Say it ain't so, Sarah

I cringed when I heard Sarah Palin suggest that human activity might be to blame for so-called global warming in her ABC News interview with Charlie Gibson last week. The Republican VP nominee's claim instantly conjured up images of French President Nicolas Sarkozy breaking many of the pledges he boldly made during the presidential election campaign here in France in early 2007. As I watched Sarah Palin’s cut-and-thrust with the MSM (via the Internet here in France), I seriously wondered for one moment whether her remark was not yet another example of a politician saying one thing and doing another, once in office or on his or her way there.

Forgive my sensitivity. After all, we, American-inspired French conservatives, who have been gullible enough to believe that France might ever become anything other than a stronghold of socialism, have had our fair share of rude awakenings since the days of Turgot, Tocqueville, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Frederic Bastiat.

Consider the latest wakeup call. As candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy straight-facedly promised to reform France along clear-cut free-market principles. Granted, since then, he has cut some taxes in an effort to boost investment and stimulate growth and made moves to dispel the notion that the work ethic is a dirty word.

However, where are the cuts in welfare spending that should have gone hand in hand with the tax changes? Instead, the entitlement mentality is still the cultural norm, and President Sarkozy has been busy implementing his very own brand of Robin Hood economics, robbing hard-working, hard-saving, law-abiding citizens not only to pay for his Al Gore-certified green revolution but also to bribe loafers and welfare queens to get back to work:

** He has approved green taxes on anything from cars, home appliances, and flat-screen TVs to computers, number crunchers for school children and even plastic cutlery used in barbecues and other outdoor meals;

** He has “asked” Total, France’s biggest oil company, to make a $312-million contribution to the French Treasury to help those who can’t afford it pay for nest winter’s heating bills following last summer’s rise in oil prices;

** Worst of all, he has just slapped a new 1.1% new tax on capital gains and other investment to fund a back-to-work program, all in the name of solidarity, a code word for socialistic wealth transfers here in France.

The list goes on. Bottom line? While Sarkozy's approval ratings have been edging up, France’s GDP growth in this year’s second quarter plummeted to –0.3%. Another batch of taxes and France will technically be in a recession by next quarter.

So please, Mrs. Palin, however morale-boosting your selection as John McCain’s running mate might justifiably be, forget about man-made global what-do-you-call-it and let us hear you talk consistently about free enterprise, traditional values and strong national defense.

Let us see you walk the wholeheartedly conservative walk all the way to victory on Nov. 4 -- and from there to the Oval Office in 2012.

Shoulda said rouge on a corpse

I absolutely don't believe Obama was jabbing at Sarah Palin with his "lipstick on a pig" remark yesterday, and I hope she and McCain laugh it off or shrug it off. Repay him with grace for his gracious refusal last week to drag Bristol into the campaign. Send him a gift box of lipsticks from Avon and move on. I'll bet that around the Illinois Senate where Obama served, as around the Colorado Senate where I served, two of the cliches to describe a futile spin effort were that you can try to put lipstick on a pig or rouge on a corpse, but you'll fool no one. Young Obie probably absorbed both in his vocabulary when Sarah was unknown beyond Wasilla. Don't you know he wishes now that his preferred cosmetic for mocking his opponents' claim of change had been rouge.

If the remark wasn't a slur, though, it was still a gaffe, a big and easily avoidable one. Which gives more evidence that Obama is badly off his game right now, rattled by the Palin phenomenon and the dramatic momentum shift since his Invesco acceptance speech. (How long ago that already seems!)

Any candidate thinking clearly on his feet, as you simply have to do at every moment in the big leagues, would have done a silent self-edit when "lipstick" and "pig" presented themselves in the same sentence and instantly substituted -- rather than added, as he did, too late -- the smelly fish reference or something else with no double entendre. Barack did this to himself because he's obviously not thinking clearly at this season of unexpected adversity.

You can hardly blame the poor guy. It's tough out there all of a sudden. Exhibit A would be the New York Times front-page story last Sunday: "Rival Tickets are Redrawing Battlegrounds. Palin Helps GOP Put More States in Play." It said in part:

Fresh from the Republican convention, Senator John McCain’s campaign sees evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is energizing conservatives in the battleground of Ohio while improving its chances in Pennsylvania and several Western states that Senator Barack Obama has been counting on, [including] Nevada, New Mexico [and] Colorado.

Exhibit B, corroborating this, is the 13,000 who turned out for McPalin in Colorado Springs on Saturday. With any other running mate, Mac would have drawn about 1300.

Exhibits C and D, a couple of columns that have made waves this week on talk radio and the conservative blogs. Pundits can say anything, of course, and two swallows don't make a summer, but what's striking is the confident prediction of not just defeat but decisive defeat for Obama, partly as a result of the VP matchup.

Heather Higgins, board chair of the Independent Women's Forum, wrote on Townhall.com:

Here’s an unconventional prediction: in this race, unlike those before, the Vice President will actually matter, particularly in what they capture relative to that anti-Washington sentiment. Barring major mishap, here’s a second unconventional prediction: this isn’t going to be a close election, but will look far less like 2000 or 2004 than it does like McGovern in ’72.

And Spengler (pseudonym of an Asia Times columnist whose identity not even Google seems to know) wrote in his latest piece, which Rush Limbaugh trumpeted to the world on Tuesday:

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

To repeat, and use another cliche, these are but straws in the wind. But it was interesting to hear Hugh Hewitt, no incautious cheerleader, also speculating yesterday that we may be seeing everything start to crumble for Barack Obama and the supposed Democratic sure thing.

One reason, then, for Obie not to have made the safer remark in his Ohio speech that "You can't put rouge on a corpse" is that he may be starting to get morbid feelings about his own chances in November. Final cliche: Never mention rope in house of a hanged man.

Two utterly opposite candidates

Mirroring this extraordinary political year the conventions of both parties were unusual, unpredictable and given to striking twists and surprises. Aside from the continuing guerrilla warfare between the Clinton and Obama camps - a media delight - the truly remarkable aspect of the Democratic convention was the stunning spectacle of the nominee’s acceptance speech. Probably not since the Roman Coliseum mounted extravagant triumphs for the return of victorious emperors has the world seen such spectacular pageantry revolving around one man.

Without question the Obama nomination is a historic milestone which certainly justifies a reasonable degree of grandeur. Oddly however despite Obama’s well-deserved reputation for spellbinding oratory, informed opinion concluded that the show was better than the speech.

Throughout the campaign John McCain has struggled to avoid being eclipsed by his opponent’s money, media dominance, and sheer star power. Occasionally his efforts have been rather weak - visiting a German restaurant in Ohio to counter Obama’s entertainment of 200,000 Berliners - but most of his quick-release counterpunching ads have been effective, and they have clearly drawn blood -- notably the brilliant enlisting of Paris Hilton and Charlton Heston to tag Obama as a celebrity lightweight.

McCain, however, surpassed himself with his vice-presidential announcement. The “leak-free” timing - barely a dozen hours after Obama’s acceptance speech - was masterful, and the selection -“surprise” would be a gross understatement - of Sarah Palin turned the whole news cycle upside down and caused a jaded and chronically self-congratulating national media to scramble and rework countless assumptions about the state of the campaign.

Beyond stepping all over any “bounce” from the Obama speech, the Palin selection, when contrasted with the weak and defensive choice of Washington “lifer” Joe Biden, recasts the whole question of who is the real “candidate of change”.

The Republican convention - truncated by the sudden eruption of the hurricane season - sharply contrasted with the doings in Denver. While the Democrats put on a sound and light spectacle - unburdened by any substance - the GOP event was by comparison muted, and even drab, but redeemed by its Spartan brevity and the arresting acceptance speeches of its candidates.

So, in the wake of the two conventions, what can be said about this contest for the world’s most important job?

The dominant reality is the closeness of the polls. Historically Democrats have exited their convention with leads ranging from 16 (Kerry) to 25 (Dukakis) points and then drifted downward. Today the race is virtually dead even. Despite economic distress at home and an unpopular war abroad that had Democrats plausibly dreaming of a 1964-type sweep Obama’s numbers have consistently underperformed what voter identification and generic matchup numbers suggest they should be doing.

There are two reasons for this. The lesser is that in McCain - despite the heartburn he has given conservatives over the years - Republicans ended up with the one and only candidate who could effectively compete in that ocean of independent and weakly partisan voters who decide every Presidential election.

The greater reason however is the continuing mystery that is Barack Obama. Despite unprecedented albeit not-too-probing media focus, Obama remains essentially an unknown commodity. Moreover a significant slice of the electorate harbors abiding suspicion that he is very different from what he claims to be.

Evidence revealing Obama’s true identity is not hard to find. A close reading of his 1995 autobiography - written before he entered politics and therefore surprisingly candid - his associations as a community organizer (ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation), his record as a state legislator, notably his acquiescence and participation in the notoriously corrupt practices of the Daley machine in Chicago, and various unguarded public and private utterances (e.g. “clinging to guns and God”) unmask not just the Senate’s most liberal member, but rather an extreme radical deeply alienated from and contemptuous of the mainstream culture and value system of the country he seeks to lead.

Only the relentless determination of the national media to hear, see, and speak no evil regarding the “Chosen One” have sustained this stealth candidacy and prevented the American people from discovering the unpalatable truth about Obama. To date only Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers have tumbled out of Obama’s dark closet -- and not even the full story about them.

The truth is that never in our entire history have we had two presidential candidates so utterly opposite in their character, experience, vision, and values. The election will turn on whether this reality is revealed or remains concealed.

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.

Barack channels Marx

It's no accident that Obama dwells on the purported economic malaise as his main selling point. His solution is the Marxist one: redistribution. This is why he constantly refers to “taxing the rich” as the solution, a solution that all good Marxists long to impose on our nation. But would it really be a solution? Consider the underlying assumptions. The first assumption is that the economic pie is fixed and can be taken for granted. When Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in the 1840’s, the industrial revolution was young and its underlying economic theories were largely unformed. Marx drew upon the agricultural themes laid down by Malthus. Wealth was indestructible land, and the income crops grew regardless of who owned the land. Therefore, why would not industrial wealth be the same: fixed and indestructible? And if “justice” in agriculture is to redistribute the land, why would not workers “owning the means of production” not be the same expression of justice?

The next assumption is the desirability of a “steady state” economy. The green movement which opposes population growth and economic activities of most kinds are the natural allies of the Marxists. Both groups strive for the mythical static economy that neither shrinks or grows, that is predictable and controllable, that is “in harmony with nature”.

But these assumptions are false and dangerous. It is no accident that most of the ardent Marxists are liberal arts majors, gleefully devoid of real economic knowledge! The typical Marxist is a professor somewhere who continually spouts off about “the workers” without owning a pair of coveralls and without calluses on his hands. With tenure, feeding at the public trough in some state university, the professor doesn’t know what he doesn’t know!

For one thing, to define justice as equality is a mistake. Not all members of society have equal gifts. If the entrepreneurial spirit and success are punished, all of society is poorer! Once the seizure of power and the redistribution is over, the economy will contract, bringing with it poverty for all. “ Equal outcomes” means all of society equally poor at the subsistence level.

The next thing the Marxists don’t get is that wealth is NOT a static fixed pie! Economies grow or die. To stick to the agricultural metaphor, entrepreneurs can, in effect, "create farmland." The wealth pie expands or contracts depending on the policies and incentives put in place. For Obama to dwell on the “haves” and the “have nots” is a fraud. With 70% of the millionaires in this country SELF MADE, the real issue is between the “doers” and the “do nots." But every member of society CAN be treated with equal dignity!

This is the fraud perpetrated on blacks in this country by the likes of Jesse Jackson. Rather than tell his flock to stay in school, to work hard and to work to improve their lives, he tells his people they are victims. The problem is “white people conspiring to keep you down." Dropping out of school, getting pregnant at 13, being content to stay generation after generation on welfare has “nothing to do with their poverty!” His solution is to march on the capital and demand that society just “give” them money, (such as the “reparations for slavery”, classic victimology!) But the promise of America is not equality of condition but equal opportunity. Until these leaders change this emphasis, blacks will remain on the bottom of the economic ladder.

The last thing the Marxists don’t understand is the American ideal, which is if you work hard, there’s no limit to what you can achieve. The “rags to riches” stories are what attract people to this great land of ours! Americans want to get ahead. Americans want to do well, they want to grow their potential, not be stuck in a static planned economy with a Marxist Party elite telling them how to live their lives.

The two nominees: What we know

Now that the conventions are over, a 60 day sprint to the general election for president remains. The conventions were alternately interesting, boring, predictable and downright electrifying -- embodying all that is compelling about American politics. It was great theater. But now it's time for substance, because this is really the most important job interview in the world. The seriousness of this endeavor should be obvious to anyone paying attention since 9/11/2001, and has been compounded further by $4 gasoline, a banking and mortgage mess and a general slowdown in the economy.

The choice we make in November -- particularly in light of a certain Democrat majority in both houses of Congress -- will be extremely critical to the future of the country. While every four years we hear "this is the most important election in memory" -- this really is.

So it is time to get serious. And in that vein, I'd like you to consider the following:

This election will be about more than character and experience -- but it is important to keep in mind that in a president, character counts more than almost anything else. Though Barack Obama's acceptance speech in Denver was full of "I will save the country" promises, the reality is that in our system of shared powers, the president can't work miracles. He's part of a complex dance with the House, Senate and Judiciary. Where the president's decisions alone matter most is in his role as Commander in Chief. Most everything else requires at least some advice, consent or legislation from the Congress.

A good example of the importance of presidential character and judgment is Harry Truman: when he became president in 1945 the only real tools he brought to the job were his good instincts, his basic values and a strong sense of right and wrong. He also brought to bear a strong ethic of public service, which enabled him to avoid the temptations of personal enrichment that ensnare so many in government. The president must have a solid sense of ethics and a well-defined moral code to be successful. It is far more important than any policy prescription -- especially in times of crisis.

On this score the choice is clear. As we saw last night in his speech to the RNC, and as we know from his well-documented bio, John McCain's life has been about public service. He's the personification of courage in so many ways -- a man who has give so much to his country, and understands that the first and last job of holding public office is serving the people -- not himself. Moreover, in a lifetime of being in the public eye, his values, character and judgment are well documented and proven. He's been right more often than he's been wrong, and he has the internal compass and fortitude to stand up to criticism from within his own party -- which he has often been subject to. He's not right on all the issues, but we know who he is and what he stands for.

And what of Barack Obama? He's obviously smart and well spoken. But we really don't know anything about him. Where are his good friends who will vouch for him? His classmates at Harvard who know his background and character? The Obama campaign has been designed to hide the real Obama, by being a carefully controlled, crafted and scripted program that has shielded him from questions about his past.

In the one setting where he took direct questions -- at the Saddleback Church debate with Rick Warren -- his answers were unclear, vague and indecisive. One gets the very real sense that we don't know what he thinks because he doesn't know what he thinks. We don't know why he wants to be president -- except that he wants to "change" America. We don't know how, or why, or what change that is, however. He thinks (and his wife obviously also believes) that America is somehow "broken". But how will he "fix" it?

What we do know about Barack Obama is that on the few issues where he has taken a stand, his judgment has been poor. Here's a sampling:

** We don't know much about Obama's background, but we do know that he and his family attended a a racist and anti-American church for 20 years. We know that the pastor, Jeremiah Wright, married Obama and his wife Michelle and baptized his two children. We know that Obama stood behind Wright until the pastor's comments made it politically untenable, and then (and only then) did he move to distance himself.

** We know that Michelle Obama wrote a thesis at Princeton that promoted black seperatism as a worthy goal and who said 'There was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the black community, I am obligated to this community and will utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit the black community first and foremost."

** We know that Obama has had a relationship for the past decade with William Ayres, a noted 1960s radical and unrepentant member of the Weather Underground terrorist group. We know that Obama has been to Ayres home and that they sat on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge together (read more about it here: Obama Needs to Explain his Ties to William Ayers ). As Michael Barone reports:

Ayers was one of the original grantees of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform organization in the 1990s, and was cochairman of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one the two operational arms of the CAC. Obama, then not yet a state senator, became chairman of the CAC in 1995.

Later in that year, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state Senate campaign was held in Ayers's apartment. Ayers later wrote a memoir, and an article about him appeared in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001. "I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers is quoted as saying. "I feel we didn't do enough."Ayers was a terrorist in the late 1960s and 1970s whose radical group set bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

** We know also that Obama has a relationship with convicted felon Tony Rezko, who was involved in a shady deal to help Obama purchase his home in Hyde Park, Chicago.

** We know that on the issue of welfare reform, Obama took a position in the Illinois State Senate that he was against it -- fearing (as most liberals did) that it would force people off the rolls and onto the streets. Bill Clinton, to his great credit, pushed the Democrats to support it 1996 and it has been an unprecedented success. Obama admits now that he made a mistake in opposing it -- but it shows that he fundamentally misunderstands human nature: when people have the right incentives, they are capable of providing for themselves. But Obama's judgment is mired in the victimization mantra of the left.

** We know that Obama has been wrong on Iraq. He will claim his judgment about the war itself in 2003 was right, and that he opposed the war from the beginning. But Obama didn't have a vote on it, and it was relatively risk free for him to take that position. And, in any event, his claim that he was right on the war because he opposed it -- because it has been a "failure" -- is not at all a given. We don't know what the long-term results of the fall of Saddam Hussein will be, but if the current events are a sign of things to come, history may very well judge the war in Iraq as a success.

** With certainty, however, we know that he opposed the surge and wanted to remove U.S. troops staring in January 2007. That would have resulted in chaos and the destruction of the nascent Iraqi state, and provide a vital victory for Al Qaeda and the insurgency. It would have been a disaster for American interests, providing Iran with access to one of the largest supplies of oil on earth. Obama can't even admit that he was wrong on the surge -- and has said repeatedly that he would oppose it all over again, even knowing what he knows now.

** We know that Obama's domestic policies on virtually everything -- from taxes to healthcare -- put him on the wrong side of history. We know from our own experiences and the record now in Europe that high taxes on corporations and investments impede economic growth. Obama's plans to raise corporate, dividend and estate taxes are precisely opposite of what the growing economies of the world are doing. His polices on healthcare expand the role of government and place draconian requirements on small and medium sized businesses -- the very engine of growth in our economy. His energy policy is one that is based on extensive government investment in alternative energy technology -- but largely at the expense of current oil supplies that are needed to drive prices down.

** In fact, Obama is on record as believing that higher gas prices are acceptable as a way of forcing conservation. He doesn't seem to care if we pay more at the pump if it facilitates his goals of saving the planet from global warming. In an interview with NBC News in June, Obama said this:

When asked by Harwood if higher gas prices were an incentive to shift to alternative means of energy, Obama said the U.S. has "been slow to move in a better direction when it comes to energy usage." When Harwood followed up and asked if the higher prices then could actually help, Obama responded this way: "I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.

The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly U.S. automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now."

The goal of lower emissions and reducing greenhouse gasses is a good one -- but doing it in a way that punishes those who can least afford it is not the way to go.

**************** If you want change, voting for Obama/Biden is not the way to go. If you want to shake up Washington, sending Obama and Joe Biden and his 36 years in the U.S. Senate -- to conspire with a Democrat Congress is not the way to go. Obama and Biden will only expand government in line with special interests -- teacher's unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers and all the usual suspects.

John McCain, however, has a record of opposing special interests -- of both parties. He will be a thorn in the side of Pelosi and Reid and serve as a needed check and balance to one-party rule. He will compromise when needed to advance the public good, but he will be a strong advocate of responsible government that will be sorely needed with the Democrat's in control of Congress.

We have a simple choice to make the election: between a man with a solid, known track-record of courage and compromise, and a man with almost no record to speak of. It's a choice between someone who has the right motivations for seeking the presidency, and a man who's background leaves many questions unanswered.

This is no time to take a flier on Barak Obama.