Obama's Executive Philosophy

Yes, it's been about a year since I posted last. And, yes, we still live in Nevada, not North Carolina. And, yes, I realize nobody reads this blog unless they follow a link from a comment I leave on somebody else's blog. I am in the process of thinking up rather technical posts for a technical blog I'm considering starting.

It took me longer to realize this than it should have, but I believe I finally understand something of President Obama's philosophy. Almost as soon as he won the election, President Obama started taking advice on what he should really do. This puzzled me because he had published large numbers of proposals to deal with health care, climate change, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other issues. And, of course, his stump speeches referred to these proposals.

But if he already had proposals, why was he taking advice on the same subjects? People voted for him, presumably because they wanted to see him keep his campaign promises. Why ask "what should I do now that I've been elected?" after spending years promising what he would do if elected?

I believe the reason is that President Obama sees the role of the President very differently than I do. Or, rather, he sees the role of the legislature as more important than I do. The President appears to prefer legislation that originates in Congress. In the President's world, he has the ability to propose laws, regulations, policies and whatnot. And Congress not only enacts those changes, but drafts them in the first place. I'm honestly not trying to caricature the President's M.O. but simply trying to understand why the Press Secretary disclaimed Ted Kennedy's proposed health care bill and encouraged rival plans.

The President is willing to give speeches to cajole Congress into action, the President is willing to play hard ball with the opposition party, and the President is willing to campaign against Rush Limbaugh. But President Obama appears unwilling to actually author legislation. If I were to guess, this appears to be out of a belief that Congress creates a great marketplace of ideas and can generate better legislation (I suspect this comes from his past as a legislator).

Unfortunately, I think this approach sounds too much like "design by committee." I believe that in general groups (like Congress, boards of directors, and committees) do a good job of judging whether an idea is good, and individuals (like the President, CEOs, and individual committee members) do a good job of coming up with ideas.

However, last year Secretary Paulson came up with a three page bill that was a real stinker. And Congress caused it to balloon to a much worse law hundreds of pages long. Not only did the final law have irrelevant pork attached, it even created a health cost oversight board which clearly had no connection to the credit freeze TARP was supposed to address. It's hard to say this outcome is any better than what would have happened had President Bush left the initial drafting of the bill to Congress.

I haven't posted to NC Lybberts since we moved out of North Carolina. But, I just read a story about an interaction with a man who has not only READ the psych books but *believes* them. It's hilarious. We haven't run into this with Jayden yet, but who knows what tomorrow might bring.

Looks like we won't be NC Lybberts much longer. At least for a while. We finished packing today and we'll be moving to Nevada come tomorrow morning.

Any guess why I find this author's description funny? I'm putting my money on the fact that I have a twisted sense of humor; but I think other people may have more-developed theories.

Don't think that since I haven't posted in a while that I'm not following current events. I am, but not the Presidential primaries.

As for the primaries; I don't really have a nominee that I like. I can get mildly enthused by three of them, but that's it. The main reason is probably that I've never lived in a state with an early enough primary to affect the nomination. Another reason is that there simply won't be another Bush (somebody able to send the liberals into apopolectic fits; cause the other side to prove Godwin's Law on a daily basis; and continue to run circles around his opponents even when his popularity ratings are in the toilet).

I've heard some suggestions that Hillary Derangement Syndrome is just as strong as Bush Derangement Syndrome, and I have to agree. But that's only one ingredient to the mix. Hillary's missing the actual conviction that makes watching B.D.S. sufferers so funny. Bush's decision to not fund some embronic stem cell research is still ridiculed in some quarters. To dream up a parallel scenario, if Hillary were to expand ethanol subsidies drastically, do you think she would have the backbone to hold the line if the price of corn skyrocketed? Would she be willing to try getting ethanol out of sugar cane or algae? If she didn't at least pretend to care about the cause, it wouldn't be fun to watch the fireworks, because she'd cave before there were any. And I haven't seen any reason to believe she's less of a chameleon than her husband.

This is the kind of politics I like:

House Democrats on Tuesday beat back a Republican attempt to force them to vote on a divisive resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney for "fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" to justify the war in Iraq. ...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and her lieutenants maneuvered to avoid a bruising floor fight. Such a clash would have forced Democrats to choose between their liberal base, which might cheer a Cheney impeachment, and a broader electorate, which might view the resolution as a partisan game in a time of war.

There's better coverage elsewhere, but we'll use the LA Times for now. For years the Democrats have whispered that Cheney ought to be impeached, but when they get the chance they don't follow through. Why? Because they don't want the open discussion. They want the benefits of a whisper campaign without the drawbacks of actually finding facts.

Sure, calling on people to apologize for inappropriate comments is a national past-time, and when the Anti-Defamation League invokes Godwin's Law, it's news, but there's something elegant about parliamentary maneuvering. Of course, sometimes forcing the other side to show up for their filibuster just turns things into a sleepover. And sometimes playing bait and switch with "consensus candidates" isn't a good idea either. Although "Congress has managed to outrun Bush to the bottom of the approval ratings," they still have a chance to play politics intelligently.

Of course, right now Congress is debating what the Democrats call "warrantless wiretapping" and what President Bush calls "the Terrorist Surveillance Program." Every time Congress considers requiring warrants to wiretap international phone calls, they decide to rubber stamp Bush's proposals. Why? Because swing voters overwhelmingly side with Bush on this issue. So why is Congress dragging it out again? It could be an attempt to get some support from "the base," or it could just be more proof that Pelosi and Reid really don't know what they are doing. You can be the judge of that.

I know that Bush's opponents like to paint him as dull-witted, but he keeps outwitting their leadership. What does that say about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi?

I will make a very early prediction regarding elections a year from now: Democrats will nominate Hillary, who will then lose the general election; however, Democrats will remain in slight control of Congress.

Bush has successfully maneuvered the political debate over to traditionally Republican strengths, namely fighting terrorism and controlling spending. No, Bush doesn't have any real credibility on controlling spending, but that's more than Pelosi or Reid have. The House just spent about a week threatening to pass a resolution that would upset a key ally and disrupt our supply lines in Iraq, turns out that was a bad strategy. They've also tried to expand S-CHIP to cover groups outside of any reasonable definition of "low income." And while a majority of Americans -- including President Bush -- support expanding the program very few support expanding it that much.

And all this time, they have failed to get very far on the budget. Even so, a year from now, I expect the Democrats to hold on to their Congressional majorities. I'm not sure about whether they will keep the same leadership, though. But in the end, Hillary has too many negatives to get very far in the general election. There is documented evidence that she spied on political rivals under President Clinton. Try to square that with her position on FISA. "Spy on politicians, not terrorists"? Likewise, the more moderates get to know her, the less they like. Overall her candidacy will not be pretty.

You may have heard the reports that the former US commander in Iraq has said the war is now an unending mess. Turns out that he said a whole lot more (which includes a link to the speech, so you can judge for yourself).

[I]t seems highly ironic that the journalists covering the story attempted to cover up the acidic, biting, and mostly accurate criticisms of their own performance in this war while giving front-page treatment to Sanchez' criticisms of the political structure at the same time. If Sanchez has such credibility and standing to bring this kind of criticism to bear on Washington, why didn't the Post and other news agencies give the same level of exposure to his media criticisms as well? He basically accuses them of cynically selling out the soldiers to defeat American efforts to win the war ... but you'd never know that from the Post.

The Post then goes on to obfuscate a key part of the second half of Sanchez' speech. While he criticizes the Bush administration in sharp terms, Sanchez blames the Democrats in equal measure. ...

And most importantly, none of the press has managed to pick up on this key sequence in Sanchez' broadside at the American political establishment:

America has no choice but to continue our efforts in Iraq. A precipitous withdrawal will unquestionably lead to chaos that would endanger the stability of the greater Middle East. If this occurs it would have significant adverse effects on the international community. Coalition and American force presence will be required at some level for the foreseeable future. Given the lack of a grand strategy we must move rapidly to minimize that force presence and allow the Iraqis maximum ability to exercise their soveriegnty in achieving a solution.

UPDATE I probably ought to make this its own post, but the general theme of the speech is that Iraq need bipartisan support in our government. The military never promised to fix everything, and no matter how much military success we enjoy (and it has been a lot, by any real measure of military success), it won't be enough by itself. This is a very good point. How often do we hear the Democrats say that there is "no military solution" to Iraq? And how often do they propose something to help solve the non-military questions? How often do they, instead, try to upset Turkey by talking about a massacre that took place 90 years ago in the Ottoman Empire? Make no mistake, by upsetting Turkey, Congressional leaders are hoping that more US military will die. Sanchez's speech appears directed at Congress to get it involved in a much better way than to try to disrupt our own supply lines in a war.