Yes, I did happen to see the state of the union, or at least enough to get the general picture. You want us to support "The Surge" with another 30,000 troops. I had to wonder what the 120,000 guys who are already there are doing. Oh, that's right. They're school bus drivers, sanitation engineers, and embassy clerks. Sheesh. No wonder 35% of the people think you're doing a poor job. Out of the other 65%, I believe most of us still would like to win the damn war. It's just that you don't seem to be fighting to win the war. You are spending our resources apparently to broker some kind of legacy deal so we can pull the strings later. It's misguided and wasteful to conduct a war like that. Do you mean to tell me that our 120,000 troops are too busy to root out the last of the terrorists? Even the Republicans aren't dumb enough to buy that. Even Lugar, who loves the whole notion of creating one homogeneous world isn't going for the plan.
Dammit George. Let's win this war and come home. What happens after that is going to be Europe's problem, not ours.
Let's see...on the domestic side....hmmm. That's a non-starter....So's that... That too.
Use 20% less gasoline? Next ten years? Driving what, George? Ethanol cars? I don't care how much of our money you want to spend subsidizing the Ethanol cartel, people will not buy it while gas is a buck eighty. This ear-candy is pure pandering, enriches only corn farmers and ADM, and has nothing to do with energy security.
What else you got? Ah, so you dropped the notion of amnesty. That was smart. At least now you can get the Republicans back on your side. The Democrats? No, they wouldn't want law abiding immigrants. That would work against their "immigrants as victims" strategy. Only half of legally registered immigrants are likely to vote for them once their freedoms are guaranteed. Until then (and until they learn English) the dems have their way with the illegal votes. So, you're not likely to get any help there, George. Just make sure the plan fixes the problem. The political fallout is way too hard to predict in any scenario. Just fix the problem and let the votes fall where they may.
While I got the calculator out, I want to give you a little lesson in election math. about a third of the republicans stayed home in the last election leaving the democrats to win 41-39. Of those, 21% to 20% or a 1 % plurality are pretty much running things now. The loud 21%. They want a lot of changes that the rest of us 79% don't want. What that means is that you need to do several things to ensure that we are not irreversibly harmed. One, don't ever let go of your veto pen. Two, keep appointing judges who understand and respect the constitution (that being OUR constitution, not Denmark's). Three, restore all lost property and liberty rights that have come under fire since you came into office. You need to fix everything from Kelo to Gitmo, and while you are at it, take another close look at the Patriot Act. I bet we have another 120,000 people there who are miscast, and have nothing better to do but follow their own pet conspiracy theories.
Fix these things George. Then and only then will there be a legacy you can still be proud of.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Gerald Ford, R.I.P.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. -- Gerald R. Ford
Oh sure, they all love him now, but those of us 40 and over (some of us who only remember him by Chevy Chase's parodies) remember a day when Jerry Ford couldn't catch a break . He was constantly lampooned and derided as 1) a stumbling dimwit, 2) a Nixon apologist, 3) the latest in a long line of evil republican masterminds, 4) the bringer of stagflation, 5) party hack, and etc. Now, we hear that he was a statesman, a solid, respectable guy, who did the right thing in pardoning Nixon, and "healed the fissures of the political landscape". So what is the truth about his legacy? Let's explore...
One of the things he was ridiculed for was his campaign to have everybody wear a "whip inflation now" (WIN) button. I always thought those were somewhere between benign and cruel; because citizens had no more control over inflation than they had over the phases of the moon. But there was something wonderfully insidious about the act. By giving people some hope that they as individuals had power to change things, he planted an important seed. It took until Reagan's election to actually unleash the power of the people, but it might not have happened if we were still conditioned to leave everything up to the government.
So, was this positive kernel arrived at by accident? Well, let's go to the record. Jerry was right about tax cuts, spending vetoes, and hiring Alan Greenspan (as economic policy director). That's all good.
Jerry Ford gave us John Paul Stevens. Uh-oh. Supreme Court Justice Stevens is the worst enemy of the US Constitution in our nation's history. That didn't work out so well.
And then there's the matter of Nixon's pardon. On the one hand, criminal hearings would have been a good chance to focus on the hypocrisy of the elected, and I for one was hoping for the fight. The famous white house tapes were surely inadmissable as evidence, and they would have had a hard time proving a lot of what Nixon was accused of doing. It would have accelerated our understanding of the political biases in the newspaper business. On the other hand, a show trial is not a very good use of our country's resources.
Jerry Ford was also a member of the Warren Commission; that group of politicians who conspired to protect the "magic bullet theory" and forever obscure the identity of John Kennedy's assassin. Maybe he just wanted that national nightmare to end prematurely, as well.
I heard some pundits this morning say that he was not on anybody's "best presidents" list, but he wasn't on their worst list either. That's no doubt true, because we require our leaders to be politicians first. And Jerry was put there because he was a politician. Consider this quote:
The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. -- Gerald R. Ford
So, Jerry was blaming Watergate on those who operated outside the network. The fact that he was an insider was what ultimately cost him a redo in 1976. Political insiders are forever bound to disappoint at the end of the day.
Jerry, you had a good run. You probably made fewer mistakes than others who had your job. Some of those mistakes (read Stevens, Warren) we still pay dearly for, but at least we know you did it out of a sense of political propriety, and not because you were dumb or evil. Those distinctions are preserved for other presidents.
Oh sure, they all love him now, but those of us 40 and over (some of us who only remember him by Chevy Chase's parodies) remember a day when Jerry Ford couldn't catch a break . He was constantly lampooned and derided as 1) a stumbling dimwit, 2) a Nixon apologist, 3) the latest in a long line of evil republican masterminds, 4) the bringer of stagflation, 5) party hack, and etc. Now, we hear that he was a statesman, a solid, respectable guy, who did the right thing in pardoning Nixon, and "healed the fissures of the political landscape". So what is the truth about his legacy? Let's explore...
One of the things he was ridiculed for was his campaign to have everybody wear a "whip inflation now" (WIN) button. I always thought those were somewhere between benign and cruel; because citizens had no more control over inflation than they had over the phases of the moon. But there was something wonderfully insidious about the act. By giving people some hope that they as individuals had power to change things, he planted an important seed. It took until Reagan's election to actually unleash the power of the people, but it might not have happened if we were still conditioned to leave everything up to the government.
So, was this positive kernel arrived at by accident? Well, let's go to the record. Jerry was right about tax cuts, spending vetoes, and hiring Alan Greenspan (as economic policy director). That's all good.
Jerry Ford gave us John Paul Stevens. Uh-oh. Supreme Court Justice Stevens is the worst enemy of the US Constitution in our nation's history. That didn't work out so well.
And then there's the matter of Nixon's pardon. On the one hand, criminal hearings would have been a good chance to focus on the hypocrisy of the elected, and I for one was hoping for the fight. The famous white house tapes were surely inadmissable as evidence, and they would have had a hard time proving a lot of what Nixon was accused of doing. It would have accelerated our understanding of the political biases in the newspaper business. On the other hand, a show trial is not a very good use of our country's resources.
Jerry Ford was also a member of the Warren Commission; that group of politicians who conspired to protect the "magic bullet theory" and forever obscure the identity of John Kennedy's assassin. Maybe he just wanted that national nightmare to end prematurely, as well.
I heard some pundits this morning say that he was not on anybody's "best presidents" list, but he wasn't on their worst list either. That's no doubt true, because we require our leaders to be politicians first. And Jerry was put there because he was a politician. Consider this quote:
The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. -- Gerald R. Ford
So, Jerry was blaming Watergate on those who operated outside the network. The fact that he was an insider was what ultimately cost him a redo in 1976. Political insiders are forever bound to disappoint at the end of the day.
Jerry, you had a good run. You probably made fewer mistakes than others who had your job. Some of those mistakes (read Stevens, Warren) we still pay dearly for, but at least we know you did it out of a sense of political propriety, and not because you were dumb or evil. Those distinctions are preserved for other presidents.
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