Goodbye bland affluence? Meh...

Unless the sense of resignation dripping from her column "Goodbye bland affluence" is merely an attempt at irony, Peggy Noonan appears to have forgotten a central message of Ronald Reagan's successful movement. To quote from his first inaugural address:

"It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.... We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don't know where to look."

It is important to remember those words lest we slip into the malaise that gripped the nation in the 1970s, the decade with which Noonan compares our future. While there is much to recommend a simpler, more rooted lifestyle that eschews the excesses of conspicuous consumption, the picture Noonan paints of a New York City that has lost its brass and brashness and of an America that dreams small dreams fills me with something less than comfort.

There is little doubt that these are trying times, that belts will be tightened and sacrifices made, but I am unwilling to resign myself to a future of frayed carpets and a return to the haunted remnants of "WASP style" and "authenticity chic". That is a mindset of complacency and inaction where the facts on the ground are not only fairly acknowledged, but stoically accepted as inevitable. Noonan's is an indulgently nostalgic and almost post-war British vision for the future, one in which anxieties and quiet desperation are nursed by lonely cocktails and secret cigarettes while flipping through our collective album of a sepia past, a world where people give up on their physical appearances and their aspirations alike.

Moreover, Noonan misses the real importance of the Wojtowiczes' story. Yes, she recognizes that they are doing more than just surviving, but rather finding a new way to live. She fails, however, to recognize the motive energy behind what they are doing. They are not resigned to a gray, subdued future of shrinking incomes and silent cities. If they were, they would not have uprooted their lives to start again -- they would have meekly endured it, but this has never been a meek nation.

Faced with changing economic circumstances, the Wojtowiczes have taken the initiative to make for themselves a life worth living. They are "21st century homesteaders" in fact, and like their forebears, they and people like them making various choices will make new communities full of vitality and promise. In short, they have done what Americans have always done when faced with adversity. They stand among the heroes to whom Ronald Reagan was speaking in his first inaugural address. It will be the Wojtowiczes of the world that turn our economic woes around despite the Obama administration's economic policies and despite the elite few, like Peggy Noonan, who appear willing to accept a subdued and pared-down America.

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 Unconstitutional?

It's an open question, as George Will's Sunday column points out. Was there a serious discussion about this all too pertinent issue during debate on the bill? Of course not. How about moving forward as the Obama administration asks for more and more discretion to implement new regulations and as the Congress becomes more and more congenitally averse to fulfilling its regulatory obligations? We'll see, but let's not hold our breaths.

"Show some restraint!"

That was Obama's advice to bank CEOs on Friday. I wonder if the President can think of someone closer to home who might follow the same advice. No? Well, 2010 is right around the corner.

A well-oiled foreign policy machine at work

Hillary Clinton leaves flowers for Our Lady of Guadalupe, asks ‘Who painted it?’

Public-Private Partnership?

Who in their right minds from the private sector would dream of signing on to one of the Obama administration's various outreach programs designed to partner public and private money to "solve" the current economic crisis?

First we had the Democrats in Congress, along with the White House and fringe advocacy groups such as ACORN, demonizing AIG bonuses that they specifically created a loophole to allow, followed by ongoing attempt to pass a confiscatory tax on those bonuses that amounts to little less than a bill of attainder.

Now we have the President demanding the resignation of of the CEO of General Motors in exchange for more federal money. Who exactly are they going to hire to replace him? Tim Geithner can't even staff the Treasury Department.

Is Obama just clueless, or is there a method to the madness? I'm starting to think there's something to the claims of some conservatives that Obama is deliberately manipulating events so that his first round programs fail, opening the door to more straightforward nationalization down the road.

Site redesign and another word about my return to blogging

As you may have noticed, there have been some significant changes around here. After a two-year hiatus, I figured my return to blogging should be paired with a new look for the blog itself, and I've chosen as my banner image the famous painting of the Constitutional Convention by Howard Chandler Christy for a reason. There are many lessons to be learned from the political and economic upheaval of the last year, but none is more important than the realization that we've collectively forgotten what it is that binds us together as a nation. It isn't race, religion, economics, political ideology, culture or even the simple fact of geographic proximity. Rather, we are bound together by a commitment to a set of ideas, the principles set down in our founding documents. They are what make this nation unique in the history of the world.

While I've long been aware that these ideas were the living heart of our polity, I was poignantly reminded of how far we've drifted away from them this week when I happened upon links to Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address in 1981 and his farewell to the nation in 1989. Now, before you jump to the conclusion that I am just another example of a conservative taking an opportunity to let his Reagan obsession reach new heights, let me disclaim that I came across them on YouTube entirely by accident. I wasn't just sitting here feeling nostalgic, and I'll be the first to admit that Reagan's was a flawed presidency. But in these two instances (and many others beside), Reagan transcended the messy, often broken nature of issues politics and plunged into the deep, uniting themes that flow through our collective history as a nation. His ability and heartfelt longing to do so is part of what made him a transformational president. Watch, listen, learn and remember.

I'll be having a lot more to say in the coming days about these two speeches, so please tune back in soon.

It's been too long...

Well, folks, it's been a while since I've posted. Too long. I'll be honest with you: the presidential election and all of the hullabaloo accompanying it put me off my usual diet of political news, but it's time to get started again. There's just too much going on not to speak out about the dangers our country and culture face on all sides. I probably won't resume blogging at full speed, but check back when you can. I will be commenting whenever I have something to say.

Better Late Than Never?

The Washington Post reports what's been obvious for over a month now -- the Bush administration is slowly coming around to adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. With more intensive regional diplomacy, an increased willingness to entertain benchmarks for Iraqi performance, and emphasis on coordination between US and Iraqi forces, we're seeing those policies implemented, albeit in slow motion. Moreover, prominent Republican lawmakers are co-sponsoring a bill to make the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group official policy of the US government.

The question is whether Bush has missed the window to use the group's findings to save US political commitment to success in Iraq:

"The administration is sort of being slowly compelled to adopt the bipartisan consensus that the Iraq Study Group presented them in December," said James F. Dobbins, a Rand Corp. analyst and former U.S. diplomat who served on one of the expert working groups advising the panel. "Eventually they are going to be pulled to it regarding troop reductions."

The trouble, he said, is that by coming around so late, the White House may have missed the last opportunity to rally Congress to support staying in Iraq under more limited circumstances -- rather than simply pulling out. "They are going to end up embracing all the provisions, without the benefit of bipartisanship," Dobbins said.

I fear Mr. Dobbin's analysis is correct given growing recalcitrance on Iraq among the Democratic leadership, but I hope there's still time to forge a compromise position. The solution is for Bush to give a speech with the following message:

My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight to explain that the stakes in Iraq are higher than ever. I understand that there's a great deal of controversy over how and why we invaded Iraq and that many people are dissatisfied with the way this government's policy has been implemented. I understand your concerns, and I share many of them -- mistakes have been made, and as Commander-In-Chief, I take full responsibility for those mistakes -- but failure cannot be an option. Whatever your opinion of how we began this war and regardless of your opinion of me, the consequences are simply too grave for us to withdraw without creating a stable and secure Iraq that can stand on its own two feet.

First and foremost, it's a matter of national security. If our Iraqi mission fails, there will be dire consequences in the Middle East that will make us less safe. The risks of a failed state in the heart of the region are real. We cannot accept the expansion of Iranian influence at a time when they are pursing nuclear weapons. We cannot allow Al Qaeda to use Iraqi territory as a new training ground for terrorists. We cannot allow instability in Iraq to destabilize its neighbors Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan, our allies all. These are all real possibilities, maybe even inevitabilities, should we fail.

Second, we must consider the suffering of the Iraqi people, and if we withdraw before finishing the job, there will be suffering on a monumental scale: civil war, ethnic cleansing, and massive dislocations of refugees. As a matter of morality and national honor, we cannot stand by and watch this happen to a people we have liberated. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave us good advice when he said, "If we break it, we own it." For better or worse, we're responsible for the outcome in Iraq, and it's time to redouble our efforts toward success.

As I've said before, mistakes have been made, and they weigh heavily on me as they do on our nation as a whole, and I take full responsibility. But there is still hope. The Iraqi people still long for the freedom they expressed when so many of them embraced democracy, voting in their first truly free elections. The Iraqi military is standing up with our help, and General Petraeus' plan is helping them stand up faster. This is a process that will take time, but those forces who ran in the first days are now standing to fight for their country, and we must stand with them until they can bear the burden themselves.

There is no shame in opposing this war, and it's not unpatriotic to have a different opinion. The free exchange of ideas is central to our own constitutional system, and I fully accept that many people strongly desire a change in policy. I recognize that there is growing dissatisfaction about how long things are taking in Iraq, and it was a mistake for me not to reach out sooner to ask you for more time, to call on you to sacrifice for this effort that is so vital to our national security. It was also a mistake for me not to have forged a bipartisan consensus on Iraq -- we are always stronger when we work together.

I am committed to rectifying those mistakes. I am committed to doing better by you, by the military that fights so valiantly, and by the Iraqi citizens who deserve a chance at a better life. It's time for us to set politics aside. As my first step toward that goal, I will immediately implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and I ask the Congress to join me by passing those recommendations into law. I also ask the Congress to come together to forge a bipartisan compromise on the war funding supplemental that will allow our troops to have the support they need to finish their mission.

In particular, I endorse the Warner Amendment that ties Iraqi reconstruction aid to specific performance benchmarks. We must sacrifice to insure that our mission is a success, but it's only fair that we ask the Iraqis to do the same. This plan demands that the Iraqi government shoulder more of the burden while insuring that they receive the support they need in a timely fashion. The accountability that the plan provides is essential to our confidence that we have a partner in the process, but it doesn't stop there. The Warner Amendment also provides for additional congressional oversight and testimony from independent experts on Iraqi and US performance. I want you to have confidence in your government, as well.

This isn't a war without end. None of us wants that, me least of all. But if our history in Vietnam has taught us anything, it's that our proud military cannot be defeated in the field, but only at home. We cannot accept defeat, and I pledge to you to do my best to chart a new course that gives you confidence in the very real hope we have to secure Iraq and stabilize the heart of the Middle East. Thank you and God bless.