Is Obama Crazy Like A Fox?

Conservatives are rightly outraged that President Obama is choosing to govern not as the president of all of us but as the partisan enforcer of his liberal faction.



Didn't the liberals excoriate Bush for being just that (even when that noble and honorable man was never the divider they accused him of being)?



Never mind.  Liberals are the cultural hegemons; they get to set the rules and they get to break the rules.



But old war-horse Pat Buchanan has a warning.  He argues that the last two successful presidential dynasties featured a sharp denunciation of the other side.  First FDR:

"They hate me, and I welcome their hatred," said FDR in the 1936 campaign. He believed that if a slice of the electorate was incorrigibly hostile, one ought not appease or court them, but use them as a whipping boy to rally the majority. With FDR, the foil was Wall Street, the "money-changers in the temple of our civilization."

Then Richard Nixon.  His divisiveness set up Ronald Reagan:

With Nixon it was urban rioters and campus anarchists and their academic apologists and elite enablers, and the demonstrators who blocked troop trains and carried Viet Cong flags as they chanted: "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh! The NLF Is Going to Win!"

Pat is arguing that Obamian intransigence can work if he can get a majority on your side, and you have to agree that he has a point.



But let us remember that things had to come together for FDR and for Nixon/Reagan in special ways for his theory to work.



FDR may have won a resounding reelection in 1936 with his divisiveness, but his party lost 72 seats in the 1938 midterms.  It was World War II that made FDR into the father of his people and, incidentally, the great unifier.



Nixon so infuriated the opposition that they ran him out of office in his second term.  It was only the manifest incompetence of Carter and his stagflationary economic policy that got Republicans back in the game in 1980.



It maybe that President Obama is smarter than we think and that his display of partisan scorn is a master stroke.  But I'd say that partisan behavior is best for reelectioneering.  In 2014, with ObamaCare coming onstream and people finding just how much money and aggravation it is going to cost them, President Obama may find that his divisive politics unites a majority of the nation against him.



But maybe we'll get a war that will make President Obama into a national hero and elect Vice-President Biden as president.  Though that route didn't work too well for Bush.

How to Do Division

Everybody knows that a majority of white people vote Republican and overwhelming majorities of minorities vote Democrat.  This is known as politics.



In the good old days, politics, such as it was, was clan-based.  People didn't actually vote in elections, but they supported their family, or their tribe, or their local lord.



Then they invented the nation state, and people supported their language-in-common nation state.



All this is merely to say that politics is division.  The politician makes his living by dividing people. In the old days, they did it by uniting "us" in the family or the tribe against "them," the foreigners.



But the industrial revolution started mixing families and tribes and nationalities something new was needed, and it was Marx who developed the basis of modern politics.  The educated elite would divide the nation state up by class, pitting the working class against the middle class, the workers against the employers.



In the natural development of things, it happened in the United States that by the 1970s the division of workers vs. employers was starting to fray.  An old Democratic friend reminded me how it had worked.   Now that the worker had become a homeowner, thanks to an FHA loan, he told me, that ungrateful worker had become a Republican.



A generation before the machine politician had railed in similar terms against the civil service.  The bureaucrat with civil service protection stopped making his grateful contribution to the machine.



With the old working class ascending into the middle class a new method of division was required.



We all know what that is.  You only have to know that in America any Republican or conservative is a racist, sexist, homophobe unless proven innocent.



In Commonwealth the lefty manifestist duo Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri develop the intellectual apology for the new politics of identity by race, by sex, and by sexual orientation that has revised and extended the old politics of class.  They talk about the "violence and hierarchy of identity."  In their view "identity maintains hierarchy primarily through social structures and institutions."



Get it?  Identity is manufactured by the ruling class in order to create a hierarchy of oppression against the colored, the female, the LGBT.  Thus the lefty politics of race hatred, of anti-religious bigotry, of anti-family bigotry, of gay sequestration is represented as the fight against racism, sexism, fundamentalism, homophobia.  It really is brilliant.



When people demand that conservatives and Republicans reach out to blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, they are asking the impossible.  It is impossible to fight the left-wing politics of hatred by saying, hey, we are nice guys and we will propose a politics of quotas and free stuff, only not so much.



And I don't think that the implicit conservative/Republican program will work.  The idea of waiting until it's obvious to the black or Hispanic in the street that the Dems have betrayed them just won't cut it.  The Dem-voting minorities are like soldiers in an army.  It is very difficult to desert from an army, short of an absolute rout where discipline breaks down, because there is usually no place to hide.



No.  Politics is division.  That is inescapable.  Conservatives and Republicans have to find different ways to divide the American people, ways that cut against the Democrats.  But what?  Obviously, it's not that obvious, or someone would already have done it.



Let's look back to Ronald Reagan for some tips.  The big deal in the 1970s, when Reagan was beginning his rise, was the cultural backlash against the Sixties culture.  The "silent majority" was frightened and disgusted by the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.  The so-called Reagan Democrats were mostly people offended by the cultural liberalism of that era.  Reagan divided the voters by neutralizing the New Deal economic divide in favor of a cultural divide.



In fact, Reagan was so successful in dividing America that the Democrats were forced to amp up their race identity program and encourage massive Mexican immigration.  Their cunning plan created a whole new immigrant cohort that they could woo with class and ethnic identity politics.  As we know from Judis and Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority the Dems think they have a generation-long winner with their politics of identity.  And maybe they do.



But there is almost more than one way to cut a cake, and the profession of politics is finding new ways to do it.  Here are some ideas.

• Liberal war on the poor.  Liberals have demolished lower-class culture and the family.  There has to be a way to appeal to lower-class women on this, to show them that there is a better way than government dependency.  We are talking about the children.


• Liberal war on science.  Liberals advertise themselves as pro-science.  Except they don't believe in modern economics (other than the convenient Keynesian idea that more spending is good); they don't believe in climate science, as we are finding out; they don't believe in a crony-free economy, as in Solyndra, biofuels, wind energy.


• Liberal war on prosperity.  Liberals have convinced the middle class that they care about the middle class.  Then they go and pass a tax-cliff bill with $62 billion in tax loopholes for big business.  Come on fellahs; surely someone can figure out how to wage war on liberal crony capitalism.


• Liberal war on women.  One fine day women are going to wake up and realize that a culture of sexual license is anti-woman.  Look, I'm a guy; I appreciate that sexual license is great for guys, and forces women into bed.  The argument for female chastity is not just moralistic; it is practical.  The more things a women allows inside her body the bigger chance that she will get diseased and unable to bear children.  We've just experienced a generation when science could mostly kill the nasties.  But it looks like that era is coming to an end.  Look for a sudden change in the culture.

But really, I don't know anything.  All I have is faith.  Somehow in the next few years, a politician will rise to power on the right on the strength of some politics of division that cuts against the current Democratic advantage that boxes Republicans in on race and sex.  That's just the way the world works.

Dems to Retake House in 2014?

When I first read a piece connecting President Obama's take-no-prisoners tactics with Nancy Pelosi's plan to retake the House in 2014 I did a double-take.



Taking back the House in the sixth-year of a presidential term?  Are they serious?  But maybe what they are saying between the lines is that they are going to pull out all the stops to limit the damage.



Now there's a lefty report from Mother Jones on the fabuloso meeting of all the progressive groups to work out a "massive new liberal plan to remake American politics."



What might that be?  Well, it's nothing more than a three-part program to push Democratic advantages at the polls:

1. getting big money out of politics, 


2. expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, 


3. rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation.

Oh.  Is that all?

What is really interesting in the article by Andy Kroll--all these lefties seem to write under nicknames--is the absurdity of their demonization of Big Oil and the Koch brothers.  Really.  Here we have all the progressive institutions, "labor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other progressive leaders" all planning a campaign in a "the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about."  Ya think?

We are talking about this sort of thing:

"It was so exciting," says Michael Brune, the Sierra Club's executive director. "We weren't just wringing our hands about the Koch brothers. We were saying, 'I'll put in this amount of dollars and this many organizers.'"

Really.  And just what have the Koch brothers with their millions achieved recently against the Sierra Club and its billions?  And this:

 Greenpeace's Phil Radford notes that for decades conservatives have aimed to shrink local, state, and federal governments [in a] "a 40-plus-year strategy by the Scaifes, Exxons, Coors, and Kochs of the world…to take over the country."

There is a profound misunderstanding of what conservatism is all about in remarks like that, particularly where Exxon is concerned.  Exxon, dear liberal friends, is just a big corporation that knows it must pay protection money to keep the feds off its back.



But of course, that's what the left is all about.  It believes in a profound division between supposed "haves" and "have-nots" epitomized by "capitalists" that represent the modern incarnation of the feudal lords of the feudal era.



I realized, while writing a chapter in "An American Manifesto" a week or so ago that this is a complete fantasy.  It is just not true that capitalists sit astride modern society like feudal lords.  Capitalists are not and never have been a ruling class, except in the thousand years of the Serene Republic of Venice.



Oh, and by the way, the ruling merchant aristocracy in Venice was a pretty good governing elite.  You could check it out.



Today's ruling class is the ruling class of the educated elite.  Ours is an aristocracy of politicians and publicists, not a plutocracy of businessmen.



But the idea that businessmen rule the world is essential to the rule of the educated elite.  That is why The Communist Manifesto remains modern and vital.  Its message is the means by which the modern ruling class divides employers from employees.  And politics, let us never forget, is division.



That is why the progressives descant endlessly on "the Scaifes, Exxons, Coors, and Kochs of the world."  Their rule depends on workers mistrusting their employers.



I am reading right now the Hardt and Negri Commonwealth.  Today, the Marxists want their revolution to transcend both the capitalists and the welfare state, because they see a life in common among the multitude of "biopolitical production" meaning the modern creative economy in cities of individuals creating a spontaneous combustion of creative work and "affect."  These people will not submit to the control of the capitalists, that only slow them down, or the state either.



The trouble is that the common man has never been either a helpless proletarian or a creative singularity in the multitude of various lefty narratives.  Most people are social animals that go along to get along in the society and the economy of the day.  They work for employers because it is easier than working for themselves.  They take a fixed wage instead of the uncertainty of the market and its risks: what's not to like?  They resent the income and the power of their employer, well, just because.  Some people are creative; some people want to build a business.  But most people just want to fit in and stay out of trouble.



The saving grace, for conservatives, is that each progressive lurch ends in disillusion as the folks inspired by the New Deal or the New Frontier or the First Black President eventually realize that the incandescent hope of the great political hero isn't really going to make a difference in their lives.



In the rhythm of American politics that disillusion seems to set in about the sixth year of a presidential term.  The only exception seem to be when the disillusion sets in in the first presidential midterm.  And the rule seems to work whatever cunning plan the president's partisans may have to persuade themselves that this time is different.

The Second Amendment March on Washington

Obviously it will be a while before Republicans get a chance to enact good conservative legislation for America.  Even if they wanted to.  It is clear with his appointments that President Obama is going flat out to enact the most liberal agenda he can before time runs out.



Although I wonder about the idea that the Dems can retake the House in 2014.  Do they really think that or is it just bluster?



Meanwhile here is something we can do.  We can march on Washington to celebrate the Second Amendment.  Based on news reports that Americans are descending on gun shops in their tens of thousands and buying all the guns available, you have to think there is gold in them thar hills.



But I don't think we should have just the regular "march" where people gather on the Mall to hear speeches.  That is so lefty.



What I have in mind is a real march.  Men (and women) marching in companies.  In step.  Maybe they should be singing the "Song of Angry Men" from Les Mis.  They should be marching in companies because the company of 150 men is the natural size of a face-to-face body of men.



And there should be flags.  Usually your average regiment will have two flags, so I suggest a US flag and a "2" flag.  You know what the "2" is for.



Now I don't know Washington DC so I don't know how you'd do this march.  But I see the companies marching past a viewing stand somewhere on the Mall, at which huge articulated puppets, as in War Horse, representing the three great presidents, would review the marchers.



I see the three puppets representing Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan.



When the marchers pass the reviewing stand they would recite, from memory, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Then the marchers would head home.



I think a march like this would be a good morale booster for all conservative Americans.



And it would utterly flummox our liberal friends. 

Lose the "Low-information Voter" Sneer

Everyone on the right is sneering about the "low-information voter."  Even the sainted El Rushbo has succumbed.



I say: Let's lose this loser excuse, and for a simple reason.  We are all low information voters.



If we are liberals we get our information from NPR and the New York Times.  Now there's a reliable way to get information!



If we are conservatives we get our information from FoxNews and a host of online rants.



If we are ordinary Americans that don't gorge on political propaganda every day then we get our information from the local TV news, from reality TV, and from Hollywood.



So who's the low-information voter?



Let us recall tha the late great election was decided on about one and a half issues, as all elections are decided.  What were the issues?  The rich should pay a little more: funny how the president forgot to mention that FICA taxes would be going up on the 99%.  Jobs: but maybe the American people reckon that those government benefits are a better deal, for now.



Given the choices, who is to say that the low-information voter is wrong?



The fact is that the government runs about 20,000 programs and just about every one of them stink.  But what voter has the time and inclination to study up on even 100 of them?



That's one reason conservatives call for limited government.  There is no way that voters can pass judgment on a government of 20,000 programs.



Let us forget the "low-information voter" whine and get back to work.  Work means persuading the folks in the middle that we are the good guys, we are the ones that care about them, we are the ones that care about families, and we are the guys that have a plan.



And, of course, it won't hurt that in 2016 the Dems will be running a white guy and the race card will be worth a lot less.  So the Mitt Romney of 2016 will be able to continue his negative ads into the general election and do the character assassination that he couldn't do on Barack Obama.



Here's more.  It won't hurt in 2014 and 2016 that Republicans and conservatives can start bellowing about a "lost decade" and blaming Barack Obama for everything.  That is the reason the presidency seldom gives one party more than two consecutive presidential terms.  After eight years of the usual miserable and corrupt governance, low-information voters rightly decide it is "time for a change."  Or even time for "hope and change."



I wouldn't be at all surprised if the low-information voters will want "change" in 2016.  What will conservatives say then?

The End of a Dynasty

For years and years I used to wonder about the dynasties in China.  I would read about how a dynasty got old, how it failed to keep up the armed forces, how eventually marauders from the north--Mongols, Bannermen, whatever--would sweep down and kick the existing dynasty out.



OK, fine, I would think.  But how does it work?



I think I can now understand the process, face to face, as it unfolds before our very eyes.  Of course it helps to read Reinhart and Rogoff in This Time is Different.



The simple fact is that governments are armed minorities, and they stay in power by giving money to their supporters.  When a government first takes over, by military conquest or by a political movement, it doesn't have too many supporters to support.  So it has plenty of money to spend.



But over the years the government has to pay out more and more to keep the supporters happy.  And the organized supporters get better and better at extracting support from the government.  Eventually the government runs out of money, it defaults on its sovereign debt and on its promises to its supporters, and finds itself unable to resist some new political force that swoops down out of the north--or the east or the west.



You can see the process working on our present dynasty of the educated elite.  It started in the 19th century with a moral crusade to help the working man, and prevent exploitation of the miners and the factory workers by their ruthless employers.



Today it's simply a racket.  The government takes in huge bounties from working people in the payroll taxes and even more from businesses in the form of incomes taxes and regulations, and then distributes the loot to its supporters.



The urgency with which the Democrats in power are using every ounce of political muscle to increase federal taxes is just an illustration to show what is going on.



The problem is that the more the government expropriates to spread out among its supporters the less is available to grow the economy.  Liberals tell themselves bedtime stories every night about how government spending is essential if everyone wants to be tucked in at night, but the numbers tell a different story.



When the government gets in a jam and can't sell its debt to the market, the way out is with "rescheduling debts", i.e., debt default, and spending cuts.  It's been done again and again.  Of course, when you do that you get a couple years of zero growth as the economy adjusts, but after that you get robust growth.



But the current dynasty can't afford to do that.  Their supporters are not moral crusaders, willing to give up a little for the sake of the nation.  They are simple rent seekers, whether seniors like me that want their entitlements or government employees that want their tenure and their pensions, and they want their money, now.



Otherwise, what's the point of voting for a bunch of thieves and demagogues?

The Education of Barack Obama

I know that we are all supposed to think that Speaker Boehner is an idiot, the naif that got rolled by President Obama in the fiscal cliff deal.

But I am trying to look between the lines.  Take Stephen Moore's the "Education of John Boehner" in the Wall Street Journal today.

Boehner thinks we have a "spending problem."  But the president does not.  He thinks we have a "health-care problem."

Boehner agreed with the president about the health-care problem. Said he to the president: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem."

But that is the sticking point.  I'll bet the president thinks that ObamaCare is going to solve the health-care problem, with all its administrative bells and whistles.  And so do all his liberal friends.

It doesn't matter whether they are right or not.  They have to believe that.  Otherwise they would be getting ready to do a bipartisan deal with the Republicans and cut spending.

And that points up the basic delusion that liberals have about government.  They think of themselves as disinterested experts and ethicists making considered public choices about governance.  That's what that Seidman chappie thinks when he rags on the constitution as an evil product of slave-owning white property owners.

But the liberals are wrong.  Starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democrats have been running a national patronage machine.  They are buying votes and political power with government spending programs.  And they will continue to do so until the money runs out.

And by the way, the appetite for free health care is limitless, Mr. President, and your ObamaCare will become a bottomless pit of special interest giveaways and vote-buying.

The Democrats are riding the whirlwind.  Their power is based on delivering more and more benefits to their voters.  But we all know how grateful gift recipients are.  For about one minute.  Then they want more.

So the Democrats must keep offering more, or go out of business.   They cannot say: gee, it looks like we are going to have to cut those benefits in the future, 'cos there ain't no more money.  What do you mean no more money?  They have justified all that spending in moral terms: helping mothers with disabled kids, fighting inequality, etc.  How can you compromise on a moral agenda?

Both sides in the political arena call themselves rational and sensible and the other guys mean and delusional.  That's the way that playground fights go.  And so's your father.

But the Democrats won't agree to spending cuts until they have sent their supporters over the cliff.  It's not because they are evil, but because their supporters won't agree to spending cuts until they are lying in red ruin, like a herd of buffalo at the bottom of a Plains Indian buffalo cliff jump.  There's one up in Alberta, thoughtfully called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

But by then, President Obama will be long gone.  I expect President Rubio will be to blame.