Welcome to Friday’s with the ‘hammer.
Dr. K. rightly points out that the Left never can own up to their own mistakes and prefer to point fingers and make excuses for their failed policies (when not altogether denying the failures) despite controlling all three branches of government and having the “popular culture” in its hip pocket. For example, now we are told that it takes at least a year for the stimulus to kick in and create jobs – that was not what they were telling us last February. Jimmy Carter blamed his failures on a “national malaise”, the Clintonistas claimed (through their parrot Peter Jennings) that the 1994 electoral tsunami was akin to a 2-year olds temper tantrum. Barack Obama claims it is all a matter of failed communications, not failed policies. They would all be advised to heed Cassius’s warning to Brutus “The fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars but in ourselves”.
by Charles Krauthammer
In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president’s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.
Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.
The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O’Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.
A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board — and fueled two decades of economic growth.
Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.
It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable.
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The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model, while America flails about under its “two parties … with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.
[…]
He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise — expanded coverage at lower cost — led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public opinion polls, then in elections — Virginia, New Jersey and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.
Read the rest: Excuses for Obama’s Failure to Lead
Tags: Charles Krauthammer
