson’s December 3, 2008 column, “Closet Centrist” on the president-elect’s early picks for his cabinet. So insightful did I find this column that I intend to devote two posts to it, this one to what he says about his former boss, the outgoing President of the United States, the second to what it implies about that good man’s soon-to-be successor, the incoming President of the United States.

Impressed with Obama’s initial appointments, Gerson found they ratified, to a certain extent, the policies of the incumbent the president-elect so regularly attacked in successful White House bid:

Obama’s appointments reveal something important about current Bush policies. Though Obama’s campaign savaged the administration as incompetent and radical, Obama’s personnel decisions have effectively ratified Bush’s defense and economic approaches during the past few years. At the Pentagon, Obama rehired the architects of President Bush’s current military strategy — Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. At the Treasury Department, Obama has hired one of the main architects of Bush’s current economic approach.

This continuity does not make Obama an ideological traitor. It indicates that Bush has been pursuing centrist, bipartisan policies — without getting much bipartisan support. The transition between Bush and Obama is smoother than some expected, not merely because Obama has moderate instincts but because Bush does as well. Particularly on the economy, Bush has never been a libertarian; he has always matched a commitment to free markets with a willingness to intervene when markets stumble.

Emphasis added.

This continuity makes clear that the incumbent president has been anything but a conservative on the economy. Thus, to blame conservative economic policies for the current mess would misstate his record.

While I am glad that Obama seems to be emulating the most successful aspects of the Bush Administration, I am concerned that he is building on the least successful ones.  If big government defines economic centrism, what then defines left-of-center policies?

I fear the answer.

During the course of the presidential campaign, I read both books the Democratic nominee had written and three the Republican nominee had written (I had read another, Faith of My Fathers, during the 2000 campaign).

When, particularly during the late summer and early fall (i.e., prior to the financial meltdown), I read John McCain’s books, I became convinced he would be president.  In his works, mostly appreciations of a variety of individuals from all walks of life, he showed a keen appreciation for the struggles of the various people he portrays as well as a respect for the values which sustained them in difficult times.

He even wrote movingly of John Lewis’s leadership of the march from Selma to Montgomery at the height of the Civil Rights’ Movement:

I’ve seen courage in action on many occasions. I can’t say I’ve seen anyone posses more of it, and use it for any better purpose and to any greater effect, than John Lewis.

During the presidential campaign, Lewis would accuse McCain of promoting racist violence.

What struck me as presidential about McCain’s works was his ability to see beyond political differences to get at the quality of an individual.  About the Gipper he wrote:

What was . . . it [about] Ronald Reagan that let him see the future, a future few others believed was imminent or possible at all?  What gave him the strength to make such hard decisions, to accept disappointment so manfully, to bear criticism so lightly, to confront opposition so confidently?  I think it was one thing, one conviction more than any other, a conviction born of his own success.  He believed in his country and its values, and he never doubted that America was on the right side of history.

As I go back over McCain’s books, after his defeat, I see the qualities presented there a little differently than I did when I was a partisan advocating for his election.  Then, it was easy to see his strengths, but I missed one thing which certainly contributed to his defeat last fall.

While he showed great appreciation for men and women from all walks of life, he did not articulate a political philosophy, did not outline a set of principles which would establish how he intended to govern.  He heralded qualities of character which marked these individuals, persistence, courage, determination, resolve and patriotism, but as his praise of the Gipper showed, he focused more on such broad (and noble) qualities and less on particular policies.

To be sure, appreciation of those qualities would have served his well as president, but would not have helped him determine a particular political course.  And his failure to clearly define that course in his campaign is one reason his opponent will take office just one week from today.