Category Archives: political solutions
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #22
What does President Obama bring to the table? Given a teleprompter and a prepared speech he will deliver a magnificent piece of oratory. A performance that few in our history could match. But what else? He may project likeability but he is not. He is quick to anger. Carries grudges even those of his family. His treatment of the Supreme Court Judges in one of his State of The Union speeches was unprecedented. Remember his treatment of Representative Ryan. Not the work of a kind or gentle man. He cannot think on his feet. You have seen how he does without the prepared speech on a teleprompter. He is very thin skinned and cannot take criticism. He would prefer to do nothing if he can’t have his way. He does not even meet with his
I can’t stand to close this piece without debunking President Obama’s bragging rights. I know something about preparing operations for Presidential approval. I did that for President Reagan for the last two years of his administration. Take drones. They were developed and flying operations long before Obama’s tenure. All he did was approve the increase in their use. I agree with their use for it saves lives of our men and women in uniform. The only hard part for the President to decide is what is the political and foreign affairs fallout. The same is true of the Usama bin Laden affair. There is political risk in both approving or disapproving the staff recommendation to go. If it fails, ala Carter’s attempt to rescue hostages in Teheran, there will be negative fallout from the opposition. If the staff recommendation to go is disapproved there will be, sometime later, attacks from the opposition. Being President is a very hard role to fill. Sitting around the Situation Room with anxious looks for photo ops is not necessary. The credit goes solely to those who execute and face the real risks. Nor is leaking classified intelligence successes necessary to campaigning for re-election. Last night you saw the real President Obama who is not used to people talking back. Most supreme leaders and emperors are like that. Last night was no surprise.
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 21
Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.
MY PERSONAL VIEW OF PRESIDENT REAGAN
In December of 1986, Frank Carlucci pulled me aside in the coffee hour following a worship service and told me President Reagan had asked him to be his National Security Adviser. He was putting together an entirely new Security Council Staff and wanted me to do all the intelligence, covert action, counter terrorism and counter narcotics staff work on his staff. I greatly admired Frank Carlucci and would have followed him anywhere. I reported for duty just after the first of the year. What follows is my personal view of President Reagan whom I would soon meet for the first time.
My motivation for writing this after decades of silence is the similarity between where President Carter and President Obama have led this nation. Neither one of them could ever have led us out of where we were then and now. But I have nothing but praise for President Reagan. I have several unflattering comments I could make about people in his Cabinet but silence is the better choice. I will say that Cabinet government cannot work without a strong, committed presidential staff. In my time, that was the National Security Council Staff. Cabinet members are soon captured by the organization they lead and soon are presenting the organizational viewpoint rather than that of the president. Please don’t believe I was an important person in the White House or that I was close to the president. In this case, admiration flowed one way. I was in his presence several times in the Situation Room and the Oval Office, but less so in the latter. My role was to provide the staff preparation for National Security Council meetings that fell within my area of responsibility. Okay, enough of the establishing of credentials.
In my first meeting with President Reagan in the Oval Office, he immediately made me feel at home and that he wanted to hear what I had to say. After his opening humorous story or joke, he said, “Frank, unless you tell me what is happening, I have no way of finding out.” He wanted us to know we could say what we thought without holding back. Bad news as well as good news is all relevant to the president. He was always gracious and sincerely interested in the well-being of his staff. I never saw him treat anyone with anger or sarcasm. He was extremely loyal to Cabinet members and Pentagon officials even when they deserved being sent to the wood shed. Keeping government organizations on the course the president wants, not what they want, is more than a full-time job.
Foreign officials couldn’t understand that the Reagan Revolution was first and foremost for Americans. His vision of the ‘Shining City on a Hill’ was not for nice-sounding rhetoric read from a teleprompter. It was call to all of us to throw off the cloak of doom and gloom and to remember our heritage, remembering also that government growth diminishes individual freedom. This is the president who destroyed Communism, rebuilt our military power, restored faith in capitalism and the free market, spoke truthfully, practiced transparency, and was respected by both parties. The most powerful man in the world never thought of himself in those terms. He understood those of us from blue collar backgrounds. The last quote I remember from him was, “Barry, I want Americans to be able to walk down any street in the world and be safe.” He cared about all of us. I’m glad he is not here to see Americans slaughtered in Libya while Carter, sorry, I mean Obama, dithers.
http://www.factsandfictions.com The author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #19
LETTER TO FAMILY & FRIENDS
I was asked recently to comment on the use of lies, flip flopping, and spin in the presidential campaign. Politicians from both parties and their surrogates are and have been guilty of all these methods of distortion. I will concentrate on those of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party in this blog because I believe the distortions here are more dangerous to our nation than those of their opponents and are more outside the normal use of truth twisting. I am aware of my own bias in favor of centrist policies and hope I will not offend my many Democrat friends, present or past. I’m going to present the case in bullet form without paragraphs of evidence.
*President Obama is often mistakenly accused of lying when he simply failed to reach one of his goals: Unemployment under 8 percent and cut the deficit in half in his first term if he was given more than 800 billion of stimulus to spend. Those are not lies; they are simply failures of management and leadership.
* Obamacare will be deficit neutral. No one now believes that will happen. Lie? Probably not. But the denial of movement of 700 plus billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare is much closer to the definition of a lie. Many would say that is just slight-of-hand budgeting and more in line with spinning the truth. It seems clear this transfer happened but the faithful will say it was all going to a medical fund for the American people. The choice is yours.
* Repeated charges that the Republican Party is waging a war on women is a hard stretch to fit under political spin. Did Secretary Sebelius of HHS anticipate the firestorm that followed her decree that the Catholic Church had to pay for contraceptives for women who worked in all Catholic hospitals, clinics, and schools? The issue was and is, simply: Could the president force the Catholic Church to pay for something that is against their religious beliefs? To me this is clearly an example of the Big Lie strategy. Speakers at the DNC expanded on the extent of the “war on women” to fears of losing their right to vote or exercise of their right to decide on having an abortion. Maybe they were reading too much into the Republican Party platform. Platforms of both parties, no longer, if ever, follow principles. They are used to give radical and fringe elements evidence of their influence in return for their support.
Keynesian Economics
* If only Congress, especially the House, would pass the president’s Jobs Bill or bills, millions of jobs would be created. Lie or an example of the vast difference between Progressive and Republican financial theories? I think this is not the president or his surrogates lying. This issue is a philosophical chasm that divides conservative from progressive. The Keynesian theory, in simple form is that government spending or pump priming can grow the economy and bring an economic system from recession to a growth mode. It can add jobs in the public sector and in infrastructure improvements as long as the taxpayers continue to pay the costs. It does not create wealth or long-term growth. Only the private sector by expanding the supply of goods and services to sell in the free market can create wealth and improve the gross national product.
Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Secretary of Treasury and financial guru, remarked after several years of trying Keynesian economics that it just doesn’t work. Contrary to folklore, the unemployment rate late into President Roosevelt’s tenure was more than 12 percent. Many communists and socialist nations have tried to develop growth and national wealth through varying forms of Keynesian schemes. All failed. Yet it remains a mantra of the far left, while to Progressives supply side economics is still the enemy of growth, even though its record shows a very high rate of success. While it is true that the House and the Senate have not passed the president’s jobs plan nor any of his budgets, their failure is due more to their lack of fiscal reality than to partisan politics. Not one Democrat voted for any of the president’s budgets. (This is an example of political spinning and differing beliefs and not lying.)
* Political spinning is also the answer to conflicts about the amount of jobs created, when, by whom, and at what cost. The whole rationale of how the unemployment rate is computed gives wide latitude to different claims. Progressive ads and political claims are often not lying, just avoiding the unpleasant facts in favor of partisan sound bites. And every time a politician, from either party, changes his or her mind in the face of new information or an internal conviction, their new position should not be called flip-flopping. Maybe it was the right thing to do.
Rather than labeling opposition statements as lies, wouldn’t it be better to shed light on the truth, even the relative truth?
http://www.factsandfictions.com The author of the Jack Brandon thriller series.
EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #17
Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
WHERE IS OBAMA COMING FROM AND WHERE IS HE GOING?
Those are two questions Americans have been asking themselves for nearly four years. He has written a book about that journey. Pundits have written articles, both in favor of the president and in opposition. The main-stream media, which we have counted on in the past to uncover the guiding principles and the experiences that have shaped the principles of our leaders, has been silent. It would be unseemly to dig deeply into the background of the first man with minority credentials to inhabit the White House. It was enough that he fought the Clinton machine and beat an inept McCain candidacy. The only good thing to come out of that debacle was governor Sarah Palin. Any conservative who questioned Obama’s birth, associations, education, and beliefs flirted with being branded a racist. I was personally proud of my country for electing a black man to the presidency, even though I had serious doubts about his capacity for the job. No nation embracing racist values could have elected Obama.
There are numerous problems in America Obama could have tackled. The inner city mess, failure of American K-12 education system that serves the union better than the children, jobs and job training, free trade agreements, supporting people struggling for freedom everywhere, stamping out the last vestiges of discrimination, and uniting our people. No, instead he set about gaining control of the means of production, righting America’s nearly nonexistent colonialist history, and seeking forgiveness from foreign nations for the actions of American power and influence. Where did that all come from?
We should have known some hidden demon was driving this man when one of his first acts in the White House was sending a bust of Churchill back to Great Britain. He was picking up the anti-colonist battle his grandfather and father fought in Kenya against British colonialism. He was mentored for many of his formative years by known communists and Islamists dedicated to the destruction of the “colonial empires of the west.”
This man is not evil. He is just marching to a different drum. The only one he can hear. He is not cruel or bad, just misguided. We can not change the beat of this ancient anti-colonist drum. He looks cool, but he’s living in the past. He’s trying to follow a path that is now faint and overgrown. One the nation does not want.
Go see the Documentary 2016. It is a good piece of scholarship. Well produced and very helpful in understanding a president who is mired in an anti-colonial past.
http://www.factsandfictions.com Author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series
Eight Decades of Insights – 15
YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION WHEN THE OPPOSITION DEVOUTLY BELIEVES THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.
My last blog emphasized the need to focus on the big picture and not on shifting issues. The president and his whole administration know the goal is to get re-elected: “Nothing else matters. Say anything. Do anything. Never mind the law. Sort that out later. When we win, we will own the courts. Use the full power of the executive office where it is needed. Increase subsidies, extend payments, fight voter ID, sue states, block investigations, try to deny late voting to veterans, leak if it helps build short-term credibility.” These are things the administration is willing to do. And don’t expect a serious effort by the administration to find and punish the leaker.
I have seen real leak investigations. When the president is angry about leaks, the leaker is found and sometimes exposed. These leaks are so spectacular that only a few people could have provided the information to the NYT. The FBI and a counter-intelligence team could find the leaker in two weeks if allowed to do what they know how to do. Mandatory polygraphs of less than twenty people to start. But remember: The end justifies the means. Failing to get four more years is the only thing to fear.
These are smart people. Take immigration. President Obama showed the brilliance of his campaign when he bypassed Congress and issued the essence of the Dream Act by executive order. Senator Marco Rubio lost his unique platform and the Republican Party its chance to make serious inroads into the Hispanic community and to win Florida big.
The Obama brain trust has at least one more ace up its sleeve. They must now be talking about cutting some baggage. Does anyone believe that the vice president is a net gain for the campaign? He is a gaffe a speech and standing beside the president on the platform he looks and acts like he has been or never was politician. Can he debate Ryan? I think not. So, think about it, should this end justifiy the means and should ‘followers of Saul Alinsky’ even think twice about throwing the VP under the first bus?
No! Watch the convention when a tearful VP tells the convention that the campaign and the responsibilities of another four years is just more than he can do. It isn’t fair to the president or the American people and the highly respected financial genius replacing him will help the party and the nation, thereby challenging Ryan’s contribution to the Republican ticket.
That is my prediction. It will happen unless the Obama brain trust believes it can win with Joe. In that case, the Romney/Ryan ticket must have made some catastrophic blunder or blunders.
Barry Kelly | Facts and Fictions 