Personal Aside: What is the Next Logical Step for Republicans?

harold_macmillan



Party Should Turn More Conservative.

Every time the national GOP loses the presidency, it becomes more conservative than when it owned the White House. That was the case in 1933 after Herbert Hoover a New Deal-style anti-free market experimenter lost and conservative congressional Republicans changed the party’s philosophy. Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency largely applied Bob Taft’s domestic policies—but also his military ones: Ike rejecting Nixon’s urging for boosting troops in Vietnam or wasting more money on defense to fight the illusory JFK-propagated “missile gap”. Jerry Ford’s loss led to the rise of Reagan conservatism.

So what is likely to happen to the Republicans now that they are in the wilderness? They should speedily become more conservative than George W. Bush has been. But before we go there, let’s take a brief backward look at the election in order to put it in perspective.

The Meltdown was the Deciding Factor.

After every losing election the GOP produces fly-speckers who say “if…if…if.” If he had gone to Ottumwa, Iowa rather than Des Moines. If he had picked Romney instead of Palin. If his staff hadn’t tried to micromanage Palin. If he had a ground game. If he hadn’t accepted federal financing (I agree here most of all). These things are speculative and counter-productive. The mid-September economic meltdown did it. Period.

Going out of the gate, with the unpopularity of the Iraq War and President Bush, the Republicans had no right whatever to imagine they could win in 2008…but McCain started to. Why? The country was center-right and Barack Obama was not. All the way along until mid-September even with the adulatory pro-Obama media working against McCain, it seemed to work--John McCain clocked at 2, 3, 4 or even 5 points ahead of Obama despite all the national media hype that inculcated the man from Chicago as destiny’s savior. With mid-September came the economic meltdown. Since that time, McCain ran 4,5, 6 or 7 points behind depending on the poll you read. Realclearpolitics.com, was right on the button: Obama won with plus 6.5% of the electorate. In electoral votes of course it was greater—365 to 162 (270 needed to elect). So we should stop muttering if-if-if. The meltdown did it.

Loss but Not a Disaster.

The Democrats did not gain enough in the Senate (plus 6) to put down a Republican filibuster—such as may well occur if they try imposing a “Freedom of Choice” act to override Hyde amendment protections or return to the mid-named “Fairness Doctrine” which would put conservative talk shows in a strait-jacket. In the House Dems gained plus 26. No tidal wave there. Nor in ideology. Polls show now Dems comprise 39% of the electorate, Republicans 32% contrasting with the 37-37 tie in 2004. Nor is the spread in Congress dismaying. After his victory in 1976 Jimmy Carter had bigger margins in the Congress. Moreover—and this is most important—22% of the electorate call themselves liberal (up one point since 2004) and 34% call themselves conservative (unchanged since 2004). Forty-four percent constitute a swing vote—self-identified as moderate—compared with 45% in 2004. That is amply sufficient to build another coalition—if care be done that while continuing George W. Bush’s laudable social policies, it does not simulate his foreign or domestic views.

There were no huge gaffes in the 2008 campaign that Republicans need to torture themselves with. Sarah Palin was just what the doctor prescribed as needed—a bright conservative pro-lifer to energize the dominant evangelical base…and her addition to the ticket undeniably aided the effort, no matter what the liberal media think. In fact their frenetic hatred energizes her case for 2012.

Three Signal “Events.”

Often I have cited Harold Macmillan’s view of politics that it is not engulfed so much in strategizing as in “events, my dear boy, events.” I list the salient events that changed the campaign as three. First, the brilliant defense of pro-life by McCain in the most intellectually stimulating two-part interviews at the Saddleback church run by Pastor Rick Warren. In his interview Obama seriously blundered by saying the question of when life begins “is above my pay grade.” McCain surged with conservatives at that point who set aside all doubt that he was their guy.

In reaction to Obama’s disaster at Saddleback, liberal media felt for the first time that the election of their candidate was in jeopardy…and they dropped any pretense of objectivity in order to savage the candidate who was once their favorite Republican and censor stories that reacted unfavorably on Obama. That’s when the stories first started appearing about McCain’s “advanced” age of 72 (ridiculous: Churchill was 77 when he returned to power in 1951; Charles deGaulle was 77 and at the peak of his career when as president of France he declared an arms embargo on Israel in 1967). The attack culminated with leaked stories of how his reputed short-fuse would ignite world tensions (ridiculous again, the shortest presidential fuses in modern times belonged to the explosive Ike, then Harry Truman, then Bill Clinton).

Second, McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin which so angered the media because she was pro-life…and more: she had resolved to have a Down syndrome baby when liberals believe if abortion rights mean anything the “right” to end an inconvenient life by a mother was being negated. So they resolved to picture her as a naïf and bumpkin with no depth despite the fact she had far more executive experience…as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas commission and governor of the state… than did Obama who in his embarrassingly thin resume ran nothing: zero, zilch. The McCain campaign staff cooperated unwittingly by making her unavailable to conservative talk show media and Fox News, wasting much time preparing her for two liberal appearances where she was savaged—Charlie Gibson’s on ABC and Katie Couric’s on CBS.

Accordingly, media escalated minor news about Palin (the $100,000 wardrobe purchased by the Republican National Committee for her, for example that is being donated to the poor: a news story that stunningly was released by McCain staffers) and embargoed the Los Angeles Times video of a horrific toast Obama made to a Palestinian leader. The New York Times relegated to page 62 behind the corset ads Joe Biden’s scary recounting to NBC’s Katie Couric (who nodded approvingly, itself a weird circumstance) of how as president FDR stabilized the country after the stock market crash of 1929 by going on national television, not understanding that Hoover not FDR was president then and there was no television beyond experimental devices in `29…which cast doubt on Biden’s mental acuity since in his health record there are recorded two serious and separate aneurisms of the brain.

The third event was the economic meltdown which was beyond McCain’s or Obama’s power to avert or even ameliorate. By that time, the Sleepy Eye of the electorate opened wide, grasped that a world crisis was in the making and that Republicans were in power—so the Eye concluded there must be a change in command no matter what the risk.

Summary: The two given conditions for reelection being peace and prosperity, there are no examples in U.S. history where the party in office during wartime which also presides over an economic panic was returned to power: none.

For the future, what should be done?

I: Return to Taft Foreign Policy.



On foreign policy. The direction of foreign-defense policy in the Republican party can be changed without negating the past or pulling up all the stitches that have gone heretofore. Something has happened to take the war off the screen in the 2008 campaign: the surge worked; we’re winning in Iraq.

This leads to the question: Was Iraq necessary? After 9/11 we waited for terrorism’s second shoe to drop—and nothing happened. All the while other sites became targets: Madrid, Glasgow, London and Bali, the entirety of Denmark as well as, of course, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. All this time we have been safe from suicide bombers, germ warfare and skyscrapers being struck by air transports. Assuredly we are not out of danger, but when the presidential campaign regards Iraq as of secondary importance to Sarah Palin’s wardrobe it seems to me there are two conclusions to be drawn. (A) Either al Qaeda has been on vacation or (b) something serious has been done to frustrate their ambitions.

I would say that for now, since terrorism is off the table and presumably will be for the duration of the Bush presidency, out-of-power Republicans should accept the view of the nation’s leading expert on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis that Bush’s reaction to invade Iraq was correct—because for the first time terrorists were shown America has the will and energy to fight for which he credits Bush’s action in Iraq. Since he’s one of the world’s leading experts at age 92, I defer to him.

However I will say that the Republican party of the future should not echo the Bush policy of announcing we will eradicate all tyranny in the world to be replaced by democracy whether the inhabitants want democracy or not . This Wilsonian futility is self-evident.

Then what foreign policy should be adopted by the Republican party? I would say it is largely contained in A Foreign Policy for Americans written by Robert A. Taft circa 1951. He was not just a great constitutionalist but a skilled diplomat, having learned intelligent policies from his father, the 27th president who encouraged U.S. businesses to invest in under-developed nations (for the U.S.’s own good, thus it was called “dollar diplomacy”) . Young Bob learned at his knee and served first-hand as a legal counselor at Versailles where he learned the folly of Wilsonian idealism. In his book he wrote, “Our traditional policy of neutrality and non-interference with other nations was based on the principle that this policy was the best way to avoid disputes with other nations and to maintain the liberty of this country without war.” But he made clear that “it has always opposed any commitment by the United States in advance to take any military action outside of our territory. It would leave us free to interfere or not interfere according to whether we consider the case of sufficiently vital interest to the liberty of this country. It was the policy of the open hand.” (Italics mine).

Taft’s should be the policy leading to the future with the proviso of returning full measure to terrorists who strike at this country. Far different from the missions made by Condoleezza Rice where she junkets around the world as a constable of rectitude and screams at every unfriendly country including Iran that the United States won’t stand for this-or-that. That is world policeman stuff.

Nor is Barack Obama’s enunciated policies like Taft’s. Obama is willing to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions (it’s a good question whether he thinks we have any enemies). He was willing from the outset to abandon Iraq. Thus we would have lost the war and trivialized the lives lost there—a war we are now winning. That is not the Bob Taft view of the world who strongly opposed the Korea “police action” but determined that once we were in Korea to we must win it. He would have chosen Douglas MacArthur…the architect of “there is no substitute for victory” as his vice president. (How those two would have meshed, however, is anybody’s guess).

Another point. I have always been embarrassed by Republican candidates publicly pandering for Jewish votes here by threatening to engage in a Mideastern war solely to defend Israel and no other purpose. Here we were in 2008, at war in Iraq, at war in Afghanistan, on a rumble with Russia over Georgia, threatening to repulse Iran… and John McCain issuing yet another threat of war bearing on Israel’s survival. Almost like we are lashed together as one nation. Those who respect the policy of the free hand for U.S. involvement were and are genuinely disturbed with that talk.

I can understand our evangelical Protestant allies…invaluable supporters in all elections… see a symbolic Biblical tie between Christianity and Judaism which I share. Assuredly, Protestant evangelicals are an indispensable part of any winning effort Republicans are to make. They who voted for McCain by 92% are far more influential and effective in the grassroots for conservative elections than indifferent Catholics (only one in four who go to church) who voted for Obama 54%.

All the same, while we revere democracy in Israel (in fact we send millions of dollars in aid to it very year) the most pragmatic political argument to scotch the pounding of war-drums vis-à-vis Israel is this: 78% of American Jews voted for Obama who was pulled up short early in the campaign as being insufficiently pro-Israel and who was at times was even suspect as favoring Palestinians and was quoted in that famous toast as saying he learned much at the feet of an anti-Israeli Palestinian scholar.

Especially to nurture the tie with evangelical Protestants who comprise an essential part of our base, we should respect the historic ties between Christianity and Judaism. But let’s do it with less stentorian bombast than McCain, George W. Bush and others have stressed. Under Richard Nixon with Henry Kissinger at his elbow and under George H. W. Bush they pursued realistic not idealistic foreign policies. Realism should return to American foreign policy—essentially despite all the challenges, we cannot and should not send our secretary of state across the globe issuing dire warnings of war-war-war.

II: A Sharply Curtailed Domestic Policy.

On domestic policy, Republicans should get one thing straight: The only “compassionate conservatism” that counts is lessened government size, fewer oppressive regulations and tax cuts. Not by adding other government programs to those liberals have created which we label as ours…as did Bush and Good Time Charlie Speaker Dennis Hastert…when they passed their hugely costly new entitlement program for seniors.

On the economic meltdown: It was not caused principally by “business greed” (as McCain and Palin have erroneously said) but by government and political foul-ups…partially by Alan Greenspan’s arrogant mistakes at the Fed for which he is now contrite…but most significantly by Democratic favorites at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac named in 1988 by Bill Clinton who got hundreds of millions in bonuses, Franklin Raines and Jamie Garlick. A Bush OMB probe in 2004 found massive fraudulent bookkeeping at Fannie Mae but was blocked by Democrats, Congress refused to hold hearings.

All the while Fannie Mae gave millions to Democratic causes including ACORN and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), banking chairman along with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), a member of the Federal Financial Management committee as well as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of House Financial Services, an acknowledged gay whose boyfriend was a key executive at Fannie Mae. (Media blacked out this news). Raines and top executives were forced to resign in 2005, paid $31.4 million in civil fines, did not go to jail, received little media coverage and were allowed to keep their bonuses.

McCain introduced the “Federal Housing Regulatory Reform” act in 2005, saying ”if Congress doesn’t act taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market and the overall financial system.” Media gave it almost no coverage. Democratic recipients of Fannie Mae cash opposed it and it died aborning. Instead, the Democratic congress passed stringent anti-business bill, Sarbanes-Oxley which media gave extensive coverage to.



On the $700 billion rescue package: The proper conservative focus is given by the man I supported for president before George W. Bush defeated him and who has, I believe, a superb economic mind in the U.S. with a journalist’s ability to put ideas in plain words: Steve Forbes. “Belatedly, governments realized the only way to get credit flowing again was to make massive infusions of new equity into failing banks…Despite the crisis, the global economy still retains enormous strengths…The world is flush with cash. It’s frozen because of fear, but the cash is there. Productivity gains are burgeoning. So will this global boom resume next year, slowly at first and then with increasing momentum? It should. Whether that happens, however, depends on the next highly dangerous phase: the political aftermath.” The change in focus that came yesterday from Treasury seemed to indicate the rightness of Forbes’ position.

By which he means whether we follow policies that hinder growth or and retard or abort a full-blown recovery—“regulations that stifle innovation and taxes that harm the creation and deployment of capital.” Such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s crusade to add car makers to the list of taxpayer beneficiaries and to “let Main street share with Wall street” whatever that means.

Also: The out-of-power Republican party must be to take up what has been aptly called the elements of the “leave us alone” campaign of Grover Norquist—fighting government’s “takings,” defending gun owners’ rights, ending misguided campaign finance “reforms” that curtail free speech (in favor of unlimited contributions with immediate Internet disclosure), and by all means defending the taxpayer: reducing the corporate income tax rate, cutting the 35% tax rate on corporate capital gains, advocating a flat tax, abolishing the alternative minimum tax, abolishing the death tax and most important, creating a constitutional protection against taxes creeping back.



There: that’s off my chest. Enough for now. More at some future time.

Personal Asides: Pelosi Calls for Federal Bailout of “Sun-Times” and “Tribune”,,,Me? Plagiarizing the Dead? Subliminally Guilty as Charged.

Pelosi Asks Bailout.



WASHINGTON—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today called a federal bailout of Chicago’s two daily newspapers, the “Sun-Times” and “Tribune.” It is understood her plea has the support of the White House, particularly incoming Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. President-elect Obama reportedly will comment on the grave situation facing the two newspapers at his next briefing.

“Both daily newspapers constitute an invaluable resource to public understanding of key issues,” said the Speaker. “It would be inconceivable that Chicago would lose its newspapers because of the harsh decisions of the marketplace. `Tribune’ which also owns the ‘Los Angeles Times’ and the ‘Baltimore Sun’ has suffered weak print advertising of $121.6 million for the quarter ending Sept. 28, compared with a profit of $152.8 million a year earlier; revenue falling 11% to $1.04 billion from $1.16 billion, operating profit declining to $37 million from $217 million. This concerns us greatly in Washington.

“Concurrently the `Sun-Times’ also suffered a $160 million loss in the last quarter. Accordingly, there comes a time--as with the Big 3 automakers of Detroit--when the public interest transcends private, ill-considered marketplace decisions. The case of the newspapers in Chicago would warrant intervention by the federal government. Just as we cannot allow Detroit’s Big 3 to die, we in Washington will not stand idly by and allow Chicago’s Big 2 newspapers to shrivel up and die.

“`Tribune’—particularly as owner of the ‘Los Angeles Times’—has been a yardstick for fair and impartial journalism. Its acquisition of a few years, the ‘Times,’ stood guard against flagrant destruction of public confidence in the presidential election system by resisting demands to release a video in contravention of its earlier journalistic pledge to keep the contents secret—and moreover refused to sanction a text to be distributed which was suggested, a sleazy way to evade journalistic ethics. This allowed the public to make judgment on the presidential election untrammeled by hate-filled insinuations. This record of genuine public service and beneficent editorial page support of the `Tribune’ have compensated for the unenlightened John Kass whose columns, for some reason, the paper keeps running. But it is expected that infusion of federal funds will necessitate in staff cutbacks in the future—although that will be a matter for Mr. Sam Zell to decide.”

The Speaker added: “The ‘Sun-Times’ has long distinguished itself in public service, particularly due to the guidance of Michael Cooke, its editor who has seen to it that both sides of controversial questions are presented in exemplary fashion.”

When asked for examples of the “Sun-Times’” objectivity on political issues, she responded: “The paper has run stories about President-elect Obama fulsomely and completely. That’s one side. Then it has turned around and satisfied its obligation to cover Republican objections by assigning that party’s opinion statements to a prime journalist Mary Mitchell whose astuteness is beyond question. She has given full coverage to their evil motivations and hate-filled views—which is the other side.”

Under tentative plans for the newspaper bailout, a Board of Accommodation will be set up by the federal government to adjudicate matters involving both newspapers on news coverage and editorial positioning. Chair of the Board will be, reportedly, David Axelrod.

Plagiarist?

Eric Zorn emailed me the other day asking for my comment. This was quite refreshing, I paused to savor it: In years of writing his liberal tracts in the “Tribune”…and his blog…he never asked for my comments before.

Then I read further. One of his readers charges that my critique of rock music (see Nov. 3: “The President We Deserve”) uses many of the same words that the late Allan Bloom did in his book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Thus he wanted a comment as to whether I plagiarized the late Bloom. My first thought was surprise that any of Zorn’s blog readers…notably left-wing and fawningly pro-Obama…would be familiar with Bloom who was a social conservative—a band usually branded by Zorn and his readers as “hate-filled.”

The second was that at last I am going to be compared with some humanitarian and literary superstars—all liberals—who found themselves in the same boat: among them Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. …Stephen Ambrose…Doris Kearns Goodwin. Then—the third: a comedown. I could also be compared to Joe Biden who not only stole Neil Kinnock’s words but lifted his entire biography and applied it to himself. A possible fourth: there could be some comparison to Barack Obama’s essays from college —but alas that is not to be since they have been forbidden to the supine press including Zorn’s employer, Obama being black, you know.

Now as to the charge of plagiarism. As a longtime admirer of Bloom, I drank in his views of philosophy since they approximate those of my first Phil: 101 professor, Dr. Ernest Kilzer OSB whose views I fear I may have appropriated and even some of his language from his 1946-47 lectures. For example, he used to say “pigs is pigs!” and start a lecture with that mundane observation. I can’t recall the many dozens of times I did the same thing—WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION TO FATHER KILZER! For which I now apologize. Here is the pertinent section gratis my old notes.

“Pigs is pigs, gentlemen! Are we capable of knowing what makes a pig a pig? Or is the word `pig’ merely an arbitrary term we use to describe this particular animal which, for all we know, may one day evolve into a horse? No, `pig’ is an abstract idea, gentlemen, an abstract idea expressing the concept which describes all members of that species.

“Now `justice” is also an abstract idea. I ask you: can we know what is just and unjust? Mr. Roeser, sitting in the back row, dawdling: are some actions always unjust no matter what the subjective culpability or lack of same of the person who performs them? Answer, Mr. Roeser! You say—what? Yes, yes, yes—you HAVE been listening! Not entirely but somewhat. Yes, there is indeed an objective order according to which some acts will always be `just.’ In the same way some animals will always be members of the species we call `pigs.’ You may sit down, Mr. Roeser. Now let me ask this man in the front row, Mr. Arth: Can we really know that objective order? And going one step further, can we really know there is a God? Can we know His attributes?”

Yes, as with Father Ernest, I DID savor Bloom’s take and language on rock music and acknowledge that his language without attribution came through in the piece the day after election. Further I can say the ultimate source which gave Bloom the idea was the 1979 movie “10,” with Bo Derek. Mr. Zorn’s reader will quickly note that Ms. Derek is a Republican and announced her support of John McCain which is another thread in this story. Ergo: from Derek-to-Bloom-to-Roeser. This bears all the marks of a conservative conspiracy which Mr. Zorn will want to check out for his “Tribune” masters.

Thank you, Mr. Zorn. And when your readers have something else to allege, please write again.

Personal Aside: It Gives Me Great Joy II.

“Advertising Age” has just come out with an exhilarating (for me) finding…that Barack Obama’s victory didn’t do a thing for sales on newsstands in Chicago—a well-deserved rebuke to the hustling editors of both “Sun-Times” and “Tribune” who sold much of their integrity to turn their papers into sales pamphlets and most of their columnists into flacks for the Democratic candidate—eschewing their once diverse stance. During the sixth months ended this September, the “Tribune” saw its weekday circulation decline nearly 8% to 516,032 and the “Sun-Times” decline by nearly 4% to 313,176.

Wrote the magazine: “The declines came during a period that included the grueling final months of Mr. Obama’s face-off with Hillary Clinton, his clinching of the nomination and a number of key developments around local figures including Rev. Jeremiah Wright, political fixer Tony Rezko and former [sic] radical William Ayres. The papers’ proximity to these events helped them land a number of big stories along the way and the Sun-Times’ chief Obama watcher Lynn Sweet became a cable-news regular. But neither the intense interest in the stories nor the paper’s access to them stopped circulation declines.” I’m glad if it helped Sweet whom I admire but it’s sweet satisfaction to see the tabloid which has disgraced itself since the great days of Emmett Dedmon, disintegrate. Proof that when you betray what remains of a newspaper’s soul you betray yourself.
Michael Cooke, the editor of the “Sun-Times” has staked his job on the hope that his paper would become the bible for blacks—so his columnists have paraded their elective intentions accordingly…Mary Mitchell whose animosity toward whitey is designed to inflame her black readers…Neil Steinberg, the brackish anti-Catholic who dispenses ridicule against Republicans not gently but with a trowel…Mark Brown who would do the same if he could manage to get readers who stay awake after reading his unutterably tedious Sears catalog-style prose and the Sunday special—fittingly chosen for the Lord’s Day—the vitriolic atheist Christopher Hitchens who insulted Mother Teresa on her funeral day.

Over at the “Tribune,” the conversion of the once-serious paper to a cheap Obama supplement with the editorial endorsement written ala stenography by R. Bruce Dold, things weren’t much better. It’s owner, the Lucifer look-alike with the red scruff beard, orange fringe hair and slit eyes, joined the outfit and took stock of its soul which he offered up to the gods of expedience by signing off on a big-photo USA Today-like format and ordering lackey Dold to write the Obama endorsement…thinking he’d move the paper into the black at least in the campaign by shilling for Obama.

So congratulations Mike, Sam, R. Bruce and others. Just imagine, you couldn’t have done worse if you had stayed straight…the S-T not taking to donning whorish net stockings and standing provocatively under the streetlights to lure black readers…and the “Trib” also turning into a lady of the evening instead of remaining true to its heritage and endorsing McCain.

Personal Aside: Let it Be Said Here First: Emanuel Worst Choice for Chief of Staff.

As one who knew Rahm Emanuel well in what his future biographers may describe as his “early formative years,” let me register a firm dissent from the chorus of favorable opinion greeting his appointment as chief of staff in the Obama administration. The rousing approval has now grown as conventional wisdom and has taken on the character of a cliché…certifiable now that even Carol Marin—whose opinions are always second-hand-- has climbed aboard. Yes Obama is a good choice because he is a realist, not an idealist. There evidently was a feeling in the supine, pro-Obama media, that with all his filmy, gauzy rhetoric, Obama would hire a dreamer in the post who would look at the most beatific of cases and run the operation into the ground: something like what happened in the Carter administration.

No, assuredly, Rahm Emanuel is neither idealist nor dreamer. But he carries inside him all the qualifications to be a real screw-up—because he is known for applying an iron fist…flying into rages…throwing around the “f” word four times in every sentence…in being vindictive and argumentative and not to suffer fools gladly. You must remember that the best chiefs of staff were not of this mien: the best being Jim Baker under Reagan, another being former Senator Howard Baker in the latter days of the Reagan term. The worst were the tough, adamant guys very much like Emanuel. Dwight Eisenhower placed as his chief of staff a resolute, “no-man,” former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams. Adams was a laconic but very-very cold and blunt New Englander.

He insisted on being called “Governor Adams.” Because he was curt and abrupt he damaged Ike’s relationships with the Congress greatly. A minor breach of etiquette, trivial enough now in retrospect, interrupted Adams’ service: the acceptance of a vicuna rug from an industrialist in New Hampshire, Bernard Goldfine. Everyone wondered how Ike who liked to compartmentalize the White House would get along without a gate-keeper. Answer: He did just fine. He hired Gen. Jerry Persons who had a sweet temperament. In fact, Ike got along, much better than when Adams was there. Adams also arrogated unto himself the aura that perhaps he was the power behind the throne.



Of course the worst chief of staff was H. R. (Bob) Haldeman, Nixon’s lackey who did what he was told, was very obedient and did not serve as a brake whatsoever on the rages of his boss. Another bull-of-the-woods was Haldeman’s seeming co-chief, John Ehrlichman. I had experience with both and can testify they did a great disservice to the president—and ultimately the presidency.

Not all chiefs of staff who share some…not all…of Emanuel’s temperament were disasters. One who was decidedly not very good but then no disaster either was the man we used to call “Mr. Warmth,” Sam Skinner, who for a time was the gatekeeper for George H. W. Bush. Don Rumsfeld who was Jerry Ford’s first chief of staff was tough and cold. He got rid of Henry Kissinger in the White House and had him concentrate on State…and also succeeded in convincing Ford to dump Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. But Rumsfeld was not a conspicuous success as chief of staff and shortly after he moved to secretary of defense. Dick Cheney was an excellent chief of staff because at that time he had a passion for anonymity, which is what the job entails. To say that Rahm does not have a passion for anonymity is obvious.

The best chiefs of staff are those who have a sweet disposition, try to be gentle, apply the proverbial iron fist in the velvet glove: definitely not Rahm Emanuel’s style.

Personal Aside: It Gives Me Great Joy…Speaking of Newspapers… Egan Raises a Glass with Obama as Money Cascades In.

Joy.

It gives me great joy to announce to you who have not heretofore read it…that the “Sun-Times” newspaper group LOST $168.8 million in the third quarter with ad sales DOWN 19%. It will be sad to see Sneed go but she’ll make tracks back to the “Tribune.” Other than that it’ll be so fulfilling to see the following turned out on the street: the obnoxious, brash, loudmouthed secularist and anti-Catholic Neil Steinberg who never tires of reminding us he is an obnoxious, brash, loudmouthed, secular anti-Catholic…

…Mark Brown who will be relieved of his deadly dull foundry-style work of commenting on city news in the most unexciting, prosaic and unimaginably style-less prose extant…Carol Marin who soon will be deprived of drawing conventional conclusions after many others have in earlier pieces (Emanuel was a good choice!) in cliché sentences and down to only two news commenting paying jobs where she can easily crib her thoughts from other liberals, on NBC and WTTW…Stella Foster who only got her column because she was Kup’s secretary and who uses it to salute her black pals…Mary Mitchell who will have to take her hate whitey campaign to other venues. Zay Smith whose charming Q-T is biting, provocative…and for the life of me I don’t know where he’s going to land because the “Tribune” has no sense of humor…

…Rev. Jesse Jackson, that great exemplar to the black community replete with extortion, illegitimacy-siring and hate, who will have to let his ghost writer go…I would be sorry to lose Steve Huntley but he may be ready to retire anyhow…I would also miss David Roeder on the business page but definitely not the bubble-gum chomping adolescent religion columnist who is incapable of growing up, Cathleen Falsani..nor Bill Zwecker…probably Hedy Weiss. Roger Ebert may have garnered prizes for his movie reviewing but he is a dim candle next to Joe Morganstern of “The Wall Street Journal,” and Morganstern is not a frustrated political commentator. Most of all in the no great loss category would be editor Michael Cooke who drove this enterprise into the ground, after he was fired as editor of “The New York Daily News” where they stopped him from doing the same thing just in time, dogged in his attempt to make it a black chauvinist paper (which blacks saw through as a cynical and dishonest device and didn’t reward with their patronage).

The extraordinarily good ones will find work—Fran Spielman, Lynn Sweet, Pulitzer prize winner Jack Higgins and the investigative staff--replenishing the anemic “Tribune” for a time. But only for a short time until its billionaire sugar daddy Lucifer with slit eyes, red-rimmed hair and goutee will board his motorcycle and WRRRRRROAR off leaving corporate toady R. Bruce Dold free to go where he belongs to Hill & Knowlton where he will continue doing what he has been, taking orders.

Speaking of Newspapers…

Michael Miner in this week’s “Chicago Reader” reports on a talk about the future of newspapering delivered by veteran journalist John Darnton who spent 40 years at “The New York Times.” In short, the future is behind it and both the “Sun-Times” and the “Trib” are likely to be out of business replaced by Internet journalism. But eventually Darnton’s old NYT bias came through. Miner: “Internet journalism is good at aggregation, linkage, documentation and verification—for instance it can demystify an unknown like Sarah Palin. But when the truth is buried, he said, the blogosphere doesn’t dig.” Sarah Palin, ah there’s a subject destined to warm the cockles of liberal hearts. Of course, Sarah Palin. When the truth is buried, the blogosphere doesn’t dig. Unmentioned was how bloggers unveiled a signal journalistic fraud circulating with CBS News and Dan Rather. As well as the entire disgraceful CBS story to vilify George W. Bush. Darnton just happened to forget to mention it. And Miner didn’t think to mention it either in his column.

I refer to the sleazy attempt of Dan Rather of CBS to circulate the tale that George W. Bush was absent a lot during his Texas Air National Guard service. False documents were foisted on Rather by Mary Mapes which caused her dismissal and Rather’s ultimate departure. Conservative bloggers checked the accuracy of the typing on the so-called reports and found they were fabricated. Not a mention of that by Darnton. In the pre-Internet days the Mapes-Rather story would just have been put on the air without verification.

Darnton sounds like a typical NYT product—so cross-eyed Dem liberal he can’t see straight and does not even think of mentioning this significant triumph for the blogosphere. I’m rather surprised Miner didn’t think of it himself as he’s a reputable journalistic product. But when you work for a lefty throwaway like “The Reader,” you can get careless.

Then, before I forget it…this gem. “Darnton worries that a `generation of illiterate news consumers’ will be created, consumers who don’t know how poorly they’re being informed because they’ve forgotten (or never knew) what good journalism was.” Did he mention this with a straight face without cracking up? With his paper neglecting to focus on the stunning example of a Democratic veep candidate with two prior brain aneurisms telling Katie Couric how FDR steadied the populace after the stock market crash of 1929 by going on coast-to-coast television? Instead concentrating on Palin’s wardrobe? And he worries about illiteracy? What a laugh.

57% Catholic Vote for Obama.

Fifty-seven percent of all Catholics voted for Obama…which is not the fault of a small but hardy handful of bishops who courageously pointed out the stakes. Others…the big-name prelates…generally turned out evasive letters that have to be studied with a jeweler’s eye to gain real import. How many of wishy-washy closet liberal pastors spoke that way from the altar is unknown. But then one out of four Catholics don’t go to Mass at all. But there’s more. A major symbol of the church’s disinclination to disturb “unity” by making a fuss over principle: His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan of New York (an Oak Park native), resplendent in his crimson robe (the color of blood so as to remind all that if the duty comes to the fore he should become a martyr but why spoil regal trappings with that depressing thought), tittering politely over drinks with Barack Obama, at the Alfred E. Smith fundraising dinner, yes with Obama the reincarnation of King Herod who believes in not allowing babies born of botched abortions to find any nourishment or medical comfort.

John McCain was there, too, but of course his presence wasn’t stressed by the media. You Know Who was front and center in the mainstream media featured with the cardinal. Present in rapt admiration of Obama were Katie Couric with a walnut sized diamond weighing down her hand and Brian Williams…both very interested in Catholic theology, of course like “hey, what do you suppose Obama’s whispering to Egan?”

But listen, it was a FUND-RAISER for the CHURCH which makes everything all right. That’s of PARAMOUNT CONCERN as it was here when Hillary Clinton in mid-campaign was invited to speak at Mercy School for Boys & Girls by liberal Dem Fr. Scott Donohue who couldn’t imagine there would be a stir, money-raising holding the sway it has today, the Democratic party being so embedded in the archdiocese beginning with Jimmy Lago. Chancery officials contradicted themselves as to whether Cardinal George (a) signed off or (b) found out too late and couldn’t sign off. Probably both (a) and (b). And maybe (c), (d) and (e) as well.

Political risks are likely to be taken in some Church quarters when dough is involved. It causes lots of red-robes to rise above principle. A notable bishop out of town once confided in me that if a bishop dallies with a woman or two, Rome can find forgiveness…with an stray boy or two, Rome can find it possible to look the other way…but when you SCREW UP ON THE MONEY, there’s NO ABSOLUTION. The offender is transferred speedily out of his diocese--which is why Samuel Cardinal Stritch spent his last days in exile in Rome, applying the Dewey decimal system to the Vatican library. He was exiled because he had screwed up on the money from the Chicago collections big-time. Illiterate accounting led a layman to run off with a cool million before the ecclesials could get their hands on it, a story that has still not been covered many decades later.

Red-robed cock-robin Egan, raising his beefy heavy-ringed hand as a reputed “prince of the Church” in a dual cocktail salute with Obama, knows what the real priorities are: big bucks. Assuredly hefty contributors to Catholic Charities (largely subsidized by government grants that water down the Church’s stand on key moral issues) would have been offended if Obama had been dis-invited with a serious downturn of dough at the gate. In 2004, when he was criticized for inviting John Kerry, the Catholic pro-abort attend with pro-lifer President Bush, Egan scrubbed both attendees…an exercise in true cowardice under fire, punishing the principled presidential pro-lifer along with the pro-abort. But it was a rotten marketing idea since the proceeds diminished accordingly. They learned after that when the dough didn’t rush in.

So this year with the prelate photographed sitting next to Obama, THAT was a coup that raised big bucks. And that’s what it’s all about in the big city archdioceses including here. Show me the money.

Paraphrasing Hilaire Belloc “where big city Catholic sun doth shine, is found money-raising and the Dem political line/ At least I’ve always found it so/ Benedicamus Domino.”

Wait for the next “gaffe” to occur here when another liberal Dem priest…not Donohue this time, he’s HAD his turn, someone else… decides to invite a big Dem pro-abort to kickoff a money event. Maybe Biden, maybe Pelosi. Maybe Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. who made his peace with the pro-aborts by joining “Catholics for Obama” a marked departure from his late father, the Democratic governor, who was ostracized because he wouldn’t endorse pro-abort Clinton. The invitation will be made, a speaking date accepted and then—oh! We didn’t imagine that would offend people! Same apologies will follow: oh, dear! How did we goof this up? We’ll send out letters of apology to those offended after the money is collected and tabulated—as did Donohue. Maybe those in the pews’ll forget when we try it again in succeeding years.

Personal Aside: What Happens to Fitz Now?

The big question here…in this citadel of the national Democratic party (the nation’s oldest political machine) and the home of the walk-on-water messiah…is whether a ramrod-straight Irish Catholic federal prosecutor will reappointed by President-elect Obama. If so, Patrick Fitzgerald will continue to prosecute more members of the bipartisan combine which runs this town and state. For now, he is a distinct threat to the man known as Richard II, Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Democratic apparatus here including the governor—and very possibly Obama. So don’t hold your breath that his service will be renewed by our reformist president.

Fitzgerald, 47, is the U..S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois, who, ever since his appointment in 2001, has been giving fits to Daley Democrats and “moderate” Republicans who bed down with the Dems There is no doubt that he, recommended for his post by Republican U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald, (no relation), is fearless and heedless of political propriety. No sooner was Pat Fitzgerald named by George W. Bush than he launched an investigation of GOP Governor George Ryan with close ties to the White House.

Ryan, an apostate ex-prolifer who turned pro-abort and who commuted the death sentences to all inmates of death row to life in order to ingratiate himself with what he figured would be a liberal black jury—a close confidant of Mayor Daley and non-ideological pragmatic Republicans in Washington including members of President Bush’s staff and then House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert—was found guilty on all 18 counts against him. He got a sentence of 6-1/2 years. So powerful was Ryan that James R. (Big Jim) Thompson, 72, a liberal Republican former governor who is the state’s most clout-heavy lobbyist, devoted years at his blue-chip law firm on a pro-bono basis to getting Ryan sprung on successive appeals which went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thompson spent more than $20 million of the firm’s money using its top defense counsel defending Ryan which cut into his and his partners’ bonuses for which in pique they replaced him as managing partner.

Being demoted didn’t bother Thompson, a multi-millionaire and former federal prosecutor who discarded a rosy career to hustle for big bucks clients in Springfield and Washington, D. C.. He has bigger things to worry about. For years he was a man driven to spend whatever it cost his law firm to get his former lieutenant governor off the hook…reportedly petrified that if angered Ryan would spill some costly beans about Thompson and others in the rarified world of Republi-crat back-scratching.



So solicitous was Thompson after Ryan’s conviction that he had Ryan driven to the federal prison in his own law firm’s limousine while he sat in the back seat comforting Ryan while Ryan’s wife sobbed. Thompson is supposed to have said he’d work overtime to get George W. Bush to pardon the bulbous-nosed old ex-governor whose licenses for bribes corruption as secretary of state contributed to aliens getting commercial licenses who could not understand English. One such illegal contributed to an accident that burned five children alive—a grisly act for which Ryan refused to apologize.

Getting Close to Richard II.

Having convicted Ryan, Fitzgerald started to move on the Great Untouchable in Chicago politics—Mayor Richard M. Daley. In 2005 his office indicted a number of top aides to Daley on charges of mail fraud, alleging numerous instances of corruption in hiring practices at City Hall. Despite a federal decision allegedly removing hiring as reward for continued political service, it seems Mayor Daley had turned a blind eye to its operation. Fitzgerald found that a Daley top aide fielded requests for promotions from taxpayer-paid civil workers in recompense for political work they performed—including flooding the neighborhoods with canvassers in the 5th district which cuts an oddly-shaped swath across the city’s north side…in behalf of Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel is a lean and hungry Cassius…a former ballet dancer but who is definitely not a girly man…a brash and profane son of an Israeli immigrant (he uses the “f” word in almost every sentence), who owes his soul to Mayor Daley and who had become (a) political director of the Clinton White House where he regularly defended the 42nd president in the media vis-à-vis the Monica Lewinsky affair and (b) a multi-millionaire by learning first-hand from those close to ex-treasury secretary Robert Rubin how to make money in the investment banking business by using his old political connections. He became independently wealthy…$16 million net worth… managing a merger involving Chicago’s major utility, Com Ed which as a novice he managed by hanging on the phone and following orders dictated by Rubin associates. He was on the board of Freddie Mac, never mentioned in a laudatory “New York Times” bio, Freddie Mac having been fined $50 million during the time of his service for serious ethical impropriety). He ran for Congress in the 5th district (Dan Rostenkowski’s old district) and when a senile worker for Emanuel’s Democratic opponent claimed Emanuel had duel citizenship (here and Israel) Emanuel raised a stink, claimed his opponent was anti-Semitic and got the nomination, tantamount to election.

Still and all, his election ground game was run largely by patronage workers from the city water department, for which its recruiter, Don Tomczak, went to jail—a matter Fitzgerald is still looking at. Once in the House, Emanuel proceeded apace, is a member of Ways and Means and is now chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. He has just been appointed as Obama’s chief of staff in the White House. But needless to say, Emanuel will never forgive Fitzgerald for prosecuting the man who mobilized city water department employees into a political army that elected him and others.

Then Fitzgerald moved to the scandal-plagued program in the city that involved hiring private trucks to do city work. Daley-connected truck owners waited patiently in line to sign up their vehicles and drivers so that they could stand idle and collect money for doing nothing in a $40 million program. Daley’s kid brother sold insurance to three major trucking companies which understood that if their vehicles were to be hired by the city it would be prudent to have John Daley write the insurance. Twenty-five percent of all hired truck companies happened to come from the 11th ward, ancestral home of the Daleys where John serves as Democratic committeeman (in addition to commissioner of Cook county where he is ensconced as chairman of its finance committee). In return more than $105,000 in campaign donations flowed to the mayor from companies in the program.

In February, 2005 Daley, his cheeks aflame addressed the hired trucks scandal by shouting—reminiscent of his late father, Richard I [1902-76] (although with better syntax)—“Anyone who believes that my interest in public life is enriching my family, friends or political supporters doesn’t know or understand me at all.. My reputation and the well-being of this city are more important to me than any election.” The press corps which still retains its honor could hardly keep a straight face. Sure enough, in February, 2006 a close relative pleaded guilty to taking at least $5,400 to steer hired truck work to a trucking company.

Following this, Fitzgerald prosecuted the former city clerk, Democrat pro-abort James Laski with taking bribes and obstructing justice after the feds caught him on tape urging witnesses to lie to a grand jury and deny they gave him $500 to $1,000 a week each in cash bribes to keep getting business in the hired truck program. Also his predecessor was convicted in a ghost payroll scheme with taxpayers shelling out more than $400,000 in salaries to six politicians who didn’t show over a dozen years. In addition Fitzgerald discovered that tons of asphalt paid by the city were stolen by truck drivers in the hired trucks program and used on private jobs.

…Then to the Bush Administration.

Pro-Bush Republicans were gloating about these bad things happening to the Daleyites when Fitzgerald wheeled on his heel and…retaining his office here… went to Washington part-time as special counsel to investigate the Valerie Plame matter in 2003. He brought an indictment on 5 counts against Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and for a time the Bush administration held its collective breath fearing that he would indict Karl Rove, the president’s political guru and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Libby was convicted of 4 of the 5 counts and sentenced to a $250,000 fine, 2-1/2 years in prison and 2 years of probation. After an appeals court rejected Libby’s attempt to delay the prison sentence, President Bush commuted that portion of Libby’s sentence. I personally have trouble with this conviction since the purpose of the probe was to find out who leaked to journalist Robert Novak that Plame was CIA-connected. Fitzgerald knew at the outset it wasn’t Libby but deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage (and, in fact, told Armitage to shut up about it). Fitz claims he caught Libby in a subsequent lie so he convicted him anyhow —the mark of a true zealot… which confirms what his critics say about him, but no one accuses Fitz of being soft on those he zeroes in on.

After Fitzgerald returned full-time to prosecutions here, one Republican writhing under an investigation for fixing contracts was caught on tape vowing he would use his credentials with the White House…presumably with Rove who began in politics here… to get Fitzgerald replaced. Sure enough, in March, 2007 it was revealed that Fitzgerald “was ranked among prosecutors who had `not distinguished themselves” on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March, 2005. The downgrade was so blatant that President Bush rushed a statement out saying Fitzgerald “is a highly qualified prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities [on the Plame matter] as charged.”

Embarrassment for “Big Jim.”

All the while Big Jim Thompson was defending George Ryan pro-bono, Fitzgerald launched an investigation against the pompous CEO of Hollinger newspapers, which owned a string of publications including The Chicago Sun-Times, Conrad Black. He charged Black with criminal fraud, violations of fiduciary obligations and running “a corporate kleptocracy.” The indictment came perilously close to the patriarch of let’s-cut-a-deal bipartisanship in Illinois, Thompson who was chairman of the newspaper’s audit committee. Big Jimbo so relished serving on a board that included Henry Kissinger and neo-con Richard Perle that he personally and without examination signed off on outlandish expenditures by Black to ingratiate himself with management. As result Thompson was investigated by the SEC for wanton carelessness, agreeing to expenses by Black that were not remotely connected to the newspaper—and very narrowly missed being indicted for malfeasance by Fitzgerald. Black was convicted last year and sentenced to 78 months in federal prison, required to pay the newspaper $6.1 million in restitution and a fine of $125,000. Thompson escaped federal indictment by a hair’s breath and there is no doubt that he is gunning for Fitzgerald to be replaced.

Corruption with Ties to Dem Governor.

Although liberal Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich was elected (Serbian Orthodox) on a pledge to end corruption in Illinois government, Fitzgerald moved swiftly on first report of play for pay dealings in state government where big contributors were rewarded with cushy contracts and other favors. Republican Thompson’s law firm was Blagojevich’s general counsel on “ethics” (believe it or not) and Thompson raised campaign money for Blagojevich. Now Blagojevich has been widely rumored to be the unnamed “Public Official A” in the indictment of Antonin “Tony” Rezko, who has been a major fund-raiser and patron for Barack Obama’s career who has aided Blagojevich in at least one alleged extortion attempt.



Rezko was convicted by Fitzgerald on 16 of 24 counts against him. Sent to prison where he could well spend decades, he so dislikes solitary confinement that he has agreed to talk to prosecutors. The danger for Blagojevich…and a host of pols of both parties--and possibly for Obama---is not inconsiderable. The first indication of Rezko’s information came last week when a big power-broker in the Republi-crat combine was indicted, Catholic Bill Cellini, close to Ryan, Thompson and a host of Dems, who has been playing bipartisan deals in this state since 1969. The feds also are looking seriously at Mrs. Blagojevich, daughter of a highly placed Catholic multi-millionaire Democratic pro-abort alderman who started the man known as “Blago” on his way…and who has been estranged from the governor and the fact that Patricia Mell Blagojevich, a licensed real estate broker, earned $113,000 in commissions from the owners of a company that won a no-bid contract with the state.

But now it gets really interesting since Fitzgerald has done years of digging that may finally tie the Presidential Swami of Hope, Obama to dirty deals in the filthiest municipal tag team match of corruption extant in the nation, a process that John Kass of the Tribune, the only major columnist not supinely craven to Obama, calls “the Chicago Way.”

Ties to Obama.

Because Pat Fitzgerald is such a straight arrow, pols here don’t know how to deal with him. Regarded as an instinctive Democrat due to his Irish heritage as the son of a hotel doorman, born in Brooklyn, Fitzgerald has nevertheless been fearless in prosecuting close-up allies of Mayor Richard II and will likely indict a second governor, Democrat Blagojevich with rumors that this will be done before Thanksgiving.

Not only that, with jailbird Antonin Rezko chirping like a canary in order to get his sentence reduced, what happens to the entire Democratic structure of power if bad things surface in his tales about Barack Obama who is regarded by so many media idolaters as a distant relative of the Deity? Like pro-abort Catholic MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews they feel collectively “a tingle” up their leg when Obama walks into a room. But the facts are there and this Demo-publican combine town is pathologically worried Fitzgerald will uncover more.

What is known is toxic bad p.r. for Obama (but never played up by deferential local and national media). Rezko rehabbed a 31-unit building here eleven years ago with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. They couldn’t find the money to restore the heat in a winter season but they did dig up enough dough to give $1,000 to the newly elected state senator whose district included the rehabbed building.

Obama, then a young operator on the make, took donations from Rezko while Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many black families in buildings with squalid conditions, lack of heat, filled with drug dealers and squatters. In all, 11 buildings Rezko rehabbed were in Obama’s legislative district. There is no evidence that Obama lifted a finger to help ease conditions caused by Rezko’s company; instead, he gratefully accepted Rezko’s dough and patronage. Moreover as a lawyer, Obama helped Rezko’s company get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 buildings “for the poor.” Many had code violations; hundreds of apartments were vacant; taxpayers have been stuck with millions of dollars in unpaid loans; at least a dozen times, the city of Chicago had to sue Rezko for failure to heat the buildings.

And that’s not all. What might interest Fitzgerald is that Obama teamed with Rezko in a cushy deal to improve his own living conditions. With money from his autobiography which through media hype became a best-seller, Obama then a U.S. senator paid less than the asking price for the home. He wanted to acquire a lot next door for a garden.

Then Rezko’s wife…who was earning only $30,000 in salary…paid the full price for the lot next door and Obama bought part of the lot from her for $104,000—a transaction Obama later apologized for as “a boneheaded mistake,” acknowledging people might think he benefited from this gift from Rezko. The U.S. Senate’s ethics violations take such benefits seriously as we’ve learned from the case of Alaska’s Ted Stevens, found guilty of seven felonious counts of accepting gifts without reporting them. Rumor is consummate digger Fitzgerald is finding further business dealings between Obama and Rezko.



What to Do with Fitzgerald Dems Ponder.

John McCain announced that if elected president he would keep Fitzgerald on the job in Illinois. Obama has been less definite but in his smooth way expressed support for the prosecutor. Yet behind the scenes, there is much consternation in Democratic circles here. One pol close to Obama told me “it’s important we ditch this guy but do it the right way.” Meaning kicking him upstairs in Justice. But there Fitzgerald might still influence a probe. So the entire Illinois Demo-publican combine starting with the president-elect and centering on Richard II is uneasy.

Chicago Democrats aren’t known for ancient history or literary accomplishment but they would be interested to learn that his namesake, Britain’s Richard II [1367-1400] overreached in power-grabbing, was deposed and sentenced to the Tower.

In Act II, scene 2 the besieged king says, “the ripest fruit soon falls.” Richie Daley making license plates with George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich? Brrrrr!

Personal Aside: Studs Terkel: Disproved Lincoln Once and For All.

More than 20 years ago…when authorities were trying to hype Newberry Library funding…they scheduled a series of debates in adjoining Washington Park, known forevermore as “Bughouse Square.” Bughouse Square was, for decades, this town’s version of London’s Hyde Park where assorted philosophers, poets, madmen and fanatics would address roving crowds which would either heckle them, applaud wildly or drift away. I recall how on a date in 1952 with the girl I ultimately married, we listened raptly to one little man with a serious mien, trying to focus on what he said only to deduce that he was inveighing about pubic hair. Moderation of subjects such as intimate bodily distinctions was then verboten as Bughouse was regarded as composed of alma maters of universities (and the great municipal library nearby) which was devoted to good taste—and they properly heckled the guy off the stage. Today he’d be regarded as a serious rival to Howard Stern.

Not so now when universities large and small…especially the elite ones like Harvard where I taught in the late 1970s…turn to the serious business of making the revolution, with no recognized rules for citizenship, no vision, no competing visions of what an educated human being should be.

But more than two decades ago they asked me to debate of all people Studs Terkel (with Len Despres moderating) on the differences between vogue liberalism and contemporary conservatism. We had known each other slightly, he and I. He had the reputation that still stands of being a 1930s radical on his radio show, prattling the prescribed catechism of neo-Marxism as substitute for thought. I prepared diligently for the confrontation. I should have saved my time. Studs was genial and non-confrontational. The crowd was overwhelmingly in his corner and he became a “Zelig,” identical to Woody Allen’s great film comedy where the central character was nothing in himself but a collection of roles prescribed by others. What I thought was a defender of radicalism was an embodiment of value relativism. Believe it or not the battle was ended shortly after it began with Terkel sort of giving up, declaring that God appeared to be a myth whereupon I responded that this is exactly what Plato says in “The Republic” where he declared war on poetry in behalf of philosophy…I adding that I would be glad to take up the cudgel for philosophy if he wished—the aim of philosophy being to substitute truth for myth. This time the crowd didn’t drift, Studs did. He wouldn’t take the challenge and soon lapsed into a showman’s repartee of the old days…which is when the crowd shrugged and DID move on. The “confrontation” was over.

In short, this image of the man of the people, the man on the street, was concocted by him for suckers who would pay for his books and pay him for his appearances. The late Steve Neal, a friend of mine and a vehement liberal who actually stood for things (none to which I subscribe) wrote a column calling Studs a great phony: someone who tape recorded people without paying them, had their views printed up and sold them at a huge profit to himself without recompense to them. Of course the Neal column was not mentioned during the pop media epitaphs to Studs (it was a great ironic tragedy for Studs that when he checked out for what he would call “the Great Perhaps” Barack Obama was elected which deprived Terkel of much lionization than he received).

Seven years ago he interviewed me with his tape-recorder for one of his books that dealt with freedom…but when I said that freedom of mind requires not the absence of popular restraint but the presence of countervailing thoughts—and that the most exasperating tyranny is one that discounts the awareness of other possibilities, making it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable (which is largely what the media are propagating today)—he seemed disinterested, snapped off his recorder and left my office with laughter but not getting it at all. Needless to say nothing of the sort appeared in his very conventional book.

So in summary, a charming man little man…a professional secular non-observant Jew… never better than in the 1940s when he was the star of “Studs Place” on TV…but following which he became a true phony, making a great-great deal of his singularity…convincing the popular media of it…but at bottom a great con with his red-checked shirts, cigars stuffed in his mouth, not owning a car but riding the bus (which he was very diligent in informing the sucker press about) in short--an average guy with revolutionary views. But he was not very singular at all. He was genial, prosaic, cliché-ridden, unwilling to recognize or acknowledge that education (and we talked of it in my office) is…or should be…the taming of the soul’s raw passions. He saw this conventionally as the suppression of them. A true conventional liberal with little or no thought put into his views.

My farewell to Studs is this: In your long life you disproved Lincoln once and for all. It IS possible to fool all the people all the time and you did it for 96 years, my friend. That’s not much of an accomplishment but the media believe it is solid proof.

Personal Aside: The President We Deserve.

It will have been said of us one day that we elected the president we richly deserve. The reason Barack Obama won was that his followers resent absolutes…hierarchical and authoritative. That goes particularly for authoritative religion which the Enlightened—mostly the media--despise. This is a secular state. The other day when Justice Scalia spoke and invoked God the media looked at themselves questioningly. Violation of church and state? Only the primitives go to authoritative churches like the benighted evangelicals or the one in four Catholics who attend weekly mass.

Oh, you CAN go to church (actually it’s good to hear about love-love-love and civil rights, as per the Rotary Club). But what the majority of Americans now hate…with a fury…is definite moral strictures on things. That smacks of primitive superstition. Where once this country was founded on bedrock Christianity with few exceptions…from the pilgrims to the abolitionist moralists… (Jefferson being the major dissenter)…our people now believe science has left agnosticism as the only respectable intellectual position. This is the unspoken credo of the media and the jocular late-night talk show hosts who are so very-very-very clever and cynical. They all imply: Freud, Marx and Darwin have triumphed over the believers.

We elected the president we deserve because he is cool. But also because he is black. That makes us feel good. Take a look at the slouching, grinning guitarist on the Moosejaw show (Jay Leno). Seeing him strum, seeing them defiant…seeing Obama trotting up the steps…makes us feel so tolerant, filled with a smarmy hypocritical version of brotherly love to replace morals. Obama’s church was involved in only two absolutes: hate whitey and where’s the largesse for us? But media have made us forget that. Now we all feel so good about ourselves—because of him.

How enlightened this is next to the old bygone verities. You know the bromides our grandparents believed in: man’s inclinations are to seek the good, including the highest good, eternal happiness with God (so out of date)…to preserve himself in existence (no room for death with dignity)…to preserve the species i.e. to unite sexually (no room for homosexuality)…to live in community with others (no reference to sexist mal-authority)…to use his intellect and will to know the truth and thereby to make his own decisions (smacks of God).

By this 5-pronged standard Christianity is largely out-of-date. When we enlightened ones discard it we all feel liberated, although we don’t care to recall that it presents massacre of the unborn, intolerance of people who love the old ways, destructive pride in ourselves, the feeling that, after all, there is nothing worth dying for, a kind of insidious pleasure in confronting the pitiless nature of man. Time was when the unifying creed was America’s culture; but these times are different and America has no significant culture but rock music. It has great appeal; barbaric appeal to sexual wantonness, undeveloped and untutored. The young understand that rock has the cadence of sexual intercourse and they revel in the industry that develops the taste for orgiastic state of orgasm associated with sex, celebrating puppy love and polymorphous attractions that shield them from traditional shame. The good thing is that it is LOUD. Obviating much of shared speech that Aristotle insisted is the only common ground. No-no. What is real is the grunt, bodily contact, a throwback to cannibalism and gladiatorial combats.

The credo that succeeds moralistic absolutes is rock and increasingly the self…longing for a world without constraint…antinomianism…which will overcome the ancient codes that restrict and supplant them with free sexual expressing, anarchism as what happened years ago at Woodstock, the drug-induced mining of the unconscious and giving it free rein. What we strive to become in this new society is like Mick Jagger…now old but still very-very relevant…passion’s plaything, a demon satyr, unencumbered by modesty. Yes that is what we have become. And we have just elected our Messiah who with his stylish black wife showed no concern about unwanted infants born from botched abortions dying in hospitals’ dirty linen closets. No-no-no, we don’t want to think about these things. Better to concentrate on the living…not dying things…education, for instance: not moralizing to children against their instincts but linking between what they feel and what they want to be. That’s education, not Western Civ.

That’s why in this new age of Obama we will all become even more tolerant…overcoming the shibboleth that culture should preserve the dominance of heterosexual white males…overturning the old dogma that American culture should be Eurocentric…denying that this toleration shall mean the slowing of economic productivity, the vulgarization of scholarship. What do we do when we kind of recognize there should be a religion of some sort but reason by itself can’t find it? We turn to us. “We are the change we’ve been waiting for!” Does that strike a chord? We turn to creative, artistic man—man passionately involved in Self: Pascal’s wager no longer based on God’s existence but in our own desire to be happy. We have seen it with our own Dear Leader: by innate human greatness man can attract followers, organize whole societies, provide inspiration and devise a culture neither reason nor religion can supply. Yes we ARE the change we’ve been waiting for!

Items of change: taxes on the rich go up (hooray!) the income threshold which defines “rich” goes down (media don’t report this: boring). With tax rates on incomes over $250,000. And—another hooray!-95% of all Americans will get a tax cut! Many of them pay either very little or no federal income taxes at all so they will get a demi-grant (hooray!). Meaning that everyone who pays payroll taxes will get $500. (Hooray!). If you federal income tax is less than $500 you’ll get the balance via government check (Hooray!).

On judicial appointments, the Supreme Court will likely change harshly liberal, harshly pro-abort in one fell swoop with the mortality tables (John Paul Stevens, 88; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75; Antonin Scalia, 72; Anthony Kennedy, 72; Stephen Breyer, 70; David Souter, 69). With the Congress the first step will be reinstituting the “Fairness Doctrine.” As the nasal-Brooklyn accented Chuck Schumer says: what the hell, if you favor censorship against porno, to be consistent you must accept a radio station’s requirement that liberal talk shows are equally billed with conservative ones. The fact that liberal talk shows don’t sell is immaterial: apply affirmative action.

Tocqueville predicted the end will come with a soft form of despotism to suffuse society in rules that sound good, look good…look so calm and relaxed like our new president-elect…that we will accept “servitude of the regular, quiet and gentle kind.” That’s us. 1789 to now…where we make the big change.

We made the big decision last night. The men and women who died in Iraq trying to support democracy? We’ll be out of there quick and their sacrifice will be forgotten. Servitude of the state of the regular, quiet and gentle kind…the kind we don’t notice as we all sway our bodies to the banal rock music in simulated intercourse. We have a young president who is trim and athletic. Cool and calm. Speaks so comfortingly. Spread of nihilist attitudes is the logical extension of self-indulgence, prosperity that has weaned us from God. Nietzschean nihilism has now become nihilism American style.

Knowing Barack’s in charge makes us feel so good…so good…so good. Hooray for us.

Personal Aside: Eddie Vrdolyak’s Guilty Plea a Surprise as is His Moth to the Flame Career…More on Government’s Responsibility for the Meltdown.

A Gifted but Strange Man.

I’ve known Eddie Vrdolyak for many years…not well but when we were together on occasion his wit, sharp acumen and irreverent feel for street politics charmed me--but I have never…and I mean never…ever…figured out what makes him tick. Here’s a guy gifted with a superbly retentive mind, a thorough background in municipal law and public affairs...who was dissatisfied or bored to tears or rebellious at making a fortune with the law on the legit…which he in fact was extraordinarily capable of doing…in order to teasingly like a exasperating moth cruise around the flame of corruption. Was it the fun of not getting caught…of coming close but escaping at the last minute—to have people wag their heads admiringly and say, “that’s Fast Eddie! Smartest guy in town! They’ll never get him!”

He’s fun to be around; his repartee is quick and memorable. In an unanticipated sense he started me at WLS. I had been a frequent guest on some talk shows, nothing more. He had a very popular show in the afternoons…drive-time…with Ty Wansley and I’d call him up on the phone. He was getting big bucks from the station because he and Ty gave it topmost ratings—but he became infuriated that WLS decided not to carry his program on FM where his buddies could hear him downtown without the static that accompanies AM. So…not only a wealthy lawyer but a guy getting hefty six figures in radio with a huge audience at his fingertips every afternoon…he went on strike and affected a serious “sore throat” that was bogus. So he called me and recruited me in a sense to sit in for him, to hold down his seat until he would come back…come back when the station came to its senses. I wondered about that one. But I took his place.

He told me he was only going to keep the “sore throat” for a week or so until the station capitulated. I had just retired from Quaker Oats at the time and had begun a consulting company to businesses. At his behest took his role on the show with Ty which lasted for months before I had to quit the full-time broadcasting to save my consulting business. I ended up doing radio as I do now--an hour a week as a pastime. I’m okay but Eddie…Eddie was a true radio star. And Eddie never came back. His radio career ended by his choice—pique. Why? WHY? How do you figure it? How do you figure his running around with bums and doing tricks in grey ethical areas instead of concentrating on the serious practice of law which he was equipped to execute with high professionalism…as well as a lucrative radio career paying him big bucks… which his highly endowed intelligence and propensity for entertainment served him so well? Why did he allow his law license to be suspended because of crude billing “errors”?

Some observers have told me he liked to savor the thrill of beating the odds, of flying ever closer to the flame. It’s more than that, though. I think it’s self-destruction. That’s the only way I can explain it. Every so often when I saw him…and I didn’t see him often…he would jest about Richie Daley. “Nobody ever called him Fast Richie,” he would say referring to the mayor’s rather commonplace thought processes and stammering language. No, but Richie isn’t self-destructive. Now the odds are that at age 70 Fast Eddie is going to spend maybe 16 months in stir—unless he turns evidence against his cohorts which will reduce the time but not eliminate it.

No, we were never close but still and all, I remember the times we laughed together. I look back at his nice wife and the family he loves and now, sadly, I ask myself…he didn’t need the money…why was he doing these tricks in dank and squalid circumstances? Why-why-WHY?

Government’s Responsibility.

The sad thing is that liberalism…and pragmatic Republicans as well…have succeeded in putting the blame for the meltdown on enterprise—not government. With Fannie and Freddie blowing up the bubble and the Fed and the Bush administration weakening the dollar, regulators pushed banks to reduce book value due to mark-to-market accounting…the idea that financial institutions should correct their books when the market value of their financial assets goes up or down. As banks diminished the value of their assets they had to search for new capital—which signaled rating agencies to reduce credit value…forcing financial firms to hike collateral for default swaps meaning they had to issue more calls for fresh capital. So investment banks with positive cash flows discovered they were in a death grip. Another example is short-selling where the SEC ruled that a stock couldn’t be shorted unless it had gone up in price—the up-tick rule. Add to these things the SEC’s lamentable failure to enforce the rule against “naked” short-selling…meaning that before an investor shorts a stock he must borrow the shares and pay a broker or stockholder a fee.

What should happen to rectify things? The best index of monetary value is gold. The Fed should pin the dollar to a gold price of $500 to $550.

Just remember that the cause of the Great Depression was government…the Smoot-Hawley tariff and President Herbert Hoover’s insane decision to raise taxes…raise taxes…in order purportedly to balance the budget and give Wall Street confidence. Enough damage has been done by governmental action…I don’t mean the $700 bailout which was necessary to avoid a disastrous panic…but reckless governmental action so that the next administration should be prudent, should cut taxes…but wait—what am I saying?

If the polls are right that Obama wins, forget it. In fact, forget about a lot of things including prosperity.

Personal Aside: On the Decadence of Chicago Journalism—Crossing One’s Fingers and Conflict of Interest…Part II of the Liberal Malady that Began With the Misnamed Enlightenment.

Pro-Obama Hacks and Flacks.

Joel Weisman’s trained seals program aka “Chicago Week in Review” had an interesting turnabout Friday. Weisman felt comfortable enough of the presidential election to ask serious follow-up questions of Barack Obama fawner Mike Flannery (CBS2). He began with the usual: how is Obama doing? Flannery responded with the usual predigested pap—Obama’s doing wonderfully, insofar as prediction can be made he’ll win etc. etc. Then Weisman asked what could possibly derail the effort. Flannery stuttered and said “I don’t want to go there.” Of course he doesn’t but he managed to say events could intervene…or Obama could say something stupid. Weisman persisted: what could he say? Flannery offered the thought “I’ve got my fingers crossed.” Got my fingers crossed that Obama would not goof up. My-my, that’s real objective journalism from someone who has been hired to cover the candidates, isn’t it? Talk about conflict of interest. In Chicago journalism, enthusiasm for Obama with reporters is brushed off as good old hometown spirit. Like supporting the Cubs or White Sox. Pathetic indeed.

Pathetic because it is so unashamedly decadent. Flannery and most of the others can be partisans because they know their bosses are …marketing the pro-Obama brand, don’t you know. Flannery had written an article confessing his gushing admiration (rather sophomoric like Chris Matthews’ unmanly statement that when he sees Obama he feels a tingle go up his leg). We don’t know if Flannery feels the same tingle but he is definitely in awe of Obama as he explained in a paid advertising supplement to “The Sunday New York Times.” In it, Flannery reported he asked if he could have a photo taken along with his kids with Obama when he becomes president…or, failing that, if he could have an ornament from the White House Christmas tree. This fawning before elected liberal Democratic officialdom is what passes for television journalism here, ladies and gentlemen. For this servility David Axelrod may well offer a third-tier job to Flannery in the Obama press office. On the other hand, why the hell SHOULD Axelrod when Obama gets continuing lascivious massages from Flannery for nothing?

Also on the panel flapping her fins and barking for a tossed fish from Weisman so she could boost Obama was Marion Brooks, NBC 5 anchor at 4:30. Her legendary prior extraordinary conflict of interest…the severest violation of ethics barring an absolute payoff—bedding down with a source while pretending to be objective… as a TV reporter and anchor in Atlanta…which should have gotten her bounced from journalism permanently. She was the mistress of Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, a married man, while purportedly covering City Hall and so was required to testify when he, as ex-mayor, was indicted after a five year federal investigation into corruption. The sexual relationship went on for four straight years with the newsroom knowing all about it. She accompanied him on so-called Atlanta trade trips to Paris, Jamaica, Mexico and San Francisco. If her TV bosses thought she would get exclusives from that relationship they were disappointed. As the mayor’s lover, she kept his confidence…not much different than what goes on here in news circles for Obama which are flacking for Obama but without the sex. Maybe it’s subliminal as per the tingle that goes up one’s leg.

Far from seeing her career ruined by the scandal, she was hired by Channel 5 here and is front and center as an anchor. In contemporary journalism’s politically correct “ethics,” you’re not supposed to bring it up because that would be (a) racist and (b) is her own personal business (see “privacy—right of”) , even though in another line of work…in a corporation where she fraternized sexually with a boss or influential supplier… she would have been bounced permanently for unprofessional conduct. She wasn’t and covers the news…at least reading from a teleprompter…here. By the way, Campbell was just released from federal prison in Florida last week. While fighting the indictment, he used the usual dodge…that the feds were racist, that they also bugged Martin Luther King, Jr. et al. It didn’t work.

Brooks’ career is on the rise while the very same Channel 5 bounced Amy Jacobson in July, 2007 after Channel 2 ran a story featuring her in a swimsuit—skimpy—with her kids at the home of Craig Stebic. Stebic’s estranged wife, Lisa, vanished in April, 2007. No likelihood that Jacobson bestowed sexual favors but she certainly exhibited bad judgment (she says she was just covering the story). She says she went to the Stebic home at the invitation of Stebic’s sister and wound up family swimming with the Stebic children. Rival Channel 2 took films of her at Stebic’s house. In her lawsuit against Channel 2, Jacobson claims the station “wanted the public to believe that Plaintiff Jacobson had a sexual liaison with Craig Stebic.”

What’s the difference between Brooks who was embroiled in a massive conflict of interest with a sitting mayor but who was hired for a big paying job by Channel 5 after the Atlanta scandal and Jacobson who still can’t get a TV job? If you have to ask, forget it.

Also on the panel was R. Bruce Dold, editorial page editor of the “Tribune”…the pro-abort Catholic and corporate toady… who wrote the editorial endorsing Obama who offered his biased journalistic assessment on how great Obama is doing. The “Tribune” company owns the “Los Angeles Times” which is sitting on a video taken of Obama praising a Palestinian leader…and the “Times” says it can’t release it because of a promise its reporter made to his source. Of course the newspaper could release a transcript but doesn’t, stalling until the clock runs out and its hoped-for Obama election. Needless to say, Dold wasn’t asked about this by the ever smiling cross-eyed (so Democratic he can’t see straight) Weisman. Eric Zorn says we don’t understand the sanctity between a reporter and his source.

Not a word about printing the transcript from Zorn. Not pertinent, you see.

His paper is meticulous about privacy concerning Obama. Not so when it pried open the sealed divorce records of Blair Hull and Jack Ryan—a gross violation of privacy-- which indubitably helped Obama. Not a hint of a question about these inconsistencies. Not a hint of a question in this city’s news media about Obama’s advocacy of share-the-wealth, nor the sliding scale of upping the tax rates on first $250,000…then $200,000, then $150,000. Not a hint about facing up to the obvious incompetence of Joe Biden’s declaration that FDR appeared on television right after the 1929 stock market crash and steadied public resolve. If Sarah Palin had said this, what would have been the reaction? Corporate lackey Dold would have been instructed to write a scathing editorial and he would have leaped to the task.

Thus, ask not why public trust of the mainstream news business is in the cellar. I come from a long vantage-point of watching news media go bonkers over liberal politicians and liberal prescriptions…from the entire Washington media lowering their cameras while paraplegic FDR was hoisted on derricks aboard planes and ships… so the people wouldn’t learn of the extent of his paralysis…to Ben Bradlee’s participating in sexual romps with JFK and keeping still about them…to Walter Cronkite’s pronouncement while ensconced at his anchor desk in New York that the Vietnam war was unwinnable when in fact Tet had been won by us…to Dan Rather’s conspiracy with a forged document that falsely impugned the military service of George W. Bush. But the current Obama craze and the abdication of news media responsibility for its mission anent Obama is unprecedented. The hypocrisy is attendant in the fiction that the big newspapers are “objective.”

At least in the old days when Thomas Jefferson had his own newspaper, subsidized by grants from his State Department that the Virginian ran…and Alexander Hamilton had HIS financed by his wealthy supporters…the “news” was subjective and honestly biased…honestly subjective as it was with Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph Hearst and Dorothy Schiff’s then ultra-liberal “New York Post.” Unlike the hypocrisy of today where news organs…TV channels and newspapers like the “Tribune”… pretend to be objective and are tools of partisanship with hacks and flacks like Flannery, Brooks and Dold in love with a politician. In Flannery and Brooks’ case it’s true love; in Dold’s it’s opportune.

Then there is the anomaly of “The Economist,” the Brit magazine that has a reputation for solid economics but which has been veering crazily leftward contradictorily to its economic standards for a number of years. There is definitely something in the water over there and has been causing bubbles in the UK brain for years. When our culture turned erratic, the UK went even more so: witness our love affair with rock music which the UK worsened with a craze for an imbecile named Screaming Lord Sutch. We toyed with embryonic stem cells until science discovered exploitation was unneeded: their scientists announce joyfully they’re splicing half human, half animal cells. Likewise, “Economist” articles have been as pro-abort and pro-gay rights (even pro-gay marriage) as our “Time” and “Newsweek” for years but I ignored it to get to the economic meaty articles. This week the paper tossed economic circumspection aside and ran a front page of Obama striding toward destiny as in an insurance ad with the headline “It’s Time!” Inside, a review of the latest bio of FDR went giddy, refusing to mention an acknowledged fact that Roosevelt’s terms didn’t solve the depression and unemployment…which it took World War II to overcome…and pacified Joe Stalin in ways that led to the Cold War.

But we don’t have to look at “The Economist” for erraticism. The little billionaire owner of the “Tribune,” who looks like Lucifer…with a fringe of red hair and beard and slit eyes (lacking only a forked tail)…who spews four letter words, crouches over his motorcycle handlebars, revving it up to prove his manhood… RRRRRMMMMMM!...views the Obama endorsement as a marketing device, turning out a revised and remolded product that is a cheap Xerox of “USA Today” with the exception that the “Trib’s” ink comes off on your fingers.

II: How the Economic Prospect Can Be Worsened.

Unmentioned in the late presidential campaign on both sides is that blunders with the economy has occurred through governmental, not capitalistic, means. Due to those governmental blunders, the global credit system has been temporarily paralyzed which has propelled the U. S. and Europe into recession and which threatens the Asian markets. If allowed to fester, the credit crisis beginning in mid-2007 would have suffocated the economies as surely as did the Great Depression. Thus while it was an agonizingly tough choice, governments of the West decided rightly that they must make direct and massive infusions of fresh equity into failing banks. The stand-pat argument that they should suffer the fate of the unregulated free market and fail sounds logical at first—but would surely have provided a total meltdown.

Despite the media which strikes fear into panicky hearts, the global economy survives with impressive strength. It is too easy to forget that between the 1980s and 2007 we had a bountiful era. More people advanced economically in a short span of time than in the last half century. Seventy-million people were joining the middle class a year. And the prosperity was due to the Reagan income tax cuts which burst into atoms the stagflation of the Jimmy Carter 1970s. In the period between 2002 and 2007 our growth TOPPED the entire size of the economy of China.

Now the economic world is bursting with cash but because of fear the cash is stymied. If conservative economic principles learned under Reagan were to be applied, global growth will resume next year. But looking at the liberal sickness, it’s a big IF. Barack Obama has shown us that he will tighten regulations that retard innovation and hike taxes that stymie capital formation. Indeed, his surrogates are already urging Washington to force tighter emissions curbs and compelling more costly health insurance coverage.

God knows we in this country have contributed with mindless governmental action to the economic chaos, with punitive and anti-productive legislation such as the benighted Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Obama may well proceed with the lamentable process of criminalizing business failure. We are on the way to repealing the doctrine of limited liability which enabled business leaders to be liable only for the investments they actually put into a corporation with the remainder of their assets safe. Limited liability spurred the country’s entrepreneurial strength. The prosecution of KPMG is an example of liberal aberration where the IRS dissatisfied with civil action turned to prosecutors who bludgeoned it. The record of Arthur Andersen, ruined by such mis-begotten practice, could not be resurrected back to life after the courts threw out the charges.

Yes, John McCain and Sarah Palin notwithstanding, the problems weren’t caused by private greed but government’s false creeds. The Fed in 2004 turned on a fire-hose of excessive liquidity and thus held interest rates unnaturally low…based on the misconception that the U.S. economy was weaker than it was. Thus it engineered a global commodities boom which sent the price of oil, copper and steel to the stratosphere. Then for nearly four years the dollar fell against the euro, yen and pound—sending the housing market spiraling. The Bush administration liked a weak dollar believing it would reverse our trade imbalance and cosmetically make exports cheaper. Treasury never cautioned the Fed to bolster the dollar. When the housing bubble popped in 2007, it would never have hit its extreme if we had a strong dollar policy. Banks and investors turned fearful. And the good old Fed again certified easy money which created the commodities bubble.

All the while, pushing oxygen into a looming housing bubble were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac angered at studies showing they had negligible influence on the housing market and real life accounting scandals that made their leaders ungodly rich. So they reacted…with help of Barney Frank and his male Fannie (Mae) lover (pun intended)…and leapt to the challenge of great p. r. by extolling “affordable housing for the poor.” Out came the bicycle pump and on came the strenuous inflating, guaranteeing $1 trillion under prime mortgages, retaining up to $100 billion of faux paper on their books. Only secondarily were the Wall Street “greed-sters” responsible since they saw immediately that Freddie and Fannie were on hand to buy the junk they churned up.



More later.