Prayers for AG Mukasey

November 20, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration | Leave a Comment 

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech in Washington D.C., and didn’t immediately regain consciousness:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech Thursday night and was being taken to a hospital.

Associate Attorney General Kevin O’Connor said Mukasey began shaking while addressing the Federalist Society at a Washington hotel.

“He just started shaking and he collapsed,” O’Connor said. “They’re very concerned.”

O’Connor said he did not know whether Mukasey, 67, had regained consciousness.”

Mukasey was 20 minutes into his speech before he collapsed

Pen to Paper (or Finger to Keyboard)

November 19, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Election 2008, First Ladies, Media, Presidents, Sarah Palin, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Ted Stevens conceded defeat in his bid for re-election to the Senate today, strengthening the Democratic hand in the upper chamber but at least saving the GOP elders some embarrassment.  This eliminates the prospect, at least immediately, that Gov. Sarah Palin, as speculated by some earlier this month, might appoint herself to the seat (if Stevens had won and then resigned to avoid expulsion), leave the statehouse in Juneau, and bring Todd and the young’uns down to teach Georgetowners about the virtues of moose chili.

But her other options, as the days go by until 2012, remain plentiful.  The book business, according to a Yahoo News article, is thoroughly agog about the idea of a Palin-penned book.  The article quotes several agents and editors as suggesting that the bidding might go up to $7 million and beyond - just a million less than Sen. Hillary Clinton received for her autobiography Living HIstory, which was merely about spending eight years as First Lady.  ($7 million might seem like a lot, but Tina Fey just got $6 million for agreeing to write a book which, very likely, will partly be about impersonating Sarah Palin, so why shouldn’t the real McCoy cost a tad more?)

The article also discusses the prospects for the post-White House memoirs of President and Mrs. Bush.  One book-biz veteran states that the President, given his present unpopularity, should wait for a while to seek a deal for his memoirs, on the assumption that publishers now would assume the book wouldn’t sell and would offer a smaller advance.  It’s hard to say if that line of reasoning holds water.  Jimmy Carter left office in 1981 with a popularity rating not much higher than Dubya’s and immediately managed to score a very sizable advance from Bantam for his memoirs Keeping Faith. But then again, he was a Democrat, as are most book editors.  But the sources quoted in the article believe that Laura Bush’s autobiography would attract offers comparable to what Hillary received in 2001.  That often is the case with First Ladies; Lady Bird Johnson’s A White House Diary sold considerably better than her husband’s The Vantage Point, and Nancy Reagan’s My Turn left her spouse’s An American Life completely in the dust at the cash registers.

The article doesn’t discuss how other figures in the Bush White House will fare on the literary scene. My guess is that Condoleeza Rice and Henry Paulson’s memoirs will be the ones most in demand.

Put THIS On A Bumper Sticker

November 17, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues, Political Philosophy, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Bill Kristol says the election loss wasn’t McCain-Palin’s fault. It was President Bush’s, if only because he was in office when the economy imploded. Kristol’s blueprint for GOP future, worthy though it may be, doesn’t exactly make your heart beat faster:

I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models. I think they’ll have to take much more seriously the task of thinking through what are the right rules of the road for both the private and public sectors. They’ll have to figure out what institutional barriers and what monetary, fiscal and legal guardrails are needed for the accountability, transparency and responsibility that allow free markets to work.

Department of Cognitive Dissonance

November 13, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

In today’s Wall Street Journal, under the headline “Bush Defends American Capitalism Ahead of G-20 Summit,” John D. McKinnon gives a preview of President Bush’s upcoming speech: 

“Ultimately, the best evidence for free market capitalism is its performance compared to other economic systems,” he will say. “Free markets allowed Japan — an island nation with few natural resources — to recover from war and grow into the world’s second-largest economy. Free markets allowed South Korea to make itself one of the most technologically advanced societies in the world. Free markets turned small areas like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan into global economic players. And today, the success of the world’s largest economies comes from their embrace of free markets.”

In today’s Forbes.com, under the headline “Washington’s $5 Trillion Tab,” Elizabeth Moyer writes:

According to CreditSights, a research firm in New York and London, the U.S. government has put itself on the hook for some $5 trillion, so far, in an attempt to arrest a collapse of the financial system.

The estimate includes many of the various solutions cooked up by Paulson and his counterparts Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve and Sheila Bair at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as the credit crisis continues to plague banks and the broader markets.

Bush Angry….Bush Bartering?

November 11, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Bush Administration, Congress, Economic issues, International Affairs, Obama administration | 2 Comments 

Drudge is reporting Bush Administration officials are angry that Pres.-elect Obama leaked details about their White House meeting yesterday, violating a long-standing tradition of honoring private conversations during Presidential transition. Sources close to the situation reportedly claim that the two disagreed over a Detroit bailout. As I wrote yesterday, The Obama Team and Democrat Congressional leaders are urging Bush to sign an additional stimulus package in order to receive cover from a union-backed, but very unpopular measure.

Pres. Bush is no dummy, especially since the International Herald Tribune is reporting that he might just hold out for a deal that would revive a Colombia free trade deal that Congress killed earlier this year. A treaty which Obama repudiated in his third debate with Sen. McCain this October because of outstanding security guarantees for labor leaders, potentially dangerous political actors who have revolutionary roots in the FARC.

A Moment In The Greatest Country In The World

November 10, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration | 1 Comment 

New York Times

Imperial? Maybe. Bacterial? No Way.

November 10, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Lifestyle | 1 Comment 

The reports indicate that today’s meeting between the President and the President-Elect went well.

Bill Sammon reported on their first meeting four years ago. Is it just me, or is this truly, deeply weird?  (And maybe even, in equal parts, offensive?)  Or should I just rush to the store and get me some of that Purell in a pump?

Four years ago, Obama and other newly elected members of the Senate were invited to the White House for a breakfast meeting with Bush, who pulled the young Chicagoan aside.

“Obama!” Bush exclaimed, according to Obama’s account of the meeting in his second memoir, The Audacity of Hope. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours — that’s one impressive lady.”

The two men shook hands and then, according to Obama, Bush turned to an aide, “who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.”

Bush then offered some to Obama, who recalled: “Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.”

PyeW.

October 31, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Iraq War, Movies, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

Professor Stone and his latest victim

In Oliver Stone’s “W.,” you can see George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) wipe himself after defecating. You see him eating constantly and showing hunks of food oozing between his teeth, spitting it at people as he talks, and nearly choking on a pretzel (true story). The constant sloppy drinking before he turns 40 goes without saying.

Stone and his writer mock Bush’s faith, suggesting that he embraced Christianity after losing his race for the House so he wouldn’t be “out-Texas’ed and out Christian’ed” again. They make up “Dallas”-like dialog between Bush and members of his family designed to show that he was jealous of his brother Jeb and obsessed with invading Iraq to show his father up as well as obtain his affection.

Everybody is a caricature except Laura ( Elizabeth Banks), the elder Bush (James Cromwell), and especially Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright), shown strenuously resisting the Iraq War. Along among Bush’s advisers — Rice, Rumsfeld, and Rove are carefully rendered in cardboard — Gen. Powell comes out of “W.” smelling like a member of Barack Obama’s cabinet.

And yet “W.” isn’t really about Bush at all. It’s about the subterranean vein of bloodthirsty imperialism Oliver Stone identifies as an integral part of the American character. In “JFK,” the darkness took the form of shadowy business interests whom Stone falsely said were behind the President’s assassination (in which Stone disgustingly accuses Lyndon Johnson of complicity). In “Nixon,” which didn’t contain a single completely honest moment, the evil gremlins provoked the invasion of Cambodia.

In “W.”, the third film in Stone’s paranoid trilogy, the evil finally has a face. Dark America is personified as Dick Cheney, self-proclaimed architect of a new empire of oil. During a Dr. Strangelove turn in the situation room, Cheney tells the President and his aides that since the U.S., with five percent of the world’s people, consumes a quarter of the world’s energy, the obvious solution is an invasion of Iraq as a prelude to conquering Iran and colonizing the Middle East. “Good meeting,” says Bush, who nonetheless is shown believing that there really are WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein’s fall will bring democracy to the region.

As it may yet do. When Stone was making the movie and planning an autumn release, Iraq was going so poorly that everyone assumed it would dominate the election. It hasn’t, both because of the economy and the success of Bush’s policy over the last year. The Vietnam-obsessed Stone assumed Iraq was going the same direction as South Vietnam and Cambodia. As of now, it isn’t. In this sense, W. looks smarter than “W.”

As for Stone, now that he’s made this mean, boring movie, 129 minutes of relentlessly detailed “Mother Jones” historical and policy analysis, maybe he’ll do us and especially history a favor and lay off the Presidents. After all, no one will want to see Obama going to the bathroom while talking to his wife. Instead, Stone should use his vast influence to get Richard J. Barnett’s early books back into print — the ones about how the United States started the Cold War instead of the Soviet Union — and finish out his career doing the work for which he was truly born: Teaching international relations at Sarah Lawrence.

Charisma and Promises to Keep

October 31, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, National Security, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

I voted early this week - but just the once. We are being told that one of the unique things about the election this year is the fact that about one third of all ballots cast are via various forms of early voting. This is certainly unprecedented. The Commonwealth of Virginia, where I live in Fairfax County, requires someone desiring to vote early to affirm a reason for not being able to do so on Tuesday, November 4th. They range from being responsible for the care of another, to travel. It is a travel issue with us. My wife and I head to Ohio to watch all the fun there this Tuesday.

The trend toward such significant early voting is also uncharted territory for the integrity of elections themselves. It remains to be seen if this development will lead to greater voter confidence in the process, or further confusion, conflict, and potential destabilization. All indications are that early Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans. Part of this is due to a determined effort on the part of the Obama-Biden campaign to get out the early vote.

By definition, early voters are not undecided. We have not only decided, we have expressed that decision through the sanctity of the secret ballot. It follows, therefore, that those still undecided have not yet voted. Therefore, with more than 30 percent of decided voters already finished with the only poll that really matters, the portion of undecided voters may actually be statistically significant.

It also means that both campaigns still have an opportunity to win converts.

I suggest that one important question every voter – especially those yet undecided – should ask is: “Will John McCain or Barack Obama be better at keeping promises made during the campaign?” It has been a year of promises. “Ask not what your country can do for you – demand it!”

We have been promised tax cuts, spending cuts, new programs, war plans, and much more. Every American needs to remember that it is a very rare thing for a politician to keep every promise. Sometime next year, no matter who wins on Tuesday, our new president will have to face the American people with the news that it can’t all be done.

Sorry folks. Forget how we will be doing four years from now. How will the new occupant of the White House be doing in four months? Will Obama stay closer to campaign message or will McCain?

History tells us that voters do not always take unfulfilled promises in stride. George Herbert Walker Bush never recovered from the outcry after he broke his “read my lips” pledge and, in fact, raised taxes. Lyndon Johnson promised not to send American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys. The Vietnam War broke him. They even came up with a name for the breaking of a presidential promise back then – “credibility gap.”

Mr. Johnson might have preferred the more benign: “I uttered a terminological inexactitude.”

The granddaddy of all promise breakers to become president was Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. When he ran against Herbert Hoover in 1932, much of his rhetoric and emphasis had to do with things that never actually happened in his administration. Just a few weeks before his election, he was calling government spending “reckless and extravagant.” He told Americans: “I regard reduction in federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign.” He also promised to “reduce the cost of current federal government operations by 25 percent.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

When FDR took office in March of 1933, he raced to the left and stayed there. He sold the people on it because circumstances had gotten worse. He was prepared to ask for broad “executive” powers to lead the nation out of the crisis. And he sacrificed his promises of fiscal responsibility on the altar of populism.

By doing so, he ensured that times would not get better. But he got away with it. The man who became president during our nation’s greatest economic crisis did not at all resemble the man who asked for votes in the prior election. Will the same thing happen if a man who talks about current problems as being the worst since The Great Depression is elected this time around?

Once elected, leaders tend to default to their real selves and comfort zones. There is a certain hubris, a “we won” or “it’s our turn” kind of spirit. It happens to Democrats and Republicans. Remember when George W. Bush spoke out against “nation building” in the 2000 campaign? How about his promise for “compassionate conservatism” and the disappearance of “partisanship” in Washington?

What does this all mean for us right now? Well, again – we must choose a person who can be trusted to keep as many of his promises as possible. We also need someone who, when having to make the tough choices about what promises to keep and the ones to discard during difficult times, will have the courage to resist the clamor from core constituencies.

Does anyone really believe that Barack Obama, when faced with a push-to-shove kind of choice, will opt to do anything that would risk his image as a populist hero of the downtrodden? He will move, with lightening-speed, to the left if given the chance.

He will be the kind of president Huey Long would have been, but instead of the Kingfish’s “Share the Wealth” mantra, it will be “Spread the Wealth.” And he will have another thing going for him that both FDR and Long had.

Barack’s got charisma. It is that magic something that gets people to want to believe on the way to believing. It is fascinating to watch, but whenever it has emerged in chaotic times, it has been ultimately ugly.

A discussion of charisma, as part of the study of sociology, was first introduced by Max Weber early in the 20th century. He identified it as “an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed.” He indicated that it implied “a relationship between the great man and the followers.” In a charismatic environment, “whatever the leader says, whatever he asks, is right, even if it is self-contradictory. It is right, because the leader has said it.” The follower develops “a devotion born of distress and enthusiasm.”

He also suggested that charismatic leadership tends to rise up against the backdrop of a chaotic “social milieu.” In other words, bad times, confusing times, chaotic times are fertile moments for this kind of leadership.

During the Great Depression the nation was ripe for demagogues. They always turn up when leading cultural and economic indicators trail down. Huey Long was one such man. In his excellent book, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and The Great Depression, historian Alan Brinkley describes the man from Louisiana as someone “evoking an almost religious adulation from many of the poor and struggling.” He quotes one reporter at the time as saying: “They do not merely vote for him, they worship the ground he walks on. He is part of their religion.”

Of course, it remains to be seen what will happen, but if Barack Obama is elected and the economy has not improved by the time he takes the oath of office, watch for him to move left and stay there. He will keep the promises that tend to enhance his charismatic stature as a champion of the frustrated. He will sacrifice promises he made about tax cuts as irrelevant to the new reality he will inherit.

Mr. Obama’s meteoric rise to the threshold of political power should give Americans pause. A man who would likely not be able to get a security clearance if he tried to get a job with the CIA or FBI, may very well be elected president on Tuesday.

We live in “interesting times,” as Robert Kennedy used to say. But, of course, he was quoting an old Chinese curse.

Obama, Reagan, And The Mandate Of 2009

October 27, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Economic issues, Election 2008, Presidents | 3 Comments 

It’s not over yet. But while almost everyone will blame either Sen. McCain or Gov. Palin for the expected GOP debacle on Nov. 4, it’s important to fix the blame for the party’s dire prospects where it belongs — the plummeting economy, whose authors are Republicans and Democrats, Congresses and Presidents, Fed chairmen and Americans who borrowed more than they could afford in the hope that real estate prices would balloon indefinitely.

Amid the dread that millions of Americans are feeling, no different VP nominee would have helped McCain more, and no different GOP nominee — Romney, Huckabee, Reagan — could probably beat Sen. Obama. By the same token, Obama’s considerable gifts notwithstanding, Sen. Clinton would have done just as well. It’s just like 1980, when any Republican — Connally, Bush, Reagan — could’ve beaten Jimmy Carter thanks to the abysmal mess his administration had made of the economy and foreign policy.

President Reagan’s hagiographers have turned the 1980 election into a mandate for Reagan-Goldwater Republicanism rather than for the doctrine of anybody-but-Carter. They’re wrong. Not his election but his first-term tax cuts and tough Cold War line earned him his legacy, along with his unfailingly sunny demeanor.

If Obama wins, he won’t have an ideological mandate. Reagan could blame his predecessor for most of the nation’s problems in 1981 far more legitimately than Obama will be able to in 2009, especially now that Iraq war has taken such a positive turn. Even more than Reagan, who talked right but often governed as a moderate, Obama is more likely to succeed by walking right down the middle of the road. Just like Reagan, his greatest resource will be his temperament.

Powell’s Missed Opportunity

October 21, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Iraq War, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Our Nixon brother Pat Buchanan has provoked unsurprising outrage by suggesting that race was the principal motivating factor in Gen. Powell’s endorsement of Sen. Obama. But there’s a less-noted foreign policy angle. Buchanan:

There is speculation Powell feels badly used by the neocons who cherry-picked and hyped the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction he presented at the U.N., and that he harbors a distrust of the neocons now reassembling around McCain.

If so, he surely has a case, and should have made it.

An opponent of the Iraq intervention himself, Buchanan speaks with considerable authority on this point.

An Offer They Chose Not To Refuse

October 15, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

James Gandolfini is the only choice to play Henry Paulson in the inevitable movie about the last months of the Bush Administration. This New York Times account of the Treasury secretary doling out $250 billion in capital to the nation’s nine top bankers — whether they said they needed it or not — makes Oliver Stone’s “W,” at least as it’s being reviewed, sound like a Lifetime movie in comparison.

The chairman of Wells Fargo, Richard M. Kovacevich, protested strongly that, unlike his New York rivals, his bank was not in trouble because of investments in exotic mortgages, and did not need a bailout, according to people briefed on the meeting.

With all due respect, Dick, and we mean that with every possible sincerity, we’ll decide who needs a bailout. Capice?

Stone And The Shakespeare Thing Again

October 9, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Culture | 1 Comment 

Putting on airs, director Oliver Stone says of his latest hit piece, “W,” in “Huffington Post”:

It’s not a political film, but a Shakespearean one.

Stone Shamed Into A Better W.?

October 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Culture, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Richard L. Berke thinks Oliver Stone was chastened by widespread criticism “Nixon” and “JFK”:

For all of his fascination with what he calls Bush’s demons, Stone has demons of his own. After “JFK” and “Nixon” he was ridiculed by historians, journalists and partisans for, as he put it, “brainwashing the young.” Maybe now he is chastened, not wanting critics to dismiss the movie as another hatchet job that would scare off audiences.

Two Bushes, Neither A Reagan

October 1, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Presidents | 1 Comment 

As TNN’s Frank Gannon has often argued, George W. Bush is no wizard when it comes to the essential Presidential arts of persuasion and communication. Like his father, he wasn’t as bad a leader as we think. It’s no coincidence that another thing they have in common is that they both disdained the vital power of great political oratory. The “Economist“:

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt revealed the importance of talking directly to the public with his “fireside chats” during the Great Depression, the ability to influence public debate directly through appeals and persuasion has been one of the most powerful tools of any president. Mr Bush has used this power patchily, at best. His set-piece national addresses on the financial crisis have been short and passionless. They have shown little sense of a leader able to guide and shape national debate. According to polls by Pew Research Centre, 43% of Americans describe themselves as confused about the bail-out; half say they are scared. The power of guidance has long been beyond the president: his most recent job-approval rating (according to Gallup) was 27%, the lowest of his presidency.

Nixoned

September 26, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, News media, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

From Andrew Sullivan, again the N word as an implicit justification of by-any-means-necessary tactics to elect Sen. Obama:

First: we have to get rid of the most corrupt, incompetent, unhinged, and power-mad political machine since Nixon.

Biden: Bush Is The New Nixon

September 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

ABC’s Matthew Jaffe reports on Sen. Biden’s latest historical reflection:

The Democratic vice-presidential nominee accused President Bush of running an administration less accountable than Richard Nixon’s regime and acting as if “somehow he’d just come to office and this crisis had dropped on his table.”

“There’s nobody responsible for anything that’s gone wrong,” the Delaware lawmaker said. “Think about it now, I mean that literally. Even in the Nixon administration people were held accountable. Mistakes were made, identified the person or persons and they held them accountable and there was a change. In this administration no one’s held accountable….”

To Be Frank

September 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

Rep. Barney Frank is upset about having to go to the White House today, what with him working so hard on the bailout:

[Frank], who has led negotiations with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the package, said that given the progress of the talks, the White House meeting was a distraction.

“We’re going to have to interrupt a negotiating session [Thursday] between the Democrats and Republicans on a bill where I think we are getting pretty close, and troop down to the White House for their photo op,” said Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman. “I wish they’d checked with us.”

The White House did check with him back in 2003, when he said,

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness (of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae), the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn’t bail them out.

A Few More Of The Very Few Things I Know For Sure

September 24, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues, Election 2008 | 1 Comment 

I don’t know much about geography.

Don’t know much trigonometry.

Don’t know much about algebra.

Don’t know what a slide rule is for.

But while the litany of my lack of knowledge goes on and on and on, here are a few more of the few things that I not only know, but know for sure.

• Ninety percent of the Senators and Congressmen who will be voting on Secretary Paulson’s eventual $700 billion pig in a poke piece of legislation have four overriding concerns on their minds right now.  In descending order of importance they are:

GWB Is Not The New FDR

September 24, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Leonard said the President’s goal tonight was to pressure Congress by frightening (rather than reassuring) the American people. And yet,

I don’t think he offered enough assurance to angry Americans or doubting members of Congress that the Paulson plan delivers a fair and equitable resolution to the crisis that faces us.

It All Depends On Who’s At The Table

September 23, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | 7 Comments 

Thanks to George Will’s prim criticism of Sen. McCain, it seems to be all about temperament this week. Will claims that McCain accuses everyone who disagrees with him of being corrupt and of betraying the public trust. Perhaps Will can prove that. Or maybe he’s displaying a hyperbolic journalistic temperament to make a point, which is what McCain was doing by calling for the resignation of the chairman of the SEC, Chris Cox, which is what set Will off in the first place.

What an absurd notion, after all, that in the midst of the greatest financial meltdown since 1928, heads should roll at responsible regulatory agencies. Instead, why, sober men should sit around in red patent leather chairs at the Union League, harrumphing and being prudent. In a conversation with Laura Ingraham this morning, Christopher Buckley also questioned McCain’s temperament and said that he was toying with the idea of voting for Sen. Obama as a protest.

In the light of this sudden outbreak of emotional maturity in the news media, Obama’s meandering comments on “60 Minutes” Sunday night make a little more sense. You’d think after running for two years, he would have a concise answer when someone asked why he wanted to be President. And yet:

Kroft: Why do you think you’d be a good president?

Obama: Well, I think that when you think about the challenges we face, these are challenges that require us to look forward and not backwards; when it comes to the economy I think we have to realize that we are now in a global economy.

Kroft: Why you? I mean, why do you think you would be a good president?

Obama: Well, I was gonna get to that.

Kroft: All right.

Obama: I think both by training and disposition. I understand where we need to take the country.

Kroft: But what is there specifically about you. You mentioned disposition. What skills and traits do you have that would make you a good president?

Obama: I am a practical person. One of the things I’m good at is getting people in a room with a bunch of different ideas who sometimes violently disagree with each other and finding common ground, and a sense of common direction. And that’s the kind of approach that I think prevents you from making some of the enormous mistakes that we’ve seen over the last eight years.

Obama isn’t selling his vision. He’s selling good manners and a long, cool drink of Gen X chill-out. This helps with young people plus the third of Democrats who, polls show, worry about his ethnicity. The message is McCain, dangerous; Obama, safe. Pressed by Kroft, who interrupts a graduate seminar lecture on the global economy, Obama describes his skills as a listener, consensus builder, and mediator. That’s right: Obama’s running to be the second in a series of Democratic Empaths-in-Chief.

Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future, says that empathy is the most useful asset of 21st century business leaders. How can you sell the people something if you don’t know what they want? How can you build an effective organization without listening to what subordinates think and empowering them by integrating their insights into the mission? Such thinking has been in the air in academe and corporate America for a generation. It certainly has its appeal. It’s good for running a church and a corporate division. It’s the reason we have the iPod. It makes for friendlier, more inclusive workplaces. Whether the White House can or should be one of them is open to debate.

The first question, obviously, is who gets a seat at the table when President Obama sets out to find common ground on health care reform, battling terrorism, and fixing the economy. Assuming an appropriate breadth of opinion is represented, Obama will hear men and women who are even smarter than he is making aggressive cases and clashing strenuously with one another. Some will leave the room disappointed, and in Washington, they are likely to take an influential constituency with them. And that will be the end of the sense of common direction. The President’s goal then becomes selling the decision he’s made and sweeping aside the opposition, which takes a different skill set.

Second, Obama of course brings his own preferences and ideology to the table. It’s considered de classe to mention these. He rarely if ever brings them up. But it’s absurd to argue that they’re less important than whether he has an even temper and a smooth way of handling a Cabinet meeting.

Finally, Obama attributes the “enormous mistakes” of the Bush Administration to a lack of collegial decision-making. With his four books on Iraq, Bob Woodward would be the expert on this. It seems pretty clear that Iraq amounted to a “blink” decision by President Bush, an instinctual choice radically to upend the dynamics of a region in which the U.S. had been on the defensive for two generations. He seems at peace with it, and in ten years he may (or may not) loom larger as a successful President for having taken the risk. Had he put this policy before the American people in those terms — instead of as a means of protecting ourselves from Iraq’s WMD — the search for “common ground, and a sense of common direction” would no doubt be ongoing, and Saddam Hussein would be safe in Baghdad, worrying about his mutual funds.

Perhaps that’s as it should be. Or not. That’s the thing about leadership. Sometimes it’s just you, and you have to make the call — and even when you do, you might not know for sure how it will turn out. As for the men and women sitting around the table, they’ll be staring into space, planning how exactly to get the word to the Post and the Times that they’d told you you were wrong.

A Few Of The Very Few Things That I Do Know For Sure

September 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008 | 1 Comment 

I don’t know much about history.

Don’t know much biology.

Don’t know much about a science book.

Don’t know much about the French I took.

Come to think of it, I don’t know much about most things.

And in the hierarchy of all the things that I don’t know much about, economics and finance are right up there at the top.

But here are a few of the very few things that I do know; indeed, that I know for sure:

• 43 days before an election is the absolute worst time for any major decisions to be made, but especially unprecedented decisions involving the national economy.
• All the people who will be making the decisions —with no exceptions— will have as their primary focus getting elected or re-elected. Where getting elected or re-elected isn’t a relevant criterion their primary focus will be the electoral advantage of the party they belong to or support.
• All the people —with no exceptions— who will be making the decisions regarding the economy over the next few days are responsible, to greater or lesser degrees, for the problems that created the crisis. Some will outright deny this; most will merely try to obfuscate it. The media will accommodate those they like and pinion those they don’t like.
• As recently as July 2006, the man to whom everyone is now turning to fashion the solution was one of the most prominent, and lavishly rewarded, parts of the problem.
• Secretary Paulson is asking for extraordinary and unprecedented powers without providing even the modicum of information that would be required in any other circumstances except those that obtain in the last weeks before a national election when everyone wants to be able to say that they have done something and no one wants their fingerprints on anything. The shared bipartisan goal is to kick the can down the road until the last swing state precinct closes on 4 November.
• In a town where shamelessness is a cottage industry, the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and the Chairmen of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Budget Committee are shamelessly compromised.
• The President continues to be AWOL. He has completely abdicated his vital roles of keeping the nation informed, and sustaining national confidence and morale. Having long since ceased to be The Decider (and who knows if he was ever this anywhere other than in his own mind) he has also ceased being The Explainer.
• The media has abdicated all of its vital roles —of providing information, of monitoring public performance, of maintaining neutral balance— and is complicit in shaping and spreading the “Wall Street/Main Street” trope that completely distorts the situation but has already become the touchstone by which any solution will be analyzed and judged.
• Whatever happens, and after all the blathering and posturing and…..let’s be real, after the voting six weeks from tomorrow……no matter who is elected or re-elected the result is going to be the same: the usual fair deal for the hapless middle class taxpayer.

Paulson-Petraeus ‘08

September 19, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues, Election 2008, News media | 1 Comment 

Both candidates look like lightweights today and the political media with them, pundits’ story of the week having been endless exegesis of the rhetorical nuances of what the guys on the bench have had to say about the hard work of the players on the field. Neither Presidential candidate had suggested anything like the dramatic, market-clearing consolidation of bad mortgage debt that President Bush is announcing today. NBC spent some time this morning trying to show that as the plan was being formulated, Bush was either out of touch or, because of his unpopularity, afraid to be out in front. But it looks like he’s been managing his office as usual, setting the policy and letting his battlefield commanders carry it out.

As banks sigh with relief as questionable assets are lifted from their and Wall Street’s backs, attention will presumably shift back to homeowners and consumers who were lured into borrowing more than they could afford (even though Dee Dee Myers cautioned this morning against “blaming the American people”). In view of his ties to the credit card giants, perhaps Sen. Biden will get some questions along these lines during his debate with Gov. Palin.

In the meantime, while it’s too early to say if today’s events amount to the beginning of the end of the crisis, one scenario for January 20, 2009 is that the grey-haired man with the enigmatic smile standing on the right behind the Chief Justice will have left the economy and the Iraq war in better shape than anyone could’ve imagined a year before.

Exclusive Preview of Secretary Paulson’s Rescue Plan

September 19, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Economic issues, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

From $4.4B to $415B In 25 Years

September 15, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, China, Economic issues | Leave a Comment 

Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez on today and tomorrow’s trade talks in Yorba Linda:

In 1983, a group of Chinese and American officials met in Beijing to work through issues related to a small, but growing, bilateral trading relationship. At that time, goods trade between our nations totaled $4.4 billion. Twenty-five years later our two-way trade reached $387 billion, and this year it is on track to surpass $415 billion.

The U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), which grew out of that 1983 meeting, has become a vital mechanism of engagement between our two economies. This week in Southern California, leaders of the two countries will again come together to advance what has since become one of the world’s most important economic relationships.

Wang Qishan, China’s new vice premier, and a number of senior Chinese officials will meet with the U.S. delegation at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, Calif. The library is a fitting venue, given President Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, paving the way for the normalization of relations between our two countries.

Where’s The Beef? At The Nixon Library

September 15, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Bush Administration, China, Nixon Library | Leave a Comment 

Reuters:

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - The United States will press China to drop its 5-year-old ban on U.S. beef and take a tougher stand against piracy and counterfeiting of U.S. goods when top officials from both countries meet this week at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.

“It’s really too early to say what progress we will have in the area of beef. But ag issues are on the agenda,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in an interview ahead of the talks that begin on Monday.

Like many countries, China closed its market to U.S. beef after the first case of mad cow disease was found in the United States in December 2003. The Bush administration hailed China’s conditional agreement in April 2006 to reopen its market but more than two years later, that still hasn’t happened.

A second U.S. trade official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said that conditions probably still are not right to resolve the beef spat.

The U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade is holding its 25th anniversary meeting in Nixon’s hometown to capture the symbolism of the late president’s historic 1972 trip to China to reopen relations, Gutierrez said.

He and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab lead the talks for the United States and Vice Premier Wang Qishan for China. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer and Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming will also attend.

The United States will be pressing China on “three big buckets” of concerns, Gutierrez said.

Those include China’s high rates of piracy and counterfeiting, a number of specific obstacles to imports of U.S. agricultural and manufacturing goods and opaque regulations that are a barrier to trade, he said. 

Oh Snap! Dr. Krauthammer Calls Out Charlie Gibson

September 12, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Election 2008, International Affairs, Media, National Security, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

In a column datelined tomorrow but currently available on the Washington Post’s website, Charles Krauthammer deconstructs “Charlie Gibson’s Gaffe”.

The subject is the Bush Doctrine — whatever that means.  Which is precisely Dr. Krauthammer’s point.

What Mr. Gibson clearly (indeed, almost obscenely, so silkily did he pose his short but carefully crafted question) had in mind when he sat down for his interview with Governor Pailn was the ultimate gotcha moment.

He would casually ask her whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.  And that would be it.  No need to stand around folks — it’s all over, you can go home now.  Finis.  The end.  That’s all she wrote — so to speak.  

And he, good old Charlie Gibson of ABC News, the man so friendly his first name is a diminutive, would go down in history as having singlehandedly accomplished what every liberal on the planet has been fantasizing about 24/7 since two weeks ago yesterday.  With seven short words he would have exposed Sarah Palin as the jumped-up parvenu everyone knows she really is.

And, at least so far, that is pretty much the way the mainstream media has been playing it.  The New York Times reported: 

At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did no