As a result of a suggestion from reader Sam Dunkin, we'll start archiving our Snippets page tonight.  Go to SNIPPETS ARCHIVE in the left-hand column. 

SUNDAY,  MARCH 22,  2009

HANSON STRIKES AGAIN - AT 10:09 P.M. ET:  Reader James Birdsall alerts us to a superb piece by Victor Davis Hanson on why Americans are depressed:

Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days? It is perhaps not just the economy.

I think the answer is clear: all the accustomed referents, the sources of security, of knowledge and reassurance appear to be vanishing. Materially, we still enjoy a sumptuous lifestyle in comparison with past generations—and the world outside our borders. America remains the most sane and successful society on the planet.

But there is a strange foreboding, a deer-in-the-headlights look to us that we may be clueless Greeks in the age of Demosthenes, played-out Romans around AD 450, or give-up French in late 1939—with a sense it cannot go on. Why? Let us count the ways.

And the "ways" will look dead-on to anyone who hasn't been hibernating:

1) About Broke. 

...I think instead the worst element is a sort of ill-feeling about ourselves, an unhappiness as we look in the mirror and see what we are doing to our dignity in this, the hour of our crisis.

We are starting to fathom that when times got iffy, we lacked the resilience of the proverbial Joads and the grit of that tough Depression-era generation, and certainly we seem different sorts from those who built and flew B-17s amid the Luftwaffe.

Instead, this generation has gone quite stark raving mad the last seven months, hysterical, and decided we would simply borrow, charge it, print money, blame, accuse—almost anything other than roll up our sleeves, take a cut in our standard of living, pay off what we owe, admit that we lived too high on the hog, and find a certain nobility in shared sacrifice...

2) Fides?

We have almost destroyed the concept of trust: we don’t think there is any accuracy in AIG statements; don’t really believe GM will make it on its own, or that Goldman-Sachs is honestly run.

All our icons—Ford, General Electric, Citibank, Bank of America—in a mere generation imploded by their own hands, and now we don’t have any real idea of what went wrong, and believe their captains don’t either...

3) A Certain Coarseness.

We also are wearied by a certain crassness in American society in ways we have not seen before—or at least since the mid-19th century. Sorry, I don’t want my President joshing about the Special Olympics on Leno. I don’t want him on Leno at all in his perpetual PR mode. I don’t want him drawing out his picks for the final four on TV. I don’t want him paid for rewriting/revising/ condensing/whatever his earlier book while he’s supposed to be President, or ribbing Gordon Brown about his tennis game in patronizing fashion, or giving the British a pack of un-viewable DVDs after they, in exchange, offered a tasteful gift of historic importance...

4) What is good/bad? We are depressed and listless and angry also because I think that we fear we have lost all sense of calibration. We can’t tell what is good and what is god-awful. Where does a Paris Hilton or Britney Spears come from? What can they do? What determines a modern poem’s line break?...

5) Yes/No/Sorta/Maybe

We sense we are trimmers and redistributors, and wouldn’t dare build a new dam a transcontinental railroad, a new 8 -lane freeway.

Instead we would sue, file reports, argue, quit, delay—anything other than conceive a majestic idea and finish it, sighing, “It is not perfect, but damn good enough and will do.”...

Finally...

Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?

Not for the reason our President attests about high unemployment or shaky GDP or the lack of national health care. We simply are ashamed of our profligacy; we don’t trust those who should be trusted; we put up with the crass and honor the mediocre and ugly; and we fight and bicker over the distribution, never over a share in the creation.

Hope and change, indeed.

COMMENT:  Wonderful piece, well argued.  Read the whole thing.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

POINT TO PONDER - AT 4:12 P.M. ET:  Reader Mike McDaniel makes an excellent point about national security in an e-mail received today.  As follows:

May I suggest that you point out a significant statement Obama made on 60 Minutes when he asked how many terrorists the Bush administration "brought to justice?" That's exactly the point.  War is not about bringing enemy combatants "to justice," but about killing them or removing them from the battlefield until hostilities cease.  Obama, like Clinton before him, is stuck in criminal justice mode, determined to give terrorists more constitutional rights than citizens while inserting them into a revolving door system of criminal justice.  This is not security, but madness.

COMMENT:  And because of our economic crisis, we're not as alert to these changes as we should be.  We may pay a price.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA RAPS CHENEY - AT 9:16 A.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama hit back at former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of his policies on terrorism suspects, saying Cheney's approach had brought the United States scorn instead of security.

Obama told CBS network's "60 Minutes" program that the policy on detainees at Guantanamo Bay military prison under the administration of former President George W. Bush had been "unsustainable."

COMMENT:  Brought us scorn instead of security?  What have we gotten since The One took office?  Compliments?  Flowers?  Name a single change a single country has made in its attitude toward the U.S.    This is real cult-of-personality stuff: "I'm here, things will be better." 

Show me.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

GROWING UNEASE ABOUT "THE ONE" - AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  We've said often here that some of the best reporting on American politics is done by the British press. We see another example today in The Times of London, in a piece by Tony Allen-Mills, reporting anger at the president, especially his tactics and his ever-present TV image:

WHEN the White House announced last week that President Barack Obama will be returning to the nation’s television screens on Tuesday for a prime-time press conference that will postpone the latest episode of American Idol - the talent show watched by 25m viewers - fans of the programme were quick to respond.

“Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can’t take much more,” one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. “Not again!” complained another. “It’s the same speech he’s been giving for the past year.”

There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno’s popular late-night chat show, Obama was “just like Fidel Castro [of Cuba] and Hugo Chavez [of Venezuela] - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing”.

The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama’s economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government’s trillion-dollar bailout programme.

COMMENT:  The story points out that some of this anger is coming from Democrats.  The Brits have picked up something that is certainly discussed here, but with less focus - that the president may be wearing out his welcome, that the folksy, "we're the ones we've been waiting for" theme isn't resonating much any longer.  Sometimes Mr. Obama comes off as less than serious, less in command than he should be.  Franklin Roosevelt used radio to speak to the nation, but he wasn't on the air as often as Obama is, and he had a commanding presence.  Obama is developing the image of commander-in-training.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL - AT 8:45 A.M. ET:  From Charles Murray, in today's Washington Post:

The trouble is that American elites of all political stripes have increasingly withdrawn to gated communities -- literally or figuratively -- where they never interact at an intimate level with people not of their own socioeconomic class. Over the last half-century, the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, and never having had a close friend who hadn't gotten at least 600 on her verbal SAT.

America's elites must once again fall in love with what makes America different. The drift toward the European model can be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.

COMMENT:  Read the entire piece, on the danger of America becoming more like Europe.  Oh, we would have the "good" life, with cradle-to-grave socialism, but not much would get done, or invented, or even dreamed.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

ANTI-WAR OR JUST ANTI-AMERICAN? - AT 8:25 A.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Before war protesters ended their demonstration Saturday afternoon, several placed cardboard coffins in front of the offices of northern Virginia defense contractors such as KBR Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. as riot police stood by.

''Lockheed Martin you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!'' they chanted as part of a demonstration that began in Washington to mark the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq...

...Organizers from the ANSWER Coalition said more than 1,000 groups sponsored the protest to call for an end to the Iraq war, and estimated that about 10,000 people participated.

COMMENT:  What really riles me about these stories - and this began during Vietnam - is that the press gives us so few facts about the "anti-war" protesters.  ANSWER is a Marxist organization.  (Read that pro-Communist.)  But apparently we're not permitted to say it out loud, for that would be "McCarthyism."  No, it wouldn't.  It would be honest, accurate reporting.  I visited many "anti-war" marches in New York during the Vietnam War.  Many of the organizers had far-left credentials.  But then, as now, they were just described as "anti-war."  As Christopher Hitchens has written, they're not anti-war.  They're just anti- some wars, especially those America has a chance of winning.  But the mainstream media keeps it all vague.

March 22, 2009   Permalink

SATURDAY,  MARCH 21,  2009

OBAMA STILL SLIPS IN POLL - AT 4:52 P.M. ET:  The Rasmussen survey for today shows continued slippage for the president.  Some 55% approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing, while 44% disapprove.  That's a gap of only eleven.  The day after inauguration it was 35.  Equally ominous for the White House is what Ras calls the presidential approval index, the gap between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove.  Strongly approve today is 36%, strongly disapprove is 32%, a gap of four.  The day after inauguration it was 28.

March 21, 2009   Permalink

SARAH'S PLIGHT - AT 11:07 A.M. ET:  From the Anchorage Daily News: 

Gov. Sarah Palin owes more than a half million dollars to an Anchorage law firm that has defended her against ethics complaints, and she may create a legal fund to pay the bill, she said Friday.

Legal bills have mounted fighting complaints that she called partisan, false and frivolous, starting with "the politically motivated Troopergate probe," Palin said in a written response to questions.

She said the legal bills all stem from her actions as governor.

"I must defend against these baseless ethics accusations out of my own pocket as the use of public monies to do so could itself violate state law," Palin wrote.

COMMENT:  Like her or not, Sarah Palin has faced a disgraceful level of harassment and abuse.  Suing public officials is becoming a sport, meaning, as she says in the story, that we may reach a point where only the wealthy can serve - or those who have their own law firm.  We have to provide some protection for public officials who are frivolously sued, or we risk serious damage to our democracy.

March 21, 2009   Permalink

AJAMI ON AFGHANISTAN - AT 9:49 A.M. ET:  One of the marks of an outstanding analyst is the ability to show how different problems relate to each other.  One of the best is Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins, who cautions about failure in Afghanistan.  At a time when the president - see the two stories below - is genuflecting before the Iranian mullahs, it's critical that we keep our eye on where the fighting actually is going on:

We face today the oddest and most unexpected of spectacles: On its sixth anniversary, the Iraq war has been vindicated, while the war in Afghanistan looks like a hopeless undertaking in an impossible land.

This is not what the opponents of the Iraq war had foreseen. After all, Afghanistan was the good war of necessity whereas Iraq was the war of "choice" in the wrong place.

The Afghan struggle was in truth a rod to be held up in the face of the Bush administration's quest in Iraq. Some months ago, Democratic Party strategist Robert Shrum owned up to this fact. "I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as the 'right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom. This was accurate as criticism, but also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."

Hmm.  Finally, an admission that a liberal could be wrong on anything.

And Mr. Obama?

The president is on the horns of a dilemma of his own making. In his determination to be the "un-Bush," he has declared his intention to repair what some have called "Brand America" and to pursue a nonideological foreign policy of multilateralism and moderation. His aloofness from what played out in Iraq is a hindrance to him when it comes to issuing any call to arms in Afghanistan.

However, reality intervenes:

Mr. Obama does not have to offer the Iraq campaign post facto vindication. But as he does battle in the same wider theatre of that Greater Middle East, he will have to draw the proper lessons of the Iraq campaign. This Afghan war can't be waged in stealth, and in silence. Half-measures will not do. This war will have to be explained -- or explained away. For it to have any chance, it will have to be claimed and owned up to even in the midst of our economic distress. It's odd that so articulate a president has not yet found the language with which to describe this war, and the American stakes in it.

COMMENT:  Ouch.  Ajami pulls no punches.  Combine this with the rebuff from Iran, with word that North Korea is about to thrill us with a missile launch, with its military implications, with Russia's announced intention to rebuild its military might, and Mr. Obama's campaign speeches sound like high-school orations.  The question is whether his policies will be more grown up.

March 21, 2009   Permalink

BOLTON BRINGS US BACK TO REALITY - AT 9:19 A.M. ET:  Writing in this morning's Wall Street Journal, the great John Bolton brings us back from Obama's fantasy world, to reality.  This relates to the story just below:

While President Obama's unanticipated Nowruz holiday greeting to Iran generated considerable press attention, his video wasn't really this week's big news related to the Islamic Republic. Far more important was that a senior defector -- Iran's former Deputy Minister of Defense Ali Reza Asghari -- disclosed Tehran's financing of Syria's nuclear weapons program. That program's centerpiece was a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel destroyed it in September 2007.

At this point, it is impossible to ignore Iran's active efforts to expand, improve and conceal its nuclear weapons program in Syria while it pretends to "negotiate" with Britain, France and Germany (the "EU-3"). No amount of video messages will change this reality. The question is whether this new information about Iran will sink in, or if Washington will continue to turn a blind eye toward Iran's nuclear deceptions.

COMMENT:  That John Bolton is so annoying.  He wants everyone connected to foreign policy to grow up.  What should we do with a man like this?

The Iranian defector's report proves that Bolton's warnings have been correct all along.  They've also been ridiculed.  What a pity if we fixed our economy, and sealed the doom of an American ally or an American city.

March 21, 2009   Permalink

SHOCK!  IRAN REBUFFS OBAMA - AT 8:59 A.M. ET:  A funny thing happened to President Obama on the way back from Leno:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed overtures from President Barack Obama on Saturday, saying Tehran does not see any change in U.S. policy under its new administration.

Khamenei was responding to a video message Obama released Friday in which he reached out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year, and expressed hopes for an improvement in nearly 30 years of strained relations.

Khamenei holds the last word on major policy decisions, and how Iran ultimately responds to any concrete U.S. effort to engage the country will depend largely on his say.

In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for better ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between the two countries unless the American president puts an end to U.S. hostility toward Iran and brings ''real changes'' in foreign policy.

COMMENT:  And so the supreme leader has spoken, and Mr. Obama's "outreach" comes crashing down one day after it's delivered.  Or does it?  There will be those around Obama - Samantha Power comes to mind - who may well agree with the Iranian leader and urge real "change" in American foreign policy.  It would be catastrophic change from our point of view.  But the Scowcroft, Power, Charles Freeman, Zbig Brzezinski school of foreign policy will give Obama an honorary degree.

What will it be, Mr. President?  Will you uphold American ideals and interests, or will you cave in order to get a photo op with some Iranian thug?  The fact that we have to ask the question, suggests, we admit, a certain lack of confidence in you and your administration.  Prove us wrong.

March 21, 2009   Permalink