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April 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

 

George Washington’s first inauguration took place 220 years ago today* on the balcony of the Senate Chamber in Federal Hall in New York City.  His Inaugural Address was delivered to a joint session of Congress in the Senate Chamber.

The First Inaugural Address of the First POTUS, delivered on 30 April 1789

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years — a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.

By the article establishing the executive department it is made the duty of the President “to recommend to your consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it will remain with your judgment to decide how far an exercise of the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the Constitution is rendered expedient at the present juncture by the nature of objections which have been urged against the system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good; for I assure myself that whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted.

To the foregoing observations I have one to add, which will be most properly addressed to the House of Representatives. It concerns myself, and will therefore be as brief as possible. When I was first honored with a call into the service of my country, then on the eve of an arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed; and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed may during my continuance in it be limited to such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.

Having thus imparted to you my sentiments as they have been awakened by the occasion which brings us together, I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication that, since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.

*Update: 1 May 2009: For any TNN reader who is convinced that you have the worst possible quasi-monopolistic internet provider, I see you and raise you Comcast.  Usually satisfied with supplying only intermittently undependable service, Comcast went down altogether for close to twelve hours beginning yesterday (30 April) in the afternoon; it has only just come back after one o’clock EDT  on May Day morning — when I am at last able to upload this post.

Hemingway Is Anti-life, Anti-mind, Anti-reality.

April 30, 2009 by Joshua Treviño | Filed Under Economic issues, Political Philosophy | 2 Comments 

This is a chart of the relative stock prices, over the past year, of six major American banks: BB&T, Bank of America, USBancorp, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Suntrust. Clearly it’s been a bad year, and worse for some than others: Citigroup’s stock price has lost just under 90% of its value, Bank of America about 76%, and SunTrust about 74%. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo’s stock price has only lost about 33%, and BB&T only about 32%. In this economy, this passes for stellar performance. What sets them apart?

According to NRO’s Mark Hemingway, it’s Ayn Rand.

Hemingway writes that BB&T CEO John Allison “navigated through the overheated mortgage market and the ensuing banking crisis by relying, in large part, on a philosophy that many others are now turning to” — Rand’s self-titled Objectivist creed, which endorses unregulated capitalism as the sole moral system of economic and, indeed, societal organization. Objectivism is best understood on the pragmatic level as a sort of mishmash of libertarianism and vociferous atheism, leavened with a cultic devotion to the woman who thought it all up. (Typical of the convinced Objectivist devotee is the high-school English teacher who challenged me to find a single factual or grammatical error in any of her works.) Rand hated the association with libertarianism, less because of any meaningful policy differentiation than her intolerance for variation on what she considered her themes: like the religious “mystics” she claimed to hate, she expended far more vitriol on perceived heretics than actual unbelievers.

This conflation of rigid social ideology with individual virtue was married to a belief that both expressed themselves in the most minute preference of the total person. With Ayn Rand the arbiter of rectitude, one must love the things Ayn Rand loved: a petty megalomania satirized by Murray Rothbard in Mozart Was a Red, from which comes this essay’s title. (For a more wrenching and appalling tale of Rand’s inability to separate ideology — or as she would have it, philosophy — from herself, see the appealingly soap-opera-ish The Passion of Ayn Rand.) This exclusionary vision easily elides into an exterminating one, as Whittaker Chambers noted in his famous review of Atlas Shrugged:

Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”

Here, it is useful to turn to a major essay by the man whom Ayn Rand designated her “intellectual heir” — a formalism unique outside cultic structures, which perhaps this is not — Leonard Peikoff. (I’ve written about him before.) In casting out a “heretical” movement which held that Rand did not, in fact, discover the whole of truth, and that disagreement with Rand was not an inherent moral failing (details from the putative heretics may be found here), Peikoff wrote the following:

Now take the case of Ayn Rand, who discovered true ideas on a virtually unprecedented scale. Do any of you who agree with her philosophy respond to it by saying “Yeah, it’s true”—without evaluation, emotion, passion? Not if you are moral. A moral person … greets the discovery of this kind of truth with admiration, awe, even love; he makes a heartfelt positive moral evaluation. He says: Objectivism is not only true, it is great! Why? Because of the volitional work a mind must have performed to reach for the first time so exalted a level of truth—and because of all the glorious effects such knowledge will have on man’s life, all the possibilities of action it opens up for the future.

The arrogance of assumption that one who differs is either evil or stupid may be a hallmark of the political blogosphere and frustrated corners of academia, but it does not commend those who purport to defend and embody a putative holistic philosophy.

All this brings us full circle to John Allison, BB&T, and Mark Hemingway’s assertion that Objectivism has saved the company from (comparative) financial ruin. Allison is a longtime and public supporter of Randian ideas, and has given a great deal of money to promulgate them. All this is perfectly fine, and a matter for Allison, the BB&T board, and the recipients of their largesse. Where the narrative becomes problematic is in the place Hemingway takes it: to an assertion that Ayn Rand and her ideology have, via Allison, “saved” BB&T.

The evidence for this, as presented by Hemingway, is thin. Allison credits his Objectivist beliefs with three things that benefitted BB&T in the past year: he believes in capitalism; he was wary of exotic mortgages; and he is against altruism, which he identifies as the flaw “that got us into the current financial crisis.” The first two items have no necessary connection with Randian teaching whatsoever. An overwhelming majority of Americans endorse capitalism, despite an underwhelming minority adhering to Objectivism; and unease over the strange financial instruments that helped precipitate this crisis is a familiar theme to anyone who followed the financial press (or Paul Krugman) in the past few years. As for Allison’s denunciation of “altruism,” he is certainly right that well-intentioned (by conventional, not Objectivist, lights) government interventions aggravated and perhaps even helped cause the market crash: but what Hemingway does not bother to explore is what the term means in Objectivist thought. Again, it’s instructive here to turn to Peikoff, who serves a useful purpose in illustrating the deeply strange moral turn that Randian ideology demands:

Q: During the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech College, there was a professor, a holocaust survivor, who blocked a door against the shooter so that his students could escape safely. And although he died in the process, the students did escape. Is this an act of altruism that Objectivism classifies as immoral?

A: No. As you present it, it was a heroic act in defense of the professor’s values.

Assuming a professor does not have reason to despise his students, then they are a value to him…

By contrast, and assuming no special personal attachments among the students, if one student decided to risk his life to save the others, I would regard that as highly dubious morally; in fact, I would think him weird. (Emphasis added.) If he has no grounds, personal or professional, to value the lives of these students so highly as to risk self-destruction, then, according to Objectivism, his action is altruistic and, as such, immoral.

In Hemingway’s piece, Allison says that in place of “altruism,” “[w]hat you really need to do is run your life in relationship to other people in context to what [Rand] calls the trader principle.” This sounds reasonable till, instead of doing something noble, you find that Objectivism demands you abandon your terrified classmates — who have nothing to trade in that moment — to their deaths. What Hemingway allows his subject to present as a jewel of enlightened self-interest is, upon what should be ordinary journalistic examination, a chilling and dumb bit of moral juvenilia.

Finally, Hemingway errs in presenting BB&T as a uniquely good and noteworthy bank in these troubled times. Indeed, the entire piece could be a commissioned bit of puff-PR from BB&T corporate communications. The truth is that BB&T, though markedly better off than many of its institutional peers, is nonetheless enduring the loss about a third of its market capitalization — and Wells Fargo is doing almost exactly as well as BB&T is, without recourse to Objectivist corporate leadership. Hemingway intones that the example of BB&T and the crisis of capitalism together mean that “Rand’s perspective is suddenly so valuable.” But it’s not. It’s as valuable as it’s always been, in good times and bad: as a personal validator of businessmen, and a moral fantasy for teenagers. A pity that National Review, which once printed apt condemnations of this enduring absurdity, now issues de facto press releases on its behalf.

Nixon Off the Record

April 30, 2009 by admin | Filed Under News media, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Here is a Bill Safire classic from the New York Times.

White House Burned By Hackosphere

April 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Hackosphere, History, News media | Leave a Comment 

It appears that someone at the White House gave President Obama Andrew Sullivan’s post saying that Winston Churchill’s government didn’t use torture during World War II. During his press conference last night, Obama offered it up as authoritative evidence in favor of his no-torture position.

As it turns out, the record isn’t so clear. Ben Smith has now unearthed evidence of British torture centers that was obviously beyond the reach of the resources of “The Daily Dish” and the Executive Office of the President, elusive evidence buried deep within the web site of the British Guardian, damning evidence available only to those who Google with exactly the right search words.

Sullivan now says that if it really happened and Churchill knew about it, then he’s a war criminal, too.

Interestingly, if you capture the link to Sullivan’s new entry, it says, “the-british-tortured,” perhaps the draft headline for the entry. Someone changed the final “Dish” headline to “Three Mansions In London,” which sounds like the title of a Moody Blues song. I thought that on this subject, we didn’t like weasel words.

The Welcome Wagon Derails

April 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Congress, Democratic Party, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

This little story is a perfect paradigm of why the Republican Party is on a treadmill to oblivion.

While Republicans are obsessed with figuring out how many angels should be allowed to dance on the head of the pin they have yet to find in the haystack of popular elections, the Democratic leadership is out recruiting men to match the mountains they’ll be climbing later this afternoon.

In The Hill today, Alexander Bolton reports the unhappiness of a few Democratic Senators whose seniority will be disturbed by the 79-year old newbie.

The only one willing to be quoted is Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski, whose beef is legitimate but hardly Specter-caused.  A Senator since 1987, she is still without a major chair.  But even without Mr. Specter being moved to the head of the line, she is still fourth down on the Appropriations Committee’s food chain.

Senior Senate Democrats are objecting to the deal Majority Leader Harry Reid made with Sen. Arlen Specter, saying they will vote against letting the former Republican shoot to the top of powerful committees after he switches parties.

Several Democrats are furious with Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep his seniority, accrued over more than 28 years as a GOP senator. That agreement would allow Specter to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels — including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees.

Specter’s terms of trade with Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently guarantees his retaining the seniority earned by his time in the upper body when the leadership is reorganized following the 2010 elections.

One anonymous Democratic Senator —whose tinfoil-covered welcoming casserole Senator Specter might want to pass first to a taster— was bitterly eloquent.

One senior Democratic lawmaker told The Hill that the Democratic Conference will vote against giving the longtime Pennsylvania Republican seniority over lawmakers like Harkin, Mikulski and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) when they hold their organizational meeting after the 2010 election.

Under his deal with Reid, Specter would jump ahead of all but a few Democrats when it comes time to dole out committee chairmanships and assignments.

“That’s his deal and not the caucus’s,” the senior lawmaker said of Reid’s agreement with Specter.

The lawmaker requested anonymity because the issue of Specter’s seniority is “a sensitive subject.” The lawmaker said it would be OK if Specter joined his panel as long as he “sat at the end of the dais” with junior members.

Since Reid and Specter announced their deal, Senate insiders have speculated that Specter could bump Harkin after the election from his chairmanship of the powerful Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee or return to be chairman of Judiciary if the current chairman, Leahy, takes over the gavel at Appropriations. Specter was chairman of Judiciary in the 109th Congress when Republicans controlled the chamber, and ushered through the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

But the senior Democratic lawmaker disputed these scenarios: “That can’t happen. Seniority is decided by the caucus.”

A key factor that prompted Specter’s switch was a review of polling data that suggested he couldn’t beat former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in the 2010 Republican primary. His new colleagues are not forgetting that.

“He was going to lose to Toomey and we were going to beat Toomey,” said the senior Democrat. “We did him a favor by allowing him to remain in the Senate.”

But a day in politics is a lifetime, and sufficient unto the day is the majority thereof.  And Harry Reid is a man with his eye fixed firmly on the prize.

But a source close to Reid told The Hill that Specter’s party switch brings Democrats “one step closer to the 60 votes necessary to choke off Republican filibusters.” The source said Democrats have close to a year and a half to resolve seniority disputes before setting committee assignments for 2011 and beyond.

“No one is going to lose committee or subcommittee chairmanships this Congress,” said the source, who added that the negative light Specter’s move has cast on the GOP will help Democrats pick up even more seats in the next election.

“We have a long time to sort this out,” said the source.

Day 101

April 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Humor, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

 

Featured Articles — April 30, 2009

April 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism By Arthur Brooks, The Wall Street Journal
There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it’s not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise — the principle at the core of American culture.

How to rebuild the GOP By David Frum, This Week
It’s not pointless to lock the barn door after the horse has gone—if, that is, you still happen to have some horses remaining in the barn.

On national security, Obama’s task will get even tougher. By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek
President Obama’s advisers have called his recent decision to authorize the release of Justice Department interrogation memos one of the toughest of his first 100 days. But the truth is, that was nothing compared with the decisions he will have to make on a host of related national-security and legal issues in coming months.

The Rise of Kim Jong-Un By Ken E. Gause, Foreign Policy
In January 2009, the South Korean news agency, Yonhap, reported that Kim Jong Il’s third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un, had been nominated to succeed his father “around” Jan. 8, the younger Kim’s birthday.

Obama’s National Security Facilitator By David Ignatius, The Washington Post
One of the puzzles of the Obama administration’s first few months was how the National Security Council would work under Gen. James Jones. He had the tricky challenge of managing an all-star “team of rivals” and working with a young president who was just 6 when Jones went off to Vietnam in 1967 as a Marine Corps second lieutenant.

Farewell to the American Century By Andrew Bacevich, Salon
Americans have perpetuated a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant.

How to Prevent a Pandemic By Nathan Wolfe, The New York Times
THE swine flu outbreak seems to have emerged without warning. Within a few days of being noticed, the flu had already spread to the point where containment was not possible.

Pakistan must be saved from collapse By Greg Sheridan, The Australian
KEVIN Rudd rightly linked Australia’s increased troop commitment to Afghanistan with a desire to ensure the viability of the Pakistani state. He identified this as a vital interest for Australia. Like US President Barack Obama, Rudd has appointed a special envoy — in this case former Defence Department head Ric Smith — for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Europe’s future depends on voters. But not on the European elections By Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
The EU is not a single democracy. The parties are shaping up for a big scrap in June, but the issues will be domestic.

Reconciliation’s Slippery Path By George Will, The Washington Post
But under Senate rules, “reconciliation” can be a means for coping with disharmony by deepening it. The tactic truncates Senate debate and curtails minority rights. The threat to use it to speed enactment of health care reform has coincided with talk about possible prosecutions relating to the previous administration’s interrogation policies. Harmony is becoming more elusive.

Obama Outsources His Presidency By Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal
While officials in the Obama White House dismissed yesterday’s “100 Days” anniversary as a “Hallmark Holiday,” they understood it was what sociologist Daniel J. Boorstin called a “pseudo-event.” By that, Boorstin meant an occasion that is not spontaneous but planned for the purpose of being reported — an event that is important because someone says so, not because it is.

Altering History

April 29, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under New Media, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

“Newsweek”’s superstar columnist thinks I’m mad at him.

Nixon’s White House Military Aide Weighs In On Air Force One’s PR Photo Shoot.

April 29, 2009 by Editors | Filed Under National Security, Obama administration | 5 Comments 

By Jonathan Movroydis & Sandy Quinn

“Had there been a senior military officer running the military office, this would not have happened,” said former Nixon Military Assistant and retired Marine Colonel Jack Brennan in an interview with The New Nixon blog (TNN –thenewnixon.org) earlier today about the White House Military Office’s  (WHMO) decision to carry out a photo op in which Air Force One flew over the New York City skyline haunting metropolitan residents reminded of the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Taking responsibility for the embarrassment is Director Louis Caldera, a retired soldier, lawyer, California politician and Clinton Secretary of the Army.

The previous director (under George W. Bush) was Rear Admiral Raymond Spicer. Most recently the Obama Administration decided to return it to civilian control, and though he is a retired Army Captain, Caldera doesn’t report through conventional channels. “A civilian running this operation is certainly not desirable,” Brennan argues.  “And not desired by the 2,000 people reporting to him. A military mind would have sent it back to the Pentagon. Nobody had the common sense to assess the impact on the city, citizens, and those working in the office towers.”

The White House Military Office is tasked to direct roughly 2,000 personnel assigned to assisting the President in military support including all transportation, hospitality, medical support, emergency services and the staff mess.

Housed originally in the East Wing built for the military by FDR, “the military assistant is a powerful office,” says Brennan, “people started to recognize this. Anyone who wanted a plane, car, or to eat in the staff mess had to call us.” In the Nixon Administration, the office maintained its traditional military authority. James “Don” Hughes, an Air Force Colonel — later General — was Nixon’s first military assistant. After Hughes came then Air Force Lt. General Brent Scowcroft, and finally Army Brigadier General Richard Lawson.

Caldera’s $300,000 plus decision – in a position as a political appointee – can perhaps be viewed from a different angle. “It’s a possibility he was told to do it, by a political officer, civilian to civilian.” Ostensibly the traditional protocol wouldn’t have produced the need for urgent PR opportunities and the threat of Federal sanctions, Brennan contends; “the unfortunate incident shows the need to return the military office to the military.”

Update:  5/10/2009, 1:02 am:

Brennan went on the record to discuss the flyover flap last Tuesday, May 4:

Brennan also discusses Caldera’s potential loyalties despite him being a Westpoint graduate and retired Army Captain:

RN Would Say That Snowe Gets The Drift

April 29, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Various Specters, then the cold reality for Republicans.

Featured Articles — April 29, 2009

April 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

An Engaged, Yet Elusive, President By Gerald Seib, The Wall Street Journal
Just as the times of Barack Obama defy the easy descriptions and old labels, so too does the man himself.

100 Days of Disquietude By Alan Brinkley, The New Republic
There is no very good reason to judge a new president by his first 100 days. Some of our greatest presidents accomplished little in their first months. Some of our least successful had impressive beginnings. But ever since the New Deal trumpeted the successes of its own first 100 days, it has been common to take note of what subsequent presidents have done in the same period.

Federal control of General Motors is game changer By David Howes, Detroit News
Not in post-war France, when Charles DeGaulle nationalized Renault SA in 1945 to punish its founder for alleged enemy collaboration, a stake that has diminished to 15 percent over time. Not in Germany, where the state of Lower Saxony owns 20 percent of Volkswagen AG and its minister-president sits on VW’s supervisory board alongside representatives of labor.

The Next Big Thing: America By Michael Lind, Foreign Policy
What will the world look like when the present emergency has passed? The safest prediction is that the post-crisis financial sector will be downsized and more heavily regulated, nationally and internationally. The financial sector as a whole, which peaked at 40 percent of corporate profits in the United States in 2006, may shrink as much as 50 percent in the aftermath of the emergency.

Learning to Live with Bloggers By Salil Tripathi, Far East Economic Review
Indian bloggers and other online commentators are challenging the status quo in business and politics like never before. And they are redefining attitudes toward the media in a country whose celebrated protection of free speech has often been undermined by the libel laws of its common law legal system.

Living with the Taliban By Ali Dayan Hasan, The Guardian
At my daughter’s annual school parents’ day in Lahore, the tension was palpable. An innocuous annual event had transformed into a maximum security operation. Parents filed in their hundreds past security guards, metal detectors and bag searches to see their children perform songs.

Trig Palin…

April 28, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under News media, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

…should hire Ed Whelan.

Welcome Aboard The Wilderness Express

April 28, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Republican Party | 7 Comments 

The GOP has the Democrats right where it wants them now!

A Star Is Born

April 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, National Security, News media, Obama administration | 3 Comments 

Judging from the first two samples, Ross Douthat’s Tuesday columns will be welcome additions to The New York Times‘ op-ed page.

Today’s —”Cheney For President“— posits an interesting (if backhanded) “what if”:

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.

Last Thursday, another Cheney —daughter Liz— appeared on MSNBC and turned out to be an able, articulate, appealing, civil, and immensely patient spokesperson for her beliefs.  For some twenty minutes of excellent television, she held anchor Norah O’Donnell’s feet to the uncomfortable (not to say unaccustomed)  fire of accuracy and accountability.

Needless to say, the chances of Ms. Cheney being invited back to continue the mauling any time soon are slim to nil, so I planned to embed the video of her combined spectacular-debut-cum-farewell-performance as both must viewing and historical artifact.

“Now this argument about the Geneva Conventions — in terms of this idea that somehow Al-Qaeda abides by the Geneva Conventions — if Al-Qaeda captures an American they cut his head off.” —  Liz Cheney on MSNBC:

MSNBC’s website welcomes blogs to embed its videos — and then provides a defective code that only results in blank space.

Although not a drop of conspiratorialist blood flows through my increasingly arteriosclerotic veins, the thought did briefly cross my mind that perhaps the cable network was less than anxious for this particular embed —in which the highly polished studio floor is wiped with Ms. O’Donnell— to be easily accessible to a wider audience.  But I checked and it turns out that all MSNBC clips are similarly embed-resistant.  So MSNBC is guilty of incompetence not obstruction.

The upshot is that you will have to do some work yourself.  But, trust me, your effort will be rewarded.

If you click here you can see the discussion of the meaning and consequences of the release of the CIA documents.

Click here and watch the discussion of the propriety of Vice President Cheney raising questions about some of President Obama’s actions and inactions.

And click here for a few thoughts about the future of the Republican Party.

Liz Cheney is an attorney, a  former AID official, Deputy Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and head of DOS’ Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group.  She served on the Bush-Cheney campaign staffs in 2004 an 2008.  In her spare time, she is a mother of five.

Next Time You Think You’ve Had A Bad Day

April 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Next Time You Think You've Had A Bad Day | Leave a Comment 

Twenty-eight year old Artyom Sidorkin complained of extreme chest pains.  Then he started coughing up blood.  So surgeons decided to operate to remove the tumor his x-rays revealed.

The operation’s outcome was reported by the Daily Telegraph:

“We were 100 per cent sure,” said Vladimir Kamashev, a surgeon in Izhevsk in the Urals. “We did X-rays and found what looked exactly like a tumour.

“I had seen hundreds before, so we decided on surgery.”

Before removing part of the man’s lung, the surgeon investigated the tissue.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” said Mr Kamashev. “I asked my assistant to have a look: ‘Come and see this – we’ve got a fir tree here’. He nodded in shock. I blinked three times as I was sure I was seeing things.”

Medical staff said that Mr Sidorkin must have inhaled a seed, which later sprouted into a small fir tree inside his lung.

The spruce, which was said to be touching the man’s capillaries and causing severe pain, was removed.

One Man Down

April 28, 2009 by Joshua Treviño | Filed Under American Politics, Congress | 4 Comments 

Leave the Internet to itself for six hours, and look what happens: Arlen Specter jumps ship, and the Democrats (probably) get their 60-seat Senate supermajority — which, coupled to a solidly Democratic House, means the Obama agenda may proceed unhindered through the national legislature.

This is not good news in itself, but neither is it awful. The defection of Arlen Specter, his statement notwithstanding, has little to do with his convictions, and much to do with his probable loss to Pat Toomey in the forthcoming Pennsylvania Republican primary. Senator Specter’s core principles will remain in the Democratic party what they were in the Republican party: that is, focused upon the interests and well-being of what Senator Specter sees in the mirror. The Democrats, for their part, now own Washington, D.C., outside the judiciary. If they accomplish great things, they will deserve the credit for it — and if they don’t, they will own the failure in full. It’s not difficult to guess which outcome is likely. Either way, the American people will have the grace of clarity in 2010.

This said, Specter’s party switch is the latest in a long trend of ideological party-sorting, in which the Republicans get the conservatives, and the Democrats get the leftists. It’s arguable which of the two actually offers more objective scope for dissent and range, and it’s arguable whether more scope is inherently good. The party coalitions are not mirror images of one another, and so the Republicans, with their modern roots in ideological struggle, are probably more cohesive than the Democrats, with their modern roots in plain power partnerships. This cohesion seems either a tremendous strength (there being power in unity) or a risible weakness (there being exclusion in strictures), depending on whether you’re a partisan, and on what year it is. A Republican party bound by common principles and shared goals seemed a crushing threat to its foes from late 2002 through early 2005; now, its detractors argue that its tent is too small, and its ideals too narrow.

Well. The proper response is that this is indeed true for some, but the long-term benefits of losing the likes of Specter (or Jim Jeffords, or perhaps, in the future, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) outweigh the short-term costs — at least in political calculation. The truth is that the Republican party has been shedding “moderates” — a much-abused term, that — for the past generation. If we take the 1976-1980 era as the decisive span in which the Republican party became the party of conservatism, it seems clear that it has only become more conservative since — and that this process must entail the end of Republican careers like Arlen Specter’s.

The conservatization, so to speak, of the Republican party is not an unmixed blessing, not least because uniformity brings the danger of intellectual complacency. Yet to see in Specter’s defection the knell of a too-narrow, too-exclusive movement is to badly misread events. No party will ever be broad enough to accommodate an endangered office-seeker. More to the point, that process has yielded both the modern Republican identity, and several periods of Republican dominance — at least one stretch of several years in each of the last three decades. To abandon what the party is, and has been becoming over the past generation, just because a “moderate” defects, betrays an ignorance of recent history: and it makes as much sense as abandoning capitalism over the latest recession, centuries of prosperity notwithstanding.

Yet meaningful numbers of people do want to abandon capitalism, and even more do want to abandon conservatism as the Republican mark. If they believe the likes of Arlen Specter a prize worth having, they are welcome to him. Certainly he agrees.

Bill Bennett Weighs In On GOP Woes, ‘Torture’ Debate

April 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, TNN TV | 1 Comment 

The Hon. William J. Bennett was at the Nixon Library Sunday to sign his new book The American Patriot’s Almanac: Daily Readings on America. Bennett also spoke to a crowd of over 400 in the Library’s replica of the White House East Room.

Bennett began his remarks by recalling that President Nixon’s record on civil rights is a legacy worth remembering, capturing the endorsement of baseball legend Jackie Robinson and 30 percent of the African American vote in the 1960 election, the largest proportion a Republican candidate gained in the past 50 years.

In addition to losing key demographics, Bennett noted that though Republicans have ceded the center of gravity in Washington, giving up — by default — California’s 55 electoral votes has done greater damage. “California is the land of Nixon,” Bennett said. “But it’s also the land of Reagan.” Challenging the state to regain the “center of gravity” is important Bennett argues, because it’s where the rest of the country receives their “cultural queues.” While California has consecutively voted Democratic in the past 5 election cycles, its people have voted to keep property taxes “low,” mandated English as the language of instruction, and has kept “marriage between a man and a woman.”

Bennett also reminded the audience of the lessons of Ronald Reagan in what he believes is the divergent age of Obama, explaining that the responsibilities of government is first “security,” that we must acknowledge “that men are free,”  and that the “nanny state”  is not the answer to our economic woes. Bennett didn’t say this would come easy, acknowledging that conservatives have ceded ground in popular culture making it easier for the opposition to fill the political vaccuum. “A society has two important questions,” the philosophy phd recalled in Plato’s dialogues, “what will we teach the children, and who will do the teaching?”

After his speech, Bennett discussed President Obama’s recent release of the ’so called’ tortured memos and opined on the administration’s possible decision to prosecute Bush administration officials on this episode of TNN TV:

Correction: During my Q & A with The Hon. William Bennett, I referred to Robert Mueller as “former” FBI director. Mr. Mueller is the current director.

Now If He Could Only Do Something About The Polls

April 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

On the eve of his administration’s second Hundred Days, President Obama has some welcome news. Late this morning, Arlen Specter, the longtime Republican senator from Pennsylvania, announced (in the face of a planned challenge next year from former Representative Pat Toomey) that he is changing his party registration to Democrat and running in the 2010 primary as such.

This means that if the Democrats can figure out a way to seat Al Franken before millennium’s end, they will have a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the Senate, presumably hastening the day when everything on the liberal agenda short of union card-checks, a Federal legalization of gay marriage, and a Congressional Gold Medal for Jane Fonda or Sean Penn can be passed.

Update: Republican strategist Roger Stone foregoes his customary sardonic tone to offer some thoughtful and fairly insightful observations on Specter’s defection at NewsMax.com.  I should mention that this clip is introduced by a commercial for Hampton Inns featuring a shirtless character with a spectacular example of what my wife would call a “Homer belly” (as in Simpson).  I was worried that when asked to follow that image with one of Stone in his usual finery, my computer would crash instantly. However, he is only heard on the phone in the clip, not seen; the person on the screen is his NewsMax interviewer, who looks something like Horatio Sanz’s thinner brother.

That Bodyguard Of Lies

April 28, 2009 by Joshua Treviño | Filed Under National Security | Leave a Comment 

Lost in the controversy over the release of the now-infamous “torture memos,” and the forthcoming release of Abu-Ghraib-style photographs, is the broad question of what, exactly, ought to be classified. The existing system of intelligence classification is merely a codification of the age-old need to keep secrets from one’s enemy. “Truth,” intoned Winston Churchill, “is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” There is some merit to this, especially in the context of a world war, but it is not the last word on the topic, and still less a rule of thumb for the control of information in a liberal democracy.

I. Democracy’s presumptions.

The fundamental presumption of our sort of democracy is that the people, in aggregate, are competent to receive, assess, and act rightly upon information. James Surowiecki has written a great deal on this, mostly in the contexts of markets, but even he cautions that the existence of this sort of aggregate is, in itself, insufficient to yield the positive outcomes assumed by democracy. Three years ago, I spoke with a Claremont Institute scholar who, in critiquing the assumptions undergirding the Iraq war, remarked that “democracy requires a demos.” A demos, in turn, requires what Surowiecki posits as the characteristics of a “wise crowd”: diversity, independence, decentralization, and aggregation. (I don’t wish to rely on Surowiecki overmuch, as he is not the final authority on these things — his book sold well less because of its ideas than its affirmation of market mechanisms in good times — but those ideas are nonetheless useful here.)

The existence of information classification implies at least one of two things: first, that there exists an enemy for whom the information is useful; and second, that the people at large do not possess the “wise crowd” characteristics to usefully act upon the information. The first implication is generally non-controversial in war, and I believe this non-controversial nature may easily be an example of a bad crowd decision.

II. The things we should not see.

Explaining this requires an examination of the second implication, on the unsuitability of the general public to rightly assess and act upon information. The rationale asserting this unsuitability is neatly summarized in the famous courtroom monologue of Marine Colonel Jessep from “A Few Good Men”:

We live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns … I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom … You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

Stripped of its patina of arrogance and belligerence, this argument — that death awaits in the things one should not see — is strikingly similar to the Straussian concept of the “noble lie” that makes the polity possible. Contrary to what popular-media discussion of Strauss exists, it does not necessarily follow from this that a Straussian is an agent of a restrictive national-security state. It does follow, though, that the “noble lie” concept lends legitimacy to the idea that a democratic people are not, in fact, suited to full self-governance — if we accept that full self-governance must include full access to the information possessed by one’s leaders.

Information classification on this premise therefore comes dangerously close to a denial of the foundational premises of American governance. If governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed,” it is difficult to argue that this consent may be anything less than fully informed. Even if that argument is accepted, it defies credulity to assert that the agent controlling the information ought to be the very government to which the people are consenting. To put it mildly, this is a tremendous conflict of interest.

In his outstanding “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe writes of the salutary effect of religious revival in 1820s America: “[T]he revivals expanded the number of people experiencing an autonomous sense of self. They taught self-respect and demanded that individuals function as moral agents.” But a moral agent must have the tools of agency. Howe does not argue that faith alone sustained the young American republic: the title of his history (which covers the period 1815-1848) refers to the first message sent by telegraph from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. — and thus to the transformative, equally salutary, and equally necessary effect of information on the creation of our democracy. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in that same era, “To suppose that [newspapers, the primary means of mass information dissemination] only serve to protect freedom would be to diminish their importance: they maintain civilization.” (Emphasis added.)

III. The face of the enemy.

How do we reconcile the free informational dissemination necessary to both consensual governance and the “maintenance of civilization” with the aforementioned second implication: that the people at large do not possess the “wise crowd” characteristics to usefully act? Set against the principles of the American founding, and information’s needful role in the type of society we wish to have — as demonstrated in history — the case for information classification is rendered weak. The primary remaining argument for it, then, is in the first implication above: that there exists an enemy for whom the information is useful.

In identifying this putative enemy, it is useful to proceed backwards from the information classified, to the meaningful groups from whom it is thus denied. I use “meaningful groups” here in the sense of “groups that may be expected to care about and act upon” the information. (Madagascan militants may be denied the same stuff we are, but they hardly matter.) Therefore, the classifications of NATO plans and dispositions in eastern Afghanistan are likely meant to deny information to the Taliban and al Qaeda; that we are denied this information is secondary. Presumably, if citizen of the Western nations could keep a secret, we’d all know. This much is easy.

Where the identification of the enemy gets difficult is in other cases, such as the former ban on the photography of soldiers’ caskets at Dover AFB. Who then is the object of active denial of information? Surely al Qaeda doesn’t get the photographs — but we, the American public, and the media apparatus we patronize are the real and obvious objects. Inasmuch as this makes us “the enemy,” the implication here is profoundly troubling. This is a comparatively stark case, but the “torture memos” and the to-be-released Abu-Ghraib-style photographs differ only in their marginal utility as propaganda for the battlefield enemy. Again, the primary object of denial would seem to be the people at large.

IV. Worth the fighting for.

What is to be done? Deeply unpopular as it is to say so — at least on my side of the partisan aisle — the Obama Administration is taking tentative steps in the right direction in its slow and halting release of information. This is not to credit it with unsullied intentions, or to assume that it values governmental openness for its own sake. The evidence for either is thin. Still, as the bias toward withholding information did not yield demonstrable, pragmatic policy gains — to say nothing of strengthening civil society — in the preceding Administration, we might hope for an opportunity to urge a contrary policy bias toward openness.

That this is wartime need not obscure this possibility. The man who declared truth so important that it should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies meant to deceive the Nazis first, and his own people as a regrettable consequence. Inasmuch as modern America seeks the deception of its own people as a primary intent, it is not an America worth the fighting for.

Featured Articles — April 28, 2009

April 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

The Secret Of His Success By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
No other American president in modern memory has faced a learning curve as steep as the one Barack Obama has encountered. When he began his quest for the Democratic nomination three years ago, the Dow Jones industrial average was 14,000, and the world was in the midst of a great economic boom.

Understanding Swine Flu By Henry Miller, The Wall Street Journal
The extent and impact of the swine flu epidemic, which appears to have originated in Mexico and spread rapidly to a dozen countries and parts of the U.S., is still unknown. The epidemiology of such disease outbreaks is rather like a jigsaw puzzle, and we are now at the stage where the picture is intriguing even if we’re not sure what we’re seeing.

The Politics of Liberal Amnesia By Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal
Nancy Pelosi is “pushing back” against charges that she was aware of — and acquiesced in — the CIA’s harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees nearly from the moment the practice began, reports the Politico Web site. Maybe she’s suffering from amnesia.

General Petraeus’s ‘Anaconda Plan’ By H.D.S. Greenway, The Boston Globe
LAST WEEK the most celebrated American general of our time, Central Command’s David Petraeus, came to talk at Harvard University – four stars glittering on each shoulder, and an impossible number of campaign ribbons laddering his chest.

Cheney for President By Ross Douthat, The New York Times
Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.

100 Days of Obama: The New Cold Warriors By Pejman Yousefzadeh, The New Ledger
The 100 day mark of a new Administration’s first term serves as the cue for the punditocracy to opine at a fever pitch, and with the Obama Administration reaching its first 100 days, they are predictably doing what they do best. Of course, this is an artificial and arbitrary milestone, so the pronouncements of the punditocracy have to be taken with a grain of salt. Even so, there are trends that are worth noticing and highlighting.

The Taliban’s tactical withdrawal By Dilip Hiro, The Guardian
It is only a matter of time before the Pakistani Taliban flexes its muscle elsewhere. The government needs a fresh approach

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