Freedom Line Blog

In the current issue of National Affairs, William Schambra gives a thoughtful analysis of President Barack Obama’s approach to solving public policy problems:

In one policy area after another — from transportation to science, urban policy to auto policy — Obama’s formulation is virtually identical: selfishness or ideological rigidity has led us to look at the problem in isolated pieces rather than as an all-encompassing system; we must put aside parochialism to take the long systemic view; and when we finally formulate a uniform national policy supported by empirical and objective data rather than shallow, insular opinion, we will arrive at solutions that are not only more effective but less costly as well. This is the mantra of the policy presidency.”

It’s also a tune out of harmony with America’s constitutional system of checks-and-balances. In order to be successful under Obama’s Progressive-inspired notion of policy making, the creation, implementation, and administration of policies must be shielded from people with priorities that differ from the expert-determined norm.

To be successful by its own definition, each of its policies must necessarily be rational, coherent, and all-encompassing, whether the issue is health care, energy, or education. And yet, as the early Progressives knew all too well, critical elements of the constitutional system — the executive cabinet, federal decentralization, the separation of powers, and the extended commercial republic — serve to shred and fragment policy proposals as they make their way from the minds of their expert designers through departmental bureaucracy and legislative committees (not to mention their hearings in the court of public opinion). Once enacted, the execution of policy is similarly trammeled by our political system’s fragmented dispersal of administrative authority. The result is often policy that is irrational, incoherent, and partial. Policies not designed to take account of that reality usually turn to mush in practice.”

Though lengthy, this post is worth the time it takes to read. Hopefully, by the time the next presidential election rolls around, someone will have thought about how to redefine the limits of human knowledge in a way that reaffirms human dignity and encourages human flourishing. Otherwise, we may be fighting to overcome a new consensus that the elites really do know best.

For readers following the race in New York’s 23rd congressional district (upstate NY), the Club for Growth has released a new poll showing conservative candidate Doug Hoffman leading by four points.

Hoffman, with 31.3% in the poll, leads Democrat Bill Owens (27%) and Republican challenger Dede Scozzafava (19.7%).

This race in rural upstate New York has garnered national attention and endorsements from prominent conservatives.  Newt Gingrich has endorsed Scozzafava, while Sarah Palin and Dick Armey have endorsed Hoffman.

More info here and here.

Here’s a contradiction to chew on for a while:  Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt tells The Washington Post that he’s wary about destructive overregulation of the Internet…  Yet he simultaneously favors so-called Net “Neutrality?”

According to Mr. Schmidt, “it is possible for the government to screw up the Internet, bigtime.”  The article reports that he went so far as to say that “it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

But how can Mr. Schmidt square his accurate concern about destructive Internet regulation with his advocacy of Net “Neutrality,” which would needlessly introduce federal rules into Internet service for the first time?  Stated simply, he can’t.  Nevertheless, he and Google foolishly advocate Net “Neutrality” because they believe it serves their short-term corporate interest.  Of course, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries initially believed the same thing about ObamaCare, before belatedly recognizing the toxic longer-term reality…

Gallup Poll – Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group
Political Wire – Schumer Says Democrats Close to 60 Votes
WSJ – Chamber v. Obama
NY Times – Democrats Optimistic on Health Care
WSJ Editorial – The Spending Rolls On
National Review – NY-23: It’s About Integrity
RedState – You, Me, and New York 23

Federal Debt: $11.944 trillion

As President Obama mulls over General McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan — and former Vice President Cheney hits the current administration hard for what he calls “dithering” — the White House has hit back with some heavy accusations.

Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has claimed that the Bush Administration ignored the strategic planning process for the war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs alleges that the Bush White House let a request for more troops in Afghanistan fall stillborn for nearly a year.

You can debate the merits of various approaches and the trade-offs that are always necessary in national security policy. But as someone who was in the Bush White House during the time in question, I can testify to the fact that Afghan planning was very high on the agenda in the waning days of the administration. Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has done the legwork to bear this out and his new piece pushes back against the Obama Administration’s claims with great clarity. Among the best passages:

One Bush veteran asks, “If it’s true that the Bush administration sat on these troop requests for eight months, is the White House suggesting that the Pentagon was incompetent or negligent or both? That would be a good question to put to the defense secretary–and President Obama is in a position to make him talk.”

I couldn’t reach Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but I did talk to a senior defense official who serves with him. This person stressed that Gates has gone to great lengths to avoid being dragged into political fights between administrations. Nonetheless, he offered a strong rebuke to the present White House political team.

“There was no request on anyone’s desk for eight months,” said the defense official. “There was not a request that went to the White House because we didn’t have forces to commit. So on the facts, they’re wrong.”

In reality, the Bush Administration stayed quiet on the options going forward into Afghanistan so that Obama wouldn’t have his choices muddied by having them labeled as recycled goods from the previous president.  That they are now using that fact as a cudgel speaks very poorly of the current denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Read Hayes’ entire piece here.

“Good Evening. This is Walter Crankcase reporting for State News.

“We are unable to report tonight that President Obama is still dithering over the decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan because former Vice President Cheney said it and Fox News reported it first.

“Turning to other news, the Obama family has posed for its official White House portrait. Isn’t that just the cuddliest First Family you ever saw? Robert, leave that visual up for the rest of the broadcast. It’s much better than those boring unemployment numbers and that deficit graph.

“After the break, we’ll be back with an exclusive report on Rahm Emanuel’s Thanksgiving plans, and the ACORN choir will premiere its Christmas carol, “What Will Santa Bring the Hos?”

“Robert, can we leave the First Family portrait up during commercials?”

Thankfully, Joe Klein (almost) proves the adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day. As recently documented, Klein has an inability to set aside his partisan pom-poms and see the real issue in a news story. But not when it comes to the White House’s war on Fox News:

The problem with war is that it diverts attention from the actual news. The Administration has tried to pursue a sophisticated, difficult domestic and foreign policy. It doesn’t offer the quick-fix irresponsibility of a tax cut or an invasion. It needs space, time and patience to explain. This is an enervating, midstream moment. It’s not certain that the President’s efforts from health care to Afghanistan will succeed. We’ll know a lot more in a month, but I really hope the White House hasn’t launched this attack to fill the public space while the other issues are being sorted out. The long-term costs of stooping to Fox’s level are not just bad posture; they are diminution of the office and its primary occupant.”

Now, Klein has a few more hours to be right again.  The clock is ticking…

In the growing rift between the Obama Administration and its military advisors, reports are surfacing that Vice President Joe Biden is upset with General Stanley McChrystal for making a closed door presentation to NATO defense ministers. In the briefing McChrystal explained his rationale for increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. Apparently, the defense ministers liked what they heard.

Here was Biden’s reaction:

Diplomatic sources say NATO endorsement of General McChrystal has led to anger in the Biden camp. They had criticized the commander for promoting his strategy, including a visit to London, while President Barack Obama is still weighing up the options.”

In short, Biden thinks the best way to win in Afghanistan is to reduce the number of troops there while implementing a counter-terrorism plan that expands the war into neighboring Pakistan, since that is where some members of al-Qaeda are based. McChrystal, on the other hand, wants to introduce 20,000 to 40,000 new troops and pursue a counter-insurgency strategy that would focus on eliminating the security threat inside Afghanistan. And yet, Biden is seen as the White House official most in favor of de-escalating America’s military involvement in the region.

If Joe Biden was Dick Cheney, would the Vice President’s aggressive push to expand the theater of war while reducing the number of ground troops be reported on as a moderate approach?  Well, at least the White House can’t be faulted for ignoring the advice of their military experts and applying its own ideological notions of sound war planning…

One of the eternal irritations about mainstream media coverage of conservatives is how often unabashedly liberal journalists are tasked to write “objective” pieces about the political dynamics within the GOP. The results tend to be about as unpredictable as a Horatio Alger story.

The narrative usually goes something like this: Ideological zealots (read: conservatives), abandoning all pretense of pragmatism (apparently it isn’t practical to have principles) are threatening to drive the party of a cliff. Yet one enlightened moderate, free of all that ideological ballast, holds the potential to lead the party boldly into the future if only the flat-earthers would get out of his way.  The moderate is sensible, temperate, and judicious.  The conservative is either mentally unhinged or has sold his soul to Karl Rove.

That’s basically the tact that Time’s Joe Klein (whose consistent ability to be wrong in print deserves a Pulitzer) takes in his profile of the GOP primary contest for the open U.S. Senate seat in Florida.  Klein portrays Florida’s moderate governor, Charlie Crist, as a good-natured centrist being driven to the wall by wild-eyed right-wing activists.  Meanwhile, conservative former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio is shot down on the grounds that (a) the Florida GOP chairman doesn’t like purists (since all of us recognize the unalloyed majesty and power of state chairmen) and (b) Jeb Bush’s decision to create public hurricane insurance half a decade ago proves that limited government won’t work in the Sunshine State.

Of all the candidates aiming to leap onto the national stage in gubernatorial or senate races next year, Rubio is far and away the most impressive addition to the conservative movement.  An enterprising conservative or moderate journalist (or even an intellectually honest liberal) would have seen that the real story here is how a relatively unknown, underfunded conservative has started destroying the lead of a popular moderate govenor in one of the nation’s largest states. That’s not the story that Joe Klein wrote. Unfortunately, it’s probably not one he’s capable of writing.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino comments on how the culture of corruption in Washington has gotten worse, not better, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.  Watch the video below.

This week’s installment of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out.  For those readers who haven’t had a chance to read it, below is a summary of its contents:

Humber:  All the President’s Boys and Girls
Senik:  The Inconvenient Truths Behind Health Care Reform
Lee:  From “Honest Abe” to “Double-Talk Barack“

Freedom Minute Video:  Nancy Pelosi Coddling Corruption
Podcast:  12 Looming Questions on Health Care Reform – Interview with The Washington Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio
Jester’s Courtroom:  How Much Exactly Is a Billion Trillion Dollars?

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive the Liberty Update, sign up here.

Apparently, the White House’s “Enemies List” has exhausted its reservoir of Republicans, so it’s now targeting Democrats.

According to this morning’s Washington Post, senior Obama advisors anticipate a resounding defeat in the Virginia governor’s race between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. Accordingly, the article reports that the White House fears a Republican victory “would likely be seen as a sign that Obama’s popularity is weakening in critical areas of the country.”

So how does the White House respond?  Simple – scapegoat Deeds, and ignore Obama’s plummeting popularity in Virginia, which voted for a Democrat in the presidential race for the first time in over four decades.  The White House conveniently claims that Deeds should have targeted the bloc of younger and African-American voters who propelled Obama in 2008, but the fact is that those 2008 surge voters are deflated after nine months of disastrous performance by Obama.

The lesson?  Democrats across America can no more count on steadfast loyalty from the Obama White House than foreign allies such as Poland, Afghanistan, Israel, Honduras or Colombia can.

Charles Krauthammer – White House Tactics Go Too Far
Senator Judd Gregg – U.S. Maxes Out On Credit
Politico – Reid Leaning Toward Public Option
Huffington Post – Snowe Warns Reid on Public Option
Breitbart – Video Released of Philadelphia ACORN Visit

Politico – NY-23 Race First Test of Tea Party Power
Chris Cillizza – Palin Endorses Hoffman
Political Wire – Support for Public Option Grows
Washington Post – FCC Taking Steps Toward Web Regulation

Federal Debt: $11.956 trillion

According to a Rasmussen public opinion poll released today, both Republican candidates in the 2010 Florida Senate race lead their likely Democrat counterpart.

Current Republican Governor Charlie Crist leads Democrat Kendrick Meek by a 46% to 34% margin in the contest to replace retired Republican Senator Mel Martinez.  Similarly, former Republican Congressman Marco Rubio leads Meek by a 46% to 31% margin.  Interestingly, Rubio’s 15-point lead is larger than his 13-point lead from August, whereas Crist’s 12-point lead over Meek is down from his 19-point lead in August and 21-point lead last June.  Accordingly, the GOP primary shapes up as an interesting race, with Rubio receiving increasing publicity and praise from such conservative publications as National Review.

In light of the fact that Florida “turned blue” in the 2008 election, the Republicans’ substantial lead appears to suggest that Sunshine State voters do not like President Obama’s policy prescriptions, and are expressing a sort of “buyers’ remorse.”  Stay tuned…

A new poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that Americans are becoming less enthusiastic about capping greenhouse gas emissions.  According to the survey, only 35% say global warming is a very serious problem.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) commented, “Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll, aside from the precipitous drop in the number of Independents who believe global warming is a problem, is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade.”

Surprisingly, 55% of respondents said that they have heard “nothing at all” about cap-and-trade (legislation that would impose new energy taxes) proposals being debated in Congress.

For more info see here and here.

Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and urge your representatives to oppose new energy taxes.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines this morning to advance the process of imposing strict net neutrality regulations on the Internet.

According to a report in The Hill:

With Thursday’s vote, the five-member panel began the process to move forward with open-Internet regulations announced last month by the agency’s chairman, Juilus Genachowski. His proposal would formally codify the FCC’s current four principles intended to prevent Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to certain content and services and therefore deciding which applications consumers have access to. He also proposed two additional principles, one to ensure providers do not discriminate between applications and another to require Internet companies to disclose their network management practices to consumers.

“Genachowski had the full support of Democratic Commissioners Micheal Copps and Mignon Clyburn, as expected. Republican Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Atwell Baker dissented to the idea that government regulation is needed to keep the Internet open, but supported the beginning of a fact-finding process to learn more about the technical and legal questions surrounding net neutrality.”

At an event put on earlier this week by the Safe Internet Alliance, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) cautioned against the imposition of net neutrality regulation, calling it the “fairness doctrine for the Internet.”

Peter Feaver writes a wonderful post today for Foreign Affairs where he recounts the growing mistrust between the Obama White House and the military establishment. The problem is what to do about Afghanistan, how soon, and at what price. There is evidence that National Security Advisor Jim Jones was dispatched to tell war planners to tailor their advice to fit the President’s political calculations. Feaver also hypothesizes about the involvement of the ever-present Bob Woodward in shaping the increasingly tense interactions between military commanders and their civilian bosses. This does not bode well for the troops on the ground.

For those perturbed by the federal government’s lack of responsiveness to the will of the people, California’s voter initiative process shows the danger of the opposite extreme. Recently, Ronald George, Chief Justice of California’s Supreme Court, questioned the wisdom of the state’s constitutional-amendment-by-initiative process. In a speech to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, George criticized the ease with which voters can change the fundamental law of California, a practice that has yielded 500 amendments since 1879. To compare, the United States Constitution contains 17 amendments, plus the 10 known as the Bill of Rights, over a time period spanning twice as long.

George’s lament is that frequent and easy changes to the primary source of law are not the criteria for sustained, peaceful government. Instead, the continuous use of such measures (and the threat of more in the future) renders government dysfunctional by making the legislative process merely the starting point of a policy debate, not its conclusion. Moreover, legal challenges to popularly passed initiatives put judges in the unenviable position of trying to discern the voters’ intent without the benefit of the usual contextual sources (e.g. legislative history, factual findings, committee reports, etc.). If California goes forward with calls for a constitutional convention, one hopes that the delegates remember the virtue of constraining lawmaking to a system governed by checks and balances, the separation of powers, and representative democracy. As we see with the current White House, though, hope alone won’t ensure a better government.

Despite claims from some on the left, including the White House, that health care reform will lower visits to the ER, new statistics from Massachusetts prove that individual mandates could actually increase ER visits.

A survey of Massachusetts emergency physicians found that 42% said emergency care had “somewhat increased,” while 22% of respondents said ER care had “significantly increased.”

The main platform of health care reform in Massachusetts is an individual health care mandate for virtually all residents.  (Residents who fail to obtain coverage can face fines of up to $912.)  Dr. Angela Gardner, President of the American College of Emergency Physicians, noted, “The idea that emergency departments are filled with people who don’t need to be there is simply not true.”

Thus, despite increased access to care in Massachusetts, ER’s across the commonwealth are still inundated with patients.  This finding isn’t too surprising.  Sure enough, people will actually go out of their way to save their lives, even if government tries to get in the way.

George Will – Obama’s Senior Moment
RedState – Remember the TARP Money? It’s Gone
National Review Online – Hope and Change in New Jersey
Dallas Morning News – Net Neutrality Draft to be Unveiled Today

WSJ Editorial – The Public Option Comeback
Political Wire – Neck-and-Neck in New Jersey
WSJ – Rep. Grayson Explains
News Journal – New Social Security Payments a Burden

Federal Debt: $11.964 trillion