For some time, I have been compiling notes for a post on why the incumbent Democratic president will not have the success that one of his partisan predecessors had with a “Give ‘Em Hell” strategy, attacking the Republican Congress for its “Do Nothing” record. Jim Geraghty has made by task easier, linking and excerpts John Bicknell’s piece in Roll Call contending that “Obama’s choice to adopt Harry Truman’s “give ‘em hell” strategy would work better if it was still 1948″.

Back in 1948, the Republicans weren’t prepared for such aggressive a strategy.  And for another, as far as I can tell, Truman didn’t take up this tack until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in mid-July of that election year.

Obama has begun his long before the corresponding date in this cycle (still six months in the future).  Voters may tire of a negative, hectoring incumbent.  Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have the time to showcase the legislation they have passed — and point to the “Do Nothing” Democratic Senate which has bottled up their bills.

Importantly, Bicknell reminds us that Americans in 1948 liked the New Deal:

Perhaps most importantly, despite the economic problems the country faced in 1948, underlying support for continuing the New Deal was strong. Obama faces an even tougher economy, and his economic program inspires little loyalty beyond the Democratic base.

Even as increasing numbers of economists are coming to recognize that the New Deal did not work as advertised, delaying recovery, it retained in the 1940s — and even in subsequent decades — the aura of success.   Today, the American people, as poll after poll after poll indicates, have become increasingly skeptical of government solutions to our economic problems, favoring a private sector approach.

On matters economic, Barack Obama in 2012, unlike Harry S Truman in 1948 is not in tune with the times.

Back in 1980 as Ronald Reagan began racking up victories in Republican primaries and caucuses, establishment Republicans were in a panic, fearing that by nominating such an extreme conservative, the party faithful were jeopardizing their best chance to unseat a Democratic incumbent since the year before the United States entered the First World War.  Indeed, Jimmy Carter and Democrats delighted as the Gipper easily secured the GOP nomination, believing him to be easier to beat than some of his more moderate Republican rivals.

We hear similar grumbling today about the weakness of the current GOP field, with pundits and bloggers (including yours truly) pining for a promising legislator or accomplished former (or current) governor.

With his encyclopedic knowledge of American history, Michael Barone reminds us that in 1932, the party out of (presidential) power had a weak “field of presidential candidates in a year when its prospects for victory seemed so great“:  Democrats’ “prospects for victory [that year] were excellent by just about any measure.” But, despite this “golden opportunity for the Democratic party . . ., its field of candidates looked weak at the time”. The man who would win the party’s nomination — and the general election was, during the contest that year for the contest for that nomination, considered a

. . . lightweight, profiting on the fact that he was a distant cousin (his wife Eleanor was a closer cousin) of Theodore Roosevelt, a president considered great enough at that time to be worthy of being depicted on Mount Rushmore . . . .

Although underestimated early on in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt all but defined American politics for the next fifty years — and is still today considered one of the greatest American presidents. (more…)

The late Vaclav Havel was a voice of moral clarity on a continent confused by the various ideologies which arose as the threat of communism receded, indeed, which became chic even as those totalitarian regimes oppressed the citizens of nations in eastern and central Europe and challenged democratic republics in the western and southern regions of the continent.

There was a time when such men were commonplace in our society. Or at least when we honored men like him and the ideas they so eloquently expressed. We knew to call out oppressive ideologies for what they were — and warn our fellows of the threats followers of such ideologies posed to free societies like our own — and to men and women across the world.

During World War II, those who produced our entertainment understood the threat of fascism and called it what it was. In Watch on the Rhine, for example, Paul Lukas‘s Kurt Muller “I fight against fascism. That is my trade.”  And he wins and Oscar.

How many other films were produced in that era which had strong characters exposing the evils of that system, with characters like Lukas’s Muller who had suffered under it.  He was a German.  The system was evil and not the people (nor the nation itself).  (Am now watching Keeper of the Flame which seems to have a simlilar theme.)

So, this leads me to wonder where are the films where strong characters take a strong stand against Islamofascism?  And where are the characters, say an Iranian gay man, who suffered under such regimes and speak out strongly for their overthrow as they tell us how that system oppresses their fellow Persians.

Or a film depicting an Arab heroine fighting the ideology which prevents her from reaching her full potential while refusing to punish the men who rape her sisters..

For the past few evenings while having my snack or seeking a moment’s escape, I have been working my way through The Bette Davis Collection, Vol. 3 which I bought on sale at a Barnes * Noble in Denver.  (I could have saved a few more bucks had I bought it online at Amazon.)

Although the films in this collection aren’t all of the caliber of those in the collection I blogged about three years ago, Miss Davis’s screen presence is no less compelling.  She seems capable of playing the full range of feminine emotion from demure, but cold old maid to a maternal nanny to an affectionate wife to self-centered hedonist (link each movie) and be utterly believable in each role, indeed, in numerous situations.

What struck me in the last movie, In This Our Life, that I started watching last night and finished watching while grabbing a snack after catching one of the greatest movies ever made on the big screen, On the Waterfront, was not just her performance, but the way the 1942 film, set in Richmond, Virginia, treated the black characters.

WARNING:  Plot details provided.

Here a young black man Ernest Anderson‘s Parry Clay works for the family of Davis’s family while studying law.  When drunk after returning from a bar Davis‘s Stanley Timberlake (yes, both she and her screen sister Olivia de Havilland have men’s first names) erratically driving her sports car, runs over a mother and daughter, killing the latter, she pins the blame on Parry whom, she claims, was cleaning her car that night.

And we’re made to sympathize with Parry, not her.  De Havilland’s Roy begins to doubt her sister’s story when his mother Minerva (Hattie McDaniel) provides an alibi.  The white woman trusts the young black man; she has seen him use his small income to buy law books and watched him work hard in a law office. (more…)

Today, the president traveled to Osawatomie, Kansas, in Michael Know Beran’s words “to unveil his latest persona: Teddy Roosevelt, who delivered his “New Nationalism” manifesto in the town’s John Brown Cemetery in August 1910.”

And yea, the Democrat did invoke the Republican who also favored a more muscular state than had that energetic early twentieth century leader’s predecessors. Only problem is, as Beran reminds us:

The difference is that in 1910 government spending amounted to about 8 percent percent of GDP. A century later it comes to around 40 percent. The country today has too much state, not too little.

At this point, I’d settle for government spending (at all levels) three times what it was a century ago.

UPDATE:  Writing about the speech, Tina Korbe observes:

Today in Osawatomie, Kan., Barack Obama laid bare his progressive agenda, calling for more federal involvement in education, increased spending on infrastructure, an extension of the payroll tax cut and increased taxes on the rich. . . .

. . . on the whole, the president was pretty transparent about his belief that big government makes everything better.

Seems that every time the incumbent gives one of his ballyhooed big speeches, he calls for more federal spending and greater government intervention.  Doesn’t this guy remember that he won the Oval Office by promising a “net spending cut”?

UP-UPDATE: About the incumbent’s attempt to compare himself to the Republican progressive, Victor Davis Hanson writes, “What we have here is an adolescent president in desperate search of an adult identity of his own, without which he borrows liberally from others, often oddly from Republicans or conservatives.” Read the whole thing.

I’m glad I stumbled upon this item in the Wall Street Journal today.

Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

This is indeed a big country, a rich country, in a way no array of figures can measure and so in a way past belief of those who have not seen it. Even those who journey through its Northeastern complex, into the Southern lands, across the central plains and to its Western slopes can only glimpse a measure of the bounty of America.

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.

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We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“On the night of his inaugural gala, all his dreams seemed within his grasp. . . .
within 100 days _______ would be compared to Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.”

(Heard on a recent documentary.)

HINT:  It’s not Barack Obama.  And that’s the point of this post.

UPDATE: Seems Cas has been reading my posts as I had mentioned last week that I had been watching a DVD about LBJ.  It was indeed LBJ.  And few would consider that Democrat one of the greatest U.S. Presidents though he shepherd through a lot of legislation.

Seems that the presidents about whom our chattering classes have the highest expectations turn out to be the greatest disappointments.

Back in the 1990s, when I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh when driving back and forth between Charlottesville, Virginia and our nation’s capital or when motoring about within the confines of that city’s Beltway, I recall the talker criticizing the then-incumbent President of the United States for his wayward ways.

Now, he wants to return federal spending the levels of that era?  He said as much in praising Ron Paul’s economic plan:

Genuine, big spending cuts are the only thing that is going to bring us back into some semblance of ideas.  Now, these aren’t really Ron Paul’s ideas.  They are ours.  On this program, I myself, El Rushbo, have suggested freezing spending at 2008 levels. In fact, I said, you guys, the Democrats, you’re running around and you’re talking about how great the Clinton years were, let’s freeze, let’s take spending back to that level.  You said Clinton produced a boom, let’s go back to those years.  Let’s do that.  So Paul is stealing that idea.  Cutting the EPA, we’ve long been an advocate of this, eliminating whole bureaucracies.  But nobody on our side’s ever really seriously proposed it, and Ron Paul’s going to.

Via Joel Gehrke @ the Washington Examiner.  Kudos to Paul for going big with his proposal as we need to do given the Augean task facing the next president.  (Please note that yours truly has not yet read the plan, so am not endorsing it, just showing appreciation for the bold gesture — and the need for more than just cosmetic cuts in federal spending.)

Looks like he’s offering us the type of “net spending cut” Barack Obama promised in the last campaign.

Perhaps, having heard from left-of-center pundits that he needs to act more like Harry S Truman in order to win reelection next fall, President Obama is pulling a page from his Missouri predecessor’s playbook:

“I would love nothing more than to not be out there campaigning,” Obama said at a press conference in the East Room of the White House. “I would love nothing more than to see Congress get so aggressive… that I can’t campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress.”

He accused Republicans of objecting to his $447 billion American Jobs Act not for policy reasons, but because they want to thwart his reelection campaign.

Problem is that unlike Truman, Obama faces only one house of Congress controlled by the opposition.  In 1948, when the Missouri Democrat ran for reelection, Republicans had majorities in both houses.

And the Republican chamber has hardly been a d0-nothing body, having passed numerous bills with job-creating reforms, only to see them languish in the Senate.  And they’re not the kind of bills the president is likely to support.

It’s not that that House Republicans are doing nothing, it’s that they’re not doing what the president wants them to do. (more…)

If Rick Perry wanted to, he could turn the story of the hunting camp his family leased on its head, making those who blow it out of proportion look like fools while burnishing his own image.  All he needs do is pull a page from Richard Nixon’s campaign for the vice presidency in 1952 when he briefly became a liability to the Republican ticket.

When then-Senator Nixon (he held the seat now occupied by Mrs. Boxer), the Republican nominee for Vice President, was “accused of improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses“, he took to their airwaves to defend himself — and attack his accusers.

He reminded Americans that he was a man from a modest background and could not pay for all expenses related to his office out of his own pocket.  His wife did not wear a mink coat, instead wore a “respectable Republican cloth coat.”  He did acknowledge, however, that he was keeping one gift:

One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something-a gift-after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was.

It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl-Tricia, the 6-year old-named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.

For the Nixons, the family dream was to own a dog.  For the Perrys, it was to find a place that could use as a hunting camp.

As Nixon did, Perry could make a speech about this dream, to find a place where his family could go to engage in the kind of recreation they enjoy.   Just as the dog made the Nixons seems like an average family, so would this story make the Perrys seem like an all-American family, seeking a place where the family could gather together on weekends and for vacations. (more…)

I can hardly believe that a decade has passed since I was two blocks from The White House and watching the TV in my office as a second plane hit the World Trade Center.

A lot of what drives me as an adult was born on that day. It is hard to believe that 2001 was so long ago. John and I had only met two years before. We enjoyed living in the DC suburbs before that day. None of our current canine companions had been born yet. The creation of the GayPatriot blog was highly influenced by the events of 9/11, but on that day I had no idea what blogs even were. My personal time being invested in politics no doubt increased and I am sure that my convictions about helping to start GOPROUD are rooted in 9/11/2001.

As long time readers know, I don’t talk much about my personal life — but I struggled for a long time to deal with the attacks on America in 2001. As I’ve mentioned before, not only was I in DC that day — but a very close friend was taken from me during the terrorist attacks. I found myself psychologically affected by that day for many years to come. Since 9/11, we moved west to Loudon County, VA…then south to Charlotte, NC ….and now to York, SC. I don’t regret any of those moves, but I can’t honestly say that I would be living where I’m living had 9/11 not happened.

I was thinking about the “9/11 kids” this weekend. It struck me that kids who were 10 & 11 on the day of the attacks are now 20 & 21. I have to believe that they have been profoundly affected by the last decade — perhaps in a way that will never alter that generation’s character.

I’m tired of war, I’m tired of fighting, and I’m just damned tired. But this nation’s founding was an aberration of human history — and I’ll be damned if some two-bit 7th Century ideologues will break my will and take the United States of America down.

Let’s Roll.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Two weeks ago, I wondered if Obama’s Big Jobs Speech would be, like his other big speeches, full of sound and fury, specifying nothing. Yesterday, in a similar vein, Jim Geraghty quipped, “Wait, a ‘major speech’? I thought he promised a ‘very specific plan.’”  That blogger was responding to an USA Today piece on the president’s claim that creating jobs was “our urgent mission.”

So, as the president prepares that speech, I’m wondering whom he’s consulting, representatives of left-of-center interest groups whose resources he needs to win re-election, political consultants who have poll-tested various ideas or economists who have theories of how markets work.

Perhaps, he would better to consult instead with economic historians, asking them to study each major economic downturn over the past century or so, perhaps going back to the Panic of 1893, and see how the respective presidents responded to those recessions  – and to see how markets responded to those policies, whether the economy grew in response and whether or not jobs were created.

Instead of consulting economists who have put forward various theories of how markets works, he would to wise to seek out individuals who have studied what actually happened.  But, methinks, alas, Mr. Obama is too dependent on various big government theories; he just believes they work.  Seems he puts more stock in his theories than in the actual results of government policy.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  John the Egyptian offers:

The liberal narrative always transcends reality. Liberals are to be judged upon their intents, their hopes, and their empathy; not on their results.

Indeed.

As I drive to Colorado to celebrate my father’s upcoming birthday, I have been listening to Ron Chernow’s wonderful biography of George Washington.  Last night, when crossing Nevada in the dead of night, but with the temperature fluctuating from the mid-90s to low 100s, I learned of the trials that great man faced when first taking charge of the Continental Army, then little more than a ragtag collection of  state militias, in 1775.

Among other things, the then-green Commander-in-Chief was concerned about the spiritual welfare of his men.  From his “General Orders” of July 4, 1775 (one year before that day would become the most significant one on an American’s calendar):

The General . . . requires and expects, of all Officers, and Soldiers, not engaged on actual duty, a punctual attendance on divine Service, to implore the blessings of heaven upon the means used for our safety and defence.

Wonder how the ACLU would have reacted had it been around at the time.

Contrast the father of our country with the the current Mayor of New York City:  ”New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will not reconsider his decision to exclude clergy from the ceremony marking 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, a spokesman said Friday.“

Until recently, when I read about the Revolutionary era, I devoted most of my attention to my three favorite Founders, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, studying less the events which inspired them to rebel, focusing instead on the ideals which inspired them to establish our republic.

In recent years, I have expanded that list of favorites to include not just the father of our country, but also a man dubbed the “First American“, Benjamin Franklin.  And in studying these two great men, I considered not just their actions during and after the American Revolution, but also in the period which lead up to it.  As I read (and listened via Books on CD) to their biographies I learned why both Washington and Franklin, once loyal British subjects, broke with the “mother country.”

Fighting in the French and Indian War, Washington learned that a “colonial” could not advance in the ranks as could a counterpart born in Britain, particularly one born there wealth and privilege.  One’s birth, not one’s merit, determined the rank to which he could rise — and the leadership posts he could assume.

Building his own business from scratch, Franklin learned that in a “Proprietary” colony, there were two sets of laws, one which applied to certain families, the other to everyone else.

They believed that the law should make no distinctions based on class.

Yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal, Harvey Golub, a former chairman and CEO of American Express, responding to Warren Buffett and the president, critiqued the current American tax system and showed that it now privileges certain favored “classes”:

. . . the extraordinarily complex tax code is replete with favors to various interest groups and industries, favors granted by politicians seeking to retain power. Mortgage interest deductions support the private housing industry at the expense of renters. (more…)

You know how Democrats was nostalgic about the Clinton years when, they claim, the Arkansas Democrat’s economic policies lifted us out of a lingering recession and the charismatic Southerner single-handedly balanced the budget.  There are a number of problems with this narrative, the first being that the recession ended before Clinton took office.  He was just lucky that it appeared to linger through the 1992 campaign.

Now, to be sure, I do give the Democrat credit for learning from his mistakes and his party’s setbacks at the ballot box.  After the 1994 elections, he pivoted to the center and worked with congressional Republicans to enact real reforms and balance the budget.  Indeed, the unemployment rate in November 1992 was 7.4%, down from its peak of 7.8% in June of that year.

There’s another thing to bear in mind when talking about Bill Clinton’s economic policies.  Senate Republicans blocked his “stimulus”. From the April 22, 1993 New York Times:

Senate Republicans killed President Clinton’s economic stimulus program today, maintaining their filibuster until Democrats surrendered and agreed to limit the bill to $4 billion for extended unemployment benefits.

Mr. Clinton’s first serious legislative defeat was marked by complaints from Democrats in the Senate and the White House. But Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, was satisfied that the Republicans had shown that they deserved to be taken seriously. He avoided gloating, and promised occasional cooperation with the President.

A brief, harsh outburst from Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, served as the eulogy for Mr. Clinton’s original $19.5 billion measure, which was proposed in February.

Emphasis added.  $19.5 billion dollars ($31.4 billion in today’s dollars), chump change to the guy who has Clinton’s old job.  Does look like Bob Dole actually did some good while in the Senate.  Had Republicans succeeded in filibustering the Illinois Democrat’s stimulus plan, we might have seen a less anemic recovery.

Do hope the president recalls that Clinton’s success may well have derived, in part, from his failure to pass his “stimulus.”

I’ve been listening to Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington in the car.  A number of things struck me about this great man who faced much adversity in the early days of the French & Indian War.  Chernow points out how although the young officer in the British army made some, well, bone-headed military decisions, like establishing Fort Necessity, a frontier outpost near French lines “poorly situated to withstand and incursion,” he, by and large, learned from those mistakes.

The current occupant of the office he would be the first to hold seems to lack that ability.  As the fetching Stephen Green observes:

Obama can’t recognize mistakes — even though the evidence is as plain as last month’s hideous jobs report. He will continue to demand that reality conform to his theories, no matter what damage he does to this country. He doesn’t doge, he doesn’t weave — he keeps pursuing failure in the face of failure.

(Via Instapundit.)  Even after the failure of his “stimulus”, with the depletion of our coffers and the diminution of our nation’s once good credit, the Democrat still calls out for more spending* and fails to recognize that the regulations his administration has increased have reduced those he identified as those “produce most of the new jobs in this country“ to hire new employees.

The president’s policies haven’t worked.  A real leader would understand that his goal was not to demonstrate the rightness of his approach, but to shift course and find an approach that did.

George Washington did that.  And because of that capacity, he won an unwinnable war and fathered a nation that offered opportunity for tens of millions, inspired others yearning to be free in distant corners of the globe and provided a level of prosperity that few had even imagined.

Our nation achieved all this in large part because George Washington learned form his mistakes.  Would it that Barack Obama could follow his predecessor’s example.

* (more…)

And that was back in ’69.

The last four times the federal government ran surpluses, Republicans ran the federal legislature.

Today in 1993, President Clinton signed one of the most landmark anti-gay rights laws ever passed in the United States of America — the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.

Gay leftist revisionist history types like to blame Republicans in Congress for *making* Clinton sign a law.

FACT: Democrats controlled the US House under Bill Clinton until 1995

FACT: THE leading elected official advocating for outright ban of gays in military and then DADT was US Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA)

FACT: Bill Clinton ran radio ads in his 1996 re-election campaign heralding his support of DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act

Facts are stubborn things.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“Clearly, Jefferson’s own conception of individual freedom,” Joseph J. Ellis wrote in his study of the Virginian, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson in the decade after Ronald Reagan’s presidency and before the rise of the New American Tea Party, “was more restricted than modern day notions”:

His vision was essentially negative:  freedom from encroachments by either church or state.  It was all a piece with his antig0vernment and therefore incompatible with our* contemporary conviction about personal entitlements, whether it be for a decent standard of living, a comfortable retirement or adequate health care, all of which depend on precisely the kind of government sponsorship he would have found intrusive.  His was the freedom to be left alone, which has more in common with twentieth-century claims to privacy rights than more aggressive claims to political or economic power.

That vision closely parallels my own — and I would daresay that of many conservatives today, including a certain Mr. R. Reagan and many who join the various Tea Party protests.

* (more…)

“America needs you/Harry Truman,” sang the band Chicago in 1974.”  They added later that the straight-talking Missourian knew “what to do.”‘

Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward paraphrases “Those Were the Days,” the theme song to the 1970s hit sit-com, “All in the Family,” so suggest that given Herbert Hoover’s predilection for government solutions to the Great Depression, we could instead use a man like Warren Harding again.  Hoover, he reminded up, citing Dan Mitchell and others

. . . increased government spending 47 percent in his one term, raised taxes, and signed off on the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff, which first caused Franklin Roosevelt to run against Hoover’s profligacy, but later caused Rex Tugwell to say later that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”

Turns out that to confront the recession he “inherited” (to borrow a word) from his predecessor, the Ohio Republican

. . . cut government spending sharply and rapidly (by almost 50 percent), began cutting tax rates across the board, and allowed asset values and wages to adjust freely as fast as possible.  Harding’s administration, Paul Johnson observed, “was the last time a major industrial power treated a recession by classic laissez-fairemethods, allowing wages to fall to their natural level . . .  By July 1921 it was all over and the economy was booming again.”  (more…)