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October 12, 2010

Must Reads

A sampling from the op-ed pages today:

Obama's Outsized Ego

LAT

Jonah Goldberg

"That's all right, all of you know who I am," President Obama joked last week when the presidential seal fell off his podium during a speech in Pittsburgh.

Even though the incident made headlines for no discernible journalistic reason, it was noteworthy as a succinct example of Obama's arrogance problem. Rather than make a self-deprecating joke, he opted instead to make a self-inflating one, as if to say that the title mattered less than the man.

The good news is that it's apparently not racist to call Obama arrogant anymore. Not long ago, Keith Olbermann and other gargoyles on the parapets of establishment liberalism insisted that if you were to call attention to the fact that Obama ostentatiously holds himself in very high regard, you were really calling him "uppity," if you know what I mean.

Now what was once taboo has become undeniable. Even the New Yorker's David Remnick, author of a loving biography of Obama, tells Der Spiegel, "Obama has a considerable ego."

And here's Time's Mark Halperin: "With the exception of core Obama administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusion: The White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters."

Halperin's diagnosis was inevitable, given Obama's conviction that he represented a movement that was larger than politics or even the presidency. After all, this was the man who, as a candidate, descended on Berlin as the leader of a worldwide cause that transcended national borders. And when asked in a debate what his greatest weakness was, he plumbed his soul and answered that he was disorganized. "My desk and my office doesn't look good," he said.

Of course, all presidents have healthy egos. You cannot become president, or even think you're qualified to run, if you don't think highly of yourself. Obama's arrogance problem isn't a matter of psychology but of strategy.

When Arkansas Democratic Rep. Marion Berry complained that healthcare reform felt like a replay of the Hillarycare debacle, Obama explained that the big difference between then and now was "me." In other words, the White House's plan for making everything work out was an unyielding confidence in the power of Obama's own cult of personality. That's why that cult's high priest, David Axelrod, pursued a strategy of greeting every problem as if it were an excuse for Obama to give another big speech.

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When America Feared and Reviled Catholics

LAT
Sharon Davies

The mind-set is all too familiar: A radical religious group, lurking inside the country, owing loyalty to a foreign power, threatens America. No one denies that its members have a right to worship as they please, but good Americans, patriots, feel compelled to call for curbs against the menace they present. Because of the number of Americans sharing these fears, calls for restrictions on the religion are voiced openly and unapologetically, even proudly.

Today this description may bring to mind the flap over the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in New York, or recent calls for greater restrictions on Muslims in America, like banning their service on the Supreme Court or in the Oval Office. But in fact, it describes the year 1920, when the reviled group was Roman Catholics, not Muslims. As Mark Twain once quipped, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

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Undocumented Workers: Essential but UnwelcomeLAT
Gregory Rodriguez

If Meg Whitman loses the gubernatorial race because her actions didn't jive with her words on illegal immigration, she could become a sacrificial lamb for the rest of us. Her sin is our sin. Because where illegal immigration is concerned, we are all hypocrites.

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The Paralysis of the State
DAVID BROOKS
NYT

Sometimes a local issue perfectly illuminates a larger national problem. Such is the case with the opposition of the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, to construction of a new tunnel between his state and New York.

Christie argues that a state that is currently facing multibillion-dollar annual deficits cannot afford a huge new spending project that is already looking to be $5 billion overbudget. His critics argue that this tunnel is exactly the sort of infrastructure project that New Jersey needs if it’s to prosper in the decades ahead.

Both sides are right. But what nobody seems to be asking is: Why are important projects now unaffordable? Decades ago, when the federal and state governments were much smaller, they had the means to undertake gigantic new projects, like the Interstate Highway System and the space program. But now, when governments are bigger, they don’t.

The answer is what Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal once called demosclerosis. Over the past few decades, governments have become entwined in a series of arrangements that drain money from productive uses and direct it toward unproductive ones.

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The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
FRANK RICH
NYT


Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.

Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.

At first some Republicans had trouble figuring this out. On primary eve, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee badmouthed O’Donnell’s “disturbing pattern of dishonest behavior.” On election night, Karl Rove belittled her “nutty” pronouncements and “checkered background” on Fox News. But by the morning after, bygones were bygones. The senatorial committee’s chairman, John Cornyn, rewarded O’Donnell’s “dishonest behavior” with an enthusiastic endorsement and a big check. A sweaty Rove reversed himself so fast you’d think he’d been forced to stay up all night listening to Glenn Beck’s greatest hits at top volume in a Roger Ailes re-education camp.

Rove’s flip-flop was no doubt hastened by his own cohort’s assaults on both his ideological purity and masculinity. The blogger Michelle Malkin labeled him an “effete sore loser,” and Sarah Palin publicly instructed him to “buck up.” But surely the larger motive for his retreat was the dawning recognition of just how valuable O’Donnell is to the G.O.P.’s national aspirations in November — even should she ultimately lose her own race in blue Delaware. Whatever her other talents, she’s more than willing to play the role of useful idiot for her party. She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.

Posted by stevemack at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)