Category Archives: Elections

The Problem with Jimmy Carter

3 Replies

“The Passionless Presidency”
James Fallows
The Atlantic
May 1979

James Fallows was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter for most of Carter’s single term in the White House. More than just a technically adept writer, Fallows came to his job in January 1977 a true believer, someone who saw in the clearly intelligent Georgian a leader who could lead the nation into the future.

Fallows’ disillusionment was gradual, apparently without rancor, but was utter. After citing a long list of Carter’s political, intellectual, and managerial failings, Fallows offers a telling comment that gives illuminating background both to Carters character and to his recent activities.

These clues told me part of the answer, but there was one part missing, the most fundamental of them all. Carter’s willful ignorance, his blissful tabula rasa, could—to me—be explained only by a combination of arrogance, complacency, and—dread thought—insecurity at the core of his mind and soul.

The arrogance of willful ignorance, according to Fallows, led Carter to treat history as Henry Ford did – as so much bunk. Even in the White House, Carter felt that the lessons of history beyond those of Watergate and Vietnam were irrelevant. At best, this led him to repeat the mistakes that others had made before him, in energy, in tax reform, in his hollowing of the U.S. military, and in his fateful mishandling of his Cabinet.

That same arrogance lies at the root of Carter’s misunderstandings about Israel and the Palestinians. Whatever the virtues or vices of his views, they were based less on a full apprehension of the facts than on opinions. Given Carter’s history in and with the region, the ignorance can only be willful.

All of this is important not because it is necessary to pull Jimmy down a peg, but because in the story of Carter’s failure as president lie lessons that are essential for the entire American electorate. While we may debate whether it is correct to judge a presidential candidate by his extracurricular behavior, we must recognize that good character alone is insufficient qualification for the highest office of the land.

Fallows’ review Carter shows us that we need a president who is a great manager as well as a great leader; who can work with the Beltway establishment without being subsumed by it; and above all who is prepared to learn from history to avoid the mistakes of those who have gone before.

Cicero once said “To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be forever a child.” Fallows’ retrospective of Carter, published even before the Iranian hostage crisis and the election of 1980, suggests a slight modification of that. “To be ignorant of what happened before you came to Washington is to be forever a failure.”

It is a harsh verdict, but it serves every voter to heed it.

 

No Conventions at the Bull Moose

Leave a reply
English: Bull moose laying on a lawn in Anchor...

Bull moose laying on a lawn in Anchorage, Alaska. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once again, I am stepping back from the Reality Distortion Field of the parties’ Nuremberg Rally-like shows.

As a professional propagandist, I know what they are trying to do.

Party national conventions are Weapons of Mass Distraction, pointed attempts to draw attention away from some things and toward others.

Instead, we’ll be focusing on principles and issues from now until election day.

Sarah Palin Off the Agenda at the RNC

Leave a reply

Palin Won’t Speak at Republican Convention — Daily Intel.

I take this as either a sign that the sane wing of the GOP is starting to win some battles, or that Mitt Romney and Ayn Rand Paul Ryan don’t want to jinx their campaign with the Ghost of Campaigns Past.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, will conclude the coverage of the 2012 election for the Pacific Bull Moose. Our focus now returns to principles, ideas, and policies.

Instruments of Change We Can Believe In

Leave a reply
Republican Party (United States)

Republican Party (United States) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Change is often most acceptable to the American polity when it is championed by leaders whose credentials defending the positive aspects of the status quo are beyond reproach. This is doubly true when it comes to programs with widespread and emotional support.

Only Nixon could go to China, to be sure, but it goes beyond that. Only Clinton, a Democrat, could have pushed welfare reform through Congress. Only Eisenhower, a Republican with unbeatable credentials on national defense, could not only slash a bloated Department of Defense, he was also able to raid defense funds to build the Interstate Highway System. And who but a Republican like Teddy Roosevelt could have taken on the oligarchs and robber barons?

Knowing this, we have to build our legislative manifestos accordingly, having the political courage and the vision to take on vested interests on our side of the aisle rather than pander to them. This is the essence of public service.

Related articles

Matt Taibbi and the Criminalization of Compromise

Leave a reply
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rolling Stone National Affairs Chief Matt Taibbi, who has written the introduction to the 40th Anniversary Edition of the late Hunter S. Thompson‘s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, was interviewed about this singular honor and about Thompson in the June 27th Edition of The Village Voice.

Now, Taibbi and I only occasionally find ourselves in agreement, as much because of his tone and tactics as his content. His coverage of the collusion between government and the banks has been some first-class reporting that should be making the staffs at both The Wall Street Journal and Mother Jones blush in embarrassment.

Sadly, his polemic style undermines his reportage, if not his effectiveness with your average Rolling Stone reader. Taibbi’s goal is to enrage and mobilize at least as much as it is to argue and analyze, and to me this kind of fire-and-brimstone-upon-the-converted from ideological extremists lies at the heart of the modern American political dysfunction. Taibbi’s style is as much a part of the problem as Rush Limbaugh‘s. Passion should be the seasoning in politics, not its substance, and reasonable points get lost when concern boils into outrage.

To offer just one example of what I mean, in his interview with The Voice, Taibbi makes some cogent points about the Left’s disillusionment with Obama:

“I think a lot of what Occupy is is disappointed idealism. A lot of the people who thought, in Hunter terms, that Obama was the “Great Shark” who was going to come and right all the wrongs. And then they realized that he was very much, for all his good qualities, a conventional Democratic party politician, and all the negatives that that comes with. I think people were extremely disappointed, and that’s why they’re all out on the streets right now. There’s a tremendous cynicism embedded in mainstream American politics right now, where people who are in Washington and live on Capitol Hill really don’t think they have any obligation to be truly honest.”

As I read that, I was banging on my desk screaming “yes, Yes, YES,” like Meg Ryan in a deli, smacking the two-ton benchwright table so hard that the monitor was bouncing. Taibbi gets it, I think. Then, in the very next sentence, he tosses in a barb that ruins it all.

“They [i.e., the politicians] think that everything is a compromise. They’ve lost touch with what people actually want. And they [the voters] really do want somebody who is idealistic.”

Ach, der leiber Gott, Matt, this is the heart of the problem with both progressives and reactionaries: they want idealists in power, and because of that we wind up with Solons who could not compromise even if they wanted to because their electoral mandate is to hew to an idealistic line. As a result, today we have a government made up of puritanical idealists on the one hand and cynical sell-outs on the other whom together have effectively institutionalized political gridlock.

Are Americans tired of watching Washington serve as a feather bed of public self-servants? Of course. But the answer is not more idealism in the halls of power. What we need is a government made up of moral, ethical public servants who have strong ideals yet who recognize that in an ideologically diverse nation like our own, compromise is essential to progress. We want leaders who understand that compromise for the sake of genuine progress is no vice, but that compromise for the sake of personal empowerment or enrichment is at least morally reprehensible, if not a felony.

History bears witness to the truism that idealism in government is the pathway to division and tyranny. A government in service of ideological absolutism, whatever its flavor, is a government at odds with democracy and an open road to despotism. That a correspondent of Taibbi’s stature cannot see this elemental fact is not just disappointing, it is downright frightening.

I can only hope that the readers of Rolling Stone and The Village Voice know better. But I worry. When you start throwing around words like “moral” and “ethical” with many liberals, you don’t get nodding heads, you get a fiery debate about WHOSE morals and WHICH ethics. This is the problem with relativism in society: the good people stand around arguing about where to draw the line between right and wrong while the bad people are cleaning out the store.

That said, buy the book. Thompson did not create the modern genre of popular political science (that laurel goes to Teddy White for The Making of the President, 1960), but he reinvented it with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ’72, and in the process wrote a book that every voter should read at least once.

Related articles

Priorities, Priorities

Leave a reply

Mitch McConnell: Top Priority, Make Obama a One Term President – YouTube.

As readers of these pages will attest, the Bull Moose is no particular fan of our current president. Nonetheless, it is distressing to hear the leader of any major party declare that the Party’s top legislative priority is political, rather than governing.

Though it will likely come as a shock to our distinguished Solons, we elect them not so that their first and second priorities are personal reelection and promulgation of party goals. We elect them so their first goals are the governance of the nation.

McConnell has his priorities out of whack, as does any politician who has become so focused on the opposition that the opposition is the target rather the improvement of the country and the prosperity of its citizens.

On the Elections

Leave a reply

As moderate and progressive conservatives, our focus should not be dominated by the bread and circus of the 2012 elections. Instead, it should be dominated by the desperate need to give voice to the silent majority of Americans whose convictions and interests lie nearer the to the center of the spectrum of our political debate, and perhaps a wee bit to the right.

We need to agree on the principles that will guide the future of our limping (yet still resilient and robust) republic, and on how those principles will determine what we must do to repair our dysfunctional institutions and reclaim our future.

Santorum Crosses All Californians

Leave a reply

Rick Santorum flat-out lies about California universities | Hotspyer

Normally, we don’t get involved in the back-and-forth of the campaigns, preferring instead to focus on a discussion of broader principles, issues, and policies. But we get our dander up when a candidate of any persuasion questions the patriotic credentials of Californians.

Rick Santorum apparently accused California universities for ruining the nation, claiming that “seven or eight” universities in the state do not even offer American history.

The University of California response:

But UC spokesperson Brooke Converse told Think Progress, which originally reported the story, that all University of California undergraduate programs require students to study American history and institutions, though the exact requirements vary by campus.

And from the California State University system:

The CSU requires each student receiving a baccalaureate degree to be knowledgeable about the Constitution of the United States, American history, and state and local government. This U.S. History, Constitution, and American Ideals Requirement is generally known as the American Institutions Requirement. You can complete this requirement either by completing the required courses (generally two) or, at some campuses, passing a comprehensive examination or a combination of coursework and examination.

When campaign rhetoric reaches this level of demagoguery, when a candidate has to lie in order to make his or her point, a line has been crossed.

Rick Santorum owes California an apology, and he needs to explain to us how he is planning on avoiding the spread of such disinformation in the future.

Hoekstra makes conservatives look bad

Leave a reply

Letter from China: How Did Hoekstra Get So Much Wrong? : The New Yorker.

Evan Osnos explains in detail why Pete Hoekstra’s anti-China Super Bowl ad was just plain wrong. This has been covered in many places, but Osnos really knows his stuff, and he is nobody’s idea of a Sinopologist.

Thinking conservatives should distance themselves from this kind of demagoguery. Not only does it demean political debate with disinformation, it also give ammunition to liberals who would categorize conservatives as the automaton minions of special interests, or, worse, as a bunch of protectionist boobs trying to build government walls around outdated industries.

Let’s get this straight: Michigan’s economy has been shafted by the folly of the auto makers on the one hand, and the entitlement mentality of the UAW on the other. We need to learn from the mistakes of the industry so we do not repeat them, and so that we can help rebuild the business. Laying the blame on the plate of outside forces – China, Japan, the WTO – does little more that institutionalize a somewhat pathetic victim mentality, and does little to solve the core problems: unemployed people and decaying enterprise.