WWND

May 14, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, News media | 1 Comment 

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie answers a question asked by Newark Star-Ledger reporter and editorial page editor Tom Moran at a press conference yesterday in Trenton:

Another President With “Game”?

May 14, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Nixon family, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Sports | 1 Comment 

Many articles about President Obama have suggested that he is the first President to display any considerable skill as a basketball player. (Herbert Hoover used to toss a six-pound medicine ball over a volleyball net, but Hooverball’s another game altogether.)

But such may not be the case, as recounted in Alex Pappas’s article about President Nixon’s grandson, GOP congressional candidate Chris Cox. Recalling the time he spent with his grandfather, he says:

“I remember we went to lots of baseball games together and played basketball together. I tell you, he had a mean shot from the top of the key.”

And from a story by the Associated Press:

The aspiring politician says his grandfather, who mostly talked with him about the Mets and Giants before his death in 1994, when Cox was 15, did provide advice that may come in handy between now and November.

“What he would tell me is the only way you lose is if you stay on the floor,” Cox said. “You’re going to get knocked down time and time again, but keep coming back. And keep trying. The only time you lose is when you stop trying.”

New York Times Obituary of Walter Hickel

May 8, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Environmental issues, In Memoriam, Nixon Administration figures | Leave a Comment 

The New York Times has just put up a lengthy obituary of Walter J. Hickel, two-time Alaskan Governor and President Nixon’s first Secretary of the Interior who died last night in Anchorage.

With Governor Hickel’s passing, George P. Shultz (Secretary of Labor, 1969-1970) and Melvin R. Laird (Secretary of Defense, 1969-1973) are now the last living members of the Cabinet that entered office with RN.

What Would Buckley Think About The Tea Party?

May 1, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation, author of the standard biography of Barry Goldwater (and of a new book about William F. Buckley Jr.) argues that Buckley would have endorsed it:

Some of you may be saying, “But wait, wasn’t Bill Buckley an elitist, the ultimate patrician, the man with a New York City maisonette and a limousine and driver? Wouldn’t he dismiss the tea party people as a bunch of ignorant emotional backwoods yahoos?”

Well, according to a New York Times/CBS survey, supporters of the tea party are wealthier and better educated than the general public. More than 90 percent of them think the country is heading in the wrong direction. An overwhelming majority say that President Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and does not understand their problems.

Bill Buckley would be very comfortable with such yahoos. After all, it was he who said in a debate at Harvard University: “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty.”

PJB – C-SPAN – 5.2.10 – NOON EST

May 1, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Ideas, Media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Politics, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Pat Buchanan will be the guest tomorrow on C-SPAN’s monthly three hour interview and call in show In Depth.

Back in the day: PJB in his EOB office.  RN recruited the youngster —his first hire for his new presidential campaign— in 1967 from the editorial page of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.  He served on the White House staff until 1975.

A National Day Of Humiliation

April 18, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Faith, History, Presidents, Religion, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

Of course, it will be appealed and wind its way through a process of judicial, if not national debate before all is said and done, but the mind fairly boggles at the arrogant absurdity of a court in this land ruling the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Back when George W. Bush occupied the Oval Office, the radical anti-theist group (read: atheists on steroids), “Freedom From Religion,” filed a lawsuit and the toxic seed planted then has now borne poisonous fruit. Stay tuned.

I know it’s fashionable these days to bash-Bush, blaming the man and his administration for all the ills our current leaders find to be overwhelming and resistant to their heady scheme-dreams, but our 43rd President is a man of passionate faith. Sometimes he’s accused of wearing his faith on his sleeve, but personally I find that to be preferable to politicians who always seem to have something up their sleeves.

I had the privilege the other day of receiving a nice note from Mr. Bush. He had received a copy of my new book, a Texas story from the 1920s called, “Apparent Danger—The Pastor of America’s First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920s.” In the note, along with kind words about the book, he said something that I find quite timely in light of the news about the ruling by Judge Barbara Crabb in U.S. District Court (a Jimmy Carter appointee, by the way)—something about prayer: “During our time in the White House, Laura and I were inspired by the strength of the American people and sustained by your prayers and encouragement.”

Certainly, I understand that he was talking about personal prayers, not necessarily public ones, and that there is nothing in the current court ruling banning private prayer. Duh. I get that. But there is nuance, code, and an unmistakable trend. Our current president and his sometimes profane pals seem to be very uncomfortable with any form of pious-speak, and downright out of place in any role requiring lip-service to faith.

Religion—well, let’s be fair, anything related to Christian or Jewish religion—is increasingly being relegated to stepchild status. In the case of Islam, exceptions are made all the time, of course.

I would appeal to President Barack Hussein Obama today, to reach back beyond his Muslim, Marxist, and Liberation Theology (which is to real Christianity as anthrax is to sugar) roots and try to connect with his “inner-Lincoln.” It is clear to all of us that he very much loves to tap into Lincoln-like moments and trappings. From his announcement to run for president in Springfield, Illinois, to his train ride from Philadelphia en route to his inauguration following the route Lincoln took in 1861, to using Lincoln’s Bible while taking the oath of office, he has deliberately cultivated this clever image.

The year 1863 was a critical one for an America then immersed in nation-rending conflict. It was a year that began with his famous Emancipation Proclamation. Later that year, President Lincoln would travel to Pennsylvania and deliver immortal words at a place called Gettysburg. But almost forgotten among our 16th President’s writings, speeches, and proclamations, is something else he said that same year. As the Civil War raged, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Prayer—only he didn’t quite call it that. It was actually called, are you ready for this? “A Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.” Now, that would make any liberal “living-constitution” judge’s head spin all the way around today, don’t you think?

Among the things the President said in his 1863 Proclamation were these words:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

These days it is fashionable and politically expedient for our President to travel the globe confessing our purported geo-political sins to would-be enemies in an effort to appease and impress. But wouldn’t it be far more effective for our future, and refreshing for the republic, if we had people in charge who were willing to humble themselves before Almighty God, instead of petty potentates, as a shining example to all of us?

Oh, and speaking of Presidents and prayer, maybe someone in the White House should pull out any good biography of another Obama hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and turn to the part about D-Day in June of 1944. There they’d find what I consider FDR’s finest moment and most effective and eloquent utterance and it was in the form of a prayer. That’s right—he led the nation, via radio, in prayer. And, in part, he said this:

My Fellow Americans:

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

That’s right. Mr. New Deal said that those heroes storming the beaches of Normandy that fateful day were doing so to “preserve…our religion.”

We’ve apparently come—or better, descended—a long way since then.

Hope For All C Students

April 13, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, National Security, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

The FBI file of Pulitzer-winning columnist and Nixon White House speechwriter, the late William Safire, has become public. The Associated Press’s Jessica Gresko describes the contents:

Some of the earliest material dates from 1969, when investigators did a background check on Safire, who was joining the Nixon White House as a speech writer. The FBI’s investigators learned that Safire, then 39, had been an “honor senior” at the Bronx High School of Science and served as circulation manager of the newspaper. As a student at Syracuse University between 1947 and 1949, he had an average “just short of a B” before quitting the school. Later, while running his own public relations firm, he had clients such as The Good Humor Corporation and Ex-Lax Inc. in Brooklyn.

The bulk of the file is only partly related to Safire, however, and includes an investigation into the wiretapping, which lasted from 1969 into 1971 and was apparently started because of leaks surrounding Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The talks between the U.S. and Soviet Union were on the subject of arms control. The documents show Safire was among more than a dozen people, including some at the White House and four journalists, whose phones were tapped. The wiretap on Safire lasted four months and found nothing.

“I have a thing about wiretapping,” Safire said on “Meet The Press” in 2006, describing what had happened to him and referencing wiretapping during the Bush administration. “I didn’t like that … it told me how easy it was to just take somebody who was not really suspected of anything for any good reason and listen to every conversation in his home.”

New Book On Media Myths

April 11, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, TV News Personalities, U.S. History, Watergate | 1 Comment 

W. Joseph Campbell is a professor at American University School of Communications. Before he entered academia he spent 20 years as a journalist, often traveling and working abroad (in the days when major American newspapers and magazines could afford to send a fair number of reporters overseas).

He has a new book coming out in July, Getting It Wrong, published by the University of California Press. It focuses on ten major myths about the Fourth Estate that have arisen in the last century or so. The Washington Post website’s “Political Bookworm” discusses three of these: that the Spanish-American War was mainly the creation of William Randolph Hearst; that Edward R. Murrow, when he criticized Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy on his TV show See It Now, was the first major journalist to criticize McCarthy’s tactics (when several reporters and columnists were already doing so regularly); and that the thirty-seventh President was removed from office entirely through the efforts of Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and the late Jason Robards Jr:

Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher during the Watergate period, said in 1997: “Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon's] resignation were constitutional.” She was right, but the complexities of Watergate are not readily recalled these days. What does stand out is a media-centric interpretation that the dogged reporting of Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought Nixon down.

Justice Stevens Retires

April 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Presidents, Senate, Supreme Court, White House | 1 Comment 

Less than an hour ago word came from Washington that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who was selected by President Ford as William O. Douglas’s replacement in 1975, has announced that he will retire when the Court’s spring term concludes at the end of June. In recent interviews, Stevens, who turns 90 on April 20, has emphasized that he has no interest in trying to break Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr’s record as the oldest person to sit on the Court, or Douglas’s as its longest-serving Justice. But his announcement is still somewhat surprising.

The Justice’s decision to retire presents another challenge to the Obama White House, of finding a nominee who can be confirmed by a majority of the Senate with no more debate and controversy than that which surrounded the comparatively smooth progress of Justice Sonia Sotomayor through the nomination process. As the Washington Post notes today, the candidate who seems most favored by the President at the moment is his Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, previously the dean of Harvard Law School. Ms. Kagan was confirmed for the Federal post by a Senate vote of 61-31 in March 2009, which might seem to augur well for her appointment to the Court. But quite a lot has changed in thirteen months, and the process may well be a tougher one for such a selection now.

The Economics Of Peter And Paul

April 9, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Economic issues, Europe, Healthcare, Political Philosophy, economy | 4 Comments 

Maybe they’re on to something across the pond. It was announced the other day that the next national election in Great Britain will take place on May 6, and the stakes will be high. A 30-day campaign—can you imagine that?

Of course, the reality over there, as here at home, is that political posturing is a 24/7 proposition—relentless and unmerciful. But just the idea that an actual election can be set for a single month cycle is (pardon the pun) a foreign concept to us. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his leftist Labor party have been gaining ground on David Cameron’s Conservatives, closing what was once a 20-point gap to single digits—lately around 7 per cent—so the timing seemed right.

And while America is being dragged kicking and screaming to the statist left, our increasingly distant cousins could possibly be on the verge of an ironic power-shift. One that has been described “as potentially the most pivotal since the one in 1979 that brought the conservative Margaret Thatcher to power and recast the fundamentals of British politics and society.”

In other words, the culture that gave us Lloyd George, Churchill, and Lady Thatcher, could soon witness “the fundamental transformation” of their nation. Some are calling the campaign of the Tories a “back to the future” effort. Indeed.

Of course, conservatives in the United Kingdom are nowhere near clones of their nomenclature counterparts in the United States. Tories there would barely qualify as “moderate” Republicans here. But the trend is unmistakable and it is not being sufficiently noticed in our neck of the political woods.

Emerging as the hot button issue in the British election is a Labor-backed planned 1% increase in the National Insurance Tax. The Tories oppose this and have countered with an “efficiency saving” program that would address the chronic financial hemorrhage situation in the National Health Service. The NHS, by the way, remains an object of envy to many in our government. Go figure.

Most Americans—especially the nearly half who will pay no income tax this year—haven’t a clue as to how a single payer system works in places like Great Britain. Over and above already oppressive income tax rates, workers must pay a National Insurance Tax, with exemptions only for those who earn, say around 105 pounds per week, then it increases immediately to 11% of income up to 770 pounds per week. Over that, it costs an additional 1% of each worker’s income. So under the new Labor proposal most British workers would be paying a minimum of 12% of their income to fund their single payer system—in addition to already high income taxes.

Even a cursory examination reveals that this is a tax burden that falls squarely on the middle class—something the Brits have been more honest about than some in the current administration in Washington. Of course, the “official” position of the powers that be here is that a single-payer system is not on the table. But for anyone willing to think this political chess match through a few moves ahead, it is clear that there is gleeful hope in many quarters that the recent “reforms” will so stress our current system as to bring it and the country to its knees, paving the way for our own European-style set up.

What Americans need to note is that for a government to operate here as it does in other places will eventually require a great sacrifice on the part of the middle class. We are being sold a bill of good these days, one that some Americans seem all-too-willing to accept. The big lie du jour is that we can have all the purported “benefits” of socialism without the burdens.

Tax cuts for low and middle income families were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year. As a result, nearly half the country will benefit from everything the government does without paying a dime for it! And it is not just the poorest of the poor. There will be people who made $50,000 or more in 2009 paying no income taxes. In fact, 47% of workers in America will pay nothing.

And this is, in many ways, a cancer eating away at our national character. We are almost at the place of critical mass where those who derive a benefit from the government outnumber those who pay the bills. And as the old saying goes: “If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul!”

The irony is that this house of cards will ultimately collapse. Americans who think it’s all a pretty cool deal today—the idea of getting a free ride paid for by someone else—need to look closely at places like Great Britain. Yes, they have exemptions for some in their tax system, but you have to earn less than 6,000 pounds to qualify (roughly 12K in U.S. dollars, give or take). Everybody else pays. In fact, that family making the equivalent of 50K in U.S. dollars over there will pay heavy income taxes plus an 11% National Health Insurance tax for all that “free” stuff.

The other day, the New York Times wrote about the “growing power of the state in British life” noting that “more than half of all those in employment have government jobs, and just over half of the economy is accounted for by government activity.” Is this really what we want for America?

The truth of the matter is that the programs being touted today as to be paid for by the very rich will soon start costing all of us. In fact, it will be a rude awakening one day—if current trends persist—when a worker making an income that had long kept him below a tax-paying threshold sees a big chunk of change taken out of his paycheck.

Yes, they plan to soak the rich right now. But one day, they’ll come for everyone else needing dollars to feed the big entitlement machine. Saul Alinsky, in “Rules For Radicals” talked about the struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots.” And this became the basis for the kind of political energy that brought Barack Obama to the White House. People were trying to get their perceived “fair share.” Social Justice is now all the rage—let’s reshuffle the deck and give everyone a New Deal.

But the problem is that eventually the “have nots” will get all they can extort from the “haves.” Then the “pay nots”—those who have grown accustomed to someone else paying the tab—will have to become “pays.”

The other day, I was listening to BBC America on satellite radio and I heard a round table discussion bemoaning the fact that America has so much more entrepreneurial activity per capita than the U.K. These bright bulbs pondered the reasons and never seemed to have an “A-Ha!” moment. They talked about how maybe if the government gave more “grants” to those who wanted to start businesses.

Clueless.

Years ago, I heard a quote, I don’t remember where—or from whom—to the effect that if you want to see what the U.S. will be like in 40 years, look at the UK now.

Come to think of it, I heard that said just about 40 years ago.

Jerald F. terHorst and Eugene Allen, RIP

April 2, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, In Memoriam, News media, Nixon Administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

Wednesday marked the passing of two men who, in their respective ways, were part of memorable moments in White House history. In Takoma Park, Maryland, Eugene Allen died at age 90. He joined the White House pantry staff in the last months of the Truman presidency, and rose through the ranks for the next 34 years, retiring in 1986 after five years as the White House maitre d’.

Allen traveled with President Nixon on the historic visit to Romania in 1969, the first time a President had visited the Communist world in peacetime, and shortly before his retirement he, along with his wife, had the honor of attending a state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s guests. After two decades of quiet retirement, Allen gained national prominence in November 2008 when he was the subject of a fascinating and moving article in the Washington Post by Wil Haygood.

And, in North Carolina, Jerald F. terHorst died at age 87. He was the head of the Detroit News’ Washington bureau in the 1960s and early 1970s, and in that capacity was a member of the media delegation accompanying President Nixon to China in 1972. But he came to national notice just after Nixon’s resignation, when he was President Ford’s first major appointee as press secretary.

Thirty days later, he became the only major figure in the Ford Administration to leave office over the 38th President’s decision to grant a pardon to his predecessor. Several years later, terHorst co-authored The Flying White House: The Story of Air Force One with longtime AF1 pilot Ralph J. Albertazzie, which contains a lengthy opening chapter describing RN’s flight on the plane from the White House to San Clemente on August 9, 1974. It’s a fascinating account of that trip and the rest of the book is just as worthwhile.

A Canadian View Of David Frum

March 30, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Canada, Healthcare, News media, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Part of the political fallout resulting from the recently passed health-care legislation has been the alienation of David Frum from the conservative movement. Frum is a 49-year-old native of Toronto who, in the twenty-odd years since settling in New York after attending Yale and Harvard Law, has developed a reputation as an able writer and provocative, and sometimes contrarian thinker.

After publishing a book about 1970s America, How We Got Here (notable for many pages analyzing the impact of Richard Nixon’s presidency on the culture of the era), Frum became a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and, in that President’s first term, gained fame for coining the phrase “axis of evil.” (Although his original wording was “axis of hatred,” with the last word changed by Bush.)

In 2005, Frum left the Bush Administration to become a fellow at the America Enterprise Institute and a regular contributor to National Review. But in 2008, differences started to become apparent between Frum’s views and those of many conservatives when he published one blogpost and column after another criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Although Frum declared his support for Sen. John McCain that fall, with the inauguration of President Obama (preceded by the journalist’s departure from National Review) it became evident that Frum’s thinking was closer to the accomodationism exemplified by Sam Tanenhaus’s The Death Of Conservatism that to that of the Republican establishment.

The debate over the health-care bill made it clear just how far Frum had moved from the GOP consensus. The bill’s passage by a handful of votes was taken by most Republicans as an encouraging sign. Frum wrote that he viewed the result as a Waterloo for the minority party. Soon thereafter, he parted ways with AEI.

However, he does have his defenders – notably in the land of his birth. In the Canadian magazine The Tyee, Crawford Kilian, an American who’s lived in British Columbia for almost a half-century, argues:

Rather than viewing the victory of Obama as the inevitable arrival of the Antichrist, Frum has respected Obama’s political skills and tried to draw lessons from his success — just as Nixon drew lessons from Jack Kennedy’s use of television. ([Rick] Perlstein [in Nixonland] tells us Nixon got his first training in this field from a young TV producer named Roger Ailes, now the head of Fox News.)

In effect, Frum was treating Obama intellectually, not morally. Hence his “Waterloo” rant, and the resulting uproar.

His onetime allies, however, are aggressively anti-intellectual, and enjoy moralizing about their enemies. Their world is clearly divided into good and evil, and only they are good. Apostates and heretics are doubly evil, deserving nothing but very loud contempt.

This may be as much fun as screaming at Emmanuel Goldstein during the Two-Minute Hate, as Winston Smith does in Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it is no way to build and maintain a coherent framework for a revived conservatism.

The Economist On The Surcharge Proposal

March 27, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, China, Congress, Economic issues, Presidents, Richard Nixon, economy | 9 Comments 

The recent health-care bill that President Obama signed may have its similarities to the proposals President Nixon unsuccessfully presented to Congress in the early Seventies, but those are far from the only pages from the 37th Chief Executive’s playbook that are being re-examined now. In recent weeks, 130 members of Congress sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urging that a surcharge – in other words, a tariff – be placed on Chinese imports. They are supported by liberal economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman. The Representatives and Krugman point to Nixon’s 10 percent surcharge imposed on imports in 1971 as a precedent.

The venerable British journal The Economist has a new article assessing the reasons for the Nixon surcharge (which was to a great degree the brainchild of then-Treasury Secretary John Connally) and showing why its purpose, and the effects it had on the world economy at the time, do not necessary show that a tariff on Chinese goods would benefit the American economy now:

China’s foreign-exchange reserves now total $2.4 trillion, of which about 70% are thought to be in dollars. In 1971 the central banks of America’s trading partners had amassed a rather smaller hoard, of about $40 billion. But that was enough to buy the gold in Fort Knox three times over, if America upheld its commitment to sell the metal at $35 an ounce. Britain’s request to exchange dollars for gold on August 13th 1971 was the last straw. “Although the US government attached no great importance to the gold as such, a run on this gold would have been a sorry spectacle,” wrote George Shultz and Kenneth Dam, two prominent economic officials in the Nixon administration, in their book “Economic Policy Beyond the Headlines”. On August 15th Nixon, in effect, announced that America was now unwilling to do what it would soon be incapable of doing—converting dollars into gold at the agreed exchange rate.

Messrs Shultz and Dam argue that the import surcharge was intended as “an attention-getter and a bargaining chip”. It allowed John Connally, Nixon’s treasury secretary and a Texan, to stride down the corridors of international finance “with both guns blazing”. In the face of this bravado America’s trading partners duly backed down. By December they agreed to let the dollar fall (by a trade-weighted average of 6.5%) and the surcharge was removed. Nixon was able to present the humbling of the dollar as a political victory. But were Barack Obama to emulate him, would he really enjoy the same result?

The obvious difference is that in 1971 America was locked into a system of fixed parities. By pegging to the dollar, a currency was automatically fixed to everything else. Since July 2008 China has pegged the yuan to the greenback. But over that period its currency has swung up and down against those of its trading partners and competitors. On a trade-weighted basis the yuan is back to where it was when the financial crisis started. Indeed, compared with China’s emerging-market competitors in its big export markets, the yuan is about 12% more expensive today than it was before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, according to a measure (the “third-country” effective exchange rate) calculated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. By this indicator China’s currency is about 25% above its level in 2005.

The second difference is related to the first. Because everybody was pegged to the dollar in 1971, everybody had to pay the surcharge. Nixon dismayed everyone but discriminated against no one. China’s critics today, on the other hand, urge Mr Obama to slap a tariff on Chinese goods alone. This will reduce the demand for Chinese imports, which constitute about 15% of America’s total. But there is no guarantee that customers will switch from Chinese goods to American ones instead. They are more likely to buy from China’s rivals in Asia. The surcharge may change the composition of America’s trade deficit, without necessarily changing its size.

George Washington vs. Barack Obama

March 26, 2010 by Dimitri Simes | Filed Under American Politics | 13 Comments 

Overwhelmingly supportive of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform effort, the mainstream media has portrayed Republican Senators’ predictions that they and their House colleagues will be reluctant to support other administration proposals as a combination of sour grapes and partisan zeal. Surely, both elements have contributed to Republican indignation toward the substance and particularly the process that turned the health-care bill into law. Yet far more important is the fact that principled opposition to the Obama administration is not only inevitable but appropriate for congressional Republicans. It is inevitable because the Republican base would expect nothing less from its representatives in Congress, and because raw emotions among practically all Republicans are so strong that business as usual is not an option. More importantly, however, it is appropriate because what Obama and his congressional Democratic allies have done represents a genuine danger to the Republic.

In his farewell address, President George Washington warned of a “real despotism” when one branch of the government encroaches on the prerogatives of another, bringing “change by usurpation.” How else can one describe the White House essentially using Democratic congressional leaders to impose what is perhaps the most far-reaching social reform since the New Deal through reconciliation, a process designed to address differences in budgets approved by the Senate and the House? In a democracy, process is no less important than result, and the Democrats’ cynical and manipulative approach after it became clear (following Senator Brown’s remarkable win in Massachusetts) that normal Senate procedures would not succeed reveals a profound disregard for the principles and spirit of good democratic governance. Many independents sense this and are increasingly uncomfortable with one-party rule.

Obama’s obsession with health-care reform clearly transcends cost-cutting and improved services. For the president, health-care reform is an integral part of a moral crusade for profound income redistribution that includes a relentless assault on the upper-middle class—those whom the president defines as individual Americans making more than $200,000 a year or families earning over $250,000 a year.

Statistically, most people in this category have incomes that are a little over $250,000 per year—not a lot over—and are not “wealthy,” especially if they are in families living in cities on the East or West Coasts. President Obama’s two daughters are enrolled at Sidwell Friends School, where annual tuition is about $31,000. It is unlikely that he would be able to send them there on an average yearly income of $250,000—out of which he would probably see only $150,000 after taxes—particularly if he would like to have a decent house in Washington (at his expense, not the taxpayers’), to go on family vacations and to enjoy other attributes of an upper-middle class lifestyle.

Still, at times there may be no alternatives to belt-tightening and sacrifice. Faced with a skyrocketing budget deficit and out-of-control growth in entitlement spending, fiscal responsibility may dictate tax increases for those better off and entitlement cuts. But that is not what President Obama is talking about: he is increasing taxes and spending. Thus Obama is not asking the upper-middle class to make an essential sacrifice; rather, he is trying to force those whom he calls wealthy to give up some of their earnings not because he considers it necessary, but because he believes it is self-evidently just. “I think when you spread the wealth around,” he said as a candidate, “it’s good for everybody.”

Revealingly, instead of focusing on the need for new taxes while showing empathy for those affected, President Obama and his associates have instead argued that tax increases will affect only a small group of Americans. First, the group may not be quite so small. According to analysis by a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, some 25 percent of those earning less than $200,000 will see a tax increase. Second, according to the Census Bureau, 4.2 percent of American households have an income upwards of $200,000 per year. Even if only 4–5 percent of Americans would pay additional taxes, as the president and his supporters argue, these families represent millions of Americans who deserve equal consideration. Would the president treat any other minority group in this fashion if the distinction were ethnic, religious or social rather than class-based? Such an attitude toward successful, but overwhelmingly honest, hardworking and productive citizens is basically un-American and deserves condemnation on moral grounds. For an African American former community organizer, this cavalier stance toward minority rights is particularly remarkable.

Last but not least, by spending so much political capital on health care reform, Obama has sharply limited his ability to take necessary but domestically controversial steps required by U.S. national security. Look at his pathetic attempt to force Israel to freeze its settlements. The tough rebuff from Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that Obama had to accept—angry rhetoric notwithstanding—was demeaning to America’s reputation in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, and beyond. The United States is involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is far from concluding a global fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates. For the Commander in Chief to put all his chips into domestic social engineering at such a time is nothing short of an abrogation of responsibility.

And President Obama has made it abundantly clear that health-care reform is the beginning rather than the end of his effort to reshape America. In the absence of strong resistance, the president could impose further “change by usurpation” on the United States. Republicans should not attempt to shut down the government as Newt Gingrich and his cohorts did in the 1990s. Nor should they refuse to cooperate with administration initiatives that are important for the security and prosperity of the nation. But Republicans cannot and should not acquiesce in Obama’s usurpation of power and allow him to appear victorious while taking the country on the wrong course. With ingenuity, common sense, and good political instincts, the Republicans should be able to develop the right formula for continuing the nation’s business while resolutely opposing the president’s definition of “change.”

Nickels, Noses, And The Nation

March 19, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Politics, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

After several anxious days of waiting—watching out my office window for the faithful U. S. Postal truck—I finally received mine. Have you gotten yours? I sure hope so, because there isn’t much time—We The People—134 million households of us—have a deadline.

In fact, there is a very special day coming up. It’s called Census Day 2010. And, are you ready for this—it’s scheduled for April 1ST. That’s right, the moment we honor fools and play tricks on everybody is the official day to recognize, if not return, our Census forms. Census Day started out in 1790 as the first Monday in August. It was moved to June in 1830, then to April 15 in 1910, and by 1940 to the first day of April.

Obviously, most Americans are well aware of this decennial process of counting everyone. After all, we’ve been seeing all those very cool commercials. I saw one the other day, having made the mistake of watching a show that hadn’t been dvr’d, that mentioned how important it was to fill out the form and send it back. The spokesperson warned: “You won’t get your fair share, if you don’t send it back.”

Fair share? Fair share of what?

If I read my history correctly—and I do—the whole idea of a census from the beginning had to do with having our fair say. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified and became the ever-since law of the land, it specified in Article 1, Section 2, that a census, or “enumeration” should be scheduled within three years of the first meeting of the Congress, and then every ten years, thereafter. The first such census was conducted in 1790 and it has been repeated every decade since.

Even in its early days the idea of a national head count was not without controversy. There was something at least a little disconcerting about individuals ceding personal information to government, no matter how small or general that data might have been. The purpose of all of this had purely to do with the apportionment of representation in Congress, the various districts being determined by population.

That remains one purpose of the every-decade-nose-count in America, and it is a vitally important one. If an area has lost population, districts are redrawn and Congressional representation adjusted accordingly—and vice versa for growing areas. So the political stakes are real—and high.

But as government has grown over the course of our nation’s history, both in its size and scope, the Census has morphed into the basis for many other things having to do with government programs and federal dollars. And this is where that mention of “fair share” comes in. There are these days various federal initiatives funding programs in states and communities for education, infrastructure, and even health care. Of course, all the money comes from us in the first place. Around the time our nation was in the middle of its fourth census, Alexis De Tocqueville suggested, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” Indeed.

Beyond this, Census data is used by the government in a variety of ways for “policy purposes”—economic and otherwise. This brings to mind another Census 2010 campaign mantra—in fact, it’s the official slogan this time around: “We can’t move forward until you mail it back?”

Forward to where? Forward to what?

I will fill mine out and send it in. I will answer every question truthfully and I won’t waste my time being clever or creative in my responses. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder what all the fuss is about this year. After all, we get a package from the federal government around the first of January each year reminding us of incoming taxes. I never saw a funny commercial about that, largely because most Americans can figure out that this means we have to send something back or be in trouble.

Why then the song and dance about the Census?

Is it because those in charge these days have cool ideas (cool to them) about what they can make of America with new demographic tea leaves to examine? I don’t think one has to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder. Last year, a few eyebrows were raised when the administration announced that it wanted to, in effect, take the Census away from the to-do-list of the Commerce Department, signaling that they wanted command-central for the big count to be in the West Wing. Then there was the issue with ACORN being contracted to work on the big detail-dig. We all know how good they are with numbers, muscle, and the truth.

Questions were raised last year—reasonable ones, in my opinion—about the fact that nowhere on the Census form does it ask about the citizenship of residents. This suggests the possibility that some areas—with large blocs of non-U.S. citizens (legal or otherwise) would have their population and therefore congressional representation impacted by some who have do not have the full rights of American citizenship.

Personally, I am not concerned about getting my fair share based on the Census this year. I am solely concerned with continuing to have my fair say and that the voices heard in our country are those described by “We the People”—in other words, actual citizens.

Furthermore, I’d just as soon keep more of my fair share in the first place, thank you. And “move forward” by myself.

How Could Biden Fix The Senate? Think VP Nixon

March 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

As the Democrats in Congress struggle to path health care reform, the American Prospect’s Bruce Ackerman writes that Vice President Biden should heed wisdom from Vice President Nixon, who used his constitutional power to make the U.S. Senate a more active governing body:

If Biden is willing to exercise the power granted him in the constitution, he could do more than pass health care. He could establish a precedent that would later help him limit the filibuster rules that threaten to deadlock our system of government. He would not be the first vice president to use his power for good in this way.

Consider the history: It now takes 60 Senators (three-fifths) to end a filibuster, but for most of the 20th century, a full two-thirds majority was necessary. Worse yet, unanimous consent was required by Senate rules to change this. The two-thirds provision seemed cemented into the system beyond repair.

Until Richard Nixon came along. When the Senate opened for business in 1957, he took the chair as vice president and urged the chamber to rethink the very foundations of its rules. The Senate traditionally considered itself a continuing body, which automatically inherited its old rules without any formal action.

This was a mistake, Nixon said. Since one-third of its membership is renewed every two years, the Senate should explicitly vote on its rules when it organized itself at the beginning the session. If a simple majority wanted to reduce the two-thirds rule, it was free to do so.

Nixon’s ruling was a bombshell. If his view were accepted by the Senate, 51 Senators could impose a strong civil-rights bill on the South.

This put Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in a tough spot. He was willing to join a broad effort for a weak civil-rights measure, but he was unprepared to sacrifice his Southern colleagues by campaigning against the filibuster. He refused to support Nixon’s pronouncement. Instead, he asked the Senate to table any vote on its rules and follow its traditional practice of simply inheriting the existing rule book in a passive fashion. When Johnson’s motion won the day, he frustrated Nixon’s effort to use the Senate presidency as an engine for filibuster reform.

Barack Obama–Administrator: A Story Of Tomorrow

March 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Healthcare, History, Political Philosophy, Politics, Presidents, Public Opinion, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Did you know that the word, “manufacture” is from the Latin and literally means: “to make by hand?” Of course, the term has long since been connected with things made by machines. The word no longer means what it meant.

Language—any language—is like that. “Brave” used to mean “cowardly.” Really. And “nice?” Well, it originally meant, “not to know,” or another way to say someone was ignorant.

Nice.

Etymologists—those who study word origins and meanings—tell us that words change for several reasons: generalization—specialization—degeneration, to name a few. Now, apparently, we must add politicization to the list of word-changers. Most of the time, such linguistic morphing is subtle and hardly noticed. But right now before our eyes, a very good word is becoming something quite unlike what it originally meant.

Reconciliation—a word rich in nuance, meaning, and historic impact; a term that has for centuries indicated the removal of barriers and the restoration of relationship—may be rendered virtually meaningless soon. What is now being planned for the whole health care fix in this country, all other avenues having failed those who just know they know better than the rest of us, will likely come to pass in some form via a political process now known famously as Reconciliation.

George Orwell would be proud. What once meant the end of hostility and all parties coming together in good will, soon will likely stand for the raw exercise of party and power politics. And in the process it will leave in its wake anything but the fruit of real reconciliation. In fact, all indications are that we are on the verge of entering a fierce period of vituperative political conflict—one even worse than what we have recently seen.

Yes, I understand that, in this case, the word is being used in an accounting sense. But when you “reconcile” your bank statement, isn’t that also called “balancing?” Where’s the balance in such a political maneuver?

Of course, the idea—and in fact, the practice—of reconciliation in matters of legislation has been around for more than 35 years. And the process was used in the past by Republicans, giving some credence to the charge of hypocrisy now being hurled by the Democrats. But a closer look at matters handled in the past via the Byrd-rule suggests that nothing prior even comes close to comparing to what is being suggested and orchestrated now—a takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

It’s all part of that “fundamental transformation of America” that was being talked about in 2008.

In the past, the opposite of reconciliation—in fact, a key reason for the term’s existence in language—was alienation. Now, however, reconciliation will not be healing alienation, rather it will be exacerbating it. And what is striking and enduringly frustrating about the whole thing is that at every turn Americans have been sending not-so-subtle signals to those breathing the rarified air inside the Beltway. The message has been consistent and persistent: Read our lips—no new Health Care. The things that are weak in our current system can be fixed, not by moving away from market-based economics, but by creating incentives for the market to fix itself.

One particular thing that makes my skin crawl every time I hear it is this idea that under Obamacare all Americans who are happy with their current health care can keep things as they are. While theoretically (i.e., outside the actual real world) this may sound reasonable and reassuring, the facts speak otherwise.

Most Americans did not choose their current coverage—their employers did—or, at least, some entity within the business, corporation, or union organizational structure. That means that decisions about future coverage will not be in the hands of employees, but rather such decision makers. And if a business owner or CEO sees a better deal, or feels pressure to alter the plan—does anyone really think a mere employee has much of a say?

Why, then, the big push in the face of overwhelming political ill will? The only reasonable answer is that those pushing the Obamacare agenda have made up their minds that they know best and that those opposing the measures are simply ignorant. In other words—it’s arrogance.

And when political arrogance meets perceived public ignorance, it can only mean one thing: The spirit of Woodrow Wilson is back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Like the professor who knew better way back then, Mr. Obama and company honestly feel that if this thing can be passed, even by the thinnest of razor margins, Americans will ultimately like enough of the plan once implemented that they’ll tend to embarrassingly forget what all the fuss was about. They are also banking on the fact that once a generation grows accustomed to a certain entitlement, it is almost impossible to reverse it.

But Woodrow Wilson learned a thing or two the hard way about the folly of political arrogance. Self-assurance, crusader-zeal, and personal charisma can only carry a politician so far. History shows that leaders who rely on such traits long-term are eventually devoured by them. One day the cheering actually does stop.

Interestingly, such arrogance also smacks of something out of a work of fiction that flew close to the flame of fact nearly 100 years ago. Published anonymously in 1912, the year Mr. Wilson was elected as the 28th President of the United States, was the novel “Philip Dru—Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935.” The author was actually Edward House (he was referred to by the purely honorific “Colonel” House), a man who became Woodrow Wilson’s alter ego—he was the Rahm Emanuel of the day, only much better at it.

The book tells the story of a man, Philip Dru, who becomes the dictator of America—but as a despot he was of the benevolent sort (I told you it was fiction). He was a leader who took unprecedented power, only doing so for the good of the people. Father knows best. In the book’s dedication, House wrote:

“This book is dedicated to the unhappy many who have lived and died lacking opportunity, because, in the starting, the world-wide social structure was wrongly begun.”

One gets the feeling that the ghosts of Philip Dru, Edward House, not to mention Woodrow Wilson are not merely haunting the halls of the White House these days.

In fact, they’re part of the team.

Bob Brown Remembers

February 28, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Civil rights, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

Today concludes Black History Month 2010, and the Greensboro (North Carolina) News & Record marks it with an interview with Bob Brown, who was the White House aide in charge of minority affairs in President Nixon’s first term. He recalls:

When Brown [after Election Day 1968] entered the room where Nixon was holding court, the president-elect introduced him to everyone as, “One of my new assistants.”

When the others left, Nixon got down to business.

“He said, ‘I know you weren’t looking for a job. I need you. There will be no impediments to our relationship … you will have access and in Washington everything is built around access.’ He said if you want to get anything done, you’ve got to go to Washington. He said if you want to get done all those notes you sent me, you’ve got to come to Washington with me.”

And from his office in the White House complex — with four secretaries and three assistants — Brown went about fulfilling some of those promises, and other needs he saw firsthand, such as finding a funding tap for financially struggling black colleges trying to educate future leaders[...]

Nixon, who Brown said got little recognition for efforts to improve race relations, always backed him up.

“He trusted my judgment,” Brown said.

Brown wouldn’t change a thing about his time on staff with Nixon.

“It was four years and two months of incredible,” he said.

Al Haig In Conversation

February 27, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Cold War, International Affairs, Middle East, Military, News media, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

In 2000, James Rosen of Fox News interviewed Gen. Alexander Haig for his biography of John Mitchell. That book, The Strong Man, was published eight years later. But it turns out that, in the course of the three-hour conversation, the General talked of many other things besides Watergate, with his customary verve and forcefulness, and in tomorrow’s Washington Post, there’s an article by Rosen in which Gen. Haig ranges from Vietnam to America’s policy toward Lebanon to the first Gulf War. Also worth reading is the comment on the article by Ken Hughes of the Miller Presidential Center at the University of Virginia.

Running Against Hooverville–The Presidential Blame Game

February 26, 2010 by admin | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Election 2012, George W. Bush, History, Obama administration, Politics, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 20 Comments 

In the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation accepting the total blame for what had happened. He referred to an old saying about victory having a thousand fathers, but defeat being an orphan, and identified himself as the responsible officer in the government. Even though the whole initiative had been first devised and planned by the Eisenhower administration.

JFK’s poll numbers moved dramatically—up. There is something refreshing—though sadly rare—about a political leader saying “My bad.”

In the 19th century, a British politician stood in Parliament and remarked that trying to get his particular point across was akin to flogging a dead horse to make it pull a load. We call this beating a dead horse today. And every time President Obama or a member of his administration plays the blame Bush card, he is beating that proverbial dead horse. It is also getting really old.

Everyone on Facebook has an information page and there is an entry labeled “relationship status.” Some mark “married” or “in a relationship,” others say “single.” Then there are those who put: “It’s complicated.” When it comes to Presidents and those who come before or after, it’s really complicated. Some chief executives have managed to rise above the propensity for personal paltriness—others, not so much.

And it goes way back.

Thomas Jefferson, who ran a particularly aggressive campaign against former-and-would-be-again-much-later friend, John Adams, in the 1800 race, continued the attack on his predecessor well into his own presidency. He regularly smeared Mr. Adams for maladministration of presidential powers, though apparently willing to benefit from things Adams had done that he had opposed at the time. The anti-military, anti-big government Jefferson, had no qualms about using navy Adams had built (opposed by TJ) to deal with the Barbary Pirates; nor did he hesitate to use broad executive powers in the whole matter of the Louisiana Purchase—the kind of action candidate Jefferson would have likely decried as tyrannical.

Democrat Andrew Jackson wouldn’t even pay a courtesy call on outgoing President John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams then refused to attend his successor’s inauguration. Jackson spent significant time in office tearing down his predecessor—blaming Adams and the whole fierce campaign for his wife’s death after the election. That one was very complicated.

Speaking of Presidents and courtesy calls, Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, sat famously in the car under the White House portico, snubbing the Trumans. But when it came to blaming his predecessor for the mess he inherited, he chose the path of just ignoring and dismissing Mr. Truman like the junior military officer he saw him to be.

Abraham Lincoln had great reasons and resonant issues to use to place blame for the country on the verge of disintegration he inherited in 1861 because his predecessor, James Buchanan, did virtually nothing to deal with the brewing national disaster. But Mr. Lincoln seemed to have a capacity to rise above cheap politics—dealings with his own Cabinet-made-of-would-be-rivals also demonstrated the 16th President’s ego tempering skills.

Of course, many times Presidents have succeeded men from the same party and, though they might have wanted to really make the guy before look bad, they realized that it was political suicide. Martin Van Buren could certainly have blamed the panic of 1837 on Andrew Jackson, who destroyed the National Bank, but party realities forbade it.

Warren Harding didn’t spend a lot of time or energy blaming Woodrow Wilson for the nation’s woes in the early 1920s. Ronald Reagan used Jimmy Carter as a punching bag for a short while, but quickly moved on. Even Richard Nixon didn’t waste time passing the buck back to LBJ. In fact, their relationship was remarkably good, considering their history.

Now, Franklin Roosevelt—well that’s another story. He used predecessor Herbert Hoover as his whipping boy for at least a decade—and one wonders if this example is the one that resonates with the current administration.

FDR ran a skillful campaign against Hoover in 1932, allied with the forces of economics and history in play at the time. Hoover was an unpopular president as a result of the onset of the Great Depression. Once hailed for his genius at organization and engineering, his name was even part of the vocabulary signifying good economy, as in the popular 1920 Valentine’s Day card:

“I’ll Hooverize on dinner,
On fuel and tires too,
But I’ll never learn to Hooverize
When it comes to loving you.”

By 1932, however, his star had fallen and shantytowns across America were dubbed, “Hoovervilles.” However, today’s prevalent narrative that Hoover was a do-nothing president and then the great activist Roosevelt rode to the White House on a white horse, is at best an apocryphal exaggeration—at worst, it’s a lie.

In fact, Mr. Roosevelt, famous smile and all, was simply an effective and cynical politician who knew how to practice demagoguery with the best of them. He was also a very petty man. One example is in the naming—better, renaming—of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. It had been named for Herbert Hoover in 1931 not just because he was the President at the time (there were already dams named for Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt extant), but also because he had been a major driving force in the project since the early 1920s during his highly successful tenure as Secretary of Commerce. He, being an engineer by training and trade, even played a crucial role in how it would work and be constructed—effectuating something called the Hoover Compromise allowing the project to go forward at a critical juncture.

After his humiliating defeat by the Roosevelt juggernaut in November of 1932, Mr. Hoover stopped at the construction site of the dam and remarked for the press:

“It does give me extraordinary pleasure to see the great dream I have so long held taking form in actual reality of stone and cement. It is now ten years since I became chairman of the Colorado River Commission—This dam is the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted by the hand of man—I hope to be present at its final completion as a bystander. Even so, I shall feel a special personal satisfaction.”

But by the time the project was completed in 1936, it had been renamed by the Roosevelt administration as the Boulder Dam and Hoover was never invited to be part of any festivities. Of course, by that time Mr. Roosevelt was running for reelection against Republican nominee Alf Landon of Kansas.

But FDR was really running against Hoover one more time.

The other day, during that good-for-nothing White House meeting on health care, there was a telling exchange between President Obama and Senator John McCain. He told McCain that the campaign was over. He meant their campaign.

The battle against all things George W. Bush, however, still rages. And most likely this will continue through the 2012 campaign. After all, if you can’t run on a record of accomplishment—find a dead horse to beat and hope the people are dumb enough not to notice the abuse and absurdity.

The big question is: Will George W. Bush be as durable a whipping boy as was Herbert Hoover—or better yet—is Barack Obama as arrogant, cynically petty, or politically cunning as was Franklin D. Roosevelt?

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