Bloodthirsty Liberal

I don’t know about a thousand words, but this picture certainly recalls one word: putz.

All eyes were on Saudi business tycoon Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud and his wife, Princess Ameerah Al- Taweel, at an event at the Fairmont Copley Plaza commemorating the Alwaleed Bin Talal Centers for Intercultural Dialogue and Understanding. (One of the six centers funded by the prince to improve cooperation is at Harvard.) Alwaleed is among the wealthiest people in the world – Forbes lists his net worth at $19.4 billion – and his investments include Twitter, News Corp., Citigroup, and the Four Seasons and Fairmont hotel management companies. (The prince chose to spend the night at the Four Seasons.) The evening included a conversation between the prince and former president Jimmy Carter, who appeared remarkably vigorous at 87. The crowd included William Fatt, CEO of Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, Kathleen Taylor, CEO of the Four Seasons Hotels, former Florida congressman Alan Grayson, Global Post CEO Phil Balboni, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, radio host Callie Crossley, Christian Science board member Mary Trammell, Alex Jones of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, and attorney Geoff Lewis. Alwaleed called for rejecting extremists and focusing on common values among faiths. And Carter again urged Israel to return to 1967 borders and called on Syria to accelerate elections. Asked if he feels free to say what he thinks, Carter replied: “Well, I’m never going to run for office again. And I have Secret Service protection for the rest of my life.’’

For budgetary reasons alone, let us hope that expenditure ends soon!

Obama?

Score!!! You guess it! He’s lower than Jimmah…

President Obama’s slow ride down Gallup’s daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history.

Since March, Obama’s job approval rating has hovered above Carter’s, considered among the 20th century’s worst presidents, but today Obama’s punctured Carter’s dismal job approval line. On their comparison chart, Gallup put Obama’s job approval rating at 43 percent compared to Carter’s 51 percent.

Back in 1979, Carter was far below Obama until the Iran hostage crisis, eerily being duplicated in Tehran today with Iranian protesters storming the British embassy. The early days of the crisis helped Carter’s ratings, though his failure to win the release of captured Americans, coupled with a bad economy, led to his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980.

According to Gallup, here are the job approval numbers for other presidents at this stage of their terms, a year before the re-election campaign:

– Harry S. Truman: 54 percent.

– Dwight Eisenhower: 78 percent.

– Lyndon B. Johnson: 44 percent.

– Richard M. Nixon: 50 percent.

– Ronald Reagan: 54 percent.

– George H.W. Bush: 52 percent.

– Bill Clinton: 51 percent.

– George W. Bush: 55 percent.

What’s more, Gallup finds that Obama’s overall job approval rating so far has averaged 49 percent. Only three former presidents have had a worse average rating at this stage: Carter, Ford, and Harry S. Truman. Only Truman won re-election in an anti-Congress campaign that Obama’s team is using as a model.

The Iranian problems are eerily duplicated, eh? I don’t think so. I think that appeasement invites aggressive behavior. Both Carter and Obama are wimps.

- Aggie

Obama.

Alas, a few days before his all-but-certain election, he glibly telegraphed what would prove the seminal mistake of his administration, telling Time magazine’s Joe Klein that, right after fixing the financial crisis, “a new energy economy . . . That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.”

The financial crisis would not be fixed, but Mr. Obama decided our sagging economy would just have to endure fights over the big ideas he was so determined to implement anyway, including health care, re-empowering labor, redressing income inequality, etc.

Let us suggest a counterintuitive historical parallel. Jimmy Carter also came to the presidency as a “progressive” Democrat, amid a failing economy. He also had considerable freedom to define his own agenda, riding a wave of Watergate revulsion rather than an ideological mandate.

But Mr. Carter had served aboard Navy submarines. He ran a peanut plantation. He served one term as Georgia governor—real jobs that produce real effects. Mr. Carter saw himself in some realistic relation to the world.
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It was no part of Mr. Carter’s progressive heritage to dismantle the regulatory state that the original progressives had erected. But he did so—in airlines, trucking, railroads and (partially) energy—and made a virtue of it.

It was no part of his progressive heritage to prioritize a strong dollar, but he did so—appointing and supporting Paul Volcker because inflation-fighting had to be done.

The Carter presidency was a mixed bag, but he had the requisite adult judgment for the job. He did not abandon his “progressive” values, but he could see the obvious—that the times called for backing and filling in the “progressive” project, not charging ahead, onward and upward oblivious to realities.

He never got credit from the political calendar, but the Reagan economy was truly built on a Carter-Reagan foundation. Lost amid the shouting, the continuities of American life are often impressively large. Check out Mr. Carter’s speech to the 1980 Democratic convention, in which he boasted unembarrassedly and at length about “slashing regulations” and “restoring free enterprise” to failing regulated industries.

You perhaps see where we’re going. Mr. Obama’s career has been one in which the main effect has been the impression he leaves on audiences—the main effect has been himself. Familiarity with his country—or any other country—would be helpful at this point, if only to counterweight his mesmerization with the arc of his personal story.

Even at this late date, he could tell his aides: “I see the bill coming due for a generation of excesses and the last thing we need is more excesses. I want growth. I want only proposals that encourage growth.”

Well, I agree that Obama is a horrendous President, but am not completely convinced that Carter was much better.

PS – I heard an amusing Leftist rant a few days ago, in which I learned that Republicans start all wars. History buffs, can we compile a list of wars with the Presidents who participated in them? Like Roosevelt (D) – WWII, Truman (D) WWII, etc. I actually think that the dems are more war-happy, but am not completely sure.

- Aggie

Should we send Barry a cardigan? The Carter-Obama similarities are as striking in foreign affairs as they are domestically.

Somebody in the Iranian government backed a planned terrorist attack in America’s back yard? No surprise there. Tehran didn’t earn a reputation as the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism for nothing.

Nor is it terribly shocking to hear that the plot was intended to be carried out on US soil. America these days must appear an open target for the likes of Iran.

This summer, President Obama revealed his new and improved strategy for combating terrorism. Pop quiz: What did it say about Iran? Almost nothing. Despite its record, Tehran merited just one mention in 19 pages.

This wasn’t an oversight. The White House didn’t forget to say something substantial about state-sponsored terrorism. It’s just that talking about states that foster and fund the slaughter of innocents is much too inconvenient a truth for the administration.

The president came into office with a plan to make nice with evil regimes (which won him the Nobel Peace Prize after just months in the White House). The Obama Doctrine called for engaging with America’s enemies. Little foibles — bankrolling terrorists, or trampling the human rights of their own citizens — would just have to be overlooked.

To many, this seems like Jimmy Carter-redux. Our 39th president, after all, wanted to play nice. America’s enemies sized him up as a patsy. Once they thought that they really understood what kind of man was in the White House, no snub or humiliation was too small. They spent the second half of his term making Carter’s life miserable, from Iranians’ seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran to the Soviets invading Afghanistan.

Yet the only reasonable outcome of the Obama Doctrine is to make Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy look reasonably adept by comparison. Even before yesterday’s indictment, there was plenty of evidence that adversarial capitals around the world don’t take this administration seriously.

This summer, in fact, the Iranians got a clear lesson in how the United States responds to state-sponsored terrorism. It happened when press reports revealed that American intelligence had concluded in a classified report late last year that Russia’s military intelligence was responsible for a bomb blast just outside the US Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia.

The bombing inconveniently occurred while the White House was pressing for approval of the New START nuclear agreement with Moscow and trumpeting the successes of “resetting” relations with Russians. The White House just told the Georgians to keep quiet about the whole affair and slapped some Russian wrists in private. What our president didn’t do was express an ounce of outrage.

No surprise the Iranians might think that even if their fingerprints turned up all over this plot, they could worm their way out of it.

After all, they’ve spit on every outreach effort the White House has made. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made jokes about Obama’s name. Tehran has moved full speed ahead with its nuclear program despite Western protests.

It even threatened to send its ships through American waters, and the White House said: So what?

So let’s be honest. Is this assassination plot really a surprise?

Carter wasn’t reelected. Back in 1980, we knew that appeasement was a flop, most of us understood that anyway. Let’s hope that the similarities hold through November 2012.

- Aggie

Wikileaks

Beautiful.

Twitter was abuzz Thursday with the death of Apple visionary Steve Jobs but another topic was gathering steam as the day progressed. Who will win this year’s coveted Nobel Peace Prize?

Not Jobs, though many among his huge global following posted messages that he should. The Nobel is never awarded posthumously and that rule also eliminates Mohamed Bouazizi, the unemployed college graduate whose self-immolation in Tunisia sparked a popular uprising that led to the fall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s government. The Tunisian revolt began this year’s so-called Arab Spring.

Some years, there are clear frontrunners — Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi.

This year, it’s anyone’s guess with a record number of nominations — 241 — received by the Nobel committee. Of those, 53 are organizations, including WikiLeaks — the website founded by Julian Assange that facilitates the publication of classified information and made headlines for leaking documents and videos related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also released thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables.

Wikileaks would be a better choice than Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama.

- Aggie

In a spirited debate with friends recently, I was pressing the attack on Obama’s record of failure and shattered promises. I usually wouldn’t bother, preferring to enjoy their company rather than endure their opinions, but the wine was flowing and they wouldn’t shut up.

My rhetorical adversaries were trotting out all the tired themes and memes (I don’t yet trust that word—we haven’t been formally introduced), including the granddaddy of all excuses: blaming Bush.

Seriously.

To these die-hards, there is no blaming Obama for Bush’s ever-more evident catastrophes, and any attempt at even mild criticism is deeply rooted in America’s unique loam of racial antipathy.

Well, if the shoe fits, I guess:

If you really want to light the fuse of a liberal Democrat, compare Barack Obama’s economic performance after 30 months in office with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s not at all flattering for Mr. Obama.

The two presidents have a lot in common. Both inherited an American economy in collapse. And both applied daring, expensive remedies. Mr. Reagan passed the biggest tax cut ever, combined with an agenda of deregulation, monetary restraint and spending controls. Mr. Obama, of course, has given us a $1 trillion spending stimulus.

By the end of the summer of Reagan’s third year in office, the economy was soaring. The GDP growth rate was 5% and racing toward 7%, even 8% growth. In 1983 and ’84 output was growing so fast the biggest worry was that the economy would “overheat.” In the summer of 2011 we have an economy limping along at barely 1% growth and by some indications headed toward a “double-dip” recession. By the end of Reagan’s first term, it was Morning in America. Today there is gloomy talk of America in its twilight.

My purpose here is not more Reagan idolatry, but to point out an incontrovertible truth: One program for recovery worked, and the other hasn’t.

Can’t have enough Reagan idolatry, as far as I’m concerned. I missed it at the time, so caught up in Carter and Mondale idolatry as I was. (I can’t believe I just wrote that.)

You young uns won’t remember how bad it was under Carter. But it was really, really bad. End of America bad. No reason to live bad. Iran was pulling our strings, oil shocks rattled the economy, a malaise was settling over the country—and then there was the Misery Index.

The Misery Index, seized by Ronald Reagan during the campaign against Carter, was the simple (even simplistic) metric that added the inflation rate to the unemployment rate. The two were (are?) thought to be mutually exclusive: inflation meant there was too much money chasing too few goods, thereby raising prices. Unemployment implied less money in the system, hence falling (or at least stable) prices. Like I said, simplistic. And it didn’t take into account stagflation.

The table I link to above shows how bad (really, really bad) it got: not only did the Misery Index reach a record high of nearly 22 under Jimmy Carter, the change from the beginning to the end of his administration was a plus-7. Under Reagan, it reached a low of 7.7, with a net from beginning to end of minus-9.6. Not only did Reagan leave the economy better than he found it, he left it better than Carter found it.

While we’re on the subject, W’s net MI was minus-.44, while Obama’s is a plus-4.9. Do I think he can hit up there with Carter? No, but then I’m supposedly a racist. If some peanut farmer from Georgia can nearly ruin a great nation of two centuries’ age, who am I to suggest that a community organizer from Chicago (or Hawaii, or Kansas, or Kenya) can’t do worse?

I take it back. Of course he can.

Brett Stephens can.

Snapshots from President Obama’s efforts to improve America’s standing in the world, 923 days into his administration:

A is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%.

B is for the federal budget deficit, which is estimated to come in at around 11% of GDP in 2011, up from about 3% in 2008.

C is for China’s military budget. For 2012, Beijing plans to increase spending on defense by 12.7%. The Obama administration, by contrast, proposed Pentagon cuts in April averaging out to $40 billion per year over the next decade, and Congress may soon cut a lot more.

D is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.

E is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.

F is for free trade. Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which facilitates $1.6 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush midwifed more than a dozen FTAs, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of FTA’s signed by the current president: zero.

G is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America’s future if we don’t reform our entitlement state.

H is for Hillary Clinton, who—I can’t believe I’m writing this—would have made a better president than Mr. Obama.

I is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital.

That is but a taste. Get thee to the link to read it all. And if you’re too lazy, I’ll give you the most depressing one of all:

Z is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012.

- Aggie

This writer points out the stylistic similarities between the two Presidents

Cardigan, anyone?

It has taken three decades, but Americans are finally living through Jimmy Carter’s second term.

Now we’ve got Jimmy Jr. barking at us from the White House about eating our peas and ripping off our Band-Aid. He might not even let us have our Social Security checks.

These are just the latest in a long line of nagging lectures. Already, we have been taught how we should sneeze into the crook of our arm. We need to drive less. And we need to caulk up those drafty houses of ours.

What ever happened to the soaring rhetoric and big bold ideas President Obama promised us in that historic election of his?

Is this what he meant by a new kind of politics? If so, no thanks. Oh, and it is not new. Jimmy already dragged us through all this once and we just barely survived it.

One of the most unpleasant things about Mr. Carter was the condescending disdain he could barely disguise for struggling Americans and their irritating malaise.

Increasingly, Jimmy Jr. is having difficulty concealing that very same disdain for us as the political winds around him turn hostile and all of his bright ideas lie fallow as nothing more than socialist hocus-pocus.

But even Mr. Carter never laid bare so baldly and plainly as Mr. Obama did earlier this week his deep-seated contempt for this whole annoying process we call “democracy.”

The problem with reaching a deal to raise the debt ceiling, he explained in a long sermon, is that there is this huge wave of Republicans who won control of the House in the last election by promising not to raise any more taxes and to cut the absurd overspending that has driven this town for decades.

He bemoaned – in public – that these Republicans are more concerned about the “next election” rather than doing “what’s right for the country.” In other words, he is saying the honorable thing would be for these Republicans to ignore the expressed wishes of voters, break their campaign promises and raise taxes. Wow.

As if the whole problem of Washington spending us into oblivion is the fault of stingy taxpayers and stupid voters. And what we really need is Jimmy Jr., who knows what is best for us despite what we may think.

He’s right, of course. Obama is Doofus-Downer, more concerned that we all remember to floss than in helping businesses to grow, prosper, hire.

- Aggie

Carter/Obama policies lead to stagflation.

Debbie Downer told ‘ya so…

The Fed also released its updated economic projections based on the “models” of the board members. For 2012, they are taking down growth expectations, taking up unemployment expectations, and increasing inflation expectations. Here at Hedgeye, we actually call slowing growth, increasing unemployment, and increases inflation, Jobless Stagflation.

Bernanke also indicated that keeping the federal funds rate at 0% to 0.25% for an extended period means for at least two to three FOMC meetings. This would extend Bernanke’s tenure as the most accommodative chairman in, well, the history of the Federal Reserve. This is outlined in the table below.

If there is anything we can take away from the Fed’s projections, it is that they are based on lagging indicators and are seemingly inaccurate as it relates to actual economic outcomes. Collectively, this is a little disconcerting since monetary policy is set and based on these “projections.”

In more interesting language, we might observe that the Fed is chasing its tail (rather than basing policy on lagging indicators, which is boring to read).

- Aggie

Or is he just Obama?

Readers of this blog know that I think Obama is a re-run of the Carter Presidency, starting from the campaign branding, through the foreign policy and the economy. But some people think he’s more like failed Presidential candidate, Mike Dukakis. One important difference: Dukakis lost.

In my column on Wednesday, I drew a comparison between the Obama administration and the Jimmy Carter administration of 1977-1981, arguing that both were engaging in political theater in lieu of real power to affect the fundamentals of the American economy. Other analysts have also drawn the Obama-Carter analogy. But today I’d like to delineate the limits to the comparison, as I think it will help conservatives better understand the challenge they face in the upcoming election.

To start, there is an appeal to the Obama-Carter analogy that derives from the personality of both men. Obama and Carter saw themselves as being above the political fray, yet both were as political as anybody else who has resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since its first occupant. This holier than thou approach infuriated Carter’s political opponents in the late 1970s, just as Obama’s dissenters have been frustrated by his do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitude since he took office. The other parallel of particular merit is the one I discussed on Wednesday: both had to deal with an economy that seemed frustratingly resistant to the governmental management. Carter could not stem inflation, Obama cannot stimulate real private sector growth.

[Or perhaps Obama's policies have actually inhibited private sector growth? - Aggie]

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The most important difference for conservatives and Republicans, however, is the position of each within his own party. Put simply, Obama is in much better shape with his own coalition than Carter ever was. To appreciate that, consider the following chart, which tracks the approval of Obama and Carter among all adults, Democrats, independents, and Republicans at key points in each administration. All numbers come from the Gallup poll.

You’ll notice that by June of his third year in office, the bottom had basically fallen out from under Carter, due largely to runaway inflation. The economy remains fragile today in 2011, but there is not a sense that things are spiraling out of control. When the Consumer Price Index starts increasing by 1 percent per month, as it did in 1979, the average consumer will feel genuinely threatened, as opposed to right now when most of them feel as though they are merely treading water.

But the lines I want to focus in on are approval among Democrats. Notice that Obama’s are consistently stronger than Carter’s. Carter also correspondingly did better among Republicans than Obama did.

The basic point of the article is that Carter was a conservative democrat, which seems crazy to us today, but back then he was because he built a coalition including southern democrats, whereas Obama is a man of the north and has built the traditional democrat coalition that we know today.

Today, not nearly as many people call themselves Democrats as once did, but those who do are much more homogenous ideologically, and they tend to be on the left hand side.

This gives Obama a substantially stronger base of support than Carter had. I have a lot of conservative friends who have puzzled over why Obama’s numbers remain as strong as they are, considering the state of the economy, the size of the deficit, and the unpopularity of the health care bill. I think the homogeneity of the modern Democratic party is a big reason why he is still in the mid-40s in terms of his job approval. Obama has governed like a true blue Democrat, and his party continues to reward him with great support. [ie brain dead liberals will support him til the end of time. - Aggie]

Barring some kind of precipitous decline in the condition of the economy – like the kind of runaway inflation suffered in 1979-80 – I have a hard time seeing Obama’s numbers falling much farther than the mid- to low-40s. That’s the level where the core of the Democratic coalition remains united behind him. It’s not enough to win, of course, but it is enough to make it interesting. Given the demagoguery the Obama team has engaged in against the GOP budget plan, it seems unlikely that he will broker some grand compromise that might risk alienating his party base. Thus, I see relatively little change in his numbers moving forward.

Accordingly, I think that at this point the Democrat that Obama most closely resembles is Michael Dukakis. To appreciate what I mean, let’s compare Obama’s current standing among different political groups with the 1988 exit poll results.

These are some very eerie similarities – Dukakis, unlike Carter, was able to hold together his party coalition. He lost the 1988 election because Republicans were firmly united behind George Bush, and independents broke decisively toward the GOP.

This is roughly how the current political landscape appears, which leads me to conclude if the election were held today, and the GOP nominated a reasonably attractive candidate, Obama would do about as well in the popular vote as Dukakis did. Given the geographical polarization of the electorate (i.e. the red state-blue state divide), Obama would surely capture more than the 111 electoral votes Dukakis carried. Even so, it would be a sizeable Republican victory. Not quite as smashing as Reagan’s victory in 1980, but still substantial.

Moving forward, I think that is the best way to compare Obama. Not so much to Carter, who was hampered by internal divisions that did not plague Obama, but more to Dukakis, whose final vote share is roughly consistent with Obama’s job approval rating over the last 18 months.

Well, the big problem is locating that next Reagan. Who is he/she? As an aside, I happened to hear Allen West being interviewed on the radio yesterday, caught it in the middle so didn’t know who was speaking. He is just fabulous. Just in his ability to define and discuss a problem, he leaves Obama and just about everyone else in the dust. But he isn’t running.

- Aggie