Do Engineers Make Great Leaders?

Over on the Dilbert website, Scott Adams argues in his blog (http://www.dilbert.com/blog/) that the reason that China has been so successful in recent years has been because all their leaders have been engineers.

I have nothing against engineers (my Dad was one) but like many of monkey-boy’s bright ideas that deal with anything outside the narrow confines of his once-funny strip, I have to question it.

Of course, it could have been argued in 1942, for example, that Nazi Germany was spectacularly “successful,” but never mind. I will just note that the two engineers who were given the opportunity to lead this country were—Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.

Remind me, how did those two Presidencies work out?

Family Guy — Stick to the Funny!

One of my favorite TV shows used to be the animated FOX series Family Guy. I say used to be because it has tended in recent years to fall prey to the tendency that often afflicts highly popular shows, that its creators begin to feel that they can do anything they want and become self-indulgent. Like most people in show business, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarland is politically liberal and with the success of his program, he has tended recently to indulge in left-wing sermonizing at the expense of both humor and factual accuracy. (The most egregious recent example was an episode last season in which the baby Stewie and the dog Brian visit Nazi Germany. At one point Stewie is forced to don an SS officer’s uniform and finds that there is (what else?) a “McCain-Palin” button pinned to the tunic. Apparently MacFarland has never read Jonah Goldberg’s excellent work “Liberal Fascism” and found out what the real philosophical wellsprings of the National SOCIALIST movement were.)

Still, when he does not attempt political humor, MacFarland’s show is often quite amusing and I have to admit we both share a love for the great American popular music of the Golden Age from 1930 to 1960 and Broadway musicals. (Also, if I refused to watch or listen to any popular entertainment written, acted, produced or directed by leftists these days, I would find scant pickings anywhere in Hollywood or on the stage.) , So I did tune in to the premiere episode of FG last night.

Overall, this was a better than usual outing, again starring Stewie and Brian (originally secondary characters who have taken over the leads in this show in much the same way as Dr. Smith and Will Robinson took over Lost in Space). In it, Stewie had developed a device that allowed himself and Brian to travel through the “multiverse,” a series of parallel versions of our universe, each different from ours in some interesting way.

A couple of these were quite clever, like universes which were based on The Flintstones, Robot Chicken and Walt Disney animated features (although this one was ruined at the end when it gave credence to the canard that Disney was an anti-Semite.)

However, two of the parallel worlds were again excuses for MacFarland to press his own philosophical agenda. The first was a Buck Rodgers style futuristic world with people using jet packs and the like. Stewie explains that this world is so much more advanced than our own because Christianity never developed here and thus never held back scientific development.

The trouble with this notion is that if Christianity actually impeded technological progress, how does MacFarland explain the fact that from approximately 1400 (when the printing press with movable type was invented by Gutenberg) to the present day, the Christian nations of Western Europe and later the Western Hemisphere, gained and quickly expanded such a decisive lead in technological infrastructure and scientific advances that only within the last few years have the non-Christian portions of the world even managed to attain a rough equality?

You can argue I suppose, that without the “oppressive restrictions of the Christian Church,” the West’s advantage over the rest of the world would have been even greater than it was, but it is certainly clear that whatever restrictions there were (if any), they did not place the Christian world at any competitive disadvantage with regard to the non-Christian portions of the globe.

For that matter, under MacFarland’s analysis, why did not the abolition in the 20th century of organized religion in the Communist world, in the Soviet Union and Red China, for example, give them an edge against their still-Christian rivals within the West? Instead, we now know that the fall of the Evil Empire was precipitated by the realization of the Soviet leaders that they lacked the technical know-how to compete in the race to construct a shield against ballistic missile attack that Ronald Reagan asked them to join.

No, the myth that the Christian church was an impediment to progress is a pervasive one, but a myth all the same. Even modest scholars of history such as myself are aware that during the worst years of the so-called Dark Ages, it was often the Church itself that was one of the few institutions that preserved the knowledge of the past and even attempted to expand it, through its personnel, often the sole concentrations of literate individuals within their societies and its monasteries, where scholarly texts were written and copied and distributed to the laity. I am afraid Mr. MacFarlane has allowed his ignorance and his fashionable anti-religious bias to lead him astray here. There is no sound evidence that the existence of Christianity slowed the progress of Western Civilization and a great deal of evidence that it facilitated it.

Finally, Brian and Stewie also visit another multiverse that has seen a nuclear war because JFK was not elected in 1960 and a President Nixon voted into office eight years early mishandles the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is of course, impossible to know how Nixon might have responded differently than Kennedy in this situation, but certainly Tricky Dick had far more experience of foreign policy and defense issues as eight years as Vice President under Eisenhower than did Kennedy, a second term Senator so it is difficult for me to believe that he would have done less well than the Democrat, particularly in view of the numerous foreign policy triumphs of his own actual Presidency (the opening up of Red China, helping to assure Israel’s survival in the Yom Kippur War, the Paris Peace Treaty which brought the Vietnam War to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion (until a Democratic Congress cut off the necessary military aid to South Vietnam), etc.) For one thing, Nixon might have avoided the missile crisis entirely if he had given the proper support to the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Castro regime had been overthrown, instead of remaining in power for half a century due to Kennedy’s blunders. No Castro, no missiles in Cuba, no missile crisis.

So I would advise Mr. MacFarland to do a little basic research before trying to make his own political points using alternate history scenario. At the moment, Harry Turtledove can rest easy!

Jack Kemp and Me

This week we lost Jack Kemp, one of the former stars of the conservative movement.

I followed Kemp’s career right from the beginning as a subscriber to HUMAN EVENTS, which back in the 1960s and early 1970s, when HE was the ONLY source for reliable news about conservative politics.

Anyway, one of the features of HE was one called “Races of the Week” which profiled, beginning several months prior to each election, three U.S. Senate or House contests each week in which a strong conservative might have a shot at winning. In 1970, one of these was the race for the 39th** Congressional District in New York, where a former NFL quarterback Jack French Kemp was running for the seat of Democrat Richard McCarthy, who was giving up the position to run for the U.S. Senate.

Now, I am not a fan of football or for that matter of any spectator sport. (I sometimes tell people that the only thing I know about football is that the number on the jerseys represent the IQs of the individual players.) Still, if HE liked him that was good enough for him and I was pleased when he won his race that November, one of the few Republicans, in a not very good year for the Grand Old Party, to take over a seat that had been held by the Democrats.

My admiration for Kemp grew over the years as he became one of the stars of the conservative wing of the House GOP. It peaked when he became one of the two sponsors of the Kemp-Roth tax cut bill.

It’s hard to realize today, after tax cuts have become a Republican staple campaign issue.
But back in 1978, the idea of cutting taxes was a real novelty. (In one of his parody songs “You Need An Analyst,” Allen Sherman included a line saying that anyone who thought that they would ever cut the income tax being one of those who needed the service of a psychiatric professional)

And actually, Republicans would have been thought to be the last ones to put forward such an idea. The GOP had the reputation of being the ones who were always kvetching about the ever-growing federal deficit and debt. Why, with the federal budget so awash in red ink, a reduction in the amount of revenue would have been irresponsible. To reduce the deficit, you need to cut spending, not taxes! Or so the party of that day would have argued.

But Jack Kemp (and the conservative Republican Senator from the state where I grew up, Bill Roth of Delaware) had read their economic history and the work of the economist Arthur Laffer and had discovered that the one recent time when income tax rates had been cut—by a Democratic, John F. Kennedy—who had reduced the ridiculously punitive confiscatory tax rates on upper income taxpayers imposed under FDR’s New Deal, tax revenues had not declined, but increased, as wealthy taxpayers had less incentive to find tax shelters and other dodges to shield their earnings from 90% tax surcharges. (As Bing Crosby once said when he was subject to the old soak-the rich tax rates, “I sing all week to make a living and the government lets me keep what I earn on Sunday evening.)

Kemp and Roth also realized that it was a lot more politically popular to offer to give voters some of their money back than to propose to eliminate ANY government programs. Because face it, every form of government spending, no matter how useless it is to anyone else, benefits those who get the money. Propose to eliminate one taxpayer-funded program and you make enemies of its supporters. Propose to eliminate a score of programs and you create a score of enemies who ally together to fight to the death oppose you for their mutual benefit. No wonder Ronald Reagan once referred to a government program as the nearest thing to eternal life as we will see in this sad vale of tears.

But everyone, or at least everyone who makes a decent income, pays taxes. Propose to reduce the amount everyone pays and you make friends of every taxpayer.

So the Kemp-Roth proposal, to reduce individual income tax rates by 30, over three years (later reduced to 25%) was introduced in Congress, eventually embraced by Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan and was a major factor in Republican victories at the polls in both 1978 and 1980. It finally became the law of the land in 1981 after the Gipper was in the White House and the GOP was in actual control of the U.S. Senate and a Republican-Dixiecrat coalition in control of the House of Representatives.***

Aside from the Kemp-Roth proposal, Kemp was also one of the first Republicans, along again with Ronald Reagan, to put a smiling face on the visage of the GOP. Before then, the Republicans were seen as the tight-lipped scowling schoolmarm, every ready to rap her naughty children over the knuckles for the slightest infraction and certain everything was going to hell in a handbasket. The Democrats were able to pose as the lovable roguish uncle, generous, optimistic and tolerant. No wonder their party had kept control of both houses of Congress for more than a quarter century.

Kemp and Reagan helped turn this around. Reagan preached the doctrine that our country had been great, was still great and that its greatest days were still before it. Kemp worked with black Democratic politicians in Congress to pass programs to enable urban slum dwellers to become homeowners, instead of tossing their weekly paychecks down the rathole of rent payments for miserable sets of rooms. A hand up, not a hand out.

When the GOP convention convened in Detroit, Michigan in July 1980 to make official Reagan’s nomination for President, many of his supporters, including myself, hoped that the former governor of California would choose Kemp as his running mate.

There was even a draft Kemp movement at the convention with neat black and white “Reagan-Kemp” buttons. I had a couple of these but foolishly gave them all away to admirers, hoping to build support for cause, and erroneously believing I could just get more from headquarters.
I even attended a rally at the convention for the Veep for Kemp cause with speakers like then Congressman Trent Lott of Mississippi, later the Republican Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate.

But it was not to be. It could have been worse, I suppose, we apparently only narrowly avoided the sure disaster of a Reagan-Jerry Ford “co-Presidency,” but Ron apparently bought the argument that the GOP moderates needed to be placated and chose instead George H.W. Bush, a gray shadow of a man whose only outstanding characteristic was the length of his resume.

So Jack Kemp remained in the House of Representatives when Reagan became President. He played his part in the passage of the Kemp-Roth tax cut, but never having sought a House leadership post, he largely remained in the background during the years of the Reagan Presidency.

Some, including myself, wondered why, if Kemp was apparently not interested in a long-term House career, evidenced by this failure to seek a leadership position (as a Republican during the time when its minority in the House still seemed permanent, a committee Chairmanship appeared out of the question) he did not seek higher elective office.

Some had touted him for the Presidency as early as 1980, but once Reagan had decided to run despite quibbles by commentators that he was “too old,”**** this was out of the question. However, there were opportunities in both New York State Senate and Governor’s races. In the same year that Reagan won, Alphonse D’Amato, a Long Island local government official, defeated liberal GOP Senator Jacob Javits in the Republican primary and then won the seat in the fall when the left-wing vote was split when Javits insisted on continuing to run on the Liberal Party line. Two years later, in a bad year for Republicans, businessman outsider Lewis Lehrman nearly beat Mario Cuomo in the New York governor’s race. It is hard to believe that Kemp couldn’t have done as well or better as either or both of these little-known candidates in these races.

Who knows why Kemp failed to run in these races. Perhaps he didn’t wish to take the risk of failure and the loss of his House seat. More likely, is that having already played in the big leagues of national politics with the Kemp-Roth tax cut effort, he felt he should only shoot for the top and make a bid for the White House itself when the chance came.

In 1988, the chance came. Unfortunately, it couldn’t have come under worse circumstances. Jack entered the race with all sorts of disadvantages. First, although he was well known within the GOP and the conservative movement, as a mere congressman, he was almost unknown to the general public. Second, while he had every reason to consider himself the true ideological heir to President Reagan, to the public the logical successor seemed to be the man who had been next in line to the Presidency for the previous eight years, George H.W. Bush.

In addition, the party, after eight years in power, had a plethora of at least plausible and in some cases, actually attractive candidates in addition to Bush and Kemp, such as former Delaware governor Pete DuPont and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. The Religious Right, which had played a big role in Reagan’s initial election had come up with a candidate of its own, who was not merely supported by but was a part of that movement, CBN television minister Pat Robertson.

In such a crowd, it was difficult for Kemp to stand out as the alternative to Bush and to many of his supporters, including myself, it seemed he was not making a serious effort. Admittedly, he was hamstrung by being reluctant to make any criticism of Ronald Reagan’s administration both for fear of alienating conservatives and because of Jack’s relentlessly positive campaign themes, but when the race came down to a contest as to who was the Gipper’s most faithful supporter, Reagan’s Veep was always going to win hands down.

Eventually, the Kemp forces conceded that they had no chance to win any of the early primaries and pinned their hopes on surprise wins in the Georgia and Minnesota caucuses. When they were unable to win either, that was the end of the Kemp presidential effort, not only for 1988, but for the rest of Jack’s life.

By 1988, I was living in the Washington, D.C. area and was present on Capitol Hill for Kemp’s official announcement of his candidacy and later briefly worked for the Kemp fundraising effort as a data entry peon, logging in campaign contributions. (I once played a harmless joke for a wealthier friend of mine and adjusted the form fundraising letters he regularly received from the campaign so that Jack would address him by his college nickname.)

Also, I met Kemp in person at a reception for his volunteers at his home*** in Chevy Chase, Maryland for the first and last time. He couldn’t have been a nicer guy and I mourned later when his candidacy crashed and burned.

Again, in 1988, there was the hope that Bush might make Kemp his running mate and give him the chance to be in line for the next Presidential nomination. But Bush, while he may have been a mediocre President, was no slouch as a politician. He picked the suitably right-wing but harmless Dan Quayle to be his Veep and made Kemp his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Why? One reason, you can fire a HUD Secretary, but not a Vice President. Bush brought both Kemp and former Drug Czar Bill Bennett (as Education Secretary) into his cabinet. George H.W. knew that Jack and Bennett were the only two figures in the GOP who would have plausibly challenged him for the 1992 nomination and that by making them part of his Administration they would both be held responsible for any of its failures. Bush also knew that both men were sufficiently honorable not oppose his renomination in any case once they had accepted office under him.

Probably you can’t remember any of Kemp’s great accomplishments as HUD Secretary. Neither can I. If there were any, they have been forgotten with the other failures of that one-term Presidency.

Finally, in 1996, there was one last chance for Kemp to take his place on the national stage when Dole unexpectedly asked the former congressman to serve as his vice Presidential running mate in his inept effort to unseat Bill Clinton.******

Former Kemp for President supporters like myself felt a burst of optimism at the news. Could this be the bold move that would restore the White House to the GOP and revive Jack’s stagnant career? But those hopes died in the first minutes of the Vice Presidential debate when Kemp, in effect, rolled over on his back and presented Vice President Gore his belly, when he announced that he would refuse to make any “personal” attacks on the most corrupt Administration in American history. Once again, we learned that it is possible to be “too nice” in politics.

Admittedly, as the scowling, sarcastic humorless Bob Dole (who apparently believed that the best response to having a joke bomb was to repeat it–often) was undoubtedly the worst GOP nominee since Alf Landon it would probably have made little difference if Kemp had managed to be the kind of GOP attack dog the party needed that year.

After that little was heard about or from Kemp except that he had adopted the career of choice of failed politicians and become a lobbyist, even taking on as a client the reprehensible left-wing dictator of Venezeula, Hugo Chavez. Finally, we heard the sad news this month that he had succumbed to the Big C.

So, we can remember Jack Kemp as a man who played a pivotal role in our nation’s history at a crucial moment for the benefit of us all. And if he did not live up to the promise many held for him, that can be said of many of us (including yours truly.) Honor him for his virtues, try to overlook his faults.

¬¬¬________________________________________________________________________

*(Yes, there was NATIONAL REVIEW, but its emphasis was almost entirely on issues and political philosophy. Except for a roundup of political races in the final issue before an election, NR provided almost no news on individual election races and candidates. You kind of got the feeling that the otherwise admirable WFB, Jr. looked down from his ivory tower and found the sordid details of such plebian contests far too dirty and yucky for his high-toned magazine to concern itself with. Since the Old Man gave up active control of the magazine, this changed somewhat.)
**How things have changed! Now, the state of New York doesn’t even have anywhere close to 39 total congressional districts as its high tax/high corruption series of governments over the past decades has driven more and more of its residents to take up residence in warmer and more business-friendly climes.
***As Jerry Taylor of NRO has pointed out, the Republican success on tax cuts did have unintended consequences farther down the line. It wrongly convinced too many in the party that it was never necessary to cut government spending and led inevitably to the creation of the big government or “compassionate” conservative movement, with the results that have been seen in the November 2008 election.
****Funny how there were no objections by these same types to the candidacies of 1996 and 2008 GOP Presidential nominees Bob Dole and John McCain, both older than Reagan was at the time. In my belief, it was because in the former case, Dole was rightly seen by these journalists as a far weaker Republican candidate than was Reagan and in the latter, because McCain was both weaker and more closely aligned with the commentator’s ideological outlook.
*****Yes, this was his home in fact from the time he entered Congress and NOT Buffalo, New York. I had the privilege of talking to one of his attractive and charming young daughters at the reception and I remember her guilelessly admitting to me that she had not been back to Buffalo, even for a visit, for many years. This phenomenon, of members of Congress representing but no longer having themselves or even their families, still living in their home states or districts is, IMHO, a cause of many of the problems with our national legislature today. But I will quickly add, that if Kemp was guilty of this fault, he was far from alone in the House and did not lack fellows from both parties and all across the ideological spectrum.
******Dole’s first choice had been none other than Bill Bennett, who sensibly declined, realizing that his then unknown to the public gambling addiction would doom the already slender chances of the ticket if it had been revealed.

The Greatest Man in the World

With President’s Day just past, I have seen a lot of lists of the “10 Best” and “10 Worst” Presidents on the net. Every one, of course, has their opinion on this, but while both the public and most historians seem to agree that the TWO greatest Presidents this country ever had were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But which of the two was THE greatest still seems to be debatable.

At the moment, the Lincolnites seem have public opinion on their side. And Honest Abe was a remarkable man. A man who rose from the direst poverty to the greatest office in the land almost solely due to his own efforts. A brilliant writer, speaker and wit. The leader who presided over the greatest armed conflict in our nation’s history which took more than half a million lives and who was indirectly responsible for the end of human slavery in this nation, an eradication of what was a vile stain on the story of a nation supposedly born in liberty. This alone might gain him the prize in an age when “civil rights” and “racism” remain continual obsessions.

And finally, Lincoln was a man whose image will always carry with it the golden glow of martyrdom, as he was struck down by a cruel assassin at his moment of greatest triumph.

Compared to this, how can George Washington compete? A man who none of his contemporaries ever described as brilliant or a great speaker. Brave, yes, honest, yes, honorable, yes, stubborn, dependable, loyal, all the dull virtues.

Nonetheless, I still believe that Washington, was, far and away, the greatest President this country has ever had. Why? Because without Washington, this nation would never have been born and also, without him it never would have endured.

The first of these services was performed by Washington before he became President, when he served as commander of the Continental Army and won America its freedom from the British Empire.

It must have seemed at first a suicidal task, a few colonial militamen taking on the greatest military power in the world, under the leadership of a man who had been denied a regular commission as an officer in the ranks of the army he would have to fight.

Again, no military historian would ever consider Washington one of the great strategist or tacticians who ever wore a uniform. He made many mistakes and lost many battles.

But Washington was like the hedgehog who knew one big thing, rather than the fox who knows many little things. He knew that as long as he kept his army in the field, the dream of American independence would remain alive. For seven long years, he fought not to lose, rather than to win. And when he got his own “surge,” in the form of a sudden reinforcement of troops and a battle fleet from his French allies, he had the wit to use these new forces to win the final battle and force the surrender of General Cornwallis’ army in Yorktown, Virginia.

The war won, and the new nation established, how many men in Washington’s position, the commander of the only armed force in America, a body of men which really knew no name but his and owed their loyalty to none other, would have resisted the temptation to make themselves dictator or even King George the First of Columbia? But Washington not only laid down his sword and happily returned to his farm, but even headed off a proposed attempt by some of his officers to use force to get the back pay for their troops from the often-effectual Continental Congress.

There is no doubt Washington was an ambitious man. He wore his militia uniform to the Continental Congress on the day they were to chose the leader of the Continental Army and there is no evidence that he even thought of declining the chance to be his new nation’s First President when he was offered the job six years after stepping down as its Revolutionary War leader. But there is every indication in the historical record that Washington wanted to be a great man and do great things because he wanted to do great things, not because he wanted others to see him be a great man doing great things.

As President, George Washington saved his country again and again, on a number of occasions. Domestically, he did it by brilliantly balancing the conflicting points of view in his own government. Washington had the blessing, and the curse, of having two men of genuine genius in his Cabinet, Alexander Hamilton, who was to serve as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson, our first Secretary of State. The two men roughly represented the two main point of views of those in the new country, about how it should be governed. There were those, mostly Northerners, who, like Hamilton, wanted a strong national government, or those, mostly Southerners, like Jefferson, wanted a weaker federal state, with more power retained on the state and local level.

Washington was friends with both men. Jefferson was a fellow Virginian and Hamilton had served brilliantly under the General as an officer during the Revolution. He was also fortunate that he was probably the only man in the entire Thirteen former Colonies that both men were willing to defer to. During his eight years in office, Washington managed to work out compromises between his two protégés that probably left them both somewhat unsatisfied but ultimately worked out for the best interests of the new nation.

It was also a dangerous time for American—and the entire civilized world. 1789, the same year that Washington became President was also the year of the beginning of the French Revolution, a conflict that was not to have the same beneficial results as that which had taken place thirteen years earlier across the Atlantic. It was instead to see France ultimately ruled by a tyrant crueler than Louis the Sixteenth ever dreamed of being and began almost three decades of war on a global scale, one which would not ultimately end until the Battle of New Orleans on American soil in 1815.

Under Washington, the nation remained at peace during his terms of office, leaving European disputes to the Europeans, though even here the rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson played a part. Jefferson, like many intellectuals then and now, never met a revolution he didn’t romanticize, and sympathized with the France that had been our ally in our struggle for independence (although the head of the government that had actually aided us in those years was to meet his end on the Revolution’s guillotine.) Hamilton, on the other hand, thought that our blood and commercial ties to England should be renewed now that the late unpleasantness was over.

But though Washington respected the views of his able subordinates, his own point of view prevailed, which was to keep America on a course of strict neutrality in the coming conflicts. As a result, the barely-born nation lived to grow to full manhood and the lord of Mount Vernon was able to retire to his estate along the Potomac River knowing that his job had been done—and well.

His final gift to the nation he birthed was his decision to leave office after only two four year terms. He could have been re-elected indefinitely, but chose to let others lead instead, leaving the nation the valuable lesson that no man is indispensable. His example was no powerful that only two later Presidents tried to break the tradition he had established, both named Roosevelt, of whom only one succeeded. When the voters later realized how close FDR had come to establishing a genuine dictatorial Presidency-for-life in this country, prevented only by his own death, they elected a new Congress that enshrined Washington’s “two years and out” example in the Constitution. It also becomes more and more obvious every day that the nation would benefit if the same tradition was applied to the members of Congress as well, many of whom have confused what should have been for them a temporary civic duty with a lifetime remunerative career.

At last, Washington retired to the Virginia estate that he loved. He was to live only two more years after he did so and the whole nation mourned the man whom one of his Revolutionary War cavalry commanders, General Light Horse Harry Lee, the father of Robert E., was to rightly memorialize as “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

But the tribute I like best was that of his old foe, King George III of Great Britain, when he was told that Washington intended to return to private life after leading the American army, rather than trying to make himself its unelected ruler. “If Washington does that,” said the astonished monarch, “he will be the greatest man in the world!”

And so he was.

Bye-Bye, Blue?

On Tuesday, in my town of residence, Alexandria, Virginia, there was a remarkable electoral result. A special election was held to fill the seat of Democrat state legislator Brian Moran. Moran is the younger brother of long-time Congressman for Alexandria and Arlington, Jim Moran, and the U.S. Representative’s sibling gave up his seat so that he could campaign full-time for the Democrat nomination for Governor.

Now if you are unfamiliar with the politics of the Old Dominion, let me explain that Alexandria, right across the Potomac from the nation’s capital in the District of Columbia, is one of the most Democrat areas of the state, inhabited by Government bureaucrats and their toadies and sycophants in the private sector. This state delegate seat, the 46th, has always been held by a Democrat and in recent years, the local Republicans have often been unable to find a candidate to contest it.

This time, however, the GOP did find a candidate and to everyone’s astonishment, he came within 16 votes of winning the special election and is now demanding a recount of the narrow victory of his Democrat opponent.

After the triumph of the blue forces in November, including Wonder Boy being the first Democrat in over 40 years to win the electoral votes of Virginia, this is welcome news for Republicans, especially coupled with the recent report that the sole Republican candidate for governor, Attorney General Robert McDonnell has raised more campaign funds than any of his three Democrat opponents, including big Washington player Terry McAulife.

However, we shouldn’t make too much of this, just as we shouldn’t take too seriously leftist claims of the end of the Republicans as a contender to regain the Presidency or control of Congress. Special elections often produce odd results, because of the usually low turnout, such as the recent on in which Republican Joseph Cao defeated Democrat incumbent William Jefferson in the majority black Congressional congressional district in Louisiana last month. No one, not even a GOP partisan like myself, thinks Cao has a good chance of retaining his seat in a normally scheduled election and against an opponent less tarred by scandal than Jefferson, who was caught hiding tens of thousands of dollars in shadily acquired funds in his home refrigerator.

But it does seem to show that liberal claims of a takeover by the Democrats of the Father of Presidents may be premature. Now, it could be that the victory of Obama and the left in November is the harbinger of a long reign in power, like FDR’s triumph in 1932. But maybe not. Yes, Obama managed to win three southern states this year (Virginia, North Carolina and Florida) and almost carried another (Georgia). Well, in 1976 Jimmy Carter carried 10 of the 11 states of the Old Confederacy. And four years later, he lost 10 of 11, retaining only his home state of Georgia.

Political pundits writing for the Washington Post try to prove their case that Virginia is becoming a blue state by citing the fact that the Democrats have won two gubernatorial elections in a row. True, but the Republicans won the two before that, after the Democrats had won three governor’s races in a row before that! And do you know what party the three gentlemen belonged to who won the three governor’s races before those three Democrat victories? Republicans! The pendulum swings one way and then it swings another.

Also, a great deal is made of the fact that the Democrats picked up three US House seats in the state and now have a majority of the Congressional delegation, turning an 8 to 3 Republican edge into one Democrat 6-5. Well after the 1980 election, the Republicans had 9 out of the then 10 House seats, only to lose three in the next election, a few more in subsequent elections to lose their majority in the delegation and then slowly regained it to their recent peak of 8. As I said, the pendulum swings. You win some, you lose some. Nothing in permanent in politics. If it was, Mississippi would still be giving 90% margins to Democrat Presidential candidates and New England would still be the GOP’s strongest regime instead of the one without a single Republican congressman.

And you can’t also discount the effect of pure chance on election results. The Democrats again, now can take pride in holding both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats when just two years ago, the GOP had two Senators. But they had two Senators in 1987 as well, only to see popular former Democrat Governor Chuck Robb take back one in a landslide, just like popular former Governor Mark Warner did in this year’s election. And Republican George Allen would likely be still be a senator today if he had just managed to keep his mouth shut at a certain campaign rally when he was annoyed by a Democrat operative videotaping his speech.

In conclusion, I can’t claim that the result in Virginia’s 46th District guarantees a GOP resurgence in my state, but it is certainly evidence that claims of a long reign of Democrat control, are, to say the least, premature.

DEMOCRATIC SENATE REFUSES TO SEAT NEW BLACK MEMBER

A short post this time for a change. I’m just wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to seeing that headline! It’s been a rough year for us Republicans but we’ve been making up for it since November 4th! Holding our Senate seat in Georgia by a landslide, picking up two Democratic seats in Louisiana and now Governor Blagojevich, the Christmas gift that keeps on giving!

And really, don’t forget that legally, Blago has every right to make this appointment. Remember, he has only been accused of something, he hasn’t been convicted of anything, so his gubernatorial powers remain the same as they were the day he was sworn in.

True, the evidence seems to be indicate that he is surely guilty and lots of people think he should do the right thing and resign. But I can remember another elected official who was clearly guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice and who a lot of people thought should do the right thing and go quietly. Instead, he stuck it out and by sheer stubbornness (and the eager support of the MSM, which admittedly Blago does not enjoy) he not only served out his term of office without ever setting foot in a prison cell but with 60% approval ratings. As somebody said, you may see justice triumph all the time in heaven, but we only see it occasionally in this life!

UPDATE: 1/14/09 – Well, what do you know, the Democratic majority in the Senate has decided to seat Roland Burris after all! As I said in my earlier post, it was always gonna be tough for them to turn down a minimally qualified black appointee, especially when Governor Hairhelmet had the law on his side. There are legitimate reasons for the U.S. Senate to refuse to seat someone, but because you think the guy who appointed him is a skunk, isn’t one of them, even if your opinion is right on the money!

Of course, as many others have already pointed out, the Democrats could have avoided this whole embarrassment for Harry Reid and the rest of his Keystone Kops by simply having the Illinois Legislature (which the Democrats control overwhelmingly) vote to have the seat filled in a special election instead of by appointment of the governor. But they were afraid they might lose a vote of the actual people. I mean, why let the people decide important stuff like this when they have federal judges to do it for them?

Why Does Gary Trudeau Flaunt His Mistakes?

I subscribe to the Washington Post and although there are good things you can say about that newspaper, it is the home to some of the worst cartoonists now working. When their bigoted, nasty left-wing editorial cartoonist of many years, Herblock, passed away recently, they made an obvious effort to find a new cartoonist just as bigoted and nasty and just as left-wing, Tom Toles. Also, just like Herblock, Toles is seldom if ever actually funny.

I can’t say the same about Gary Trudeau, who, although I disagree with him almost totally regarding political issues, is an individual of genuine talent. (Although there is a long-running controversy about how much of the actual drawing of his comic strip Doonesbury he still does himself.) I have to admit that when he deals with non-political topics, which is fairly often, I often find him quite amusing.

On political issues, however, Trudeau now displays no creativity and little humor. This is to be expected as Gary is an Ivy League product of the “Sick Sixties” that decade of phony idealism, when the cowardice of young men was portrayed as the love of peace, when the hatred of the South and its values was portrayed as a genuine concern for the black people of this country and the assault began, now far too successful, on the vital institutions that our society is built on, like traditional family life, religion and patriotism.

Gary Trudeau has done his best to promote the values of that sad interval in our history. He can take as much credit as anyone for the victory of Communism in Southeast Asia, like every other member of the pro-Hanoi movement from that period, the blood of the millions massacred after the Red triumph drips from his hands. For some time, a “loveable” member of the North Vietnamese Army was a regular character of his strip.

Since then, Gary has parroted every cliché and repeated every rumor manufactured by the American Left. You know what I mean. Reagan was a dunce. We had to make friends with the Communists because they were going to be in power forever. Oh yes, and school bussing for the purpose of establishing racial quotas was a great social experiment (and the only case where he endorsed the use of the American military). (Of course, Trudeau and his wife Jane Pauley, like the Obamas, sent their own kids to exclusive private schools where the only blacks present were custodial staff or the odd son or daughter of a member of Congress.)

More recently, Trudeau has done a series of strips on Sarah Palin, which he continued to write even after the triumph of the Obama-Biden presidential ticket, on the theme of what a dumb hick the Alaska governor is. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for a companion series on Caroline Kennedy, who has been shown to be more clueless under press scrutiny than Palin at her worst—she’s a liberal Democrat.)

Funny, you would think that someone who was married to a former on-air personality like Jane Pauley would have been more sympathetic to someone like Palin with a very similar background and someone who, like Pauley, owes a great deal of her success to good looks and natural charm rather than any great intellect.

Still, much as his work sometimes infuriates me, you can’t avoid Trudeau and Doonesbury in today’s culture. I do take some solace from the fact, that being on the wrong side of history, he often displays this ignorance by making predictions in this strip that are wildly inaccurate. Of course, Reagan’s Presidency was not a failure and Carter’s was, big-time, despite what Gary expected. Like many on the left, he predicted that the first Iraq war was going to be an American massacre when our boys went up Saddam Hussein’s crack Republican Guard.

Probably his biggest boo-boo was made in 1989 when he had to abruptly abandon a series based on the protests in Tiananmen Square in mid-story when the Communist government slaughtered the democracy supporters who had gathered in that Chinese plaza. Comic strips have to be drawn and prepared weeks before they are published and Trudeau’s version of events had the Reds giving in to the demands of the protestors. After all, surely the Chinese government would be peaceful and reasonable? After all, weren’t they Communists?

But I have to say about Trudeau is that he may be often wrong, but he is never unsure in his opinions and never changes his mind. I was reminded of this today when he went on vacation and the strip in the Post was a “Doonesbury Flashback.” In other words, a rerun of a previously published strip.

Trudeau has done this on numerous occasions when he has taken some time off and you would think that he would choose past strips that would show him in the best possible light. But, no, he often uses strips whose premises have already been debunked by historical fact.

For example, one of his re-runs was a series of strips attacking the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or more popularly known “Star Wars” anti-missile defense program. Trudeau derided the idea that we could defend ourselves against a nuclear missile assault as both impossible (by raising the straw man that such a system would have to intercept every incoming missile to be successful and that no one could expect “to hit a bullet with another bullet”) and actually dangerous in that it would upset the “Mutual Assured Destruction” policy (rightly acronymed as MAD) of letting the US and Soviet populations be living hostages to the threat of nuclear annihilation for each other’s government’s good behavior, which leftists like Gary thought was the only sensible way to keep the peace, instead of the insane ramshackle Rube Goldberg contraption that MAD actually was, which we should be forever grateful did not collapse and send the world into Armageddon, which it threatened to do every second this suicidal policy was in effect.

We now know, of course, that SDI turned out to be a brilliant success before the actual hardware was deployed or even perfected. It was President Ronald Reagan’s refusal to give up the United States’ development of this technology that led the masters of the former Soviet Union, knowing that their primitive scientific research facilties and rotting infrastructure would never allow them to keep up with or even match our achievements in producing such a new defense system, to agree to the dismantling of both side’s strategic nuclear arsenals which in turn led inevitably to the collapse of the Evil Empire and the threat of the Warsaw Pact.

As for anti-missile defense itself, despite the inevitable failures, more effective systems are being developed every day, as proven both in field tests and those conducted in actual combat. During the Gulf War, Patriot missile knocked down a number of Saddam Hussein’s SCUDs and more recently, a defensive missile was used to obliterate a space satellite whose decaying orbit was threatening to make it fall on the Earth below.

And surely, the events of 9/11, the North Korean missiles tests aimed at intimidating Japan and the near constant rain of Hamas Palestinian terror rockets on the peaceful towns and farms of Israel, demonstrate beyond question the desirability of producing such anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems for the security of both the American people and that of other peace-loving nations of the world. But to Gary Trudeau, it was the attempt to protect the United States from missile attack that was the threat to international peace.

Today, the Post contained another Doonesbury Flashback and again, Gary shows is showing us that while he may be wrong, he will never admit it. Why? Because today’s strip is one he wrote some months ago demonstrating the “failure” of the surge of US troops in Iraq to restore civil order to that nation.

You can argue as to whether the US should have invaded Iraq and once having done so, still argue if Iraq will be able to develop into a peaceful non-sectarian democracy once American troops have withdrawn from the country. But the success of the surge in reducing sectarian violence in that country cannot be disputed, not with a straight face, anyway.

To quote James S. Robbins: “The number of daily attacks in Iraq has fallen almost 95% from levels a year ago. Also of note, the murder rate in Iraq in November was 0.9 per 100,000 people. That is lower than the rate from before Saddam was overthrown. For those keeping score, the 2007 murder rate in the US was 5.9 per 100,000.”

You would think that making Iraq a safer place to live than many US cities would be a sufficient indicator of a victory in restoring order. But not to Mr. Trudeau apparently, or why else would he rerun this strip that insists that the surge was a failure?

Gary does use a standard technique of trying to win an argument in these strips. That is, when the overall situation contradicts your point of view, find some unique case within the general situation that seems to support it.

In this case, Trudeau uses the situation of the Iraqi Christian community which apparently has suffered persecution by the Moslem majority since the fall of Saddam. I don’t know all the details of this, but let’s say that it is true and it is also probably true that such persecution did not take place under the Hussein regime.

A surprising number of liberals appear to feel some nostalgia for Iraq under Saddam, on the grounds that he ran a “nonsectarian” state where you could worship as you pleased with no fear of interference. This is also true, within Iraq, Hussein had no time for any disputes between Sunni and Shiite Moslems, Christians, Jews and Hindus. This is because all Saddam cared about was whether you were for and against Saddam Hussein. If you were for him, you could live in peace, whatever your religion, if not, you would be crushed, even if you were the most devout disciple of Mohammed.

Now Iraq is attempting to become a democracy. And a characteristic of democracies is that, unlike totalitarian states, they are messy. This is because people are allowed to express their opinions and sometimes their opinions are unpleasant bigoted ones. Sometimes, in a reborn nation where order has not been completely restored and private armies exist, these opinions are expressed in the form of violent action. They shouldn’t be and if the Christians in Iraq have suffered in this respect, I feel for them and hope that the situation is made right again so they can live in peace as they deserve to like any other law abiding citizens of their nation. But the fact that members of one group have received unfair treatment despite the surge does not invalidate the overall success of the operation or that of the Iraqi experiment in democracy, whatever Gary Trudeau may think.

What, We Angry?

As a conservative, I have greatly enjoyed the consternation among the American left engendered by Barack Obama’s choice of moderate evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.

 

For Warren is a moderate, not a conservative, as the very definition of a moderate is someone who possess both right and left-wing views.  In the pastor’s case, Warren’s conservative positions on abortion and homosexual marriage are balanced by more liberal stands on so-called “global warming” and other issues.

 

But where does E. J. Dionne, in today’s (12/23/08) column in the Washington Post get the notion that conservatives are upset about Obama’s choice?  I am a voracious reader of conservative columnists and blogs and nowhere have I found any response from responsible conservative voices that are anything but delighted at Wonder Boy’s choice, just as those on the right were universally delighted with Warren’s interviews with both McCain and Obama during the Presidential campaign, where the man of God asked the candidates to answer genuine moral questions instead of the “gotcha!” inquiries directed at McCain and the deferential softballs Obama got in the Presidential debates and interviews conducted by the “mainstream” media.

 

No, we conservatives are just grateful for the wise selection and are also enjoying the gibbering tantrums thrown by such liberal icons as Congressman Barney Frank.  Frank, who once let one of his “roommates” run a rent-boy service out of his apartment, objects to the fact that Warren said he would not support marriage between two same sex partners any more than he would support a marriage between a child and an adult.  Warren, blustered Frank, was actually equating his own personal sexual deviation to another type of sexual deviation!  What kind of a mean-spirited comparison was that?

(UPDATE: Since I originally posted this four days ago, the only “conservative” group or spokesperson I have heard of to object to Rev. Warren’s appearance at the inauguration is the anti-abortion group “Operation Rescue.”  While this organization’s goals, ending the continuing slaughter of the unborn, are laudable, its methods, are borrowed from the worst tactics of the left, to wit, massive “civil disobedience” (i.e. violently breaking the law) so I cannot really regard it as a “conservative” group at all and my initial point still stands.)

Goodbye, Senator John Warner, Don’t Let the Door…

In my opinion my home state of Virginia’s happily soon to be ex-Senator John Warner is the epitome of the expression that all you find in the middle of the road are dead skunks and long yellow streaks.

It was a sad day for the Old Dominion when the rightful GOP Senate nominee in 1978, Richard Obenshain was tragically killed in a plane crash and this man, whose only real previous achievement was being the latest in Liz Taylor’s regiment of husbands, was chosen to replace him as the general election candidate in November and in a strong Republican year, barely managed to win the race by a few thousand votes.

Obenshain was a man of strong conservative principles like Ronald Reagan, Warner has been an empty suit whose main activity for the last 30 years has been to hold a wet finger in the air to judge the conventional wisdom and align himself with it to ensure his own re-election.

I mean, can you think of a single controversial stand he has taken during his Senate career? And please don’t mention his refusals to support Republican nominees Mike Farris for lt. governor candidate in 1993 and Oliver North for the U.S. Senate in 1994, a position isn’t “controversial” when it is heartily endorsed and praised by the local mainstream media (including of course, the Washington Post.)

Warner made it his business to sit tight and not make waves in his admittedly successful effort to retain his Senate seat. Every one of his votes seemed to be weighed to determine which position would best advance this goal. I think his most cynical vote was that he cast against the nomination of the supremely well qualified Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This might have been considered a principled stand except for the fact that Warner waited until the actual day of the vote to announce his position and not until enough other Senators had already done so to guarantee that he would be on the winning side. John obviously figured that since Bork was going to go down to defeat in any case, he might as well vote “no” and gain a little street cred with the state’s large black voting bloc. But I have no doubt at all that if Bork had needed one extra vote to win nomination, Warner would have provided it, in that case, it would have been the “safe” thing to do.

This kind of supine behavior may be helpful in winning elections, but it does nothing to advance the interests of the nation. We need statesmen who will take the right stand even when it is unpopular (thank you, President Bush) not politicians who regard living on the public payroll as a lifetime career.

Goodbye, Senator Warner, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Two Cheers for Georgia

Two cheers for the state of Georgia for returning Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss to the U.S. Senate by a landslide (59-41) margin in Tuesday’s runoff election.

 

But only two cheers instead of three because while good, this is hardly great news for the GOP.  It reminds me of the man who was told how lucky he was that a gunshot wound he had received had not been three inches more to the right where it would surely have been fatal.  “Lucky,” he replied, “if I’d really been lucky the damn bullet would have missed me entirely!”

 

Really, this was a seat and a state that should have been absolutely safe for our party and up to a month before the election, no political prognosticator thought that it wasn’t.  It is an indicator that the Republicans have a lot to do to fire up the party base again, whose failure to turn out in 2004 numbers now appears to have been the main cause of John McCain’s loss and not the MSM myth of an immense turnout of young and minority voters for Wonder Boy.

Bombers and Double Standards

William Ayres, the unrepentant terrorist who hosted our new President’s first political campaign fundraiser—but who never spoke out before the election, no doubt for fear of jeopardizing Wonder Boy’s chances, has now broken his silence as detailed in a laudatory article in today’s Washington Post.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/18/AR2008111800007.html

 

Of course, Ayres thinks he is more sinned against than sinning.  He laments that he was turned into “a cartoon and a caricature” and says that “This demonization of me, the creation of me as a fearsome person, is false.”

 

Was he a terrorist?  Heavens no!  What he did may have been “extreme” and he admits it was “illegal.  But to call him a terrorist “stretches the definition of terrorism to everything you don’t approve of.”  Well, Mr. Ayres has me there, I have to admit I don’t approve of setting off bombs in public buildings.

 

And Ayres knows terrorism when he sees it, he admits that the 9/11 attacks were “vile.”  BUT he finds them no more vile than our troops clearing the terrorists out of Fallujah in the campaign against the insurgents in Iraq.

 

Of course, President-to-be Obama excused his association with Ayres on the grounds that the bombings he planned and executed took place forty years ago when Wonder Boy was a small Wonder Boy child.  All ancient history—you see?

 

But can you imagine what Obama’s response would have been if one of McCain’s Arizona associates had masterminded the bombing of an abortion clinic or a black church in the South during the Civil Rights era?  Such a friendship, however casual, would have damned the Arizona Senator irredeemably in the eyes of the Mainstream Media.  Just a few years ago, a man in his 80s was tried for his involvement in a church bombing in Mississippi in the early 60s.  I am sure this man, however, despicable his acts back then, is no more a danger to society now that is Professor Ayres of the University of Illinois.  But the left does not hesitate to continue to hound those whose actions they consider to be evil, however, old and decrepit they may be or how distant their offenses.  Note also the way the international hounded from country to country former President Auguste Pinochet of Chile, the man who saved Chile from Communism, for the alleged excesses of his regime.

 

But Professor Ayres is now respected and honored despite his attempts and those of his associates in the Weather Underground to kill and maim his fellow citizens.  The MSM and the liberal elite in this country feel that while his actions may have been questionable, his heart was in the right place so while his actions may have been excessive, all is now forgiven.  So Ayres gets to be Chicago Citizen of the Year, have three book deals in the works and, most disturbing, his “casual acquaintance” in the White House for the next four years.

Hell Freezes Over, Democrats Have Rare Moment of Good Sense When They Let Lieberman Off for McCain Endorsement

To my surprise, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate have had a sudden outbreak of rationalism and have decided not to seriously punish Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (elected originally as a Democrat, defeated for renomination as the Democratic Senate candidate in 2006 and then re-elected as an Independent, but still caucusing with the Democrats in the Senate) for his apostasy in supporting the Republican candidate John McCain in the Late Unpleasantness which culminated on November 4^th.

 

By a more than three to one margin (42-13) the Senate Democrats voted to allow Lieberman to remain as chair of both the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and his chair of the Armed Services committee subcommittee on air and land power issues.  The only real loss the Nutmeg Senator suffered was to lose his seat on the Environment and Public Works Committee and his subcommittee chairmanship there.

 

Nor to get this deal was Joe required to greatly abase himself to his colleagues for his heresy in supporting the Republican candidate for President and for committing truth when he stated during the campaign that Wonder Boy was not prepared to be President.  True, Lieberman did say that there were some remarks he had made during the campaign “that I wish I had never made at all” but what politician can’t say that about some remarks he makes in the course of a long election battle?

 

By not punishing Lieberman more severely, the Senate Democrats show that (at least in this case) they have learned a lesson that experience taught me long ago.  Namely, that when you have already won a battle, there is no need to rub it in to the losers.

 

After all, what was Lieberman’s crime (from the Democrat’s point of view, anyway?)  That he broke ranks to support the Republican candidate for President.  But McCain lost anyway.  So what would have been the point, except for sheer spite, to expel Lieberman from the Democratic caucus or strip him of all of his committee chairmanship?  It might well have been counter-productive, causing the Connecticut Senator to abandon the party altogether and caucus with the Republicans, something the Democrats could ill afford when they hope for a filibuster-majority of 60 votes.

 

After all, it would have made equally as much sense to punish Lieberman after the 2006 election, when his independent bid for re-election deprived the Democrats of Senator Joe Lamont.  But to expel him then would have cost the Stupid Party their newly won majority in the Senate.  They were right not to punish Lieberman then and then were eminently sensible not to do so now.  I hate to admit it, but this time the Democrats got it right.

Thank You, Senator Stevens

Well, the Senate Democrats are now one vote closer to achieving a filibuster-proof majority in the Upper House of Congress, thanks to the pigheaded stubbornness of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who, facing a trial for corruption charges refused to resign his seat even after his conviction on all counts weeks before the election.

 

Incredibly, on election day it appeared that Stevens might have won re-election by a narrow margin over his Democrat opponent Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.  There is no doubt that Stevens was a popular figure in the Land of the Midnight Sun, as he was a much better Senator for Alaska than he was for the country as a whole, spending nearly all of his efforts in his newly 40 years of service in that chamber diverting Federal taxpayer funds to his home state.  However, it now appears that even in a Republican bastion like Alaska, the Democratic early voting efforts paid dividends as absentee votes seem to have given the edge to Begich.

 

Stevens was a walking argument for term limits as the theme of his entire congressional career was one of selfishness, even if that self-serving vice was exercised in behalf of his Alaskan constituents.  We can remember his recent selfish rant on the Senate floor in which he attacked his fellow Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma for trying to take away “my money” when Coburn made the first attempt to eliminate the incredibly wasteful “Bridge to Nowhere” project.  The GOP can be happy that now the face that Alaska Republicans present to the world is that of the reformist optimistic Governor and Vice President candidate Sarah Palin and not the dour money-grubbing Stevens.

 

The only way that conservatives will miss Stevens is as an ass in a seat on the Senate floor and an occasional vote tossed our way.  Even after his conviction when it was too late to replace him on the ballot, he could have done the right thing by announcing that if re-elected, he would resign and allow Governor Palin to name his replacement.  It might have produced just the few thousand additional votes that would have preserved this seat for the GOP.  But, of course, in the end an ego the size of his home state prevailed and Ted would not perform even this service for his state and his party.

Forgive & Forget?

Now that Wonder Boy has been elected President, we have been assured that despite the rough times at the moment, we should just be patient, as a new era of peace, prosperity and good times is at hand under the beneficent rule of Barack Obama, that magical combination of Abe Lincoln, FDR and Jesus Christ.

 

We are also being told that we should abjure the bipartisanship and politics of personal destruction that have marred the public discourse of the past eight years.  No longer should congressional committees launch massive investigations of every little misstep of the Obama administration and each peccadillo of the new President’s political appointees.  After all, that wouldn’t be civil, would it?

 

Well, of course, I have heard it all before.  Exactly eight years ago, in fact, when the Clinton Administration was coming into office.  After twelve years of a Democratic Congress trying to do everything it could, fair and foul, to hobble the work of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, the left suddenly realized that this sort of thing, like the vicious attacks against Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, was really beyond the pale and should no longer be tolerated, especially against the nominees and policies of Bill Clinton.

 

Well, fortunately the Republicans weren’t stupid enough to buy this attempt by the Democrats to avoid serious scrutiny and Slick Willie soon proved that the GOP would have ample cause to make a number of investigations of the most corrupt Presidency in American history. 

 

But even if Clinton had been as pure as the driven snow, the Republicans would still have had the right—nay, the duty—to watch his every move for any mistake or wrong move.  Politics ain’t beanbag and the knowledge that your opponents are on the alert for any illegal or injudicious act on your part can sometimes lead one to avoid rash judgment calls, which can only benefit your party and your country.

 

And although I think the investigations of the Republican administrations from 1981 through 1992 were sometimes over the top, I can’t say that they were never justified.  Iran-Contra for example.  There is no question that turning the money gained from the sale of arms to Iran to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua was an illegal act, just the same as FDR’s illegal acts to aid Britain in its fight against Hitler prior the US entrance into World War Two.  Only of course Roosevelt’s Democratic Congress at the time did no investigations of those breaches of the Constitution!

 

So when President Obama takes office, the Republicans have the right and duty to be just as tough on him as the Democrats in Congress have been on George W. Bush over the past eight years.  Yes, we should support him when he is right and we should never oppose him simply for the sake of opposition, but only when we think our party is in the right.  To go easy on him would be patronizing and if we were not as tough on the Dems as they have been on us, they would rightly regard us as a bunch of suckers.  As the Republicans learned back in the 1960s and 1970s, contempt is not a good basis for a healthy adversary relationship.

 

For example, in the past eight years the Senate Democrats have set the standard that a judge nominee for a Federal Court of Appeals slot who believes in a judicial philosophy contrary to theirs, despite being eminently experienced and educated for the job and with an unblemished character, will nonetheless require 60 rather than 51 votes to be confirmed.  The Republicans should hold the Democrats to this standard, particularly since they have already given the other party reason to believe that they can be rolled on these appointments, as demonstrated by the fact that despite the disgraceful treatment meted out to Judge Bork and Justice Thomas by the opposition party, the Republican Senators under Bill Clinton let both his very left-wing Court nominees go through with fewer total Republican votes cast against the two of them together than were cast by the Democrats against either Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts in the subsequent Bush administration.  Fooled me once, shame on you, fooled me twice, same on me.

 

 

 

For Thee, But Not For Me

It can’t possibly come as a surprise to anyone that Barack and Michelle Obama have decided to send their two young daughters to attend an exclusive private school when they move to DC, in fact the very same school (Sidwell Friends) that Bill and Hillary Clinton sent Chelsea to back in 1993.

Not that Barack and Michelle have anything against public schools, heaven knows! A spokesman for Obama said and I quote “Mrs. Obama is the product of public education on the South Side of Chicago and she believes strongly in the importance of good public schools for all kids.” However, the Obama girls also went to a private school in the Windy City, despite how well Ms. Permanent Frown turned out.

The spokesman also said that ” the Obamas felt that a private school was in the best interest of their children” and I have no doubt that a truer statement was never made. It is glaringly obvious that the future President and First Lady have made this decision for the simple reason that they love their kids and want what is best for them. What decent parents don’t? And what is best is clearly not turning them over to the tender mercies of the District of Columbia public school system, which, despite spending more per capita on its students than any other jurisdiction in the country, balances that out by having the worst student achievement test scores as well.

The new superintendent of schools, Michelle Rhee, is doing her best to try to change this dismal situation, but despite my admiration for the lady, I wouldn’t entrust any of my children to the tender mercies of this product of one of the strongest “teachers” unions in the country until Ms. Rhee has been in charge at least a decade.

So I don’t blame Barack and Michelle for their decision, but I do blame them and others of their ilk for denying others who are less financially gifted the same choice they have. For Senator and Mrs. Obama have, like all liberal Democrats, resolutely opposed any efforts to allow the use of vouchers or any other form of government subsidies to assist poorer taxpayers to send their beloved children to the private school of their choice.

Why? Because the liberals are so dependent on the “teachers” unions for support for their causes that they cannot afford to offend them in the slightest and the unions are against any measure that would break their monopoly to provide the worst education in the world to the children under their control.

Another one of these Democrat hypocrites was just elected as the new Senator from my home state, Virginia, Mark Warner, also known as “Governor Liar” for being elected on a “no new taxes” pledge which he promptly broke when he was elected to the Old Dominion state house. When Warner was running for governor, he was another “theoretical” supporter of the glories of public education—but of course his kids attended private institutions of learning. When the Republicans made timid attempts to point out this apparent contradiction, they were howled down by the mainstream media (notably “The Washington Post“) and promptly shut up. The failure of the Virginia GOP to press this entirely legitimate point is one example of why my local Republican party is in such a mess today.