Showing posts with label Carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carter. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2009

Conrad Black on Obama

I am not too sure that many of my audience know much about Conrad Black, beyond perhaps the rather obvious point that he outstayed his welcome in the newspaper publishing business. At least he avoided steering through the rough contraction now taking place by been first. He has also emerged as a skilled writer of political biography and history and I am sure we will hear much from him. So his views are well worth heeding on the current political dispensation.

What finally strikes home for me on reading this article of the presidential progress is that Barrack Obama is presently a lightweight on a steep learning curve, with a devoted staff of similar minded folk aiding and abetting. In most of the examples quoted, his silence might have been better. It is as if he has never read some of the basic texts or is simply not a scholar by any inclination. His is a carefully crafted political persona that lapses too glibly back on old fashioned socialist stump speeches. I really hate to say this but he is so far very similar to Jimmy Carter.

Fortunately he still has time to get a grip on his duties. Shaky as this first quarter of his presidency is, it can easily be overcome.

In the event, the Us Government is about to face sharply falling revenues and no one has even clued into this at all. How Obama’s brain trust will handle all this is not presently apparent either. Like Conrad, I find it hard to see much good arising from a weak presidency humbled by financial woes limiting his options to respond. Right now, my instincts tell me that he needs a better mix of talent around him, but that may not be possible

George bush did assemble excellent talent but became their captive. This smells more like a case of excessive congeniality without balance. Clinton had the same problem and that only resolved itself in his second term.

And yes he needs to speak up as a patriot for his country and denounce the nonsense been gratuitously thrown his way. These guys are speaking to their home crowd and he needs to do the same thing. Praising Lula and chastising Hugo is a good start. That aligns the US with majority opinion in South America, while ending the trifling.

Conrad Black: Disparaging America from the Oval office

Posted: May 02, 2009, 11:07 AM by NP Editor

It must be said that Barack Obama tosses out apparently feckless suggestions about important matters rather flippantly. He wants to share the wealth; told a pre-election questioner that he would raise capital gains taxes even if it reduced government revenues, out of “fairness”; and has transformed the foreign visit into an itinerant, vicarious, confessional, where he seeks expiation for his country and his own predecessors, interspersed with the exchange of unlikely gifts — an iPod to the British and Commonwealth monarch of 57 years, and the “Idiot’s Bible” of Latin American socialism from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

We will have to wait for his specific medical-care and energy proposals to be sure of what he intends, but as of now he is still proposing health care “competition,” which is a euphemism for the federal government eliminating private plans, and a movement to renewable energy sources that will be unsustainably expensive. He is still describing his proposed cash handouts to low income people as “refundable tax credits” and “tax cuts” (to people who do not pay taxes). It’s in the same category of Newspeak as that favoured by the late mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, who called his city’s public lottery a “voluntary tax.”

In his foreign tours, Obama utters and endures abuse of his country, sometimes, as in an addicts’ meeting, leading the expression of opprobrium against past U.S. policy. In particular, he implicitly states that his predecessor was nasty and unreasonable.

Admittedly, few will deny that George W. Bush was a public relations disaster. It is as difficult to imagine Roosevelt or Reagan with their mouths full of food greeting Churchill or Thatcher, as Bush did Tony Blair, “Yo Blair!,” as it is to imagine anyone throwing shoes at Eisenhower, Kennedy or Nixon. But Obama could safely allow the contrast with his predecessor to be appreciated spontaneously.

President Obama’s comparative suavity and fluency are assets for his country, and deploying them is useful. But disapproving of the use of the atomic bomb by one of his party’s most admired presidents, Harry S Truman, was an astonishing (and unjust) open goal to offer to America’s enemies.

It is not clear what possessed him to refer to America’s economic performance, which carried much of the world on its back for the last 25 years, with apology if not shame on his visit to Europe last month, while praising Europe for its social democracy. Europe’s economic torpor is one of the chief ingredients of current economic problems. Economic growth and job creation are not subjects for embarrassment, and if he conducts the United States to a replication of Europe’s sluggish to stagnant growth figures, his will be a failed presidency.

It is difficult to discern what he was doing at the Americas conference in Trinidad two weeks ago. Apart from referring to political prisoners in Cuba, he sat as mute as a suet pudding while Venezuela’s Chavez, Bolivia’s Morales, Cuba’s Raul Castro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, (stuck as if in aspic in Ronald Reagan’s description of him as “the little colonel in the green fatigues” 25 years ago), flayed the United States as the source of all Latin America’s problems.

This was long the specialty of the continent’s absurdly bemedalled, Ruritanian junta-leaders as they pillaged their countries, and of the left-wing demagogues they regularly overthrew. But good government, both from the centre-left (Brazil and Chile) and the centre-right (Colombia and Mexico), is in vogue and the practice of blaming everything on the United States is now confined to the far left. Moderate Latin American regimes have been rather cowardly about attacking the human rights records of Castro, Chavez and others. This meeting was Obama’s chance to hold their feet to the fire and shake the branches for Latin American democrats, but he let the opportunity pass.

For all America’s excesses and presumptions, there are limits to how much abuse the United States has to accept from left-wing South American regimes. Washington assisted the Latin American countries in gaining and retaining their independence, liberated Cuba from Spanish oppression, gave it the best government it has had and then gave it independence. It would have been better for everyone if it had taken Cuba in as a U.S. state a hundred years ago. The day when U.S. Latin American policy was unduly influenced by exploitative corporations ended decades ago.

Obama’s relaxation of travel and some financial restrictions is a reasonable first step in reforming America’s Cuban policy. Cuba and the other leftist states in the hemisphere are no particular threat or nuisance to the United States now. They can’t export revolution, are no longer agents for intercontinental mischief as Cuba and Nicaragua were in the piping days of the Soviet Union and Cuba is desperately short of cash. When Raul Castro replied to Obama’s conciliatory gestures by saying that everything was “on the table,” he was batted down in an Internet posting by big brother Fidel. The palsied Castro despotism has been reduced to this charade of governance. It can’t fester and infect Cuba much longer, but appears to be trying to cash in on Obama’s born-again, open-pocketed notions of good neighbourliness. There is no reason, unilaterally, to end the embargo of Cuba, though a relaxation of it, in exchange for almost anything, could be justified.

So far, while in Europe, President Obama has indicted his country and his predecessors for arrogance, dismissiveness, genocide, torture and insufficient respect for the Muslim world. Does the poor old USA really deserve this, and deserve the message to be delivered by its leader in the continent that gave the world totalitarian Communism, Nazism, Robespierre’s Reign of Terror and all the pogroms and massacres of Russia, Armenia and Bulgaria? All of these have occurred in the time that the United States has been continuously constitutionally governed by 43 elected presidents and 110 elected congresses.

Obama even disparaged the era when it was “just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy” deciding the fate of nations. They were the world’s greatest statesmen, at least since Lincoln, and they saved civilization from the Nazis and Japanese imperialists while Europe was governed by Hitler and Stalin, Japan by militarist gangsters and Latin America by implausibly uniformed crooks.

Many wonder where these mad discursions will end, and what their purpose is. If Obama is confusing America’s enemies and tuning up the atmospherics as only a non-white president could do, flying trial balloons and reconnoitring, it is eccentric, but not necessarily bad, statesmanship.

If what we see and hear is what we are going to get — unilateral disarmament, preemptive concessions, socialized medicine, tax increases, windmills and solar panels from sea to sea, the auto industry run by the UAW and the wholesale prosecution of Republicans on torture charges, it is indeed time for the tea parties of protest that are taking place all over America, and for the prayerful singing of patriotic anthems, in the encircling gloom, to remind Americans of what their country once was.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Obama and Amending the Constitution

One of the interesting side stories of the candidacy of Barrack Obama is the persistent story that he was born in Kenya and that his mother immediately returned with the new born to her Hawaiian home to claim and register birth in the USA. The problem, of course, is that this story rings true. This has been a consistent practice among mothers who had the option and we can be sure that she planned to come to the USA before the due date and at least certainly did so. That the child may have not been born in the USA thus becomes a real possibility that is not eliminated by the judicious stonewalling and obfuscation been practiced by the campaign on this and other Obama records. In fact it provides a clear motive to not release any documentation except under duress and clarifies his peculiar behavior over this matter.

This particular feature of the constitution should have been eliminated long ago and it serves no practical purpose whatsoever and merely demonstrates a lingering fear that the American electorate will not get it right. If we end up with a duly elected president who is legitimately disqualified from taking office, then we have a real constitutional crisis. What makes it so choice is that I suspect that everything could be legal up the point in which he is sworn into office.

Obama has been clearly brought up and has lived his adult life as an American citizen. It would be an injustice to deny his right to stand for office on what is a technicality. This is a good example of the law and in this case the constitution been an ass.

On the other hand, this is an excellent time and place in which to push through the appropriate constitutional change on this matter. In fact, we likely have no better time. The Democrats will have a majority in both houses and the presidency itself and are in a position to push through such a constitutional amendment. I expect that the Republicans will find ample reason to support it also. And that will end the static over his mother’s choices.

Since it appears that we are about to be graced with an Obama presidency, which in view of his tactical reticence is shaping up so far to be a mystery, a few thoughts are perhaps in order.

The man is a lawyer by training and a polished speaker who should become a gifted legislator. Because of his age, he may find that an attractive option. Bill Clinton should consider the same option. I have grown up in a world were the top post is held by a parliamentarian and find it quite appropriate.

He was delivered into office as a Chicago machine politician with all the vote rigging and baggage that goes with that. If you wish to believe otherwise read this article:

Somehow that machine has kept their candidate inside a media cocoon that has made no issue out of his many politically incorrect lapses from the past. This will likely come back to haunt him and certainly gives the machine a lot of undue influence.

He must now try to rise above all that in the same way that Kennedy was able to. Kennedy’s daddy was a sweetheart and it probably helped that he was struck down before his influence might have been felt.

He has been associated with a lot of the classic far left political clichés. This is perfectly harmless so long as he actually does not think that they are real policy. The wacko left and the wacko right both have curious positions that politicians need to at least give a nod to. Implementing those weird positions is an excellent method of mobilizing ninety percent of the population against you.

His foreign policy credentials are on a par with those of George Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter on entering the white House. Until he has had time on the job, he will not be deft and the challenge will initially be to not make any obvious blunders. Expect more sympathy for Africa in particular and the third world in general. Just do not expect more money.

My real fear is that he does not understand the Laffer curve and is unable to rein in the very stupid people in his own camp who think that they now have a mandate to jack up taxes. If we can stay the course on taxation policy and implement the regulatory governors put in place seventy years ago and removed a mere ten years ago, we will be fine. If we can then implement a number of other useful programs such as universal health care properly by making the states run it as was done in Canada, the country will emerge much stronger from the disaster.

Race issues will be on the agenda whether by choice or otherwise. It needs to be ignored because it is actually resolving itself through simple age. What must not be ignored is poverty. Once again read my item on minimum wage and home ownership.

Poverty and Medical care are both resolved the same way. You establish a service floor for one hundred percent of the population. Otherwise, your system will be naturally gamed in such a way that a third of the population will be disadvantaged while a third pays way too much for the privilege of service. By establishing a floor you are simply moving the game to a higher more naturally stable level while lowering the cost.

Should he win, it is likely that he will face a savage drop in governmental revenues and the need to accommodate a deepening and unavoidable recession over the length of his term. It will be interesting to see how his reputation fares and how long the media wolves will then hold off.