Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Michael Steele becomes chairman of the Republican National Committee. This could will be the first step in the GOP’s political comeback.

Jazz legend David “Fathead” Newman passes away at 75.

Progressives called the 1980s the “decade of greed.” Conservatives called the 1990s a “holiday from history.” I’d like to suggest a fitting title for the 2000s: “The Nasty Decade.”

Seriously, did anything go right the last ten years? Could you have imagined things being this insane on December 31, 1999? Maybe this was the Y2K problem everyone feared.

We’ve had three consecutive controversial elections, a terrorist attack that ended the lives of nearly 3,000 individuals, and an economic crisis that brought the world to its knees. The country’s morale sinks while the national debt rises. Like ungrateful children, this decade has been good for nothing.

I’d hate to be a child growing up these last ten years. Any young person who has borne witness to the horrors of this decade will be mentally scarred for life. He or she will grow up cynical, confused, uncertain about the prospect of happiness in the future. Those who opened the cruel gifts life delivered over the past decade have learned not to trust the government, not to trust the media, not to trust authority—not to trust anybody.

We will look back at the 2000s and remember this decade as the one in which we became pregnant with cynicism and sparked a baby boom. We will remember the exact moment in this decade when we became permanently bitter and alienated, silently contemptuous of what passes for daily existence.

Speaking of pregnancy, I sometimes wonder about my friends from high school and college who describe the joys of parenthood on their Facebook pages. I’m happy for them, but I can’t help thinking that in this era, one has to be a little bit crazy to become a parent. Why would someone want to bring life into a world filled with so much death?

I think about the folks who brought children into the world decades ago, only to see those children taken from them through acts of religious extremism and war. I think about how their minds must now be filled to capacity with bitterness and anger and hatred of life and hatred of God, and I wonder if the same fate will befall my friends someday.

Whether prompted by the violence of 9/11 or the tides of Katrina or the IEDs of Baghdad, one can’t be surprised by a growing lack of faith in the American populace. An atheist desirous of turning people against God couldn’t have designed the events of this decade any better in terms of trying to accomplish that result. Or maybe atheism has nothing to do with it: perhaps the events of this decade were the acts of a God who decided to answer the paranoid prayer of President Obama’s former pastor and damn America.

Maybe Jeremiah Wright was right. Maybe America’s chickens are indeed coming home to roost. Maybe this decade has been punishment for our past greed, our past iniquity, our past idiocy. Remember Robert Bork’s book Slouching Towards Gomorrah? Maybe we became Gomorrah.

I don’t mean this in a right-wing sense. We didn’t become Gomorrah only by allowing our culture to become coarser: we also become Gomorrah by doing little to address the problem of middle-class wage stagnation. Those of us who accept the “conservative” label also bear responsibility for the apparent judgment of our country: while we rushed to protect the life of Terri Schiavo, how many of us raised questions about the ineptitude that led to the needless and senseless deaths of so many American soldiers in Iraq between 2004 and the 2007 troop surge? Were we only pro-life when it came to middle-class women in Florida?

This was the decade when great men left us (Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley) and mediocre men replaced them. This was the decade when the “dumbing down of America” reached its zenith, a decade when we decided that the cheap and tawdry had character and taste. This was the decade of American Idol and minds that were idle. This was the decade of actions that shocked the conscience, and actions of those with no conscience.

The birds flew into our engines this decade, but there was no hero captain to save us once the plane crashed. If we survived, it was only because of a fluke. Flukes defined this misbegotten, star-crossed decade. Were it not for the Lewinsky and Elian Gonzalez scandals, would George W. Bush have become President? Were it not for Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Margaret Marshall and the release of The Passion of the Christ, would Bush have retained his seat? Were it not for an economic collapse and unchecked GOP arrogance, would Obama have made history?

The answer is the same as the answer to this question: Will anyone remember this decade with anything approaching fondness?

Rush Limbaugh proposes his own economic stimulus package. (Am I the only one who couldn’t care less about this Obama-Limbaugh feud? Both of these dudes are addicted to the media spotlight.)

UPDATE: From Jed Babbin.

Jeff Jacoby on the Obama stimulus.

Legendary novelist John Updike passes away at 76.

Thomas Sowell on President Obama’s response to the economic crisis.

William Kristol’s final column for the New York Times.

UPDATE: More on Kristol’s departure. Kristol’s NYT work was OK overall, but I do admit there were times when his work seemed more “pro-Republican” than “independently conservative.” Will the Times bring on a new conservative columnist to replace him? How about a rotation of young conservatives in that slot, featuring the likes of Ross Douthat, Ericka Andersen, Amanda Carpenter, Matthew Continetti, Patrick Ruffini and Robert Bluey?

Paul Blart: Mall Cop remains on top for a second week.

Jeff Jacoby on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Can it not be argued that one reason Roe remains with us is the lack of real desire on the part of the American right to seek its reversal or nullification? Although the conservative movement as a whole professes a belief in the sanctity of unborn life, is it not possible that there are “conservatives” at the highest levels of power who aren’t terribly bothered by Roe, because they figure a) they can always use it as a wedge issue to get money and support from evangelical voters and b) legalized abortion reduces the number of folks who, if born to indigent parents, will wind up on various forms of welfare?

President Obama may be wrong on Guantanamo Bay. He may be wrong on the so-called “Mexico City Policy” regarding abortion rights. He is dead right, however, on the need for a new era of responsibility.

Irresponsibility has been the coin of the American political realm for the past two decades. Irresponsibility has lead to extreme and excessive partisanship, the sort of partisanship that effectively crippled the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Irresponsibility has made us hate each other—and that hatred has polluted discourse in this country.

Irresponsibility has made it easier to be reckless in our language. Because of this irresponsibility, it was considered appropriate to spread false stories about a President being involved in suspicious deaths. After that, it was considered appropriate to accuse a President of stealing an election and deliberately lying about the necessity of going to war. Once that was tolerated, it was considered appropriate to suggest that a Presidential candidate was a closet Muslim who was not really born in the United States.

Irresponsibility. It’s the cancer that will consume us all—if we allow it.

A lack of responsibility is indeed a childish thing—and we had better put it away. Granted, it should have been put away years ago, but we had no motivation to do so. We should be filled with motivation now.

What should be the hallmark of an era of responsibility? It should be defined by a willingness to value reason over emotion, a desire to embrace fact over fiction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with ideology. However, when reality confronts ideology, the latter must bend to the will of the former.

We haven’t been willing to let that happen for a while in this country—and our collective decision to place ideology above reality occurred long before the previous President took office. This country’s in a hole right now because so many of us, for so many years, chose what was fantasy over what was firm.

In addition, if we’re serious about ushering in an era of responsibility, we must agree to denounce double standards wherever we see them. Double standards can be found on both political sides. Does anyone deny that if a straight Democrat behaved as the late Congressman Gerry Studds did years ago, he would have been drummed out of the Democrat Party? Does anyone deny that if a white Democrat acted in the irresponsible way Al Sharpton has for years, he too would have been asked to leave that party?

Similarly, can we acknowledge that the same Republicans who now praise a President who failed to secure the country’s borders in the wake of a terrorist attack would excoriate and pillory a Democrat President who had done the same? Can we acknowledge that the same Republicans who defend an outgoing GOP President with woeful approval ratings as a fundamentally decent person would mock and ridicule Democrats who tried to make similar arguments about an unpopular departing Democrat Commander-in-Chief?

Our new President is calling upon us not to set down our beliefs, but to set down our political bigotries. He is asking us to see beyond Democrat and Republican, to see beyond red and blue, to look at our political differences as merely opposite routes to the same common location. Instead of sitting back and rooting for him to fail (or rooting for him to vanquish what little political opposition he currently has), why not take him up on this challenge?

Before the War on Terror began, we were engaged in a modern-day civil war, with words as weapons and keyboards as bases. This war has continued for far too long, and has incurred numerous symbolic casualties. Maybe neither side can win this war. Yet it’s possible to have peace with honor, no?

I’d like to make my own pledge to the President. I pledge to reject stupidity and dishonesty wherever it is found, to denounce as intolerable the obnoxiousness of the blind left and the blind right. I pledge to question and challenge political storylines and talking points. I pledge to demand excellence and rationality from the influencers of our political discourse, especially those influencers who happen to share my personal political vision. I pledge to fight the dumbing-down of discussion and the substitution of slogans and potshots for reason and wisdom. I pledge to change my mind if and when the facts change. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

William Kristol on the GOP’s future.

Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks on Mr. 44.

David Freddoso on a potential GOP comeback in Ohio.

To paraphrase Steely Dan’s song “Kid Charlemagne,” does Barack Obama realize that he is a champion in our eyes?

The 44th President is facing the sort of pressure no President has faced since Ronald Reagan in 1981: an economy in collapse, a seemingly endless struggle against extremism, a middle class facing stagnant wages and slipping hopes.

People want him to be great. They need him to be great. This country, damaged by years of non-leadership, will absolutely collapse if he doesn’t live up to the hype.

Obama did not receive my vote, but he receives my support. While I’m disappointed that John McCain did not emerge victorious in last November’s election, I cannot wallow in the same bitterness that has consumed too many members of the online right over the past two months.

I don’t get the anti-Obama rhetorical fist-shaking in the conservative blogosphere. Let’s be honest: McCain would have, in all likelihood, sold conservatives out just as his Republican predecessor did. The only reason those of us who didn’t have schoolboy crushes on Sarah Palin voted for McCain was that we feared Obama would appoint super-liberal judges to the federal bench.

Obama will likely make such appointments. However, bad judicial appointments will hopefully be his only failing as President.

I don’t share Obama’s views, but I want him to lead. Is it too much to ask for effective, competent leadership in the White House? We haven’t had any since January 20, 1989. (Yes, the partisan right insists that Bush demonstrated true leadership, but those claims are as odd as Al Gore’s 1998 assertion that President Clinton will be regarded by history as one of the country’s best leaders. If Bush was such a great leader, then why didn’t the public seem to recognize his great leadership after 2004? And no, you can’t blame the mainstream media: they were just as critical of Bush when he was liked as they were when he was loathed.)

Among the fifteen (give or take a few) conservatives in Massachusetts, there is a general consensus that Obama is merely a younger, more charismatic version of Governor Deval Patrick, who also employed hope-and-change rhetoric and exploited anti-Republican sentiment to defeat Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey for the top seat in 2006. Patrick’s tenure hasn’t lived up to the hype (to say the least), and the Bay State right is convinced that Obama will deliver a Patrick-style performance as President.

For Obama’s sake, and for the sake of the country, I hope that’s not the case. The country can ill afford the sort of pseudo-leadership Patrick has brought to Massachusetts. Call me naïve if you want to, revoke my conservative credentials if you must, but I have faith that Obama has learned from his friend’s mistakes and will provide the country with leadership far superior to what Patrick has given the Bay State.

For whatever reason, I don’t have the desire to join the right’s grumble-thon about the inauguration. Does the coverage of this event prove that the mainstream media are in the tank for the Democrats? Sure enough. Are the celebrities involved in this celebration demonstrating their usual egomania? No doubt. However, despite the annoying aspects of the inauguration, conservatives should also get their hope on. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, no?

Obama’s victory proves what conservatives have argued for years: that talent, merit and hard work will take you anywhere you want to go in this country. Obama may not share “conservative values” in one sense, but from another perspective, he is a living testament to “conservative values.”

It’s true that the press and the entertainers would never react with such joy if a Republican President were assuming office, especially a nonwhite Republican. However, it’s also true that the conservative media would celebrate until the break of dawn if a Republican, especially a Republican of color, were about to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If Obama doesn’t lead as President, the left will be tearful. Should it really bother us if they’re currently cheerful?

Whether conservatives like it or not, Obama embodies the American dream. I certainly wish the American right currently had a figure who could galvanize Americans of all races, backgrounds, ages and political persuasions. Right now, the Democrats have such a person. Let’s give him his due and wish him the best.

Recently, an unusual theme has popped up in the comment sections of the major conservative blogs: “We’ll show Obama the same respect the left showed Bush!” This is a creepy calculation: because progressives demonstrated gutter ethics in their treatment of Bush, it’s supposed to be our duty as conservatives to do the same to Obama? I don’t think so. When he’s wrong, we should criticize him. When he’s right, we should shake his hand. Here’s hoping they’ll be many opportunities for handshakes in the future.