Why does Sarah Palin seem to command such attention?

Palin, as media critic Howard Kurtz reports, is a crafty person when it comes using the media. Somehow, she is able to get most of the mainstream media to hang on her every word and watch her Facebook and Twitter sites for her latest views as if one were waiting for white smoke from St. Peter’s to announce a new Pope.

Part of the reason that the press and most of the political establishment tend to focus on the former governor is because they want to take her down. Think of blogger Andrew Sullivan and his years-long focus on all things Palin. The media, liberals and moderate conservatives all want to show that she’s a fake, an idiot; not presidential timber.

I would agree with all this, and yet she hasn’t gone away. Why?

I think Palin came along at the right time in American history. If we were in an alternative universe where there were no wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, where there never was a housing bubble or Great Recession, there might have been no Sarah Palin, or at least, Palin would still be an obscure governor from a small state.

Krurtz gives a clue as to Palin’s popularity in this paragraph:

For now, Palin is the accidental multimillionaire who positions herself as an ordinary hockey mom. She struck a note of sarcasm with the Times’ Draper while discussing news organizations: “They’re the elite. They know much more than I know and other people like me!”

She could just as easily be referring to Wall Street wizards or housing lawyers or congressional leaders. “Her message is that all the people who think they’re so smart aren’t really so smart. That’s a message that resonates,” Frum says.

John Ellis, a seasoned political analyst and a cousin of George W. Bush, puts it this way:

“‘She’s too stupid’ is what the Establishment GOP really thinks about Sarah Palin. ‘Good-looking,’ but a ‘ditz.’ This is unfertile ground, since Palin can turn the argument on a dime and say: ‘They drive the country into bankruptcy, they underwrite Fannie and Freddie, they bail out Goldman Sachs, they fight wars they don’t want to win, they say enforcing the immigration laws is silly and they call me stupid! I’ll give you a choice: You can have their smarts or my stupidity, which one do you want?’”

That’s why the images of Palin hunting and fishing and telling Willow she can’t have boys upstairs may matter more than her policy positions—and separate her from a president with a Harvard Law degree. If the smart guys have failed, if the credentialed creative class has messed things up, it opens the door for a plain-spoken populist ready to refudiate the old order.

That message, naturally, rankles the journalistic elite, which nonetheless serves as a megaphone for Palin’s musings.

In some ways, the smart guys have failed- miserably. And this is not just in politics, but in the media and the economy as well. Palin’s rise is more about a lack of trust in, well anything except Sarah Palin.

And that’s the problem. Those of us that look down on Palin as not being smart don’t get that being smart is percieved as part of the problem. Palin’s homespun wisdom seems a lot more reliable than placing our trust in smart leaders who then procede to lead the economy down the drain. This is a message that the media and liberals must pay attention to, but so-called establishment conservatives (or those who don’t like Ms. Palin) have to be aware of as well. The way to challenge Sarah Palin is NOT to talk about how stupid she is; instead it is about re-establishing trust between the average American and the big institutions that are a part of our daily lives.

That’s why the Democrats got a “shellackin’” earlier this month, and why folks like Mike Castle and Bob Inglis got beaten in GOP primaries. The smart guys could not realize that they were the problem.

In unsettling times such as these, demagogues like Palin are successful because they offer simple answers and shed a light on the ruling elite.

The answer to Palin is to make America function again. It’s to restore confidence in our economic and politicial sectors that haven’t been working well at all.

If we can do that, then maybe Sarah Palin will go away.

Crossposted at Big Tent Revue

Really Arizona legislature? Really Governor Jan Brewer? This is the time when you decide to make this switch?

And, from Politico, the text of the bill reads like some of the craziest satire…

“Public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people,” the text of the bill reads.

Haha, so…that legislation you passed several weeks doesn’t teach people to resent other races or classes of people? Hmmm….

Here’s more from this wacky law…

The law prohibits the teaching of any classes that promote “the overthrow of the United States government,” “resentment toward a race or class of people,” “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

Neither the governor nor the bill’s supporters have identified examples where a Chicano studies class has advocated the “overthrow” of the federal government, and the bill’s opponents in the state have expressed outrage over what they see as a law that unfairly targets Hispanics.

Here’s more about the schools that are the target of this bill…

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.

For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors.

So then…how many of you have taken ethnic studies classes in college? Remember them? If so, remember how they were EXACTLY like what’s described in the above quoted passage? If not, please tell me, but that’s what I remember.

But now we find the real reason why this is happening…political opportunism…

[State schools chief Tom] Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He’s been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that “Republicans hate Latinos.”

Really? You’re going to not only get offended but also quote a civil rights activist?

Another question…it seems like the only schools affected are in Tucson, but obviously bills have broader implications once passed. What about the universities? Are they prohibited from teaching Chicano studies or Black studies classes?

The answer is no, not at all. In fact, apparently no ethnic studies classes at all will be affected in any way whatsoever…

The measure doesn’t prohibit classes that teach about the history of a particular ethnic group, as long as the course is open to all students and doesn’t promote ethnic solidarity or resentment.

But hey, thank whatever deity you believe in for laws that solve problems that haven’t even started yet. Whew!

And, by the way, for those of you who have taken any sort of ethnic studies classes…did you ever advocate overthrowing the government or hating people of other races after you took them? Sure, some may build up a healthy disdain for those forefathers and foremothers who violently discriminated against folks just because they were different, but unless “learn to hate people of other races” is in the curriculum, it’s up to the individual to not place the sins of the past on the present’s shoulders.

Of course, you know what might cause hate and resentment towards an ethnic group?

Arizona knows!

And scene…

The Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, certainly had its moments. In what appears to be an impromptu statement, Ryan Sorba, head of the Young Americans for Freedom’s California chapter, stood up to condemn CPAC’s invitation to GOProud, a group that supports gay Republicans:

Conservatives and libertarians are concerned about the scope and reach of government. The phrase “limited government” is used to convey this thought. But it is a complex subject. Conservatives generally recognize the need for laws governing human actions that harm or endanger others. Social conservatives tend to marry this idea with another: that individual actions can endanger entire communities, cultures and nations. Sometimes, they want to enact laws, or continue supporting standards to protect society. I submit that is not within the purview of a limited government, as only an expansive, intrusive and overbearing government can hope to “preserve” a culture (think: France).

Finding the right balance between maximum freedom, smallest government, and social order is difficult. But if the choice is between limiting the reach of government into our daily lives and limiting access to political activism by gay people, it might be instructive to take this simple three question test:

Choose one answer in each question:
Within the last 500 years, which one of the following groups has wrongly imprisoned, tortured, and executed people in violation of natural law:
A. Governments
B. Gay people

Within the last 500 years, which one of the following has extracted onerous taxes from people, often without giving them the right to be represented:
A. Governments
B. Gay people

Within the last 500 years, which one of the following has restricted various liberties, including property rights, religious liberty and freedom of speech:
A. Governments
B. Gay people

As the audience members at CPAC booed, they reminded me of the decision by Ronald Reagan as he considered a run for the Presidency. He was asked to oppose the 1978 Briggs Initiative, a measure put to the voters that prohibited gay and lesbian teachers, with jail terms specified for encouraging homosexual behavior. It enjoyed about two thirds support prior to Reagan weighing in, as the Log Cabin Republicans note in their history:

Many prominent politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties were hesitant about standing up to the bigotry of Briggs and his allies. That’s when gay conservatives turned to former governor Ronald Reagan. At the time he was preparing to mount a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980. His advisors all thought he was committing political suicide when he decided to be an outspoken foe of the Briggs Initiative. Reagan declared that the initiative “is not needed to protect our children – we have the legal protection now.”

Reagan went further, detailing the dangers of passing such a measure. “It has the potential for real mischief,” the former governor explained. “What if an overwrought youngster, disappointed by bad grades, imagined it was the teacher’s fault and struck out by accusing the teacher of advocating homosexuality? Innocent lives could be ruined.”

Reagan’s forceful opposition helped defeat the Briggs Initiative. In November 1978, voters rejected the Briggs Initiative by more than a million votes. Even in conservative Orange County, Briggs’ home base, the initiative lost. Long-time Democratic gay activist David Mixner met with Reagan in 1978 to personally lobby him on the Briggs initiative, recalling, “Never have I been treated more graciously by a human being. He turned opinion around and saved that election for us,” Mixner said. “We would have been in deep trouble. He just thought it was wrong and came out against it.”

While social conservatives have a home in the greater conservative movement, it would be instructive for them to remember the greatest threat to freedom comes from government. A government expansive enough to limit the freedom of gays is one expansive enough to limit the freedom of conservatives.

Cross posted to FrankHagan.com

I’m not kidding. It’s the perfect combination. A slew of ill informed protesters who heart Glenn Beck, think they know “true” conservative values and are convinced our country is turning into a dictatorship and Sarah Palin…an ill informed politician who hearts Glenn Beck, claims she knows “true” conservative values and loves to convince folks our country is turning into a dictatorship…and that Obama wants to kill your grandparents.

What’s not to love?

So yes, I’m bringing this up because she’s headlining their first convention, and that’s where it gets very interesting. Because while the Republicans have a big opportunity to pick up steam going in 2012, the Tea Party movement could completely undermine it…in much the same way the Deaniacs did in 2004.

A political scientist explains…

But courting what many call a fringe and inchoate movement carries huge risks, argues Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, in Atlanta.

He says a Republican shift toward the Reaganesque Tea Party ideal could lead to a sort of pogrom for moderate Republicans, forcing out those (think Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe) who don’t hew precisely to rock-hard conservative principles around economic freedom and limited government interference.

“The Republican Party is trapped by their base, which is going increasingly conservative,” says Mr. Abramowitz. “Yes, Republicans can do fairly well in the 2010 elections – it’s entirely possible that they could pick up 20 to 30 seats in the House – but they could read the wrong message from that. In 2012, if the economy is doing reasonably well again and Obama’s popularity has stabilized, that strategy is going to be very risky and this could all come back to haunt them.”

Oh, and Palin is getting paid anywhere from $75K to $100K to speak at the event. Looks like freedom pays handsomely!

My question: Does this hint at a third party run in 2012?

Jon Henke points to Steven Hayward’s op-ed “Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?” which makes some very salient points. Chiefly:

The best-selling conservative books these days tend to be red-meat titles such as Michelle Malkin’s “Culture of Corruption,” Glenn Beck’s new “Arguing with Idiots” and all of Ann Coulter’s well-calculated provocations that the left falls for like Pavlov’s dogs. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these books. Politics is not conducted by Socratic seminar, and Henry Adams’s dictum that politics is the systematic organization of hatreds should remind us that partisan passions are an essential and necessary function of democratic life. The right has always produced, and always will produce, potboilers.

Conspicuously missing, however, are the intellectual works. The bestseller list used to be crowded with the likes of Friedman’s “Free to Choose,” George Gilder’s “Wealth and Poverty,” Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times,” Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind,” Charles Murray’s “Losing Ground” and “The Bell Curve,” and Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man.” There are still conservative intellectuals attempting to produce important work, but some publishers have been cutting back on serious conservative titles because they don’t sell. (I have my own entry in the list: a two-volume political history titled “The Age of Reagan.” But I never expected the books to sell well; at 750 pages each, you can hurt yourself picking them up.)

But, therein lies the crux of the problem for conservatism; people don’t want intellectualism (or at the very least they do not appear to want intellectualism). The modern conservative movement, led by the likes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, wants to be spoon-fed right-wing talking-points like so many tiny jars of Gerber baby food. If people would be willing to pick up a 750-page book by a conservative intellectual once in a while, our political discourse might sound a bit different right now. I would venture a guess that there would be a lot less ‘socialist!’, ‘fascist!’ and ‘racist!’ invectives being thrown around, no?

Though I will admit that the ‘more Buckley less O’Reilly’ comparison is a bit off for my tastes. I feel that (with my recent warm-fuzzy feelings for him — if you can call it that) Bill O’Reilly is not nearly as divisive and, frankly, offensive as Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity.

Oh, and for the record, this is not a problem that is exclusive to conservatism. The Keith Olbermanns and Ed Schultzs of the world aren’t as bad as their conservative counterparts, but they are not necessarily helping the progressive movement either. This is a knife that does indeed cut both ways.

——
Photo: Jan Lukas/Little, Brown

“The role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.”
- Pete Wehner in Commentary magazine

Obviously I agree, and not just because I think Beck is a hack.

We need REAL, honest debate and the Becks of the world (Hannity, O’Reilly, Malloy, Rhodes) are only their to make a fast buck off of people’s ignorance. These folks aren’t truth tellers. They merely 21st century snake oil salesman, only this time they’re bottling impotent partisan rage and saying that you can make a difference if you just scream loudly enough.

Well, we’re seeing where all this screaming is leading and it’s not good…especially online. The internet is lousy with thousands of garbage blogs that do nothing but parrot Beck’s lunacy and the net effect is a very, very small minority that gets attention from the media because they’re simply too crazy to ignore.

And that’s why conservatives need to run away from this guy as quickly as they can. Because while he may be responsible for a drop in Obama’s popularity numbers, he’s doing absolutely nothing to bolster yours. You still are less trusted than Democrats in never every category and you’re not going to win elections on the basis of deficit reduction alone.

In any event, fair warning. Don’t say we didn’t tell you so.

A mind meld with that I expressed earlier today…

It really is disappointing to see McCain and Graham behave like this, especially when they haven’t filled in the blanks as to what Obama should say and why that would be more effective than the current course.

And, again, what’s the end game to tough talk? I’ll tell you what…more dead Iranian protesters. As the President mentioned earlier in the press conference, the Iranian leadership is already trying to trick their supporters into believing that we’re fomenting revolution by mistranslating things he has said and reporting that the CIA is behind this uprising.

As is the case with most foreign policy calls Republican lawmakers have made in the last 8 years, I genuinely have no clue as to how they’re arriving at these decisions. And I think Americans are equally perplexed and that’s one of the reasons McCain lost by 9 million votes last year.

Moving on…

Usually, when people debate why the conservative movement has hit hard times, they argue about whether Republicans are fiscally conservative enough or whether they are too focused on social issues. Rarely does the third tent pole of modern conservativism get mentioned: the national security conservatives. But that’s the exact group to blame argues Daniel Larison in The Week:

The faction most responsible for the GOP’s political failure is national security conservatives. Yet within the party, they remain unscathed, their assumptions about the use of American power largely unquestioned, and their gross errors in judgment forgotten or readily forgiven. Among the mainstream right, the foreign policy of the Bush administration is barely a subject of debate. Rather than reorienting Republican foreign policy towards a political center defined by realism, humility and restraint, the GOP’s leadership and activists have redoubled their commitment to Bush and Cheney’s hawkish stances and to a lock-step defense of the Bush administration’s policies.

Larison is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, part of the Pat Buchanan wing of the conservative movement (wing? More like alcove these days) – so you know he comes at this with a certain isolationist bias. But is he right? Are Republicans losing because they can’t divorce themselves from the national security policies of the Bush years?

Seems to me it’s a lot more complicated than that. But it’s worth considering. After all, the Republicans were once known for their realism abroad and that, in turn, made the party look mature and capable. Without that realism on weighty matters, can the party hope to regain the trust of the American people? Does Larison have a point?

Mona Charen of National Review Online notes that major media outside of Fox News either ignored the tax day tea parties or took an adversarial tone in reporting on them. Charen rightly notes that part of the problem is that Fox News promoted and actively participated in the events, giving other news outlets the excuse that the tea parties were illegitimate. But does that make the frustrations of the attendees illegitimate as well?

Charen points out that maybe tea party participants deserve more credit for their concerns. Writing about a specific attendee who was confronted by a CNN reporter, Charen says:

Perhaps [the stimulus and tax credit don’t] buy his support because he is skeptical that his taxes can remain low when the federal government is embarked on a record-shattering spending spree. He may be offended by the bailout culture, and worried that the obligations of taxpayers cannot remain low when it seems that every irresponsible borrower, failed car company, and free spending state is being rescued by the federal government. Additionally, he may be dubious that the government will spend the money wisely. It has been rumored that government spending has produced waste, fraud, inefficiency, and corruption. But he also may simply believe that engorging the government and enfeebling the private sector — no matter who is writing the checks — is not good for the economic or spiritual health of the country.

Or maybe he believes President Obama is leading us towards a socialist, totalitarian state where capitalism will be discouraged and guns will be forbidden. And that’s the problem with these tea parties. From my observations, it’s hard to separate the reasonable complaints from the outlandish accusations. Too many people associated with these groups have reached for ridiculous rhetoric rather than formulating smart, convincing critiques.

That said, the reasonable pro tea party argument laid out by Charen is a difficult one to disseminate without losing people’s attention. Fiscal responsibility is not something on which great slogans or firebrand speeches are built (although Ross Perot did a pretty good job with the issue back in the day). Unfortunately, overstating the risks of fiscal irresponsibility ruins the credibility of the critic. As of yet, the tea party organization has not found the right balance between firing up the populace and presenting a consistently reasonable argument free from rightwing chicanery.

The good news for the tea parties is that they have time to perfect their message and move away from the controlling influence of Fox News and other powerbrokers who make the organization seem more like a coordinated campaign than a grassroots movement. It would be nice to see the group become an alternative to the sedentary, bitter, social-conservative dominated Republican Party. But the group could also just become a MoveOn.org of the right — more partisan tool than positive force.

Regardless of what I might think of how they were started, promoted or whether or not they’ll last, it’s always a good thing when Americans peaceably unite to protest. Thankfully we’re lucky enough to have those rights and, as we all know, rights are best when exercised often and vigorously.

Also, I understand the anger over the bailouts. I genuinely do. A lot of “T”s haven’t been crossed or “I”s dotted. And when there aren’t a lot of answers as to the whos, whys or hows, frustration is inevitable.

Again, all of this is certainly within the protestors’ rights, but anybody who doesn’t admit that Obama inherited this mess is playing fast and loose with the facts. And I appreciate that they think he’s going down the wrong path, but where are the alternative plans? All we’ve seen so far from the Republican leadership are tax cuts that would destroy social safety net funding around the country. Or, in other words, all we’ve seen are plans that are completely unrealistic.

And riddle me this…what are the tea partiers for? What are their ideas? We know what they’re against, but they haven’t been effected AT ALL by the government’s bailout of the banks. I also find that there’s a basic lack of recognition that the financial system a) can’t be allowed to fail and b) this was caused by unregulated, unchecked free marketism. So I find it disingenuous that these protests are even being likened to the Boston Tea Party when our forefathers acted because of genuinely prohibitive grievances that were effecting their daily lives. And they protested again and again and again for years and years and years.

So yes, my guess is a genuine populist storm isn’t truly brewing yet, and if conservatives think it’ll happen after today, they’re kidding themselves. Also, if this Tea Party crowd truly wants to make an impact, they better realize that they’ll have to stand out in public places with signs for months on end, and that’s certainly not something most conservatives are use to. Because one big media hit isn’t going to do it. In fact, it could very well hurt them because all subsequent protests will most likely be smaller.

And, let’s face it, we’re seeing a lot of nutty anti-Obamaism at rallies today and that’s unsustainable. Because eventually the serious folks will be turned off and simply not show up.

Those are my thoughts.

What are yours?

Thanks to John, I am pointed to these two rather strange arguments in favor of the Drug War and against libertarian use of statistics on race against the Drug War from Jonah Goldberg. John does a pretty good job explaining why Goldberg’s arguments are so strange. The only thing I’d really add is that the notion that libertarians don’t normally give a crap about race and poverty is a notion that is borne out of the coalition of libertarians with conservatives – libertarian and classical liberal philosophy, when divorced from coalition politics, actually have quite a bit to say about the problems of poverty and laws that disproportionately single out politically less powerful groups.

Goldberg also makes this odd statement:

A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.

This is particularly puzzling because Goldberg has argued that anti-statism is at the core of conservatism and is also why libertarians should continue to coalition with conservatives. Obviously, increasing drug prosecutions is not only inconsistent with any conception of limited government, it’s also an expansion of the size of government. And not an insignicant expansion either, given that this can definitionally only be achieved by pursuing people with enough resources to put up a tough fight against drug prosecutions (a fact that at least partly explains the socioeconomic discrepancies in such prosecutions in the first place).

Goldberg’s statement does indirectly suggest one point worth exploring, though – that human liberty is increased when laws are enforced more uniformly; unfortunately, he takes this point to be a justification for the expansion of drug prosecutions.

Much has been written of late about the difference between small and limited government – specifically, small government refers only to the fiscal “size” of the government, whereas limited government refers to the government’s actual powers. If you accept that the State must exist, as even most libertarians do, then one must have a desire that the Stated do well that which it is authorized to do. If the State does its job poorly, then it will actually have a more negative impact on individual liberty than if it does its job well, because at that point enforcement of the laws becomes arbitrary and based on one’s ability to curry favor with the State in some other non-germane arena.

If, on the other hand, the State does its job well, then people may act in reliance upon the law being enforced equally without regards to other issues. So there may be a marginal decrease in liberty due to the existence of the law in the first place, but this is mitigated by the fact that uniform enforcement ensures that people may act in reliance upon the law and without having to curry favor with the State in some other arena. This means less State corruption, less connection between wealth and power, and less fear of interference from the State more generally.

The trouble is that very often uniform enforcement is simply not possible due to the State’s limited resources. Put another way, in the words of the inestimable Wirkman Virkkala, “regulation is not scalable.”

In the case of the War on Drugs, this problem is particularly apparent. For any given drug, there are going to be potentially millions of users spread out over a vast country. The only way to have uniform enforcement of the drug laws in such a situation is to have an incomprehensibly large budget far bigger than the already-incomprehensibly large Drug War budget we have. Other programs, some of which may or may not be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion will need to be scaled back (and thus enforced more arbitrarily). Short of that, given the nature of prohibitions on the possession of banned personal items, the only way to truly enforce the law uniformly would be to turn our neighbors and friends into de facto secret police.

Still, under some circumstances, I suppose it’s possible to enforce such prohibitions in a more or less uniform fashion without creating a de facto secret police force – whatever Singapore’s flaws (and it has many), drug use is not something that flourishes there. Part of that, though, is that Singapore is a tiny nation geographically, and another part of it is that it spends very little on many other types of restrictions, such as economic regulation.

Which brings me to my final point – even regulations that are not outright prohibitions can be uniformly enforced only if they govern a sufficiently small number of actors or if the enforcing agency has the very substantial amount of resources necessary to enforce the regulations uniformly over a large number of actors. Again, they are not scalable. If the regulations are to apply to more actors than the agency has the resources to oversee, then the only solution an agency may follow will be to make the regulations so restrictive as to ensure the reduction of the number of actors over whom they have jurisdiction. In other words, regulatory capture doesn’t just benefit the capturing business – it also benefits the captured regulator.

There is, I think, a solution to this problem: terminate any set of laws or regulations that cannot be uniformly enforced without an unrealistic budgetary expansion, and fully fund those laws or regulations that can be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion. Unfortunately, this is impossible in a two-party system where the Executive is increasingly viewed by both supporters and detractors as omnipotent and where few are willing to admit the unrealistic nature of their pet programs.

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

After less than two months of Barack Obama’s presidency, pundits across the spectrum are competing to “frame” the new administration. There are lots of narratives, but, in my mind, the most potent ones are expressed in two editorials appearing today.

From the negative side, Janet Daley at Britain’s Telegraph argues that Obama is handing the reins over to liberal Democrats in Congress:

[W]hy, when [Obama] went to such pains to assemble a huge and widely experienced team of White House economic advisers (even going to the lengths of parading them at a press conference before he took office) he then handed over the actual drafting of his economic policy to the old Democratic fixers in Congress. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, are now, for all intents and purposes, running the Obama recovery plan.

Needless to say, Daley has a very low opinion of Pelosi’s and Reid’s motives and capabilities.

From the positive side, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, writes in Salon that Obama is plotting a radically ingenious course likely to remake America and end the economic troubles started under Reagan.

The basic idea of Reaganomics was that the economy grows from the top down. Lower taxes on the wealthy make them work harder and invest more, and the benefits trickle down to everyone else. Rarely in economic history has a theory been more tested in the real world and proven so wrong. In point of fact, nothing trickled down. After the Reagan tax cuts, increases in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, the median wage actually dropped. Meanwhile, most of the income went to the top. In 1980, just before the Reagan revolution, the richest 1 percent took home 9 percent of total national income. But by 2007, the richest 1 percent was taking home 22 percent.

Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. Obama’s program increases taxes on the top and uses the proceeds to raise the living standard of average Americans by giving them lower taxes, better schools and more affordable health insurance. That may not seem very radical, but compared with the last quarter century it’s revolutionary.

Reich notes that Obama’s administration is working hard to present his programs as incremental changes, but Reich sees them for the radical change they are.

Here’s why I think these two narratives are likely to compete for public attention for at least the next two years:

First, on the Daley side of things, Reid and particularly Pelosi are certainly harmful to Obama’s hopes for change. They seem far more interested in political payback and rewarding key interest groups than they are in improving government. As long as the current Democratic congressional leadership is in place, Obama will have to either fight the good fight or acquiesce to bad policy. So far, he’s done more acquiescing than some of us would like, thus setting himself up to be labeled a pawn of the liberal/establishmentarian wing of his party.

On the Reich side of things, he’s putting the Obama presidency into the kind of framework from which legacies are born. If the economy turns around, Reich’s narrative would give Obama the kind of big idea, reformer credit which only Roosevelt and Reagan have enjoyed in the last 75 years. A good economy in 2012 would give Obama the opportunity to run not just as a competent manager but has a political savoir, potentially ushering in an era of “trickle up” dominance.

The difference in the positive and negative narratives is that the negative is based on a very real problem (the small mindedness of the Democratic congressional leadership), while the positive is based on the hope/belief the economy will indeed rebound and we’ll be better off afterwards. I would go so far as to say for the “Obama as savoir” narrative to work, the president must first solve the “Congress as stone-around-the-neck” problem first.

Right now, none of us knows what the next few years will bring. But don’t expect that to stop the world’s pundits from trying to define Obama before a single result is in.

One thing that has long baffled me has been the idea on the American Right that Europe is some kind of socialist hell-hole that borders on Communist. The thrust of the argument always seems to be that European government is so large and intrusive, and it public mores so lacking and dare I say nihilistic that it is something akin to Hell on Earth. Mark Steyn, not surprisingly, expresses this attitude fairly succinctly, writing:

Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you’ve spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory. In the same way, few of those Americans who want to introduce Canadian-style health care to the U.S. have ever had surgery at the Royal Victoria. Indeed, America is full of immigrants whose hostility to Euro-Canadian public policy derives explicitly from their prolonged exposure to it.

Of course, the definition of “Europeanism” is ill-defined. So far as I can tell, it’s a reference to a government with a large social welfare system combined with a secularized social policy. The assumption, which is largely based on a false equivalency that social safety nets = socialism = Road to Serfdom and that United States = World’s Only Bastion of Free Market Capitalism = World’s Only Free Country, is that these “Europeanist” policies make Europe an absolute hell-hole.

Despite my deep love of the free market, I’ve always found this chain of thought to be utterly absurd. For starters, the idea that Europe is some kind of hell-hole at all doesn’t seem to line up with reality, as Alex Massie points out:

Never mind that, according to the most recent World Values Survey, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden each reported higher levels of happiness and “life satisfaction” than the United States. That isn’t to say that the US is unhappy, merely that there is more than one route to happiness. And that’s the point: europe (however broadly defined) and the United States are each remarkable success stories permitting a greater percentage of the population than at any point in history has the opportunity to make their own choices about how to lead their lives.

But there’s more to it than this. If “Europeanism” really is that much of a restraint on freedom, one would expect that European nations would have exceedingly tightly restricted economies, with comparatively little economic liberty. Thankfully, that lunatic left-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation has long compiled a statistical ranking of economic freedoms around the world.

In the current iteration of this list, based on data from late 2007 to early 2008, shows the good ol’ USA ranked 6th – right behind Ireland and New Zealand, and just barely ahead of Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, and the UK. But things get even more interesting when you look more closely at the data. After all, the argument seems to be that larger and more expensive government leads to less economic freedom (amongst other problems). And yet, when one looks at measures of economic freedom other than the size of government, one quickly finds that the US is outperformed by numerous European countries and Canada. Canada for instance surpasses the US in things like Fiscal Freedom (ie, taxation), freedom from corruption, business freedom, and trade freedom; Denmark in business freedom (where the Heritage Foundation considers Denmark just about perfect!), investment and financial freedom, property rights, and labor freedom; the UK and Netherlands in investments, property rights, and corruption; Iceland in business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, property rights, and corruption; and Austria and Belgium also comparing pretty favorably.

Meanwhile, there are a number of governments that seem to score extraordinarily poorly on these measures despite having relatively small governments. In fact, by the Heritage Foundation’s measurements, the US actually has a larger than average government compared to the rest of the globe, but has a far smaller government than most of Western Europe and Canada, most of which – including Sweden, with the third largest government in the world according to Heritage – score in the top 30 most economically free countries in the world. The sole exceptions are Portugal (#53), France (#64), and Italy (#76).

Meanwhile, countries with relatively small governments seem to largely be ranked pretty poorly in terms of overall economic freedom as I previously discussed here. If you rank the countries by size of government (keeping in mind that higher scores equal smaller government), the “best” governments are, in order: Burma, Liberia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and the Central African Republic. None of these are exactly bastions of economic freedom in any other respect.

This isn’t to say that smaller government equates with less economic freedom generally – I don’t think it does, and one can’t ignore that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Chile all have rather small governments combined with quite a bit of economic freedom. Instead, it’s simply to say that there is a complete lack of evidence of any sort that “Europeanism” is a first-class ticket to disorder, totalitarianism, or regulatory hell.

Meanwhile, whatever the flaws of secularism (and in the case of so-called Human Rights Commissions, it’s pretty clear that there are quite a few such flaws), it’s worth noting that Europeans seem to have a closer attachment to their culture and history than just about any part of the US outside the Deep South. Indeed, in France, the desire to preserve that culture and history is probably one of the biggest causes of French restrictions on economic liberty, which results in a level of protectionism that is noticeably higher than the rest of Western Europe (except for Italy).

On the other hand, the idea that the solution to American problems lies in adopting European-style policies (whatever that may mean) is pretty foolish as well, for the simple reason that the U.S. isn’t Europe. We are a far more culturally and ethnically heterogenous society than any European country, we are far larger in terms of both population and area than any Western European country, and – as is the case with any two countries – we have completely different established institutions upon which to base our policies, as Ms. McArdle recently noted.

Regardless, can we please stop pretending like Western Europe is the closest thing to Hell on Earth or, in the alternative, some kind of socialist paradise? It’s neither – instead, it’s just a collection of several different governments that in general seem to have each found a balance between government and liberty that works pretty well for the specific people who are subject to that specific government’s jurisdiction.

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

And she fisks Ann Coulter in a fantastic op-ed for The Daily Beast. For the Republicans in the crowd, she spouts some hard truths:

It is no secret that being a Republican isn’t the most hip political stance a person can take right now. President Obama has successfully established himself as the hippest politician around. You know you’re big when Katy Perry wears a dress with your face on it to host the MTV Europe Music Awards. To my fellow Republicans: I’m sorry, I wish I could be more positive about the current “hipness” of our party. But being a Republican is about as edgy as Donny Osmond. Granted, being “hip” is not a reason to join a political party, or a reason to agree with its ideals. But it is a way to get the attention of a generation—or, more specifically, my generation.

To make matters worse, certain individuals continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Republicans. Especially Republican women. Who do I feel is the biggest culprit? Ann Coulter. I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. But no matter how much you or I disagree with her, the cult that follows Coulter cannot be denied. She is a New York Times best-selling author and one of the most notable female members of the Republican Party. She was one of the headliners at the recent CPAC conference (but when your competition is a teenager who has a dream about the Republican Party and Stephen Baldwin, it’s not really saying that much).

…but it’s still worth your time to read the whole thing.

Several readers have written in to point out that I keep talking about and linking to pieces written by Meghan McCain. While this is true, I submit to you that there is very good reason for this: She’s onto something. Her conservative voice is refreshing on so many levels — especially when compared to the usual conservative pundit-class. Ms. McCain is using her platform not to call Obama a socialist or Democrats evil-baby-killing-liberals, but rather to have a coherent discussion about the path forward for the conservative movement in America. She represents a younger generation who, if the GOP continues on it’s current path, will be increasingly turned off to the idea of conservatism.

[cross-posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]

I’m no fan of Rush Limbaugh. I find him neither elucidating nor entertaining — even on occasions when I agree with him. But he is quite popular with a core group and is increasingly powerful within the Republican party. What’s behind this expanding power? Would you believe the Democrats are?

Apparently, Democratic strategists, inside and outside the White House, have decided there’s no better way to marginalize the Republican party than by purposefully promoting Limbaugh as the heart and soul of the GOP. And Limbaugh is happy to play along.

“The Administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an email to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama’s policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”

The bigger, the better, agreed Democrat James Carville. “It’s great for us, great for him, great for the press,” he said of Limbaugh. “The only people he’s not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress.”

Remember those dark days for Democrats just a few years ago when controversial characters like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan became symbols of the liberal movement? Certain portions of the base loved it. The rest of American turned away.

Limbaugh could very well have the same effect on the conservative movement. And here’s why — like the Michael Moore of the Bush era, Limbaugh seems to be actively rooting against America. That’s not to say he’s anti-American (or that Moore is/was either), just that he’s so vituperative in his critique of the current administration that his words can easily be turned against him and the right in general.

Politically speaking, Democrats are smart to play up Limbaugh’s influence within the Republican party. But they don’t want to overplay it. If Obama’s early economic initiatives fail or if he mishandles an unforeseen foreign crisis, Limbaugh has the rhetorical power to whip American resentment into real anger. The more prominent he is, the more damaging to the Democrats he could be.

But for now, while Democrats are safely in power and Republicans flop like fish on the shore, Limbaugh is a liability to Republicans. Conservatives need a leader with ideas, not just negativism. Of course, if that person shows up, don’t look for Democrats to give him or her any free publicity.

Kyle’s post yesterday the other day about the need for the GOP to stop focusing on “how” it was going to come back from the wilderness if it ever wants to get back to relevance made a lot of sense to me. The political reality is that the GOP, despite its recent defeats, continues to consist of tens of millions of faithful voters, including moderates, party fundamentalists, social conservatives, libertarians, etc. And exactly none of those voters are going to change their worldview overnight just because some pundit says that it would be more electorally sound if they did so. So whatever direction one thinks the GOP should go as a matter of policy, the political reality is that it is incapable of consciously choosing any new direction.

Does this mean that the party is permanently doomed? No – we live in a two-party federalist system, and that’s not about to change soon.

Today, I think I finally have a picture of exactly how that road back to relevance is going to look (which is different from the normative picture of how I think it should look), thanks in part to this Politico interview with Gov. Huntsman of Utah. In the interview, Huntsman spells out a worldview that some would call “moderate,” but is instead quite along the lines of the various reformist conservatives – it’s a distincly different type of worldview from that of Arlen Specter & Co.

Matt Yglesias thinks the growth of reformism amongst elected officials like Huntsman and Gov. Crist of Florida means a coming civil war for the GOP. But he argues that these voices seem confined to the state level, and that the GOP won’t actually start to reform on a national level until similar voices start getting elected to Congress.

I disagree. The reality is that change in political party policy doesn’t happen overnight; instead, it happens subtly and gradually over the course of years. What we see in the reformist governors is the beginning of that change – it’s just not a change that is being consciously directed.

Patrick Ruffini’s much-ballyhooed and criticized post on de-Plumberizing the Right gives a pretty good idea of where the Right is likely to go over the next few years on the federal level. Specifically, Ruffini argues that what is need is not a change in policy, but a change in focus onto issues where 80% of Americans agree with Republicans, per Newt Gingrich’s strategy. This actually makes quite a bit of sense as political strategy because it doesn’t involve alienating any of the base, which a political party cannot do without putting itself in an even worse position in the short-run. Meanwhile, Robert Stacy McCain is probably right that it is politically more sound for Republicans to simply oppose anything the Dems try to do, and make them own it if (and some would say when) the Dem policies fail. Besides, there’s rarely an electoral penalty for opposing something that succeeds; there’s frequently an electoral reward for opposing something that fails. And this, of course, is precisely what Congressional Republicans seem to be doing.

The trouble with this approach, while it probably will work in the short-term, is that it is superficial, and only gets part of the GOP’s problems right, as Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison argue. It allows Republicans to stop the bleeding, but those 80% issues aren’t going to be big picture enough to make the GOP relevant again in the minds of a lot of those who have abandoned it (“Drill, Baby, Drill” may be popular with a lot of people, but it’s not something that’s going to suddenly make many people Republicans).

But GOP governors have the burden of actually governing rather than just criticizing, which is part of why several of them are solidly in the reformist camp. They have no choice but to depart from dogma on core issues, which is precisely what Huntsman and Crist are doing. Eventually, though, the national GOP’s change in focus will loosen the dogma on issues where the national GOP is no longer proposing serious policy alternatives. At that point, you will see reformist thought actually start to infect Republicans in Congress and maybe even Presidential primary candidates because it will no longer require annoying part of the base.

To sum up: continued populism on the national level, but with a focus on pushing different issues while reflexively opposing Obama on just about everything; renewed reformism on the state level that ultimately winds up providing an example for a new affirmative agenda on the national level. And no one will have planned it this way, since really it’s not what anyone wants right now – the change is too slow from the perspective of the reformists, and too much from the perspective of the base. But happen, I think it will. I just don’t know what reforms will wind up carrying the day, nor whether I personally will find those reforms palatable in a way that brings me back to the GOP fold (no matter what happens, I’m pretty happy staying an independent).

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

John Derbyshire has a great article in the current issue of The American Conservative discussing the impact of conservative talk radio on conservatism as a whole:

[A]re there some downsides to conservative talk radio? Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism abroad—has talk radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the table for the next four years at least, a prospect that conservatives can only view with anguish. Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs?

They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in no-account nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

And if you dared to be one of those criticizing the Bush Administration’s domestic policy, or question it’s foreign policy, then watch out. Even if you were a Republican you were still a traitor, a RINO, un-American. For eight long years, with only a few minor deviations such as the nonsense over the Dubai Ports Deal or Bush’s inexplicably stupid selection of Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court, conservative talk radio carried the water for an Administration and a Republican Party that was anything but conservative.

During the 2008 Election, you heard more from Rush, Sean, and the rest of the gang about the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama than about the Republicans. There was precious little discussion about Mike Huckabee’s love for taxes, Mitt Romney’s flip-flops, or John McCain’s, well, John McCain-ness. And voices in the party for limited government and rational foreign policy, like Ron Paul, they either weren’t talked about at all or they were ridiculed.

But it’s not just their slavish loyalty to whatever Republican happens to be in power that bothers Derbyshire about the talk radio crowd:

Much as their blind loyalty discredited the Right, perhaps the worst effect of Limbaugh et al. has been their draining away of political energy from what might have been a much more worthwhile project: the fostering of a middlebrow conservatism. There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. It’s energizing and fun. What’s wrong is the impression fixed in the minds of too many Americans that conservatism is always lowbrow, an impression our enemies gleefully reinforce when the opportunity arises. Thus a liberal like E.J. Dionne can write, “The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity. … Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans.” Talk radio has contributed mightily to this development.

(…)

Why engage an opponent when an epithet is in easy reach? Some are crude: rather than debating Jimmy Carter’s views on Mideast peace, Michael Savage dismisses him as a “war criminal.” Others are juvenile: Mark Levin blasts the Washington Compost and New York Slimes.

You could see this triumph of low-browism in full force during the 2008 General Election from the adulation given to a totally unknown Governor who virtually celebrated anti-intellectualism, to the attention given an unlicensed plumber from Ohio who managed to get himself YouTube’d repeating a GOP talking point, to the unstated assumptions that many had about Barack Obama that just weren’t true.

And you could see just how well that went over on Election Night.

Joe Gandelman makes this excellent point about the damage that this has done to the right, and the GOP:

Just talk to a high school or college student who is NOT a member of the Democratic party or Republican party and get his/her reaction to hearing a typical conservative talk show that sounds like three hours of rip and read RNC emails while raging against anyone with a “D” in front of their party affiliation. Most young people listening to sputtering and name-calling partisans on the air consider them lame — and many of these young people are conservatives or liberals.

(…)

The question is whether conservative talk radio will continue to grow as a dominant high profile voice of Republicans — one that decidedly turns off many independent, moderate, centrist, conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, and young people who are not “damaged goods” baby boomers (like me) and makes them think this is what the Republican party is and stands for — or whether it can go back to being one tool in the GOPs’ get-out-vote arsenal.

In the 1970s the voice of conservatism on the air was Firing Line. Today it’s Rush, Sean, Laura, Mark, and Michael. If anyone doesn’t recognize that’s a step backward, it’s only because they’ve become used to associating the right with the latter rather than the former.

Rush Limbaugh may be the “leader of the opposition,” but he doesn’t have to be, and he shouldn’t be.

Cross posted from Below The Beltway.