Libertarian Leanings

Comforting the comforter

From the Washington Times:

Asked where he gets the strength to meet with the families of soldiers whom he - as commnder in chief - sent to their deaths, he turned stern.

"You have to believe in the cause. You have to understand that - and believe we'll be successful. If I didn't believe in the cause, it would be unbelievably terrible. I believe strongly in what we're doing. I believe it's necessary for our security. And I believe history will justify the actions. ...

"The interesting thing is, most of our troops fully understand this. They know we must defeat the enemy there so we don't have to face them here. And in a place like Iraq, they fully understood that Iraq was a front for al Qaeda. And they saw their mission as one of defending America by defeating al Qaeda," he told The Times.

Meeting with the families of the fallen has allowed the president to step out of the bubble that often surrounds him, to meet real people. "I find out a lot about the individuals when the families come and see me, because one thing they want to do is, they want to share. They want to share pictures or letters or moments.

"And I ask them to describe their loved one. What should I know about this person? Or they volunteer - 'You'd like this guy.' And many of them have said - it's amazing, the comforter in chief oftentimes is the comforted person - comforted because of their strength, comforted because of their devotion, comforted because of their love for their family member. And a lot of them said, Mr. President, please know that my child wanted to do this."

The Ice Storm of 2008

2008 is coming to a dramatic close.  A worldwide financial meltdown has so far been narrowly averted,  an historic election gives America our first African American president, the American automobile industry faces bankruptcy, and democracy has taken root in Iraq as the Iraqi Parliament came to agreement on the Status of Forces Agreement that will provide a schedule for the U.S. troops to come home.

On top of all that, a half a million homes in New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts lost power when tons of ice from a deluge of freezing rain snapped branches and trees, and brought down power lines.  Utility crews are still working to bring power back in some areas, and many homes will be without power through Christmas. 

We were fortunate to have electricity restored late Wednesday afternoon.  In the meantime we spent cold nights in a dark house with the fireplace providing minimal warmth.  We managed to find a hotel room for one night, we visited relatives in Connecticut for a couple of days, but the outlook improved dramatically when a friend offered me the use of his portable generator which I connected up to the furnace. Having heat and hot water improved our spirits mightily.

Thirty-five years ago when an ice storm hit central Connecticut it was my sister and her two boys who came to stay with me in my warm apartment for a couple of days.  This year our roles were reversed.  I spent two days with her and her husband in Connecticut in their warm house.  I would have thought that thirty-five years after the ice storm of '73, power companies in the northeast might have made some progress in mitigating the effects of freezing rain on the power grid.  It hasn't happened.  If anything the power grid has proven to be more vulnerable than ever.

In any event, Libertarian Leanings is back.

Good question

John Hinderaker wonders, "...how does a profane, corrupt moron become governor of one of our largest states?" He's talking about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has just been indicted for putting President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat up for sale.

Public interest will center, naturally, on the fact that it was Barack Obama's Senate seat that Blagojevich allegedly tried to sell. I don't think for a moment that Obama had anything to do with it, of course, for many reasons. Still, Obama's proximity to the scandal highlights a basic fact about his career: Obama's political career began, and was lived until very recently, in the very dirty pond of Chicago politics. It is quite remarkable that Obama has been able to emerge not only intact but ostensibly pristine from that political swamp. In part, this is because his history and associations have been too little scrutinized.

Today, Obama answered just one question, in his trademark stammer. He managed to get out these words: "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

But, as Jake Tapper points out, Obama's claim to have kept aloof from the Senate selection process was contradicted two weeks ago by his spokesman David Axelrod, who said:

I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.

So already Obama has been caught in a contradiction.

Remember when everybody was talking about that Republican culture of corruption?  Democrats have their own, but the media are less willing to talk about it.  That fact may offer a clue into the mystery of how morons get elected.  What happens when the media watchdogs turn out to be media advocates?

Hope dashed

Promises, promises.  The windfall profits tax, repeal of the Bush tax cuts, abandonment of Iraq...  Those promises to the left wing base are what won Barack Obama his party's nomination, but what's good for the Democratic primary will never do in the general election.  Lefties, once enthralled by Barack's soaring demagoguery, are beginning to get a little nervous.

Obama drew rousing applause at campaign events when he vowed to tax the windfall profits of oil companies. As president-elect, Obama says he won’t enact the tax.

Obama’s pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts and redistribute that money to the middle class made him a hero among Democrats who said the cuts favored the wealthy. But now he’s struck a more cautious stance on rolling back tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year, signaling he’ll merely let them expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

Obama’s post-election rhetoric on Iraq and choices for national security team have some liberal Democrats even more perplexed. As a candidate, Obama defined and separated himself from his challengers by highlighting his opposition to the war in Iraq from the start. He promised to begin to end the war on his first day in office.

Now Obama’s says that on his first day in office he will begin to “design a plan for a responsible drawdown,” as he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Obama has also filled his national security positions with supporters of the Iraq war: Sen. Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize force in Iraq, as his secretary of state; and President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, continuing in the same role.

The central premise of the left’s criticism is direct – don’t bite the hand that feeds, Mr. President-elect. The Internet that helped him so much during the election is lighting up with irritation and critiques.

Leftist solidarity with The One is beginning to show cracks.  Some are willing to give him a little time.  After all, he's not even the president yet.  But the choices he made for his national security team seem about to dash hard core hopes.  

Lefties had kept faith, even as the primary campaign gave way to the general election and Obama's various positions drifted predictably toward the center.  It was just campaign talk.  Obama couldn't really mean that nonsense he was babbling about Iraq and conditions on the ground.  That was Bush talk.  Barack had to say those things to convince those right wing rubes it was safe to vote for him.  Sophisticated lefties were convinced that they understood the game plan.

Meanwhile, Obama has come face to face with reality.  A U.S. defeat in Iraq at the hands of al Qaeda, the defeat that Democratic party leaders have predicted and worked towards for so long, has become the distant unreachable star. 

On the left, though, they are determined to soldier on.  Their candidate of hope, who wooed them with promises that he would immediately abandon Iraq, has predictably veered to the center, backing away from his earlier stance.  In his current stance he says we must withdraw carefully.  On the left they know he has to say this, but their uncertainty remains.  Do they have the audacity to hope he's lying?

But then Robert Gates was asked to stay on as Secretary of Defense.  Doubt became certainty.  Obama actually meant what he was saying to the rubes. 

Perhaps they give up hope too soon, the left.  Patience should be the order of the day.  As we've seen, Obama's positions evolve.  He refines them.  Pick an issue.  At one time or another he's been on both sides of it.  What is true one day is may not be so the next.  And there's the beauty of it.  Obama is always telling the truth -- half the time.  Now suddenly it's the other half that is giving the left fits.  Lying half the time, used to be OK.  But on the left it is slowly sinking in.  They can't be sure who he is lying to anymore.

The future of the Republican party

The Wall Street Journal reports that Saxby Chambliss cruised to victory in the Georgia runoff election for the U.S. Senate winning 57.5% of the vote with 96% of precincts reporting.  The good news is that the Democrats will not achieve a filibuster proof majority in the Senate this year.  There is also a glimmer of hope in this for Republicans if they know what to look for.

Sen. Chambliss's victory -- a morsel of good news for Republicans in an otherwise bleak election season for the party -- comes nearly a month after he failed to win re-election outright by garnering more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 4 against Democratic challenger Jim Martin and a Libertarian candidate.  (My emphasis.)

Over the past few years the Libertarian party has grown enough in popularity for their candidate to have substantial impact on the Georgia Senate race.  The Republican party would do well to burnish its appeal to libertarian leaning voters as it strives to recover from this election debacle.  If the Republicans hope to capture any of the youth vote in future elections they are going to have to appeal to their libertarian instincts.  Greg Mankiw could see this almost as soon as the polls closed.

In this election, the young left the Republican party in droves.

Why? I am not enough of a political scientist to be sure, but recent conversations I have had with some Harvard undergrads have led me to a conjecture: It was largely noneconomic issues. These particular students told me they preferred the lower tax, more limited government, freer trade views of McCain, but they were voting for Obama on the basis of foreign policy and especially social issues like abortion. The choice of a social conservative like Palin as veep really turned them off McCain.

So what does the Republican Party need to do to get the youth vote back? If these Harvard students are typical (and perhaps they are not, as Harvard students are hardly a random sample), the party needs to scale back its social conservatism. Put simply, it needs to become a party for moderate and mainstream libertarians. The actual Libertarian Party is far too extreme in its views to attract these students. And it is too much of a strange fringe group. These students are, after all, part of the establishment. But a reformed Republican Party could, I think, win them back.

Mankiw wonders if the Republican party will be able move in this direction without alienating its social conservative base.  I'm wondering if party leaders are smart enough to realize that this is the direction the party has to go.

We're all keynesianos now.

Mexico has made great strides on economic policy.

To be sure, Mr. Carstens [Mexico's minister of finance, Agustin Carstens] believes in the state's capacity to stimulate economic activity. "If you can get the economy going and you have the instruments to do it, it is important that you use them," he told me. Then he added a historic footnote: "But we have limits to how much we can borrow and finance prudently." He went on: "Thinking that we are going to run a fiscal deficit without thinking of how we will finance it? That would be irresponsible."

For a country that has repeatedly gotten itself into fiscal and monetary trouble by running up big budget deficits, this is a tectonic shift in thinking.

We must all stand together

Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, urged to India to resist striking back at Pakistan for the terror attacks in Mumbai. 

Speaking exclusively to the Financial Times, Pakistan’s president warned that provocation by rogue “non-state actors” posed the danger of a return to war between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

“Even if the militants are linked to Lashkar-i-tayyaba, [a prominent militant group linked to previous attacks against India] who do you think we are fighting?” asked Mr Zardari, whose country is battling al-Qaeda and Taliban militants on its shared border with Afghanistan.

“We live in troubled times where non-state actors have taken us to war before, whether it is the case of those who perpetrated [the] 9/11 [attacks on the US] or contributed to the escalation of the situation in Iraq,” said Mr Zardari.

“Now, events in Mumbai tell us that there are ongoing efforts to carry out copycat attacks by militants. We must all stand together to fight out this menace.”