Today's the Day

Today's the day on which we Americans decide if Barack Obama's huge gamble pays off.

Back in 2006, if you remember, Democrats decided that they had learned from the Bush 2004 victory and they ran a lot of moderates for Congress.  It was a great success and the Dems picked up 30 seats in the House.

Then they ran the healer Barack Obama in 2008 and America voted for its first black president in the hope that he would end the centuries of race war.  The Democrats also picked up 25 seats in the House.

But President Obama did not govern as the healer.  He governed as a man in a hurry.  Galvanized by the almost filibuster-proof Senate, he decided to go for broke and pass every item on the liberal wish list while there was still time.  He passed a stimulus bill, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank.

The American people were outraged and in 2010 sent 63 more Republicans to the House of Representatives, including a Tim Scott, a black insurance agent to represent Charleston, SC, and Allen West to represent a district in SE Florida.

The question today is whether we return the president to office, in which case his signature Obamacare will probably endure, or whether we counterattack, and roll back his ambitious effort to "transform" America.

If the president gets reelected then he will go down in history as one of the most daring and successful politicians ever.  If he fails then he will be dismissed as just another reckless fool that tried to take a bridge too far.

Of course, beyond the issue of the president and his daring gamble for the laurels of history, there is this.

Politics is civil war by other means.  The idea is to take advantage of your opportunities, but not so that your opponents decide that their only option is civil war.  The way you do this is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, by manufacturing consent.

When you want to pass a great health care bill you figure that you have two options.  You could go for broke with a bare partisan majority and create a head of rebellion in the opposition.  Or you could broker a compromise and pass a "bipartisan consensus."  Then you can argue that your bill was a "bipartisan" bill and that only a rump of extremists voted against it.

President Obama went the bare partisan majority route and rammed his programs through in the teeth of opposition from the American people.  I suspect that his decision will echo down the decades to come in rancor and conflict.

The result, of course, is likely to be sovereign debt default and the collapse of the welfare state, and maybe worse.

Women and minorities will be hardest hit, as usual.

But then, that's what usually happens when transformative leaders start transforming.

At Election Time, Government is Force

I confess I was a little shocked last week scanning the links at RealClearPolitics.com.  The liberals were all extolling the wonders of government.  Yeah, they said.  You sure need big government when Nature comes calling.

Of course, everyone is in favor of big government where their pet project is concerned.  Conservatives think that, on the view that the job of government is to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic, that the armed forces and the police are a good thing.

Liberals disagree.  They are paranoid about Pentagon generals, and watch local police forces intensely for any sign that they are committing police brutality on the poor and the marginalized.  But they are all in favor of the enforcement of environmental laws.  Because that will save the planet.

So there's real agreement in America.  Everyone is paranoid about the use of government force for things they don't like.

The question is: to what extent are we willing to reduce the use of government force on our pet projects in order to accommodate the fears of our friends in the other party?

Conservatives say that's why we need limited government and the separation of powers.

And I say that's why we need to go beyond that to the Greater Separation of Powers, to keep a separation between the great power sectors of society, the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector.

We already agree that there should be a separation between church and state, between the political and moral/cultural sectors, except that we violate it every day with government schools instructing the young and government support for the arts.  Of course, the truth is that you cannot separate politics from morality and culture, because morality and culture inform the decisions we make in politics.  But we can at least try to get the politicians and the moralists from getting in bed together.

The next great challenge is to separate economy and state: the political and the economic sectors.  This is particularly a pressing issue for the modern age, because government and business have grown from cottage industries into great and powerful systems that threaten to dominate and run over everything in their path.

It was Marx who first made the power of business into a scandal.  He used the tools of the classical economists, their confused ideas of exchange value and use value, to contrast the difference between "social labor" and "abstract labor," of work performed face-to-face and work bought and sold on the labor market.

But it took a new generation of Marxists, the Frankfurt School, to realize that it wasn't just business that threatened the social nature of humans, it was instrumental reason and its systems.  We are talking here about both business systems and government systems and their universal tendency to domination.

Then Juergen Habermas developed the ideas of Husserl and Heidegger into his system-and-lifeworld model.  System is the mechanical world of businesses and governments, of rules and subordination.  In Husserl's conception "The ‘lifeworld’ is a grand theatre of objects variously arranged in space and time relative to perceiving subjects, is already-always there, and is the “ground” for all shared human experience."

The problem for humans is that, unless we restrain the big and powerful systems they will dominate and sterilize the lifeworld.  That's because the systems want to reduce everything to their system.  So we have government, the system of force, and economy, the system of money.  We also have organized religion, the system of faith.  And each of them threatens us with its power.

Conservatives have a parallel view to Habermas and his systems vs. lifeworld view.  We believe in the limitation of powers, that is the restraining of the systems.  And we believe in the protection of "civil society" which is pretty close to the German concept of lifeworld or Lebenswelt.

But here we are, with an momentous election, determining whether we go full tilt towards an uber-systems government with bigger and more powerful systems.  Or whether we start in a different direction, de-privileging the systems and trying to find a new balance between our powerful systems of government and business and our essential humanness?

The thing about systems, of  course, is that they work really well right up until the moment they break.

Obama: Breakthrough or Bridge Too Far?

Let us suppose that Mitt Romney wins by 3-5 percent next Tuesday and gets a Republican Senate.  For President Obama and his left-liberal supporters, will it all have been worth it?

As John Podhoretz opines, you have to hand it to the president.  When he had the power he rammed through as much of his left-wing agenda as he could cram through Congress.  And as we know, it is easy to create new spending, and almost impossible to roll it back.

In his first 16 months as president, from his inauguration through the signing into law of ObamaCare, Obama arguably altered the trajectory of the United States in a manner that neither Mitt Romney (should he become president) or the president who succeeds Obama after his second term concludes in 2017 will find easy to redirect — if he or she even wishes to.

It starts with the big numbers, the $700 billion of TARP.  After that, the $800 billion of stimulus and supposed $1 trillion of Obamacare is just more of the same.

That TARP program utterly changed the terms of the Washington debate about the economic crisis and the nature of the government’s role, especially since its colossal size barely slowed its rapid adoption into law. The voices raised against it were basically dismissed as being on the fringe. The system needed an expression of confidence and an explosion of liquidity.

 So the question is whether the Obama interlude is a replay of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society when liberals seized an opportunity to enlarge government power and reach by handing out "free stuff" in a way that could not be reversed.

My guess is both Yes and No.  Yes, Obama has put government deeper into health care, and that will not change.  Paradoxically, his Obamacare was designed in part to try to put a lid on Medicare, the government's biggest problem, by instituting back-door rationing.  So Obama would hasten the time when the whole government machine shudders to a halt.  If the Romneys roll back Obamacare and reform Medicare they might actually make the entitlement program last another ten extra years.

But the basic problem is that people will not give up on their entitlements until the whole system crashes, as I wrote about yesterday.  When it comes to their Medicare, people are like the members of the NRA.  Like the NRA member's proverbial gun, you can get my Medicare from my cold dead hand.

People will only give up on their entitlements when the government goes broke, wrecks the currency, and defaults on the debt.  And maybe not even then.

That is America's real problem.

The Medicare Amendment Conservatives

When do we fix Medicare?  If you ask today's seniors, people like me, it is after we are gone.

After all, we paid in all our lives, right?

If you listen to Americans, you can see that there is no way we will reform the entitlements until after we crash.

Here's a retiree in South Florida.  He doesn't like the idea that today's Medicare won't be available to his descendants.

"I've got four children and 12 grandchildren," said Mr. Yordon, who planned to vote for Mr. Obama. "I can't believe the one item of most consequence to me would become a voucher" for them.

Dealing with private insurance companies for cars and homes, he said, was tough enough. Navigating the private health-insurance market at his age would be impossible, he said: "I just can't believe that that would work."

Er, Mr. Yordon, here's an idea.  Why not get your kids to help you navigate the insurance market as you get older.  That's what most people do.

What about this 91-year-old senior?

"I would like them to leave Medicare alone," she said. She has been in the hospital four times in the past five years, twice for surgeries to remove cholesterol from arteries in her legs. "I was very satisfied" with Medicare, she said.

I've been reading a book about the four great price revolutions of the last millennium, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History by David Hackett Fischer.  The great price waves have always featured governments spending beyond their means and seeming helpless to "do anything" about it until history decided for them in famine and revolution.  Fischer pontificates about the selfish aristocrats of the 18th century that wouldn't surrender their privileges.  Well what would you expect a left-wing academic to say.

Today's inflationary prices are different, of course.  But you still have the aristocrats, the supporters of the regime, and their privileges.  Only this time it's the union government workers, the entitlement beneficiaries, the tenured professors who are sitting on their hands refusing to give up any of their benefits.  Yes, for the feudatories of the regime, you can talk about the douceur de la vie.

Really, why would we expect any of these chaps, from Medicare beneficiaries in their 80s or retired policemen in their 50s, to agree to a reduction in their loot?  Nobody in history ever did before, not until the tumbrils started to roll.

Today's entitlement beneficiaries are like Charlton Heston and the Second Amendment conservatives.  You can take my Medicare out of my cold, dead hand, they say.

Is America Ready?

For years before the epochal year of 2008 pompous MSMers would wonder out loud: "Is America ready for a black president?"

Still, it took me aback when a faculty-wife friend expressed her satisfaction at electing the first black president.  Really?  Aren't we educated people supposed to be above all that?

Of course, I voted for Obama too.  I voted for him to shut the Democrats up on the Bush-the-warmonger front.  Anyone can flatter their base with nonsense about warmongering and Bush lied and "the wrong war" and Guantanamo.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and most of the Bush-era protocols have survived the anti-war Obama's first four years.

So now we have the ultimate question: Is America ready to fire its first black president for cause?  It's a big issue, bigger than you might think.

My old pal, the Greek philosopher George Maroutsos, used to opine about Greek politics after the Greek colonels like this.  It's important, he would say, for the conservative party in Greece to get voted out and surrender power to the liberal party.  But what comes next is just as important.  It is important for the liberal party to get voted out and surrender power to the conservative party.  Only then will both parties begin to trust that the other party will not surrender to temptation and stage a coup to stay in power.

So the same principle must apply to America's first black president.  It's a wonderful thing to elect America's first black president.  But it is even more wonderful to evaluate the performance of America's first black president and come to the decision, without any consideration of his race, that his performance is below par, and that it is regretfully necessary to terminate his service to the nation.

Actually, the question of President Obama has nothing to do with his race, except that a white guy with his experience could never have been elected president.  No, the question about President Obama is his ideas.  And also the deep questions about his leadership qualities.

Today, in 2012, the great question is different.  It is this: Is America ready for a Mormon president?  Somehow I can't find any breathless articles from MSMers wondering about that.

I wonder why?  After all, back in the day, Mormons were on the receiving end of some pretty nasty discrimination and political violence.  And even today, nice liberal women wonder if it is "ethical" for them to visit Utah.

Are the President's Men Crazy?

The polls tell us that the independents are breaking strongly for Romney:

In the last three releases of the tracking poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, Obama has trailed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among independent voters by between 16 and 20 percentage points.

So what are the Obamis doing?  They are doubling down on motivating their base:

Obama isn't just going for a win. He’s shooting for a “realignment.” Obama is trying to shape a new kind of electorate, creating a long-term Democratic majority that would allow him and his successors to stop catering to the center and finally govern decisively from the left.

Let us give them the respect they deserve.  They don't want to win with the center ground.  That would not give them a mandate for their left-wing vision.  They want to win a left-wing mandate or nothing at all.

Maybe that's a grand and visionary idea.  Or maybe it is delusional.  In our lifetimes, whenever a presidential candidate has tried to go for a purely ideological win he has lost big time: think Goldwater and McGovern.  And you would think that for liberals this would be especially foolish.  If 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservatives and 20 percent liberals, how in the world can liberals hope to win on a straight ideological pitch?

Especially when you consider that Romney is pitching himself directly at the non-ideological middle ground.

My guess right now, given the partisan move reported by Gallup and Rasmussen from the +7 Democratic advantage of 2008 to an even-steven alignment or even a +1 Republican score in the last month, is that you have to think we are heading for a landslide, a 10 point victory for Romney.  If the current Romney 49-46 lead improves in the next few days as the Benghazi cover-up gets more play the 3 point Romney lead could increase to 5 points, and if the undecideds break for challenger Romney, as you would expect, then you are close to 10 points, 55-45 Romney over Obama.

Suppose the key to the election is not what the Obamis imagine is the "'demographically ascendent' left" but the 78-year-old lady from Iowa that voted for Obama in 2008.

"Obama gave us this 'no red, no blue state' America," said McAreavy, 78.

"I was fooled, I kick myself everyday," she said. "I said: 'In four years I'll get you buddy -- and I'm going to.'"

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  How many people in America are thinking just like that this month?  There were millions of Americans that thought that, in voting for Obama, they had put the race thing to bed.

Today they are kicking themselves, and they are saying:  Hey, pal.  Don't call me a racist; I voted for Obama in 2008.  And just to prove I'm not a racist, I am voting against him in 2012.

The problem about making a big bet on anything is that if you lose you are really out of pocket.  And Obama is not just playing with his money.  He is playing with the hopes of every Democratic partisan and elected official up and down the ballot.  If he loses then he is not just going into the wilderness himself.  He is sending his entire coalition into the political wilderness.

Oh well.  Maybe the Dems will come back like the Republicans came back after 1964.

Obama and the Liberal Bubble

We've had the real-estate bubble and now eager trend-spotters are tracking the higher-education bubble.  Nothing remarkable about either one, of course.  In the real-estate bubble we had government cheap credit chasing real-estate prices chasing more government-sponsored cheap credit.  In the higher-ed bubble we had something completely different.  We had government grants and student loans chasing higher tuition rates chasing higher grants and loans.

Walter Russell Mead has a piece today about the decline of liberalism, epitomized by the disaster of Illinois state finances.

Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of the country.

He writes about the "misery and ruin that well-intentioned liberals combined with aggressive public sector labor unions inflict on the poor they ostensibly want to serve."

I think it is time to start talking about the end of the liberal bubble.  And, in a proof that God has a sense of humor, He sends us Barack Obama as the poster boy of everything that is inflated and bubbl-icious about liberalism.

The liberal bubble was borne aloft on three liberal conceits.  The first was the Enlightenment conceit that we can learn everything we need about the world from science and reason.  Thus you could create rational, scientific government programs to solve the problems of the world with a centralized administrative government bureaucracy supported by credentialed academic experts.

The second conceit was the idea that liberals were the heavy lifters in the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.  There's no doubt that liberals did work hard to push civil rights, particularly given the fact that the opponents of civil rights were in their own party.  But I would argue that the self-congratulations have been rather overdone.  For instance, why was it necessary to brand Barry Goldwater as a racist?  Here was a man that desegregated the Arizona Air National Guard before it was popular.  Why did he vote against the Civil Rights Act 1964?  Because he was a libertarian and thought the act gave the government too much power.

The third conceit was the liberal crusade against the Vietnam War and against the Cold War in general. Liberals conflated their opposition to the war with a distaste for the nation state and patriotism.  They lived above all that, working for Peace.

Liberal faith in their conceits led them to think that they were more than a ruling class with the normal vices of a ruling class, but something special. If they believed in God they would be anchoring their faith in their own superiority in divine guidance.  As it was they just believed that they were the culmination of human progress and enlightenment.  And they still do.

The ancient Greeks had a word for this sort of thing.  They called it: hubris.

Liberal hubris after the civil rights revolution led them into the racism of quotas, affirmative action, and diversity, and so they led African Americans into a hell-hole of black racism.  The fact is that we all like our own kind best, and we need the constant encouragement of moral leaders to remind us to be fair and honorable to the "other."  Liberals bang on endlessly about this.  Pity they didn't apply it to themselves and their clients.

Liberal hubris after the Great Society programs for health care and the war on poverty prevented them from being honest with themselves about the failures of centralized administrative government, and so, again and again, they reinforced failure and called their critics racists and mean-spirited.

Liberal hubris about Vietnam and the Cold War has led to the disaster of the Arab Spring and Benghazi.  That's because liberals believe in the Marxist idea of neo-colonialism, that the West oppresses and exploits the developing nations of the world.  The grain of truth in their analysis is that, of course, modern western capitalism has swept across the world like a divine wind, destroying all the old traditional agricultural cultures.  But there was never a cunning plan to reduce the rest of the world to peonage.

The French philosopher-statesman Luc Ferry writes in A Brief History of Thought that we need to get beyond the Enlightenment and its rational faith, beyond Nietzsche and his deconstruction of the idols, beyond the materialism that many profess for others but not for themselves.  We have to admit that, after we have thrown away all the gods and the modern idols there is still an irreducible core of something: e.g., the disgust of seeing someone lynched.  I would call it our irreducible human sociability.  It is something beyond material, something beyond advantage: call it self-consciousness.

I would call that something "modern conservatism."  But first we have to deal with the decline and collapse of liberalism, epitomized by President Obama, who Peggy Noonan describes as "a president who is at once over his head, out of his depth and wholly unaware of the fact."

America's big problem is that the same can be said of liberals in general.