Why I will vote to re-elect President Obama

It is difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the Democratic Party. Leadership nationally and in most states (notably Wisconsin) has shown itself to be a pack of spineless cowards, afraid of its own shadow, chronically unwilling to try anything new, or offer any substantive program, lest the radio talk show boogeymen might have something nasty to say about it. Fundraising boils down to “Citizens United is coming, Citizens United is coming, send us more money more money more money now now now now now.” Don’t forget that figment of Democratic paranoia, the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

A five year old could identify easily that voters are looking for fresh new faces, bold new ideas, something different from the same old same old, maybe, just maybe, something that might make life better. But, Democratic perceived wisdom is to keep running dinosaurs for the sake of “name recognition.” There is not much different between the reasons Marco Rubio won an upset victory in Florida in 2010 and the reasons Russ Feingold won an upset victory in Wisconsin in 1992. Republicans often miss this lesson, but Democrats never learn. Victories have to be forced on an unwilling party.

Scott Walker didn’t tell Wisconsin voters in 2010 what he meant to do 2011 if he was elected governor, but he did offer himself in a vague, noncommittal sort of way as a fresh, relatively youngish face, a man who took his lunch to work in a brown paper bag, a man concerned about job creation (without offering any details about how to create jobs). The Democratic candidate, a decently competent mayor and former congressman named Tom Barrett, is the main reason Walker won the election. As politicians go, Barrett was about as stale as they come.

When offered a rare second chance to turn Walker out, Democratic Party machinery reverted to form, reducing a popular insurgency at the polls into a re-run of a losing election. Duh-uh, with the choice of Walker v. Barrett voters affirmed that they had already passed on that choice. Barrett, once again, was found wanting. Democrats have a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Obama offered “Hope” and “Change,” in 2008, and despite Sarah Palin’s pathetic carping, he won handily. That was four years ago. He can’t exactly run as the candidate of “change” now. He IS the incumbent. Fortunately, neither can Mitt Romney, a tired politician and soiled millionaire whose platform boils down to “I really admire the thought of ME being president. What do I have to say to win your vote?” Running on his record, he is one of the early architects of health care reform and the individual mandate!

Barack Obama was elected to take the Democratic Party by the scruff of the neck, give it a good shake, and make the party over into something creative, productive, appealing. Instead, once he had the nomination, he sank gratefully into the party as it was, like a gigantic pillow, and went to sleep. Turning to Summers and Geithner for financial advice, he single-handedly allowed Tea Party 2.0 (don’t use my money to bail out the banks) to gather steam. That energy was duly captured by the professional Republican consultants, who redirected the flow into Tea Party 3.0 (everyone hates Obama) and 4.0 (the usual crowd who believe Herbert Hoover had it right all along).

But let’s stop that line of thought for a moment. One of America’s great national past-times is trashing our president. It doesn’t matter who the president is, what their program, what their party, we draw and read cartoons lampooning everything they do, laugh at them on late night talk shows, carp about how they are doing whatever they are doing, and speculate on how their every word and action will cement or alienate the support of bald left-handed Mexican Jewish homosexual women of Chinese descent who are concerned about saving the whales, particularly those who are or are not born-again Christians, Muslim, or Hispanic.

Like most Americans, I have a laundry list of things I would have done differently if I were in President Obama’s shoes. But I’m not. I have the luxury of sitting in my own little room imagining that I have power to do things the way I think they should be done – a power the president, frankly, doesn’t have, and shouldn’t have. We have a government of limited powers, and that means the president can’t fix everything by decree, even if his decrees would always get it just right.

As presidents go, Barack Hussein Obama has done a magnificent job. He steered us away from the cliff of Great Depression 2.0, for which he gets little thanks, because we never felt the pain he saved us from. Franklin Roosevelt had the advantage that our grandparents stewed in Depression with 30 percent unemployment for three years under Hoover before Roosevelt came in. Anything Roosevelt did was bound to be a little better, and he was bound to get credit for easing pain we had felt all to sharply.

We are pretty much out of Iraq, and while George W. Bush signed the treaty that committed us to pulling out (because the elected government of Iraq turned down a longer American involvement), President Obama has stuck to his commitment that we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless going in. Nobody could get a good result out of the quagmire in Afghanistan – the only right way to have done it was to go in for six months, kick some Taliban and al Qaeda butt, then get out, and let our gallant allies of the Northern Alliance sort things out in their country. That’s water under the bridge. Obama is, step by painful step, pulling us away from our massive over-commitment, while trying not to throw away what the troops we did sent managed to accomplish at some considerable cost.

The economy is not performing in superlative fashion, but unless we live in a command economy, the president can only shape the broad outlines, and not always those. Europe is going to hell in a handbasket, rising economies all over the world can work employees cheaper than we can, and congress balks at what government does best: upgrading and installing a first-class infrastructure that allows economic innovation to flourish. Bottom line, President Obama stopped the bleeding, and the recovery is taking longer than we would have liked. Given a cooperative congress, what he’d like to do is on the right track. But he should act boldly, confidently, on a mass scale. We need high speed rail across the nation, not a hundred miles here, a hundred miles there.

I’m disappointed the president took a position on gay marriage. Frankly, its none of the business of the President of the United States. He should have had the political courage to say that, and then drop the subject. Our culture has come to expect the presidency to function as a bully pulpit, sounding off on every contentious issue of the day. It is a matter for the states, not for the feds. Period. Its not about fairness or equal protection of the laws, its about “Oh, here is an interesting human relationship, shall we take official notice of it and issue a piece of paper from the city hall, or just let people do what they want to do and not bother about it?” But, this entire subject really doesn’t matter a whole lot to me. I’m not going to vote for or against much of anybody because they are for or against gay marriage.

Abortion is also a non-issue for me. Again, it’s a matter for the states, to the extent it is the legitimate business of any level of government. No president has the power to overhaul the legal framework of the past 39 years, nor should any try. Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, well-established, a sound, conservative, jurisdictional decision, resolving who shall decide, The State, or the individual pregnant woman concerned. With that well and truly settled, in the free market place of ideas, we are all free to advocate which choice is the right choice, the best choice, the moral choice, and the constitutionally designated decider (the individual woman) will make the final call. There is nothing about this that has any place in a presidential election.

President Obama doesn’t get any credit for this, but on his watch, the flow of undocumented immigrants across our borders has gone down remarkably. The only real question is how to deal with the people who are already here. The president’s proposed policies are right on target, and this is one of the things George W. Bush got right. Democrats and Republicans have various manipulative reasons no majority has ever gotten a comprehensive reform passed, but as the head of the executive branch, Barack Obama’s enforcement priorities are just about right.

Obama has been reasonably good for the country, in perilous times, and his challenger offers nothing of any substance. Voting to re-elect President Obama is a no-brainer. Now, getting back to all the things I would have done differently if I ran the zoo…

Santorum cannot honestly take the oath of office as president

Rick Santorum cannot take the oath of office as President of the United States, even if he managed a modest majority as Republican Party candidate for the office. He has stated, openly and honestly, that he has no intention of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States of America.

Santorum has said in public that John F. Kennedy's speech in Houston, Texas in 1960, makes him want to throw up. That was the speech when Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, promised an audience of Protestant clergy "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general poulace or the public acts of its officials."

So, that makes Santorum want to throw up. It would therefore be more than fair to infer that Santorum believed in an America has an official religion, which he would undoubtedly prefer to be his own, Catholic, faith.

Santorum believes in an America where public officials routinely request and accept instructions on public policy from ecclesiastical sources. In Santorum's case, once again, that would be the Pope, and the subordinate Princes of the Roman Catholic Church.

Santorum believes in an America where religious bodies, as a matter of course, seek to impose their will directly or indirectly upon the general populace and the public acts of officials.

Of course Santorum, being a wily politician, does not put it in quite those words. Santorum said that Kennedy had said "only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case." That is the way Santorum characterizes what John F. Kennedy says in Houston. But it was Kennedy's speech that Santorum said makes him want to throw up.

Kennedy, of course, said nothing of the kind. Kennedy did not say that the National Council of Churches, or the Roman Catholic Church, should shut up on questions of public policy. He said that no public official should seek or accept INSTRUCTIONS from ecclesiastical bodies.

In the long history of Roman Catholic presence in our constitutional republic, there have always been those adherents of that church who considered it an infringement upon their "freedom of religion" that the various levels of government DO NOT seek or accept instruction from ecclesiastical authorities. After all, the bishops of Rome have always claimed such authority. To deny their claim has even been framed as the essence of "anti-Catholic bigotry."

Santorum is apparently one of those who cannot accept that the Roman Catholic Church and its adherents have EQUAL rights in the public square to voice their opinions. It makes him want to throw up that his church should not have a dominant place at the head of the table. He has a First Amendment right to believe and to say that. He can say that our constitutional system of government is morally flawed and should be replaced. But he can't take the oath of office if he believes what he says he believes.

If Rick Santorum should ever (may God forbid) have the opportunity to take the oath of office as President of the United States, if he should place his hand on a Bible and raise his right hand, promising to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America," he will be lying.

As John F. Kennedy said, on his own behalf, that day in Houston, to place his hand on the Bible, and take that oath, then break his promise, would be a sin against God.

Sic Transit Gloria Meehan: Delusions of grandeur from a New Jersey Republican vigilante

Everyone knows that it is more fun to comment on the posts of a well-regarded blogger who draws a good deal of attention. What's the point of sticking to your own site when nobody bothers to read it? Rod Dreher's pages at The American Conservative magazine is one of the more popular and highly regarded. But sometimes a discussion can spin out of control. Like a raging argument between two invited guests at a dinner party, it needs to be removed from the premises, to the corner bar, or the driveway of one of the antagonists.

An aging vigilante living on fantasies of past glory, going by the name of Thomas O. Meehan, takes perverse enjoyment in finding blogs populated by those he characterizes as "all manner of fantasists, humbugs and inadequates." Those are his own words, and by his own words, he seems to fit all three descriptions himself. It is not, otherwise, clear why he cares to waste his time engaging with fantasists, humbugs and inadequates.

Dreher posted some doubts that requiring photo ID to vote is racist. Although few offering comments directly thought is was racist, many challenged the wisdom, propriety, and necessity, of imposing such a condition on the exercise of the franchise.

Very late in a lengthy discussion, Meehan began hinting that he had been part of a glorious effort to document and curtail voter fraud, a great citizen uprising which had single-handedly paved the way for a Republican to be elected governor of New Jersey. Pressed for details, Meehan slowly and begrudgingly offered something approximating a factoid or two, of gradually increasing specificity. Hard pressed, he eventually was even gracious enough to identify the year of the election, and the candidates.

Sorting out claims of fact from a matrix of bombastic rhetoric, Meehan would have anyone who read his account believe that:

In 1982, an unelected, voluntary organization styling itself the "Ballot Security Task Force" mailed post cards to registered voters in Newark and Trenton, New Jersey. It is not clearly whether he claims that 45,000 of a much larger sample, or 100% of 45,000 cards mailed, were returned marked with some variation on "No such person at this address." This task force, Meehan boasts "brought good government to New Jersey in the person of Thomas Kean."

How did this happen? Meehan offers various versions, but the more cutting edge claim is "We forced a recount that threw out enough bogus votes to elect an honest governor." More emphatically, "We challenged them at the polls and we had more than enough legal grounds to force a recount based on State Law." Meehan further specified "The purpose of the recount was to prove that the contested votes (lists) were indeed invalid." The recount, he insists, "succeeded in challenging more than enough of those fraudulent votes to form a government."

Further pressed, Meehan offered a series of suggested Google search terms, and later, specific links to news coverage. What searches and links revealed was a very different story.

The post cards were sent to addresses from a voter list that was several years out of date, not the list actually in use for elections in 1982. Naturally, many voters registered in past years had moved, and were no longer at these addresses. Because the list used was out of date, the commissioners of registration declined to investigate the loudly trumpeted "results." It is not clear whether an out-of-date list was used BECAUSE many voters would have moved, providing the desired appearance of fraudulent registration, or whether the task force was simply careless or negligent.

The task force then paid squads of visibly armed men to congregate around voting places, intimidating voters with the unsubstantiated allegation that they were not qualified to vote, and might be arrested if they tried. In the 19th century, Democrats shot Republican poll workers for challenging the exclusion of black voters — the goon squad Meehan boasts of being part of did not actually shoot anyone, but appears to have taken up the same cause, in the name of the Republican party.

There was indeed a recount, but not one initiated by the self-styled "Ballot Security Task Force." Votes were recounted because the inital margin of victory, for the Republican candidate, Thomas Kean, was so tiny, that the Democratic incumbent, James Florio, wanted a recount. The recount did NOT result in massive numbers of ballots being discounted as fraudulent. It did NOT change the result of the initial vote tally: both in the initial count, and the recount, Kean won.

There was a court case AFTER the election: The result was that Republican defendants promised to cease and desist from intimidating likely Democratic voters, while admitting no wrongdoing. There was no court case that disqualified one or one thousand voters, nor any court case that reversed the outcome of an election.

Perhaps Meehan's real motive lies in the off-hand remark, "readers who wish to purchase the few remaining signs in my possession can contact me at my web address above. Be warned, they’re not cheap." Perhaps not now, but one is left with the impression that a buyer today, at Meehan's price, will find that his investment depreciates in value as the truth dawns upon the population of potential buyers.

It is only fair to note, for the hypothetical reader (if any) who cares to examine this matter closely, that Meehan made a few follow-up remarks in the midst of another discussion at Dreher's site, a retrospective on "The Red Dean," William Hewlett. Meehan's reputation for either accuracy or probity having fallen under the principle "Falsum in unum, falsum in omnibus," he felt impelled to defend himself, however ineffectually, one last time.

Meehan is invited to attempt to rehabilitate himself in the posting box.