By George F. Will

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Promoting his new book, Jimmy Carter , whose version of Christianity allows ample scope for what some Christians consider the sin of pride, has been doing something at which he has had long practice — praising himself. He is, he says, “probably superior” to all other ex-presidents, and would have enacted comprehensive health care if a selfish Ted Kennedy had not sabotaged his plan.

Actually, one reason Carter, who promised to deliver government “as good as the American people,” lost 44 states in his 1980 reelection bid was that voters believed he considered himself too good for them. And they thought he did not know them — that he was disconnected from the way most people thought and felt.

Eight years later, another Democratic presidential candidate had a comparable problem. Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis had vetoed a bill that would have required public schoolteachers to lead their classes in the Pledge of Allegiance. Perhaps the bill was constitutionally problematic. But a presidential campaign is not a law seminar. Dukakis’s incomprehension of American political culture outside of Massachusetts was apparent when, responding to Republican insinuations about his patriotism, he said dismissively that “every first-year law student” studies flag-salute cases that vindicate his position.

Today, Barack Obama, a chronic campaigner, is out and about trying to arouse the masses against the inequity of not raising taxes on “the rich.” He opposes extending the Bush tax rates—they are due to expire Dec. 31, when a higher rate is restored — for “millionaires and billionaires.”

And for quarter-millionaires. Expiration would mean an increase for households with incomes of at least $250,000. Obama’s $750,000 fudge sweeps many people into the plutocracy. In Obama’s Chicago, a high school principal can earn $148,000. A police officer with 25 years on the force can earn $114,000 — not counting overtime. If the principal and the officer are married, supposedly they are rich.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama said that the rich begin at $150,000. If so, both the principal and the police officer are perilously close to becoming targets of liberal redistributionists.

The damage that has been done to the Democratic brand in just 20 months has encouraged comparisons of Obama to Carter, who seemed miniaturized by the presidency, and to Dukakis, who seemed mystified that Massachusetts’s political culture was not the national norm. There also is, however, an Obama resemblance to Lyndon Johnson.

Obama became president knowing next to nothing about Washington. Johnson began his career as a congressional staffer and spent almost all of his pre-presidential adulthood in Washington. But there is this similarity between them: overreaching.

Obama’s overreaching is testimony to what 44 years can do to a party’s memory. It has forgotten the 1966 elections, which cost Democrats three Senate and 47 House seats, abruptly terminating two years of liberal happiness that had followed 28 fallow years.

In 1938, five years into the New Deal, the public was weary of Washington’s hyperkinesis. Voters recoiled against FDR’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court by enlarging it, and his related attempt to purge conservative Democrats from Congress. After 1938, Republicans and conservative Democrats prevented a durable liberal legislative majority. Until the 1964 anti-Goldwater landslide.

Johnson carried 44 states, Democrats gained two Senate and 38 House seats, and hyperkinesis returned in the form of the Great Society agenda. Since 1966, liberal overreaching has been difficult. After November, it will be impossible, for many years. For Obama, the worst result next month might be for Democrats to retain control of both houses of Congress. If they do, their majorities will be paralyzingly small. And their remaining moderates will be more resistant to the liberal leadership: The moderates will have survived not because of, but in spite of, those leaders.

Today, if you see Obama in a political ad, you are almost certainly watching a Republican ad. And a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that more than twice as many people view House Speaker Nancy Pelosi negatively (50 percent) than positively (22 percent).

If Democrats retain control of Congress, Obama will seek reelection while being perceived as responsible for everything in Washington, where everything is perceived to be dysfunctional. And anti-Washington fever may be worse than it is today, because the 2010 elections will not seem to have changed very much.

If Democrats lose both houses, Obama will seem repudiated. If they lose neither, he will seem impotent. So, if Democrats lose big, he loses big. If they lose smaller, he loses bigger.

Source: Washington Post

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The one recent event that grabbed everyone’s attention was the stunning upset victory by Republican Scott Brown in the race for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts long held by Ted Kennedy. That victory is being hailed across this land as a national victory for political conservatives. It appears some of the first fallout from that Republican victory is the refocusing of President Obama’s view on what America says is job one: the U.S. economy.

It took a cataclysmic event to do it, but if you choose to believe him this time, President Obama is signaling a change in his economic policy.

Here is what the president said in his announcement of his economic policy change.

I’m proposing a simple and common-sense reform, which we’re calling the “Volcker Rule”–after this tall guy behind me. Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest, or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds, or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers. If financial firms want to trade for profit, that’s something they’re free to do. Indeed, doing so–responsibly–is a good thing for the markets and the economy. But these firms should not be allowed to run these hedge funds and private equities funds while running a bank backed by the American people.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it. Now let’s look at who this Paul Volcker fellow is. He is a brilliant economist. I remember Paul Volcker from when he was the Fed Chairman in the Jimmy Carter administration. Making him the Fed Chairman is just about the only good thing I can remember Jimmy Carter doing during his presidency. I remember how Mr. Volcker showed his willingness to do the difficult things that had to be done to change the economic direction the country was headed in when he came into office. He swiftly moved to put a stop to the raging inflation that was threatening at the time. You may recall if you are old enough that Mr. Volcker was successful in stopping that inflationary trend. It took a recession to do it, but he stuck to his guns and got the job done.

So, at first blink, it would appear from that scenario we should expect tough times ahead—as if we haven’t had enough tough economic times already. Assuming Mr. Volker can walk on the economic hot waters we find ourselves in presently, I don’t expect he’ll see much need for making things get much worse before they get better, although that may well be in the offing rather we like it or not.

What I do foresee is that, since this man knows his job, we can expect he will see to it that what needs to be done is done, if, that is, the president gives him the power to do the job by appointing him his Fed Chairman. There are rumblings around Democratville that the present Fed Chairman, Mr. Bernanke, may be on the way out but that does not assure that Mr. Volker will get the job in his stead. So that is the big question, will the president give Paul Volcker the power to do the job or is he just kidding us again.

I say we can hope the president will keep his word this one time, but I won’t count on it. The man is an ideologue and the latest wind out of his mouth indicates he is not going to step back from what he sees as the best socialistic policies yet devised to turn America into just another failed European-style socialist country.

Gosh, I hope I am wrong about that. I hope he got a call from President Clinton telling him it is time to change course if he wants to be a two term president and that he took that advice to heart. I hope but not that much that he got the call and that he listened and understood, and took to heart that sage advice from the savviest political mind to live in the Whitehouse since President Ronald Reagan.

Still, I will be one happy fellow and a strong supporter of the president on this one issue, if he does keep his promise this one time to strengthen our republic by being tougher on banks and other financials, but only if he does it for all the right reasons.

We need a true believer in the Whitehouse; a true believer in the republican way the founding fathers of our republic gave us in the Constitution of these United States. When he is not spewing hate, Mr. Obama appears to be a nice American gentleman. We need to see more of that nice American gentleman and less of the hatemonger we have so often seen in the past.

If I could speak with the president, I would tell him to join in with us in our victory celebration. I would say that he has said more than once that what is good for America is good for him. I would tell him now is the time to show the truth of that statement before his time has run its course.

The president should appoint Paul Volcker Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.

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