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The Left's Cultural Advantage

As modern history will attest, handicapping presidential elections in America is a risky business.  Because there are so many variables, many dependent upon the vagaries of an electorate in flux and polls that are about as successful at prognosticating as market timers are at making money on Wall Street, the safest bet is to understand that voters aren't usually drawn to powerful resumes.

That's what William Kristol argues in his editorial in today's New York Times, which is why he counsels the McCain campaign to focus more on a concrete domestic agenda, rather than touting his biography, compelling as it is.  The more latent, and fascinating issue is that a McCain candidacy has a cultural resonance that might just translate into a victory this fall, precisely because he's not a prototypical conservative.

If we look into the hazy soul of the American electorate, one thing is clear, and that is its nearly unprecedented susceptibility to government intervention for just about every ill--real or imagined--we face.  That why we've argued that President Bush morphed from a self-described fiscal conservative to a left-of-center spendthrift, in a patently misguided effort to retain power, which he did, but at the expense of vitiating conservatism, and losing control of Congress.

But, although McCain isn't likely to replicate Bush's deficit spending, he does seem inclined to accommodate government sponsored stimulus packages, if only to immunize himself from the charge of appearing to do nothing--something in our age that's tantamount to political suicide.  That's because a demonstration of empathy today wins unwarranted points in the likability contest, where 'caring' is more important than adherence to four founding principles.

In that regard, Kristol argues that McCain should characterize himself as the reform candidate:

Candidate McCain should be working overtime on a broad reform agenda —education reform, health insurance reform, tax reform, government reform, Wall Street reform.

However, his list of reforms is rendered less palatable if it's underwritten by conservative solutions--vouchers and choice for education, letting the insurance industry right-size pricing, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, etc.--and therein lies the Democratic advantage:  Modern notions of reform are predicated on special interest pandering rather than a Reaganesque return to the conservative principles of smaller government and free markets.

Therefore, it obliges McCain to find culturally acceptable solutions that both distinguish him from the liberal Democrats, Obama and Clinton, but which resonate with mainstream America, in particular, Independents.  It's a tall order, but McCain might just be the one to deliver it.  As Kristol correctly notes, voters might be tiring of the "stale liberal orthodoxy" that the Democratic candidates are offering, in large measure because, as we've argued, they're repackaged, retreaded ideas that are intellectually threadbare, and, critically, they don't work.

However, that doesn't mean that with the political accelerent known as the mainstream media--which has a knack for studiously avoiding anything positive in the war or economy--their agenda wouldn't be successful. 

Coupled with the grim fact that each passing generation seems to have a more abbreviated historical memory, presidential candidates, in particular those on the left, can say or promise just about anything and if it 'feels good' it will likely pass through the electorate unencumbered by any hint of scrutiny.  A rather discouraging, but inevitable result of a solipistic culture whose attention span is best measured in nanoseconds.

Charity: Who Really Cares?

One of the sacred, if misinformed truths of modern America is that because liberals are champions of big government they care more about those in need.  When his book, Who Really Cares:  The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, was released last year, Arthur Brooks took heat from the mainstream press because his research findings clearly demonstrated that conservatives are more apt to donate to charity than liberals.

In a reprisal of that theme, George Will, writing in today's Washington Post, guides us through the myth that the left's bleeding heart is more than a convenient political fiction.  But beyond the facts that Mr. Will cites, such as that conservatives donate more time and more blood than liberals, the question that intrigues us is why liberals have such a blanket endorsement of government as the best way to provide for those in need.

One reason is a fact, which Mr. Will quotes from Brooks:

...the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have 'no religion' has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s.

It's axiomatic that religion induces greater altruism, in large part because Christianity generally, and Catholicism specifically, have precepts that require its members to assist those in need.  But, another illuminating point is that people with strong religious beliefs also tend to believe that it's not the role of government to redistribute money, even, or especially, for those in need. 

Why?  Because people in need, whether of food, clothing, or shelter, are best served by people and agencies on an individual basis, where assistance can be customized, if you will, in a way that obliges them to meet the donor half-way.  The value of that, which is justified by an even cursory reading of human nature, is that the goal of assistance is twofold:  First, to ensure people are cared for, but, second, to migrate them to independence.  That may seem intuitively true, but forty years of the so-called Great Society, which fostered a pernicious inter-generational dependence, in particular upon inner-city minorities--and which cost some $6 trillion dollars--was a colossal example of self-perpetuating government programs that had a corrosive impact on millions.

However, if your goal is independence, it must be stipulated that the vast majority of people are capable of achieving that goal, and therein lies another counter-motivation for liberals to support private charity:  To wit, if people aren't permanently frozen in poverty, if, indeed, they can become contributing members of society with a modicum of assistance, they don't need liberal politicians.

That phenomenon is itself based on the left's view of poverty, of those who are temporarily down on their luck, and that it's never their fault.  Blame, in the view of the left, can always be ascribed to our capitalist system, to racism, gender bias, or some other ready made bane.  Unquestionably, those problems do exist, but to reflexively indict them as the cause is not only intellectually dishonest, it leads to a prognosis that relieves the recipient of the conjoint responsibility so crucial to the goal of ultimate independence.

Of course, another function of the political instinct to redistribute wealth for a presumably worthy cause is the ego gratification and concomitant acquittal of any further obligation to assist privately.  As Mr. Will notes at the end of his editorial, when Vice President Gore's embarrassingly low charitable contributions became public in 2000, he could always say that he "gave at the office," which means, he voted to expand the role of government to help those less fortunate.

It's a cynical view of human nature when people endorse a cold and anonymous government bureaucracy as the most efficacious way to help their fellow man.

Obama & Clinton: The Left's Best Hope?

With five month until the Democratic convention and eight months until the general election, many Americans are expressing political fatigue over the Obama-Clinton internecine.  Democratic strategist, Bob Beckel laments this development, which some of us saw as an inevitable outcome of liberalism's stagnant political platform, because not only does it fail to provide a definitive candidate, it's counter to the spirit of bipartisanship the candidates tout.

Although it's statistically impossible for Senator Clinton to win, she sees in the super-delegates a kind of political salvation, and because of that, she'll take this contest right to the convention, Mr. Beckel's entreaties notwithstanding.  But beyond the mechanics of this battle and the daily feuding of the candidates, we're struck by the staggering immaturity of the Democrats' choices for president.

We'll stipulate that neither has a presidential resume, but, far more disturbing is the curious truth that although we have the paradigmatic Democratic choice--a man of African ancestry and a woman--both are firmly and apparently irreconcilably in the grip of the very politics they have forsworn. 

To wit, Obama professes to be a 'post-racial' candidate, but virtually every utterance confirms his deep investment in a politics of grievance and a blinkered entitlement to special treatment based on historical wrongs.  The Reverend Wright debacle, which we're all well versed on by now, is a compelling case in point, but there's also his remarkably anachronistic book, Dreams From My Father, which Hugh Hewitt has excerpted from the author's audio book.

It's replete with examples of the caustic racial politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, which frames every ill that blacks of African ancestry have faced as the product of systemic racism, and characterizes Caucasians as innately racist.  It's a backward looking view of America, one in stark contrast to such cutting edge blacks as Juan Williams, whose book, Enough, demands that his fellow blacks stop blaming whites for their failings, and Bill Cosby, who rants against the deterministic thinking of blacks who seem intent upon perpetuating the myth white America is hobbling their ability to succeed.

As for Senator Clinton, she has inartfully and transparently exploited her gender in ways that must make the last few feminists in America cringe.  But beyond that is her inimitable verve for blending fact with fiction.  No, we're not talking about Whitewater, the Rose Law firm billing records, Vince Foster, or Travelgate.  Rather, we're focusing on the litany of half-truths and outright fictions as cataloged by Dick Morris.

It's been observed that the will to power clouds judgment and makes people unwitting participants in a game of fictionalizing their images.  It also deludes them into harboring the wholly naive notion that their charade won't be discovered.  Mrs. Clinton's description of deplaning in Bosnia under sniper fire was laughably debunked by footage showing her walking calmly off the plane and greeting a young girl with daughter Chelsea.

There are endless examples of these incongruities, but between Obama and Clinton, serious Democrats nationwide must be asking themselves whether these two represent the left's best hope of winning the White House.  It's a hope that the likes of Mr. Beckel believes may be in jeopardy.

The Left's Vision for America

Although conservatism's death knell has been echoing in the left's imagination, it's only because they've been granted a predictable dispensation by the media in their quest to recalibrate American politics to better fit their liberal policies.  Indeed, movements are inherently susceptible to cultural forces, which is why the modern liberal seems boldly out of step with mainstream America; the same, unfortunately, can be said of traditional conservatism, but the paradox is that it's so rarely practiced that it's become something of a modern myth.

As a kind of model talking point, we turn to E.J. Dionne, whose piece in today's Washington Post perfectly illustrates the fine art of political leveraging, with the goal of a tectonic movement of conservatism to the center.  Benignly titled Righting the Right, Dionne's premise is nothing more than a cultural comment on conservatism, which is to say it obdurately refuses to capitulate to the liberal instinct to look to government to redress problems that are rightful charge of individuals.

He trots out some new books by so-called conservatives, and showcases quotes from inconstant conservative David Frum, who these days is sounding more like Senator Joseph Lieberman than Ronald Reagan.  To wit, next to racial issues, the third rail of domestic politics is 'economic inequality,' which truly has a politically charged aura because of its implied indictment that any inequality is the product of a biased, flawed system, versus the result of individual decisions, work ethic, and talent.

Moreover, as last year's study by the Treasury Department demonstrated, and which was reported in The Wall Street Journal, the left's jaundiced view of the working class permanently mired in the doldrums of low income, is simply a politically motivated fiction. 

The combination of the books Dionne notes and Frum's comments amount to a call for economic intervention on a level that would make economic conservatism indistinguishable from its opponents across the aisle.  Indeed, the left's instinctive remedies consistently stipulate income redistribution as the panacea of choice.  The rhetorically freighted and impassioned manner in which they make their case is in faithful lockstep with the cultural ban on criticism, which effectively immunizes them against a common sense retort:  Why should a family of four, whose bread-winners chose their specific careers of their own free will, be subsidized by another family who chose one with greater income potential?

Consistent with his liberal brethren on the presidential campaign trail, Dionne resorts to the politics of pettiness by calling conservatives "heretical Republicans," exhorting them to give up their principles and join the enlightened majority, which insults the working class by providing them with substantive rewards for phantom efforts.

But, as we argued yesterday, if you eliminate the pain of struggle by smoothing out life's inevitable challenges, you also eliminate the evolution of inner resources that we never know exist unless they are pressed into action.  In truth, conservatives--the real ones--are the last best hope for America because they represent a principled connection to a past largely, if not completely, forgotten, one informed by the wisdom of our Founding Fathers.

Dionne and his ilk are welcome to champion the left's vision of America where every ill is corrected, health care is 'free,' and housing and jobs are evenly distributed, but it's not the vision our Founders contemplated.  They knew that life's lessons are best learned empirically, not with 'help' from the blunt hand of government engineering.

Fixing Our Cultural Malaise

A reader, whose email moniker is "PF," left a thoughtful and provocative comment to last Thursday's post, Liberalism & The Nature of Sacrifice.  He makes the credible argument, one we've made on more than one occasion, that hardship and struggle are vital elements in life because they create the friction necessary for growth, which leads to understanding and, we pray, wisdom.  That led him to posit his premise:

...what happens to people when a society becomes successful for a long enough time that people experience little of the genuine hardship on a day-to-day basis that our forefathers experienced?

But the existence of a strong social establishment is only justified in the minds of young people when concrete examples of suffering lead them to understand why it came to exist in the first place.  As the consequences of breaking society's rules become less severe, the rules are regarded as less important.

That is an insightful observation, one that is commonly overlooked or avoided, because in the case of the former it's a forest and trees issue, in the latter, it's politically incorrect to suggest that we should be made to suffer the consequences of our behavior.  For an apt example we turn to the Depression of 1893, when four million Americans were unemployed and violent strikes were common. 

The demonstrators were demanding government sponsored work programs but Democratic president Grover Cleveland vetoed every measure, which resulted in cries of cruelty.  Rather, he reduced the burden for taxpayers across the board.  In his veto statement, he wrote:

Federal aid in such cases encourages an expectation of paternal care on the part of Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character.

Imagine President Bush issuing such a statement after he vetoed the deeply insulting 'stimulus package.'  Or, imagine Senator Clinton telling home owners that a 'tough love' approach is best, not a bail-out, which is what she's proposing.  The problem, as our reader correctly noted above, is that unless there are meaningful examples of how suffering--read consequences--directly contribute to the social guidelines that sustain our nation, the justification for the "boundaries and rules" becomes obsolete.  And, therein lies the noxious groundwork that erodes those rules.

'PF' also talks about the "weakening effects of luxury on the character of young people," and this can't be overemphasized.  Our local newspaper, The Gazette, recently ran an editorial excoriating an on-line financial health index whose algorithm has a family of four making $76,000 a year in economic trouble.  Well, when you require a 3500 square foot home, one child per bedroom, with Internet connection in each, three-car garage, high-end kitchen, yes, it's going to be a stretch.

But the virtue of living within your means is yet another that's been sacrificed at the altar of self-indulgence, and, as such, happiness has been recalibrated to ensure we're always one step behind it.  In a paradox of modern culture, your editor recalls his 1500 square foot childhood home, and his seven siblings and parents--Italian-Catholic--and it was the picture of happiness because it was predicated on hard work and sacrifice for a greater good.

'PF' closes his comments with a remedy, which involves

"resetting the clock" of character [which] requires that some level of hardship be deliberately introduced in the raising of our young people.

It may be difficult to introduce this on a broad level, because the cycles that give birth to these waves of luxury and penury aren't susceptible to such interventions.  What is possible is for individual parents to make the decision to eschew modern definitions of happiness, which are purely materialistic and lack any hint of discipline.  We're encouraged that for a select few that's happening, but since it's out of cultural fashion, it's probably not going to have a substantive impact anytime soon.

Liberalism & The Nature of Sacrifice

We've spent countless hours trying to divine the modern liberal sensibility, from its atavistic embrace of noxious racial politics to its perennial preoccupation with victimhood.  Perhaps the most vexing and inscrutable issue is their apparent incapacity to appreciate the geopolitical implications of the war in Iraq.

For a prototypical example, we turn to Leonard Pitts, whose piece on Iraq in the Miami Herald covers every counter-intuitive paradox in the liberal play-book.  Although it's largely a 'cut and paste' editorial cobbled together from the left's book of received wisdom, it's still instructive to peer inside the dark inner-workings of their arguments, if only to try to fathom the curvilinear nature of their reasoning.

Pitts rounds up the usual suspects:  No WMD, we weren't greeted as liberators, no connection to 9/11, Iraq's become a recruiting station for Islamic terrorists, infrastructure problems, and, their latest complaint, the costs of the war.  We won't succumb to the temptation to pick these off like so many ducks at a carnival shooting stand because most people understand what might be kindly referred to as the frailty of their arguments.

The deeper, which is to say, more profound question is why the left seems incapable of seeing the broader, longitudinal implications of a stable--i.e., nominally democratic--Iraq in the Middle East?  Part of the answer lies in the left's obvious disinclination to sacrifice for a greater good, which forces us to view the politics of defeat as a prime motivator. 

Simply stated, in order for liberalism to be successful in the arena of foreign affairs, America must lose in Iraq, which would prove the folly of the incursion in the first place.  They won't tell you that, but why else does the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment moguls remain in ideological lockstep, exploiting every opportunity to tell voters how we've failed there?  Or, to turn it over, why is the success of the surge--which really can't be denied with a straight face--the political equivalent of kryptonite for the left?

No one, regardless of political affiliation, is immune from horror of imagining a family's reaction to the loss of a loved one in war.  But sacrifice, whether for freedom and stability in Iraq or to free Europe in World War Two, exacts painful costs.  You can choose virtually any battle in that war, be it Guadalcanal or Midway in the Pacific or the Battle of the Bulge or Normandy in Europe, and the losses were staggering in comparison.  The difference then was not only a defined enemy in identifiable theaters, but an America that understood what was at stake.

Indeed, the other salient feature of the modern liberal is a dim, obtuse appreciation of the meaning of 9/11--the horrendous capstone of nearly three decades of attacks on the U.S. and her global allies and interests.  Rather, the left cavils about the absence of WMD in Iraq and the lack of substantive connections between Iraq and 9/11.  It's that kind of skimming of evidence that illustrates the purely craven nature of their motivation.

As Senator McCain has correctly observed, it's not the length of time we're in Iraq, it's the casualty rate.  We have troops in dozens of countries world-wide, with South Korea and Germany being the most notable examples, and the left doesn't call for their withdrawal because they implicitly understand the strategic role they play as counterweights to unstable regions.

If we can achieve a measure of political stability in Iraq, the implications for avoiding war with Iran are substantial.  If we leave prematurely, it's almost guaranteed we'll be drawn into war with Ahmadinejad.  Moreover, a stable Iraq would lay the groundwork for urging meaningful reforms in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as better control over the Israeli-Palestinian internecine.

But for reasons best left to cultural psychologists, the Pitts of the world seem incapable of understanding that nothing of lasting value comes without sacrifice.  It makes one wonder whether there's anything--save raw political power--they would fight for.

The Democrats' Plan for Losing

To the untutored eye there appears to be something in the political genes of Democrats that breeds a superfluity of countervailing electoral forces, which accelerates candidates' survival instinct and leads to the kind of intra-party warfare we've been witnessing between Sens. Clinton and Obama.  Indeed, when John Dickerson at Slate drafts a piece that catalogs the various proxies that herald a pitched battle of epic proportions, there must be something to this.

Part of the problem is the Democrats' false facade of political altruism, as though they're above the pettiness that spawns party squabbles.  That, of course, belies the reality that even within a given party there are stark policy differences, the kind that people are glad to get muddy about.  Curiously, Clinton and Obama's platforms could be scrambled and redistributed and even the most astute analyst couldn't provide an accurate taxonomy.  So, voters are left with two personalities who seem to alternate between statesmen and adolescents.

Even though the election is eight months away they're starting to look frazzled as though they've not paced themselves for the inevitable slog between now and the convention.  A key question is whether voters can sustain this level of attention, especially since their policies are static, which means their personalities are piped into our living rooms every day like in-laws who simply refuse to leave.

When we add the broader context of their primary and caucus systems, with the menacing specter of the superdelegates hanging overhead, we can be guaranteed that the next few months will be punctuated by political high dudgeon, near-death experiences, which is the political equivalent of supermarket tabloids.  Although some Republicans may delight in that, it's hardly an adult-like way to run a presidential election, because it has the feel of day-time television reruns from the 70s, which combined predictable plots with poor acting.

That's why, in this particular episode, we're being subjected to the Florida and Michigan wars, which reaffirm, for those with short memories, that political willfulness doesn't attenuate with age.  The state officials that insisted upon front-loading those primaries despite stern warnings from party titans are now stunned that their voters may be disenfranchised, the left's equivalent of the bubonic plague. 

It would be instructive, if only academically, to replay the tapes from last year when these discussions--nay, arguments--were simmering.  Was there any ambiguity in the party officials admonitions that flouting the system would have grave electoral consequences?

Now, due to their puerile antics, we'll be entertained with this stuff right through their convention in August, and the voters are the ones who'll suffer because they won't have a defined candidate until then.  And, since there's no substantive difference between them, Senator McCain can indulge the military's favorite command:  Commence firing, fire at will.

Can the Democrats Get Beyond Racial Politics?

Not unlike the stark contrast between the historical image of Eliot Spitzer--the crusader who cleaned up Wall Street and the tireless champion who helped eradicate such sleazy enterprises as prostitution--and the new one, a man consumed by power, who trampled on the rights of many innocents, and who betrayed his marriage vows by frequenting top-flight prostitutes--Barack Obama's sterling image of a uniter whose 'transformational politics' will move the nation beyond its divisiveness, seems to be tarnishing.

More specifically, how can a presidential candidate whose central thesis is a post-racial platform continue to make that claim in light of last week's revelations concerning Reverend Wright, his pastor for two plus decades?  By now the entire country has seen the disturbing footage of this presumed man of the cloth who berates and chastises America, which he effectively blames for 9/11, who believes white people inflicted the AIDS epidemic on blacks, and who believes Africa is a better nation than America.

Although Senator Obama has condemned those portions of Wright's sermons, the crucial question hasn't been answered:  With all of the churches to choose from in Chicago, why would Obama remain at one that is so virulently racist?  Whether you're Catholic or protestant, if your priest or preacher even once expounded such vile rhetoric, would you remain a parishioner?  For most Americans this would be an instance of 'one strike and you're out,' because it's so fundamentally at odds with any rendering of the Christian faith.

So the question is, by what right or flight of imagination, can Obama maintain the pretense that he's a 'post-racial' candidate?  Or, more profoundly, since the Democratic Party remains deeply mired in identity politics, is there any hope that its members can, to borrow their favorite term of cultural enlightenment, evolve and leave the detritus of racial politics behind?

Frankly, there doesn't seem to be much evidence they can.  The television news shows this weekend were a case in point:  As Democrats--elected officials and party bigwigs--argued about this, one question seemed to be overlooked:  why is there such an accommodating home in their party for racially noxious thinking predicated on the flawed premise that race alone is a proxy for values and character?

It's a fair and relevant question that the media is remiss in not pursuing, especially in what has been billed as the most important presidential election in years.  Perhaps Geraldine Ferraro might know the answer, as she was taken to the wood shed for suggesting the obvious--that a critical part of Obama's success thus far has been due to the fact the he's a black man who's convinced that race is not a predictor of values and character.  Does that remind you of another black man, a reverend who seems especially out of step with many of today's black leaders?

Admiral Fallon & the Denial of History

We've all heard the axiom, one that has achieved a wholly unwarranted level of credibility, that war should always be a last resort.  Military historians have a plethora of examples of wars that were either lost or needlessly protracted due to a belated entrance.  Although Hannibal enjoyed many military successes in the Second Punic War, some historians argue that Carthage's twenty-three hiatus after the First Punic War was a contributing factor in its ultimate destruction.

In modern times, the most ignoble example is World War Two, and in a moment of inadvertent prescience relative to our current war against radical Islam, William F. Buckley was once asked whether or not he believed that war should be a last resort.  He replied that it was an absurd notion, and that had we stopped Hitler before he took the Sudetenland in 1938 we might well have prevented the war.  The difference, he noted, could be measured in the 45 million souls who perished.

Against that backdrop we turn to President Bush's decision to remove Admiral William Fallon from his position as head of U.S. Central Command.  With some hesitation we link to the recent article in Esquire, which provides the prototypical--read disdainful, scornful--rebuttal to our traditional understanding of war.  Which is to say that conflict, and its offspring, war, is a natural--i.e., timeless--outgrowth of profound differences between regimes and nations, typically the result of border disputes, trade route hegemony, or religious conflicts.

The author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, who wrote the thoughtful book The Pentagon's New Map, is a Democrat with whom we episodically agree, as in the case of his book--but not his piece in Esquire.  As Barnett argues, Fallon has been at odds with the Bush Administration for years, and notes that

He is as patient as the White House is impatient, as methodical as President Bush is mercurial...

More pointedly, notes Barnett,

...he's doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn't do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq:  He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.

What, precisely, is unsound about a process that begins with tiered sanctions and leads to a U.N. Resolution demanding that Iran cease its uranium enrichment program or face military action, we aren't told.  But, we do learn that he would, if circumstances were just right, be willing to go to war with Iran.  However, it's the studied reticence he brings to the strategy that rightfully discomfits those who support a more deliberative--which is to say, successful--approach to dealing with an adversary.

The most apt example is his curious notion that Iran should be brought into a Middle East conference:

...right on the heels of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's meetings with Middle Eastern ministers of defense, Fallon held a similar summit of Persian Gulf chiefs of defense in Tampa earlier this year, something Centcom has never attempted before.

Could Iran be a participant in something like this down the road?

"Oh, absolutely, eventually. It's like the Chinese," he says. "It would be great if Iran turned into a team that decided to play ball in the end."

We expect such naivete from State Department officials, but not from our military's highest ranking member.  Indeed, although the think tanks would welcome him, President Bush as a right to have commanders who are willing to carry out--not undermine--his policies.  There is, indeed, a difference between providing constructive, contrary ideas and subverting the mission.

With respect to his ideas about strategy, Barnett notes that "Fallon sticks out like a sore thumb with the neocons, who have the unfortunate tendency to come off as unpredictable to their allies and predictable to their enemies."  This is the realist's comforting but thoroughly mischaracterized notion of the neoconservative approach to foreign policy.  For anyone who takes the time to review the pre-Iraq war signals sent by President Bush to the U.N. Security Council, as well as to the entire world through a series of speeches on the subject, the message was clear:  Saddam's flouting of 17 U.N. Resolutions demanded a response, and 29 Democratic senators agreed, voting in favor of military action.

Although a measure of unpredictability with one's foes can keep them off balance, when it comes to summary statements and ultimatums, false positives are not only counter-productive, they are dangerous.  The regime in Iran won't halt its nuclear program with hollow threats.  Rather a vice-like tightening of sanctions with the threat of military action is the only way to leverage the intended outcome.

That kind of rhetoric makes the Fallons of the world cringe because, in their view, it supplants their infinitely adroit machinations with blunt, Patton-esque folly.  Among many other ill effects, their approach has a lead time best measured in years, which means that not unlike Hitler, who grew into a formidible foe, Iran will be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Then we'll hear the cries from Fallon and his ilk about the crucial element of timing and they'll demand to know why we sat passively as this gathering storm developed.  Since we have over two thousand years of history, which provides a rich, if tragic pattern of nearly interminable warfare, punctuated by bullies and belligerents, you might think that the modern sensibility would understand that, after diplomacy fails, there is only one language that aggressors understand, the one written in blood--theirs.

Gov. Spitzer & the Morality of Marriage

Besides the delectable taste of schadenfreude that many on Wall Street and elsewhere are indulging, the precipitous fall of Governor Eliot Spitzer has another dimension, one that our drive-by culture seems to overlook.  And, no, it's not the allegedly dovetailed nature of power and sexual appetites, which is the stuff of social psychologists, but rather, how we seem to have reached the point where moral codes have been demoted to the status of situational convenience.

However, before we parse the moral implications, we must note that his initial press conference was consistent with similar malefactors such as Bill Clinton in that he had his wife at his side.  It may be ironic that hers was a true look of grim remorse in stark contrast to his--as well as his words--which were more appropriate for a policy discussion about infrastructure improvements in the state.  But, beyond that, asking your wife to stand next to you as a sign of familial support strikes us as a uniquely unjust act of cowardice.  The message is that whether it's the case of one of his daughter's fighting a terminal illness or his squalid philandering, we're all in this together.

Moreover, the notion that men have always behaved in this manner is an observation of little utility.  It leads to the self-justifying explanation for the apparently universal weakness in men who succumb to the wiles of women.  In truth, it's a facile and effete commentary that is merely a gloss for the argument that the lowest denominator has always ruled human behavior, which is, of course, a misnomer.

You may recall a minor scene in the classic film, The Philadelphia Story, where Katherine Hepburn is engaged in an urbane debate about philandering and morality.  A rough paraphrase has a set-up line by her father that tries to justify such behavior with a reference to the state-of-nature, or a kind of Hobbesian approach to marriage.  She deftly replies that we're put on earth to rise above 'nature,' a quaint notion that the Spitzers of the world might do well to note.

But it's the moral dimension, where the presumed sanctity of his marriage vows come into play, that is of interest, because it's clear that the code that underwrites our civic and religious ethics has been recast to fit our convenience.  Some may remember a quote from Ross Perot during the 1990 presidential election concerning Bill Clinton's reputation as a sexual amoralist:  If your wife can't trust you, who can?

And, that, in essence, is the heart of the matter, which itself goes to the core of every aspect of our lives, whether in business, with friends, or in our families.  Indeed, in the case of Spitzer, the legal framework that formed the foundation of his prosecutions is predicated on trust in our Constitution and the confidence we have in due process and judicial review, are all of which are based on trust.

So, what does it say about a man who can look his wife in the eye after having spent thousands on a prostitute, smile, kiss her and ask how her day was?  It's also a testimony to the twisted way in which our culture tries to justify such aberrant behavior when his brother, Daniel Spitzer, a neurosurgeon, said: 

If men never succumbed to the attractions of women, then the human species would have died out a long time ago.

So, in the view of Spitzer's brother, the solemn pledge we take when we marry is a tactical convenience and when lust strikes we can elevate it from its subterranean locus by an adroit reference to perpetuating the species. 

Although many will justify their delight in his downfall because of the abundance of evidence that he manipulated the law to serve his own political agenda, there's nothing to celebrate when any man, in particular one in a place of such prominence, provides yet another example of moral cowardice and gross indifference to the woman he supposedly loves.

A Debate of Ideas

As the din of our presidential election begins to reach a disquieting crescendo it's an illuminating exercise to ask whether ideas still matter, and, if so, who's listening?  An inherent problem with being a champion of ideas is that it seems fundamentally at odds with everything in contemporary culture, whose primary feature seems to be a deafening overload of ephemera.

But what happens when the superficialities of life become so inextricably interwoven into the fabric of our existence that they become indistinguishable from our cultural patterns that are as ubiquitous as they are meaningless?  Further, as the veneer on which we live our lives becomes the substance, debates over the timeless ideas that constitute our Republic's legacy are depreciated and even scorned because they are unpleasant reminders of precisely how far we've wandered from our Founders' principles.

As we've argued in these columns, in times of cultural homogeneity, when there is broad agreement concerning our core values and an approximate consensus regarding American exceptionalism, the debate over ideas can still rage, but it's within certain parameters.  However,  when cultural anarchy reigns, when a certain percentage of the nation looks to America for blame, for everything from 9/11 to 'global warming,' we have arguably excised those core values, which places us on a cultural trajectory for immolation.

That's because the post-modern instinct to deny absolutes is as powerful a form of intellectual oppression as is a blithe and unquestioned reliance on them.  Indeed, the relativism that masquerades as a friend of mankind is, in fact, bred of a totalitarian impulse, one predicated on a supreme intellectual insecurity as well as a cynical desire to impose systemic controls on others.

It's that impulse that is clearly manifest in the policies of Sens. Clinton and Obama, be it their health care reform initiatives, their love of taxes, or their curiously apologetic approach to national security.  A healthy mistrust of free markets only has utility if you're willing to stipulate that every other system is more profoundly fraught with its own panoply of ills.  But today's left seems less confident that the failed socialist regimes of Europe are, in fact, inferior to ours, because just as our friends overseas are reducing their corporate tax rates to lure capital and investment as well as dismantling their vast entitlement apparatus, our tandem Democratic presidential nominees haven't gotten the message.

That, in the context of our jaundiced culture may achieve a perverse kind of currency, because the left has successfully re-engineered an entire generation to believe that more government--read taxes, regulation, and the like--are the most efficacious way to achieve mass happiness.  Of course, conservatives have but one interest on the economic front and that's to keep taxes and regulation low and tout the merits of individual initiative, which means the only limits to our success is our God given talent and work ethic.  As for happiness, the last place we would look is the government.

But all of this is unpopular, because this new form of civic fashion is a tacit endorsement of a kind of national collectivism, of which Mr. Obama is the high priest.  Indeed, the wholly specious notion that a senator with all of three years of experience at the national level, one with the most liberal voting record in Congress, can unite our fractured nation is at best quixotic.

In truth, our divisions are real because they are based on conspicuously different interpretations of the proper role of government, and, as such, the debate that will ensue is healthy for our country.  Papering over it with a motivational speaker's parlance is at once insulting and counter-productive.

So, let the debate rage, but let it be a debate of ideas.

The Left's Misguided Love of Fairness

Whether it's in business or politics, striving to be fair is laudable and makes for an even playing field.  Indeed, to a large extent, fairness is encoded into our laws, along with its more profound progenitor, justice, and for good reason.  When we all play by the same rules we have confidence that a victory is due to superior talent, not someone gaming the system.

But when the notion of fairness becomes a preoccupation rather than a guideline, it's an inhibition to a defined outcome.  Moreover, our values underwrite our various interpretations of whether something is fair.  For instance, some people think it's fair to provide increased welfare benefits for a woman who has another child out-of-wedlock, while others believe it only exacerbates the problem and is not in her long-term interest.

Deep within the modern liberal sensibility is the most refined, airy, and rarefied example of fairness, one with such an exquisite symmetry and with such rich nuance that it would require an Cambridge physicist to parse its opaque surface.  Indeed, whether it's our tax code, which is an example of Draconian fairness, or the Democratic Party's nomination rules for the presidential primary, you can be assured that fairness will overrule all other considerations, including common sense.

You see, in the liberal lexicon, losers are elevated to the status of heroes, which is why Senator Clinton's crying episodes and querulous whining about questions during debates make her appealing to many Democrats.  The same can be said of men who show emotion--e.g., the public "man-hug"--something unheard of back in the 50s,  the age that liberals call oppressive.

Whatever you believe, the quaint notion of a definitive outcome, as in the example of professional sports, seems to have suffered.  So it is that the Democratic contest for a presidential nominee won't produce one until their convention in late August.  We can handicap who that benefits, but an axiom of politics is that voters aren't drawn to ambiguity, and having two photo-finish candidates is the prototypical example.

How this helps their party or advances their argument that a Democrat should win in November is something of a mystery because if you can't execute the basics, why, pray tell should you be trusted with the White House?  And, although the fledgling internecine between Sens. Obama and Clinton is a great spectator sport, since their platforms are nearly identical, what purpose does it serve except to allow Senator McCain the entire electoral stage from which to shout his message?

Further, we're eight months from the election and already the name calling has begun.  As reported today, Samantha Power, an unpaid foreign policy adviser to Obama resigned under pressure from the Clinton campaign after she called her a "monster" during an interview with a Scottish newspaper.  If that's indicative of the direction of the race for the nomination, as Betty Davis said, fasten your seat belts, we're in for a bumpy ride.

All of this, including the inevitable battle over Florida and Michigan, could have been avoided if the party had been more focused on producing a clear winner rather than handicapping the system into oblivion.  But the left's instinctive infatuation with fairness has again led to a disastrous end, and it's only just begun.

Presidential Character & The Role of the Press

What a delightful gift we've been given by the Democrats:  A white woman and black man vying for their party's nomination for president of the United States.  The mavens of political correctness have been lecturing for years that gender and race are dispositive of values and principles.  In that regard, so the argument goes, we should view these human traits as the political equivalent of earthly salvation, because by recognizing their pre-eminence we're subscribing to a code that transcends our mortal limits.

Of course, conservatives dismiss such cultural ephemera as the logical outcome of identity politics, a game of perpetual one-oneupmanship that inevitably brings out the worst in people as they naively compete for the title of most aggrieved.  Now we have a primary beta test as Sens. Clinton and Obama provide self-refutations of one of the left's most hallowed precepts.  If you thought the past few months of feigned cordiality would last, the press has a bone to pick with you.  A piece in today's Huffington Post that segues nicely from our post of yesterday, clarifies that we're about to enter a political kick-boxing match.

As an elected official, the editor can tell you that becoming annoyed at the press is the rough equivalent to teasing a Rotweiller, it only makes matters worse and you're probably going to lose some flesh.  Recall how poorly Bob Dole handled the press in his 1996 campaign, and how masterfully Reagan handled it.  Apparently Obama's a slow student in this regard because his nascent petulance will cost him as the media begins its excavation of his record in Chicago.

But, back to the politics of gender and race.  The multiculturists and gender foot soldiers have insidiously worked their way into corporate America, instilling in the ranks of unsuspecting workers the notion that diversity deserves a place along side religion.  There are special values, so we're told, unique to women and ethnic minorities, values that, by default, are absent in white males. 

Onto the national stage walk Clinton and Obama, yet try as we may, we can't distinguish anything special about them to support that argument.  Indeed, Hillary, with her chameleon ethics, seems just as conniving and craven as any male, and the Obama we're now getting to know seems no different than any white politician who becomes incandescent when dealing with a vexing press.  Based on his senate record, which is unambiguous in its rank partisanship, his dream of a 'transformational politics' has the ring of a studied hypocrite.

This new chapter is just beginning, and so we can expect that Clinton's political pugilism and Obama's razor-like anger will blossom ingloriously as the press turns up the heat.  Although we'll enjoy the spectacle, it's actually good for voters because, as students of Shakespeare know, as pressure is applied, character becomes illustrated.

As Democrats Vie, McCain Ascends

The beauty of American elections is that they provide both a cleansing and a clarifying effect.  That may take a long time in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, but yesterday's results in Texas and Ohio did illustrate a timeless axiom of politics:  Electoral predictions are perilous. 

Just as the Obama juggernaut seemed predestined to serially decimate the electoral landscape, Clinton demonstrates that the mix of fear and reticence can redound to the underdog.  The fear component for many in yesterday's contests is not only economic--read jobs--but rather, the fear that Obama may not have the general election potency many once felt he did.  Indeed, ad hoc interviews on his campaign plane seem to reveal that callowness we've divined in him in the recent past.

And, the reticence was the natural byproduct of the Democratic electorate taking a collective deep breath and questioning whether a man with all of three years experience at the national level is ready to assume the world's most powerful leadership position--in particular, during a time of war (a revelation even the left must face).

In an informal interview yesterday, Obama seemed surprised that the press has begun a new chapter in its love affair with him, one that heralds a new appreciation for its primary responsibility, which is to shake the candidates' cages so hard that voters can test their mettle.  And, shockingly, he opined that this new phase of aggressiveness wasn't necessary.  Well, the honeymoon couldn't last, if only because it's begun to be embarrassing, even for the liberal members of the press.

The Rezko affair may not have staying power, but Obama's history as an arch liberal activist in Chicago should be the subject of exhaustive reporting if the press hasn't lost its ability to feel shame.  Indeed, initial reports indicate that Obama's activism was so caustic as to make Jesse Jackson seem positively benign.  If it's exposed as it should be, voters may have trouble reconciling his hand-holding kumbaya rhetoric with the street-tough, anti-corporate activities from his days in the Illinois legislature.

All of this is to say that Clinton's star may not be in a downward trajectory, but not because of a sudden political makeover than because voters are finally getting a closer look at Obama, and, he's giving them pause.  From a Republican perspective, of course, confusion and instability among Democrats is the equivalent of a pipe dream come true.  Add to this rare mix the likes of Ralph Nader and, for conservatives, the stars are all aligned.

Although Senator McCain's speech last night wasn't the stuff of Churchill or Reagan, it made up for its lack of oratorical verve with a clarity and genuine sense of conviction that might well appeal to conservative Democrats and Independents alike.  Both of those groups, who are understandably concerned that either an Obama or a Clinton is likely to raise taxes across the board, and who might have a recessive supply side gene, could look to McCain as the one most likely to bring the economy back from the brink of disaster. 

And, when we include the Democratic candidates' sworn diffidence in the face of radical Islam, it might be the case that McCain's tough rhetoric begins to resonate with common sense voters across the spectrum.

Agnst on the Left: The "Cost" of the War

The exercise of tallying the "true cost" of a war is a kind of political Rorschach test because it reflects the values and principles that we hold in high esteem.  For instance, whether or not you believe the Civil War was worth the financial cost or the loss of the approximately 618,000 who died in it--or any of our modern wars--reveals much about your character, values, and principles.

But those are academic exercises because the outcome and implications of such wars have been largely adjudicated by historians.  However, what would you think of an editorialist--and her party--who expended ink and effort in December 1944 to argue that the second world war wasn't worth the money--while it was being fought--indeed, just before the start of the Battle of the Bulge?  Enter the intellectually effete Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, who quotes from a book by Joseph Stiglitz, who she describes as a "Nobel-prize winning economist," failing to mention that he was former President Clinton's chairman of the council of economic advisors. 

More revealing is Mr. Stiglitz' seething dislike for globalization and our free-market economy, whose disciples he disparagingly refers to as "free market fundamentalists."  Huffington then links Stiglitz' estimate of the cost of the war--$3 trillion--to domestic politics, arguing that it's caused the nascent economic downturn.  Her craven conclusion is that Americans should dismiss Senator McCain's presumed superiority in foreign affairs and national security because of--yes, the cost of the war.

Let's begin by observing that the polemical plausibility of Huffington's argument presupposes an agnosticism concerning the outcome of the Iraq war.  But it also calls into profound question the worth of any military action, save that in direct defense of our nation.  Curiously, it wasn't Germany that attacked us in World War Two, but Japan, yet we sent hundreds of thousands of our boys overseas to liberate Europe, an action that even many liberals might celebrate.

Now, we face a foe that is the antithesis of a state-based, uniformed enemy on a conventional battlefield, one that according to all intelligence experts, is living in our very midst.  A good friend of ours is an Air Force colonel who has served three decades as a military intelligence officer.  He tells us, with his usual blend of candor and conviction, that it's not a matter of if the U.S. or its interests will be struck by a tactical nuclear weapon, but when.

So, it's curious that Huffington and her arch-liberal ilk are so preoccupied with the financial cost of the war in Iraq, instead of understanding that allowing democratic principles to get a toehold in the Middle East is probably our best guarantor of regional--and global--stability.  But for reasons that may interest future cultural historians (or psychiatrists), today's left has developed a blind spot to despots and the evil that spawns them. 

One thing is absolutely clear:  If today's liberals were in evidence during either of the 20th century's major wars their outcomes may well have been dramatically different.  Their naive denials notwithstanding, we are in the early stages of a war that may be decades in duration, one that has the potential to adversely impact our way of life, which is something the Huffingtons of the world should weigh before wringing their hands about the financial "cost of the war."

Obama: Untested, Unready

Candidates such as Senator Barack Obama seem to create an aura of electoral inevitability, not only due to their technicolor personalities, but because there's no evidence of anything objectionable about them.  Indeed, Mr. Obama has meticulously scripted his profile and photoshopped any trace of contentious policy recommendations, leaving only his soft-focus bipartisanship that causes voters to swoon.  It's as though America has found a Eruo-candidate, a candidate for president of the world.

But, as the liberal columnist, Paul Krugman notes in today's New York Times, something's missing from this political diorama, and that is substance.  Progressives are getting sweaty palms because despite the fact that Obama's voting record is liberal, he's not sounding like the standard-bearer for their litany of leftist causes.  As Mr. Krugman notes, Obama's promise of a "transformational politics" rests on a decidedly thin reed, and, as such, has the feel of a motivational speaker or a regional sales director.

When we bring the media into the equation it's clear that Obama will be grilled and cross-examined, and that the press will enjoy scrutinizing his policy recommendations under their collective microscope.  Moreover, they will deconstruct his veneer thin resume, and the McCain camp will litter the television and radio airwaves with ads telling voters that Obama just isn't ready for the White House.

Indeed, if you have a working knowledge of modern political history you'll recall the criticisms that Jack Kennedy sustained, arguing that he was too inexperienced to lead America during times of Cold War peril.  But you'll also recall that by the time he was running for president Mr. Kennedy had served six years in the House of Representatives and eight years in the Senate, was a decorated veteran of World War II, and in contrast to Mr. Obama's political callowness, had a mature understanding of world affairs.

If the argument can be made that the delicate balance of powers and volatile nature of the Cold War demanded a man of demonstrated political aptitude, the same can be made for our age where asymmetrical warfare in the form of Islamic extremism is a sleepless, omnipresent malice.  And, critically, when you juxtapose Obama with McCain the differences are at once manifest and disturbing.

Obama, who has said he would sit down with the world's dictators without preconditions, has the genetic marker of the prototypical foreign service officer who is convinced he can out smart his adversaries, that he will always win more than he concedes in negotiations.  McCain has nearly three decades of high caliber political experience and brings the kind of flinty resolve America needs at a time when her enemies are as determined as they are nefarious.

That's the tack McCain must use, in conjunction with his pledge to keep taxes low and spending in check.  Since independents are the fastest growing voting bloc, and with the blessings of Ralph Nader once more chiseling off a few percentage points for Republicans, there's a real chance that McCain could prevail.