Browner Proves It: The Second Clinton Administration!

Carol Browner, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency for both terms of the Clinton administration (1993-2001), is expected to be tapped as "energy and environmental czar" for the incoming Barack Obama administration.

Well, that does it. I'm putting my foot down, finally. I've held off on criticizing Obama for his oppressively stale administrative appointments. But, I mean let's be honest, this is a de facto Second Clinton Administration, with a token black chief executive who'll be sitting in the Oval Office. This is not just a disaster for the Democratic Party, but for Barack Obama's personal claim to embody hope and change, not to mention post-partisan transformation.

Recall what we've seen so far: Obama picked the profane Illinois political operative Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Emmanuel, prior to being elected to Illinois' 5th conressional district in 2002, was Bill Clinton's campaign finance director in 1992, and later served in the Clinton White House as a personal advisor to the president.

Then, of course, we have Senator Hillary Clinton who has accepted her nomination to be secretary of state in the new administration. The Clinton pick raises more questions than anything we've seen so far. Tapping Clinton, above all, is a sign of Obama's dire weaknesses. Did Obama need to shore up his credibility with the PUMAs? Probably not, as he won a decisive 52.5 percent majority on November 4th (apparently showing that the pre-convention fears of party disunity were overblown). No, Obama selected Clinton to neutralize his own woeful inexperience, and not just in foreign policy, which Hillary had targeted so effectively during the primaries (don't forget the "3 am phone call"). After running perhaps the most successful presidential campaign in history, Obama put on the retroburners. Frozen by the fact that he's going to have to actually govern, he tossed his utopian calls for transformation and hewed to the tried and true of old-news party hacks. We'll have not just have Hillary, but Bill Clinton too, as an in-house deputy secretary of state, with tremendous influence on his wife (and not to mention his estimable connections, which at any other time in history would raise vigorous questions of conflict of interest).

Then you've got New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the most qualified failed presidential candidate in American history. Richardson was Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of energy. Having been snubbed for state, Richardson will preside over private-sector ribbon-cutting at one of the smallest cabinet departments in Washington. What a letdown, but it's a perfect signature for Obama's already-failing style of bureaucratic leadership.

Of special note is attorney general-nominee Eric Holder. As assitant attorney general in the second Clinton administration, Holder endorsed Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, which soon became a culminating symbol of the moral vacuum of the Clinton presidency.

With the appointment of Carol Browner as a top staffer on Obama's energy and environmental policy, we'll see another top Clinton administration official coming back to D.C. for a second turn on the Democratic-insider merry-go-round (revolving door?). An undistinguished bureaucrat, Browner apparently stepped on toes during her tenure as the administration's enforcer on bone-crushing anti-business environmental mandates. This time around she'll have the added capital of global warming hysteria to really dampen entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

More announcements are on the way (including the possible appointment of Anthony Lake, a former national security advisor to Bill Clinton, as CIA director - no "change" there, again!).

Note that Obama's selection of physicist Steven Chu as secretary of energy should have been the model. This man has no inside Washington experience, and he boasts impeccable credentials as a winner of the Nobel Prize. Chu is a big thinker on the cutting-edge of alternative fuels and is thus exactly the kind of pick that Obama should be making across-the-board.

The progressive left has been deeply disappointed with Obama's appointments so far (not enough "genuine" Democratic leftists). But it's the American public who should really be disappointed, now that they're disabused of the campaign's lofty - even ethereal - promises of national healing, unity, and restoration of American values abroad. The fact is American government will largely return to the status quo ante, circa 1999. The difference is the country's got pent-up and deep-seated problems, and the man in driver's seat (or the figurehead, depending on how incompetent Barack Hussein ends up being) will have not a "team of rivals" but a team of cronies from the previous Democratic era of Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and the last presidential impeachment.

I can't see how this constitutes the kind of "change" Americans hoped for when they pulled their levers last month. But this year's been a black-magic tour of corruption and radicalism on the Democratic side, from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers, and now to Rod Blogojevich.

I'll be relieved, though, if Obama breaks with Bill Clinton's record and loses in 2012, ending up as a failed one-term president with his first-term agenda of big-government liberalism repudiated at the polls next time around.

Peter Beinart Backs Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel

Beinart writes at yesterday's New York Times, "To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements":

In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the settlement of Ariel, which stretches deep into the West Bank, “the heart of our country.” Through its pro-settler policies, Israel is forging one political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy, given that millions of West Bank Palestinians are barred from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.

In response, many Palestinians and their supporters have initiated a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.), which calls not only for boycotting all Israeli products and ending the occupation of the West Bank but also demands the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes — an agenda that, if fulfilled, could dismantle Israel as a Jewish state.

The Israeli government and the B.D.S. movement are promoting radically different one-state visions, but together, they are sweeping the two-state solution into history’s dustbin.

It’s time for a counteroffensive — a campaign to fortify the boundary that keeps alive the hope of a Jewish democratic state alongside a Palestinian one. And that counteroffensive must begin with language.

Jewish hawks often refer to the territory beyond the green line by the biblical names Judea and Samaria, thereby suggesting that it was, and always will be, Jewish land. Almost everyone else, including this paper, calls it the West Bank.

But both names mislead. “Judea and Samaria” implies that the most important thing about the land is its biblical lineage; “West Bank” implies that the most important thing about the land is its relationship to the Kingdom of Jordan next door. After all, it was only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948 that it coined the term “West Bank” to distinguish it from the rest of the kingdom, which falls on the Jordan River’s east bank. Since Jordan no longer controls the land, “West Bank” is an anachronism. It says nothing meaningful about the territory today.

Instead, we should call the West Bank “nondemocratic Israel.” The phrase suggests that there are today two Israels: a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based nondemocracy beyond it. It counters efforts by Israel’s leaders to use the legitimacy of democratic Israel to legitimize the occupation and by Israel’s adversaries to use the illegitimacy of the occupation to delegitimize democratic Israel.

Having made that rhetorical distinction, American Jews should seek every opportunity to reinforce it. We should lobby to exclude settler-produced goods from America’s free-trade deal with Israel. We should push to end Internal Revenue Service policies that allow Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to settler charities. Every time an American newspaper calls Israel a democracy, we should urge it to include the caveat: only within the green line.

But a settlement boycott is not enough. It must be paired with an equally vigorous embrace of democratic Israel. We should spend money we’re not spending on settler goods on those produced within the green line. We should oppose efforts to divest from all Israeli companies with the same intensity with which we support efforts to divest from companies in the settlements: call it Zionist B.D.S.

Supporters of the current B.D.S. movement will argue that the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic Israel is artificial. After all, many companies profit from the occupation without being based on occupied land. Why shouldn’t we boycott them, too? The answer is that boycotting anything inside the green line invites ambiguity about the boycott’s ultimate goal — whether it seeks to end Israel’s occupation or Israel’s existence.

For their part, American Jewish organizations might argue that it is unfair to punish Israeli settlements when there are worse human rights offenses in the world and when Palestinians still commit gruesome terrorist acts. But settlements need not constitute the world’s worst human rights abuse in order to be worth boycotting. After all, numerous American cities and organizations boycotted Arizona after it passed a draconian immigration law in 2010.

The relevant question is not “Are there worse offenders?” but rather, “Is there systematic oppression that a boycott might help relieve?” That Israel systematically oppresses West Bank Palestinians has been acknowledged even by the former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who have warned that Israel’s continued rule there could eventually lead to a South African-style apartheid system.

Boycotts could help to change that. Already, prominent Israeli writers like David Grossman, Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua have refused to visit the settlement of Ariel. We should support their efforts because persuading companies and people to begin leaving nondemocratic Israel, instead of continuing to flock there, is crucial to keeping the possibility of a two-state solution alive.

I think the phrase "useful idiot" was invented for people like Beinart.

I remember a few years ago Beinart emerged on the scene with some writings on foreign policy (although I can't recall the titles of his books, which should tell you something). And now apparently he's a professor at the City University of New York. I wouldn't recommend him to my students. Beinart's giving aid and comfort to Israel's enemies. Recall that I'm reading Professor Michael Curtis' new book, Should Israel Exist?: A Sovereign Nation Under Attack by the International Community. Let me refer readers to Chapter 9, "The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis." The Mufti was Haj Amin al-Husseini, an Arab nationalist who worked with Adolf Hiter and top leaders of the Nazi regime to develop Germany's policy on the Middle East and the Jews. One key policy proposed was a Jewish boycott. In the 1930s, the Mufti was the lead organizer of Palestinian Arab campaigns of assassination and terrorism against British forces and the Jews in the area of Palestine. After World War II, Husseini was the head of the Arab High Committee in Palestine that imposed an economic boycott on Jewish companies, industry, and trade throughout Palestine. According to Curtis, "The Arab League in 1948 formerly organized a boycott, which had begun more informally three years earlier and had preceded the establishment of Israel, not only of Israeli companies and products, but also of those from other countries maintaining economic relations with or who were perceived to be supporting Israel." Curtis notes that elements of the "boycott is still in existence" today and it costs Israel "considerable amounts of finance in terms of lost markets and economic problems" (p. 149). (The boycott was the economic arm of the Arab state strategy that came to a head in the Arab's war of aggression against the new state of Israel in 1948 --- and it's thus in fact a central cause of the current conflict in the Middle East today.)

Folks should get a hold of Curtis's book --- it's a must-read history, vital for the intellectual and political defense of Israel. And you can see why: The idiot Beinart is attempting to make distinctions between this and that side of the Green Line where none exist. The West Bank territories do not belong to Arab states or the so-called Palestinians. These are not "occupied territories." The lands were delineated and internationally accepted by the 1948 partition plan: "there was never an international border on the Green Line..." Beinart is involved in helping to propagate a lie that works to further the delegitimation program of the global left's Israel extermination industry. He should be ashamed of himself.

In any case, Beinart has a new book out, The Crisis of Zionism. I haven't read it but Sol Stern has a review at Commentary, "Beinart the Unwise."

I'll have more later.

In the meantime, keep pushing back against the assholes. This is getting ridiculous.

Five-Star Emporium of Ambition in Kinshasha

Following-up, "A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution."

At NYT. "On the Banks of the Furious Congo River, a 5-Star Emporium of Ambition":

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The lobby of the Fleuve Congo Hotel was a swirl of double-breasted suits and tailored dresses one April morning. Shiny gold watches dangled from wrists. Stilettos clacked across marble floors. Smooth jazz played as men in designer loafers sipped espressos.

Situated on the banks of the muddy, furious Congo River, the Fleuve is an emporium of ambition in a nation that, despite extreme poverty and chronic corruption, serves up raw materials crucial to the planet’s battle against climate change.

The soil in the Democratic Republic of Congo is bursting with cobalt and other metals used in the production of electric car batteries, wind turbines and other mainstays of the green energy revolution. Practically everyone who passes through the hotel, where the air conditioning battles the sweltering heat, seems determined to grab a piece of the wealth.

Just off the lobby that day, near a sumptuous brunch buffet, sat Dikembe Mutombo, the 7-foot-2 former NBA all-star player. He had teamed up in his quest for mineral riches with Gentry Beach, a Texas hedge-fund manager who is a family friend and major fund-raiser to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Mutombo shared his table with a top Congolese mining lawyer turned politician whose office is conveniently located in a complex near the hotel.

As the clean energy revolution upends the centuries-long lock of fossil fuels on the global economy, dealmakers and hustlers converge on the Fleuve Congo Hotel.

Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president, top in the gray suit, arrived this spring at the Fleuve Congo Hotel in Kinshasa.Credit...

Situated on the banks of the muddy, furious Congo River, the Fleuve is an emporium of ambition in a nation that, despite extreme poverty and chronic corruption, serves up raw materials crucial to the planet’s battle against climate change.

The soil in the Democratic Republic of Congo is bursting with cobalt and other metals used in the production of electric car batteries, wind turbines and other mainstays of the green energy revolution. Practically everyone who passes through the hotel, where the air conditioning battles the sweltering heat, seems determined to grab a piece of the wealth.

Just off the lobby that day, near a sumptuous brunch buffet, sat Dikembe Mutombo, the 7-foot-2 former NBA all-star player. He had teamed up in his quest for mineral riches with Gentry Beach, a Texas hedge-fund manager who is a family friend and major fund-raiser to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Mutombo shared his table with a top Congolese mining lawyer turned politician whose office is conveniently located in a complex near the hotel.

Mr. Mutombo is among a wave of adventurers and opportunists who have filled a vacuum created by the departure of major American mining companies, and by the reluctance of other traditional Western firms to do business in a country with a reputation for labor abuses and bribery.

The list of fortune hunters includes Erik Prince, the security contractor and ex-Navy SEAL; Jide Zeitlin, the Nigerian-born former chief executive of the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade; and Aliaune Thiam, the Senegalese-American musician known as Akon.

All have been drawn to Congo’s high-risk, high-reward mining sector as the demand for cobalt has skyrocketed because automakers around the world are speeding up plans to convert from gasoline- to electric-powered fleets.

Most recently, Ford Motor, General Motors and Toyota announced they would spend billions of dollars to build battery factories in the United States. The price of cobalt has doubled since January, and more than two-thirds of the global supply is here in Congo.

The Fleuve became the go-to luxury destination after a politically connected Chinese businessman — himself a mining dealmaker — was awarded a contract to run what had once been an abandoned 1970s-era office building. The now five-star hotel has usurped the elite status of its competitor next door, built in the 1960s with U.S. government financing, and it is the kind of place where swashbucklers arrive by private plane trailed by paparazzi, and where some guests keep suitcases of cash and nuggets of gold locked in their rooms.

The frenzied atmosphere at the hotel reflects a pivotal moment for the country — and the world — as the clean energy revolution upends the centuries-long lock of fossil fuels on the global economy.

“Congo is the one who is going to deliver the EV of the future,” Mr. Mutombo, the retired basketball player, said of electric vehicles. “There is no other answer.”

But such bravado signals trouble to some seasoned business people, who see a lot of show and little substance in the new class of deal seekers.

“The country has become the prey of international adventurers,” said Jozsef M. Kovacs, who built the neighboring hotel, originally an InterContinental, which once hosted waves of executives from major Western mining companies that had billions of dollars in capital available to them and decades of mining experience. A handful of those traditional investors remain in Congo, including Robert Friedland, founder of Vancouver, B.C.-based Ivanhoe Mines. But Ivanhoe’s operations are now in large part financed by Chinese investors, who dominate the industrial mining sector in Congo.

“You don’t have a lot of these Fortune 500 mining companies,” said Luc Gerard Nyafé, a regular at the Fleuve who advises the Congolese president and is pursuing mining interests here. “That is something that needs to change.”

But for now, at least, the adventurers have taken center stage, and sometimes their ambitions converge at the Fleuve. Ambassadors, mercenaries, celebrities, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs — they all pass through...

The Limits of Democracy Promotion

From Stephen Krasner, at Foreign Affairs, "Learning to Live With Despots":

Could the U.S. create more stability around the world by dialing back its global push for democracy?https://t.co/bAMCX4qnFv

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) February 19, 2020

Throughout its history, the United States has oscillated between two foreign policies. One aims to remake other countries in the American image. The other regards the rest of the world as essentially beyond repair. According to the second vision, Washington should demonstrate the benefits of consolidated democracy—free and fair elections, a free press, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and an active civil society—but not seek to impose those things on other countries. The George W. Bush administration took the first approach. The Obama administration took the second, as has the Trump administration, choosing to avoid actively trying to promote freedom and democracy in other countries.

Both strategies are, however, deeply flawed. The conceit that the United States can turn all countries into consolidated democracies has been disproved over and over again, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq. The view that Washington should offer a shining example but nothing more fails to appreciate the dangers of the contemporary world, in which groups and individuals with few resources can kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Americans. The United States cannot fix the world’s problems, but nor does it have the luxury of ignoring them.

Washington should take a third course, adopting a foreign policy that keeps the country safe by working with the rulers the world has, not the ones the United States wishes it had. That means adopting policies abroad that can improve other states’ security, boost their economic growth, and strengthen their ability to deliver some services while nevertheless accommodating a despotic ruler. For the purposes of U.S. security, it matters more that leaders in the rest of the world govern well than it does that they govern democratically. And in any case, helping ensure that others govern well—or at least well enough—may be the best that U.S. foreign policy can hope to achieve in most countries.

THE WAY WE LIVED THEN

Homo sapiens has been around for about 8,000 generations, and for most of that time, life has been rather unpleasant. Life expectancy began to increase around 1850, just seven generations ago, and accelerated only after 1900. Prior to that point, the average person lived for around 30 years (although high infant mortality explained much of this figure); today, life expectancy is in the high 70s or above for wealthy countries and approaching 70 or more for many poor ones. In the past, women—rich and poor alike—frequently died in childbirth. Pandemic diseases, such as the Black Death, which wiped out more than one-third of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century, were common. In the Western Hemisphere, European colonists brought diseases that devastated indigenous populations. Until the nineteenth century, no country had the rule of law; at best, countries had rule by law, in which formal laws applied only to some. For most people, regardless of their social rank, violence was endemic. Only in the last century or two has per capita income grown significantly. Most humans who have ever lived have done so under despotic regimes.

Most still do. Consolidated democracy, in which the arbitrary power of the state is constrained and almost all residents have access to the rule of law, is a recent and unique development. The experience of people living in wealthy industrialized democracies since the end of World War II, with lives relatively free of violence, is the exception. Wealthy democratic states have existed for only a short period of history, perhaps 150 years, and in only a few places in the world—western Europe, North America, Australasia, and parts of Asia. Even today, only about 30 countries are wealthy, consolidated democracies. Perhaps another 20 might someday make the leap, but most will remain in some form of despotism.

The United States cannot change that, despite the hopes of policymakers who served in the Bush administration and scholars such as the political scientist Larry Diamond. Last year, Diamond, reflecting on his decades of studying democratization all over the world, wrote that “even people who resented America for its wealth, its global power, its arrogance, and its use of military force nevertheless expressed a grudging admiration for the vitality of its democracy.” Those people hoped, he wrote, that “the United States would support their cause.” The trouble is that, regardless of such hopes, despotic leaders do not want to provide benefits to those they govern; they want to support with arms or money those who can keep them in power. They will not accept policies that aim to end their rule. What’s more, organizing against a despot is dangerous and unusual. Revolutions are rare. Despots usually stay in power.

Yet although the United States cannot build wealthy democracies abroad, it cannot ignore the problems of the rest of the world, either, contrary to what Americans have been told by people such as U.S. President Donald Trump, who in his first speech after he was elected said, “There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American flag. From now on, it’s going to be America first, OK? America first. We’re going to put ourselves first.”

The trouble with wanting to withdraw and focus on home is that, like it or not, globalization has indeed shrunk the world, and technology has severed the relationship between material resources and the ability to do harm. A few individuals in badly governed and impoverished states control enough nuclear and biological weapons to kill millions of Americans. And nuclear weapons are spreading. Pakistan has sold nuclear technology to North Korea; the North Koreans might one day sell it to somebody else. Nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of jihadi groups. Pandemic diseases can arise naturally in badly governed states and could spread to the developed world, killing millions. The technology needed to create artificial pathogens is becoming more widely available. For these reasons, the United States has to play a role in the outside world, whether it wants to or not, in order to lower the chances of the worst possible outcomes. Revolutions are rare. Despots usually stay in power.

And because despots are here for the foreseeable future, Washington will always have to deal with them. That will mean promoting not good government but good enough governance. Good government is based on a Western ideal in which the government delivers a wide variety of services to the population based on the rule of law, with laws determined by representatives selected through free and fair elections. Good government is relatively free of corruption and provides reliable security for all citizens. But pushing for elections often results only in bloodshed, with no clear improvement in governance. Trying to eliminate corruption entirely may preclude eliminating the worst forms of corruption. And greater security may mean more violations of individual rights. Good government is not in the interests of the elites in most countries the United States wants to change, where rulers will reject or undermine reforms that could weaken their hold on power.

A foreign policy with more limited aims, by contrast, might actually achieve more. Greater security, some economic growth, and the better provision of some services is the best the United States can hope for in most countries. Achieving good enough governance is feasible, would protect U.S. interests, and would not preclude progress toward greater democracy down the road.

Policies aiming for good enough governance have already succeeded. The best example comes from Colombia, where for the past two decades, the United States has sought to curb violence and drug trafficking by providing financial aid, security training, military technology, and intelligence under what was known until 2016 as Plan Colombia (now Peace Colombia). The results have been remarkable. Between 2002 and 2008, homicides in Colombia dropped by 45 percent. Between 2002 and 2012, kidnappings dropped by 90 percent. Since the turn of the century, Colombia has improved its scores on a number of governance measures, including control of corruption, the rule of law, government effectiveness, and government accountability. That progress culminated in 2016 with a peace deal between the government and the guerilla movement the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)...

Obama an Evil and Dangerous Man?

So far this blog has been generally fair and balanced in commenting on President Barack Obama. While I'm not kidding when I suggest that Obama's social agenda, especially his abortion extremism, will tear this country's soul apart, my posts have been measured and respectful.

So, compare my approach with MacRanger's, "Forget Obama Being the Anti-Christ, He’s the Devil Incarnate. MacRanger cites Dick Morris' essay yesterday, "The Obama Presidency: Here Comes Socialism" (which is a familiar meme from the campaign), and adds this:

None of this is news, you’ve heard it here. In three days he’s already greatly weakened our national security, signed orders to set the terrorists free and signed over more babies to their death through unfettered abortion.

This is an evil and very dangerous man and we’ve only begun to see just how much that is true. So now is the time to begin to act. Now is the time to begin to wrest - through peaceful and legal means - this Country back from those who are about to destroy it.

When MacRanger suggests Obama will "destroy this country," this is precisely the argument I've made all along - that by training, ideology, and inclination, President Obama is not commited to upholding the Anglo-Protestant exceptionalism that has always been the basis for our national strength and the font of our international mission of expansive liberty. Nor is Obama committed to the kind of economic freedom that is the essence of the dramatic tax rollbacks of 2001 and 2003, which were the capstone of 25 years of prosperity dating to the first Reagan administration's tax cuts of 1983. We'll see now under the Obama Democratic-left, as Morris suggests in his piece, the biggest government and non-defense spending regime in the history of this nation.

Obama's executive order on halting trails for Guantanamo detainees gives me deep pause as well. The Washington Post went so far as to announce, upon news of Obama's action, that "Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End."

There is so much explicit partisanship - no, anti-Americanism - in that title, it's depressing, that with such ease and haste, and the coming of the Obama era, the Bush "war" on terrorism can be jettisoned for the "law and order" approach favored by the appeasement hawks of the pre-9/11 Democratic Party. The Obama mindset is well-represented in leftist foreign policy circles, where the notion that the deployment of Army and Marine infantry units for any land-based military missions, even counter-insurgency, is archaic, and that the U.S. must simply wind down the defense budget and abjure robust ground forces in favor of "cheaper and generally more effective" means.

I can assure readers that these moves are precisely why I opposed Obama's candidacy so vociferously thoughout 2008. No one can say that we didn't know this was coming, or that the leftist media and punditocracy had long been ready to turn the U.S. into a second-rate power, to abandon a vigorous forward posture, in favor of literally coddling dictators, by way of global moral equivalence, and by standing aside where no other great power can act in the face of global danger and injustice.

And of course, more is in store.

This blog reported that in 1996 Obama had declared in writing a comprehensive agenda for the roll back of traditional marriage in favor of the radical same-sex marriage absolutism. Recall too that last July, Obama declared his opposition to the proposed gay marriage ban going on the ballot in California, which was Proposition 8, passed by a majority of the state's voters on November 4th. Prior to that vote, Obama had announced to San Francisco's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club that he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts" to affirm traditional marriage institutions in California and other states.

I am not convinced President Obama will affirm his position announced to Pastor Rick Warren that marriage consists as between one man and one woman. No, as we can see in just three days of governance, the Demcrats in power are not anywhere inclined to bipartisanship or pragmatism. The ascent to power must be truly intoxicated, and it's no doubt corrupting, given the burst of impropriety we've already seen in the Democratic camp, not to mention the leftist media's refusal to report on it effectively.

So, while no, Barack Obama is not an "evil man," his designs for the total oblitertion of Bush administration rules and practices, and his early signals on the push for the most radical social agenda in decades, proves for all to see that the deepest fears on the conservative right were by no means unwarranted.

Bullying Protectionists: Democrats on Trade

This Wall Street Journal editorial highlights a key international relations election issue that's been out of the media glare with so much talk about Iraq: Will the next president expand America's historic commitment to free trade, global markets, and the internationalization of economic opportunity?

The answer's less clear on the Democratic side:

Democrats claim the world hates America because President Bush has behaved like a global bully. But we don't recall him ever ordering an ally to rewrite an existing agreement on American terms -- or else.

Yet that's exactly what both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are now promising to do to our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada. At their Ohio debate on Tuesday, first Mrs. Clinton, followed ever so quickly by Mr. Obama, pledged to pull America out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if the two countries don't agree to rewrite it on Yankee terms. How's that for global "unilateralism"?

Democrats sure have come a long way from the 1990s, when Bill Clinton pushed Nafta through a Democratic Congress. And the truth is that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have spoken favorably about Nafta in the past. Yet now they are sounding the loudest protectionist notes by a potential President in decades. More dangerous, neither is telling the truth about the role of trade in the U.S. economy. If either one makes it to the White House, he or she will carry the weight of this campaign protectionism while trying to lead the global economy.

Protectionism has been an important theme throughout the campaign. See my earlier post, "Iowa Voters Jittery on Trade Policy."

But the gains from trade remain largely uncontroversial among economists.

But note further WSJ's editorial, which highlights the gains to both Canada and Mexico from the North America Free Trade Agreement.

Especially interesting here is Barack Obama's statements on trade. He campaigned as a free trader in earlier phases of his political career. Now he wants to roll back America's commitment to free international markets: He's like John Kerry on trade policy: He was for trade liberalization before he was against it.

Communist Revolutionaries: 'The Executive Branch of the Democratic Party'

From David Horowitz, "The Manchurian Candidate":

Van Jones is the carefully groomed protégé of a network of radical organizations -- including Moveon.org -- and of Democratic sponsors like billionaire George Soros and John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff and co-chair of the Obama transition team.

At the time of his appointment as the President’s “Green Jobs” czar – and despite a very recent 10-year history of “revolutionary” activity – Jones was a member of two key organizations at the very heart of what might be called the executive branch of the Democratic Party ....

How did John Podesta and Al Gore and Barack Obama come to be political allies of a far left radical like Van Jones, a 9/11 conspiracy “truther” and a supporter of the Hamas view that the entire state of Israel is “occupied territory?” To answer this question requires an understanding of developments within the political left that have taken place over the last two decades, and in particular the forging of a “popular front” between anti-American radicals and “mainstream liberals” in the Democratic Party.

The collapse of Communism in the early Nineties did not lead to an agonizing reappraisal of its radical agendas among many who had supported it in the West. Instead, its survivors set about creating a new socialist international which would unite “social justice” movements, radical environmental groups, leftwing trade unions, and traditional communist parties – all dedicated to the revival of utopian dreams.

The new political force made its first impression at the end of the decade when it staged global demonstrations against the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. The demonstrations erupted into large-scale violence in Seattle in 2001 when 50,000 Marxists, anarchists and environmental radicals, joined by the giant leftwing unions AFSCME and SEIU, descended on the city, smashed windows and automobiles, and set fire to buildings to protest “globalization” – the world capitalist system.

In the direct aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the anti-globalization forces morphed into what became known as the “anti-war” movement. An already scheduled anti-globalization protest on September 29 was re-redirected (and re-named) to target America’s retaliation against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The new “peace” movement grew to massive proportions in the lead up to the war in Iraq but it never held a single protest against Saddam’s violation of 17 UN arms control resolutions, or his expulsion of the UN arms inspectors. It did, however, mobilize 35 million people in world-wide protests against America’s “imperialist war for oil.” The orchestrators of the demonstrations were the same leaders and the same organizations, the same unions and the same “social justice” groups that had been responsible for the Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization and the international capitalist system.

A second watershed came in the run-up to the 2004 elections when billionaire George Soros decided to integrate the radicals – including their political organization ACORN -- into the structure of Democratic Party politics. Together with a group of like-minded billionaires, Soros created a “Shadow Party” (as Richard Poe and I documented in a book by that name) whose purpose was to shape the outcome of the 2004 presidential race. “America under Bush,” Soros told The Washington Post, “is a danger to the world,…” To achieve his goal, Soros created a galaxy of 527 political organizations headed by leftwing union leaders like SEIU chief Andrew Stern and Clinton operatives like Harold Ickes. As its policy brain he created the Center for American Progress.

Soros failed to achieve his goal in 2004 but he went on working to create new elements of the network, such as the Apollo Alliance. Four years later the Shadow Party was able to elect a candidate who had spent his entire political career in the bowels of this movement. Obama’s electoral success was made possible by the wide latitude he was given by the press and the public, partly because he was the first African-American with a chance to be president and partly because his campaign was deliberately crafted to convey the impression that he was a tax-cutting centrist who intended to bring Americans together to find common solutions to their problems. When confronted with his long-term associations and working partnerships with anti-American racists like Jeremiah Wright and anti-American radicals like William Ayers, he denied the obvious and successfully side-stepped its implications.

Just eight months into his presidency, however, a new Barack Obama has begun to emerge. With unseemly haste Obama has nearly bankrupted the federal government, amassing more debt in eight months than all his predecessors combined. He has appeased America’s enemies abroad and attacked America’s intelligence services at home. He has rushed forward with programs that require sweeping changes in the American economy and is now steamrolling a massive new health-care program that will give the government unprecedented control of its citizens.

Among the hallmarks of this new radical regime the appointment of Van Jones stood out for its blatant departure from political normalcy. In his White House role, the radical Jones would have represented the president in shaping a multi-billion stimulus package, which could easily function as a patronage program of particular interest to his political allies in the “Apollo Alliance,” ACORN and the leftwing unions. In the classic manual for activists on how to achieve their radical goals, Obama’s political mentor Saul Alinsky wrote: “From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.” As the president’s green jobs commissar, Van Jones had entered the trillion-dollar community of the federal government and would soon have been building his radical army. The rest of us should be wondering who his sponsors were within the White House (senior presidential advisor and long-time “progressive” Valerie Jarrett was certainly one). Then we should ask ourselves what they are planning next.

Gingrich Teams With Pelosi on Climate Change, Loses Credibility

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has teamed up with current Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make a global warming advertisment for Al Gore's change awareness campaign, via YouTube:

I've seen this ad a couple of times now, and the word "INCONGRUITY" just jumps out at me as a look at Pelosi flashing her big smile at Gingrich.

These people are intense partisans, and given the controversial science on climate change, I'm thinking, especially about Gingrich, the bomb-throwing conservative: "What the heck has gotten into this guy?"

It turns out Gingrich has gone centrist, as the Fort Mill Times indicates:

Newt Gingrich says he wants to help Democrats. Really.

The former speaker of the House from Georgia who led the fiercely partisan Republican revolution in 1994 and once seemed to delight in firebombing Democrats with vicious verbal assaults is these days preaching a new breed of politics searching out the middle.

Gingrich just filmed a new environmental commercial with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He's back in Georgia this week pitching a platform of issues on which he says the vast majority of Americans agree. And he's shipped that list to Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee, as well as to Republicans.

"If you want the level of change that I think America has to have to remain the leading country in the world it can't be just Republican," Gingrich said in an interview with The Associated Press at an Atlanta restaurant.

"It's a red, white and blue strategy rather than a red versus blue strategy."

At one point Gingrich interrupts the interview to take a call on his cell phone. He's beaming when he hangs up.

"That was Al Gore," he said. The former Democratic vice president had called, he said, to thank him for the ad with Pelosi on behalf of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

What's going on? Some suspect that the politically-astute Gingrich - who abruptly abandoned a possible run for president last fall - is laying the ground work for another White House bid in 2012.

Gingrich, who will turn 65 this summer, does not exactly deny this.

"If the bow wave of acceptance got large enough that it was inevitable I'd run," Gingrich said.

But for right now, he said, "I'm happy to be a citizen."

A citizen who, through his political think tank "American Solutions," is jockeying to be at the center of the debate over public policy.

A conversation with the former college professor can be dizzying. Within minutes he has tackled the woes of the crumbling city of Detroit, the rise in childhood diabetes, alcoholism on Sioux Indian reservations and the troubling rate of sexually transmitted diseases in teenage girls.

The unifying theme: "We are crippled by bad culture reinforced by bad government," he said.

True to form, Gingrich is espousing some controversial ideas to turn things around. He's intrigued by an effort to pay students to study, saying it would instill badly-needed study habits in poor students. He also thinks that child labor laws should be reformed to allow those age 13 to 16 to be able to work and to keep their wages without paying taxes. The nation's entrepreneurs began young, he says.

Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University, said Gingrich will have an uphill climb in making himself over as a centrist unifier. Most people still know him as an angry partisan crusader, Black said.

But Gingrich said that label is something of a caricature. He points out that welfare reform - one of the signature accomplishments of his tenure in the House - passed with support from half the chamber's Democrats. (He doesn't mention that it was also being pushed by Democratic president Bill Clinton, whose presidency the then-speaker went on to compare to the Jerry Springer show.)

Still, Gingrich said although he remains a loyal Republican he hopes Democrats steal his platform, arguing - with his trademark self confidence - that it would raise the bar.

I agree with Merle Black: Gingrich has a huge chasm to bridge in making himself over as a centrist.

But that phone call from Al Gore's what really kills me. It's Gingrich's "inconvenient truth," on which he'll be pummelled by conservative global warming skeptics.

Democrats Struggle Ahead of 2022

 I love it.

Frankly, there's little more I love than to see Democrats struggle. This like a Christmas present.

At NYT, "Democrats Struggle to Energize Their Base as Frustrations Mount":

Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters, warning the White House and congressional leadership that they are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

President Biden has achieved some major victories, signing a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill and moving a nearly $2 trillion social policy and climate change bill through the House. But some Democrats are warning that many of the voters who put them in control of the federal government last year may see little incentive to return to the polls in the midterms — reigniting a debate over electoral strategy that has been raging within the party since 2016.

As the administration focuses on those two bills, a long list of other party priorities — expanding voting rights, enacting criminal justice reform, enshrining abortion rights, raising the federal minimum wage to $15, fixing a broken immigration system — have languished or died in Congress. Negotiations in the Senate are likely to further dilute the economic and climate proposals that animated Mr. Biden’s campaign — if the bill passes at all. And the president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful, as violent language flourishes and threats to lawmakers flood into Congress.

Interviews with Democratic lawmakers, activists and officials in Washington and in key battleground states show a party deeply concerned about retaining its own supporters. Even as strategists and vulnerable incumbents from battleground districts worry about swing voters, others argue that the erosion of crucial segments of the party’s coalition could pose more of a threat in midterm elections that are widely believed to be stacked against it.

Already, Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have taken a sharp fall among some of his core constituencies, showing double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters. Those drops have led to increased tension between the White House and progressives at a time of heightened political anxiety, after Democrats were caught off-guard by the intensity of the backlash against them in elections earlier this month. Mr. Biden’s plummeting national approval ratings have also raised concerns about whether he would — or should — run for re-election in 2024.

Not all of the blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Biden; a large percentage of frustration is with the Democratic Party itself.

“It’s frustrating to see the Democrats spend all of this time fighting against themselves and to give a perception to the country, which the Republicans are seizing on, that the Democrats can’t govern,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads the A.M.E. churches across Georgia. “And some of us are tired of them getting pushed around, because when they get pushed around, African Americans get shoved.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading House progressive, warned that the party is at risk of “breaking trust” with vital constituencies, including young people and people of color.

“There’s all this focus on ‘Democrats deliver, Democrats deliver,’ but are they delivering on the things that people are asking for the most right now?” she said in an interview. “In communities like mine, the issues that people are loudest and feel most passionately about are the ones that the party is speaking to the least.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats acknowledge that a significant part of the challenge facing their party is structural: With slim congressional majorities, the party cannot pass anything unless the entire caucus agrees. That empowers moderate Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia to block some of the biggest promises to their supporters, including a broad voting rights bill.

A more aggressive approach may not lead to eventual passage of an immigration or voting rights law, but it would signal to Democrats that Mr. Biden is fighting for them, said Faiz Shakir, a close adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Mr. Shakir and others worry that the focus on the two significant pieces of legislation — infrastructure and the spending bill — won’t be enough to energize supporters skeptical of the federal government’s ability to improve their lives.

“I’m a supporter of Biden, a supporter of the agenda, and I’m frustrated and upset with him to allow this to go in the direction it has,” said Mr. Shakir, who managed Mr. Sanders’s presidential run in 2020. “It looks like we have President Manchin instead of President Biden in this debate.”

He added: “It’s made the president look weak.”

The divide over how much attention to devote to staunch Democratic constituencies versus moderate swing voters taps into a political debate that’s long roiled the party: Is it more important to energize the base or to persuade swing voters? And can Democrats do both things at once?

White House advisers argue that winning swing voters, particularly the suburban independents who play an outsize role in battleground districts, is what will keep Democrats in power — or at least curb the scale of their midterm losses. They see the drop among core groups of Democrats as reflective of a challenging political moment — rising inflation, the continued pandemic, uncertainty about schools — rather than unhappiness with the administration’s priorities.

“It’s November of 2021, not September of 2022,” John Anzalone, Mr. Biden’s pollster, said. “If we pass Build Back Better, we have a great message going into the midterms, when the bell rings on Labor Day, about what we’ve done for people.”

Even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan that Mr. Biden originally sought, the legislation that passed the House earlier this month offers proposals transforming child care, elder care, prescription drugs and financial aid for college, as well as making the largest investment ever to slow climate change. But some of the most popular policies will not be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections, nor will the impact of many of the infrastructure projects.

Already, Democrats face a challenging education effort with voters. According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally. Among white Democratic battleground voters, support for the bills is only 72 percent...

Still more.

 

A Defense Strategy for the New Administration

From Mac Thornberry and Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., at Foreign Affairs, "Preserving Primacy":

Should the United States fail to protect the global commons, no like-minded power will take its place. https://t.co/Kdh1RRWAIX

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 18, 2016

The next U.S. president will inherit a security environment in which the United States con­fronts mounting threats with increasingly constrained resources, diminished stature, and growing uncertainty both at home and abroad over its willingness to protect its friends and its interests. Revisionist powers in Europe, the western Pacific, and the Persian Gulf—three regions long considered by both Democratic and Republican administrations to be vital to U.S. national security—are seeking to overturn the rules-based international order. In Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized Crimea, waged proxy warfare in eastern Ukraine, and threatened NATO allies on Russia’s periphery. Further demonstrating its newfound assertiveness, Russia has dispatched forces to Syria and strength­ened its nuclear arsenal. After a failed attempt to “reset” relations with Moscow, U.S. President Barack Obama has issued stern warnings and imposed economic sanctions, but these have done little to deter Putin.

Nor has the administration’s “pivot” to Asia, now five years on, been matched by effective action. China continues to ramp up its military spending, investing heavily in weapons systems designed to threaten U.S. forces in the western Pacific. As a result, it is proving increas­ingly willing and able to advance its expansive territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas. Not content to resolve its disputes through diplomacy, Beijing has militarized them, building bases on natural and artificially created islands. The United States has failed to respond vigorously to these provocations, causing allies to question its willingness to meet its long-standing security commitments.

The lack of U.S. leadership is also fueling instability in the Middle East. In Iraq, the Obama administration forfeited hard-won gains by withdrawing all U.S. forces, creating a security vacuum that enabled the rise of both Iranian influence and the Islamic State, or ISIS. Adding to its strategic missteps, the administration fundamentally misread the character of the Arab Spring, failing to appreciate that the uprisings would provide opportunities for radical Islamist elements rather than lead to a new democratic order. The administration also failed to learn from the previous administration’s experience in Iraq when it chose to “lead from behind” in Libya, intervening to over­throw Muammar al-Qaddafi, only to declare victory and abandon the country to internal disorder. It then drew a “redline” over President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria but failed to act to enforce it. The result is growing instability in the Middle East and a decline in U.S. influence.

The threat of Islamist terrorism has grown on the Obama administration’s watch. Al Qaeda and ISIS, both Sunni groups, have gained new footholds in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and even West Africa. Obama’s negotiations with Iran, the home of radical Shiite Islamism, have not curbed the country’s involvement in proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen or its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. What the talks did produce—the nuclear deal—may slow Tehran’s march to ob­taining a nuclear weapon, but it also gives the regime access to tens of billions of dollars in formerly frozen assets. The ink on the agreement was barely dry when, in March, Tehran tested ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, in blatant defiance of a UN Security Council resolution. Adding to all this instability, military competition has expanded into the relatively new domains of outer space and cyberspace—and will eventually extend to undersea economic infrastructure, as well.

With the current approach failing, the next president will need to formulate a new defense strategy. It should include three basic elements: a clear statement of what the United States seeks to achieve, an understanding of the resources available for those goals, and guidance as to how those resources will be used. The strategy laid out here, if properly implemented, will allow the United States to preclude the rise of a hegemonic power along the Eurasian periphery and preserve access to the global commons—without bankrupting the country in the process...

Sounds great.

Frankly, I'm not worried about the U.S. maintaining its material preponderance, even with China supposedly "catching up."

It's that we need robust, non-politically correct leadership. Global preponderance is a state of mind as well as an objective reality. I'd argue that President Barack Hussein wanted to chop the U.S. down to size, to attack U.S. global hegemony at home, for ideological reasons. He's still doing with his appeasement and apology tours.

America will lead again, in both word and power. It's just a matter of the political dynamics. A Hillary Clinton administration's just going to be four more years of Obama's failed policies. But the pendulum is going to swing back to American exceptionalism at some point. Of that I remain optimistic.

But keep reading, in any case.

Romney Wins Michigan Primary!

Mitt Romney secured his first primary victory in 2008's topsy-turvy race for the GOP nomination. The New York Times reports:

Mitt Romney, seizing on his personal ties to a state where his father made his family’s political fortune, captured a must-win victory in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, claiming the first major trophy for his ailing campaign and throwing the wide-open Republican field into further disarray.

Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, led Senator John McCain by 9 percentage points. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Iowa caucus, conceded after polling at 17 percent of the vote.

In the Democratic race with 14 percent of precincts reporting, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won by a commanding margin in a field that did not include her closest competitors, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards. However, about a third of voters in the Democratic primary opted to allow the party to choose uncommitted delegates to the national convention, effectively a vote against Ms. Clinton.

“It’s a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism,” Mr. Romney told The Associated Press. “The people of Michigan said they believe in someone who is going to fight for them.”

Mr. Romney’s victory guarantees a headache for political watchdogs as the competitive Republican field heads to South Carolina for its Saturday primary. Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee have each won a major primary or caucus, leaving the party without a clear frontrunner.

Another top Republican, former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, is putting most of his immediate efforts into Florida, which will hold its primary on Jan. 29.

Mr. McCain, of Arizona, conceded the Michigan race, but he told supporters in South Carolina that he would not be deterred in his campaign.

“Starting tomorrow, we’re going to win South Carolina, and we’re going to go on and win the nomination," Mr. McCain said.

Mr. Huckabee has also flown to South Carolina, a state he is looking to win with support from his evangelical base.

Mr. Romney, who was born and raised in Michigan, used his final campaign appearances to remind voters of his personal ties to the state, where his father served three terms as governor. He promised, if elected president, to “not rest” until the state’s battered economic fortunes have been restored.

The message appeared to resonate with Republican voters, more than half of whom said in exit polls that their vote was driven by overwhelming economic concerns. A majority of those polled after they voted said a candidate’s position on the economy was more important than the war in Iraq, illegal immigration or terrorism. The exit poll was conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and the Associated Press.

Early reports of sluggish voter turnout may also have helped Mr. Romney’s cause. Freezing temperatures, an early morning snowfall, and a dearth of Democratic contenders on the ballot may have affected turnout, according to a state official.

It appeared from early returns that much of Mr. Romney’s support came from the three-county Detroit metropolitan area, home of many well-off Republicans and where the Romney name is better known from his father, George, being governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.

Surveys of Michigan voters leaving the polls on Tuesday also showed that Mr. Romney did well among those who decided in the last day or two, validating his strategy of saturating the state with advertising and personal appearances over the last five days. Mr. Romney aired almost twice as many television ads as his two leading opponents combined.

In exit polls, more than half of Republican voters in Michigan said their vote was driven by overwhelming economic concerns. A majority of those polled after they voted said a candidate’s position on the economy was more important than the war in Iraq, illegal immigration or terrorism. The exit poll was conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and the Associated Press.

While the voters said a candidate’s position on the issues was more important than a candidate’s personal qualities, more than 4 in 10 voters said it was more important to them that a candidate share their values than be able to win in November against a Democrat or have the right experience.

About a quarter of the voters said it mattered a great deal to them that a candidate shared their religious beliefs.

On the issues of abortion, about 10 percent of Republican voters said it should be legal in all cases, 25 percent said abortion should be legal in most cases, about 35 percent said it should be illegal in most cases and about 25 percent said abortion should be illegal in all cases.

A plurality of voters said immigrants should be deported to the country they came from rather than be allowed to stay as temporary workers or offered a chance to apply for citizenship.

A majority of voters approve of the war in Iraq. When asked to describe their feelings about the Bush administration, they were closely divided.

Michigan’s primary occurred much earlier than usual this year, and many residents interviewed over the past few days said they were not even aware there was an election on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton is expected to lead the pack on the Democratic side because she was the only major candidate whose name is on the ballot. Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards withdrew their names at the request of the national Democratic Party, which stripped Michigan of its delegates because the early date of its primary violated party rules.

But state party leaders said they believed the Michigan delegate slates would be seated.

The race here in Michigan forced the Republican candidates to focus chiefly on the dismal economy of the state, where thousands of manufacturing jobs have evaporated over the last several years and where the unemployment rate, 7.4 percent, is the highest in the nation.

Mr. McCain may have hurt himself here when he declared in a debate in South Carolina last week that because of the restructuring of the global automobile industry many of those jobs would never be restored in Michigan.

As I noted in the update to my previous post, Romney's optimistic message of economic revitalization appealed to Michigan voters who have been battered by economic transformation and the housing collapse (thanks to Elaine, over at Elaine's Place, for providing me with inside information on Michigan's housing market).

There's a lesson of caution for John McCain's straight-talk campaign: He's right that most jobs lost to global economic competition and market restructuring won't be coming back to the Great Lakes region. But his message was easily attacked by Romney as "economic pessimism." McCain's realism plays better in foreign policy than in economic affairs, where people need a voice of hope to lift their spirits.

I'll be looking at the polling data and political analyses over the next couple of days, but even without checking Memeorandum, I predict that the Daily Kos netroots will take credit for an independent crossover impact in blunting the McCain momentum (which early voter turnout data shows to be false).

Now, while I think McCain's right to focus on the next stop in South Carolina, the bigger impact of the Michigan results is to topple Mike Huckabee from his top-tier perch secured by his win in Iowa.

Romney - with his Michigan take - will have a big push heading into South Carolina. A Huckabee win in the Palmetto state is the former Arkansas governor's do-or-die sitiuation. Fred Thompson's down but not out, and he too will have to secure a victory or a strong second place showing in the first Southern primary to have any hope of being competitive heading into February 5.

John McCain, fresh off his New Hampshire comeback, has the wind of national public opinion at his back - and note that national polls show way more diversity of opinion than the views coming out of the Wolverine State, so it remains to be seen how substantial a bounce Romney gets heading into the later contests.

What's not in doubt is this is the most exciting GOP nomination process in decades!

The "Super Tuesday" round of nominating contests will truly be a crowning event if one of the GOP candidates taps some compelling theme to carry him to victory in a plurality of states, especially the big states like California and New York.

Don't forget, Florida votes before then. Maybe Florida will indeed provide Rudy Giuliani with the bounce that he needs to avoid an utter collapse, although things aren't looking good.

Photo: New York Times

The End of the World Trade Organization?

Who cares, really?

The conflict between economic regionalism and global economic openness, embodied in the post-WWII multilateral trade regime, has been a longtime topic in international relations theory.

The Trump administration is accelerating the shift to regionalism.

Not to mention Brexit, which should go through on January 31st, thanks to the Conservative triumph in the general election.

All is not lost, as bilateral trade agreements will take the place of wider multilateral pacts.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "House passage of USMCA marks major shift away from free-trade policies":

WASHINGTON —  The House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly passed the new North American trade deal, voting in unusually bipartisan fashion just a day after impeaching President Trump strictly on party lines. 

Approval of the trade bill, which now goes to the Senate for almost certain ratification, did far more than help Trump notch a major achievement: It marked a significant change in U.S. economic strategy toward the rest of the world.

For much of the last 70 years, throughout the Cold War and down to more recent times, Washington used America’s vast wealth and economic power to build friendships and alliances that bolstered national security.

That strategy included a fundamental commitment to free trade — opening the large U.S. market to products from all over the world. For the most part, American companies and their workers had to compete against foreign businesses and labor with little or no protection from the federal government.

As Trump has long complained, that free-trade policy cost millions of American jobs. But leaders of both parties and economic experts considered it worth the price because it boosted American growth, generating many new jobs, and opened new opportunities for many U.S. companies to profit in a global economy. At the same time, it helped cement U.S. leadership in the world.

“In the post-World War II era, we were so much more powerful and so much richer than everybody else that we could improve the living standards at home and still give away the store on trade,” said Clyde Prestowitz, a former top trade negotiator in President Reagan’s administration.

“And we’re now culminated at a moment in which the cost of our old policy is really hard to bear, and so we’re de facto changing our policy,” he said.

The march toward free global markets with lower tariffs and other barriers always had exceptions. Beginning in the 1970s, U.S. companies began to complain about unfair competition: dumping of textiles and steel by foreign producers subsidized by their governments, for instance, or the sale of below-cost television sets, electronics and other consumer goods.

Reagan and his successors responded to these complaints with demands for import quotas and other measures. But overall, the United States remained committed to a broad strategy of free trade — relying on market forces and competition to determine outcomes.

While Republican business leaders complained about specific instances of what they saw as unfair tactics, such as currency manipulation and intellectual property theft, they largely remained committed to the overall free-trade strategy.

Democrats, responding to their union supporters, complained that American workers were paying a heavy price for a system that primarily benefited corporations and upper-income Americans.

The original North American Free Trade Agreement, which passed the House in 1993 by a margin of only 34 votes, highlighted the political unease about trade.

The agreement, however, fit squarely into that strategy of using trade in part for geopolitical reasons. It aimed to make Mexico more prosperous and hence make the United States more secure at a time when radical, leftist regimes seemed to be on the rise in Latin America. Economically, many saw it as a bulwark against rising competition from a unified Europe and Asian tiger economies.

NAFTA tore down tariffs and shaped North America into a powerful economic bloc — three-way trade in goods now reaches $1.3 trillion — but it was in many ways outdated in a global economy driven much more by technology and data.

Trump long attacked NAFTA, calling it one of the worst trade agreements ever and promising to renegotiate it. As president, he has attacked the whole system of free trade, undermining the World Trade Organization, which the U.S. helped create in the 1990s, and starting trade wars not only with China but with longtime U.S. allies such as Europe, Canada and Mexico.

He has enjoyed quiet but significant Democratic support on the issue. Witness the large bipartisan majority for the new version of NAFTA.

Renamed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the measure won approval by the Democratic-majority House 385-41, a remarkable show of unity at a time of deep partisan acrimony.

Not that there wasn’t the usual jostling and one-upmanship which have characterized relations between congressional Democrats and Trump.

“Of course we’ll take credit for it, because what he proposed did not fill the bill of what he described,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said shortly before the vote, referring to Democrats’ successful pressure on the administration to amend the trade deal to strengthen enforcement of labor and environmental protections.

Earlier Wednesday night, at a rally in Battle Creek, Mich., Trump insisted that Pelosi and other Democrats had no choice but to pass USMCA.

“She had a lot of pressure, especially from manufacturing areas, farm areas, a lot of pressure to sign it.... I had a lot of union labor vote for me, tremendous amount of labor,” he said...

More.

Joseph Lieberman: Neoconservative Apostate

Joseph Lieberman's a real tough guy. His reelection to the Senate in 2006 defeated antiwar netroots-backed insurgent Ned Lamont, discrediting the notion of anti-Bush online revolution in politics that year.

It turns out the experience was liberating for the Connecticut Senator, a big backer of assumed GOP nominee John McCain. The New York Times has the story (via Memeorandum):

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, not so long back the Democratic nominee for vice president, has become chief endorser, campaign companion and all-around champion for his buddy Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential standard-bearer.

So inseparable are these men lately that the question often arises: Would Mr. Lieberman consider another tilt at the vice presidential lists, this time on the Republican ticket?

A smile crossed his face like a cloud, and the white-haired senator began waving his hands.

“Oh, no, no,” Mr. Lieberman insisted in an interview in his Capitol hideaway, a nook that he occupies between votes and that once belonged to none other than Mr. McCain. “Been there, done that”....

For the longest time, Mr. Lieberman was a regular Democratic Joe. He clambered up the party ladder, serving as state attorney general before taking a Senate seat in 1988. Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham volunteered in an early campaign while at Yale Law School.

He flapped like a hawk on foreign politics and sang like a moderate bird on domestic affairs. He annoyed the White House when he denounced Mr. Clinton’s conduct in the Monica Lewinsky affair, but he voted against impeachment.

In 2000, Al Gore tapped him for the No. 2 slot. Mr. Lieberman did not flash the dirk as often as Gore aides preferred, and he went curiously passive in Florida, when the election hung in the balance. But he worked the trail as if plying the tables at Grossingers, the Catskill resort hotel. “Have you heard our campaign slogan?” he would tell the crowds. “Gore-Lieberman: No Bull, No Pork.”

Later he become a mentor to Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, sharing lunches with the freshman. Their offices are 148 feet apart.

In 2004, Mr. Lieberman alighted in New Hampshire as the presidential candidate with the broadest name recognition. But voters criticized his support for the war in Iraq, and he lectured them, and this did not go well. He finished fifth and soon folded his tent.

Mr. Curry had lunch with Mr. Lieberman in December 2005 and warned about the antiwar sentiment sweeping Connecticut. “This is not an argument over the capital gains tax,” Mr. [Clinton advisor Bill] Curry recalled telling him. “This is the biggest foreign policy mistake in the history of the country.”

Mr. Lieberman, who often praised the defense secretary at the time, Donald Rumseld, shrugged off this advice. He saw the war as an epic struggle against Islamic terrorism; bombing Iran might not be a bad idea, either.

This is the latest steeply graded curve in the long, strange trip that is Mr. Lieberman’s career. Eight years ago he exhorted sweaty ironworkers in Boynton Beach, Fla., to join the Democratic cause. Four years ago he told voters in New Hampshire that President Bush was “a divisive leader.”

But four weeks ago, he returned to Boynton Beach to address 250 Republicans at a country club. This time, he deplored the Democrats’ “visceral” anger at Mr. Bush. He is skipping the Democratic National Convention in Denver, but may turn up at the rostrum of the Republicans’ conclave in Minneapolis.

“I suppose if Senator McCain is going to be nominated, and he asks me, I will go,” Mr. Lieberman said.

I can see Lieberman as secretary of defense in a McCain administration, which would help cement the "Maverick's" neoconservative foreign policy direction.

Still, McCain might not want to campaign too much with Lieberman, who's traditionally liberal on many hot-button issues, like global warming; and don't even think about a McCain-Lieberman ticket...

McCain's had enough problems with the GOP base as it is!

Neoconservatism and Regime Change Iran

Abe Greenwald's got an awesome essay over at Commentary, "Give Bush Credit on Iran."

He links to Reuel Marc Gerecht's earlier essay, from 2002, "Regime Change in Iran? Applying George W. Bush's 'Liberation Theology' to the Mullahs."

Here's this longer section from Greenwald citing Gerecht:

Seven years ago, Reuel Marc Gerecht looked into the best crystal ball in all global strategy and wrote down what he saw in the pages of the Weekly Standard:

If the United States stays in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime, and ushers in some type of a federal, democratic system, the repercussions throughout the region could be transformative. Popular discontent in Iran tends to heat up when U.S. soldiers get close to the Islamic Republic. An American invasion could possibly provoke riots in Iran--simultaneous uprisings in major cities that would simply be beyond the scope of regime-loyal specialized riot-control units. The army or the Revolutionary Guard Corps would have to be pulled into service in large numbers, and that's when things could get interesting. The clerical regime fears big street confrontations, afraid that it cannot rely on the loyalty of either the army or the Guard Corps.

And if an American invasion doesn't provoke urban unrest, the creation of a democratic Iraq probably will. Iraq's majority Shiite population, who will inevitably lead their country in a democratic state, will start to talk to their Shiite brethren over the Iran-Iraq border. The collective Iranian conversation about American-aided democracy in Iraq will be brutal for the mullahs (which is why the Bush administration should prepare itself for Iranian mischief in Iraq's politics once Tehran determines that the Bush administration is indeed serious about ensuring a democratic triumph in Baghdad). The Bush administration should, of course, quickly and loudly support any demonstrators who hit the streets in Iran. America's approval will not be the kiss of death for the brave dissidents who challenge the regime's armed defenders. On the contrary, such psychological support could prove critical to those trying to show to the people that the die is now decisively cast against the regime.

More than a testament to Gerecht’s uncanny grasp of theocratic politics, the passage highlights the thoughtfulness of George W. Bush’s much maligned Iran policy.

Among Bush’s critics it has become accepted fact that “the big winner of the Iraq War is Iran.” There are several arguments to support this view: the invasion empowered the fanatical Shia of Iraq, who inspired their ideological brethren across the eastern border; difficulties in establishing order in Iraq hurt America’s image as a formidable military threat; the U.S., in turn, needed Tehran’s help in subduing Iraqi unrest; without Saddam to worry about, the mullahs were free to follow through on plans for regional hegemony. All these arguments could be supported by events that were actually unfolding in the region – once upon a time. Today, few of them hold water.

You know, that's the thing about neocons: It's not so much "they knew they were right" and failed, but that they knew they were right AND stayed true to their principles when the chips were down. And as folks have been suggesting, "we're all neocons now."

This naturally hard for a lot of folks to accept (so brain-addled by neocon derangement as they are), but neconservatism's making a comeback, big time.

**********

By the way, if you've never read it, now's a good time to check out Max Boot's, "What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?"

Two Party Conventions Showcase America's Stark Political Polarization

This is good.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Two conventions, one vast gulf: Republicans and Democrats appear to be speaking to different countries":

One night this week, the Democratic convention featured eight black women whose children had died in shootings or at the hands of police. A week earlier, Republicans repeatedly paid tribute to law enforcement.

In Philadelphia, the billionaire global warming activist Tom Steyer was ubiquitous. In Cleveland, Republicans put a spotlight on the plight of out-of-work miners and pledged to increase use of coal.

A speaker needing applause at a Democratic convention can always praise teachers. Republicans can reliably criticize public employee unions.

As the themes and tableaus of the parties’ conventions illustrated, a deep political gulf separates the country’s two major parties, their elected officials and their most reliable voters. And it is getting wider. Voters not only disagree on solutions to the nation’s ills, they hold starkly different views about what the problems are.

“Rarely in American history,” as Gov. Jerry Brown said here at the DNC, “have two parties diverged so profoundly.”

Both presidential nominees now face the question of whether either can bridge that divide — or whether they even want to try. Each entered the convention weeks with  a strategic choice: Does the path toward victory involve reinforcing party loyalty in hopes of driving more on your side to vote? Or does winning require reaching across the tribal lines of American politics?

In Cleveland, Donald Trump placed a clear bet on the former path. Nearly every element of the Republican convention played to the anxieties and frustrations of the older white conservative voters who form the core of the GOP coalition.

His campaign strategists believe they can do better than the last two GOP nominees in motivating those voters to the polls. They’re also counting on Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable image driving down turnout among Democratic-leaning groups, particularly young people and minorities, who may not back her as readily as they did President Obama.

Clinton confronted a more complicated calculus.

Her party has proved the strength of its electoral coalition — winning the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections. But its voters have grown frustrated at the gridlock that has resulted from a divided political system.

Moreover, Trump’s powerful appeal to the economic unease — and the racial resentments — of blue-collar whites has accelerated the trend of such voters identifying with the GOP. To make up for potential losses among them, Democrats need to increase their vote among suburban, college-educated voters who in the past have often sided with Republicans.

“We're trying to bridge that gap, to try to make an argument that the politics of division are dangerous for our country,” Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, said at a meeting with reporters sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

The Democratic convention, culminating in Clinton’s speech, reflected that imperative. With speakers like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and repeated descriptions of Trump as a dangerously unsteady authoritarian, they sought to make moderate, college-educated Republicans and Republican-leaning independents comfortable with the idea of crossing the line to vote for a Democrat.

Creating such inroads, however, is a tricky task...

More.

Cap and Trade Follies

Check out Punditte & Pundette, "The Growing Backlash Against Global Warming.

Also, here's this from Kimberley Strassel, "The Climate Change Climate Change":

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

Also Blogging: Michelle Malkin, "Cap and tax liveblog: Democrats limit debate, stampede toward national energy tax," and Ed Morrissey, "Cap and trade vote today, complete with AP spin; Update: 300-page, last-minute amendment; Update: Greenpeace opposes."

Cartoon Credit: Ed Driscoll, "2009: A Smoot-Hawley Odyssey."

(P.S. Don't miss the Greenpeace opposition!)

More at Memeorandum.