Dear Reader (though not readers “per se”),
I know that things could look better on the Republican side of things, what with the Roman slaves from Germania acting all surly. Oh, wait, sorry that’s the TV show Spartacus. My apologies, I keep turning away from the riveting news coming out of the GOP primaries.
Speaking of which, it’s looking like the long slog is coming to an end. Even Erick Erickson, Jim DeMint, and the Club for Growth have made an uneasy peace with the impending Mittatorship. I think Bill Kristol is still doing the stranded-Japanese-soldier-who-hasn’t-gotten-the-news routine, but that’s about it.
Maybe things will change. Maybe Newt Gingrich’s dream scenario where a delegate from Ohio spills Orange Fanta on his shirt, forcing him to miss the roll call which in turn leads to a hilarious and bizarre series of mishaps and one-in-a-million-shot weirdnesses will ultimately reveal Newt Gingrich as the nominee on the 27th ballot. Maybe.
Could happen. But in the meantime, I think my working definition of the conservative establishment is turning out to be prescient: You’re a member of the establishment if you prematurely reconciled yourself to disappointment.
I Feel Good!
But I’ll tell you, this week is making me feel a little better about things. No, I’m not, like the Griswold family at Walley World, whistling zip-a-dee-doo-dah out of my nethers with glee over Romney. (Though I do think Romney could end up being a very successful, very conservative president if we have a Republican Congress.)
But when you look at the fog of smugness and assclownery that is rolling off the White House lawn these days, you have to be heartened a bit.
First there’s Joe Biden, the most audacious gasbag in the last 500 years. And I say that with a little more historical rigor than Biden, who seemed to pull the 500-year thing out of thin air, if by thin air you mean the thing he sits on. In the early 1500s, I believe the Duke of Marlborough broke the existing European record for talking nonstop without saying anything of discernible merit. It’s rumored that Shakespeare chronicled the duke’s braggadocio in a sonnet lost to history (“His mouth galloped without heed to day’s pass/his words drawn from his steed’s ass . . .”). Oddly, he was also, like Biden, renowned for hypnotizing people with his teeth.
Anyway, when Joe Biden says with all of that earnest, canned seriousness, that the bin Laden raid was the most audacious military operation in 500 years, he does himself and his cause enormous damage. Never mind that it’s not remotely true. Never mind that grotesquery that is Biden’s criteria for courage: Obama risked his reelection chances (also, not necessarily true). Think about what we risked in the Normandy invasion. What George Washington risked. What the Israelis have risked. Think about the audacity of the German or French invasions of Russia? Nelson at Trafalgar. Even Obama, I hope, doesn’t think his reelection is a more precious bauble to wager with than the fate of a nation or the lives of thousands or the liberty of millions.
In other words Biden’s claims so outstrip reality, we’re lucky he doesn’t tear a hole in the space-time continuum. If he was just a bit more humble, a bit more reasonable, a bit more sane, he could actually use the bin Laden success to his advantage. Instead, by making claims about it no sane or honest person can support he sounds desperate and fritters away the actual political value of the operation’s success.
And then consider Obama. He’s coming unglued these days. He says Republicans who oppose his green-energy boondoggles would have been “charter members of the Flat Earth Society,” if they were around when Columbus came to America. First of all, the Flat Earth Society was founded in the 1950s (I believe – I am without Internet on this plane). Second, contrary to Obama’s insinuation Columbus didn’t prove the world was round – Europeans already knew that.
But he says in the same breath that Solyndra wasn’t his baby. Of course it was. At least, he took credit for it when it seemed like a good idea, poured millions into it, and is refusing to admit that the policies that made the Solyndra boondoggle so boondoggly came straight from his desk.
Obama cannot sell. He hasn’t sold Obamacare, which he only touts to targeted groups of women and lazy 20-somethings who want to stay on their parents’ health insurance and couches. He hasn’t sold his energy policies. He hasn’t even tried to sell his Afghanistan policy. But he mocks Republicans for being so stupid that they hold positions shared by a majority of Americans. I hope he keeps it up!
Ideally, he’d go out there and ridicule the stupidity of Republicans liking puppies and the sweet, sweet, taste of candy, but I’ll be happy if he continues to mock them for disliking Obamacare and wanting cheaper gasoline and more oil drilling.
Every time Obama goes out and tries to clarify how smart he is and how dumb his opponents are, he reinforces his weakness and betrays the implicit failure of his post-partisan presidency, and that undermines the rationale for reelecting him.
Why Nations Fail?
Again, I’m at a disadvantage on this plane because I lack access to the Internet and the ability to manipulate objects with my mind.
But I’ve been seeing all of this stuff about a new book Why Nation’s Fail. (Hopefully, the web monkeys at NRHQ will add in some links to this stuff when they get it. Hint, hint). It sounds like a good and interesting book. It looks at nations that are extremely similar, but exist on different sides of a shared border. North Korea and South Korea are the most famous and obvious examples for the point the authors want to make: political institutions matter.
I want to get the book, but what I find bizarre is the way the book’s being received. Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money team did a piece making it sound like this was stunning news. Finally economists have solved the mystery of why some countries are rich and some are poor.
Errr. Huh? It sounds like I agree with the authors: political institutions – broadly understood – are the foundation for prosperity. But this is a stunning revelation? Really? Seems to me this argument was ancient when I was reading comic books (okay, bad choice of words because I’m still reading comic books). Conservatives have been noting the differences between North and South Korea (and, once upon a time, East and West Germany) for generations. Hayek and von Mises, Adam Smith – all of these folks talked about the primacy of institutions. The rule of law, transparency, democracy, honest courts, property rights: These have been the key ingredients for the bouillabaisse of prosperity for as long as I can remember. (A few years ago, a World Bank study found that 82 percent of America’s wealth could be ascribed to our “intangible capital” – i.e., all the stuff that isn’t factories and commodities and infrastructure.) It’s nice to have more confirmation, but I’m flummoxed by the surprise.
Various and Sundry
Thanks very much to Students Fostering Conservative Thought at St. John’s University for having me out to chat about Liberal Fascism, drink beer, and smoke a cigar. Good times, smart kids, hideous architecture.
Also, thanks very much to the unnamed Goldberg File reader who brought me a bottle of scotch! I want to encourage this sort of creative thinking people. Though this did present a challenge given that I didn’t check luggage.
I’m in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for the next few days. I was charmed by the place when I spoke at the Steamboat Institute last Summer and went on that wild road trip with my daughter. Our chief mission is to teach Lucy to ski. She’s growing like a weed and my wife is afraid if we wait until next year she’ll be so tall and gangly the window of opportunity to learn while young will close. I keep forcing cigarettes and coffee on her, but it has failed to stunt her growth.
I was a little reluctant to do this trip because of all the travel I’ve been doing and all the work I have to do. But given how I won’t be around much after the book is out, and the horror that is a child on Spring break with nothing to do, we decided to go even more in debt.
Anyway, I apologize for the lack of oddities in this space, but I can’t do the weird links without access to the interweb. And once I land I’ve got to send this off and get on the road.
Tune in next week for exciting announcements.