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

Ross Douthat on “Obamacare.”

UPDATE: From Rich Lowry and David Brooks.

Jed Babbin on President Obama and the Iran crisis.

UPDATE: Thanks to George Will for reminding us that conservatives are actually split on this issue. More from Daniel Larison.

The Proposal tops the charts.

Kyle Smith on the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

Today is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Morgan v. Hennigan decision, one of the more unpleasant moments in Massachusetts history. The ruling by the late US District Court Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. that the Boston School Committee had intentionally segregated the city’s public schools led to the establishment of forced busing–and years of racial tensions. A few months prior to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ruling, Matthew Richer analyzed the negative consequences of the ruling in Policy Review.

While busing obviously failed to lead to either integration or the improvement of public education in Boston, it must be remembered that the Boston School Committee had an opportunity to keep this issue from going to the federal courts, but failed to do so. Thus, the racial violence and social strife that came as a result of Morgan v. Hennigan must be described by any objective measure as the bitter fruit of judicial and political foolishness.

I don’t know about you, but I like the sound of a Newt Gingrich-Bobby Jindal Republican ticket in 2012.

If President Obama is indeed a Jimmy Carter reprise, then the GOP needs a challenger who can do to Obama what Ronald Reagan did to Carter nearly three decades ago. In the arena of ideas and public opinion, the party has to have a candidate who can knock Obama down with Tysonic force, who can jab his jaw with so many rights he’ll beg for a left. For all his controversies and scorching statements, Gingrich remains the best conservative fighter in the world. It will be a miscarriage of justice if he fails to become the number-one contender.

No disrespect meant to likely 2012 GOP candidates Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, solid conservatives who know what it’s like to get a raw deal from the mainstream press. However, both Palin and Romney lack the special something necessary to put Obama on the mat. Remember 1979’s Rocky II? Rocky Balboa was the one who could beat Apollo Creed; they didn’t put Adrian or Paulie in the ring to fight the champ. Gingrich is the Right’s stallion.

If Obama continues to demonstrate weakness in foreign and domestic affairs—if he insists upon making the wrong choices when it comes to Iran, North Korea and the economy—he’ll be more than vulnerable to Gingrich’s attacks (provided, of course, that voters do the right thing in the 2012 primaries and give Gingrich the glory). Granted, Obama has three years to fix the problems that have beset his Administration. However, if he’s unable to shape up, Gingrich will have a golden opportunity to ship him out.

In order to do so, he’ll need a top-notch running mate. Who would be better than Jindal for the task? The current Louisiana governor will only be 41 in 2012; he can provide youth and diversity to counteract the GOP’s old-boy-network image. He’s an articulate, rhetorically skilled politician (so long as he doesn’t talk about the alleged foolishness of volcano monitoring) and will likely run rings around Joe Biden in a debate.

The electorate grew tired of the GOP in 2006 and 2008 in part because of the growing belief that the party was being led by a literal dummy operated by a malevolent ventriloquist. With Gingrich and Jindal, that Bush-Cheney dynamic simply doesn’t exist. Neither man needs a gravitas transfusion: even if you summarily reject their political goals, you cannot deny that they are men of accomplishment and intellectual discipline. You won’t hear “Is our children learning?” or “’Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country!” flying out of either man’s mouth.

There’s no doubt that Gingrich and Jindal will have to smooth out their rough spots in order to go over. Gingrich still needs a few lessons in how to be a happy warrior; too often, when he speaks about Obama’s obfuscations, he comes across as a cold scold, not a Jack Kemp-style cheerful conservative. While Gingrich is obviously vexed about Obama’s government-expanding vision, he should keep in mind that even a staunch Obama opponent like William Kristol manages to look upbeat when discussing the President’s progressive proposals. As for Jindal, he has to figure out a way to finally put the “exorcism story” behind him, just as Obama was able to successfully take flight from Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Once they fix their flaws, their chances of victory against a weakened Obama will be far better than average. Less than six months after he soared into office, the Kal-El of American politics is now surrounded by industrial-strength Kryptonite, unable to leap over the tall buildings of domestic economic unease and international strife. How could things go from golden to grotesque so fast? Not since Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s quick fall from grace in 2007 has someone lost momentum so suddenly.

Yes, Obama’s personal approval ratings remain strong, but as Bush can tell you, the people love you until they lose confidence in your competence. If Obama doesn’t clean up his act before 2012, Gingrich could clean his clock by the end of that year.

President Gingrich and Vice President Jindal. It has a nice ring to it, no? A Gingrich-Jindal ticket would represent effective conservative leadership, reasonable solutions to the problem of escalating health-care and education costs, responsible management of federal spending, and a sincere effort to improve the lives of average Americans. It’s a ticket that could walk all over Obama and Biden like an elephant walking over a donkey.

David Brooks on the cry for democracy in Iran.

UPDATE: More from Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer and Jed Babbin.

What does it all mean?

The June 15 Gallup poll showing that a plurality of Americans self-identify as “conservative” has some relevance, but how much? The survey is rather frustrating, because the terms employed in the poll are not actually defined.

According to the poll, forty percent of Americans regard themselves as “conservative.” Twenty-one percent declare themselves “liberal”; thirty-five percent label themselves “moderate.” (“As has been the case each year since 1992,” the survey says, “ very few Americans define themselves at the extremes of the political spectrum. Just nine percent call themselves ‘very conservative’ and five percent ‘very liberal.’”) The poll also notes that seventy-three percent of Republicans cited in the survey consider themselves “conservative” (twenty-two percent of Democrats give themselves the same label).

All well and good, but what do these terms really represent? Because the modern definitions of conservative, liberal and moderate are so flexible, and because the folks behind this survey made no apparent effort to clearly establish where respondents actually stood on the political spectrum, this vague poll isn’t terribly reliable as a means of determining future political trends.

So forty percent of the country’s citizens embrace conservatism. What sort of conservatism? Do they support limiting the size and scope of the federal government? Or do they support an expansive federal government that pursues socially “traditionalist” goals? Are they for using the United States military as a means of furthering the cause of international democracy, or are they isolationist? Do they support overturning Roe v. Wade and sending the abortion question back to the states, or do they support a Constitutional ban on abortion for birth-control purposes?

What, exactly, is conservatism today?

It’s often been said that the “three-legged stool” of modern conservatism is a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility and public morality. However, it’s hard to imagine forty percent of the country actually agreeing on how to define these three strands of conservatism. Was the Iraq War a “conservative” war? Yes and no, because there were “conservatives” who hold divergent views on that conflict. Regarding fiscal responsibility, the previous President wasn’t exactly a model of fiscal restraint, even though he was supported and defended by “conservatives” who supposedly revere fiscal prudence. In the realm of public morality, “conservatives” are often split: both Ted Olson and Mike Huckabee believe they have the morally right position on same-sex marriage.

Defining “moderate” and “liberal” is also quite tricky these days: can it not be argued that “moderate” is simply a euphemism for someone on the left side of the political spectrum who doesn’t realize that he or she actually sees the world through blue-tinted glasses (think Colin Powell)? In addition, aren’t there plenty of “liberal” voters who actually have “right-wing” positions on certain social issues (such as the nonwhite Democrats who supported California’s Proposition 8 in 2008)?

The poll, however flawed, does demonstrate that no one ideology, however defined, dominates the country. Unfortunately for self-described conservatives, America is not actually a “center-right” nation, though it may not truly be a “center-left” nation either.

Gallup’s survey certainly makes for good talk-radio chatter, but that’s about it. It may be that most Americans actually have a mix of different ideological views, and their ballot-box behavior simply represents which views they consider paramount. It can be argued, for example, that millions of Americans who voted for George W. Bush twice did not fully agree with his “conservative” platform, but felt the country needed a change from the scandal-scarred Clinton era (in 2000) and believed that it was unwise to toss the Commander-in-Chief from office in the middle of a war (in 2004). If those voters went on to support Barack Obama in 2008, they certainly couldn’t be considered “conservative.”

Next time, let’s have a better poll, one that actually tries to define the terms used, one that sheds some light on where America really stands. An accurate survey would indicate just how out of the mainstream some folks in Washington really are—and just how responsive others are to the ideological desires of the country. Until then, let’s remember that the only poll that counts is the one that takes place next Election Day. Will conservatives come out ahead then?

Michelle Obama makes it very, very hard for me to criticize her.

Jeff Jacoby on President Obama and Iran.

History does relive itself:

1. GOP brand battered (Watergate then, Iraq etc. now)

2. A smiling ‘new’ guy runs on vague “change” theme (Carter then, Obama now)

3. He beats a moderate Republican who’s gotten attacked from the right (Ford/McCain)

4. The new hopey-changey guy turns out to be naive suckup to despots overseas and a hopeless liberal tax-and-spend ignoramus at home. We lose prestige and power in the world and lose economic vitality at home…

I am a Reagan Republican in part because I saw the lessons of the Carter era first-hand.

These are the words of the artist currently known as “Freedoms Truth”, writing in response to a piece by Jon Henke on TheNextRight.com about the GOP’s perceived need to move beyond its obsession with Ronald Reagan. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Mr. Truth is correct, and that fate has decided to replay the mid-to-late 1970s, with President Obama in Jimmy Carter’s old role. If Obama is destined to collapse as Carter did before him, who will be the Reagan figure to swoop in and restore the country’s prior greatness?

Here’s where things get dicey. Reagan was a political main-eventer for a decade and a half prior to his 1980 bid for the Presidency; during Carter’s star-crossed term, the former California governor laid out a specific and detailed case for a conservative alternative to the 39th President’s vision. Can you think of a Republican who’s doing anything similar to what Reagan did today?

Yes, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney are using every available forum to condemn Obama’s policies, but the voices of Palin and Romney combined aren’t as powerful as that of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who should by all rights be the official leader of the politically exiled Republican Party. Gingrich has become Obama’s most effective critic, capably pointing out the logical weaknesses in his proposals and reminding attentive Americans that there are elements of the Obama vision that the Founders would find frightening.

While passionately pro-Romney and pro-Palin Republicans might not like to hear it, Gingrich is the only prominent Republican figure who has the star power and lengthy conservative credentials necessary to make a strong challenge to Obama in 2012. Yes, Gingrich has his flaws, but under the right circumstances, even those weaknesses can be strengths.

Gingrich’s personal life has been, shall we say, quite controversial. However, if Obama has in fact become a Carter-esque failure by 2012, will the average American voter hold Gingrich’s personal life against him? Can it not be argued that, in a time of increasing social libertarianism, Gingrich’s past personal problems will be dismissed as non-issues, just as Reagan’s failed first marriage turned out to be a non-liability three decades ago?

In a strange coincidence, by the fall of 2012 Gingrich will be the same age that Reagan was when he conquered Carter. If he manages to defeat Obama, Gingrich will be the most conservative President we’ve had since the 40th Commander-in-Chief. With any luck, he’ll be a more successful President than the last Republican to hold the office.

However, in order to lead he’ll have to beat Obama first, and he can only do so if history copies itself note-for-note. If Carter had been an effective President, Reagan have likely lost the 1980 election; keep in mind that in the fifteen years prior to his challenge to Carter, Reagan was commonly perceived as “too far right.” Gingrich was also branded an ultraconservative troglodyte in the 1990s, and unless domestic and foreign woes have completely discredited Obama by 2012, Gingrich could find himself unable to overcome the “wingnut” image that has surrounded him all these years.

Even if Obama is weak three years from now, Gingrich might not win by a strong margin. Gingrich cannot possibly overcome the Democrats’ advantage with young and nonwhite voters, even in victory. Gingrich will have to energize the GOP base and also capture the lion’s share of independent and moderate votes; in other words, he needs an intense anti-Obama backlash. In fact, anti-Obama sentiment will have to be much stronger than the anti-George W. Bush sentiment of 2008 in order for Gingrich to go over.

In the last half-century, incumbent Presidents have been tossed from office only three times (1976, 1980, 1992). Each time, the defending champion entered the political arena to deafening boos from spectators who had lost the love they once had for the titleholder. Will the current champ, who won the belt as a symbol of hope and change, be perceived in his first title defense as a dope who’s deranged? His likely challenger—the one with the white hair and the red trunks—has to hope the answer will be yes.

Jed Babbin on the upcoming confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Todd Feinburg on ideological diversity. (A must-read.)

The Hangover remains on top.

The New York Times and Washington Post on the GOP’s woes. (Why are they so interested, anyway?)