Obama's Keystone Kops Presidency

Don't say you haven't been warned. When liberals were falling all over themselves laughing about Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications for Vice President, conservatives responded by pointing out that Palin had a lot more government executive experience than Candidate Obama.

And that's how it turned out. What we see, from top to bottom of the Obama administration, is lack of experience and lack of seasoning.

At the laughable level we have the bumbling White House czars, who are not really czars but glorified community activists trying to organize "communities" out of the White House. Van Jones, the former green jobs czar was obviously not ready for prime time. Now we have the NEA flap, with junior White House aides like Buffy Wicks trying to get NEA grantees mobilized to make art for Obama.

We have President Obama, who has a 20 year history with ACORN, making like he didn't know nothing about ACORN and its federal funding. Come now Mr President. Pretty soon you will be telling us that a penalty on people who don't buy health insurance isn't a tax.

Now we have the rather clumsy effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to muzzle health care giant Humana. Naturally the folks at the Huffington Post are outraged--at Humana. Dissent for me but not for thee, insist our liberal friends, especially if the "thee" is an eevil corporation.

Of course this is all just surface effect. The real rot is much deeper. It is the fundamental error in the liberal world view that informs the Obama administration and the liberal project.

• It is not true that politicizing the economy, as the Obamites want to do, will make any improvement in the lives of Americans. All it will do is create conflict as people fight for the government goodies.
• It is not true that making nice with thug dictators will help the cause of world peace. Your Putins, your Ahmadinejads, your Castros, your Assads, your Chavezs are all alike. They live and die with power. And power must be met with power.

These fundamental errors in world view are going to cost the American people plenty, in treasure and in lives.

But the chances are that the American people will start taking their country back next year. And not a moment too soon.

Democrats thought, last January, that it was 1933 all over again. Probably, it was 1977, and time for another bumbling Carter administration.

Irving Kristol RIP

Whatever they tell you, people make a difference. You can talk all you like about productive forces, race, class, and gender. There's no doubt that they make a difference.

But who can doubt that a man like Irving Kristol, "godfather" of the conservative movement, made a huge difference? Now he is dead, aged 89.

I probably first became aware of Kristol in the 1970s when he appeared regularly on the Wall Street Journal edit page. Editor Bob Bartley had a "Board of Contributors," weighty names that would each contribute to the conversation about once a month. And then I became a subscriber to The Public Interest, which Kristol edited.

Why did Kristol make a difference? Probably it was just that conservatives were looking for a voice like his, which gave conservatives the courage to put their heads above the parapet and brave the brickbats from the liberal left.

Those heady days of the late 1970s that culminated in the improbable election of Ronald Reagan are over now. And even though liberals have rejected the manly conservatism of Reagan, the de-politicized economy and the sunny faith in the United States as a people that must have freedom, it probably doesn't matter. The folly of the Obama administration will see to that.

Very soon, liberals will have to abandon everything they hold dear as they cut spending. Why will they cut? Because the American people will be standing over them with ballot papers.

The rout of the liberals is up next. But I look to the future, which I believe requires a woman-centered conservatism. By that I mean a conservatism that heals the textured web of relationship that must be the center of any worthy society. A free economy is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

Whenever I get a chance, I like to invoke the importance of Michael Novak's social model, what I call the Greater Separation of Powers between the three sectors: political, economic, and moral/cultural.

I was thinking last week that the political sector is for people who like to compel, the economic sector for people who want to serve, and the moral/cultural sector is for people who want to inspire.

That moral/cultural sector, I feel, is the particular abode of women. It has suffered a serious impoverishment in the last century, as Irving Kristol noted in his 1991 speech at AEI. The great mistake of feminism was to redirect the enthusiasm of women out of moral/cultural influence and into politics, the locus of power and compulsion. That was a mistake, because power and compulsion are not the strong suits of women.

The next conservative tide must deal with the spiritual impoverishment of our times, the long withdrawing roar of the moral/cultural sector. And the people on the crest of this tide will be conservative women.

It would be a great monument to the memory of a great American, Irving Kristol.

Let's Talk Tipping Points

Like President Obama, bestseller writer Malcolm Gladwell is mixed race. Perhaps that qualifies him to write bestsellers like The Tipping Point.

Gladwell's book makes the obvious point that things tend to go on as they always have, in spite of winds, tides, and good old pushes. And then there's a Tipping Point.

Seems like we just reached a tipping point on ACORN all of a sudden. We've known for years that ACORN, the astroturf community organizing outfit, is a corrupt and partisan political organization that does all kinds of shady stuff for Democrats, from beating up banks to registering phantom voters. But nothing changed. Then, one fine day, Andrew Breitbart publicized a couple of young conservatives posing as pimp and prostitute in a series of gotcha videos. They showed ACORN employees advising them on how to break the law. Tipping Point! All of a sudden, Democrats are running from ACORN and voting to de-fund it.

Then there's the Race Card. After decades of playing the race card whenever they were bothered by opposition, liberals are taking a pasting on race. They are accusing the president's critics on health care of being racists. Nothing remarkable there. Liberals always play the race card. But conservatives are fighting back. Tipping Point! Maybe it's because we just elected a black president. After all, how can you call white Americans racists when they just elected President Obama?

How about Big Government? For years Americans have talked a good line about the evils of big government, but they kept electing people that grew government. It's enough to make you discouraged. Perhaps Barack Obama won because conservatives stayed home, discouraged after eight years of Bush big government.

But now Americans seem to be really riled up about the trillions in extra spending that's baked into the cake of ObamaCare. Tipping Point! Well, we don't know, exactly, on that one. A lot of the opposition, I think, comes from seniors who reckon that the president's plan is really a mis-direction play to reduce their Medicare benefits. So they are opposing ObamaCare not because it will increase spending, but because it might decrease their benefits.

Then there's Global Warming. Everyone is in favor of fighting global warming when it's just a question of repeating after me: solar, wind, and renewables. But when it comes to facing an annual cost of $1,761 on each family, well, Tipping Point! Ordinary people aren't willing to pay big costs now on the possibility of fixing a problem that won't be serious for a century.

Do you think there could be more Tipping Points in our future? I hope so. I'd really go for a tipping point on government in general. Government is force, so whenever you say: "there ought to be a program," you are saying that the only way we can do this is by force.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I'd say you'd be wrong.

Race Card: Worse Than a Crime...

Even the Brits are noting the injection of race into fight over President Obama's agenda. Toby Harnden asks: "Does white America hate Barack Obama?" in The Daily Telegraph.

No worries, Toby. It's just liberals playing the race card. It's always liberals playing the race card.

But in this case, I think that liberals have made a strategic error--worse than a crime, a blunder. It is one thing to accuse individuals of racism. Go ahead, call Bull Connor a racist. It is one thing to accuse City Hall, or a corporation of racism. Yeah. Accuse the police department of racial profiling. Good idea! You can even push the accusation to the more woolly notion of "institutional racism." It is just not a good idea to accuse voters of racism.

And that is what the president's surrogates like Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter are doing. They are accusing not just Rep. Joe Wilson of racism. They are accusing white America of racism. Of course, they are not alone. Just about every liberal believes in their heart that all white conservatives and moderates are racist.

But Ann Althouse at The Atlantic puts her finger on the problem:

Lots of people who voted for Obama believed that his election would reflect the extent to which Americans had moved beyond racism. That was part of why some people voted for him. Little did we realize that it would turn every criticism of the President into an occasion to make an accusation of racism. Racism is revolting, but so is the notion that we aren’t allowed to criticize a President.

Of course, we racist, sexist, homophobic conservatives all knew what was coming, even before the election. Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, in June 2008.

I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism.

As Rush Limbaugh says (more or less): Do I know liberals or do I know liberals?

Here's why this attempt to stigmatize all critics of the president as racists is a blunder. White people hate, absolutely hate, being branded as racists. I'd say that, after electing Obama, most white people are saying to themselves: OK, we elected a black president. Now stop with the race card. Now. Or there'll be trouble. Big trouble.

OK. There won't be trouble. But people will just decide to turn out and vote for the other guy. Or gal.

So go ahead, liberals. Accuse half the nation of being racists. Make my day!

Defend Wal-Mart Care

Back in 2008 I went to a town hall on the presidential election organized by the Seattle NPR station, KPLU. PBS and Fox News personality Juan Williams was there to liven up the contributions of the KPLU reporters.

Of course, the agenda included a comparison between ObamaCare and McCainCare. But wait, I wanted to say. What about Wal-Mart Care?

You may not know it but Wal-Mart has a health care program. It has in-store clinics where you can get to see a health care professional for routine medical problems.

Wal-Mart started these clinics in part to provide another low-priced service to its price-conscious customers, and in part to keep the cost of employee health care down.

Now there's information from the Rand Corporation on the effectiveness of Wal-Mart care, reported by Margaret Shapiro in The Washington Post. The results are in and they are good.

Walk-in medical clinics run by CVS, Wal-Mart and other retailers provide care for routine illnesses that is as good as, and costs less than, similar care offered in doctors' offices, hospital emergency rooms and urgent care centers, according to a new Rand Corp. study. The cost savings over emergency rooms, in particular, was quite dramatic.

So I'm sure that the president and our Democratic friends are running, not walking, over to Wal-Mart to find out how they do it, and how Wal-Mart's approach to health care could be scaled up and adopted by the public sector.

How much better was Wal-Mart than the emergency rooms? Here's what the Rand study said:

"The costs of care in retail clinics were 30 to 40 percent lower than in physician offices and urgent care centers and 80 percent lower than in emergency departments[.]"

You can see the danger here. It's not likely that the brilliant policy analysts at the White House have given a thought to health care the Wal-Mart way. For one thing, if Wal-Mart really made a success of this, and started expanding from routine care into treatment of common chronic conditions, then the need for a comprehensive and mandatory system of politically controlled health care would recede.

There is another way, you know.

Thomas Sowell, always good for a pithy comment, recalls how he'd spent many years without health insurance, and how and his wife paid for the delivery of their child on the installment plan.

The birth of my first child was not covered by medical insurance. I paid off the bill, month by month, until the time finally came when I could tell my wife that the baby was now ours, free and clear.

So here is a concept. Let's most of us pay for routine care at the Wal-Mart drop-in clinic. Let's pay for our babies on the installment plan. And let's keep insurance for the big stuff. And I mean by that, protecting our homes. Yes. That's the purpose of insurance: protecting our assets from disaster, natural or medical.

And let's be sure to defend Wal-Mart care from the inevitable attacks from its liberal critics. Why, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the workers in their clinics are non-union.

"Gentry Liberals" Dominate Dems

Why is the Democratic Congress so over-the-top liberal? That's the question that Michael Barone answers in an article "Republicans and Democrats: A Tale of Two Bases."

It's pretty simple really. A lot of Democrats are elected from very Democratic districts, and these are typically "gentry liberal" or race based. That is to say that the Democratic base is primarily gentry liberal or black or Hispanic, and these voters tend to be concentrated geographically in urban districts. Forty two percent of House Democrats come from gentry liberal, black, or Hispanic districts.

The Republican Party base is southern and rural. But the base is not as important. Twenty five percent of Republicans in the House come from identifiable base districts.

Then there's the leadership. Right now, the Democratic leadership comes overwhelmingly from gentry liberal districts. Only a few Republican House leaders come from the southern base (a change from the 1990s).

So that explains why the Democratic agenda right now is fiercely liberal, and why the Tea Party movement is leading the opposition to President Obama instead of the Republicans in Congress.

It does suggest that the MSM template is a little skewed. Republican support is less concentrated, and less driven by extremists. Who knew?

And of course, there is the binding factor of government largesse on the Democratic side. Those gentry liberals and the blacks and Hispanics depend disproportionately on the government for their livelihood. They are more focused and more dedicated to manipulating government and politics to deliver benefits. Republicans aren't so focused on politics because they don't depend so much on government for their daily bread.

But the Tea Party movement may change all this.

Tens of Thousands in DC Protest

Last week I was wondering if the forecasts of 20,000 protestors in Washington DC for the 9/12 protests was a little over-enthusiastic. I mean, this is America and people don't turn into the streets. Certainly not people on the right.

Leaving aside the reports of "up to a million" by the UK Daily Mail, it certainly seems that AP's estimate of "tens of thousands" is realistic. This conservative reporter reckoned on 300,000.

At any rate, it is clear that the turnout was major, beyond expectations. And it's good that it is getting less than serious coverage from the mainstream media. Any time you are doing any kind of conflict, it is best to keep the enemy quiet and unconcerned as long as possible, so that your side has the chance to prepare and reach strategic concentration before the other chaps understand what is happening.

The thing is: the ordinary American middle class is right to be concerned about the Obama administration. The administered state of our liberal friends is a state that feeds on the unorganized middle class for its sinecures and its subsidies. Ordinary people that just want to get a job, get married, and raise a family must understand that the liberal program is death to people like them who just want to be left alone to live their lives in productive peace.

The whole point of liberalism is to interfere in everything. And that means interfere with you.

For years we have been used to a kind of standoff in the great culture war. After all, the last time there was a blowout in a presidential election was a quarter of a century ago in 1984. Since then there has been a 50-50 nation of conservatives and liberals, but neither side ever got to win a decisive victory.

But the go-for-broke program of President Obama is poking a stick into a sleeping giant, the 40 percent of the American people who think of themselves as moderate, but live their lives as small "c" conservatives.

And the Obamites have provoked the first center-right street protests in living memory. The tectonic plates are shifting, folks, and nobody knows where it will end.