The First Election Post-Mortem

With the election a foregone conclusion, a few observations:

1. Obama would have won without the media's help and without a billion-dollar campaign, eight times that spent by McCain.  America was ready to tilt leftward and Obama is smart and modulated in temperament, while McCain is an old 72, with failing intelligence and increasing whininess.

2. McCain ran a terrible campaign, running on vague platitudes and against a tax cut for people making $250,000+ a year.  

He should have run on the virtues of lightly regulated versus heavily regulated capitalism and more compellingly, humanly, explained the tremendous liabilities of big government, high taxation, and excessive redistributive "justice."

3. McCain made an unimaginably bad choice of running mate.  In my view, he would have been wisest to try to convince Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, or Colin Powell to join him, and to do so, he would agree to run and govern as a fiscal conservative and social liberal, which is as conservative a stance as America will tolerate today.

4. McCain became indistinguishable from a tax-and-spend liberal by, for example, voting for the $700 billion bailout, advocating bailout of mortgagees, calling for legalizing illegal immigrants, and refusing to state what programs he would cut. 

5. Obama, as a liberal, knew he could get away with lying. He knew the media would minimize:

• his having promised to limit his campaign to public financing and then reneged. 
• the disingenuousness of his promise to lower taxes on 95% of Americans while funding all the massive programs he promised. 
• the fact that in just weeks, he changed his proposal from raising taxes on people with incomes of $250,000 or more, down to $200,000, and this week, according to his vice president, $150,000. Most observers are convinced that Obama will end up not lowering but raising taxes on middle-income people.  

If McCain had been guilty of such disingenuousness (not to mention of centrally formative relationships with extremists, most notably Reverend Jeremiah Wright) the media would have destroyed him, but not a liberal.

6. The media should be ashamed of itself for its blatant bias and its focusing on the horse race rather than deep probing of the devils-in-the-details on the core issues of health care, balancing the budget, the economy, illegal immigration, the environment, the Middle East, etc.

Perhaps the media focused on the horse race, in part, because it knew that probing on the issues would force Obama to reveal unpopular leftist positions that could jeopardize his election, and the media would not risk that. 

The media used to serve the key role of investigator and reporter, whereever the chips fell. In this election, consistent with its ever more liberal bias, the media was just a huge wing of the Obama campaign--and with the billion dollars Obama raised, he hardly needed help.

7. Our election system cries out for reinvention. My proposal: three-week-long, 100% publically funded elections consistingly primary of debates and a widely distributed summary of the candidates' voting record and positions on key issues.

8. The Obama jubilation will continue long past the election celebrations. I am convinced he will indeed make major changes to this country, armed with a liberal congress and an unprecedentedly liberal media. And short-term, the non-rich will feel encouraged. Indeed fiscal and other resources will be redistributed to them. 

The problem is that those changes (a few of which I mention in my previous post) plus his leading the ever-growing bailout conga line are likely to be just short-term feel-goods. It takes a decade or longer for the long-enduring ill-effects of major redistribution and big government to be felt.  

I believe they will be felt and that America will be a more impoverished nation a decade from now and for decades to come, but I suspect that the media will never blame Obama or the liberals for it. They'll simply call for more tax money for more government programs and more redistribution.

Of course, I could be wrong about the preceding--Too many factors affect the U.S. economy to , with confidence, predict how well it will do a decade or two from now. 

9. While I'm scared of what that perfect storm of liberality (Obama, liberal congress, and liberal media) will do to America, I admit that, from an intellectual curiosity point of view, it will be interesting to watch.

10. Of course, I want President-Elect Obama to prove me wrong and create a better America and world. I wish him all the best.

A Libertarian's Case for Obama

Regular readers of this blog know that I disagree with Obama's core value: that America needs yet more redistributive "justice." They know that I lean libertarian.

Yet as I see this campaign unfold, I'm beginning to wonder if Obama might be the right president at this point in American and world history.

Because of four decades now of liberal-slanted media and college education, most of our best and brightest are liberals, so an Obama presidency would be filled with more capable (and idealistic) people than under a McCain presidency. As every venture capitalist knows, it's as important to invest in the best people as it is to invest in the best ideas.

Have listened today to a McCain town hall meeting, it's clear to me that he shows early signs of cardiovascular dementia. He too often makes little slips, such as "Here in Vermont and the rest of this state, I mean country." In itself, of course, that means nothing. But when it happens again and again, not just in this town meeting but in, for example, when discussing Shia, Sunni, and Al Qaeda, which should be in the wheelhouse of his expertise, and the fact that his cognitive functioning will only decline during his term in office, I am convinced that McCain's cognitive functioning is too weak to be the president of the United States.

We've never had a radical president, either radical left or radical right. While one can theorize all one wants, and indeed my theories suggest America, en toto, will be much worse under a radical Left administration, there may be a need for a grand experiment with a superliberal/radical president supported by an overwhelmingly liberal congress, which is what is projected. Obama indeed will be the most liberal president in U.S. history:

• The non-partisan National Journal rated him America's most liberal senator, scoring him 100 out of 100 on liberality. And his liberality score has gone up every year he's been in office: #16 in 2005, #10 in 2006 and #1 in 2007. The trend suggests he'll grow ever more liberal.
  
• Despite band-aid statements to avoid losing votes, his statements and long-term associations make clear that his core values are radical Hard-Left, for example, Black Liberation Theology.
  
• His positions on health care, education, hatred of corporations, on illegal immigration (e.g., access to our most prestigious colleges even if it means legal residents are turned away,) are extraordinarily Leftist.
  

The gap between rich and poor has gotten too wide and perhaps a hard Leftist is needed to close the gap, and make the public feel that the cards aren't too stacked against them. (I know that statement is contradictory to my antipathy to redistributive "justice, " but, from where I sit, there is a need for modestly more progressivity of the tax code, but less redistributive "justice" in education, health care, and regarding illegal immigrants. I believe the net costs to America of the latter three are huge, and resulting in an overall worse America.)

Obama is a truly gifted orator, and whenever one deals with the masses, the ability to give a rousing speech is more important than real-world competence. Speechmaking inspires, and that is one of a president's main roles, especially in an era in which China, India, and other countries are in ascendancy while the U.S. is likely in unavoidable decline.

I have not decided whom I'm going to vote for, but consistent with my core belief that the major media has largely abdicated its responsibility to fairly present issues on all sides, having, on previous posts, presented the case against Obama, here I present the case for him.

Why the Political Campaign is So Repulsive...And a Better Approach YOU can take

You've probably never heard of George Lakoff's Rockridge Institute nor political consultant, Drew Westin nor pollster Frank Luntz.

They are the Josef Goebbels of American politics--teaching candidates manipulative propaganda techniques to obfuscate the issues. They replace facts with focus-group and even MRI-tested manipulative phrases. It disgusts me.

We can't ban them but, please, avoid listening to the candidates--they are robots merely mouthing the focus-group tested phrases. Read commentaries from all quarters.

I cited my favorite sites in an earlier post, but here are some recent worthy articles:

FROM A LIBERAL PUBLICATION
The New York Times' comparison of candidates on the issues

Salon's recent take on the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

FROM A CENTRIST PUBLICATION
The Economist's endorsement of Obama for the nomination but not necessarily the presidency.

FROM A CONSERVATIVE PUBLICATION
Charles Krauthammer's support of Clinton for the nomination (in the National Review.)

FROM A LIBERTARIAN PERSPECTIVE
A call for a Libertarian-oriented president by the editor of the libertarian Reason magazine. (This was published in the L.A. Times.)