What's wrong with gridlock?

There was a segment on Nightline and it was a running subtheme on all the TV news I caught election night, and while I had to do some writing, it was part of the job also to switch among news channels fairly regularly. The Nightline segment tonight wondered whether Barack Obama and incoming Speaker John Boehner wold be able to find common ground, and ended with the ever-vapid Terry Moran saying we should all hope so? Should we? Is it good for the American people when politicians from the two major parties get along so they can "do things for the people," i.e., spend a lot of the taxpayers' money? I would argue that we do much better when there's gridlock.
The politicians and most of the media want to perpetuate the myth that, as arch-conservative Willimoore Kendall once put it in a debate, "Nothing happens when nothing happens in Washington." To the contrary, as Kevin Hassett documented, when we have divided government the economy generally does better -- and the American voters seem to know this on some kind of instinctive Jungian level, because they've given us divided government 70% of the time since 1970. When government is gridlocked, you can be fairly certain no large-scale new initiatives will be passed, so people doing business and engaging in other productive activities can be reasonably certain they won't have new swarms of bureaucrats eating out their substance, at least for a while, and they can act productively.
I'm not saying voters have worked this all out intellectually, but there seems to be an understanding that gridlock is good. The politicians and media have to work overtime to try to obfuscate this instinct and try to convince us that when the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do something both stupid and evil it's really constructive bipartisanship and we sheeple should be pleased to see them getting along so splendidly. (Not original with me. I first heard that at a Ron Paul rally, I forget by which speaker, around the time of the 2008 GOP convention when the party showed Ron just how much it appreciated his stirring up enthusiasm nobody had seen before about limited government.)

Drilling announcement mostly symbolic

I'll give Barack Obama a certain amount of credit for announcing that certain tracts on the Outer Continental Shelf could be opened to oil and gas seismic exploration and drilling. Although there's little chance any drilling will actually occur there anytime soon, he certainly has taken heat fro0m much of his base, and he had to know it was coming. It took me a while today, with help from Jerry Taylor of Cato, just what the legal status of his announcement is. As I understand it, it's an amendment to the moratorium he reinstated when he became president (see here for more of the history). It's more politically than geophysically calculated (of course), slated off the shores of states where it's likely to be popular and not off California, where it's not so likely. Jerry Taylor thinks it's his way of saying "I care" as gasoline prices rise this summer. He's probably right.

Is Obama just obtuse about Afghanistan?

Most of the other hypotheses don't seem to make much sense, so I'm starting to approach the conclusion that Barack Obama is just not that smart. It should hardly come as a surprise. He undoubtedly has an IQ slightly higher than normal or he wouldn't have made it through college and law school (though it might be interesting to see his transcripts, which to my knowledge he hasn't released yet). But in retrospect what he seems to have displayed throughout his career is more cunning or what some would call sagacity rather than real learning. He has obviously been extremely ambitious for a long time; perhaps he has had the presidency in mind since early college days. So he has been alert to the main chance, aware of the kinds of alliances he ought to make, aware that a sensitive autobiography would make him look special in the eyes of the easily duped intellectuals of our fading empire, aware of how to present himself as a multicultural black man. But his reputation for being really smart is belied by so many of his actions.

What has me going this time is not health care, though there's plenty of evidence there, but Afghanistan. His visit there earlier this week cemented this war as "his" war. But the war makes so little sense that you would think almost any reasonably intelligent person -- I suspect he didn't take any international relations classes in college and he certainly has not shown any special interest in that field heretofore, so maybe that's a mitigating factor -- would have been able to figure it out. The official line about keeping al-Qaida out of Afghanistan is obviously absurd -- al-Qaida hasn't been there since 2002. He has to know the Taliban is an indigenous Afghan outfit without international ambitions, so while a takeover would be sad for many Afghans it would have few if any international repercussions. He is obviously aware enough that Karzai is a corrupt tool and uncooperative to boot that it annoys him. So why does he insist on maintaining a U.S. presence in the Graveyard of Empire? Does he really want to preside over the fall of the American Empire? Is he so deluded as to think we can bring a semblance of democracy, stability or semi-decent governance in the next 15 months or so? Is he just cunning enough to realize that historians tend to rank American presidents who have presided over wars as "greater" than those who presided over peaceful periods?

Maybe he's just not that smart.

No subsidized nukes

Since I wrote this Register editorial on Obama's proposal to guarantee loans to the Southern Co. to build two more nuclear reactors, I've become even more convinced that nuclear power at this point simply doesn't make economic sense at this time. Maybe sometime in the future. And to some extent the costs of building and insuring reactors are to some extent due to unnecessarily stringent regulations and catering to the knee-jerk anti-nuke crowd. But while the Federal Financing Bank (i.e., taxpayers) is formally the back-up to private financing, in reality it will be the eventual financer. If a project can't get private financing, that's a pretty good hint that it's not economically viable.

Obama stubborn about all the wrong things

I am simply fascinated at how stubborn Obama and his advisers are about health care "reform." They don't have the votes, largely because of divisions among the Democrats and Massachusetts sealed that deal for good. Yet he still wants to throw a hail-Mary pass by inviting Republicans to some kind of televised dog-and-pony show that they'll probably have to go to and which he will dominate.

Perhaps he is appealing to his left-wing base by continuing to beat that dead horse. One would wish he had chosen to appeal to that base on foreign policy, by doing the sensible thing and deciding not to get deeply involved in Afghanistan, where al-Qaida is not operating. Instead, his foreign policy looks like Bush III. Disastrous.

Fisking Obama's speech

Now I have been a skeptic of what is laughingly called campaign finance reform, which simply increases the already considerable advantages of incumbency, for decades -- since it was put in place after Watergate, which happened to be when I was working on the Hill. So I supported the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case that took the gag off political speakers and advertisers in the period prior to an election. So I have predilections. Still, the more I looked into the Obama/Alito incident at the State of the Union, the more Obama not only looked like the aggressor, the clearer it became that he utterly mischaracterized the case, extrapolating to an unlikely worst-case scenario . Here's the piece I did for the Register's Sunday Commentary section.

Maybe Obama owes the Court an apology

Actually, I admit I'm a bit torn. The founders set up three co-equal branches of government with the idea that they would check and balance each other, each preventing the others from accumulating too much power. It hasn't necessarily worked out that way; most often the three branches connive with one another against the populace, and the chief executive, envisioned as an administrator without much power of his own beyond commanding the military on the rare occasions when its use was necessary, has become, as Andrew Bacevich put it, the American Idol. But insofar as they are checking one another, there are bound to be disagreements that sometimes break out in open criticism. Such criticism might just mean that to some small degree the founders' scheme is still working, so perhaps it should be welcomed and encouraged.

That said, the more I've looked into this -- I wrote a critical piece on the speech for the Register's Sunday Commentary section -- will link once it's up -- the clearer it seems that while Alito's probably spontaneous pantomiming was probably ill-advised, it was Obama who was the clear breaker of precedent and the aggressor -- and something of a cowardly one at that, with the pointed criticism directed at people who by protocol are expected to sit motionless and expressionless during a rather pointed and highly inaccurate tongue-lashing, of the kind that any con law professor with a speck of integrity would give a failing grade to. Presidents hardly ever have referred to the Supremes in SOTU speeches, and never before in such a pointed way right to their faces. Attendance at SOTU is optional for Supremes, and it might not be surprising if none showed up next year. Maybe not so bad. Catfights between the branches just might be a good sign for freedom.

Obama centralizing interrogation

Obama just might piss off the CIA, which is not necessarily advisable for a president, with his move to create a new interagency task force for interrogation and headquartering it at the FBI, between whom and the CIA there is no love lost, even in the post-9/11 days of supposed communication and amicability in a share crisis. The Register didn't think it was a terrible idea but saw some potential downsides. Another is that the group's supposedly scientific study of interrogation techniques might lead again to enhanced interrogation, of different types than the Bushies condoned/encouraged/begged for, but potentially troubling nonetheless.

Obama on Israel-Palestine: mysterious

In my column this week for Antiwar.com I expressed fascination and more than a little puzzlement that Obama is pressing so hard on the Israel-Palestine issue. The smart thing, I would have thought, would have been to let George Mitchell diddle around for a while and not invest Obama's personal capital in a two-state outcome that is among the least likely developments I can imagine, a trap that has lured every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter and left all with egg on their faces.

Stratfor.com also tries to puzzle through what it views as a major change in U.S. policy -- actually pushing Israel on West Bank settlements rather then the empty formal criticisms previous administrations have made. It thinks it will somehow enhance Obama's ability to deal with Muslim countries no matter how it turns out, but I find myself still puzzled about just what sort of concrete gains Obama thinks he will reap. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a little hubris of the sort that develops when people have an inflated sense of their own capacities and very little knowledge of the situation they're getting themselves into in operation there

Dueling speeches, similar philosophies

Most everybody else wrote about the "dueling speeches" of Cheney and Obama, set up by Obama. last Thursday, so I did so for this week's Antiwar.com column. I suspect mine was a little different than many. After acknowledging rhetorical differences, I think I made a pretty good case that the foreign policies the two embrace and advocate are remarkably similar despite the anger Cheney wants to vent and the tendency of the two establishment "sides" to view one another as as tools of Satan if not the devil incarnate.

Obama's emphases may be different, but he believes the U.S. needs to be involved -- if only to make a decision about how actively to be involved -- in every conflict and potential conflict in the world. He might emphasize Afghanistan over Iraq, and he may really have believed at the outset that the Iraq war was a mistake. But he embraces the empire and revels in being its commander-in-chief. As his domestic ambitions are frustrated -- and many will be -- he will turn increasingly to foreign affairs, as every president since WW II has.

I think Cheney's lying -- but let's find out

Barack Obama and Dick Cheney had their dueling speeches on interrogation and national security today. I printed them out but still haven't been able to bring myself to read them in their entirety yet, though I saw excerpts on TV. I'm inclined to agree with Glenn Greenwald on what I know of Obama's speech -- nice words, but we haven't seen much action yet. I'm still unclear on whether he reserves the right to torture, he plans to use military commissions for some prisoners, he sure seems to be declaring a right to use indefinite detention without charges, and he's escalating atotally unnecessary war in Afghanistan. Perhaps for understandable reasons -- domestic policy seems to be what really interests him -- he has followed Bush's lead in almost every area of foreign policy. Not much change I can believe in.

Cheney is really a piece of work. He came right out and said we weren't getting anything useful from some of these guys until we went to "enhanced interrogation." That contradicts what I've been able to discern from the record and what can be inferred from it, as well as from discussions with professional interrogators. Torture simply doesn't furnish reliable information. I think Cheney is lying, but I'll take my chances. Release all the relevant documents and let experts and bloggers have at them. If I'm wrong I'll admit it. But I doubt if I am.

Incoherence in Afghanistan

I suspect it's probably too late to do much about it, but I would feel remiss not warning again and again that escalating U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is almost the epitome of a stupid, sure-to-fail policy. I called it incoherent in my column this week for Antiwar.com, but perhaps didn't pinpoint what is most egregious about Obama's policy. Instead of developing a coherent policy based on a real analysis of the situation on the ground, he compromised between possible policies -- all-out aggressive counter-terrorism and a counterinsurgency strategy involving security and lots of nation-building-confidence-building and chose a bit of both. The most egrgeious aspect is that he was compromising not between two approaches favored by different sections of the public, but by different factions within the government. It's bureaucrats (military and civilian) he feels he has to appease. Americans and Afghans will die because U.S. government bureaucrats can't admit they might have been wrong so we have to "finish what we started." Utterly immoral!

Baracketology update redux

Of course Barack Obama is hardly the only person to get three of the Final Four wrong, and his pick to win it all, North Carolina, is still in the chase and won over Oklahoma (whom the sportscasters were lauding a few days ago). I was pleased to see Villanova win, as you might expect, but I was also pleased to see Michigan State take down Louisville (the highest overall seed, they say) almost without breaking a sweat.

Obama wearing out his welcome already?

I had to stay late to listen and write tomorrow's editorial on President Obama's news conference this evening. The questions were pretty pedestrian and all too respectful, and the answers were pretty pedestrian as well. I'm beginning to wonder. Various biographical pieces have suggested that the U. of Chicago Law School made a strong effort to have him become a full-time faculty member, but I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't much of a lecturer. He's undoubtedly smart but he goes on and on, almost trying to show off that he grasps complexities and nuances, but not really offering all that much meat, and with a tendency toward condescension. And of course the more we get to know him the more we understand what a thorough statist he is, eager to use the power of the state to manipulate the world and lead the economy. If he really believes that pap he can't be all that smart. Here's the blog item I did for the Register's Orange Punch.

Our love for leaders

The Obama appearance in Costa Mesa this week impelled me to write this piece for the Register's Sunday Commentary section on the abiding love for leaders, maybe even mings abnd queens, which may be imprinted in the human DNA but is not necessarily good for us. If I do say so, I think this is one of my better recent efforts. The two bo0oks mentioned are Gene Healy's "The Cult of the Presidency" and Josiah Ober's "Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens."

Obama: impressive but incoherent

The event with Barack Obama today was quite interesting, although people who watched it on TV probably got a better sense of the man than those of us relegated to the print (and blog) portion of the media mob. We got to sit at long tables with plugs for power cords -- behind the risers set up for the TV and still cameras. It's obvious at most political events and has been for years that TV is more important to politicians than the near-obsolete print media, but it was really obvious at this event. From our spot we could see exactly nothing except the rear ends of some cameramen (they're still almost always men) and they didn't even provide a TV monitor. We could hear, however. And the amateur guards were officious.

Word is that the OC Fair folks got the word Friday that Obama wanted to do an event on Wednesday, so it was obviously set up rather hastily. The building was far from suitable, essentially a big barn-like structure usually used for trade shows and the like, with terrible acoustics (if any).

Must say Obama handled the event very well, and the audience was utterly gaga for him. If one expected intellectual coherence, however, one had come to the wrong place. I wonder if he actually believes this stuff. The financial crisis was caused by the banks being mysteriously loose with credit (the government played no role in this explanation) and the cure is to get credit markets going again with $1 trillion from the govt. and subsidize refinancing. I thought law professors were supposed to value at least a modicum of logic.

Here are the blogs Steve Greenhut and I produced on the event. Editorial here, with a little more detailed critique of the event.

President Obama comes to town

Well, tomorrow is shaping up to be an interesting day. It's not every day that the President of the United States (yes, I still would like to see the office and institution diminished in power and celebrity, but it is what it is) comes to an area in which you are the dominant media outlet, and the Register looks to be positioned to make something of it. So far as we know Steve Greenhut and I will be in the room for Obama's town hall in Costa Mesa tomorrow at 4:00 PST (though confirmation of our media credentials hasn't been officially confirmed as of when I left the office tonight). Given that it's supposed to be a "citizen" town hall we still don't know if they'll let the media ask questions, and we also don't know if we'll be able to bring in laptops to blog in real time. But we will be there, prepared to do an editorial for Thursday and columns for Sunday, and some blogging along the way on Orange Punch, the Register's opinion blog. I also don't know how many newsroom people will be in the room. But we'll cover it like a blanket. So please check Orange Punch and the Register's main news page. Of course print will still be second fiddle to TV, but we hope to be able to offer the kind insight and commentary TV simply can't offer.

A fair amount has been made of the supposed boldness of Barack Obama in venturing into Orange County, which has the reputation of being one of the most Republican places on earth. That's much less true than it has been in the past -- I think Obama pulled 48% in November and the demographics have been changing for at least 20 years; we may even be a "majority minority" place now. And judging by people willing to wait overnight last night for tickets, there are a lot of Obama fans in the county.

I'll probably be home later than usual tomorrow night, but should be able to record some thoughts and impressions here in the evening.

Veering off-course in Afghanistan

I think I said previously that I would probably be returning to the subject of Afghanistan and the likelihood of escalating U.S. involvement in the war there, and sure enough, it seems appropriate to do so again. Although the Obamaites say they're sending that additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan just to try to improved stability a tad while they rethink the issue, as I explained in my most recent column for Antiwar.com, it doesn't look as if they are rethinking it deeply enough to suit me (as if that matters to them).

As I and a few others have suggested, the important thing to remember is that al-Qaida and the Taliban are not one and the same, that the Taliban is an indigenous Afghan outfit while al-Qaida has international ambitions. Our core interest in Afghanistan, therefore, whoever nominally rules there, is that al-Qaida not be able to use the country as a base from which to plan attacks on the U.S. (and Western Europe). They're not able to do so now, so the best course would be to remove our military forces, which have about as much chance of prevailing as the Russians in the 1980s and the British in the 19th century, and inform whoever reigns in Kabul that if we detect al-Qaida activity we'll take it out by whatever means promises to work, and might, if we feel like it, give the nominal government maybe five minutes' notice. But it looks as if the Obama administration is preparing for a long-term commitment

Earmarks: hypocrisy all around

You've got to love that Barack Obama gave a speech denouncing earmarks the very same day he sighed (away from the cameras) a spending bill containing over 8,500 earmarks. Here's the Register's editorial on the occasion, which I think actually bent over backwards to be fair to the earmarkers. But of course it's way out of hand. And of course even now, although the Republicans claim to have gotten fiscal religion after eight years of backsliding under Bush, they received 40% of the earmarks, and most of the most vigorous seekers of earmarks were Republicans.

To be sure, earmarks are a tiny part of the massive federal budget -- 1-3% of discretionary spending -- but are still indicative of a spending system out of control.

Much worse than the politicians can admit

Various people have criticized President Obama for being too downbeat about the economic crisis, and in fact, as his budget demonstrates, he has used the sense of crisis to put forward a quite radical agenda that, like his stimulus bill that mainly stimulated bigger government, is likely to receive much less extensive informed debate than it deserves to the overweening sense of crisis. I view that as reasonably unconscionable, of course, and the argument that the American people bought every aspect of everything he hinted at vaguely in the campaign is absurd; they bought him largely because he made them feel less nervous than McCain did.

In fact, however, as I argue in this piece for the Register's Commentary section yesterday, he and most politicians have been all too upbeat about the crisis, in part by failing to acknowledge the entitlement crisis that is still breathing down our necks and madly expanding the government house of cards in the face of it. Barack's program is virtually guaranteed to make things worse rather than better -- at which time the media courtiers who dance attendance on the emperor will blame the fialure on the unfettered free market and demand even bigger government.