Redoing the Oath of Office
I still remember my first public speaking occasion, my high school valedictory. I knew every word (although I brought a typed copy with me) and basically delivered the speech from memory. About three-quarters of the way through the speech, my mind suddenly went blank. After several awkward seconds of silence (which seemed to be an eternity) and trying to search through my hardcopy under dim lighting, I suddenly remembered and delivered the remainder of the speech. I got a fair share of teasing from my family after the graduation, but the fact is I was my own harshest critic. The biggest thing I remember about that occasion is that this man I didn't know recognized me, rushed up to me and pumped my hand vigorously, telling me what a wonderful speech I just gave; God bless small acts of kindness.
The news media has focused on Chief Justice John Roberts flubbing the initial part of the Presidential oath of office; I am not going to excuse the fact that he initially stumbled on the oath, in particular getting the term "faithfully" out of sequence. (To be fair to Roberts, the flub occurred after Obama prematurely interrupted Roberts leading the oath.) Roberts initially recited the word "faithfully" (which should be "I will faithfully execute") at the end of the clause. Obama starts and stops "I will execute..." and seems to realize something is wrong. Roberts realizes the mistake and helpfully prompts "faithfully" (actually, the word order required Obama not simply to pick up after "execute" but to correct himself, repeating "faithfully execute...") But Obama, curiously enough, disregards Roberts' interjection and goes on to repeat Roberts' original mistaken phrasing.
No doubt the liberals are making much ado over Roberts' mistake leading the oath, but you have to wonder how a trained lawyer like Obama, whom spent 2 years pursuing the office of President and should have memorized the oath, not only prematurely started the oath, which probably threw off Roberts, but should have intentionally repeated Roberts' original flubbed phrasing rather than request a do-over, then and there.
Now of course, only a group of lawyers (and possibly some English teachers) would get worked up over the repositioning of the word "faithfully" in the Presidential Oath. It's as if the oath was some sort of an incantation, and if the words are not spoken just so, the magic turning Barack Obama from just another senator into a President won't work.
If there's one thing Obama understands, it's symbolism. So Cinderfella, afraid that the Presidential spell might wear off and turn him back into an empty suit senator by the stroke of midnight, decided that he needed a do-over. Of course, not in front of the nation that elected him, but in private; it's part of his nuanced transparency in government policy.
Freezing Pay Raises for Salaries Over $100K
Now whereas the Dems are speaking of spending trillions, as if resurrecting Palin's infamous Bridge to Nowhere project would revitalize that state's economy, President Obama wants the nation to know he's worried about the taxpayer buck by holding down raises for those salaried workers making over $100K.
A number of points to make. First, apparently Obama has continued to lower the bar as McCain noted during the general election campaign of just what Obama considers "rich". Second, Obama seems to be sending a rather curious message regarding just what constitutes "shared sacrifice". His concept of sacrifice seems to be giving tax cuts (rebates) to people whom pay no income tax while increasing the tax burden on those whom already pay a disproportionate share of the nation's taxes, create or invest in businesses and jobs and purchase bonds at all levels of government. Third, Obama continues to hype rather misleading statistics regarding a growing gap between the have's and the have not's, a traditional class warfare argument. It is fairly easy to take cheap shots at executive salaries, when those executives make hard decisions that can make or break a company and are responsible for making payroll for thousands of employees. After all, they sometimes make almost as much as Tiger Woods or some basketball players. Tiger Woods, of course, has a payroll to meet--his caddy.
This is not meant to be an attack on Tiger Woods. He draws paying crowds and the higher television audience advertisers crave, and he deserves the $30M or so a year he commands. But Dems target CEO's because the politics of envy is seductive and some CEO compensation packages are difficult to defend on any objective ground of performance.
I seriously doubt that the amount of money saved by freezing higher-income government professionals and managers is going to make a dent in the government payroll. What about the federal government emulating what state and local governments having to meet a balanced budget have to do? Where is its sense of sacrifice? What about Obama doing what a CEO has to do under tough times--lay off workers, put projects on a freeze, eliminate redundancy, consolidate operations, etc.?
It is fairly simplistic to believe that worthiness of a pay raise depends simply on his or her relative salary, not performance. Obama is not setting a good example. It is well-known that some managers and professionals in government make far less than their counterparts in industry. A lot of these workers have college kids to support, higher bills to pay. How does it help knowing however well you do your job and how much money you save the government in your good faith efforts, Obama is going to deny you a cost-of-living raise simply on ideological grounds, writing his check on your back?
Will this promote an exodus of the best and brightest from government? I don't know. What I'm sure is that Obama is trying to model a politics of envy in the public sector as an example to the private sector. Personally I think some of these corporate pay packages are undeserved, and I believe it's very bad form to be giving yourself lucrative bonuses at the same time you're laying off workers and cutting other expenses to the bone. But so long as they are paying top bracket federal taxes on those packages, I don't think it's any of Obama's business to micromanage the private sector.
Gitmo and Suspension of Military Trials
Announcing the target closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within a year seems to be yet another primarily symbolic act that seems to create more substantive problems (namely, the "not-in-my-backyard" syndrome of American communities not eager to be terrorist targets) than it solves (i.e., Obama's attempt to distance himself from the more controversial past of the facility). Rather than reforming the existing facility or military trial system, Obama decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, all for the purpose of placating his leftist allies. He should have addressed the tough questions first (what to do with the prisoners and/or the trials) before addressing his surface-level goals. I'm not interested in the Dems trying to treat terrorists as nothing more than domestic criminals, complete with citizen rights, in our legal system. I'm particularly disturbed by the news reports of released Gitmo prisoners showing up on the battlefield against Americans or in the Al Qaeda leadership. What I do empathize with is releasing those prisoners whom have been arrested on the basis of mistaken identity, and I do believe that, at minimum, there should be a high-level summary of why a detainee has been arrested (without compromising intelligence sources).
Torture Policy
Obama basically slandered Bush Administration policies on interrogation methods, and I have to rebuke John McCain for giving the Pied Piper of Failed Liberalism elbow room on this issue, particularly on the topic of waterboarding. First of all, there is no Geneva Convention between civilized nations and stateless terrorists. These terrorists notoriously attack soft targets (e.g., innocent civilians) as what happened on 9/11. There may be a time-critical element in interrogating certain high-level terrorists (e.g., Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), and there is some evidence that advance information yielded from terrorists in the know have been proven useful in preempting soft target attacks.
I've already heard all of the rationalizations against enhanced communication methods--e.g., you don't get usable information, that prisoners only tell you what they think you want to hear, whatever it takes to stop the uncomfortable interrogation, etc. I suspect this may be true if you apply these techniques to detainees whom never had access to upcoming operations or critical contacts; there is no evidence that these techniques were systematically applied, regardless of the status of the detainee, and the US does not authorize the use of advanced techniques for sadistic purposes (unlike, say, the techniques used against McCain and his fellow POW's or what Saddam Hussein authorized in Iraq's prisons). I also doubt that these techniques would be used, knowing they would be ineffective. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the US has obtained usable information via a variety of interrogation methods that terrorists did not voluntarily yield on their own initiative.
Bob Schieffer, in his Sunday Face the Nation commentary this morning, gave a shallow, surface-level analysis fully buying into the Obama/leftist smear against the Bush administration, implying the US had a policy sanctioning the use of sadistic torture, morally indistinguishable from those used by sadistic regimes, and Obama's surface-level ban on so-called torture is a first step towards rehabilitating the international reputation of America in the civilized world. Let me make myself perfectly clear: America has no need for someone to rescue her reputation. If Mr. Schieffer and President Obama believe that the good opinion of condescending European socialists is more important than preventing the reoccurrence of a 9/11-style event, I suggest that they move to Europe so they can brownnose the self-superior elitists in person and leave the defense of America to true patriots.
My understanding is that enhanced interrogation techniques are used on an as-needed basis. There is a qualitative difference between stateless terrorists and foot soldiers from countries with an economy and territory to defend. Less than two dozen terrorists killed nearly 3000 Americans and others; what is the response? Blowing up a cave in Afghanistan? I think we need to use every tool in our arsenal, including new, improved methods of interrogation and intelligence, to get usable, reliable information. We need flexibility, not a government or international bureaucracy stonewalling innovation in obtaining intelligence while there is still time on act on it. We already know that new technology sometimes outstrips the ability of our laws to cope, and our adversaries can exploit them without some moralizing bureaucracy vetoing them. Tell me, what due process was afforded to nearly 3000 victims of 9/11?
Let us give the Bush administration justifiable credit for keeping America safe after 9/11. There's no way Obama can improve on that record. Obama, if he is intelligent, should build on what has worked from the Bush administration, not reinvent the wheel; as Isaac Newton noted, he has stood on the shoulder of giants.
GOP: Beware of the Trojan Horse Stimulus Package
The Congressional Republicans should know that the Democrats will continue to try to continue to expand entitlements the way that they tried to do with SCHPS last term, which was to increase the cutoff for federal funding of child healthcare several times the poverty level and significantly over the median household income level. In particular, look with skepticism on bogus "temporary" expansions and upward tax bracket creep for government program eligibility, such as healthcare plans for those receiving unemployment. Does anyone want to bet whether there will be a followup efforts to allow those workers to retain their government-provided health care and to make the benefit permanent?
At a time that Obama should be providing leadership, encouraging consumers to spend reponsibly and for businesses and investors to plow money back into the economy (e.g., by slashing investment and business taxes), Obama is playing the irresponsible role of Chicken Little, claiming "The economy is falling! The economy is falling!", all to drive up the pricetag of a massive federal government boondoggle and expansion of federal social spending. Never the mind of picking the pockets of our nation's grandchildren to give those 40% of American workers whom pay no income taxes "tax cuts", because they have sacrificed just what exactly?
CBO Director Orszag's analysis this past week shows that only about $26B of the $358B in the infrastructure proposal will be spent by the end of the fiscal year (the government fiscal year ends at the end of September). I have already argued in past posts that the 2008 stimulus package resulted in most people saving, not spending their checks, and recall a longstanding macroeconomic observation that it takes several months after federal stimuli are introduced before we see a "big-picture" effect.
Harvard economist Robert Barro wrote an interesting column in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal, calling the multiplier argument Dems are advancing to justify their massive infrastructure boondoggle a new version of "voodoo economics". I won't regurgitate his article here; he does have an interesting reductio ad absurdem argument, saying in effect if the Democrats' argument was legitimate, it could be used to justify things like the government hiring workers to perform meaningless tasks, like digging holes and filling them up again (or socialist regimes producing steel, regardless of whether there were customers ready to buy the steel). [He disproves the general multiplier hypothesis of government spending, using the massive US defense spending during WWII.] But there is no such thing as a free lunch, and it's extremely unlikely that government bureaucrats are more competent at assessing, utilizing and timing the consumer, labor and capital markets than those in the private sector, whom base their decisions on intrinsic factors, not political approval ratings. Barro concludes by noting the Obamaians are principally relying on classic Keynesian theory, and much has changed in economics since 1936. He feels that on the supply side we can focus on things like revising business and investment taxes and on the spending side, funding only those public infrastructure projects which meet rigorous cost-benefit criteria (amen!)
On a more promising front, Obama has given up on his nonsensical proposal to bribe employers with tax credits to hire new workers or to stave off layoffs. Employers respond to growth opportunities, not to tax gimmicks. Globally competitive business and investment tax rates would go further in spurring domestic economic growth, just like the Kennedy/Johnson tax cuts in the mid-60's.
GOP: Beware of Obama/Pelosi "Good Cop-Bad Cop" Tactics
It seems that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is so intent on increasing tax rates on the job creator tax brackets, she can't wait until the end of 2010 for the Bush cuts to expire. Never mind that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al. have overestimated the tax revenues accruing from the tax hike, and they have already spent them multiple times over.
Obama, of course, has not changed his core political principle, which is, as Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher so ingeniously exposed during last fall's campaign, "to spread the wealth around". It could be a reluctance on Obama's part to engage in a high-profile politically divisive battle with the GOP early in his first term or some intuitive recognition that tax increases, regardless of the target, in the middle of a severe recession could be counterproductive. But you need to pay attention to what Obama does, not what he says.
What the GOP needs to anticipate is that Obama intends to coopt them by seductively luring them into, on the surface, bipartisan proposals. That makes it harder for the GOP to run against the Dems in the 2010 and subsequent elections. (On the other hand, if the GOP refuses to deal, they could be blamed as obstructivist. The GOP needs to forge an alliance with the Blue Dogs against the House liberal leadership.)
Second, Speaker Pelosi comes from a safe liberal district and can afford to take a hard line, whereas Obama is all too aware that much of his support from moderates and independents was based on a hope that he would bridge political gridlock in Washington. So expect that Pelosi will play bad cop, driving a hard bargain to carry out Obama's de facto liberal agenda while Obama appears above the fray.
Finally, the GOP must realize that Obama and the Dems are going to "Hooverize" George W. Bush and play for time, realizing that most recessions are short-lived. The GOP must focus like a laser beam on the fact that this is a center-right nation, taking a constructive tone in dealing with the clueless liberal leadership and offering substantive alternatives to liberal tax-and-spend policies.
On a Brighter Note
The drone attacks on terrorist targets across the Afghan/Pakistani border served notice that President Obama is not a paper tiger in dealing with hostile forces. However, the key things to look for is how Obama will react when casualties rise in the Afghan theater of action and the anti-war activists sense a betrayal; also, let us hope that Obama does not emulate Clinton's pattern of inconsistent responses and an overreliance on launching cruise missiles and USAF bombing runs.
