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.

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.

It was called “passing the buck.”

The phrase is, of course, most commonly associated with President Harry Truman–in fact, his desk on display at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, has a famous sign bearing the words: “The Buck Stops Here.” One of his aides, Fred Canfil, had seen the phrase on a desk in El Reno, Oklahoma, and had the sign made for his boss. Interestingly, and largely lost to the legend according to biographer David McCullough, the 33rd President only kept the sign on his Oval Office desk for a short time while in the White House.

But the metaphor stuck.

It has been used by leaders–particularly presidents–ever since as the ultimate way of saying: “I’m in charge, it’s my responsibility.” Most recently, the phrase was brought out of White House mothballs and used by President Barack Obama in remarks about the Christmas Day 2009 foiled Islamist terrorist attack.

It remains to be seen whether or not the latest pronouncement about the proverbial buck will be remembered as Truman-esque, or more like the nervous stammer of Alexander Haig the day President Reagan was shot. I believe the President said the right things the other day–but will he and his administration really follow through, taking steps, making the tough calls, and keeping the issue of Islamist terror on their political radar screen?

A good indicator would be the willingness to call it what it is. We are not just fighting Al Qaeda as some kind of generic syndicate of bad guys, as with The Man From Uncle and “THRUSH” or Maxwell Smart’s “KAOS.” There is no way for us to win over an ideology, while being afraid or hesitant to call it what it is: Islamism.

To my mind, Mr. Obama is still not comfortable in his role as Commander-in-Chief, with its implied responsibilities of protecting the nation from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He is now saying many of the right things, but I wonder if his vocabulary and America’s dictionary are in sync? He forms phrases now like “we are at war” – but I can’t help but get the feeling that this is based more on manufactured energy than real passion. Does the President view what happened on Christmas and the whole megilla of security, intelligence, and such as important as, say, the economy, healthcare, and jobs?

In fairness, most presidents bring dreams to the job. Lyndon Johnson wanted to build a Great Society and Richard Nixon wanted to focus on foreign affairs, but both had to contend more than they would have liked with their less-favored part of the domestic-international presidential paradigm. Bill Clinton wanted it all to be about “the economy, stupid.” But the first priority of any president is to keep us safe so we can actually have an economy.

A strong sense of national security is, in itself, a potent economic stimulus.

Only time will tell if the new-found-but-pretty-darn-late war-speak (better: war-whisper) will really be about the buck stopping with the President, or mere words.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy faced the press and talked about victory having many “fathers,” but defeat being an “orphan.” He also acknowledged that he was “the responsible officer” in the government. It was, as was Mr. Obama’s recent admission, a statement of the obvious.

But accepting responsibility as a leader does not abrogate systemic culpability.

The old 1970s sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, had a character named Lou Grant (played by Ed Asner)–an irascible man who ran a newsroom. Mary’s boss once said: “Leadership is the art of delegating blame.” Actually, good leadership is somewhere between taking full blame and delegating it all away. Where there are mistakes there is blame to be found. To miss this is to ignore a vital piece of the puzzle preventing something else bad from happening.

Frankly, what needs to happen throughout the government is for various leaders in key areas to think about letting the buck stay with them for a while. When a president has to say “The Buck Stops Here,” it is at least a tacit acknowledgement that the buck has been aggressively mobile.

I think the buck stops every bit as much with Attorney General Eric Holder, as it does with the President. After all, haven’t we been given the impression that the whole send-the-Gitmo-gangsters-to-New York idea is really his and the President is above it all? Or does that buck make its way to Mr. Obama’s desk, too?

And how about Dennis Blair, our Director of National Security (DNI–one of the dumbest ideas to come out of the Bush administration)? Following Mr. Obama’s speech on Thursday, he issued a statement saying, in part:

The Intelligence Community has made considerable progress in developing collection and analysis capabilities and improving collaboration, but we need to strengthen our ability to stop new tactics such as the efforts of individual suicide terrorists. The threat has evolved, and we need to anticipate new kinds of attacks and improve our ability to stay ahead of them and protect America.

We can and we must outthink, outwork and defeat the enemy’s new ideas. The Intelligence Community will do that as directed by the President, working closely with our nation’s entire national security team.

Really? What has the guy been working on up to now–health care reform?

One of two things has been happening, as clearly indicated by the foiled Christmas Day Islamist terror attack: either subordinates are keeping bad or inconvenient details from the President of the United States, or the information has not, until now, been marked or received with requisite urgency. Whatever the case, heads should roll. Blair’s words are akin to those uttered by an erudition-challenged player after a football game, “Well, we needed to score more points to win.” Duh.

There really is no buck to pass in the Obama administration when it comes to National Security, there is only a hot potato few want to deal with or even acknowledge. Attorney General Holder, Janet Napolitano, and so many others in key roles these days have regularly dismissed or minimized the danger of our times, while forging ahead with the even-more-now absurd sending of Gitmo detainees back to Yemen (6 on December 20th), and making sure that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (pronounced: Abdulmutallab) is told he has the right to remain silent and to the full protection of the American justice system, as opposed to being treated as he should be: as an enemy combatant.

Sure, the President of the United States made a speech and said many of the right things, but what we need to figure out is if what we are really bearing witness to is a dynamic described to reporters by Former Attorney John Mitchell, back in 1969: “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

Professor Ostrom, a political science professor at  Indiana University in Bloomington is the first woman Nobel laureate in this category.  She describes her work as studying “how local people, as well as government officials, have attempted to solve very difficult resource problems.”

Dr. Williamson is an emeritus professor of microeconomics at Berkeley.  He has developed a theory in which business firms represent alternate governance structures and are studied in terms of conflict resolution.

The Nobel Academy said that their work over the last three decades has “advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention.”

The “First Take” wags over at Dow Jones’ MarketWatch took a different approach to the story.  Under the headline ”Obama fails to win Nobel prize in economics,”  Tom Bernis wrote:

LONDON (MarketWatch) — In a decision as shocking as Friday’s surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday.

While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he’s been in office, the same clearly can’t be said for economics.

The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.

From his $787 billion stimulus package, to the cap-and-trade bill, to the seizures of General Motors and Chrysler, to the undead health-care “reform” act, Obama has dominated the U.S., and therefore the global, economy as few figures have in recent years.

Yet the Nobel panel chose instead to award the prize to two obscure academics — Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson — one noted for her work on managing collective resources, and the other for his work on transaction costs.

Other surprise losers include celebrity noneconomist and filmmaker Michael Moore; U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Larry Summers, head of the U.S. national economic council.

It is unclear whether the president will now refuse his peace prize in protest against the obvious slight to his real achievements this year.

His name is David Cameron and the moment described is his appearance and speech at the Tory (Conservative) Party Conference in Manchester, England yesterday. Most polls in the U.K. indicate a trend toward the Tories as the realm moves toward its next national election, which will most likely be held by the first week of June 2010.

The Conservatives have been out of power since 1997, when Tony Blair and the Labour Party gained control. These have been wilderness years. But the party is now re-energized and poised to pull off an electoral repudiation of many of the big-government trends of the past decade.

Ironic, huh?

Consider these nuggets from Cameron’s Manchester speech – and see if you don’t find yourself scratching your head and wishing America had a singular conservative voice to articulate a compelling vision for the future:

We will need to confront Britain’s culture of irresponsibility and that will be hard to take for many people. And we will have to tear down Labour’s big government bureaucracy, ripping up its time-wasting, money-draining, responsibility-sapping nonsense.

“It is government that has gotten us into this mess. Why is our economy broken?” he asked, “Because government got too big, spent too much and doubled the national debt.”

“Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility. Why are our politics broken? Because government got too big, promised too much and pretended it had all the answers.”

He ridiculed “this idea that for every problem there’s a government solution for every issue, for every situation a czar…”

And – my favorite line of all:

Do you know the worst thing about their big government? It’s not the cost, though that’s bad enough. It’s the steady erosion of responsibility…we are not going to solve our problems with bigger government. We are going to solve our problems with a stronger society. Stronger families. Stronger communities. A stronger country. All by building responsibility.

Oh – and, “Complicated taxes, excessive regulations – they make life impossible for entrepreneurs. What are you doing to make it easier to start a business? Easier to take people on? What are you doing to make regulation less complicated? To make locating a business more attractive?”

OK – one more passage, then some comments:

The truth is, it’s not just that big government has failed to solve these problems. Big government has all too often helped cause them by undermining the personal and social responsibility that should be the lifeblood of a strong society. Just think of the signals we send out. To the family struggling to raise children, pay a mortgage, hold down a job. Stay together and we’ll give you less; split up and we give you more.

After a dozen years of Labour administration in the United Kingdom, one child in six is in a family where no-one works – the highest such rate in Europe. This is not due to job scarcity. These are cases where readily available welfare provisions have undermined the need and desire to work, even when jobs have been available.

Basically, Mr. Cameron was challenging his party – and the nation – with a logic that could only be missed by the clueless or members of the Nobel prize committee (pardon the redundancy), that “the more we as a society do, the less we will need government to do.” He is championing an idea whose time has come once again: personal responsibility.

I am not sure what the Tories plan to do for a slogan in the upcoming election (and campaign cycles in Britain are mercifully shorter than those here in the U.S.), but I might suggest either, “Yes, We Should,” or “It’s The Responsibility, Stupid!”

David Cameron is what might be called over there a “liberal conservative.” And if that seems similar to what was once here called “compassionate conservatism,” there is actually only a partial connection. The conservatism of Cameron and company actually combines elements of limited government (British style, of course) and social libertarianism. In other words, the total Cameron package would not resonate with many American social conservatives, myself included. But much of this is a reflection of the state of culture at large in the U.K., as well as across Europe. Church attendance patterns are far different than those in America. And evangelicals in particular do not make up a large percentage of the population; merely a fraction of what we see here at home.

The same is true in Germany, where Angela Merkel was recently re-elected Chancellor, presiding over a government that is described as “center-right.” She is referred to, at least by some detractors, as a Margaret Thatcher-like “Iron Lady.” The trend is away from liberal-socialist economics and back toward greater fiscal conservatism. Again, as is the case in Britain, being more conservative in Germany has little to do with American-style social conservative issues, and for the same reason: The larger culture is secular, less religious, and therefore more “libertarian” when it comes to personal behavior.

Then there is France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy leans more center-right than anyone in recent memory. Again, it’s quite obvious that any form of cultural or social conservatism is not a big deal there, either.

Now, curiously, in Canada – which seems to have elements of European and American political dynamics – Prime Minister Steven Harper is an evangelical Christian (his background is with the Christian and Missionary Alliance). He has been described as “inspired by two British Christian thinkers: C. S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge,” and has strong ties to social conservatives in the realm.

This analytical detour now complete, I come to my point. Conservatism is resurgent in many Western democracies. Sure, in some places it looks a little different than its American counterpart, particularly on social/cultural issues. But that has more to do with the fact that in those nations there is no strong evangelical church itself to speak of.

On the other hand, here in the United States evangelicals are somewhat stronger. Therefore, resonant issues (such as abortion) are always either on the table, or scrambling for a rightful place. It’s a voting bloc that may make some uncomfortable, but an important bloc, nonetheless.

Some dismiss the conservative trend in Europe as irrelevant to American politics at this time because of the absence there of any social conservative agenda. But those who do so are missing the obvious. There would be a relationship (awkward, or otherwise) between economic conservatism and cultural conservatism in those nations, as well, if there were more resident evangelicals. They are not a factor in Europe because it’s been a very long time since there was any statistically significant evangelical-type movement or revival.

The lesson for all conservatives is that the ideas of limited government, personal responsibility, and strong families resonate across the board.

The lesson for evangelicals is to cultivate and maintain a commitment to see that the spiritual condition of our churches and communities never becomes European. The fact is that any movement can fall from foothold to footnote in one generation.

It seems that he was picking up a refill on some meds (my thought was that I hoped they were chill pills of some sort) and he was distressed that a previous prescription of 150 pills was refilled with only 75. Now, it wasn’t the capsule-count that bothered him – he just didn’t want to have to pay the same $10.00 co-pay for the 75 that he did for the 150. Never mind that the co-pay scale is pretty well set and that $10.00 is the bottom-line fee. Nope. He thought he should pay less. Or nothing.

The flustered, yet knowledgeable lady at the window then proceeded to show him how much the medicine would cost if he were to purchase it out of the system. Needless to say it wasn’t 10 bucks, but rather several multiples of it. Yet the guy who was buying medicine at a paid-down price still thought he was paying too much.

It’s a mindset – one that seems to be pervasive.

In fact, I suspect he may be one of millions of Americans who seem to think that medicine and medical care should not really cost them personally much of anything. Let the rich people pay for all of us – or the employer, or the government, it’s too expensive for me. Because it costs so much, goes the thinking, I really shouldn’t have to pay. God forbid that any American should have too many out of pocket health care expenses.

The logic is: nobody can afford it; somebody else should pay. Why does that remind me of something Yogi Berra might have once said?

Some time ago, I came to a parting of the ways with an employee. When our human resources person briefed him on COBRA to allow him to continue with health insurance coverage, he balked saying something to the effect: “I’m not paying for that.” Never mind that he had a wife and children and that being uninsured put them all at financial risk, he was unwilling to pay up out of pocket. To him, it was apparently just not something that was a financial priority. At any rate, he had told me and others that he was looking forward to the day when Barack Obama became president and everyone got coverage, whether they worked or not.

Of course, under the Obama plan this man would be fined for not having insurance when it was accessible to him.

I got the same kind of response when I put the health care reform issue out to a talk radio audience recently. I asked specifically for callers who had no coverage – wondering how they felt about the whole megilla. Frankly, I was surprised that so many who did not have health insurance actually had access to it, but really didn’t feel it was worth it to pay for it.

One caller told me that, at any rate, if he got sick he could just go to the emergency room, indicating that if the bill were too big and he couldn’t pay it would be the hospital’s problem. I suspect that more people think this way than we’d like to admit.

Actually, that kind of thing becomes everyone’s problem. And being lost in this national “teachable moment” are concepts like personal responsibility and living in such a way so as not to be a burden on others.

The reason something as integrity-rich as the idea of paying for what you receive is widely resisted when it comes to health care is because it is, in fact, so very expensive. But maybe if people accepted more personal responsibility and resisted the it-costs-so-much-I-can’t-afford-it-let-them-pay philosophy we might see some common sense enter the discussion.

Here’s an idea, why don’t we reform the system by turning it into one where individuals purchase their own insurance. What if every employer stopped providing health insurance as a benefit and instead translated the actual dollars spent on an employee’s plan into straight income – saying, in effect, “Here’s your health insurance money, you shop and buy your own plan.” This would need to be accompanied of course by market-based reform, eliminating the practice where states deny health plans from other states into their markets, and making such insurance completely portable, not tied to where you work.

The income used for health insurance could be tax exempt. If it wasn’t used to purchase insurance, it could be taxed – creating incentive. And if someone refused to spend the money they had on actually accessible insurance because, say, they wanted to buy a bigger house or car, well, then put a system in place where the government would help the hospital collect a bill over time, in the event of a costly illness. Pay me now or pay me later. Something like this has been described by John McClaughry president of the Ethan Allen Institute in a recent article entitled: What To Do With The Uninsured.

How many Americans would actually pay for health insurance under such circumstances? It’s hard to say. Possibly, we have been so conditioned to having another entity provide and pay for it that we truly see it as something that should be done for us?

It is axiomatic. Failure to act responsibly leads to the intervention of other parties, in the health care case – that would be the government. This intervention always means less autonomy and liberty.

Health insurance as we know it has only been around for about 80 years. With the rise of the New Deal and labor unions in the 1930s and then the economic realities during the crisis of World War II, Americans became increasingly accustomed to having the whole health care thing being part of an employee benefits package. In fact, during the war, when wages were somewhat regulated, the one way an employer could give someone a little more was through the benefits package.

Before long it became part of how things were done. You got a job and you got paid in money and stuff like health insurance. Cool.

The problem with it was that it began to put a degree of separation between the consumer and the health care service provider – we moved from a fee for service approach to something much more indirect and impersonal. Someone else was paying the bill. And when the apartment comes with utilities included you don’t look at the thermostat as much. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s no longer a market-driven enterprise.

When I was young boy, my dad had really good insurance because he was a Teamster. It wasn’t really called health insurance, though. It was hospitalization insurance. It was there for the tonsillectomy – not the runny nose. It was there for stitches in the emergency room, not for the yearly physical, or the chicken pox. In fact, when we went to the doctor, mom wrote a check. Doctor visits were not really health insurance issues. Even if people had good insurance, they usually still had to pay out of pocket to go to the family doctor, as with the dentist.

These days, though, with our whole health maintenance and managed care way of thinking, it’s all about minimizing out of pocket expenses. The problem is that this doesn’t eliminate the actual expense – it just takes it from view and increases the costs exponentially behind the scenes. We don’t see the transaction, so it isn’t really there.

Health insurance morphed into a right. Every one should have it and it should only cost those who can afford it. And few can really afford it, so the government should pay. We sure hope they have enough money – oh, what the heck, they’ll just print more. Or tax the rich more. So what if the top 1% of American households fork out more in taxes than the bottom 95% combined.

Our desire never to be out of pocket will one day soon lead to our country being out of pockets.

Putting a so-called public option into the mix is a poorly disguised foot in the door en route to the real goal of a single payer system. And once such a system is in place, it will never go away. Even conservatives in Britain don’t mess with their National Health Service (NHS). It’s part of the national fabric, like Social Security and Medicare are here already. Never mind that cancer patients over there have to wait on treatment so bureaucrats can meet “target” goals or that neurology delays put lives at risk or that some patients will now be paid to go “private” in certain cases.

After all, they have only had 61 years to work the kinks out of a program that is even now facing a funding crisis. Give them time. And surely we’d do better, right?

Just look at the Post Office. Or Amtrak.

There are many indications that good people, who have been doing good – though sometimes necessarily unseemly – work, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the politicization of their jobs and careers. It’s witch-hunting season on Capitol Hill.

A few weeks ago, former Central Intelligence Agency Director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post entitled, Defenders At Risk. He decried a “troubling reality. A whole swath of intelligence professionals – the best we had, the ones we threw at the al-Qaeda challenge when the nation was in extremis – are suffering for their sacrifice, being held up to recrimination for many decisions that were never wholly theirs and about which there was little protest when we all believed we were in danger.”

That last phrase is haunting: “when we all believed we were in danger.”

Are we acting like a nation in danger? Well, when it comes to economics, yes we are. With a mind-boggling willingness to suspend rational thought and reason, not to mention our Constitution to fix things, we are all czared-up. The American economy is being reinvented and may one day soon become something even Fidel Castro could admire, should he live so long. Of course, the new super-important-political-potentates are virtually unaccountable to the same people who spend an inordinate amount of time these days insisting on knowing everything about everything from those who must, by the nature of their work, operate in the shadows.

But it’s the economy and yes, we are stupid.

In the 1930s, Josef Stalin conducted a paranoiac purge that impacted all segments of Soviet society, notably the military. Having killed off most of his best generals and military minds, he and his nation paid the price in the early years of World War II. He bought time with his pact with Hitler in 1939, but was still nearly defeated two years later at the beginning of the Nazi invasion of his country. Some of those dead, but smart and experienced generals might have helped old Uncle Joe.

Are we on the verge of a “soft” purge in our intelligence and national security communities? Are beginning to lose people – citizens who have sacrificed and served with excellence – people we would certainly need if, God forbid, we found ourselves dealing with a major terrorist offensive here at home?

The answer is yes.

When it comes to the economy we will do virtually anything to get “the best and the brightest” into key posts because they are indispensable. But are we playing by the same rules when it comes to national security? The answer to that one is no.

All indications are that morale is low – and understandably so – in the intelligence and national security communities. Why? Likely, it’s because we have allowed for the polarizing stigmatization of these patriots and their noble work, driven by misguided and malicious self-righteousness.

The heirs to “the best and the brightest” of the 1960s are now running things. The torch has been passed to a new generation of experts who want to remake America in their image. One result may be that the most competent and experienced people, those who have been in often-dangerous trenches keeping us safe and free, may be squeezed out feeling largely unappreciated and woefully disrespected.

Ironically, and largely overlooked by a nation increasingly disconnected from its history, the way our federal government is working these days with respect to the fundamental issues of the economy and national security is completely at odds with how things were done back at the beginning.

Early on, this nation was a place for people to fulfill dreams and live lives without a nanny-state. Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, articulated the spirit of that age during his first inaugural when he said: “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”

When it comes to national security however, more than two centuries ago men of vision understood the concept of danger. Why do you think it was that when those guys came up with oaths of office for various leadership roles they tended to talk about “all enemies, foreign and domestic?” It’s because there were then – as there are now – people who just don’t get us and who would really like to hurt us.

During the American Revolution, John Jay – later of Federalist Papers fame – wrote to Robert Morris (often referred to as “the financier of the revolution”): “Communicate no other intelligence to Congress at large than what may be necessary to promote the common weal [well-being], not to gratify the curiosity of individuals.”

In fact, in The Federalist, No. 64, Jay argued: “There are cases where the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from apprehensions of discovery. Those apprehensions will operate on those persons whether they are actuated by mercenary or friendly motives; and there doubtless are many of both descriptions who would rely on the secrecy of the President, and would not confide in that of the Senate, and still less in that of a largely popular assembly.”

These days that last phrase might read: “a largely un-popular assembly.”

Now, I want to make an observation. I may be quite wrong on this, but stay with me anyway. While all the punching and counterpunching is going on between Congress and the intelligence communities, President Obama has been sending mixed signals. He certainly wants to please those who put him where he is, and his campaign promises with respect to national security issues were pretty clear.

But since taking office, his rhetoric has toned down, at least a bit. And there is no doubt that he has shown some willingness to act counter to what he said while running for office. Gitmo’s in; Gitmo’s out. We’ll release the photos; no we won’t. Shifting gears is part of par-for-the-course-political-speak in Washington, but logic suggests something else may be involved.

Why would a man who was elected on a platform that was decidedly critical of the outgoing president’s intelligence and national security record ever be tempted to change his mind and act contrary to the will of his core constituencies?

There is only one logical answer: Because he has since learned some things that have changed his mind. Things he didn’t know while he was running for office. Details he didn’t have.

Additional facts tend to influence subsequent behavior. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Obama’s “softening” on some once-ridiculed Bush administration policies and practices. The man now knows what he did not know before. How he deals with the stuff he now knows and how he responds to political pressure from those who got him elected in the first place will define his presidency and impact us all.

It would be better for the economy and for our actual physical safety if those running the show these days would read their American history and learn from the founders. Let people live their lives in freedom without being tortured with excessive taxation and tyrannical statist intrusion. And let those who have been tasked with keeping America safe alone to do their honorable work – without having to have a lawyer on speed dial.

I write this from a conservative perspective, but even a liberal writer such as Evan Thomas, editor of Newsweek, can make the point. He said in February of 2004, on a local Washington, D.C. television show:

“I really fear these investigations, if they turn into witch-hunts. The worst things that can happen is a demoralized CIA that’s back on its heels, that thinks everybody is against them, that they have to hire lawyers [and] testify before Congress. If you’re constantly pulling up the flowers to see if they’re growing, you could do more harm than good.”

The Chief Executive’s appearance tomorrow is an opportunity for him to extend a conciliatory hand to the large number of Americans who, whether or not they voted for him in November, are not supporters of some of the radical programs being espoused by a considerable number of Democratic-affiliated groups, such as an expansion of legal abortion, decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs, and gay marriage.

It seems to become more evident by the month that when voters sought “change” in voting for Obama and Vice President Biden last month, a substantial percentage of them were mainly concerned with the economy, health care, and perhaps increased opportunity of education, and were not that keen on the other aspects of “change” as defined in the agendas of MoveOn.org or other groups. This would especially apply to voters in the states surrounding the Deep South, large portions of the Catholic electorate, and churchgoing African-American voters nationwide.

In California, the voters in the latter group helped Obama carry the state, but at the same time provided the margin that passed Proposition 8 which reversed the California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. And it turns out that on abortion, the percentage of voters supporting Roe vs. Wade and the pro-choice line, after peaking during the Clinton years, has steadily been declining, to the point that this week, a Gallup poll revealed that a bare majority of those whose opinion was sampled – 51% – described themselves as “pro-life.”

This strongly indicates that a considerable number of voters – perhaps poised on becoming the majority – would not be looking forward to Al Franken taking his seat in the Senate and locking in a (theoretically) filibuster-proof majority that would then fulfill all the left’s fondest dreams in the social arena.

The events of the last few weeks involving Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, might prove a harbinger of things to come. A few weeks ago, during the Miss USA pageant, Ms. Prejean, educated at Christian schools, was asked by the online gossip columnist Perez Hilton, one of the pageant’s judges, what her opinion was of gay marriage. The contestant replied that her own view was that marriage could only exist between a man and woman – which is still officially the view of Congress, as expressed in the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by a majority of both parties and signed by President Clinton a decade ago.

Hilton (followed by an avalanche of bloggers and left-leaning pundits) subjected Ms. Prejean to ridicule. But instant polls soon made it clear that most Americans supported her right to express her opinion, and even Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor who spearheaded the legalization of same-sex unions in his city, acknowledged her right to free speech.

Ms. Prejean was then ridiculed as a hypocrite, after some rather mild and fairly tasteful photos of her in an unclad state appeared online. But Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, rejected pressure to strip her of her crown, and so in recent days the beauty queen has managed to largely prevail in the court of public opinion.

The way this particular controversy has played out has not been conveniently timed for the supporters of same-sex marriage. As I noted last week in my post “Gay Marriage At The Crossroads,”  the District of Columbia city council just voted to recognize such unions as performed in other states. Under the Home Rule Bill, Congress has a right to challenge this decision – and GOP lawmakers have made it clear that they will pursue this option, which means that in a matter of months each member of Congress will have to vote yes or no on this question.

The issues of abortion, gay marriage, and narcotics delegalization will also be prominent when the President selects a nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It seems less and less likely that any thoroughly liberal, MoveOn-approved choice would automatically sail through the Senate.

So I think that the best approach for the President tomorrow is not to mouth a series of platitudes predicated on the idea that his listeners (or the American public in general) will automatically accept all of his positions, but to acknowledge that there are differences of opinion and to express a willingness to work within the Constitution to achieve a consensus that will bridge these differences. If he does that, and follows through, he may considerably improve the chances of his party maintaining control of Congress in 2010. If he pursues a partisan path, however, the GOP – perhaps as early as the Virginia election this year – could be on the comeback trail.

Almost four months after his inauguration, President Barack Obama is still riding high in the polls. According to Gallup, 66 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing. But I expect that Obama’s popularity will begin to fall, even plummet, as the leaves turn brown. That’s not to say he is doing a bad job, but that the tasks he faces in fixing the economy remain daunting, and beyond resolution in his first year or, perhaps, even first term.

History suggests that Judis is right about the general trajectory of the president’s popularity.  Political scientists speak of the “decay curve,”  the tendency of presidential approval ratings to decline after the first few months of a new administration. The reason for the decay is straightforward:  the more decisions that a president makes, the more chances there are of alienating people.

For instance, RN’s first Gallup numbers in 1969 were 59 percent approve, 5 percent disapprove.  (That is not a typo: only five percent disapproved of his performance during his first days in office.)  By late June of 1971, the approve/disapprove ratio was a much closer 48-39 percent.

Economic conditions have a great deal to do with approval ratings.  In good times, they tend to stay high.  The boom of the 1990s buoyed Clinton’s numbers and helped him survive impeachment.  In bad times, presidential popularity plummets.  The recession of Ronald Reagan’s early presidency drove his approve/disapprove ratio to a dismal 35-56 percent in January 1983.

Obama still enjoys the benefit of the doubt and can still blame the current economic turmoil on his predecessor.  But as Judis suggests, the public will eventually hold him accountable for the results of his policies.  In that respect, he might ponder what RN wrote about his own bold experiment with big-government economics:

What did America reap from its brief fling with economic controls?  The August 15, 1971 decision to impose them was politically necessary and immensely popular in the short run.  But in the long run I believe that it was wrong.  The piper must always be paid, and there was an unquestionably high price for tampering with the orthodox economic mechanisms.

The phrase “know your enemy” hearkens back to Sun Tzu’s classic work The Art of War, and represents self-evident wisdom. Everyone has enemies, as does every nation. You can tell a lot about people and peoples by their enemies. You can also tell a lot about them by those they describe and define as enemies.

The presidential oath, taken twice by President Obama due to a miscue from Chief Justice Roberts on Inauguration Day, simply talks about preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States. All other similar oaths affirmed by members of Congress, the Cabinet, or even the Military, include the meatier phrase, “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

“Against all enemies…”

Every culture contains a measure of “us” versus “them.” But what happens when the lines between “us” and “them” is blurred. Or worse – what about when “us” morphs into “them?”

My father in law passed away a little over a year ago after a long fight with cancer at the end of his valiant 81-year life. He was a good man – a decent man – someone who loved his family and paid his bills and went to church and owned a gun or two or three.

After I had the audacity to marry his daughter in May of 1976, Bob Holland and I settled quickly into to an awkward relationship with occasional tense moments. I was the Young Turk, he the sage advisor, though I did not always welcome his advice.

OK, in fairness, I never welcomed it.

We actually had similar values, even common faith. It was just in how we articulated things that the sparks sometimes flew. I was never a liberal in any sense of the word, but there was a way the old man had – an attitude about him – deep seated cultural and political opinions, that made me at times want to argue the “other view” even if absurd and not actually believed.

Think Archie Bunker and Meathead.

Now, this is not to say that my father in law was in any way really like the Bunker caricature – not at all. Archie was an ignorant man. Bob was, though not well educated formally, a well-read autodidact. It was actually hard to win when arguing with him, though the good Lord knows I sure tried. Oh, and I never lost my hair like Meathead/Rob Reiner did (nor my mind).

I have been thinking a lot about Bob recently, not just in the “I sure miss our animated conversations” sense, but wondering how I would be able to conjure up the requisite humility to admit to my favorite forensic foe that, well…er…uh… – he was right all along!

You see, he used to say that one day “they” would mark “us” as dangerous. He always talked about the virtue of gun ownership. His long-time membership in the NRA was one of his badges of honor. He decried illegal immigration – though he had a real heart for all people. He was fiercely anti-abortion, and would tell his family that one-day holding this opinion would become dangerous.

A year before he died, he begged my wife and I to sell our house and downsize before the market crashed. Bad times were coming, he was sure of it. And when the rough times came, other bad things would start to happen.

He didn’t live to see the real estate market collapse, the stock market tank, and covers of mainstream magazines proudly proclaiming “We are All Socialists Now,” one week, and “Christianity is Dying,” another. He didn’t live to see historic things happen politically, nor was he – thankfully – around to see us bowing before a dangerous world full of actual enemies.

I guess I am glad he didn’t, but I wonder what he’d say?

What would he make of reading a memo from The Department of Homeland Security talking about the potential danger from “radical right wing extremists” – only to instantly recognize many of his precious values being stigmatized as extreme?

Words like: “may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Or: “ the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists…”

Or the always popular in these days as “us” becomes “them”: “Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent antigovernment conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty.”

One thing for sure, he would probably turn to me, his head shaking from the effects of Parkinson’s syndrome, and say: “Well, Dave, I guess you have to admit I was right after all – huh?” Then, because he had opinions without malice and never lost sight of his core contentment and faith-driven peace of mind, he’d probably add, “Let’s have a sandwich!”

I’d reply, “Sure, but first would you help me pick out my first gun?”

He’d smile and with pride remark: “Dave, you’re sure getting smarter.”

As reported by Andy Barr today on Politico:

On the heels of the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, the Service Employees International Union is urging President Barack Obama to oust Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. 

“It defies logic, common-sense, and responsible governance to punish the auto industry while letting financial institutions off the hook,” SEIU President Andy Stern said, announcing his call for Lewis’s job Tuesday. 

The SEIU has begun circulating an online petition, calling on the administration to “show the door to CEO Ken Lewis.” 

“Firing GM’s CEO is a positive step towards restructuring a broken industry,” Stern said. “But the Obama Administration needs to apply the same lesson to the financial sector: replace failed leadership and shepherd the industry into a new era.” 

Stern explain that both CEOs “sunk large public companies—putting thousands out of work and toppling the American economy — while accepting billions in taxpayer bailouts. Yet only Wagoner got a pink slip.” 

“It’s time for Treasury Secretary Geithner to replace Ken Lewis as CEO and let real reform take hold at Bank of America,” he said.

GM, per Drudge, now stands for Government Motors.

Prexy Robin Wagner (he who had his wings clipped when he used the company jet to come abegging) has agreed to step down at the request of the White House.  There will also be changes in the company’s Board of Directors.

But it has taken two not to do the Detroit tango that could have led to the production of efficient and competitive automobiles.

So maybe Mr. Obama is really about to make some news —and real a difference— by also addressing the labor side of the labor-management equation.

There’s another shoe that needs to drop.

But don’t hold your breath waiting to hear that another President —the UAW’s ever intransigent Ron Gettelfinger— is suddenly going to have a lot of time to work on his golf game.  Ninety-two percent of the $74 million raised by unions in 2008 when to Democrats, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do that math.

One can agree or disagree with Mr. Obama’s decision.  But unless and until he puts some teeth into it, it isn’t really a decision at all — it’s just a way to distract the angry torch-bearing populist mob with another villain now that we’re once again making nice with AIG.

Well begun is only half done.  But any way you look at it, half done is half assed.

Part of the problem is that he speaks very fast and rushes his words.  Now, this could be the result of the problem that many smart people have (and there is no question about the man’s smarts) — their brains move faster than their tongues can keep up with.

But that raises another of the Secretary’s communications problems: Much of what he says doesn’t sound very smart.  Many of his answers are patently off-topic and therefore sound (whether or not they are, and I suspect they are) canned.  (His responses to David Gregory’s MTP questions about the AIG bonuses were of the kind to give obtuseness a bad name.)

He also has a nervous habit of repeating and repeating and repeating his interlocutor’s name.   If there were any doubts at the outset that he was being questioned by George Stephanopoulos —on This Week with George Stephanopoulos— they had been put to rest by the time the umpteenth answer had begun with “George,”.  The first couple of times it’s a handy way of personalizing and establishing the immediacy of the moment.  After that it’s the kind of tic that gives rise to drinking games.

But the Secretary’s biggest problem communicationswise is his not infrequent slips into what is semi-officially known as the High Rising Terminal, but which also goes by many differently descriptive names, including “questioning intonation,” “late rising,” and “Sorority Speak.”

This linguistic phenomenon has its own Wikipedia page.

The High Rising Terminal (HRT), also known as uptalk, upspeak or High Rising Intonation (HRI), is a feature of some accents of English where statements have a rising intonation pattern in the final syllable or syllables of the utterance. Empirically, Ladd (1996, pg 123) proposes that HRT in American English and Australian English is marked by a high tone (high pitch or high fundamental frequency) beginning on the final accented syllable near the end of the statement (the terminal), and continuing to increase in frequency (up to 40%) to the end of the intonational phrase. New research such as that conducted by Warren (2005) suggests that the actual rise can occur one or more syllables after the last accented syllable of the phrase, and its range is much more variable than previously thought.
   

“Uptalk” was the subject of a poem by Taylor Mali, which begins:

In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

HRT was formerly seen as a function of female speech, and especially young female speech (and not just because of Clueless and Heathers), because it is considered to be non-threatening while discouraging interruption.  But it is now acknowledged as a trait that knows no gender or age.  President Bush43 seems to have  increasingly indulged in uptalk — but he was a notoriously hopeless communicator, so there’s cold comfort for Mr. Geithner in that precedent.

For purely Geithnerian purposes, allow me to cut through all the jargon and poetry and lay down the bottom line.  And the bottom line is this: Mr. Geithner’s HIgh Rising Terminal makes him sound like a Valley Girl. If I had a little more time and even less of a life than I do now, I would lay the Treasury Secretary’s voice pattern over that of Jillian, Brian’s Valley girlfriend on Family Guy — and, although I’m not a betting man, I’m betting that there would be many points of similarity.

This kind of locution is increasingly common — particularly among the young uns who are being raised and taught that, in a world where there are no absolutes and nothing is certain, tentativity is the best policy.  But at least here on the East Coast, and at least to people raised in the old school where declarative sentences ended decisively, it still sounds odd and conveys dumb.  

Maybe he was just having a bad day.  Maybe Secretary Geither is like foreigners —  if you wake him up in the middle of the night he will speak without any HRTs.  Otherwise, perhaps he should consider hiring some new communications consultants and a voice coach.  At least they won’t have to be confirmed. 

The Andrea Doria had been traveling in heavy fog for several hours before the collision.

When the surface is shrouded by cloud-like mist, the prudent thing for anyone trying to navigate is to exercise caution. Fog is not favorable to a full-speed-ahead approach. You crawl cautiously through fog if you hope to emerge safely. The fog can be especially disorienting, so it calls for the clearest thinking and decision-making.

In his classic treatise On War, Prussian military analyst Carl Von Clausewitz noted:

“The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not frequently – like the effect of a fog or moonshine – gives to things exaggerated dimensions an unnatural appearance.”

Thus was born the concept, the fog of war – the idea that decision-making is, at best, marked by ambiguity while a conflict or crisis is raging. Of course, leaders don’t always have the luxury of prolonged periods of reflection while bombs are dropping and instinct must kick in. But generally the best decisions made in the heat of battle have been thought through earlier.

Using the warfare metaphor for dealing with economic crisis is nothing new. FDR invoked it during his 1933 “fear itself” inaugural. LBJ declared war on poverty and Jimmy Carter talked about “the moral equivalent of war” during a pre-malaise address on the energy crisis in the early days of his soon-to-fail administration.

The current economic crisis is certainly a war of sorts – a battle of ideas, strategies, and tactics. It is also a very confusing time for many Americans, because some appear to want to proceed with ambitious agendas, even if that means going full-throttle through the fog. Wisdom would seem to dictate a certain measure of prudence – a sense of caution – until the fog recedes some. It is counterintuitive, not to mention probably counterproductive, to try to chart new political territory when we can barely see our economic hands in front of our faces.

It’s the folly of fog-onomics.

Some apparently see the fog of economic war as an optimum context for sweeping change. But will we emerge from this cloud-covered period only to face the reality of the national furniture having been moved and the ceilings lowered, not to mention the mother of all mortgages?

In the classic movie from the 1960s, The Great Escape, there is a scene as the POWs start making their way out of the tunnel – though far short of the tree-cover they thought they had. As it happened, a bombing raid led to the lights of the camp being turned off and Steve McQueen and the others saw this as a great opportunity to move many men out under cover of darkness. In other words, sometimes when others can’t see too clearly, the moment is right for some to make a move.

This is what seems to be happening these days. And to make matters worse, some of us actually realize what’s going on. But so many are not watching or listening. They seem to be comfortable with power-players like Rahm Emanuel, who remarked famously last November that:

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

So the ability to get certain things done can be accelerated when a crisis-driven fog impairs the ability of people to see clearly. A foggy day in Washington town seems to be the best political weather for yes-we-can change. Who goes through fog at full-throttle? Only those who know for sure where they are going. It’s about more than confidence; it’s a matter of potential hubris.

During his recent White House press conference, after his opening from-a-big-television-not-a-teleprompter remarks, President Barack Obama fielded questions. His answers tended to drone on. This, I think, is the reason he prefers the teleprompter. He doesn’t scramble too well out of the pocket. The extemporary Obama also has a thinner skin than the Barack who reads well. And he, well, can come across as “lecturing” – like the professor he once was. There’s a certain ponderous “Wilsonian” quality to how he talks when away from the script. Of course, Woodrow Wilson was another thin-skinned professor-president.

The one thing that sticks with me from the press conference a few days ago has not been widely covered. It is in something he said when describing in glowing terms his hopes for a recovered economy. As he looked down the road, he talked about such and such a thing being accomplished “before the end of my first term.”

Not “before the end of my term? Or “before the end of this term” – but “before the end of my first term.” It’s almost as if he sees the next four years as a political pre-season. If this is what the first term looks like, the mind fairly boggles at what is ahead if and when Mr. Obama wins a second term. Term two is usually when hubris kicks into overdrive.

“Before the end of my first term.” Where is that darn teleprompter?

This is a very confident president. He knows exactly what he wants to do and he’s doing it. To underestimate him right now would be a political mistake. But only time will tell whether policies worked out in the midst of a pervasive national fog will translate into another term. And if he has somehow managed to conjure up some second-term-like hubris early on in term one, he might do well to read up on recent presidential history – say, about 30 years ago.

There once was another president who had populist tendencies and the wide support of people fed up with politics-as-usual and who craved change. He even did a “call-the-president” thing with a toll free number so he could listen to the people. He also had a tendency to lecture and could come across as a bit pompous. And his skin was thin. He tended to be too generous in his opinions of ultimate adversaries and too critical and unsupportive of real-world allies. He was an activist who, in the end, didn’t really accomplish much of anything constructive. He did, however, do a lot of damage.

Instead of getting a chance to share a second inaugural, he was sent packing back to a small town in Georgia.

Then a new leader rode into town on a horse and we all lived happily ever after – at least for a while.

But talk is cheap, and when it turned out that the words could have unwanted consequences, the talk was stopped post haste.  Without missing a beat, and without even a moment of Emily Litellaish backtracking, the outrage was shelved;  and sweet reason once again prevails.

As Anne Flaherty reports from Washington for AP today:

From the White House through the halls of Congress, Washington is losing its zeal for an all-out fight over hefty executive bonuses, now that it wants the financial companies it blames for the collapse of the U.S. economy to help clean up the mess.

The House Financial Services Committee on Thursday adopted a milder alternative to a bill passed last week that would have taxed away 90 percent of employee bonuses from companies getting federal bailout money. The new legislation would let bailed-out companies pay bonuses as long as the government determines the compensation is not “unreasonable or excessive.”

The Senate, meanwhile, has put on hold a bill that Democrats unsuccessfully tried to advance last week. It would tax away about 70 percent of the employee bonuses at AIG and other companies getting more than $100 million in bailout money.

The about-face came as it become clear that financial institutions would not partner with the government on new efforts to restore vital credit flows to businesses and consumers if it meant later being demonized for its use of taxpayer dollars.

Geithner proposed on Monday a new government program that would rely on the help of private investors to buy up to a $1 trillion of bad debt, or “toxic assets,” sitting on the books of major banks, giving them more ability and incentive to lend.

“I don’t want people to think that businesses and people who have worked hard, performed well and received bonuses are going to be painted with the AIG brush,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday.

The gentler approach is in stark contrast to the anti-Wall Street rhetoric that consumed Congress and the White House last week after the bonus payments by AIG, the prime example of a company deemed “too big to fail” because its collapse could create a worldwide run on banks and other financial institutions.

The bonus payouts ignited populist anger that four days later prompted the House to vote 328-93 to tax them away and Obama to declare on Jay Leno’s late-night talk show the same day that he was “stunned” and would “do everything we can to get those bonuses back”

By the next day, the Senate’s bonus tax plan had stalled.

Obama then warned the public against vilifying investors and entrepreneurs who are needed to keep the economy alive. Geithner said industry’s help would specifically be needed to buy up the billions of dollars of sour mortgage securities.

“We cannot solve this crisis without making it possible for investors to take risks,” Geithner wrote in an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal.

Now there’s a modern twist to this old chestnut.

During the last several years someone “being thrown under the bus” has become so common as to have become a cliche.

But now we have what may be the first case of someone —in this case US Senator Christopher Dodd— throwing himself under the bus.

Only one thing is perfectly clear: Chris Dodd is in deep doodoo.

And it’s long past time that 99.99999999999% of it caught up with him.

But the combination of being (a) a Democrat, (b) a powerful Committee ranking member and/or Chair, (c) a Senator from a state where, for a Democrat, a Senate seat can be a sinecure, and (d) used to being cut incredible slack and getting away with several decades of shenanigans, must have made him feel invulnerable, if not invincible.  

While some friendly papers at home didn’t even deign to cover the major ethical questions raised by, among other things, his hinky real estate dealings, the stories were heroically kept on life support by editorial scrutiny from The Wall Street Journal and investigative reporting by the Hartford Courant. Now it appears that things have finally reached some kind of critical mass.  (“Is Dodd Toast” asks today’s Daily Beast.)

Sometimes it’s a simple straw that breaks the camel’s back, and Senator Dodd must be really surprised that  —after all the corners he has cut and all the things with which he has gotten away— his straw has turned out to be the AIG bonus payments — an issue on which he was actually in the right.

So it wasn’t easy for me to admit that, having hung him for a goat, I may have been hanging him for a sheep by assuming he was guilty in the AIG case. But evidence is evidence and fair’s fair, and I was convinced by Glenn Greenwald that this was a bum rap.  Indeed, more than a bum rap, it was a cynically calculated (and still highly successful) smear by Obama administration officials including Secretary Geither, Advisor Summers, and COS Emanuel.

So imagine my surprise when Senator Dodd took to the airways yesterday afternoon and confessed to the crime of which I had just so magnanimously absolved him.

I returned to my source to find out what I should think about this new turn of events. 

And here’s what I now think: The whole thing is complicated and confusing, but the bottom line seems to be that Senator Dodd’s CNN confession is every bit as schizophrenic as it sounds.  He admits to being guilty of doing something while continuing to deny  that he actually did it.  

Or at least he admits having been forced (indeed, dragged kicking and screaming) to do it by the people who are now accusing him of having done it.

If you’re interested in this —much less obsessed with it as I am— you will want to follow the trail of Updates on Mr. Greenwald’s original post (particularly Updates III and IV).

They provide a fascinating and disturbing insight into the way the media-political complex works in Washington in March 2009.

As they say, “When the Fed expands the money supply, it doesn’t pass out $100 bills on Broadway. It gives lines of credit to banks and other financial intermediaries to generate some money and also buys up Treasury bills in circulation to pump out more cash. But the money supply has already expanded by 271 percent in the past five months. Why does the Fed expect what hasn’t worked to suddenly start working?”

Think of a parking garage filled with cars. The cars’ owners leave them in the garage, because it’s a bad day with rain and snow and conditions aren’t suitable for driving. Similarly, banks and consumers leave their money in the vault at the Fed or in their bank accounts or under the mattress.

When conditions improve, though, all those metaphorical cars will suddenly be taken out for a drive. All at once. And a traffic jam of monumental proportion will ensue.

When everybody starts spending the money they’re now leaving in vaults and mattresses, way too much money will be chasing way too few goods and services. Double-digit inflation will return to America.

Yesterday’s Fed action won’t help but it will put more money out there that the Fed will have to mop up once the economy, on its own, revives.

The latest news —and the latest headlines— only serve further to confuse (and, more to the point, to obfuscate) exactly where the blame lies for the bonus provision that has come back to bite its author(s) in a very sensitive place.

As for this numbing example of Doddspeak, it’s hard to figure out whether he’s copping a plea or protesting a bum rap.  Or both.

The title is “The dishonest ‘Blame Dodd’ scheme from Treasury officials,” and the subject is the widespread rumor that the Connecticut Senator was personally responsible for the government’s having to pay the the AIG bonuses that have so incensed America.

The Senator’s general ethical MO and the fact that he was the largest individual recipient of AIG campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle, not to mention that one of AIG Financial Products’ largest offices is in Connecticut, made the stories only too easy to believe — by me among many others.

But Mr. Greenwald, who wears his liberalism on his sleeve but checks his fact with his litigator’s brain, provides a convincing chapter and verse that supports the counterintuitive conclusion that —in this case at least— Senator Dodd is the innocent victim of a cynical, and so far successful, sliming by White House and Treasury officials — in particular Secretary Tim Geithner and Economic Adviser Larry Summers and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Their rationale, apparently, is that Dodd’s other ethical problems make him the ideal diversion; and, because his blood is already in the water at home, he may be on his way out anyway.  And, besides, what has he done for us lately?

Mr. Greenwald anatomizes the whole process  and makes his case that “the scheme to heap the blame on [Dodd] for the AIG bonus payments is based on demonstrable falsehoods.”

I’m not defending Chris Dodd here. As I said, there are all sorts of legitimate (though still unresolved) ethical questions about Dodd’s personal financial matters. And if he were responsible for these compensation exemptions, then he ought to be blamed. But he simply wasn’t responsible. He opposed them vehemently (The Hill at the time even noted that “Dodd is not backing down” from his opposition to the exemption that Geithner/Summers were demanding, and Jane [Hamsher] has much more evidence, including the legislative history, conclusively demonstrating what really happened here). Geithner and Summers obviously thought that the exemption was justified when they were running around protecting those past compensation agreements, and they simply ought to explain why, rather than trying to sink Chris Dodd’s political career in order to protect themselves.

The only point here is that what the White House and many journalists are claiming simply did not happen. They’re just inventing a false history in order to blame the politically hapless Dodd for what Geithner and Summers did. And they’re being aided by a right-wing noise machine that knows Dodd is vulnerable and which views the opportunity to blame the AIG bonuses on him, probably accurately, as a final nail in his political coffin (Media Matters today details today the right-wing falsehoods in the attacks on Dodd by documenting that the claims against Dodd are inaccurate, but they don’t say who was actually responsible for the exemption). The next reporter who writes a word about this or listens to anonymous White House officials blame Dodd for these provisions might want to spend a moment reading Jane’s post and looking at the evidence showing what actually happened, rather than mindlessly writing down what Rahm Emanuel  these anonymous White House officials are whispering in their ears.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Neil Cavuto on FOX News Channel, Hank Greenberg attacked the bonuses, saying, “Nobody during my tenure had a contract, starting with me. No one was ever paid a retention bonus. You believed in the company—or you didn’t.”

Greenberg focused on the signing of the bonus promises and the idea that the board of directors and general counsel must have known about upcoming problems. The promise of bonuses, Greenberg said, “wasn’t done in the dead of night.”

[Current AIG Chairman and CEO Edward] Liddy claimed recently that Greenberg bears responsibility for starting the business ventures now largely responsible for AIG’s problems. Greenberg retorted: “We had risk management—what happened when I left the company?”

The answer is twofold: First, the company, with hundreds of subsidiaries, was so complicated that no one other than Greenberg and a handful of his trusted lieutenants who left with him knew what was going on across the board. Two, when Greenberg left AIG headquarters on Pine Street in lower Manhattan, fear of failure walked out of the company too. With a glad-handing boss replacing the one known for outbursts of temper and making constant demands, there no longer that daily gut check before spinning the roulette wheel of credit default swaps again. It is foolish to think that had Greenberg remained, AIG would have been immune to the larger forces that have affected financial institutions, insurance companies and markets worldwide, but it is fair to ask: how bad would it have been?