Over at The New Nixon, some anecdotes about transitioning from the presidency. My favorite:
Long after nightfall on January 20, 1969, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson arrived at their 330-acre Texas ranch. LBJ had been an ex-President for just a few hours. Throughout the day friends had gathered – first at Andrews Air Force Base, then at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas. They showed up to say thank you to the man who had ascended to the presidency in those chaotic Dallas moments more than five years before – and who less than a year before had pulled himself out of the race for a final term in the White House.
One of the first tell-tale signs that life was going to be comparatively perk-free was when they came upon their massive collection of luggage that had been left in the carport that evening, with no one around to carry the bags. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson laughed. Ladybird then uttered a phrase that captures what all former presidents probably come to understand as they take their first steps as former presidents:
“The coach has turned back into the pumpkin and all the mice have run away.”
Read and reflect. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Hubbard posted this at 8:32 PM HKT on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, I have seen the future. . .
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$35 oil! I’m calling $25 by April, if not sooner.
Apollo posted this at 10:17 PM HKT on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 as I have seen the future. . .
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From Rasmussen (H/T):
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.
Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.
Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.
When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.
Three other sitting governors — Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota — all pull low single-digit support.
A common theme I heard in the last several weeks is how many conservative leaning independents were turned off when McCain picked Palin. My view is that we need to see how Palin governs Alaska for the next 4 years, assuming she’s reelected. What say the rest of the paupers? (Tom, Jamie, please put down the hemlock. . .)
Hubbard posted this at 12:47 PM HKT on Friday, November 7th, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, I have seen the future. . .
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Barack Obama has picked Rahm Emanuel for White House Chief of Staff (H/T). The good: Emanuel is a free trader, a friend of Joe Lieberman, and fights regularly with Howard Dean. The bad: he’s a steely partisan of the Untouchables school (”He pulls a knife, you pull a gun; he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue”).
An old saw of politics is that personnel is policy. For example, Bush went from the smart and tough AG Ashcroft to the foolish and weak Alberto Gonzales. The White House Chief of Staff is effectively co-president, and Obama has picked a pitbull who’ll fight Congress, so Obama won’t be a rubberstamp for Pelosi or Dean. It seems like a smart choice. The danger is that Emanuel tends to leave bruises whenever he gets involved in an issue. If I recall correctly, he was the staffer who told someone that if Senator Moynihan (then chair of the Senate Finance Committee) got in their way, they’d roll over him. This turned a shrewd and powerful politician from an ally to a critic.
The right needs to get over Tuesday quickly. Obama’s choice tells us that he’s going to play hardball.
Hubbard posted this at 5:14 PM HKT on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 as I have seen the future. . ., Politics
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Jonah Goldberg peers into a crystal ball and sees 2012 with President Obama:
Indeed, the overconfidence of Congressional Democrats posed another major challenge to the Obama presidency. During the 2008 election, Obama’s conservative critics had long complained that the then-freshman senator had little to no record of standing up the leftwing base of his party in part, they argued, because he himself was much more leftwing than he had let on.
Whatever the truth of that, what is not contested is that the Congressional Progressive Caucus — the largest partisan bloc in the Congress when Mr. Obama was elected — believed that the new president was “one of us” according to many sources contacted for this article.
The CPC, colloquially known as the “big swinging caucus” after an unfortunate joke by then-Republican Minority Leader John Boehner after a scandal involving Rep. Barney Frank (see side story), pushed Barack Obama on a wide array of fronts: they demanded very large cuts in the military budget, a sweeping government expansion into the role of healthcare, and in a move that experts agree caused the Wall Street Panic of 2010, they persuaded Mr. Obama to make the government’s partial ownership of the remaining “Big Five” banks permanent. Representatives Frank and Charlie Rangel argued that the stakes, bought by the Bush treasury department, in the banks provided, in Frank’s words, a “once in a lifetime opportunity to inject some social justice into the capitalist system.” Or as Senator Jesse Jackson Jr. said, “if we’ve got them by the b***s already, why let go?”
Enjoy.
Hubbard posted this at 10:04 AM HKT on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 as I have seen the future. . ., There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet
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Over at The American Spectator, Peter Ferrara bloviates on The End of Prosperity:
Just two weeks ago, a book on economic policy was released that will be a classic for the ages. Entitled The End of Prosperity, by Art Laffer, Steve Moore, and Peter J. Tanous, the book explains in full detail the economic disaster that will befall America if it takes a sharp left turn to neo-socialism under the leadership of the far left President Barack Obama, the ultraleft Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with 60 liberal Democrat Senators, and their pal the ultraliberal Howard Dean heading the Democrat party.
Indeed, one of the insights of the book is that a major factor already tanking the stock market and leading foreign capital to flee America is the threat of the economic policies promised by Obama. Obama proposes increases in every major federal tax, on savers, investors, employers, small business, big business, and anyone who would start a business. Obama also promises to add additional federal spending of almost $1.5 trillion over the next four years, including a new global war on poverty in which Obama would tax Americans and send the money to the UN to spend worldwide (already introduced by Obama in legislation). That would be on top of all the spending increases already scheduled for our exploding entitlements and other programs. Obama also promises a massive increase in regulatory controls, even though government regulation is already estimated to cost America over $1 trillion per year, about $8,000 in lost output for every U.S. household. Then there is Obama’s attack on free trade and promises of protectionist trade policies that contributed so much to the Great Depression.
As the authors show, these retrograde economic policies are intellectually indefensible. They do not offer forward looking change, but would take us back to the policies of the disastrous 1970s and even worse 1930s.
The article, alas, is a massive burst of hyperventillation (whether the hysteria is Ferrara’s or the book under review is an open question). As a general rule, one need not take apocalyptic predictions seriously. Contra Rachel Carson, the Spring is not Silent; contra Jim Jones, one need not drink the Kool-Aid. There’s much not to like about a potential Obama administration, but predicting stagflation and another Great Depression? It’s possible but improbable—and when it doesn’t happen, the right’s good ideas will be discredited.
Economic conservatives should take heart for a few reasons. First, as Adam Smith once observed, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” When a decently functioning nation (which America is, despite our occasional gripes) elects hacks, they have to work hard to seriously ruin it. For all his speeches, Obama hasn’t run anything; Pelosi lost control of her caucus in the bailout debacle; Reid is hamstrung by the Senate filibuster rules. The Founders tried to make it hard to pass legislation, and they succeeded. There’s no FDR-Rayburn combo waiting for us, nor is Obama a legislative genius as LBJ was. If anything, Obama is more like Jimmy Carter.
2008 is probably going to be a bad year for the right. But even if everything goes wrong, it won’t be the end of the world.
Hubbard posted this at 3:17 PM HKT on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 as Buffoon Watch, I have seen the future. . .
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Sarah Palin plainly beat Joe Biden. I recognized it as it happened. In Frank Luntz’s group, everybody but one was moved toward John McCain.
This is the greatest, most important vice presidential nomination ever. She will be president.
That is all.
Apollo posted this at 9:48 PM HKT on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . ., Uncategorized
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John McCain is an excellent example of a La Rochefoucauld maxim: Only great men are entitled to great flaws. Were the election held today, I would be voting for McCain because Obama is worse; it is unlikely but possible that I’ll change my mind. Much as I like Sarah Palin, she’ll only be the vice president; for all we know, President McCain will send her to the funerals of foreign dignitaries before the guest of honor is actually deceased. (Call that the Dan Quayle option.)
Russ seems to be feeling a strange new respect for McCain. I suspect it will only last should Obama win; should McCain win, we right-wingers will soon enough find reason to tear out hair by the fistful.
Some time ago, Andrew Ferguson summarized how McCain works:
McCain’s method in domestic matters no less than in foreign affairs is military: He surveys a set of facts, identifies a villain, fixes him with his steely gaze, and then goes after him. . . . More recently, he has championed a “patients’ bill of rights” to tighten regulations on the HMOs, insurance companies, and employers he considers to be stingy with health benefits. Pharmaceutical companies should be reined in, he’s said, because they’re the “bad guys.”
What’s unsettling is that you can never predict who the next bad guy will be. No consistent economic principles can be extracted from McCain’s grab bag of policy positions, and no amount of textbook baloney about the free market, deregulation, and limited government will deter him from bringing his malefactors to justice. McCain’s economics aren’t ideological but improvisational—a campaign with shifting fronts, running on indignation. And a very large number of voters, probably a majority, will find this approach appealing because they don’t buy all this textbook baloney about the free market and limited government either. When President McCain finds his villain and pursues him however he can, they will likely cheer their president and egg him on—unless, of course, he fixes his steely gaze on them.
What enemies will President McCain go after? Russia? China? Pakistan? Oil companies? Insurance companies? Mortgage lenders? Banks? In each of those cases, there’s plenty of things that should be changed—and plenty of problems that could be aggravated.
Obama, alas, is a go-along-to-get-along hack. He was a cog in Chicago’s Daley Machine, and he picked a cog in the Washington insiders circuit, Joe Biden, for his VP. Given how much fighting the next president is going to have to do—with Congress, with mortgage companies, with Islamofascists, with resurgent Russia, with conniving China—we are in a unusually bad time to have a presidential hack. McCain’s selection of Palin shows that he plans to pick fights, but will he pick the right fights?
So, as Buckley once prefered Eisenhower, I prefer McCain. I would love to be pleasantly surprised by President McCain, but suspect that we’ll have lots to criticize about him once he starts governing. For now, go McCain-Palin.
Hubbard posted this at 8:10 PM HKT on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . ., The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
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I’m sort of freaked out by these shoes:
Dorothy posted this at 8:25 AM HKT on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 as Brave New Worlds, I have seen the future. . .
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David Frum, always interesting, had a long interview. A highlight:
So, when I think about the economic reforms I want to see, the social reforms, the foreign policy reforms, you need to reaffirm, in a very competitive world, the greatness and power of the United States. But second, it’s an example of how you need to not allow decisions about the future to be clouded by remembrances of the way things used to be. Maybe it was a better and easier world when the United States and its traditional European allies produced half of the world’s output, but that world is gone. No matter how much you wish it wasn’t gone, it’s gone. In politics, you have to make your plans based on facts as they are. On a whole range of political issues, I think we have to have the firmness and the future-mindedness to say that we’re going to deal with the world as we find it.
He gives some examples about how things will be changing—Europe’s decline, India’s probable rise—but you really should read the whole thing.
Hubbard posted this at 12:32 PM HKT on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, I have seen the future. . .
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I’ve been arguing for some time that Hillary Clinton, for all her flaws, is a stronger general election candidate than Barack Obama will be against McCain. Now comes a poll [link in PDF (H/T)] that backs me. Obama leads McCain 46 to 44; Clinton leads 50 to 41.
First, Obama has now had to repudiate Wright—too little too late, I think. The campaign’s internal polling numbers must have been absolutely appalling given that in repudiating Wright, Obama more or less had to make hash of his big speech on race relations. Second, key Democrats, most notably Mike Easley, Democratic Governor of North Carolina, are swinging Clinton’s way. I think she might pull it out. Despite Charlie Cook’s assertion that she’s losing the superdelegates, I think they’ll start moving towards Clinton again; the supers hate losing more than they hate her. Should Clinton win North Carolina—with it’s large black population and many well-educated whites in the Research Triangle region, it would once have been natural Obama territory—I think we might start hearing calls for Obama to pull out.
Joe Scarborough might have been right that we’ll face a Clinton-McCain match up. And Clinton would be favored to win. Well, if nothing else, we’ll get Bill Clinton jokes again.
Hubbard posted this at 4:33 PM HKT on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . .
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Bryan Caplan and Mark Steyn are betting. First, Caplan:
Here’s an especially specific claim in Mark Steyn’s America Alone:
The U.S. government’s National Intelligence Council is predicting that the EU will collapse by 2020. I think that’s a rather cautious estimate myself. Ever since September 11, I’ve been gloomily predicting that within the next couple of election cycles the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way.
I smell a bet. I propose the following terms to Steyn (or up to any three other people):
If any current EU member with a population over 10 million people in 2007 officially withdraws from the EU before January 1, 2020, I will pay you $100. Otherwise, you owe me $100.
Steyn accepted:
Throwing caution and my children’s college fees to the wind, I’ve recklessly taken [Caplan's] bet . . . . Hey, why not make it a grand? A hundred bucks’ll barely buy you a falafel at the Tour d’Argent in the Paris of 2020.
I’m inclined to side with Steyn on this one. The EU usually loses whenever it faces actual voters in a referendum.
What I expect to happen is that states will start ignoring EU dictates, and eventually someone will decide that dealing with a super-nanny-state isn’t worth the effort, and will withdraw. If I had to guess which nation would be contrary enough to pull out, I’d say Italy.
Hubbard posted this at 6:39 PM HKT on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 as Europa Universalis, I have seen the future. . .
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If scientists take this no further than helping the blind to see, I will be terribly disappointed. I want x-ray and infrared visions, and the ability to zoom. Perhaps also the ability to network my eyes with others. Science has already let me down by letting us get to 2008 without flying cars; I hope they don’t now further disappoint by restricting bionic eye research to letting the blind see the visible spectrum.
Apollo posted this at 2:26 PM HKT on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 as Brave New Worlds, I have seen the future. . ., Science!
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Jonathan Last, of The Weekly Standard, makes the case that Hillary Clinton is a stronger general election candidate than Barack Obama:
[W]hile Obama might lead McCain in theoretical matchups, Clinton can make the case that her voting coalition will be more formidable in the general election.
Obama’s support comes in large part from reliably Republican states such as Idaho, Utah, Georgia and South Carolina. Democrats have no chance in those states come November. Meanwhile, Clinton will have won at least eight of the 11 largest states, including must-win battleground states such as Florida and Ohio (and Pennsylvania).
Remember, too, that Obama’s coalition is composed of more reliably Democratic base voters: African Americans, voters making over $100,000, and young voters. These are groups that Democratic candidates carry most easily. If Clinton is the nominee, she can take these groups for granted.
By contrast, Clinton’s coalition — women, older voters, whites making less than $50,000, Catholics, Hispanics — would be McCain swing voters in a race against Obama. Obama hasn’t been successful in wooing those voters yet, so it’s unclear why anyone would believe he will finally carry them (and then defend them from a very appealing McCain) in November.
In other words, if you look at the underlying fundamentals of the race, and not just the theoretical polls, Clinton can make a strong case that she is the candidate better suited to challenging McCain and winning the White House.
I’ve long been skeptical that McCain would fare well against Clinton, although it looks like Joe Scarborough’s prediction may yet come true.
Let’s take a quick look at median voter theory: namely, that in a two-way race the candidate who wins the median voter wins the election. In the general election, the median voter in America is going to be white (whites are an overwhelming majority) and probably female (women vote in larger numbers than men). I think Last is right. Hillary Clinton is better positioned than Obama at appealing to voters in the middle, despite all of the religious revival aspect of the Obama campaign.
Hubbard posted this at 9:47 AM HKT on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . .
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I’ve never understood why we criminalize selling something that can be given away for free. Derb seems to agree, complete with a bonus geek reference:
Prostitution, like drug trafficking, is one of those zones where libertarianism bumps up against the realities of human nature.
To a lover of liberty, it’s hard to see why a woman shouldn’t sell her favors if she wants to. Trouble is, weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery to unscrupulous men, and I think there’s a legitimate public interest in not letting that happen.
The best private sector solution would be a guild system, like the geishas had in old Japan. There’d be entry standards for the guild. Women would have to pass exams, and have some entertainment skills other than the obvious ones. The guild would police itself, expelling miscreants. Freelancing outside the guild could be under strong social disapproval, even made illegal.
Firefly fans will get my drift.
Now if you’ve ever looked at The Smoking Gun you know that most prostitutes don’t look like Inara Sera – we should do something about this.
**UPDATE**
I’ll be in my bunk.
Jamie posted this at 4:29 PM HKT on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 as I have seen the future. . ., Nerdom
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