[Posted by Karl] Liberals are getting increasingly touchy about the looming prospect of voters judging Pres. Obama’s term of office. They are almost as touchy about those noting that Obama wants to focus his campaign on his opponents, real and imagined, rather than on his record or the economy. For example, Ed Kilgore found a straw man resembling Jay Cost and proceeded to beat it as thoroughly as Obama has been beating various straw men these past months. Kilgore claims that “Cost even goes so far as to tell swing voters what they have to care about,” then quotes Jay: I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the average swing voter does not want to talk about the “war on women,” the Buffett rule, or whatever else Team Obama is going to throw out there in the weeks and months to come. That voter wants to talk about jobs, the economy, the deficit, gas prices, the health care bill– in other words, all the issues where the president is vulnerable . Those not already in the tank for Obama might notice that Jay is not telling swing voters what to think about, but offering his opinion about what they want to talk about. Gallup suggests Cost is correct, with their most recent poll showing voters — even Democrats — think healthcare, unemployment, the debt, national defense and terrorism, and gas prices are all more important issues than birth control policy. Indeed, I doubt Kilgore could find a poll showing any other result (or he would have cited one). TIME’s Joe Klein has the same complaint, this time with a New Democrat-type: Bill Galston has a piece in The New Republic listing the reasons why Barack Obama is going to have a tough time winning reelection in November. He’s right about most of them, but wrong about the one at the very top–he buys into the political science mythology that some presidential elections are referendums on the incumbent’s record and others are straight-ahead choices. I’ve seen some elections that are referendums on the President, but those have almost always been Congressional campaigns, like 2010 and 2006 or 1994. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a presidential election that was a pure referendum, and every presidential election I’ve covered involved a choice. There are good reasons for this. Funny how the so-called “reality-based community” abandons academics when they report findings inconvenient to liberals, ain’t it? Political scientists will tell you that Presidents get pretty much all the blame on (or credit for) the economy, even with divided government, even in presidential election years. Plus, Klein’s historical examples as bad as his knowledge of the studies. Klein claims that “[i]n 1976, Jimmy Carter tried to make the election a referendum on Richard Nixon–and was in the process of failing at that, when Gerald Ford turned in a weak debate performance and saved the election for Carter.” Political scientist Lynn Varveck explains in her book, The Message Matters , that 1976 was an exceptional year in which Gerald Ford could not successfully campaign on the economy, precisely because Carter could make the contest a referendum on the Nixon era. Klein then claims: 1988 should have been a referendum on the Reagan presidency–Michael Dukakis surged to an early lead in the polls because people wanted a change, then crashed when he couldn’t answer a debate question about what he’d do if his wife were raped and murdered (We haven’t heard a debate like that in a while). In reality, 1988 was a referendum on the Reagan presidency — Klein just rejects the result of that referendum. The outcome in 1988 neatly tracked the result expected from the economy . Those pesky political scientists would tell Klein early polls are not predictive , if only he would listen. But he cannot listen. If he listened, he would have to abandon his fantasy that Dukakis was somehow done in by a lousy debate answer. (Again, political scientists could tell Klein about the historically small effects that presidential debates have had on general election polls and outcomes. ) If Klein finds regression analyses and scatter plots too difficult, perhaps he can consider public opinion polling. That’s what William Galston (whom Klein criticizes) did last October: When a president is running for reelection, the electorate is primarily motivated by its judgment of the incumbent’s job performance. Consider some Pew Research Center data on recent presidential contests. In the spring of 1992, two-thirds of George H. W. Bush’s supporters said that they would be casting their vote for him rather than against Bill Clinton, while two-thirds of Clinton supporters said their vote reflected opposition to Bush. In the spring of 1996, 60 percent of Clinton’s supporters said they would be voting for him rather than against Bob Dole, while 60 percent of Dole’s supporters said their vote reflected opposition to Clinton. Early in 2004, more than 80 percent of George W. Bush’s supporters were for him rather than against John Kerry, while two-thirds of Kerry’s supporters were motivated by opposition to Bush. To be sure, these numbers tend to shift during the general election as the contenders become better known. Still, by Election Day in 1996, only 47 percent of Dole’s supporters said that they were casting their vote in his favor rather than against Clinton; by election day in 2004, only 43 percent of Kerry’s supporters said that they were casting an affirmative vote for him. Now look at the most recent Pew results , which showed Obama in a tie with Mitt Romney. About three-quarters of Obama’s support is for him rather than against Romney, while more than two-thirds of Romney’s supporters say they will cast their votes against Obama rather than for Romney. In short, the historical data, regardless of type, points to 2012 being primarily a referendum on Obama and the economy. Galston suggests that in a general election contest against an unpopular incumbent, the main hurdles for the challenger are to appear competent and non-threatening. Instead of touting his record at every opportunity, Obama seems focused on making Romney seem scary. But if Carter couldn’t make Reagan seem scary, how successful is Obama likely to be? –Karl
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Yes, 2012 will be (mostly) a referendum on Obama
I take comfort in the fact that I can still drive old cars instead of new ones. I don’t have to have six air bags, stability control, back-up cameras or OnStar. If I like, I can use an old F100 pick-up as my daily driver. Or enjoy the computer-free rowdiness of my ancient muscle car. I do not want all the Stuff that today’s (and surely, tomorrow’s ) vehicles are fitted with, by order of D.C. I don’t feel the need. It’s expensive, often absurdly complex — and a lot of it is simply overbearing. I don’t like being assaulted by a “belt minder” buzzer if I choose not to wear my seat belt. I don’t have any use for a back-up camera (never having run over a child). And most of all, I like being able to squeal the tires without being countermanded by an electronic Mrs. Doubtfire. I definitely do not want a vehicle fitted with any sort of data recording device or GPS transponder — which pretty much all new cars now have. If I’m signing the check, I’ll do what I like with the damn thing. But I fear this window is closing. At some point, probably within the next five years if not sooner — older, pre-computer vehicles will be forcibly decommissioned. It will become a crime to use them for anything other than “parade” or “cruise” events — strictly monitored and enforced. It will be done in the name of the environment — or safety . Maybe both. Several states have passed laws making it much harder to register and drive an older vehicle on public roads. In my home state of Virginia, for instance, the police have the authority to conduct roadside “inspections” of any vehicle wearing antique plates. If, in the opinion of the cop — who is a cop and not a mechanic — the vehicle does not meet either safety or emissions requirements, he may physically seize the car’s plates and registration on the spot — and have the vehicle impounded. It’s then up to you to prove your car has not been unlawfully modified (just as it’s up to you to disprove whatever charges are filed against you by the IRS). Other states have repealed laws that once exempted antique vehicles more than 25 or 30 years old from the emissions inspections required of modern cars — even though the number of cars over 30 years old in regular use is so low that their impact on air quality is nil. That’s the leading edge of the spear. Rigmarole such as the above can be a hassle — but at least, it can still be dealt with. Most old car hobbyists are fastidious about maintenance — and keeping their cars up to specification is already par for the course. But there’s the rub: “… up to specifications.” What happens when laws are passed requiring older cars to meet current safety and/or emissions specifications? You know the answer. It will be the end of the road. Old cars will become true museum pieces. We will no longer be able to operate them on public roads — unless you’re rich enough to retrofit your car into compliance. At the very least, I expect the government to pass a law requiring that every motor vehicle be fitted with a GPS transponder. Progressive Insurance is already pushing for it — voluntarily, of course. For the moment. Don’t doubt it — the day is coming when it will no longer be voluntary. The “safety” lobby and environmental fanatics will demand it. Government will be happy to oblige. It wants information, in real time — all the time. And most of all, it wants control . Your movements will be kept track of, the information stored in computer banks and cross-referenced against other bits of data to aid the state in properly profiling you. It is already happening. To expect that it will not happen to cars is wishful thinking. The technology exists to erect the “intelligent highway” — one where transponders in your vehicle communicate in real time with satellites overhead and receiver/transmitters posted along the side of the road. It is possible to make driving any faster than whatever the speed limit is impossible simply by sending a set of instructions to your car’s computer. And if a cop wants to stop you, he’ll be able to shut you down at the touch of a button — literally. GM’s OnStar system already has this capability — and it has been used. So far, only against car-jackers and other deserving parties. But that’s just the opening chorus of the opera. Any old car that can’t be monitored, that isn’t subject to immediate control, will be outlawed. Preventing you from doing a burnout is only the beginning.
The storm that erupted yesterday when Barack Obama woke up and discovered the Supreme Court of the United States was not only not elected but it could overturn “duly passed” laws, even those passed in the dead of the night by the barest of purchased majorities, has been more than adequately covered on these pages and others by actual lawyers and those who think they are. I’m pretty sure Obama knows what Marbury v. Madison is, even though yesterday he gave a darned good impression of being a total goober in regards to our Constitution. The simplest explanation is that he knows how the vote went on Friday and is working to change that vote, failing that he is setting the predicate for running against the Supreme Court in November. According to Supreme Court protocol When oral arguments are concluded, the Justices have to decide the case. They do so at what is known as the Justices’ Conference. Two Conferences are held per week when Court is in session, on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. The Justices vote on cases heard on Mondays and Tuesdays of a given week at their Wednesday afternoon Conference. The Justices vote on cases heard on Wednesday at their Friday afternoon Conference. When Court is not in session, usually only a Friday Conference is held. … According to Supreme Court protocol, only the Justices are allowed in the Conference room at this time—no police, law clerks, secretaries, etc. The Chief Justice calls the session to order and, as a sign of the collegial nature of the institution, all the Justices shake hands. The first order of business, typically, is to discuss the week’s petitions for certiorari, i.e., deciding which cases to accept or reject. After the petitions for certiorari are dealt with, the Justices begin to discuss the cases that were heard since their last Conference. According to Supreme Court protocol, all Justices have an opportunity to state their views on the case and raise any questions or concerns they may have. Each Justice speaks without interruptions from the others. The Chief Justice makes the first statement, then each Justice speaks in descending order of seniority, ending with the most junior justice—the one who has served on the court for the fewest years. When each Justice is finished speaking, the Chief Justice casts the first vote, and then each Justice in descending order of seniority does likewise until the most junior justice casts the last vote. After the votes have been tallied, the Chief Justice, or the most senior Justice in the majority if the Chief Justice is in the dissent, assigns a Justice in the majority to write the opinion of the Court. The most senior justice in the dissent can assign a dissenting Justice to write the dissenting opinion. If a Justice agrees with the outcome of the case, but not the majority’s rationale for it, that Justice may write a concurring opinion. Any Justice may write a separate dissenting opinion. When there is a tie vote, the decision of the lower Court stands. This can happen if, for some reason, any of the nine Justices is not participating in a case (e.g., a seat is vacant or a Justice has had to recuse). Based on this we know the three Obamacare-related cases were voted on at the Friday afternoon conference. What happens Monday? A full-throated attack by the White House and its devoted corps of sycophants on the very idea that the Supreme Court should hear the case. Is this a coincidence? I doubt it. If is is axiomatic that the Supreme Court reads election returns, it is also true that they read the newspapers and public opinion polls. It can’t have escaped the notice of even a mediocrity like Sotomayor that 1) this is an election year and 2) Obama’s political fate seems to be closely tied to the outcome of the case. To be clear, it is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that a case of this significance to the reelection campaign of an incumbent president is going to remain secret until June. The stakes are way too high. The first question is how, if there are no clerks, secretaries, etc., in the conference how would have the president found out about the decision… and I think the actual vote? Paradoxically, if there is a leak it is much easier to identify the source than if there were assorted support staff in the room. While support staff would have been the likely suspects they actually have much to lose and little to gain from leaking. If found out, they will lose their job. If not found out their reward will be minor. No fame. No fortune. Just the day-in-day-out knowledge that the person they leaked the information to controls their future. The people who can leak without fear are the justices themselves. If one did leak they are in no danger of losing their job and while some of their colleagues might be miffed they would, if exposed, be the toast of the town in Manhattan and Los Angeles. (GASP… did you just insinuate a Supreme Court justice might breach the holiest of holies? Remember, my friends, we’re dealing with Democrats here.) If a leak occurred after Friday’s conference, it is very easy to figure out the single justice with the requisite means, motive, and opportunity. What I think was afoot yesterday was a blast aimed one man. The Cowardly Lion of the Supreme Court. If the key conference vote on striking down Obamacare was 5-4, and that is what many observers are predicting based on the oral arguments, the man with the fifth vote is Anthony Kennedy. In the conference for Planned Parenthood v. Casey , Kennedy had cast the fifth vote that would have gutted Roe v. Wade . At some point during the drafting of the opinion, Kennedy got a case of the vapors and changed his vote thereby upholding Roe and ensuring another 20 million children were aborted. The Administration has probably calculated that it can bring enough heat on Kennedy via its public statements to convince him to change his vote. And if he doesn’t Obama has declared war on the Supreme Court as a tactic to energize his base. He sort of began that during the 2010 State of the Union when he simply lied about the Citizens United case. While some have called into question Obama’s wisdom in taking a whack at the Supreme Court to their face on national television as well as this week’s onslaught on a yet officially undecided case, actually it is inspired. If you’ve ever played/coached/officiated a sport you know that more often than not the high maintenance player or coach can win a battle of wills with the referee. The referee wants to appear fair to the players and spectators. The coach or player wants to win. If you challenge every call against you, you can eventually wear down a referee and get calls in your favor simply because they don’t want the grief and they want to appear unbiased. Taken in toto , Obama’s actions resemble those we’d expect from a no-talent version of John McEnroe. The evidence, to me, seems strong that on Friday the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to toss Obamacare and the White House knows this to be the case.
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Does Obama Know How the Supreme Court Voted?
Less than a month ago, Barack Obama decided to give a speech on Super Tuesday, a key day in the Republican primary season. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the timing of the speech was “not a coincidence.” Perhaps he is trying to remind people that he is the president while the scrambling Republicans just hope to be. More likely he is trying to keep the cameras pointed at him, in part to distract attention away from his competitors and in part because he is a publicity hound fueled by a mild case of narcissism — as also shown by the fact that he thinks we need his opinion on every issue in the news (about which more tomorrow) and that nothing is ever his fault. Today is another important day in Republican politics, with primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Mitt Romney is expected to win all three, with some wondering aloud whether that would be a “knock-out blow” to Rick Santorum. (I very much doubt it will be a knock-out blow, though if Santorum does not win his home state of Pennsylvania in three weeks, that could prove a watershed moment despite a more favorable spate of southern states coming up in May.) Given what a potentially big day this is for Mitt Romney in the news cycle, here comes Barack Obama on cue with a plan to attack the House Republican Budget, authored by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan — who recently endorsed Romney. Early reports give a glimpse into Obama’s approach. Let’s just say it’s not one looking for common ground (not that there is much.) “It’s a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism.” The tactics can work the other way; it is possible that some of the news value of Obama’s attack on the Ryan budget (which the left is calling the Ryan-Romney budget) will be lost in coverage of the primary contests. But given the media’s role in recent years as an arm of the Obama press office, most news broadcasts and newspapers are likely to play up the president’s ultra-partisan language and play down any good news for Obama’s most likely opponent in November. Beyond the question of whether it’s wise for Obama to bring up “radical vision” when his truly radical vision for American health care is in public focus, one has to wonder whether a courageous reporter will ever ask the president why he keeps scheduling speeches on days of major Republican primary contests. I’m not holding my breath.
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Obama Can’t Shut Up (On Primary Day)
The thing I always think about movies like Friends With Kids — movies in which two people who are obviously made for each other resolutely maintain to themselves and the world that they are just good friends until the moment of epiphany when they discover they are totally hot for each other — is to wonder if such stupidity really does exist in nature or if it is entirely made up for ideological reasons. I lean toward the latter explanation. Feminists, I think, suffer from the terminal naïveté of always being ready to believe in the irrelevance of sex in human relations — even relations between lustful males and the nubile females. It’s just something they have to believe, like “the personal is the political” or “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” What they mean is that’s how it should be. They state it in the indicative rather than the imperative in order to pretend to themselves that what should be already is — even though it often isn’t and sometimes never could be. But the long-delayed romance between best friends Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt, who also wrote and directed the picture) and Jason (Adam Scott) is set in a movie with much larger ambitions. This is not just a romance but an essay in the thing to which romance was traditionally a prelude, namely family formation. If the two things had never been separated by the sexual revolution, a movie like this could never have been made. And for all its many faults — about which more in a moment — it does have the very large virtue of reintroducing the two to each other and making its intended audience of hip urban singles — and those who aspire to be or are nostalgic about having been among them — to think about what still seem to some of us the natural links between romantic love and families. Julie and Jason are part of a “Friends”-style faux family with two other couples. Leslie (Maya Rudolph) and Alex (Chris O’Dowd) lead the way in having children and Missy (Kristen Wiig) and Ben (Jon Hamm) soon follow. Eventually Julie and Jason get the idea and decide to have a baby together and share custody — they even move in together — with the stipulation that they are not in love, are not a couple, are not even attracted to each other and are still each expecting to find elsewhere the romance that has severally eluded them. But before you protest at the preposterousness of this scenario, you should know that the movie is way ahead of you. When Jason finally figures things out, he explains it to Julie: “We decided to make the kid together so we could have the romantic part later, but this is the romantic part , and all the rest was just filler.” Duh! The “filler” includes Jason’s long relationship with dancer Mary Jane (Megan Fox) and Julie’s rather less lengthy one with Kurt (Ed Burns), about whom on meeting him she rhapsodizes: “Who knew there were men like that?” To her he seems “a real, grown-up man” — the implicit comparison is with Jason whose taste in women runs to the bimbo-esque and who is described by his best friend, Julie, as “a pig when it comes to women” — though we are not made privy to any revisions she might be inclined to make in this opinion after their relationship breaks up. Julie’s and Jason’s attempts to make stable relationships apart from their shared one, consisting of a long platonic friendship and a child, are seen in the context of the troubled marriages of Leslie and Alex and Missy and Ben, both of which are put under enormous strain with the arrival of their respective offspring. Right there you can see the trouble with this movie as a study of families. The kids simply get in the way of what everybody still assumes, as they did when they were single and childless, is real life. That’s also why the kids are mere props in this movie, just as they apparently are in the lives of its adult characters. At no point does Miss Westfeldt allow us to see them as anything but more or less troublesome pets. The movie actually starts from the proposition that real life is the life of these hip Manhattan singles, gathered around a table in a swanky restaurant and looking rather askance at the social faux pas of their neighbors at the next table who have brought kids into it. That’s what kids do: they ruin your social life and maybe even your marriage. True, the movie treats them as a kind of weary inevitability for anyone with any street credibility and takes rather a dim view of the one character who, in the name of her “freedom,” flatly rejects the whole idea of reproducing. This is Jason’s slim, lithe, large-breasted girlfriend Mary Jane who says, “I could never be responsible for another living thing” — which also puts children and pets into the same category. But to the others as much as to Mary Jane, real life does not include children. Instead it consists of dating and going out with other adults for convivial and expensive meals, working and vacationing and, above all, “having sex” — all things with which children can only interfere. Especially having sex. In fact, not having sex smacks of scandal. The friends are always interested in how often each other is able to manage it, and the chief burden of parenthood is seen as the limitation it places upon one’s opportunities to copulate. One curiosity about the movie is that its natural climax comes quite a long way before the end. The three couples, plus Jason’s girlfriend and Julie’s boyfriend, are on a skiing vacation together in Vermont, along with the kids — who as usual scamper about like puppies without leaving any human impression. As they sit over dinner together, Ben, who is depressed and drinking heavily, says that some people were just not meant to be parents. He clearly has himself and Missy in mind but, perhaps envious of Julie’s and Jason’s perfect relationship, attempts to project his own misery onto them. Jason replies with a splendid outburst in response to Ben’s pessimism which purports to vindicate his still non-sexual love for Julie as the perfect foundation for child-rearing. “I am on board with everything about her,” he says and proceeds to enumerate her many charms for him, among which is the fact that “we both think organized religion is totally full of s***.” The idea seems to be that, as Missy and Ben’s marriage is obviously breaking down, they would be hard put to it to come up with a similar catalogue of each other’s virtues and that what’s really important in a relationship is the number of boxes such a couple could check about each other. Likes kids, check. Likes dogs, check. Thinks organized religion is totally full of s***, check. As Julie and Jason are perfectly compatible in every way but (so they are determined to think at this point) sexual attractiveness, they must have the sort of firm foundation that the ideal family should be built on. But instead of having them fall into each other’s arms at this point, the movie artificially stretches out its long charade of their supposed sexual incompatibility for another half hour before calling time and making them realize what everybody else has understood from the start, or certainly since the scene in the ski lodge. Why do that? Maybe because the coincidence of opinion implied by their both thinking organized religion is full of s*** is being mistaken for the sort of bond that religion itself would once have made in order to bring about and sustain marriage and child-bearing. The God-shaped hole in these people’s lives is being filled, so they think, by the kind of human chemistry (or alchemy) outlined 200 years ago by Goethe in his Elective Affinities ( Die Wahlverwandtschaften ) which they have both got to understand before they can be together. That’s the romance that Jason is talking about in the end when he says that “this is the romantic part.” He means that they have finally collected enough points of congruence between them, including the all-important sexual one, to see the pattern and so justify the existence of the family they started on the somewhat slenderer basis of sharing similar opinions and being parents to the same child. Once again, the poor kid is being devalued vis-à-vis the paramount importance given to his parents’ tender psyches and the imperative of their many lifestyle preferences. That’s the reality that Miss Westfeldt’s movie cannot escape from, and Jason’s final revelation is just a way of tacking on a sentimentally satisfying ending to a portrayal of life utterly without romance — a life in which sex has been mistaken for romance and will doubtless continue to be, as we realize when Jason offers to prove his love for the girl whom, as he now understands, he mistakenly thought he was not attracted to. He does this by saying, “Let me f*** the s*** out of you to show you I am into you.” That’s the big romantic pay-off in Miss Westfeldt’s view. You can’t help but realize that this is a movie about people who don’t really know what romance is. They’ve heard of it, and they are keen to experience it; they have all kinds of theories about it and where it comes from and what it must be like. But the way they have learned to live their lives will make it forever impossible for them.
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Friends With Kids
