Stromata Blog

The Second Civil War Begins

When Abraham Lincoln first took the oath of office, civil war had already been thrust upon him. The Southern States were seceding one by one, and the backers of secession had made it clear that they preferred independence to reunion on any terms.

Barack Obama, who sees himself as a man comparable to Lincoln, started his own civil war today. Like the intransigent slave owners 150 years ago, he made it clear that there is no middle ground between his principles and those of his adversaries. They imagine that “a single individual” can, alone and isolated, cope with any problem that may arise in life. He knows that only “collective action”, organized by the federal government, will suffice. Between those distant poles, there is nothing: no free exchange of goods and services, no family ties, no friendships, no voluntary associations, no charitable endeavors, not even any other levels of government.

And what are the problems that loom before us? Not a stagnant economy with gargantuan federal budget deficits. “An economic recovery has begun.” Not a terrorist resurgence that murdered an American ambassador a few months ago and more Americans last week. “A decade of war is now ending.”

No, what’s of pressing importance is that the federal government ensure that the climate will, for the first time in two billion years, cease changing, that women’s earnings will average the same as men’s, regardless of different career choices, that homosexuals will not merely be left unmolested by the law but will receive a governmental seal of approval for their relationships. Not to mention gun control, immigration reform, the elimination of lines at voting booths and, needless to say, higher taxes on all those wicked millionaires and billionaires.

When World War II broke out, President Roosevelt declared that “Dr. New Deal” would have to give way to “Dr. Win the War”. President Obama has the opposite view. Faced with staggering economic and foreign policy challenges, he wants to ensconce himself in the progressive comfort zone. He knows, of course, that none of his agenda will be enacted during the next two years, except to the extent that he can ram it through by executive fiat. He also must realize that his refusal to address economic issues in any serious way risks a series of crises. Evidently, he counts on Congressional Republicans to yield enough to keep the government operating and counts on his friends in the media to blame those same Republicans for the turmoil.

We are at Thucydides called “stasis”, where the factions within a polity can reach no agreement. Stasis has not yet – and deo volente will not – proceed to actual violence. But it is ominous that the country’s chief magistrate, possessor of immense powers of obstruction, openly regards his elected opposition as illegitimate and thinks that dealing with trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see is a trivial concern.

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways, gradually and then suddenly.”

– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Further reading: The Wall Street Journal, “We the Government”:

Americans want their Presidents to succeed, because they naturally assume that when Presidents do well so will the country. Mr. Obama will thus get a respectful hearing for his agenda, even if he has never been as candid as he was Monday in asserting his liberal ambitions. But if his second term does break down into more partisan gridlock and rancor, let the record show that the President set the tone with his second inaugural.

Let Obama Be Obama

As the Fiscal Cliff draws nigh, Republicans suffer the angst of trying to strike a deal with an intractable President while avoiding either (i) real tax hikes coupled with illusory spending cuts or (ii) blame for the failure to agree. Since the President’s preference is higher taxes plus higher spending, and his default bargaining tactics are assaults on straw men and demonization of opponents, the prospects for a happy outcome for either country or party look dismal. In these bleak circumstances, I have a suggestion: Let Obama be Obama.

Why not announce that Republicans will not block whatever the President proposes, will not filibuster in the Senate and will clear passage in the House, subject to these two conditions?

First, at least 150 House Democrats must vote aye. Speaker Boehner will then see that enough Republican Congressmen abstain so that the bill passes.

Second, the President’s plan must actually reduce the deficit, starting in the current fiscal year rather than in the remote future. My concept is that the GOP would set deficit targets for the next several years: say, $800 billion in FY2013, decreasing by $100 billion in each year thereafter, until a balanced budget is reached. None of the gimmickry of the last Obama budget (the one that was defeated unanimously in both House and Senate), where a purported $4 trillion in “cuts” over ten years led to bigger deficits and a higher national debt at the end. And, needless to say, no reliance on zeroing out the line item for “fraud, waste and abuse”.

Within that framework, it would be up to the President to put forward his ideas. If he can’t or won’t, perhaps it will be obvious to even the obtuse fraternity of American journalists that he has no interest in resolving the country’s long-term fiscal problems. If he does come up with a program, it will be his and his party’s, and they will have undiluted accountability.

The best outcome, of course, would be for Barack Obama to accept the responsibilities of his office and devise rational means to restore national finances to a prosperous equilibrium. He hasn’t shown any talent in that direction, but – let’s not be inveterate pessimists – the challenge could bring out unsuspected abilities.

Lest Benghazi Evaporate

One of the practical political strengths of the Obama Administration is that it is so inept in so many areas that critics often lose focus. What would be major controversies or scandals under a competent President – Obamacare’s array of tax hikes and Medicare cuts, the Keystone pipeline, the death toll of Operation Fast and Furious, the misspending of “stimulus” appropriations, the bungled Iraqi status of forces agreement, the facilitation of illegal campaign contributions, Russia’s expulsion of pro-Western nongovernmental organizations (just one of the bitter fruits of Hillary Clinton’s “reset”), the President’s eleventh hour reneging on last year’s fiscal “grand bargain”, the strongarming of defense contractors to disregard the WARN Act, and so on and so far – grow dim and fuzzy. So it may be with the Benghazi episode. So much was mishandled that one can easily lose track, especially with the assistance of “news media” (“Democratic operatives with bylines”, as Instapundit calls them) that have no interest in investigating very deeply.

“Benghazi” is, in fact, shorthand for five discrete failures, any one of which ought to be fatal to the Administration’s reputation:

First, security at the consulate in Benghazi and its CIA-run “annex” was hopelessly inadequate. That failure was all the more culpable if, as has been alleged, the annex served as a prison for captured terrorists and therefore needed protection from attempts to free them (perhaps one of the objectives of the Benghazi attack).

Second, on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, American forces in the Mediterranean were, by the Administration’s own account, ill-positioned to act against new attacks or threats. Hence, it took almost a full day for significant military forces to arrive in Benghazi after the assault on the consulate began.

Third, the response to the attack was slow and feeble, despite that ability of officials in Washington to watch events unfold as they happened. Apparently, there were no useful contingency plans, so hours were wasted before any troops were ordered to move. If the President himself did anything but utter platitudes to his subordinates and then go to bed, he has been uncharacteristically reticent about his role.

Given Failure #2, the options on September 11th may have been limited, but that doesn’t excuse the utter lack of energy in responding to the crisis. For instance, mobs in Afghanistan have often been dispersed by having a fighter jet roar over them at low altitude. We have a major air base in Sicily, less than an hour’s flight from Libya. Did no one think to use this tried-and-true tactic? It might not have worked, but doing nothing didn’t work either.

Fourth, once troops did tardily arrive, they didn’t secure the buildings. Reporters were able to wander in days later and pick up classified documents. Terrorists had the same opportunity.

Fifth, the Administration concocted a cover story distancing the attack from terrorism in general and al-Qa’eda in particular, apparently to avoid undermining one of the themes of the President’s reelection campaign.

In addition, there is what ought to be a scandal, namely, the arrest of the man whose YouTube video was initially blamed for the attack. It’s true that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula seems to be an unsavory character who had violated the terms of his probation by posting the video under a pseudonym. (Gee, why wouldn’t a harsh critic of Islam use his real name? Pim Fortuyn could not be reached for comment.) The U.S. government went after the video maker, however, before it knew anything about him, expending the nontrivial effort to track down the man behind the pseudonym. Why, if not to find a way to punish an uncongenial opinion? The father of one of the murdered Americans says that Hillary Clinton told him that the troublemaker would be found and jailed, and he was – no nonsense about the First Amendment.

Overshadowing the Benghazi failures is the larger, more serious failure of the President’s Middle East policy. He has chosen to drift with the swelling current of Islamic extremism. Turkey’s Erdoğan and Egypt’s Morsi win his praise, even as they move toward the establishment of anti-Western dictatorships. Anti-extremists gain only occasional polite words.

All of this bungling should not be reduced to a dispute about whether our ambassador to the United Nations, who was given the assignment of retailing the phony story to the media, was more a knave, a dupe or a fool. If the main consequence of Benghazi is that John Kerry overleaps her to become Secretary of State, that will be worse than a blunder. As Jonathan S. Tobin observes,

The real issue at the State Department is not whether Rice lied about Benghazi. Everyone in the administration lied about it from the top down. . . .

The administration’s eagerness to portray the terror attack on our diplomats in Benghazi as a spontaneous protest stemmed from an agenda which required that nothing be allowed to disrupt the president’s politically-motivated narrative that bin Laden’s death meant the end of the threat of Islamist terrorism. However, the willingness of this administration to acquiesce to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and even to go on sending billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Morsi regime should not be passed over in the zeal to nail Rice on Benghazi.

Allowing Rice to be rewarded for her deceptions rightly rankles Republicans, but no one should be under the impression that substituting Kerry for her will improve American foreign policy. . . . There needs to be accountability for all of the administration’s errors, including the shocking tilt toward the Brotherhood, and not just Benghazi.

There is a real danger that, with help from the incurious media, and possibly from Republicans playing short-term D.C. games, the Benghazi story will go the way of Fast and Furious, just another whimper on the downward road to American impotence.

Shouldn’t Susan Rice Be Furious (If Not Fast)?

At his news conference yesterday, President Obama proffered a patronizing defense of United Nations ambassador Susan Rice, who has been sharply criticized by Senators McCain, Graham and Ayotte for misleading the public about the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Those In The Know say that she is in line to become the next Secretary of State. After the way she’s been treated by the Administration, she’ll take the job only if she has shed all vestiges of self-respect.

On the Sunday after the murders in Benghazi, she trooped through five television studios to deliver the message that the assault was a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video. She delivered that message with firm confidence. We now know that it was false. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a well-planned terrorist operation for which those responsible for security were woefully unprepared.

The President insists that Ambassador Rice, “who had nothing to do with Benghazi”, simply relied on CIA talking points and can’t be blamed if the CIA’s assessment was wrong. The talking points have been leaked to reporters at least three separate times (as JustOneMinute notes). What do they say?

• "The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.
• This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.
• The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of US citizens."

Here is how the ambassador elaborated on those points in her ABC News appearance:

Well, Jake, first of all, it’s important to know that there's an FBI investigation that has begun and will take some time to be completed. That will tell us with certainty what transpired. But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.

We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in – in the wake of the revolution in Libya are – are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there. We'll wait to see exactly what the investigation finally confirms, but that's the best information we have at present.

The best information that Ambassador Rice had, perhaps, but “we”, that is, the Obama Administration, knew or had strong reason to know much more:

Ambassador Rice’s claims came despite the fact that, according to congressional testimony, the State Department had surveillance feeds and they were able to monitor the attacks in “almost real-time” and that according to media reports, an unarmed Predator drone was performing surveillance missions over Libya when the attack on the consulate in Benghazi began; within 24 hours of the deadly attack, the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington that there were eyewitness reports that the attack was carried out by militants; and e-mails show that officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that an Islamic militant group (Ansar al-Sharia) had claimed credit for the attack.

In addition, Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says that within 24 hours of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi he had information from intelligence agencies that what happened were terrorist attacks, not spontaneous attacks inspired by the anti-Islamic video. Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that accounts of the attack and the firepower employed “indicate something more than a spontaneous protest.”

There’s more.

The Washington Post was reporting on the day after the attack that “the early indications were that the assault had been planned” by “heavily-armed militias.” Journalist Eli Lake reported, “Within 24 hours of the 9-11 anniversary attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, U.S. intelligence agencies had strong indications al Qaeda–affiliated operatives were behind the attack, and had even pinpointed the location of one of those attackers.” And in a story in early October, the Associated Press reported, “The State Department now says it never believed the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a film protest gone awry.”

Quite simply, the U.N. ambassador was given the job of explaining to the American people what had happened in Benghazi, without being given most of the pertinent facts. There’s no evidence that she lied but no doubt that she was duped.

Shouldn’t she be outraged at being used as a conduit for an incomplete and mendacious story that, one can see in retrospect, was designed to minimize the impact of the Benghazi bungling on the election campaign? Most people dislike being misled and manipulated. If Susan Rice is an honorable woman, she will resign her position and refuse any further contact with the Obama Administration. If she doesn’t, her willingness to be a tarnished pawn should not be rewarded by promotion to a higher rank.

After Barack Leaves the Building

Abe Greenwald wonders what the Democratic Party will do after its celebrity President completes his final term in office.

Obama couldn’t run on his record, which proved to be no problem – Americans didn’t vote on his record. According to exit polls, 77 percent of voters said the economy is bad and only 25 percent said they’re better off than they were four years ago. But since six in ten voters claimed the economy as their number one issue, it’s clear this election wasn’t about issues at all.

The president’s reelection is not evidence of a new liberal America, but rather of the illogical and confused experience that is infatuation. For multiple reasons, Americans continue to have a crush on Barack Obama even after his universally panned first term. No longer quite head over heels, they’re at the “I know he’s no good for me, but I can change him” phase. Whatever this means, it surely doesn’t suggest conservatives would be wise to move closer to policies that aren’t even popular among Obama supporters.

Why isn’t soul searching underway on the left? When the personality at the center of the cult leaves the stage in four years, Democrats will own his results without the benefit of his appeal.

The question is a good one. The answer, I imagine, is that an infatuated lover isn’t capable of evaluating rationally what the beloved does. William Randolph Hearst truly believed that Marion Davies was a great actress. So long as Barack Obama is President, his devotees will truly believe that he is a brilliant national leader whose difficulties arise solely from his being stabbed in the back by the Republicans. I’ve talked to such people. To them, the stimulus failed because the GOP wanted it to fail – no need to speculate about how that sabotage was accomplished – while the past four years of foreign policy have been an unbroken series of successes. I haven’t yet heard the excuses for Benghazi, because the Obami don’t regard that as anything more than a phony issue created by Mitt Romney.

Can Obama pass on his aura to Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Andrew Cuomo? For that matter, will he want to? He doesn’t impress me as a man who enjoys sharing adulation.

I can think of only one potential successor who would inherit celebrity status: Michelle Obama. Listen for the whispers, perhaps starting in only a few months. If you hear them, shudder.

“History Does Not Have To Be Probable”

So said W. Bruce Lincoln somewhere in his fine biography of Tsar Nicholas I. The disgrace of General David Petraeus, until yesterday this generation’s combination Patton, Pershing, Lee and Grant, illustrates the maxim.

At least, the Official Story is wildly improbable. Supposedly, the FBI began investigating General Petraeus months ago, discovered that he’d seduced a journalist (or maybe she, him), concluded that this indiscretion by the director of the CIA was a national security risk, and didn’t bother to inform the White House until late last Tuesday or the Congressional intelligence committees at all. If that’s true, the whole FBI should be cashiered, because it’s clearly suffering from a culture of lassitude and incompetence.

What would be more probable?

A story much rebroadcast in the dexterosphere says that the White House was informed promptly and deliberately sat on the story, leaving a blackmailable official in a sensitive position, in order to avoid a pre-election scandal. I wish that were an absurd idea.

Even more do I wish that Paul Rahe’s theory – that the general was blackmailed into supporting the Administration’s initial (now inoperative) claim that all the trouble in Benghazi was the product of a cheesy YouTube video – were less believable than the official line.

Ann Althouse doesn’t have a detailed theory but thinks that the Benghazi debacle or disagreements about drone warfare are the most likely reasons for the sudden resignation; the affair, she implies, was just a convenient pretext.

There certainly is a whiff of pretext here. Once General Petraeus publicly disclosed the affair, the danger of blackmail vanished, and it’s been a long time since adultery, in and of itself, has been treated as a disqualification for public office (except sometimes for Republican candidates). If the Administration had wanted to retain the CIA director, his misconduct would have been labeled “personal and private”, a matter for him to work out with Mrs. Petraeus and their children.

Probability says that persons who had the President’s ear wanted Petraeus out and stumbled on a plausible reason to oust him. Maybe they were just lucky. Maybe they scoured his life searching for a scandal. We can be sure that they’re now working hard to make sure that we never learn anything more and that the improbable story goes into the history books. It would be interesting to know who they are and what the general was doing that distressed them.

First Glimpse of Four More Years: The Fiscal Cliff

President Obama offered his first post-election statement on the “Fiscal Cliff”, and his words, construed very literally, led optimists to imagine that there’s room for a deal with House Republicans. Speaker Boehner has already stated that his House majority won’t block revenue raising, so long as it consists of closing loopholes that benefit upper income taxpayers rather than raising tax rates. The President didn’t say that rate hikes were a non-negotiable demand. As the Washington Post described it,

Republicans say they are willing to entertain new tax revenue but will not allow rates to rise on upper-income earners, as is scheduled to happen at the end of the year. Notably, Obama did not say rates must rise on upper-income Americans — only that they must pay more in taxes — leaving room for a potential compromise.

Jen Rubin thought that Obama regretted his intransigence last year:

This is precisely where we were about 15 months ago when the grand bargain on precisely these terms broke down. It may shock dim reporters or confuse Democratic spinners, but this is nothing new. The only thing that has changed is that the president has the experience of seeing a grand bargain of historic proportions slip through his grasp. He and Boehner know precisely where the deal is to be had — where they were when Obama upped the ante on taxes and the grand bargain crumbled.

She speculated that, with no need to worry about reelection, “the President really has no interest in getting pushed around by unrealistic liberals in his party”, the “safe blue state Senate Democrats would just as soon demand a tax rate hike, let the country go over the cliff and blame Republicans”.

Doesn’t that sound a trifle Pollyannish? The reason why blue state liberals can be unrealistic is that they have no worries about reelection. Obama has no worries about reelection. Obama was in his day the Senate’s most liberal member. There’s a syllogism in there somewhere waiting to get out, and it doesn’t point to a strong aversion to “demand[ing] a tax rate hike, let[ting] the country go over the cliff and blam[ing] Republicans”. He’ll leave the White House in four years either way. If he stands firm, he’ll be a left-wing hero, whatever happens to the economy. If he compromises, his closest ideological compeers will complain that he has once again backed down before the GOP.

The President didn’t take questions, so no one could ask him whether he was in fact moving toward compromise. His press secretary, though, doused that prospect:

Jay Carney just said in the White House briefing Obama will only accept a deal that repeals the Bush tax cuts for the top tax bracket. “If a bill were to reach his desk that extends tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent, he will not sign,” said Carney. “We cannot afford it.” Interestingly enough, Carney also said the president wants to both repeal the top-level Bush tax cuts and reform the tax code.

The idea, then, is to restore Clintonian tax rates with fewer deductions and exclusions, so that “the rich” get hammered twice – three times when one adds in the Obamacare surtax on their investment income. The President’s constant refrain, repeated today, is that he is “asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes”. The combined effect of the already enacted Obamacare levy and his new proposals will be a 15 to 20 percent tax increase for the group that already pays the highest taxes in proportion to income. “A little more” is, I suppose, a flexible standard. Obama’s notion of it doesn’t sound like the first step toward reconciliation.

Answer to Pop Quiz: The last run of three consecutive Presidents elected to two terms was Jefferson-Madison-Monroe. Monroe’s second term was dubbed “The Era of Good Feelings”. I doubt that Obama’s will be remembered that way.

How to Lose Tomorrow by Winning Today

When Republicans win elections, the theme of liberal commentators (that is, almost all of the elite media) is how the extremism of the victors will alienate moderates. When Republicans lose, the theme is the impending extinction of their party as its elderly white base dies off. Democrats enter the analysis only as the beneficiaries of the GOP’s purported death wish.

In a contrarian spirit, I’d like to focus my own post-2012 thoughts on the Democratic Party, now beating its chest in triumph after doing not too much worse than in 2008. A few points seem to be abundantly clear:

1. Presidential elections and mid-term elections are not comparable events. The most straightforward explanation of the contrast between 2010 and 2012 is not that lots of Americans changed their minds but that different Americans came to the polls. When the Presidency isn’t at stake, turnout depends more no enthusiasm and less on organization. There’s not much doubt – the size and energy of the candidates’ rallies is evidence enough – that Mitt Romney won a majority of enthusiastic voters. The Democrats, however, whipped in a larger proportion of their unenthusiastic ones, and a vote is a vote, whatever the degree of fervor behind it.

To win the mid-term contests, the Democrats must either have a record that generates enthusiasm or find a way to improve turnout in non-Presidential years. Neither is an easy task. The first is likely to be especially difficult for President Obama. He hasn’t put forward much of a second term agenda, and he’s just coming into the inheritance from his first two years in office, including all of the unpopular parts of Obamacare (the individual mandate, cuts in Medicare Advantage and in payments to providers, cuts in flexible spending accounts, a flurry of new taxes, IPAB, etc.), Dodd-Frank’s unintended (though readily foreseeable) consequences, national debt at 100 percent of GDP, a paralyzed business community, a stagnant work force, and a collapsing foreign policy. (It’s not just the Fiscal Cliff!) Forecasts for 2014 would be premature. I’m not, however, placing any big bets against the Tea Party.

There’s a possibility that we’ll see a pattern: Democrats winning the Presidency, then suffering repudiation two years later, then winning again, and so on and on. That may, in fact, be the best the Dems can hope for.

2. The Democrats can depend only on their base. Mitt Romney carried independents by a solid margin, and there was very little Republican crossover vote to Obama. Democrats alone were sufficient to secure victory this year, but will that be true in the future? If Gallup’s and Rasmussen’s surveys are to be believed, party identification is at parity, and there’s no Law of Nature that gives Democrats a perpetual turnout advantage (or guarantees that the other side’s Get Out the Vote effort will be a fiasco). Without a strong appeal to independents, the Dems will be leaning heavily on organizational excellence (and, cynics who note the 99-plus percent turnouts in Philadelphia precincts where no Republican election judges were allowed in might say, vote fraud).

3. The Democratic base is a fragmented assemblage of incompatible interests. Labor unions, billionaires, celebrities, professors, public employees, left-wing clergy, unmarried women, under-30's, blacks, Latinos, Jews, homosexuals: That’s a hodgepodge, not a coalition.

Of course, a coalition by definition includes elements that don’t see eye-to-eye. This one, though, seems particularly friable, so that just a few major conflicts could dissolve it.

To take one possibility, when Obamacare’s individual mandate kicks in, young voters will face a choice between paying additional taxes or paying grossly inflated health insurance premiums. One of the system’s features is that premiums will be allowed to rise with age much less steeply than risks. Hence, young women will subsidize old men. Will they retain their enthusiasm for the architects of that arrangement?

4. And its numerical superiority is neither impressive nor growing. Although President Obama was reelected, his margin was closer to Bush 2004 than Obama 2008. Many of the Democrats’ Senate victories were similarly thin. The Obama coalition has a lot less heft than FDR’s or Reagan’s.

Notably, Obama was the first President since James Madison to be reelected with a significantly reduced majority from his first outing. According to the exit polls, his share of the vote fell among almost every group surveyed. Maybe that doesn’t really mean that the Democratic base is shrinking, but it certainly isn’t getting bigger.

The road to Democratic supremacy may be rockier than optimists on the Left and pessimists on the Right conceive. What’s more, this year’s Obama campaign, successful as it was in the short run, may have exacerbated his party’s long-run weaknesses. It was a “base election” in two senses: Obama won by getting out his base, and his rhetoric was tawdry, vicious and empty. “Not One of Us” and “Voting Is the Best Revenge” aren’t quite in a league with “Morning in America”.

Very significantly, there is no sign that the Obama campaign moved public opinion in the direction of his policies. As Ilya Somin observes, exit poll respondents favored repealing Obamacare and a smaller role for government in general. These figures suggest that a portion of the Obama vote was based purely on identity politics or anti-Republican animus (which the Obami worked hard to inflame).

Counting on votes from people who disagree with your main policies and principles is a risky strategy. Failing to make a real effort to convince them is suicidal. That’s why Obama’s reelection could be seen someday as the victory that paved the way to defeat.

Pop Quiz: When was the last time the United States had three two-term Presidents in a row?

Answer to be provided when I get around to my next post.

Who Built That?

As John Podhoretz suggests, Barack Obama may well have ended all electoral suspense with two sentences: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen.” Unless America is a vastly different country from the one I see, no candidate who espouses that sentiment is viable outside the Harvard or Yale faculty lounge.

Most of the ridicule directed at this puerile version of economics has focused on its ignorance of the role of entrepreneurship. What we reward businessmen for is taking what is already there – land, labor, capital – and making it more valuable. Obama’s buddy Elizabeth Warren would understand this if she possessed a molecule of self-awareness. She made a lot of money buying houses, fixing them up and selling them at a profit. She didn’t build the houses; she didn’t create the free market economy that let her flip them (she and her “Occupy” disciples would have destroyed it if they could); but she did make the properties worth more to purchasers than what she had paid for them, and it seems patently just that she be allowed to keep that increment rather than have it allocated to others by an omnipotent government.

But I’d like to call attention to a different point. There’s a half truth in what the President said, half of a truth whose whole is one of the fundamental conservative tenets. The markets on which entrepreneurs make their fortunes (or suffer their losses) would not exist without a stable, lawful civil society, which in turn would not exist without virtuous habits. It is not from the generosity of the baker that we get our bread. But if bakers could not by and large count on the honesty, industry and other good qualities of their fellow men, they wouldn’t be able to bake. As James Madison put it, “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.”

Building a successful business is very difficult without “virtue in the people”. It would be reasonable to conclude that successful businessmen have a moral duty to promote virtue, to be good examples themselves and, in Charles Murray’s words, “to preach what they practice”. Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s what Barack Obama had in mind.

Presidential Trivia

Question: Fifteen elected Presidents have won reelection (not counting Grover Cleveland, who lost before he won again). How many of them did worse in their second than their first elections?

Answer: One – James Madison (122 out of 176 electoral votes in 1808, 128 out of 218 in 1812; the popular vote meant little in that era and isn’t reliably known). Woodrow Wilson could arguably be another: He improved his share of the popular vote between 1912 and 1916 but, with the Republican vote no longer split, did much less well in the Electoral College. All of the rest bettered their first results, sometimes by a smidgeon (Jackson, George W. Bush), sometimes hugely (Jefferson, Lincoln, Nixon, Clinton). Most common have been comfortable victories followed by waltzes to a second term (Washington, Monroe, Grant, McKinley, FDR, Eisenhower, Reagan).

It will be a vast surprise if the President is able to come very close to the 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes that he garnered in 2008. In fact, I have yet to see a credible projection that forecasts more than about 300 electoral votes for him, while polls put him well south of 53%. An Obama victory with, say, 280 electoral votes and 50.5% of the popular vote would have no precedent more recent than Madison. The desperate flailing of the Obami – it’s awfully early to be accusing your opponent of a “felony” – suggests that they worry that their man will join the ranks of those Presidents (Van Buren, Hoover, George H. W. Bush) who won solidly the first time out and were unable to repeat.

No doubt this history has already been recounted somewhere on the Internet, but I don’t happen to have run across it.

The Obamatax and the Constitution

If I’m ever going to resume regular blogging, Independence Day seems like a fitting and proper moment, and the Supreme Court has provided irresistible subject matter with its astonishing Obamacare decision.

I’m not very interested in the Chief Justice’s motives for – apparently – changing his mind about the law’s constitutionality after initially voting to overturn it. I’ll note, though, that the alleged “sources inside the Court” who told journalist Jan Crawford that Justice Roberts bowed to left-wing bullying have no way of knowing that, except in the unlikely event that he confessed it to them. In fact, there is a plausible argument for the proposition that Obamacare’s penalty for failing to obtain health insurance coverage is more like a tax than a penalty. The Chief Justice could have come to that conclusion sincerely, in which case he was duty bound to rule on that basis, regardless of what he thought of the merits of the statute.

The question that the Chief Justice’s opinion scants is whether, if the penalty is a tax, it is a tax authorized by the Constitution. The parties barely argued that point, but, now that we know that the Commerce Clause isn’t sufficient to sustain Obamacare, the seldom noticed provisions of Article I, sec. 9, cl. 4 – “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken” (modified by the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorizes a “tax on incomes” without apportionment) – are of vital importance.

Why might the Obamacare penalty, clearly labeled a “penalty” and not a “tax” by Congress, nonetheless be a tax. The dissenting opinion spells out the distinction between taxes and penalties:

Our cases establish a clear line between a tax and a penalty: “‘[A] tax is an enforced contribution to provide for the support of government; a penalty . . . is an exaction imposed by statute as punishment for an unlawful act.’” United States v. Reorganized CF&I Fabricators of Utah, Inc., 518 U. S. 213, 224 (1996) (quoting United States v. La Franca, 282 U. S. 568, 572 (1931)).

A perfect tax raises revenue with no punitive consequences. A perfect penalty raises no revenue at all; it is severe enough to deter all of the unlawful conduct that it targets. The Chief Justice’s primary argument, reduced to its nub, is that some penalties have so little deterrent effect that they amount to pure revenue measures and thus should be treated as taxes for constitutional purposes. I doubt that view is correct, but let’s assume it arguendo.

As a deterrent to going without insurance, the Obamacare penalty will fail. Consider what it will amount to in 2016, when it is fully phased in: A single taxpayer with no dependents whose adjusted gross income (modified in ways that are of no significance to most people) is between about $9,750 and about $37,550 will have to pay $695 if he doesn’t obtain health insurance. For a married couple with two children under age 18 and modified AGI of between about $19,500 and about $102,900, the penalty will be $2,085. Above those levels, the amount is based on income, though no one will be penalized more than the national average cost of the least expensive level of coverage that Obamacare permits anybody to buy (“bronze level” coverage). [Note: These calculations assume that the standard deduction and personal exemption will be the same in 2016 as in 2012. The actual ranges will be a bit higher. Taxpayers with modified AGI below the minimum are “required” to obtain insurance but aren’t subject to any penalty. In practice, virtually all of them will be covered by Medicaid, which satisfies the insurance coverage mandate.]

The cost of disobeying the individual mandate is thus, for all but the very wealthiest, far less than the premiums for any sort of health insurance. (The bronze level premium is expected to be around $12,000 a year for a family of four.) Moreover, Obamacare requires insurance companies to accept all applicants without regard to pre-existing conditions (“guaranteed issue”) and without adjusting premiums to reflect their health (“community rating”). The penalty, then, is no incentive to buy insurance before one becomes expensively sick or injured. Once people realize this fact, the penalty will raise plenty of revenue. There won’t be many non-senior citizens who won’t pay it, other than those with employer-provided coverage (probably many fewer than today) or Medicaid, the very ill (for whom reimbursements exceed insurance premiums) and the small groups that are exempt from the penalty (such as illegal aliens, Indians living on reservations, prisoners and persons with too little income to file tax returns).

Revenue will be reduced somewhat, because the IRS has almost no effective means of enforcing the penalty. It can withhold unpaid penalties from tax refunds but cannot garnish wages, attach assets or file tax liens, nor are there any criminal penalties for failure to pay. The government will have to sue many delinquents individually if it wants to collect, which will be uneconomical. These difficulties should not, however, affect the legal analysis.

If the penalty is going to raise revenue without deterring “unlawful conduct”, characterizing it as a tax isn’t preposterous. But we then face the Constitution’s clear command: If the Obamatax is a “Capitation, or other direct, Tax”, it must be apportioned among the states by population, which the penalty is not.

The government’s defense on this point was that Obamacare imposes a “tax on incomes” authorized by the Sixteenth Amendment. The reasoning was that the penalty is the greater of a flat rate of $695 per uncovered individual ($347.50 for dependents under age 18) or 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income (subject to a cap). The second element supposedly turns the levy into an income tax. That argument has two fatal weaknesses:

First, what gives rise to liability for the Obamatax is not the receipt of income but the failure to obtain health insurance coverage. The levy is not a “tax on incomes” but a tax on conduct (or non-conduct), with the amount based (for some taxpayers) on income.

Second, for the majority – most likely the considerable majority – of taxpayers, income will be irrelevant to the amount of the penalty. For them, it will be a simple capitation tax. The fact that a few people will pay an income tax instead can’t rescue the capitation from the need for apportionment.

The alternative argument would be that the penalty is an excise tax, permissible under Congress’s authority to levy “duties, imposts and excises”. There is a hint of that in the Chief Justice’s opinion, but no one can seriously contend that a tax on doing nothing is an excise, and the government didn’t try to do so in its own briefs.

It seems, therefore, that the following propositions are incontrovertible:

1. The Obamacare penalty was intended to punish “unlawful conduct”. Since Congress had no authority under the Commerce Clause (or any other part of the Constitution) to compel the purchase of insurance, it can’t make that failure unlawful and cannot penalize it.

2. If one ignores Congress’s intentions, the penalty can be construed as a tax, because it will raise substantial revenue and doesn’t effectively deter any conduct, lawful or unlawful.

3. Considered as a tax, the penalty is a capitation, because, for most individuals, it is a flat amount that does not vary by income.

4. A capitation tax must be apportioned among the states in proportion to population. Since the statute contains no apportionment provisions and the amount collected from state to state will certainly not meet the proportionality standard, the Obamatax is unconstitutional.

As a final note, what the preceding discussion most clearly shows is that, constitutional or not, Obamacare has no prospects for success. The individual mandate is bound to be ignored by almost all of the young, healthy persons whose actuarially excessive insurance premiums are supposed to support the structure. Without revenue from that group, guaranteed issue and community rating will destroy private insurance companies.

It’s possible, of course, that the eradication of health insurance and a return to out-of-pocket payment would be less than catastrophic. That is, after all, the way that the market for almost all other goods and services operates. The missing piece here is a way to hedge against extraordinary medical costs, the role now filled by insurance. Since Obamacare outlaws all health insurance that doesn’t conform to its prescriptions, a substitute is required. Perhaps some entrepreneur cleverer than I will devise one and make a fortune.

Or perhaps Congress will simply repeal this faux-constitutional mess.

Addendum: For reasons that I cannot fathom, this post has drawn a heavy volume of spam comments (mostly pushing phony pharmacies), which I’m tired of deleting. Therefore, comments are now closed.

The Boehner Boomlet

Yesterday the Dow closed above 13,000. Today the NASDAQ index is flirting with 3,000, bank lending is reported to be strengthening, and last quarter’s GDP growth has been revised upward, albeit to a rather anemic 3.0 percent. All good news, even if in the one swallow looking for a summer sense. The White House and its media propagandists are already cheering. But there’s something curious about their cheer.

For the past year, as the President has been telling us for about a year, his policies have hit a stone wall in Congress. Except for the minuscule payroll tax cut, Administration economic initiatives have gone nowhere: The Bush “tax cuts for the wealthy” have continued; there’s been no “second stimulus”; the growth in federal spending has decelerated. Basically, the government has put itself on autopilot instead of trying to steer the economy. All because of those Do-Nothing House Republicans. Yet the economy has improved!

Post hoc non propter hoc, I know. Still, there’s this:

The President demanded and got a near-trillion dollar “stimulus” that, he said, would keep unemployment below eight percent and bring it down to not much over six percent by early 2012. Now, with that number at “only” 8.3 percent (partly because labor force participation has been declining), he explains that his experts didn’t understand the true state of the economy three years ago. Nor did they understand it two years ago, when they touted “Recovery Summer”. Nor one year ago, when they warned that John Boehner’s intransigence would lead to disaster. But of course they understand it now.

On the other side, conservative economists declared that the stimulus wouldn’t improve conditions much and might make them worse. Their cavils were accurate. Maybe that was just happenstance, or their principles have a closer relationship to reality than Barack Obama’s.

The “Boehner Boomlet”, as we ought to call it, isn’t likely to turn into a full-fledged boom – not with tax increases scheduled for January of next year, the impending layoffs of over 100,000 soldiers and Marines, rising energy prices, an inflationary monetary policy (so far dampened by the public’s disinclination to spend the excess greenbacks), further losses anticipated from crony capitalist “green” subsidies, and the prospect of Obamacare. Nonetheless, let’s give credit where credit is due. Sometimes “don’t just stand there, do nothing” is better than a number of more frenetic alternatives.

The President’s Super PAC

For over a year, and as recently as Super Bowl Sunday, Barack Obama has been excoriating the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (which held that Americans don’t lose their right to free speech when they associate as a corporation) and the ensuing phenomenon of “Super PAC’s”, vehicles designed to engage in corporate speech. Now his reelection campaign is promoting a pro-Obama Super PAC, headed by two former White House staffers and blessed by the campaign’s blog.

The Constitution protects everybody, even those who want to cut back Constitutional liberties, so I have no objection to the President’s willingness to utilize instruments that he has described as “a threat to democracy”. I won’t even chide him for hypocrisy, that most over-denounced of political vices. It isn’t unreasonable for his campaign manager to plead that Democrats shouldn’t be expected to “unilaterally disarm”. (Unilateral disarmament is only for the U.S. military.)

What this development ought to do is put paid to the assumption that the Obama campaign can raise a billion dollars for the reelection effort. Until just recently, everybody took it for granted that cash would pour in the way it did in 2008. If the President’s men still believed that, they would have kept to what they regard as the moral high ground and at least pretended to have no desire for Super PAC support, which they would scarcely have needed. Instead, they are making a high profile pitch – as high as legally allowed – for donations.

Evidently, the myriads of small donors who gave in 2008, many of whom have since become un- or underemployed, aren’t expected to be as generous this year. Or perhaps there is a fear that Federal Election Commission this time will insist that Internet transactions be screened to eliminate foreign and other illegal contributions (as was not done last time, when Obama received money from, among others, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip). In any event, it’s time to look to corporate cronies, the real base of today’s Democratic Party.

Sources: Alana Goodman, “Obama Campaign Embraces Super PACs”
Associated Press, “Obama Reverses Course on Super PACs, Seeks Support”
Jennifer Rubin, “Obama: Did I Reallly Say I Didn’t Like Super PACs?”
Andrew Stiles, “Serial Hy-PAC-risy: Obama’s Reversal Comes as No Surprise”

Parables and Politics

It’s been a while, but urge to blog is slowly returning. What has tipped me over the edge is the President’s campaign speech last week at the National Prayer Breakfast, in which he invoked Scripture in support of “shared sacrifice” (aka tax increases). His proof text was Luke 12:48: “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required” (KJV). Earlier, he had quoted from C. S. Lewis: “Christianity has not, and does not profess to have a detailed political program.” But that precept apparently does not apply to the program put forward by the Rev. Dr. Barack.

But let’s set aside the dispute about the political pertinence of the Gospel (a quarrel that, like the poor, we have with us always) and consider instead the President’s performance as Exegete-in-Chief.

The quoted snippet comes from a parable about servants whose master is away and who are supposed to be watching for his return. Some scant that duty and instead beat their fellow servants and indulge to excess in food and drink. The master then returns unexpectedly and metes out exemplary punishment:

The servant who knows what his master wants, but has not even started to carry out those wishes, will receive very many strokes of the lash. The one who did not know, but deserves to be beaten for what he has done, will receive fewer strokes. When a man has had a great deal given him, a great deal will be demanded of him; when a man has had a great deal given him on trust, even more will be expected of him. [Luke 12:47–48 (Jerusalem Bible)]

What was “given” in this case was knowledge of the master’s will, not material goods. If there is a political application, it best fits politicians who know what course their country ought to follow but are unwilling to steer that way; for example, those who face ruinous deficits and blithely propose spending increases. The Obama interpretation is just another dreary example of Biblical language ripped from its context.

This is a game that can be played in many ways. Just a little later in Luke, we find Our Lord saying, “I tell you, to everyone who has will be given more; but from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” [Luke 19:26 (Jerusalem Bible)] Perhaps that will be the President’s pietistic defense of the Solyndra loans and other instances of his Administration’s crony capitalism.

The Hindmost in Tripoli

For the next several news cycles, I anticipate, we will hear much from the Obami about the virtues of “leading from behind”. It worked in Libya, we’ll be told. Colonel Gadhafi and his brood of vipers are gone, no American blood and little American money have been expended, and who but a carping partisan can complain? The end proves that the means were justified.

Success deserves an accolade, it is true, yet this success is an odd one, for it crowns a strategy that seemed almost to have failure as its objective. Gadhafi would have been gone months ago if the United States had imposed a no-fly zone at the outset of the Libyan uprising, when the regime was in disarray and the insurgents were sweeping through the country almost unopposed. Instead the President waited while Gadhafi assembled a mercenary army, recaptured key cities and reduced his enemies to little more than their Benghazi redoubt. When we intervened at last, it was almost too late. Then, after an initial round of air and missiles strikes, we withdrew from active combat, leaving the burden of fighting on the shoulders of Britain, France, Italy and lesser powers. It’s vastly to their credit that they undertook the task, but their forces were quantitatively and qualitatively barely up to it. Their militaries are now exhausted, their munitions stocks are depleted, and their defense budgets are in disarray.

Just a couple of weeks ago, it looked like European leaders were on the verge of giving up, hinting that compromise between Gadhafi and the rebels might be the best feasible outcome. Had victory been delayed much longer, it is doubtful that it would have come at all.

The Obama Administration insisted on justifying the Libyan war “kinetic military action” as an humanitarian venture. From that point of view, it was a failure, bordering on disaster. Keeping America on a leash minimized the cost to us. To the people of Libya, it meant thousands of unnecessary casualties, hundreds of millions of dollars in destroyed property and lost oil revenue, and a heightened risk that the next act will be civil war rather than a transition to the rule of law.

The effect on our national interests remains to be seen. Nobody pretends to know a lot about the rebels, except that they are a congeries of factions, some apparently pro-Western and democratic, others no friendlier to us than Gadhafi was. There is no sign that the Administration will take any steps to enhance the position of potential friends or thwart the designs of hard-core enemies, and our passive attitude during the war is unlikely to have earned a large stock of good will. If the government that ultimately takes shape in Tripoli is on our side in the War on Terror, the credit will go to good luck.

Happily, luck may run our way. Gadhafi has screamed for over 40 years that America is his Enemy Number One. In Libyan eyes, that’s bound to be a recommendation, notwithstanding that our enmity has of late been somewhat muted. If Libya emerges as our friend, Ronald Reagan will, I think, deserve a large share of the credit.

A Triple-A Country and Its Triple-F President

Imagine that George W. Bush had responded to 9/11 with a speech criticizing “gridlock in Washington”, denying the terrorism posed any genuine threat, assuring us that “modest adjustments” would be enough to deal with it, and promising “to present my own recommendations over the coming weeks on how we should proceed”. Osama bin-Laden would to this day be comfortably ensconced in Kabul, while al-Qa’eda ranged at will through America, Europe and the Middle East.

President Obama’s response to the S&P downgrade was on that level. Jen Rubin captured the body language that accompanied the President’s dismal presentation:

He was a half hour late. His head turned from side to side as if he were attending a tennis match. He practically never looked in the camera, as if he were averting our gaze. And those were the strong parts of President Obama’s disastrous speech.

It was a bit like a slow-motion car crash. After a while, one stopped listening to the blather and simply watched the stock ticker go down and down. And down some more.

A few of the lowlights:

• The President said that it was true “the day I took office” that “we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction”. That perception must, however, have come to him very recently. There was no hint of it during his first two years, when he and Democratic majorities in Congress could have enacted deficit reduction measures if they’d wanted to, nor in his aborted budget proposal earlier this year. “We knew last year that the dam was going to break, but there were all these other things we wanted to do instead of repairing it.”

• The root cause of our economic woes, from the President’s point of view, is “a prolonged debate over the debt ceiling – a debate where the threat of default was used as a bargaining chip. . . . That threat, coming after a string of economic disruptions in Europe, Japan and the Middle East, has now roiled the markets and dampened consumer confidence and slowed the pace of recovery.” Leaving aside the fact that not raising the debt ceiling would have led to a partial government shutdown rather than a default (unless the Administration deliberately chose to stiff creditors), and that plenty of Democrats were openly yearning for a rerun of 1995’s shutdown confrontation, this analysis defies the arrow of time. Economic growth has been near zero all year (0.4% in the first quarter, 1.3% in the second). It slowed before the “string of economic disruptions” and well before the debt ceiling became a visible issue.

• Don’t worry, though: “Our problems are eminently solvable.*” (The asterisk is from the White House transcript. What it refers to, I have no idea.) All that’s needed is to “ask those who can afford it pay their fair share” and make “modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare”. Fairness is naturally in the eye of the beholder, but let me repeat, immune though progressives are to the fact, that the top one percent of taxpayers, earning 20% of all income, pay nearly 40% of all income taxes. Sure, there are other taxes, but rich people pay them, too. Progressives must, for instance, believe that estate and corporate taxes fall mainly on the wealthy (whether that’s really true is unclear); otherwise, they wouldn’t be so enamored of them. As for Social Security taxes, they are indeed capped, but so are benefits, and the benefits-to-taxes ratio declines sharply as one’s income rises. There are, in short, solid arguments for the proposition that it is the lower income brackets that aren’t paying “their fair share”. I doubt, though, that the President is making that argument.

  The best way – the only sure way – to increase tax revenue is through economic growth. No economist of any school believes that the way to spur growth is to raise taxes when the economy is barely moving. The President belatedly realized that last year, when he signed the extension of the Bush tax rate reductions. A pity that he can’t remember all the way back to last December.

  One wishes, too, that he would disclose those “modest adjustments” that will suffice to bring Medicare’s nearly-12-figure unfunded liability under control. The budget resolution passed by the House this year proposes to do that – and has been vehemently denounced by the Obama apparat. The House budget identifies that order of magnitude of the needed cost reductions. If the Obami have a “modest” way to reach the same figure, they’ve strangely neglected to tell anybody what it is.

• The President avers, “Last week, we reached an agreement that will make historic cuts to defense and domestic spending. But there’s not much further we can cut in either of those categories.” One might infer that he opposes the huge automatic cuts that are supposed to go into effect if the new “super-committee” can’t come up with a deficit reduction plan. Somehow I doubt the inference. This morning I heard his faithful ally Barney Frank on the radio calling for reducing defense spending by another $200 billion a year, i. e., retreat to Fortress America, then tear down the fortress wall.

  We can, however, be sure that the President means it when he rejects additional non-defense trimming, even though federal outlays are replete with “green energy” boondoggles, duplicative programs and useless subsidies (such as the temporarily ended – over Democratic caterwauls) funding of airports that nobody flies to).

• The speech has two concrete proposals: to extend unemployment benefits and the current year’s two percentage point FICA tax reduction. Even if those measures are beneficial, they are surpassingly trivial. Less concretely, the President wants to fight the deficit with – more spending. “We should also help companies that want to repair our roads and bridges and airports, so that thousands of construction workers who’ve been without a job for the last few years can get a paycheck again.” Ah, the good old “shovel ready projects” that worked such wonders in the first “stimulus” package!

Bringing the economic portion of his speech to a close, the President indulged in some of his familiar gaseous rhetoric, the gravamen of which was to shift blame for the current malaise to “economic factors that we can’t control – earthquakes, spikes in oil prices, slowdowns in other parts of the world”. No, the fault, dear Barack, lies not in the stars but in ourselves, that we are debt-ridden. If Japan were earthquake-free, oil prices half as high and Europe prospering, perpetual trillion dollar deficits would be – if I may use the nonce word – unsustainable. There’s not a scintilla of evidence that Barack Obama realizes that.

The Dow was already down 430 points when the President began talking. It finished down 634. Somebody has already said – but I can’t find the link now – that the Administration line is predictable: If not for the speech, the decline would have been 1,000, so the One has “created or saved” nearly 400 points.

The Reckoning Awaits

They told me that if I took a break from blogging, the U.S. government would lose its Triple-A credit rating, and . . . . Well, actually nobody told me that, and I’m glad that I followed my impulse not to kibbitz while the House Republican leadership tried to persuade President Obama and the Senate Democrats to agree to a deal that would bend the debt curve downward. What they got was paltry, at best not a step in the wrong direction. The S&P downgrade shows how much more is needed and highlights how determined the Obama/Reid/Pelosi axis is not to do it.

Though Tim Geithner tried to quibble, S&P’s downgrade was not only justified but overdue. The current trajectory of federal indebtedness is up, up and away.

If this goes on, the U.S. almost certainly won’t repudiate its obligations in an overt way. Treasury bondholders won’t be told to take a haircut on principal or anything of that sort. Instead, at some moment when debt service becomes more than the tax base can bear, the Federal Reserve Board will create enough new money to inflate it away. Someone who lends money to the U.S. today faces the risk of being repaid ten or 30 years from now with junk dollars.

Untroubled by such prospects, the President earlier this year offered a budget that generated trillion-plus deficits forever. He has now abandoned that document (voted down by the Senate 0–97) but has offered nothing in its place. His “plan” for fiscal stability consists of an unspecific plea for higher taxes. He opposes reducing spending on anything except national defense.

The dearth of tax revenue is indeed a problem; tax collections in 2010 were $400 billion below 2007. But that wasn’t because of some newly enacted tax break for billionaires. It was because the economy is in wretched shape. A tax system that relies on milking corporations and rich people runs into trouble when the rich aren’t getting richer. The solution – more easily said than done, of course – is to revive economic growth. To that end, the Obama Administration has dosed us with Dr. Keynes’ Expansion Elixir, i. e., federal spending – up $800 billion since 2007. That panacea has done as much for the economy as bleeding and purges did for the life spans of the French nobility of the Ancien Regime. The President naturally wants to increase the dosage.

In parallel with fiscal Keynesianism, the Fed has done what hindsight reveals it should have done in 1930. It has vastly expanded the money supply. That’s just what the country needed when money primarily meant currency and currency was so scarce in some regions that private scrips took over as the medium of circulation. “Unexpectedly”, though, what would have worked 80 years ago made no difference in an utterly different context. Abundant money then would have fostered economic activity that people wanted to engage in but couldn’t. Abundant money now sits unutilized, because the great impediment to activity is lack of the desire, rather than the means, of exchange.

A dead weight of uncertainty presses down on the economy: the short-term uncertainty of revolutionized financial regulation – the unaccountable caudillo of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and the rest of the Dodd-Frank apparatus – accompanied by the fear that the President will get his way on tax hikes, the medium-term uncertainty of Obamacare, and the long-term uncertainty of federal obligations that will, if they come to pass, overwhelm any conceivable tax base.

Abe Greenwald has a good response to the Democrats’ effort to blame the “Tea Party” for the downgrade:

Let’s acknowledge that the Tea Party played Russian roulette with America’s future. Which means it took five bullets out of the loaded revolver the U.S. had to its head and gave the country a fighting chance. . . . When the debt-ceiling first came up, Democrats wanted no spending cuts, period. Forget Russian roulette, that’s liberal roulette and the odds are 100% against survival. Anything that the GOP proposed afterward was necessarily a walk back from the edge.

Unhappily, the President has made it clear that the abject failure of his policies to date proves only that George W. Bush’s maleficent influence is even greater than he thought. We can expect him to reiterate his demands for higher taxes and more “investment” in wealth-draining boondoggles, to block all attempts to steer toward fiscal sanity, and to devote hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign expenditures to slandering his opponents. By this time next year, “terrorist” will be the mildest of his surrogates’ epithets.

There’s always a risk of overdramatizing the moment one is in. I remember all the folks, many of them normally sober-minded, who were convinced circa 1968 that America was on the brink of a revolutionary uprising. Nonetheless, it looks very much like we are at or near a Reckoning, when our country will either take all of the bullets out of the revolver or pull the trigger. I note that the inimitable Mark Steyn has written a new book looking ahead to the second contingency. He ought to donate a few percent of his royalties to Standard & Poor’s.

Why Are There “Kucinich Republicans”?

Monday’s Wall Street Journal blisters “The Kucinich Republicans” – and rightly, too:

The House debate on Libya was a fiasco of evasion and posturing that vindicated the Founders for not trusting Congress with the power to run a war.

The most remarkable spectacle was the emergence of the Kucinich Republicans, who voted for Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s resolution that would stop U.S. military action in Libya within 15 days. At least Mr. Kucinich is consistent in opposing U.S. force against dictators and other enemies no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

But what is the explanation for the 87 Republicans, including the likes of Indiana's Dan Burton and Wisconsin's Jim Sensenbrenner, who transform themselves into isolationists when a Democrat takes over the White House? Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota tea party favorite, also voted for the Kucinich retreat, which means she will start her campaign to become Commander in Chief by running to the left of President Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Teddy Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, Mrs. Bachmann is not.

The Kucinich resolution failed, 265-148, but only after Speaker John Boehner offered his own alternative resolution that demanded no deployment of ground troops and rebuked Mr. Obama for failing to provide “a compelling rationale” for the Libyan conflict and giving him 14 days to provide one – or, well, nothing. Mr. Boehner's resolution passed 268-145, but it is little better than Mr. Kucinich’s as a demonstration of House commitment to U.S. forces in the field.

The editors attribute this isolationist tide to partisanship, and that’s probably right in some cases. But doesn’t the President bear a large share of the blame? He has put less effort into rallying public backing for the Libya operation than Rep. Weiner has into creating a believable explanation of his tweets. I’m not surprised if GOP Congresscritters see themselves as the targets of asymmetrical political warfare: The President expends the least possible political capital. If Col. Gadhaffi falls, he takes the credit. If matters go less well, he slips away from the issue and hawkish Republicans have to deal with irate constituents.

It’s not at all obvious that the President even wants success. He didn’t intervene at the outset, when the rebellion was spreading almost unopposed and the imposition of a no-fly zone would have almost certainly have toppled the Gadhaffi regime. Now he leaves the fighting to NATO and refuses to provide ground attack aircraft to support the mission. In the words of the not exactly right-wingnut Washington Post:

The allies have asked for the resumption of strike operations by U.S. warplanes that Mr. Obama pulled from the fight in early April. But immediately after acknowledging that more resources are needed, Mr. Obama talked down the prospect of “additional U.S. capabilities,” saying “there are going to be some inherent limitations to our airstrike operations.” He added: “There may be a false perception that there are a whole bunch of secret super-effective air assets that are in a warehouse that could just be pulled out and that would somehow immediately solve the situation in Libya. That’s not the case.”

In fact no one we know of is making that claim – much less Mr. Cameron or French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose appeals for help Mr. Obama is ignoring. What the allies are seeking is no secret: eight or so U.S. AC-130 and A-10 planes, weapons that exist only in the American arsenal and that are ideal for the close ground-support operations that are much needed in Libya. In the past few days, NATO forces have stepped up attacks against the headquarters of Moammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, but if the war is to be won, rebel forces need to begin capturing more of the ground held by the regime. For that, close air support is needed – which is why France and Britain are now dispatching attack helicopters to the theater.

If the President doesn’t really want to win, that reticence would be perfectly in character. He has shown himself repeatedly to be a weak, irresolute leader (occasionally a good thing for the country, as he lacks the will to pursue many of his bad ideas, but not so good in this instance). Having been bullied by France, Italy and Britain into acting against the Mad Colonel, he’s now fearful of casualties, confusion, criticism from the Left and the other inconveniences of a vigorous “kinetic military action”. (I set aside the notion that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s ties to Gadhaffi have influenced the President. It’s obvious now that Pastor Wright was a stepping stone, not a mentor.)

The price of this pusillanimity is not just conservative enthusiasm for the venture. The “Arab Spring” is likely to become one of history’s sharp forks in the road. Despite many pessimistic mutterings, we have friends in the region, hitherto silent and repressed. It’s no secret, though, that the Islamofascists see the present turmoil as a supreme opportunity to take power. The more passive America is, the more likely that they’ll succeed.

Is Barack Obama Still President?

I wonder.

He’s openly and enthusiastically a candidate for President, but every day we see less and less energy in the performance of the duties of his office.

His first budget proposal was turned down by the Senate 97 to nil. His second version remains, weeks after it was presented, no more than a set of talking points. When he met with House Republicans to discuss budgetary matters, he spoke vaguely about the need for more federal spending.

This lackadaisical stance might be fine if the economy were soaring. When you’re rich, you don’t need a budget. (Has the President gotten so used to personal wealth that he no longer remembers having to balance income and outgo?) But right now we’re soaring like a brick-laden, xenon-filled balloon. After two years of the most “stimulative” fiscal and monetary policy in our nation’s history, the GDP is barely growing, unemployment is rising, and the stock and housing markets are sinking. It ought to be obvious to the meanest intelligence that history’s most thorough experiment in liberal economic orthodoxy has solidly disconfirmed its tenets. Priming the pump does no good if nobody’s willing to pump it, and printing dollars accomplishes nothing if there are no productive uses for them.

The President responds by raising money for his next campaign. Exactly what a non-incumbent seeking to throw the rascals out ought to do.

Further reading: The Wall Street Journal, “‘Bumps in the Road’”:

At this stage in the Reagan expansion, after a comparably deep 1981-82 recession, the economy was growing by 7% a year and the jobless rate was plunging. This time the economy is growing by less than 2%, and we still have 6.8 million fewer jobs than when the recession began in late 2007. . . .

The same economists and pundits who promoted the economic policies of the last four years are now lamenting the jobs bust and demanding that Washington double down: More stimulus spending, more Federal Reserve easing, more temporary tax rebates. They can’t explain why these policies have failed to date, but we are supposed to rinse and repeat.

The real “bumps on the road” to recovery are these policies and the larger climate of hostility toward job creators that still prevails in Washington. A National Labor Relations Board that wants to stop businesses from moving plants; a $20 billion political raid on banks over foreclosures; hundreds of major new regulations from ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and the EPA’s war on carbon energy; federal deficits that Mr. Obama says require higher taxes; near-zero interest rates for 30 months that have sent commodity prices soaring, and so much more.

The economy doesn’t need more of this. It needs a return to the growth agenda that created the long post-1982 boom.

Nile Gardiner, “After 29 Months of the Most Left-Wing Presidency in US History, the American Superpower Is Heading Towards the Economic Abyss”:

Years of profligate spending, massive bailouts and useless stimulus measures have made America poorer, not richer, and threaten the long-term economic foundations of this great country. President Obama’s big government experiment has been a dangerous failure, only further proof that the deadening hand of federal intervention is the last thing America needs at this time. The United States needs more economic freedom, less government regulation and spending, and lower taxes if it is to create jobs, wealth and prosperity, a message that seems to have been lost on the Obama presidency as it drives the United States towards the financial abyss.

The President’s Reality

That Barack Obama is weak on geography, history and vocabulary is arguably more “amusing”, as USA Today puts it, than problematic. After all, Dan Quayle, now the exemplar of political malapropism, was picked for Vice President because he had been an extraordinarily effective and influential Senator (something that one can’t say about all young Senators who run for higher office). He would probably have been a competent President, even if he greeted some Latin American counterpart with a hearty “Ego te saluto!”.

It’s harder to take an optimistic view, though, of a President who says things like this:

The reason the unemployment rate is still as high as it is, in part, is because there have been huge layoffs of government workers at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, social workers – they have really taken it in the chin over the last several months. And so, what we’re trying to do is to see if we can stabilize the budget.

Now, the President did speak sans teleprompter, so one couldn’t blame him for slight inaccuracies. But the man with the most influence on our country’s economic policies ought not to have his facts completely upside-down. Jim Geraghty lays out the numbers. The bottom line is that total federal, state and local government employment in April 2011 was almost as high (seasonally adjusted) as in June 2007, at the peak of the last economic expansion: 22,218,000 in 2007 vs. 22,166,000 now. The raw 2011 number (without seasonal adjustment) is about 400,000 higher: 22,176,000 in 2007, 22,594,000 today.

Some “huge layoffs”!

Meanwhile, private sector employment declined by about 8 million during the same period.

Then there was the Presidential assertion that the fence along the Mexican border (a waste of money, IMHO, but that’s not today’s topic) “is now basically complete”. Maybe there’s some Obamian/Pickwickian sense in which that’s a true statement, but –

There are now 350 miles of pedestrian fencing along the Mexican border. The border is 1,954 miles long. That’s 18 percent. And only one-tenth of that 18 percent is the double and triple fencing that has proved so remarkably effective in, for example, the Yuma sector. Another 299 miles – 15 percent – are vehicle barriers that pedestrians can walk right through. . . .

The GAO reported in February that less than half the border is under “operational control” of the government. Which undermines the entire premise of Obama’s charge that, because the border is effectively secure, “Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement” didn’t really mean it.

Maybe the President is so cynical that he expects his whoppers to pass without scrutiny, but the simpler, not to mention more civil, hypothesis is that he believed what he was saying. Why his reality is so different from ours, I have no idea, but the phenomenon is unsettling.

What if, for instance, the decision to raid Osama bin-Laden’s compound was based on “facts” as imaginary as the huge government layoffs and finished border fence? There’s a sliver of evidence for that idea: Anonymous, but clearly pro-Obama, sources assert that the President increased the size of the force so that it would “be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops” – from about 25 SEAL’s to about 50!

The SEAL’s are among the best fighting men in history, but they don’t hail from Krypton. Did the President really think that a commando of 50 men in four helicopters could “fight its way” through a hundred mile gantlet back to the Afghanistan border? Is he unaware that Pakistan has an air force and that helicopters dogfight poorly against jets?

This story is so bizarre that, pace the commenters at the links above, it almost has to be true, at least in the sense of reflecting the President’s own ideas about military matters. If so – well, Napoleon said that luck is more useful than talent, and we may hope that he was right.

Dan Hussein Obama

Joining the “57 states and one more to go”, the “president of Canada”, the “Austrian language” [see note] and so many more is what USA Today calls “an amusing slip of the tongue”:

Internationally, we’ve gone through a Teutonic shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come.

If General Rommel couldn’t pull that off, I doubt that Angela Merkel has.

And if Vice President Quayle’s misspelling “potato” gave us insight into his fitness for office, shouldn’t the 44th President’s flashes of ignorance be more than merely “amusing”?

Note: To be fair, I think that “how you say it in Austrian” was a joke, but so was Dan Quayle’s reference to speaking Latin in Latin America.

It Takes More Than One Home Run

On this first at-bat in the Major Leagues, Hoyt Wilhelm hit a home run. He went on to compile a great record as a pitcher, but he never, in 21 seasons, homered again and had a lifetime batting average of .088.

There’s no question that Barack Obama hit a home run last Sunday, and I’m happy to cheer him for it. But the fact remains, he’s not much of a slugger, and I doubt that he has a great knuckle ball to fall back on.

After the superlative military operation came the amateurish fumbling: the too-hasty announcement of the malefactor’s death (reducing the value of the captured intelligence trove), the changing narrative of Osama’s death, the weird rush to bury him at sea, the accompanying blather about adhering to “Islamic law”, the contradictory statements about whether SEAL Team Six had orders to kill rather than capture, the confusion about whether to release photographs of the corpse, even the peculiar detail that the code name for the mass murderer was “Geronimo”, as if he were a patriot fighting for his homeland against overwhelming odds.

This near farce follows two years of consistent foreign policy misjudgements: the ambivalent semi-surge in Afghanistan, the Russian “reset”, the continuing failure to restrain Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons, the absurd intervention in favor of the deranged Marxist ex-president of Honduras, the effort to force a change of government in Israel, the dithering over the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring, the creation of quagmire in Libya – you can add your own favorite blunders. We can argue about whether the Obama foreign policy is as feeble as Jimmy Carter’s. There’s no disputing that it’s in the cellar of the same league. Counting on Administration competence now is as if the Giants, dazzled by Hoyt Wilhelm’s debut blast, had made him their clean-up hitter.

Still, I harbor a quixotic hope. The execution of Osama bin-Laden was the President’s first unequivocal, overwhelmingly popular success. It came about because he deployed American military power directly against our enemies, and it gave him a boost in public esteem that “leading from behind” certainly hasn’t. Might he not want to repeat the experience? Opportunities abound. Will Bashar al-Assad suffer a fatal accident next week? Will mysterious explosions devastate Iran’s centrifuges? Will North Korean generals feel an impulse to mount a coup? Will there be an unexpected flow of funds to the Venezuelan opposition? Will SEAL Team Six find its way to Libya? Will Israel get a green light to break Hamas and Fatah (both denigrators of the Obaman triumph)? The world wonders.

Addendum: If the mainstream media are to be believed, the President needed 16 hours of deliberation before giving the order to get bin-Laden. Ace of Spades has a grumpy but not utterly unfair observation:

And yes, even Jimmy Carter probably would have ordered this. At least the 1970s version. Bear in mind: He did order a failed hostage rescue attempt – also fraught with peril, obviously, since the choppers crashed in the desert.

A commando hostage rescue is a lot trickier than a hit, of course. A lot more moving pieces, and you have to get all those people safely away.

So why should I praise Obama for a choice that every single one of his predecessors and every plausible successor would also make?

And probably not requiring 16 hours to do so, either.

Libya: What Is Clear

Much may be unclear about the situation in Libya, but this is not: If the United States had announced a no-fly zone in early March, when the rebels held most of the cities and Mad Colonel Gaddhafi was clinging by his fingernails to Tripoli, the old regime would be gone by now. The proof is the recovery that the rebellion managed in the past week, after Tomahawk cruise missiles ravaged Gaddhafi’s air defenses, and NATO planes (mostly U.S.) began striking his military installations and knocking out his tanks. Unhappily, the rebels remain militarily unimpressive, so intervention on their behalf may have come too late to be decisive. The President’s speech this evening looked forward to a stalemate, to be ended by something turning up.

The President defended his dithering with the argument that Bill Clinton dithered months longer before intervening in Bosnia. Indeed, but the thousands of Libyans who have died and will die as the result of Presidential indolence won’t be comforted by the thought that it was possible to do even worse.

Another clear point is that the President had no real idea what he authorized when the intervention began. His statement on March 18th, before he jetted off to Rio, described a highly limited operation: “We will provide the unique capabilities that we can bring to bear to stop the violence against civilians, including enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively enforce a no fly zone.” That sounds much like what he now says our future course will be:

Going forward, the lead in enforcing the No Fly Zone and protecting civilians on the ground will transition to our allies and partners, and I am fully confident that our coalition will keep the pressure on Gaddafi’s remaining forces. In that effort, the United States will play a supporting role – including intelligence, logistical support, search and rescue assistance, and capabilities to jam regime communications.

Over the past ten days, the actual American role hasn’t consisted at all of “provid[ing] the unique capabilities that we can bring to bear” to enable others to do the enforcing. Rather, we have done most of the fighting ourselves, starting with the initial Tomahawk barrage, which was touted as “multinational” on the basis of the participation of one British submarine in an otherwise all-U.S. attack.

During the first few days, 85 percent of air sorties were by U.S. aircraft. That figure has now declined to a mere two-thirds. The President himself acknowledged that our forces did far more than lend support with “unique capabilities”:

We struck regime forces approaching Benghazi to save that city and the people within it. We hit Gaddafi’s troops in neighbouring Ajdabiya, allowing the opposition to drive them out. We hit his air defences, which paved the way for a No Fly Zone. We targeted tanks and military assets that had been choking off towns and cities and we cut off much of their source of supply.

One wonders, was the President deliberately misleading the world on March 18th? That’s not inconceivable, but it would have been such a pointless, quickly disproven lie. It seems more likely to me that he gave the green light to Operation Odyssey Dawn without inquiring into what it would involve. He had his own concept, conveyed in his public statements, but it didn’t reach the military commanders. A good thing, too. Had we provided nothing beyond “intelligence, logistical support, search and rescue assistance, and capabilities to jam regime communications”, the force brought to bear against Gaddhafi would have been perhaps a fifth of what was actually deployed. One has to be a super-Micawber to believe that would have been enough to preserve the rebels from disaster.

What has happened is history and can’t be altered. The situation is much worse than it should have been. What’s vital now is avoiding further aggravation. There are a number of ways that matters can deteriorate further:

• Gaddhafi could prevail, regaining control of the whole country, massacring his opponents, and renewing his world-wide terrorism (quiescent since the deposition of Saddam Hussein frightened him, by his own admission, into a less bellicose posture).

• Libya could endure a long, vicious civil war, making a farce of the President’s declared objective of protecting civilians.

• Opportunistic isolationism could infect American conservatism. To some extent, it is spreading already. Right-wingers disgruntled by the Obama Administration’s faltering course haven’t confined themselves to critiquing incompetence. They drag in purported Constitutional scruples that, if indulged, would render America powerless. If you really think that every use of our military must be authorized by Congress in advance, do you accept the corollary that 41 filibustering Senators can stymie action? Whatever the case at the present moment, there’s no general rule that the legislature is a wiser commander-in-chief than the President. If he should one day bomb London, blockade Israel or send Special Forces to help FARC overthrow the government of Colombia, Congress has adequate remedies. There are, too, solid political reasons for Presidents to seek advance approval of major operations, such as the two Gulf Wars. Libya, by contrast, is an example of where quick action was essential. It wasn’t taken, but how would matters have been improved if dithering had been built into the system?

• The only national interest that, in the President’s telling, is at stake in Libya is our humanitarian impulse. He deemed that necessary and sufficient, provided that other nations ratified our moral aperçu. The upshot is a strange contradiction. One the one hand, the President extolled the American exceptionalism that he has so often treated lightly:

  To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.

  And –

  But let us also remember that for generations, we have done the hard work of protecting our own people, as well as millions around the globe. We have done so because we know that our own future is safer and brighter if more of mankind can live with the bright light of freedom and dignity.

  Yet we are apparently not to fulfill “our responsibilities to our fellow human beings” without the approval of other nations. Why not? The reason for constructing coalitions is to fight wars more effectively; they aren’t a transcendental imperative. In the first week of March, American action in Libya might have been backed only by Britain and France, but that would have been all that the circumstances required. Or let us imagine that the demonstrations in Syria bring the Assad regime to the verge of collapse. It’s easy to conceive a situation in which a few hours would make the difference between the deposition or survival of one of our bitterest enemies. Yet the Secretary of State, doubtless reflecting Presidential doctrine, has declared unequivocally that we would not act in such a case without the whole world’s prior consent.

  The contradiction between “America as moral leader” and “America as humble servant” is bound to lead to trouble – and not just because of delays. Not only do some nations “turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries”. They also fantasize atrocities that aren’t there. Already, one of the parties in the Norwegian government has declared that the intervention in Libya should be a precedent for multinational military action against Israel.

I hope that this web untangles soon, but I can’t say that my hope is backed by much confidence.

Libyan Footnotes

1. Some usual suspects, like Ron Paul and Richard Lugar, and some unusual, like Andrew McCarthy, are moaning that President Obama’s intervention in Libya is unconstitutional. The complaint, meritorious or not, seems rather premature. Our forces have yet to fire a shot, and the President’s statement yesterday (see the post below) more than hints that they never will:

We will provide the unique capabilities that we can bring to bear to stop the violence against civilians, including enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively enforce a no fly zone. [emphasis added]

But suppose that we do something more forceful than jam Iraqi radar and share satellite photos. If the Constitution requires Congressional authorization of this use of military force, the War Powers Resolution prescribes how the President is to obtain it: He is to notify Congress with 48 hours after initiating action, and fighting can continue for up to 90 days while he waits for Congressional concurrence.

Assuming that the War Powers Resolution is constitutional, the President has yet to take a half-step toward violating its requirements. If it’s unconstitutional, as every President from Richard Nixon through at least George W. Bush (including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) insisted, there’s even less of an issue.

2. Not that legal conundrums seem likely to matter. Yesterday, Qaddhafi’s troops were 30 miles from Benghazi. Today:

Shooting erupted in central Benghazi Saturday morning, and rebel gunmen said they were fighting an advance by Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces into the heart of the rebel capital from the university on the southern approaches.

Grad missiles pounded the city and a fighter jet went down in flames in central Benghazi, sending up thick plumes of smoke.

Rebels mounted makeshift street barricades, but the advance of Col Gadhafi’s forces sent many of them fleeing. A reporter witnessed heavy exchanges of gunfire just one kilometer away from the city’s Ouzo hotel.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton will hold an urgent meeting with allied foreign ministers, and President Obama flies to Brazil.

3. A friend who works for a Congressman had dinner last week with Libya’s former ambassador to the U.S., the one who resigned and cast his lot with the rebels. The name of Sayyid Muhammad Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi (or at least part of it) came up, the man who was once King of Libya (1951–1983). The ambassador says that the Libyan public despises Idris’s memory – because he didn’t fight hard enough against Gaddhafi’s insurrection. The king’s heir, my friend adds, lives in the U.S. and, while not aspiring to reestablish the monarchy, has declared his support for what he calls “the counter-revolution”.

American Followership

A couple of weeks ago, when rebels held most of Libya, sweeping Mad Colonel Qaddhafi into history’s dustbin would have been a quick and painless process. This regime is, after all, no military powerhouse – it once lost a war against Chad – and it was down to depending on hastily hired mercenaries, unlikely to sell their lives dearly if menaced by a superpower.

At that juncture, according to President Obama, speaking this afternoon, “the United States and the international community moved swiftly” – so swiftly and to such great effect that by yesterday Qaddhafi’s thugs had reoccupied virtually the entire country. As they advanced, the President declared, “We are slowly tightening the noose.” Slowly even in geological time.

Then came yesterday’s abrupt turnaround. The noose will no longer be braided out of paper. With the best will in the world, the decision to go to (sort of) war may have come too late, after the rebels have suffered too many deaths and too much demoralization to carry on against what looks like the “strong horse”. Still, there might be a chance. Western air power can certainly pulverize the Libyan air force, and well-placed strikes might make it possible for the rebels to regain the offensive. In a war like this, between amateur, undependable forces, momentum can shift dizzily. Recall how rapidly the Taliban regime disintegrated in Afghanistan in 2001.

The problem is that the President’s statement made it obvious that he has no interest in shifting momentum or driving Qaddhafi from power. Let’s look at what he said:

Our focus has been clear: protecting innocent civilians within Libya, and holding the Qaddafi regime accountable.

When he was doing nothing, the President declared that Qaddhafi “must go”. Now that he is willing to deploy the armed forces, all that he wants is protection for civilians (those whom Qaddhafi hasn’t already slaughtered) and unspecified “accountability”.

The United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Arab states agree that a cease-fire must be implemented immediately. That means all attacks against civilians must stop. Qaddafi must stop his troops from advancing on Benghazi, pull them back from Ajdabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya, and establish water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas. Humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the people of Libya.

Suppose that the regime complies. That outcome would be no victory, merely a de facto partition, to be followed, no doubt, by endless, fruitless negotiations. A cease-fire leaves most of Libya’s population, territory and resources in Qaddhafi’s grip, while the rebels sit in an unviable mini-state.

I have directed Secretary Gates and our military to coordinate their planning, and tomorrow Secretary Clinton will travel to Paris for a meeting with our European allies and Arab partners about the enforcement of Resolution 1973.

At the point when hours count – Qaddhafi’s spearheads are reportedly within 30 miles of Benghazi – we will coordinate and hold meetings. Once that’s all done,

We will provide the unique capabilities that we can bring to bear to stop the violence against civilians, including enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively enforce a no fly zone.

In plain English, the United States will furnish no combat forces, only our “unique capabilities”, i. e., electronic warfare assets. The actual fighting will be left up to the British, French and possibly Jordanian, Saudi, UAE or Qatari air forces. With all due respect, that amounts to putting in the junior varsity (or, in the case of the Arabs, the third string freshmen). There’s a large gap between American planes and pilots, and everybody else’s. Needless to say, the British and the French are much better than the Libyans; any dogfights will be unchallenging. But in the most difficult phase of the war – the destruction of Libyan air defenses – we need every iota of superiority. President Obama is refusing to do what is necessary and thus runs the risk that Western air power will have a mediocre impact.

[W]e are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal – specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya. In the coming weeks, we will continue to help the Libyan people with humanitarian and economic assistance so that they can fulfill their aspirations peacefully.

Again, ousting Qaddhafi is left off the table, while spending money to prop up the rebel zone is put onto it.

Now, the United States did not seek this outcome. Our decisions have been driven by Qaddafi’s refusal to respect the rights of his people, and the potential for mass murder of innocent civilians. It is not an action that we will pursue alone. Indeed, our British and French allies, and members of the Arab League, have already committed to take a leadership role in the enforcement of this resolution, just as they were instrumental in pursuing it. We are coordinating closely with them. And this is precisely how the international community should work, as more nations bear both the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law.

And what if those other nations had not taken “a leadership role”? Would “Qaddafi’s refusal to respect the rights of his people, and the potential for mass murder of innocent civilians” have “driven” the Obama Administration to take any action? The implied answer is no. In the President’s eyes, the United States of America is the dutiful servant of “the international community”, a golem that sits quietly in the corner till called upon, then returns quietly to its place afterward.

Leaving aside American pride, American ideals, American exceptionalism and all those vulgar, obsolete notions, one still wonders: If the United States has no right to take the lead against a demented, hostile tyrant, why is it okay for Britain and France to do so? Is there something wrong with America that renders us unfit for any role but follower?

I hope no one asks the President that question. I don’t think I’d like his answer.

Update (3/19/11): For those who read French, Le Figaro has continuing Libyan updates. The latest news is that French Rafale and Mirage fighters attacked pro-Qaddhafi forces near Benghazi a few hours ago, “destroying several tanks”. Less encouragingly, the French foreign minister is quoted as “giving assurances that the goal of the operation is not to overthrow Qaddhafi”.

Mr. Obama, is appears, is not only timid himself but a cause of timidity in others.