That, it’s widely agreed, is the sad tale of Barack Obama, who has managed to demoralize liberals while inspiring a wave of gloating among conservatives. A new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds that already, most Americans want to vote him out in 2012.

But both Democrats and Republicans are jumping the gun. They forget that this storyline also describes Ronald Reagan, who saw his approval rating sink over his first 12 months — yet rebounded to carry 49 states in his 1984 re-election bid. Bill Clinton was significantly less popular than Obama for most of his initial year, and we all know how that turned out.

George W. Bush likewise managed to hack off a lot of onetime supporters soon after taking office, and when his popularity soared eight months into his term, it was not because of anything he did but because of the 9/11 attacks. He, too, won re-election.

American politicians and commentators are generally not afflicted by a deep knowledge or appreciation of history. If they were, they would not waste their time laboring to explain something that requires little explanation. They could simply state the obvious — new presidents invariably lose public esteem in the first year of their terms — and go on to try to explicate something truly mysterious, like Lady Gaga.

That’s the implication of research by Douglas Rivers, a professor of political science at Stanford University, scholar at the Hoover Institution and professional pollster. Though Obama rated the lowest of recent presidents at the end of his first year, Rivers says the pattern “is pretty much in line with what you would expect.” What we see is “more a continuing trend than an Obama phenomenon.”

That’s not to say Obama has made no mistakes. You can’t occupy the White House without disappointing a lot of people. Every president bungles some things, and every president pays a price.

His fiscal policy and health care plan, in particular, have energized the opposition and spawned public resentment. On the other hand, his grades on gay rights and immigration have actually improved — possibly because he has done less than expected on either issue. There is no real evidence to suggest that the public finds Obama far more fallible or detestable than they usually find presidents at this stage.

On health care reform, it’s not clear what he could have done differently to appease a notoriously demanding citizenry. Surveys indicate people think that if his plan passes, they will get “worse care at a higher cost,” says Rivers. What do they expect if his plan doesn’t pass? “They’ll get worse care at a higher cost.”

I wish I could say Americans’ suspicion of health care reform shows a sensible appreciation of the limits of government power and responsibility. But I suspect the real problem is they fear it will not guarantee them everything they want at someone else’s expense. Rivers notes that when you ask people about specific components of the plan, they turn out to be “fairly popular.”

If Americans distrust the government, they also take a dim view of the private sector, or parts of it. “Anything negative for insurance companies is popular,” says Rivers. Most people blame insurers for rising health care expenditures, even though insurance companies are one of the few constituencies with a powerful interest in reducing outlays.

This is not really quite the contradiction it may appear. People don’t mind when national health care costs rise. They do mind when their personal health care costs rise. When that happens, they blame health insurers. They may also blame the president, even if costs were rising before he arrived and threaten to keep rising long after he leaves.

It’s a mistake to think every political trend has deep meaning. Most of the disillusionment with Obama is the result of a natural process that tells nothing about the future. Every honeymoon ends, but the end of the honeymoon is not a harbinger of divorce.

The good news for Obama is that he has lost ground with the electorate mainly because of things he can’t control. The bad news for Obama is that making it up will require the help of things he also can’t control.

People like philosopher John Rawls call treating everyone alike merely “formal” fairness. Professor Rawls advocated “a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstances.” He called for a society which “arranges” end-results, rather than simply treating everyone the same and letting the chips fall where they may.

This more hands-on concept of fairness gives third parties a much bigger role to play. But whether any human being has ever had the omniscience to determine and undo the many differences among people born into different families and cultures – with different priorities, attitudes and behavior – is a very big question. And to concentrate the vast amount of power needed to carry out that sweeping agenda is a dangerous gamble, whose actual consequences have too often been written on the pages of history in blood.

There is no question that the accident of birth is a huge factor in the fate of people. What is a very serious question is how much anyone can do about that without creating other, and often worse, problems. Providing free public education, scholarships to colleges and other opportunities for achievement are fine as far as they go, but there should be no illusion that they can undo all the differences in priorities, attitudes and efforts among different individuals and groups.

Trying to change whole cultures and subcultures in which different individuals are raised would be a staggering task. But the ideology of multiculturalism, which pronounces all cultures to be equally valid, puts that task off limits. This paints people into whatever corner the accident of birth has put them.

Under these severe constraints, all that is left is to blame others when the outcomes are different for different individuals and groups. Apparently those who are lagging are to continue to think and act as they have in the past – and yet somehow have better outcomes in the future. And, if they don’t get the same outcomes as others, then according to this way of seeing the world, it is society’s fault!

Society may lavish thousands of dollars per year on schooling for a youngster who does not bother to study, and yet when he or she emerges as a semi-literate adult, it is considered to be society’s fault if such youngsters cannot get the same kinds of jobs and incomes as other youngsters who studied conscientiously during their years in school.

It is certainly a great misfortune to be born into families or communities whose values make educational or economic success less likely. But to have intellectuals and others come along and misstate the problem does not help to produce better results, even if it produces a better image.

Political correctness may make it hard for anyone to challenge the image of helpless victims of an evil society. But those who are lagging do not need a better public relations image. They need the ability to produce better results for themselves – and a romantic image is an obstacle to directing their efforts toward developing that ability.

Tests and other criteria which convey the realities of their existing capabilities, compared to that of others, can have what is called a “disparate impact,” and are condemned not only in editorial offices but also in courts of law.

But criteria exist precisely to have a disparate impact on those who do not have what these criteria exist to measure. Track meets discriminate against those who are slow afoot. Tests in school discriminate against students who did not study.

Disregarding criteria in the interest of “fairness” – in the sense of outcomes independent of inputs – adds to the handicaps of those who already have other handicaps, by lying to them about the reasons for their situation and the things they need to do to make their situation better.

Schwarzenegger suggests that there should be some measure of parity between the amount that Californians pay to support the federal government and the quantity of services or federal funding they receive in return. He might have a legitimate complaint on this score, if only we were still governed by the same constitutional provisions written in 1787 and ratified in 1791. The Founders understood, and concurred with Schwarzenegger, that the several independent, sovereign states should not be disproportionately burdened with the responsibility of funding the operation of the federal government. To protect against this, the apportionment clause (Article I, Section 2) was written to ensure that each state share the responsibility of providing for those federal activities enumerated in the Constitution, in direct proportion to the number of citizens residing in each state.

It is gratifying to see Schwarzenegger arrive at the Founders’ view of budgetary fairness some 219 years after the fact, but his argument comes 108 years too late. The Sixteenth Amendment effectively overrides the apportionment clause, and authorizes the U.S. Congress to levy direct taxes against individual incomes, “without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Not only does this amendment authorize Congress to tax some states more than others (with respect to their proportional populations), but as of this writing, no intrepid litigator has yet mounted a successful general welfare argument to prevent the feds from spending the proceeds just as disproportionately. You can hardly swing a dead cat these days without hitting someone who will argue that passage of the Sixteenth Amendment dealt a potentially fatal blow to both state sovereignty and individual liberty, and much progress could be made in restoring responsible governance and economic prosperity with the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. Nonetheless, since 1913, it has been the law of the land. Sorry, Arnold, but on this count, you lose — especially since California was among the earliest states to ratify the Sixteenth Amendment in January of 1911.

In response to Schwarzenegger’s claim that unfunded federal mandates are bankrupting his state, the most obvious question is, “So who’s fault is that?” To which specific federal mandates is the Governator referring? In his remarks on Friday, Schwarzenegger referred to mandates in the areas of health, education and welfare. Fascinating that he should choose these examples, since all are areas in which the politicians in Washington have no constitutional authority to govern, much less issue binding mandates (funded or otherwise). What Schwarzenegger is really saying is that he, as governor, the California legislature and thousands of their predecessors have voluntarily chosen to comply with one illegitimate federal mandate after another. Rather than take seriously their sworn obligation to preserve the integrity of their offices, and to defend the sovereignty of their state and the liberty of its citizens, Schwarzenegger, his counterparts and their predecessors have repeatedly taken the path of least resistance, and evaded the difficult work of doing the right thing. Now we are told that California must be saved, because it is “too big to fail”. This is like the couple in the house down the street losing their life savings to a con artist, and then self-righteously demanding that all of their neighbors pool their resources to compensate them for the loss. Thanks, but no thanks.

None of us living outside of California should imagine that our own state officials have shown greater responsibility than Schwarzenegger and his colleagues. Officeholders in every state have consistently refused to face down unconstitutional federal intrusion. The solution, however, cannot possibly come from the very same practices that created the mess in the first place. If states across the nation are unable to meet the costs of their own ill-advised obligations, where does Schwarzenegger expect them to find the surplus to help Californians meet theirs? He seems infected with the currently popular misconception that the federal government has its own supply of money to spend. To give Californians $6.9 billion, the federal government can either tax it away from the rest of us (leaving us less prepared to stave off our own collapse); borrow it from foreign lenders (leaving us and our descendants indebted to those with no inherent concern for our well-being); or simply print more money (destroying the economic value of everything we currently have). Unless folks in the Golden State know of some economic alchemy that Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and John Maynard Keynes never imagined, there are no other options.

Despite the logic of the very argument he made on Friday, don’t expect Arnold Schwarzenegger or any other state governor to lobby for repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment anytime soon. However sensible this proposal may seem in principle, those wishing to be considered “mainstream” will inevitably yield to pressure to denounce the idea of repeal as a product of lunatic fringe thinking. With the resulting opportunities for disproportionate federal taxation, don’t expect state officials to exercise restraint in trying to curry federal favor, in the hope of landing a disproportionate share of the resulting proceeds. This pathetic effort to regain a few crumbs of the loaf already taken from their citizens at gunpoint keeps state officials jumping through whatever federal hoops Washington contrives, however constitutionally indefensible they may be.

We have little hope of untying this Gordian knot, but it may soon be cut by economic realities no politician can ignore forever. Over the past year, not a week has gone by without someone blogging or “tweeting”:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Usually attributed to Margaret Thatcher (perhaps apocryphally), this quote invariably expresses the frustration of those who think themselves unfairly burdened with the consequences of someone else’s irresponsibility. Faced with the unvarnished prospect of seeing their own state services slashed, while being taxed to maintain the existing basket of benefits Californians enjoy, citizens of other states may finally be ready to revolt against the federal spoils system that got us into this mess. Whether enough of us see the issues clearly or not, the economic reality is that we cannot all bail each other out. We’ve already run out of each others’ money.

My dad’s doctor asked me this a couple of weeks ago. His smile seemed to shout, “Are you guys crazy?” I had taken my 94-year-old Republican father to see him several times, but politics never came up. Did the doc really want to go there? It went something like this:

“What’s the problem with her?” I said.

“Well, she’s, she’s –”

“Stupid?”

“All right.”

“Really? Why, because she isn’t as glib or articulate as you elites like? She didn’t answer Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson the way President Obama would have?”

“Yes – I’m one of those elites.”

“How stupid do you have to be to take on the establishment in Alaska and win? How stupid do you have to be to have – at the time Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked her – an 84 percent popularity rating in Alaska? She had more executive experience than Obama.”

“Well, she doesn’t come across as prepared.”

“I don’t know what qualities you look for. But I’ll tell you what counts for me: character, competence and vision. She’s likable. She has a strong, stable marriage with a down-to-earth husband. She has convictions that I agree with. Government too big? Check. People taxed too much? Check. Stay on offense in the war on terror? Check. For me, what’s not to like?”

“I’d worry about her judgment.”

“Do you worry about Vice President Joe Biden’s?”

“No, why should I?”

“Where do I start? Put aside all the gaffes. He’s the one who, during their debate, cited the wrong part of the Constitution when asked to describe the role of the vice president. As a new member of Congress, he voted to cut off funding to the South Vietnamese. This helped lead to the slaughter of millions in that country and Cambodia. Biden routinely challenged President Ronald Reagan on fighting the Cold War, even though even some Reagan haters now believe Reagan’s policies helped speed up the fall of the Soviet Union. Biden opposed the first Gulf War. Wrong. He supported the Iraq War, then argued that Iraq should be divided into three parts, then opposed the surge – said it wouldn’t work – and then opposed the war that he earlier voted for. Wrong.”

“C’mon, you’re entitled to change your opinion.”

“You are. But we are talking about judgment. And Palin has taken a consistent and defensible position on the war. You may disagree, but at least she’s clear. And the surge did work. Iraq might just make it. We’ll see what the Middle East is like in 20 years. So far this month (of December), zero coalition combat deaths in Iraq. Pretty impressive.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“And I don’t know how you feel about abortion. But Palin is, as I’m sure you know, strongly pro-life. She learns she’s pregnant with a child with Down syndrome. Even many pro-lifers would have aborted that child. Palin didn’t. That’s talking the talk and walking the walk, and yes, ‘us guys’ think it’s admirable.”

“I, I don’t know whether she’s bright enough.”

“And a lot of people on the left thought President George W. Bush was dumb, too. Are you one of them?

“I admit it.”

“Did you know he had better grades in college than Al Gore?”

“He did?”

“Did you know he scored higher on his military IQ test than did John Kerry?”

“No.”

“Did you know he got a higher SAT score than did Rhodes scholar Bill Bradley?”

“No.”

“Obama is clearly smart,” I said.

“Yeah, and he doesn’t turn people off. He’s brilliant.”

“OK. And it took Obama nearly three months to decide how to respond to the request for more troops in Afghanistan. In making important decisions – things that matter – a president spends more time than it takes to answer a reporter’s question on what the ‘Bush Doctrine’ means. Oh, and about turning people off, Palin’s popularity is now about equal to Obama’s.”

“Well, I just feel more comfortable with him.”

“Would you feel comfortable with him if he were a low-tax, low-regulation, limited-government, strong-national-security Republican – same guy, different views?”

“Probably not.”

“OK, then this is really about ideology.”

“Well –” he laughed.

“Were you OK with bailing out all those banks?”

“No, but Bush did it, too.”

“He shouldn’t have, but how we got there is about government butting into the housing business. What about bailing out GM?”

“No.”

“Do you think the stimulus package truly ‘created or saved’ a bunch of jobs?”

“No.”

“Are you OK with Obamacare?”

Dad’s doctor suddenly turned into Mr. Hyde. He teed off on the government dictating how he should practice medicine. He predicted that costs would go up, not down. He predicted that quality would go down, not up. He talked about the importance of the profit incentive.

“Sarah Palin feels the same way you do.”

As for my dad, some swelling, occasional dizziness – not bad for a 94-year-old. Thank you for asking.

By now, the script should be disturbingly familiar. Whether in the Middle East, or increasingly in America, a fanatical Muslim blows up or goes on a shooting spree, killing many. This is quickly followed by “condemnations” from “Muslim civil rights groups,” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). We are then warned by the president and some newspaper editorials not to jump to conclusions, or to stereotype. Yasser Arafat wrote this script, which he used with great success throughout his bloody career as a terrorist.

Suddenly, the issue of gays in the military doesn’t seem as important as jihadists in the military.
If you were an enemy of America, not only would you fight overseas and develop nuclear weapons (Iran), you would also engage in an even more effective strategy by striking at America’s underbelly. This is our most vulnerable region because we now tolerate virtually everything, indulge in political correctness and subscribe to a bogus belief that if radical Islamists can see we mean them no harm, they will mean us no harm.

The federal government at all levels has hired and promoted Muslims to influential positions. It requires “sensitivity training” for federal employees, including those who work at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Last week, the House Judiciary Committee, dominated by liberal Democrats, defied the White House and removed from the USA Patriot Act a tool for tracking non-U.S. citizens in anti-terrorism investigations. As our enemies grow stronger and more emboldened, they see us becoming weaker and less committed.

No amount of evidence — from Koran verses urging the killing of “infidels,” to cries of “God is great,” reportedly shouted by the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — will cure our self-deception. Sun Tzu famously wrote that all war is deception. But it takes two to deceive and the United States is behaving like a willing partner.

People claiming to know Hasan told interviewers he made frequent statements against the wars and the U.S. presence in Islamic countries. Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, told reporters after he was briefed on the shootings that Hasan “took a lot of advanced training in shooting.” Why would a psychiatrist need advanced training in shooting unless he believed in murder as therapy? Shouldn’t that, coupled with his statements about “the aggressor” and other actions — including his preference for Muslim clothing — have alerted someone in authority that he might be a time bomb waiting to go off? Yes, absolutely. But who wants to jeopardize a career by raising such questions and becoming the target of “civil rights groups” and politically correct dupes? Intimidating Americans into silence when they know better is also a very effective strategy when fighting a war.

Sound minds not brainwashed by our own “re-educators” should have seen this coming. Though born in America to Jordanian immigrant parents, Hasan described himself as a “Palestinian.” He got into trouble by attempting to proselytize some of his patients.

Most top federal agencies, including the Pentagon and DHS, now have offices of “civil liberties,” offices recommended by the 9/11 Commission to focus on “outreach” to the Muslim community. In this, they follow efforts by the Bush administration, which dispatched Karen Hughes to tell Muslim women in Saudi Arabia that American women are so free they can drive their own cars. The Saudi women were not impressed.

It’s one thing to be suckered by others. It’s quite another to sucker yourself.

How much longer will we tolerate fighting this war as if it were a minor crime wave? Our enemies are fighting to win and they are fighting everywhere, including within our borders. People trained to appear non-threatening, until the threat becomes obvious and it is too late to do anything about it, are infiltrating our government and society at every level.

It is irrelevant that some have put the number of radicalized Muslims worldwide at 10 percent. Even if that figure is accurate, one hundred million jihadists can cause a lot of damage, as they plot the destruction of Western democracies. Other wars have been won with far fewer soldiers and far fewer dupes.

by Steve Breen

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